St. Joseph, MO

Gateway to the West
This is the story of a town which played an important part in the westward settlement of the United States and of a representative group of the men and the families who were its builders.

A cup in the hills along the great river system was a convenient gathering place for the Indians before the white man came to disturb their long tenure. That fact was noted by the early French fur traders and one of them, Joseph Robidoux, established his trading post at the site. After Napoleon decided to sell the French holdings west of the Mississippi River and Thomas Jefferson decided to buy, thus doubling the size of the United States, the American white men began their inexorable advance up the Missouri River. Because of proximity, most of the families came from the southern states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina. The rivers were the highways and the steamboat was the vehicle.

The great stimulus for the westward migration was the discovery of gold in California in 1848. It was found that Saint Joseph was the optimum northern and western point which could be reached in the relative security and comfort of the steamboat, saving many miles in distance and days in time before embarking on the hazardous wagon trip across the plain and mountains. The needs of the emigrants led to the establishment of outfitting and mercantile suppliers in St. Joseph The demands of the travelers were great; the volume of their business an increasing flood; and profits were in proportion to the opportunity,

The first great period of business activity came to an end with the Civil War. The population was largely of southern origin and it was difficult to turn against old homes and relatives. On the other hand, the compelling interests of the southern states did not seem so urgent in Missouri, and there was a great reluctance to break the bond with the Union. Missouri was a sorely divided state, with many families supplying manpower to both the Confederacy and the Union -- both sides equally sincere. Life in St. Joseph during the war years was very difficult.

When the war was over, trade began again, and railroad construction provided great activity. By 1870 the development of the wholesale houses, especially in dry goods and groceries was well under way. The next thirty years were ones of accelerating business expansion, with St. Joseph playing an essential part in the national system for distributing goods. The factories of the nation sent their products to the St. Joseph jobbers, who then carried on the distribution to the many retailers of the entire western country from Canada to Mexico and west to the Pacific coast.

The 1880s and 1890s were the ‘Golden Age’ of ‘Old Saint Jo.’ Large business houses were built; many fine homes were established; and Saint became noted for the southern flavor of its hospitality and charm of its living One observer commented that in his opinion there were two cities in the country so different from the usual as to hardly belong -- Charleston, South Carolina and St. Joseph, Missouri

The momentum of the great days carried on into the first quarter of the twentieth century. But changes were appearing. Other cities, starting later moved into the development of the West with great energy. The system of distribution was changing, with  factories more and more sending their products directly to the retailers. The emergence of the chain-store systems hastened this development and much of the need for the wholesale jobber was eventually eliminated. The wholesale houses of St. Joseph found themselves with a greatly diminished function. The job of ‘Old Saint Jo’ as the gateway was completed; the West was built.

American participation in the European war of 1914-1918 changed everything. The inflation of prices for American agricultural products led to inflations of the prices of agricultural land and the creation of debt based upon the higher level. The deflation of those values after the war brought great hardship to the surrounding agricultural base of St. Joseph and to the city. In the decade from 1920 to 1930 many of the wholesale businesses of St. Joseph were liquidated.

With the elimination of so much of the distributing business, the role of ‘Old Saint Joe’ as a supplier of the West was ended. The rich surrounding agricultural territory remained. Many businesses relating to the production of food--animal and vegetable--prospered, and new businesses were built. But the confident outward look which had characterized the growth of the years of the town was gone.

So came the end of ‘Old Saint Jo’: the Indian trading post, Joe Robidoux, John Patee, Jeff Thompson, Milton Tootle, and all the others. So began the new Saint Joseph, center for the surrounding agricultural area, one hour from ‘Main Street, U.S.A’--a great metropolitan center with dynamic growth factor (and all the problems of the American big city), half an hour from the uniquely situated Mid-Continent International Airport. All would be different in the years ahead.

