History of Southeast Missouri: A Narrative Account of its Historical Progress, its People and its Principal Interests

HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST MISSOURI, VOL. 1
By Robert Sidney Douglass


Excerpt from Preface

This territory of Southeast Missouri was first visited by De Soto about the year 1540. The next white men who saw it were the adventurous voyagers from Canada who reached the Mississippi from the north and passed down toward its mouth. Marquette and Joliet and La Salle all visited this section, or at least saw it as their canoes floated down the great stream. No attention however was paid to the district until Renault, the agent of the Company of the West came with his miners and four hundred slaves to Port Chartres with instructions to explore the country for the precious metals. This was about 1720. In his search for gold and silver he penetrated to what is now the county of Ste. Genevieve, finding no traces of gold or silver, but finding abundant deposits of lead ore. . .


Abridged Contents

SECTION I
Chapter I: Archaeology
Chapter II: Adventures of De Soto
Chapter III: French Explorers
Chapter IV: Indian History

SECTION II
Chapter V: Ste. Genevieve District
Chapter VI: Cape Girardeau District
Chapter VII: District of New Madrid
Chapter VIII: Government Under France and Spain
Chapter IX: Social Life
Chapter X: Transfer to the United States

SECTION III
Chapter XI: American Territorial Government
Chapter XII: Period from 1804 to 1821
Chapter XIII: Protestant Immigration
Chapter XIV: New Madrid Earthquake
Chapter XV: Statehood Attained

SECTION IV
Chapter XVI: General Development
Chapter XVII: Ste. Genevieve and St. Marys
Chapter XVIII: Cape Girardeau County Towns
Chapter XIX: New Madrid and Madison Counties
Chapter XX: Washington and Pebry Counties
Chapter XXI: Wayne and Jefferson Counties
Chapter XXII: St. Francois, Bollinger and Pemiscot Counties
Chapter XXIII: Dunklin and Mississippi
Chapter XXIV: Towns Of Six Counties
Chapter XXV: Political, Civil and Military
Chapter XXVI: Creation of New Counties

SECTION V
Chapter XXVII: General Movements
Chapter XXVIII: Regimental Histories

SECTION VI
Chapter XXIX: Movements Since the Civil War
Chapter XXX: Towns Founded Since Civil War

SECTION VII
Chapter XXXI: Early Schools
Chapter XXXII: Public Schools
Chapter XXXIII: Institutions of Higher Learning

SECTION VIII
Chapter XXXIV: Social Life and Industries
Chapter XXXV: Religious History — Continued
Chapter XXXVI: Railroads
Chapter XXXVII: General Status
Chapter XXXVIII: The Newspapers
Chapter XXXIX: Some Biographies

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Windham Press is committed to bringing the lost cultural heritage of ages past into the 21st century through high-quality reproductions of original, classic printed works at affordable prices.

This book has been carefully crafted to utilize the original images of antique books rather than error-prone OCR text. This also preserves the work of the original typesetters of these classics, unknown craftsmen who laid out the text, often by hand, of each and every page you will read. Their subtle art involving judgment and interaction with the text is in many ways superior and more human than the mechanical methods utilized today, and gave each book a unique, hand-crafted feel in its text that connected the reader organically to the art of bindery and book-making.

We think these benefits are worth the occasional imperfection resulting from the age of these books at the time of scanning, and their vintage feel provides a connection to the past that goes beyond the mere words of the text.