La Salle  et la découverte du Meschacébé (Mississippi)  (1679-1682)

Saint-Louis français

The diverse historic community of Soulard, located just south of downtown St. Louis, is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city with homes dating from the mid to late 1800s. The area is named for the Frenchman who surveyed the area for the King of Spain. It features beautifully restored 19th-century red brick Victorian and Federal-style townhouses.
Soulard Farmer's Market, located at Lafayette and Seventh Streets in the Soulard neighborhood, is one of the oldest public markets still in existence in the United States. Wednesdays through Saturdays, local residents, immigrants and visitors regularly browse the stalls of local farmers for fresh vegetables, meats, cheeses, bakery goods and flowers. Many farmers have been selling at the market for several generations.
According to Sandra Zak, marketing director for Soulard Market, the existing structure was designed by city architect Albert Osburg and built in 1929 in a Renaissance style reminiscent of the Foundling Hospital of Florence, Italy, by noted architect Philipo Brunelleschi. The first building, heavily damaged by the tornado of 1896, was built on land donated to the City of St. Louis by Julius Soulard in the 1830s with the stipulation that it remain a public market.
Norbury L. Wayman, who compiled information for the St. Louis Development Agency in History of St. Louis Neighborhoods, states that the 64 acre tract owned by Gabriel Cerre was conveyed to Antoine Soulard who married Cerre's daughter, Julia, in 1795. Soulard had arrived in St. Louis as a refugee from the French Revolution and was appointed as the second Surveyor-General of Upper Louisiana by Zenon Trudeau, the Spanish commandant.
Wayman notes that, after the Louisiana Purchase, the land was the subject of lengthy litigation concerning the legality of the Soulard ownership. After Soulard's death in 1825, his widow continued the legal battle and finally emerged victorious in 1836, when she acquired a deed for the 122 acre property from the City of St. Louis. The original farm was subdivided as Julia C. Soulard's first addition, followed by subsequent additions in the western part of the Soulard lands. Soulard by annexed to the City of St. Louis in 1841.
Julia Soulard also donated two lots to Bishop Rosatti as the eventual site for St. Vincent de Paul's Church. The church building, with its Romanesque architecture, was designed by Meriwether Lewis Clark and completed in 1843 on the southwest corner of Ninth Street and Park Avenue adjacent to Highway 55.
During the 1840's immigrants from Germany and Bohemia began to settle in the area. Many of the immigrants were employed by the local breweries including Eberhard Anheuser's Bavarian Brewery Anheuser-Busch, Adam Lemp's Western Brewery, Arsenal Brewery, Anthony and Kuhn's, Excelsior, Green Tree and English breweries. The area has numerous caves which provided an ideal cool storage place for beer in the summer.
Other ethnic groups also settled in the area including Syrians, Hungarians, Croatians, Italians and Serbians. They lived in row houses on "half" houses built upon narrow lots and alleys. The two-story brick houses with steep pitched roofs were generally built right up to the sidewalk line in a effort by landowners to get the maximum out of the land.
The proximity to the central area of the city and the development of the railroad along the southern riverfront provided the ideal location for other industries including a cotton compressing company, woodworks, lime kilns, flour mills, stoneware, tobacco, matches and ice houses.
Today, Soulard thrives as a diverse neighborhood with events such as the annual Bastille Day celebration in July, Soulard Mardi Gras activities in February and Soulard Oktoberfest in October, bring thousands of people into this lively ethnic neighborhood. Visitors can enjoy the unique blues music clubs, pubs and fine restaurants and outdoor cafes.
 

 

Sainte-Geneviève

Perched on the west bank of the Mississippi River, the village of Ste. Geneviève was settled in the late 1740s about two miles south of its present location. The village was one of several important French communities forming a region known as the «Illinois Country» part of the vast territory held by France in North America at the time. Many of Ste. Geneviève's earliest residents were French-Canadian habitants who farmed the rich, alluvial soil adjacent to the village, producing salt and lead from nearby creeks and mines. World events  impacted the habitants of Ste. Geneviève in 1762, when France ceded all her holdings west of the Mississippi River to Spain at the close of the French and Indian War. Despite the transfer and new Spanish government in the region, Ste. Geneviève retained its distinctive French character and language.

A disastrous flood in 1785 triggered the gradual relocation of the village to higher ground between the forks of the Gabouri Creek, the site of present-day Ste. Geneviève.