And the men who built ‘Old Saint Jo, Gateway to the West’ are gone, most them resting in Mount Mora Cemetery, where the history of their town is written in the names and dates carved in the stones. There they are safe, where neither criticism of their faults and their sins, nor praise of their exertions and their achievements can matter in the least. Their jobs are done; they can rest on their record; they are (in the words of Rupert Brooke)

Sae where all safety’s lost,

Safe where men fall,

And, if these poor limbs die,

Safest of all.

The Land
In the three centuries after the discovery of America by Columbus in 1492 three European nations were in competition for possession of the New World.

In 15I2 Juan Ponce de Leon, who had been an associate of Columbus, landed near the present site of St. Augustine, Florida. He cruised along both sides of the peninsula in a vain search for gold. Hernando de Soto had been with Pizarro in the conquest of Peru in 1533. After his return to Spain in prosperity and with honor, he organized an expedition and in May 1539 landed at Tampa Bay. Also in search for gold and mineral wealth, his expedition wandered north and west into the interior of the country, reaching the Mississippi River on April 25, 1541, at a point a few miles below the present site of Memphis, Tennessee. They built boats to cross the river and then proceeded north along the west bank to about the present site of New Madrid, Missouri. These men were apparently the first Europeans to SCt foot in the present territory of the state of Missouri. De Soto spent some time in the area of the present state of Alabama, but was disappointed in his search for treasure. He was attacked by fever and died May 21, 1542. To conceal the expedition's loss from the Indians the body of de Soto was buried in the Mississippi River and his successor led the surviving followers down the river in boats to the Gulf of Mexico. Spanish expeditions from the Southwest also reached into the interior of the continent, and pieces of Spanish chain mail have been uncovered at Lyons, in central Kansas.

The thrust of the French came from the northeast. In 1534 Jacques Cartier, while looking for a northwest passage, discovered the River St. Lawrence. In 1603 Samuel de Champlain made his first voyage to Canada. In 1673 Father Marquette and Joliet made their way, with five boatmen and two canoes, from Lake Michigan down the Wisconsin River into the Mississippi, and on down past the Missouri and the Ohio, as far as the mouth of the Arkansas River. Then they returned to Canada. In 1677 La Salle secured the backing of King Louis XIV in another attempt to find a northwest passage. He and Father Hennepin collaborated. Hennepin went down the Illinois River and up the Mississippi as far as the Falls of St. Anthony, which he named for his patron saint. LaSalle went down the Illinois River to the Mississippi and on down to the Gulf of Mexico. On April 9, 1682, La Salle, in a ceremony of great pomp, took possession of the land in the name of Louis XIV, King of France, in whose honor he named the country “Louisiana. As the result of these explorations and ceremonies, France laid claim to the entire Mississippi Valley. In 1712 Louis XIV granted exclusive trading privileges to Sir Anthony Crozat in the entire territory drained by the River Ste. Mary (now the Mississippi), the River Jerome (now the Wabash), and the River St. Philip (now the Missouri). In 1717 Crozat returned his patent to the King and the colony of Louisiana was transferred to the 'Company of the West in which the Scotchman John Law was the moving spirit. There were reports of untold riches in the property and great speculation in the shares of the Company ran them up to twenty times their par value. This was the 'Mississippi Bubble' which collapsed in 1720. During this period, however, many French settlers came to the area, and while searching for gold and silver, they discovered rich deposits of lead. The town of Ste. Genevieve was started in 1735. Large quantities of lead were smelted and sent down the river to New Orleans. [I have often wondered whether some of the lead on the roofs and drains of the Palace of Versailles came from Missouri.)

The British area of exploration and colonization was on the Atlantic seaboard. From 1583 to 1588 attempts had been made by Sir Walter Raleigh and others to establish English colonies on the coast of what is now North Carolina. The only result was the naming the country Virginia in honor of Queen Elizabeth. A successful expedition landed at a place named Jamestown in 1607, and in the next year Captain John Smith became head of the government. Further north, Englishmen landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620. From these beginnings came the development of the thirteen English colonies of the American Revolution.

