MISSOURI

Missouri is known to have been an occupied area for thousands of years.  The earliest people known to have settled in the area, possibly as long ago as 20,000 years, were what is called "mound builders"  (click on the link to read more about them and use your back arrow to return to this page.)  By the time the area was being explored by the white man, these people had long ago disappeared.  It sits between two of the largest rivers in the United States, the Missouri River and the Mississippi.  The earliest explorer to the area is said to have been Hernando (or Fernando, depending on what source you are reading) De Soto, who visited the mouth of the Mississippi River in approximately 1541.  In 1673, Father Jacque Marquette and Louis Jolliet explored the mouth of the Mighty Missouri River.  The Native Americans dwelling in the area at the time would have been members of the Missouri, Fox, Shawnee and Osage tribes. Although rumors went out of a great wealth in gold, silver and furs, the only actual findings were salt and lead, both worth their weight in gold to the early settlers.

Missouri was visited again in 1862 when French explorer, Robert Cavelier de La Salle, took possession of this section as part of Louisiana and claimed it in the name of France.  Although a Catholic mission was established 50 miles south of present-day of St. Louis in the early 1700s, the first actual settlement was not established until some time between 1735 and 1750.  This was called Sainte Genevieve.  The first actual American settlement was established in 1787 when a man by the name of John Dodge established himself in the area of what has become Perry County.  He was joined by Isreal Dodge in 1790 and by Dr. Jesse Bryan in about 1793.    By 1795, American settlements were established on Femme Osage Creek  (now St. Charles County)  This was called Upper Louisiana or New Spain (See "Pioneer Families of Missouri" published in 1876 by William S. Bryan and Robert Rose and reprinted in 1935 with an introduction by W. W. Elwang.)

Through the period of 1682 through 1803, control of the area passed back and forth between France as they waged their various wars.  In 1803, Missouri became a possession of the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase.  In 1804, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (Click on your back arrow to return to this page.) were chosen by President Thomas Jefferson to lead an exploratory expedition to explore the territory west of the Missouri River.  Also a matter of interest is the fact that in the years 1811/1812, Missouri was struck with three sizeable earthquakes in an area now known as the New Madrid fault.  These tremors are among the most violent quakes recorded in North American history, one of which has been said to have been 8.0 on the Richter scale. In the wake of all this, Missouri became an official territory in 1812.  It claimed a population of around 20,000, mostly settlers from Kentucky, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.  Indian raids continued on the settlements until the peace treaties of 1815.  

Missouri joined the Union on 10 August of 1821 as a slave state under the Missouri Compromise of 1820.  Six additional counties were added with the Platte Purchase in 1837 which was annexed from land originally intended for Kansas.  When Missouri first petitioned to become a state in 1818 as a slave state, it spurred the first clash between the North and South that ultimately led to the Civil War.  It was only through the Missouri Compromise that the ultimate action was temporarily defused.  In 1857, the Dred Scott Decision in Missouri escalated the slavery crisis.  This landmark case gave Mr. Scott and his wife their freedom after he was moved from a slave state, where he and his family were slaves, into a free state which opposed slavery.  Many of the slave owners of the state felt this infringed on their property rights.  By the time the Civil War finally erupted with the firing upon Fort Sumpter, Missouri  had sent 110,000 sons to fight for the North and 30,000 to fight for the South.  It is the only state in which Confederate dead and Union dead are buried side by side.  Many battles and skirmishes were fought in Missouri.  For further information on the battles of that region, I refer you to the Civil War website and more particularly to the page on Missouri in that site.  This same period of time (1861) the Poly Express was begun out of St. Joseph, culminating in San Francisco.

The end of the war did not relieve the violence that was occurring in Missouri.    Many Confederate soldiers turned to lives of crime.  Missouri was at the mercy of the outlaws, who staged stagecoach raids, robbed banks and held up trains, one of which was the infamous Jesse James, who was finally killed in 1882, in the quiet of his home, by someone who was seeking the reward.

MISSOURI RESEARCH LINKS