Much of historic Ste. Geneviève's charm and ambiance is due to the remarkable preservation of the features of the colonial settlement. Its narrow streets and fenced gardens surround some of the most significant eighteen-century architecture of the nation. The "French-colonial" style buildings were committed from massive logs hewn and set vertically to form the walls of the home. Heavy timbers were mortised and pegged into sturdy trusses that supported the impressive hipped roof covering the house and its wide porches. Fascinating variations of this architectural style, known as poteaux-en-terre and poteaux-en-sol are found in the historic homes of colonial Ste. Geneviève, as well as in Québec and Normandie. Historians and architects continue to study these buildings, absorbed by these links with our French colonial past.

As the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 propelled Ste. Geneviève into another chapter in history, its French-speaking residents suddenly found themselves citizens of the United States. Soon the rush of Americans into the Louisiana Territory left its mark in Ste. Geneviève as well. Merchants, lawyers and entrepreneurs settled in the village, building their homes and businesses among the old French houses,  creating the delightful mix of early nineteenth-century architecture found today. German immigrants in the mid-century left a legacy of charming brick homes and stores throughout the community.

Today Ste. Geneviève's National landmark Historic District offers visitors an unparalleled glimpse into its colonial past. Its residents join together to preserve and interpret this most remarkable community.

© From Ste. Geneviève Wine Country brochure

 

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About 20 miles up the river from Kaskaskia, where Lewis and Clark spent time in late November 1803, was Ste. Genevieve. President Jefferson mentioned in his instructions to Meriwether Lewis that the captain could stop there or Kaskaskia for assistance. Lewis chose Kaskaskia. However, William Clark and his men camped just below the town on their way to St. Louis.

It is generally accepted that Ste. Genevieve was the first permanent European settlement west of the Mississippi in the Illinois Country. The "Old Town" of Ste. Genevieve, as it was called, was located on the Mississippi floodplain on the Missouri side of the river three miles below the present site of Ste. Genevieve, about 60 miles south of St. Louis. When Clark passed by, there were about 1,000 residents, roughly the same population as St. Louis.

Ste. Genevieve was an offshoot of older French communities on the east bank of the Mississippi—Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Chartes, Prairie du Rocher, and St. Philippe. The first official documents pertaining to the citizens of Ste. Genevieve were recorded in Kaskaskia. Even before Ste. Genevieve maintained its own records, it existed as a distinct village.

French settlers started Ste. Genevieve after they had become established on the east bank of the Mississippi, used up much of the farmland there, and felt that the risk from hostile Indians had subsided somewhat. They named the town after the patron saint of their French homeland.

The town's economy relied on farming, livestock, salt springs, lead mines, and peltries. The rich soil, temperate climate, and broad expanses of alluvial bottomland made the region perfect for farming. The three main crops were wheat, corn, and tobacco. The people of New Orleans depended heavily on agricultural products from the Illinois Country.

Though the people of Ste. Genevieve were largely French-Canadian, there were many second or third generation Illinoisans, and this frontier community paid little attention to the class distinctions of highly structured European society. Not only were the prestigious families involved in agriculture, they also tackled trade, lead mining, and salt production. Slaves were used to care for the crops.

The standard residential lot in both the Old Town and today's New Town was square. In addition to the main house, the lots also contained a cow barn, a stable, a henhouse, a corncrib, an orchard, a vegetable garden, a bake oven, a well, and often slave's quarters. Occasionally, there would be a freestanding kitchen.

Picket fences were common in Ste. Genevieve. French-Canadian settlers in the Mississippi Valley did not fence in their grazing animals. Instead, they fenced the animals out.

People lived in picket lean-tos, barken shanties, rough log cabins, thatched-roof sheds, and the more familiar solid houses. Houses in the village were usually rectangular, vertical-log structures. The spaces between the logs were generally filled with saplings and noggin made of straw and clay, or stones and mortar. Whitewash was smeared over the exterior to seal the walls.

The people of Ste. Genevieve made great use of vegetables. They ate soups, fricassees, gumbos, bison, deer, squirrels, bears, ducks, geese, beef, pork, domestic fowl, fish, fruits, and breads.

The parish church was the focal point of the community for both religious and secular affairs. At the church door virtually all public auctions were cried and all notices posted.

Sometime between 1752-1755, Andre Deguire dit Larose was appointed captain of the militia at Ste. Genevieve. The militia of the town was quite small, but the formal organization of such a body indicates that the townspeople viewed their community as a permanent and viable affair.

Ste. Genevieve was and is solidly Roman Catholic.
© http://www.l3-lewisandclark.com
 

 

                                    

Eglise  Sainte-Trinité, technique "poteaux en terre"  (Chahokia, Ill.),                    Maison "Bolduc" Ste. Geneviève, technique "poteaux-en-sol".