The ambitions of the British and the French clashed and a series of armed conflicts between 1755 and 1763 were called the French Indian Wars. The British sent over troops under General Braddock who in July 1755 took the field with a picked column, in which George Washington of the Virginia Militia served as colonel, intendIng to attack the French at Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). The column was ambushed by the French and their Indian allies and Braddock was killed. The personal relations between Washington and Braddock were close and friendly. There is a body of opinion that, had Braddock lived, Washington might not have been available as a leader in the American Revolution. When the war ended, in the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the land east of the Mississippi River was awarded to the British and the land west of the River and New Orleans was ceded by the French to Spain.

During the year 1763, Pierre Laclede Liguest, a French merchant in New Orleans, obtained from the governor of Louisiana a monopoly of the fur trade with the Indians of the Mississippi and Missouri River valleys. His company was popularly known as "The Louisiana Fur Company. In August 1763 Laclede, accompanied by his stepson, thirteen-year-old Auguste Chouteau, and a band of thirty hunters, trappers, and mechanics, left New Orleans and proceeded up the Mississippi River with the object of establishing a permanent trading post at some point north of the existing settlements. They arrived at Ste. Genevieve in November. In December 1763 Laclede selected the location of his post, above Ste. Genevieve and below the entrance of the Missouri River into the Mississippi. In February 1764 a party of workmen, under the direction of Auguste Chouteau, began to cut down the trees and lay out the streets of the new trading post. The new village was named, for King Louis IX, “Saint Louis,” and Laclede stated that “it might hereafter become one of the first cities in America.’

In the next five years, Laclede's fur business grew to more than $80,000 annually, and St. Louis became and remained the center of the western fur trade. Among the French settlers in the new town were two men from Montreal-Joseph Robidoux I, born 1722, and his son, Joseph Robidoux II, born 1750. They arrived in 1771 and entered into the fur trade.

As the Americans on the Atlantic seaboard pushed across the Alleghenies and began settlement of the western lands, they needed the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers as highways to carry their produce down to market. Beginning about 1785 the men of Ohio, Kentucky, and other parts of the western frontier floated products such as flour, pork, tobacco, hemp, and iron down the rivers to the markets at Natchez and New Orleans. Satisfactory arrangements with the Spanish authorities there had been worked out by a treaty in 1795 when Spain guaranteed freedom of navigation and the privilege of deposit at New Orleans. In 1800, however, Napoleon forced the Spanish to cede their Louisiana interests to France. This caused American apprehension and Secretary of State Madison instructed Robert R. Livingston, the American minister in Paris, and James Monroe, who was sent over to assist, to sound out the French to see if they were willing to sell West Florida and New Orleans to the United States. To the amazement of the Americans, the French offered to sell the entire Louisiana Territory. Apparently, Napoleon's disastrous experiences in Haiti had persuaded him to give up his idea of a colonial empire; he was at war with Great Britain and could use money rather than the distant land; and perhaps felt it would be an embarrassment to the British to have the Americans in possession of the territory. Although President Thomas Jefferson had doubts originally as to the constitutionality of the transaction, arrangements were made in April 1803 to purchase from France the entire Louisiana Territory as far west as the Rocky Mountains for $15,000,000. The size of the United States was doubled by this purchase of land comprising all of the future states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and parts of Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana.

The actual payment of the $15,000,000 to Napoleon was made in two ways. The United States assumed the obligation of $3,750,000 of claims of American citizens against France, and Congress authorized an issue of $11,250,000 United States Treasury 6% bonds which were delivered to Napoleon. Interest on the bonds was payable semi-annually in Paris, Amsterdam, or London; and the principal was payable after fifteen years at the rate of $3,000,000 annually. Napoleon had no use for the bonds; he needed cash to prosecute his war against England. So he sold the bonds at 87½% of par value to two banking firms: Hope & Co. of Amsterdam, and Baring Brothers of London. All of the bonds were paid off by 1823, and the total cost of the Louisiana Purchase, including the interest paid, was a little over $27,700,000 or about four cents an acre. Thus some British investors inadvertently provided money which Napoleon used to make war against their country.

President Jefferson's private secretary from 1801 to 1803 was Meriwether Lewis, a young Virginian (born 1774) who had been a neighbor of Jefferson’s in Albemarle County, Virginia, and captain in the U.S. Army. Jefferson sent a confidential message to Congress urging the development of trade with the Indians of the Missouri Valley and recommending that an exploring party be sent to the region. He recommended, in glowing terms, his secretary Lewis as a highly qualified man to head the expedition. Congress appropriated the funds and, with Jefferson's approval, Lewis chose as Companion his old friend and army comrade Lieutenant William Clark, younger brother of George Rogers Clark. Late in 1803, with twenty-nine men from the Army, they went into winter quarters near St. Louis, where the men were given rigorous training. On May 14, 1804, the party, with sixteen additional members, including two French-Canadian boatmen, started up the Missouri River in three boats, a "keelboat fifty-five feet long with decks in both bow and stern, and two smaller open boats. The keelboat with a large square sail had twenty-two oars, and the smaller boats six oars.

The log of the Lewis and Clark expedition states: “In the morning of July 7 1804) the rapidity of the water obliged us to draw the boat along with ropes. At six and three quarter miles, we came to a sand bar, at a point opposite a fine, rich prairie on the east, called St. Michael's Prairie. The prairies in this neighborhood have the appearance of distinct farms, divided by narrow strips of woodland which follow the borders of the small runs leading to the river. Above this, about a mile, is a cliff of yellow clay on the east. Such was the first view by Lewis and Clark of the cup in the hills destined to be the site of St. Joseph.

The expedition spent the winter near the site of Bismarck, North Dakota, near the Mandan Indians, and early in April 1805 continued the ascent of the Missouri River. The party was cut back in size to thirty-two men, who had two boats and six canoes. They proceeded to the headwaters of the Missouri River in present Montana, then procured horses and a guide from the Shoshone Indians. They traveled through the Rocky Mountains until on October 7, 1805, they were able to launch canoes on a tributary of the Columbia River, reaching the Pacific Ocean on November 15, having traveled over four thousand miles. They spent that winter in camp on the bank of the Columbia River, and in March 1806 started their return journey, coming down the Missouri River and passing St. Michael's Meadow and the BlackSnake Hills again. They reached St. Louis on September 23, 1806, having been away two years and four months.

Congress, in 1804, divided the newly acquired territory into two parts: the Territory of Orleans-substantially the present state of Louisiana-and the District of Louisiana, which was temporarily placed under the government of the Territory of Indiana. The District was divided into five administrative districts: St. Charles-1400 white citizens, 150 slaves; St. Louis-2280 whites, 500 slaves; Ste. Genevieve-2350 whites, 520 slaves; Cape Girardeau-1470 whites, 180 slaves; New Madrid-1350 whites, 150 slaves. The totals were 8850 whites and 1500 slaves. Captain Amos Stoddard of the U.S. Army served as commandant of the District from March to September 1804. In 1805 Congress elevated the District to the Territory. of Louisiana, and President Jefferson appointed Colonel James Wilkinson governor of the new territory. He was removed in 1807 and Meriwether Lewis was appointed. Lewis died in 1809 and General Benjamin Howard of Lexington, Kentucky, was appointed governor by President James Madison. Howard resigned in 1810 and William Clark was appointed governor. He remained until Missouri became a state in 1821.

The State
In 1812 the state of Louisiana was admitted to the Union, and to avoid confusion the name of the Territory was changed to Missouri Territory. The first meeting of the General Assembly was held on December 7, 1812, in the large home of Joseph Robidoux II, who had become a substantial citizen of St. Louis.

Even before the Louisiana Purchase, American settlers, mostly from Kentucky, had been moving into the land west of the Mississippi River. Daniel Boone, born in 1734 in Pennsylvania, had lost his Kentucky lands because of a defective title, so about 1799 he moved into the Spanish territory west of the Mississippi and became a Spanish subject. He was granted land by the Spanish authorities in return for his agreement to bring into the area one hundred families from Kentucky and Virginia. He settled down in the St. Charles District about forty-five miles west of St. Louis. In 1807 his sons, Nathan and Daniel M. Boone, went up the Missouri River to the vicinity of present Boonesboro, across the river from Arrow Rock, for the purpose of producing salt at what became known as Boone's Lick. In 1808 the government established Fort Osage on the Missouri River in what is now eastern Jackson County. After the Louisiana Purchase, the tide of incoming Americans attracted by the available land increased and by 1810 a colony of one hundred and fifty families, mostly from Kentucky, had settled in Howard County, near Franklin. The population of the entire upper Louisiana Territory was estimated as 20,845 in 1810, and in a special census of 1814 as 25,000. The years 1817 and 1818 saw a great influx of population to the 'Boone's Lick Country, as all of central Missouri was then called. The towns of Fayette and Boonville were laid out in 1819. The settlers were coming from Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina. Boone County, named in honor of Daniel Boone, was cut out of Howard County and separately organized in 1820.

As the population of Missouri Territory increased, the territorial legislature of 1818–1819 made application to Congress for permission to organize a state government. This raised the difficult question of slavery. Both the governments of Spain and France had permitted it; when the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama had been taken into the Union no question had been raised, and while the number of negroes in the Missouri Territory was not great, the institution was in existence there. The two Houses of Congress were fairly equally divided between slave states and free states, and it was felt desirable to maintain the balance. Finally, on February 8, 1820, Henry Clay of Kentucky, speaker of the House of Representatives, addressed the House for four hours. As the result of his presentation, the “Missouri Compromise' was adopted. This provided for the admission of the state of Missouri as a slave state, and the admission of the state of Maine as a free state, preserving the balance. Furthermore, it was agreed that future states being formed out of the Louisiana Purchase territory north of the line of the southern boundary of Missouri would be free states. As the result, President Monroe, on August 10, 1821, proclaimed the admission of the state of Missouri to the Union as the twenty-fourth of the United States.

The original western boundary of Missouri was a line running north and south through the mouth of the Kansas River where it entered the Missouri River. The northern boundary was a line running east and west through the Falls of the Des Moines River. This left a triangular plot north of the mouth of the Kansas River between the line and the Missouri River, which was to the west. This triangle measured about a hundred miles north and south, at the northern end about seventy miles east and west, with the Missouri River as the hypotenuse. This area of about 2,000,000 acres was reserved for the Sac, Fox, Sioux, Omaha, Iowa, Oto, and several lesser tribes.

In the same year that Missouri became a state, Mexico won independence from Spain, and efforts to establish a trade between Missouri and Santa Fe began. In September 1821 William Becknell of Franklin, Missouri, organized a wagon train carrying goods to Santa Fe, disposing of them profitably, and returning safely. This was the beginning of the Santa Fe Trail. The American population continued to expand up the Missouri River. The town of Liberty was established in 1822 and Liberty Landing, a few miles to the south on the Missouri River, became the main port and outlet for trade from northwest Missouri. One of the early leaders in the Liberty area was Colonel John Thornton, who came from Kentucky in 1817. By 1820 he had 1800 acres of land, a log house, and a blockhouse built as defense against the Indians. He and other settlers near Liberty petitioned President Monroe for help from the Army in protecting themselves against the Indians. The president sent out Colonel Henry H. Leavenworth, and after discussions at Liberty it was decided that a military installation might better be built further up the Missouri River, and on the western side. As a result, in 1827 Fort Leavenworth was established.

The Platte Purchase
The growing population, as early as 1831, turned its attention to the triangle of land lying just northwest of the state line which had been reserved for the Indians. Their presence was a barrier to the natural highway, the Missouri River; and the desirability of the land led to clashes between the two races. White settlers occasionally attempted to move into the area, but they were ejected by soldiers sent from Fort Leavenworth. It was realized that the natural boundary of the Missouri River would be a safer dividing line between the white men and the Indians. In 1835, at a militia meeting near Liberty, the acquisition of the territory by the United States was proposed. In 1836 the two Missouri senators in Congress, Benton and Linn, introduced a bill proposing the acquisition of the area. Obstacles to it were: (1) Missouri was already the largest state in the Union in area; (2) the Indians had been granted the land in perpetuity; (3) an agreement of the Missouri Compromise would be breached by converting free soil into slave territory.

Notwithstanding these difficulties, the act was passed and in June 1836 was enacted into law. The negotiations with the Indians were turned over to William Clark Lewis and Clark who was at the time Indian agent for the land lying between the Missouri and Arkansas Rivers. He was respected and honored by the Indians, who called him “Redhead. Clark called together the Indian chiefs of the tribes concerned at a meeting at Fort Leavenworth on September 17, 1836. Among the witnesses was Joseph E. Robidoux, oldest son of Joseph Robidoux. A treaty was signed between the chiefs and the United States government whereby the Indians agreed to vacate the land and move to new territory farther west. The government agreed to pay the Indians $7500, one hundred cows and calves for each tribe,

five bulls, one hundred hogs, a mill, farm advisors, a blacksmith, schoolmaster, interpreter, several houses, and agricultural implements for a period offive years. This treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on February 15, 1837, and during the summer of 1837 the Indians were moved out. The Missouri legislature passed an act accepting the territory as an addition to the state of Missouri on December 31, 1837.

This was the Platte Purchase' and the settlers began to flood into the new land. It was surveyed and divided into sections of 640 acres each. Homesteaders could apply for quarter-sections of 160 acres, and pay for them at the rate of $1.25 an acre, on time.

The Indians had their own version of the Platte Purchase. The Blacksnake Hills were regarded by them as sacred ground; the gods had once dwelt here; the soil was so sacred that ailing chiefs of different tribes were brought great distances by travois to die here. They could then be buried on the summits of the hills facing west over the valley of the Great River. The sunsets from those hills were so fine that the Indians believed the rays of the setting sun provided an invisible bridge over which the souls of the departed took a direct road to Paradise and the Happy Hunting Grounds. The land ("Wah-wah-lanawa) was holy, a place of peace and plenty, a refuge and a sanctuary. Bloodshed and weapons were forbidden. The resident Platte Indian tribe was merely the custodian of this sacred place for the benefit of all tribes. It was, the Indians much later told Mary Alicia Owen, “the holiest place on Earth.

When the local chief, “MA-HAS-KA, Chief White Cloud, realized that it was the white man's intention to take this land and remove his people, he pondered deeply the question of whether the Indians should fight to keep it. Seeking the guidance of his gods, he went up to the Sacred Spring, high on one of the hills (later named King Hill by the white man), to pray. As he knelt there he saw, growing all about him, the plantain weed, which was known to the Indians as 'white man's foot, because they observed that wherever it grew the white man came to stay. White Cloud took this as a sign of the immediate answer to his prayers; he covered his face and wept. He told his people, “the White Man's foot has come to wipe out the trails of the Red

Man forever, and he led them across the river to the west without bloodshed.

Five Towns
The history of Saint Joseph falls easily into five periods, each of which was built upon the foundations of what had gone before.

Queen of the River Towns 1843-1858
The Gold Rush 1849-1858

End of the Railroad 1859-1869
The Railroad Comes 1859

The Gathering Storm 1850-1860

The Pony Express 1860-1861

The Presidential Election 1860

The Civil War Comes to Missouri

The Civil War Comes to St. Joseph

The Union Pacific Railroad

The Close of the War 1865-1870

The Wholesale Town 1870-1925
The Golden Age 1885-1900

The Rise and Fall 1900-1932