HISTORY
As you’ve probably noted, history is a huge part of what makes Ste. Genevieve special. It’s an inexhaustible well that we pull from, and that well is responsible for the many wonderful people that have moved into town to continue putting the pieces of our history together. That important work being done creates new history that will continue to enrich the soil that this place is firmly planted in. We have a variety of organizations such as the National Park Service, the French Colonial Dames of America, Missouri State Parks, and the Foundation for Restoration of Ste. Genevieve, working to keep our Frontier French history alive and relevant. Then we have local celebrities Ron and Justine Rayfield using their popular Youtube channels to make American history fun and engaging for a world-wide audience and their presence here in town to bring Ste. Genevieve’s importance in winning the Revolutionary War to the forefront. The lengths we’ve gone to protect our colonial-era buildings is a marvel all its own, and the influence it can have on a new generation of architects and sustainable builders is just beginning.
Early American
Your content goes here. Edit or remove this text inline or in the module Content settings. You can also style every aspect of this content in the module Design settings and even apply custom CSS to this text in the module Advanced settings.
Frontier Patriot
Your content goes here. Edit or remove this text inline or in the module Content settings. You can also style every aspect of this content in the module Design settings and even apply custom CSS to this text in the module Advanced settings.
French Heritage
Ste. Genevieve’s French heritage begins long before the settlement of the original village sometime between 1735 and 1750. Prior to that, French settlers and soldiers had a presence on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. French government officials and explorers knew there was lead to be found along the Meramec, St. Francis, and Big Rivers, and men like Philippe Renault set up camps for miners on the Missouri side. They also noted the salt water found in the Saline Creek, and this vital resource, along with the fertile land along the Mississippi, led settlers to establish the farming community later known as Ste. Genevieve. These settlers were largely of French-Canadian heritage, and their language, now referred to as Pawpaw French, more closely resembled Quebecois than standard French. Both had words borrowed from Indigenous and African peoples. Most of them were Creoles, born in the colonies instead of Europe. Their identity, like the land they settled, existed somewhere between Lower Louisiana, as they were governed from New Orleans, and Upper Louisiana. They built houses with long covered porches to keep off the sun, influenced by the colonies in the Caribbean, and divided farmland into long narrow strips along the Mississippi, as their ancestors did along the St. Lawrence River, or Riviere Saint-Laurent in Canada. The combined farmland constituted le grand champ, the Big Field, where wheat was produced in great quantities for the bread of Ste. Genevieve, and for supplying Lower Louisiana with flour. The French language and Catholic faith were nearly universal in Ste. Genevieve until the Louisiana Purchase, after which German, Irish, Scottish, and Anglo-American settlers of several faiths began to flood into Missouri. Though the language gradually disappeared from public usage (lingering in some families’ homes), Catholic settlers bolstered Ste. Genevieve Parish, making the Church one of the most enduring elements of the town’s French heritage.
German Heritage
Though Missouri’s German heritage is primarily associated with large numbers of German immigrants arriving in the 1830s and ‘40s, German settlement West of the Mississippi began much earlier, as early as the 1720s in some parts of then-French Louisiana. Architectural historians have noted features in Creole-constructed barns surviving in Louisiana State that are more likely to be German in origin than French. In Ste. Genevieve, there were German families present since the early years of the village’s settlement, with surnames like Gibkin, Bischoff, Ziegler, and Haefner. Visitors to Ste. Genevieve County will note placenames like New Offenburg and Weingarten. Historian Francis J. Yealy suggested that the black sunbonnet frequently seen in mid-19th century Ste. Genevieve was German in origin, similar to ones worn by women in Baden, a part of the Upper Rhineland. Father Francis Xavier Dahmen, appointed to Ste. Genevieve Parish in 1822, was German-born, and had even served in the army of Napoleon back in Europe.
Revolutionary War
Ste. Genevieve was little-affected by the American Revolution at the time it was being fought, but not wholly untouched. The Spanish government, then in control of what is now Missouri, maintained and trained a colonial militia in the village, requiring able-bodied men to serve, if called upon, for most of their adult lives. Sixty militiamen were called upon in 1780, when it became known that the British were sending a large war party of their Indigenous allies to raid Spanish settlements. These sixty brave men were sent to St. Louis to help reinforce the town’s defenses, and they were required to fight alongside the St. Louisans on May 26, 1780, when the war party reached that town. The British hoped that by destroying the defenses at St. Louis, and reinforcing their own defenses in present-day Illinois and Indiana, they could prevent Spanish New Orleans from sending supplies upriver to the Americans. They were unsuccessful in both attempts, and the spreading thin of British resources allowed for Lieutenant Colonel George Rogers Clark to capture and recapture their towns and officers in Indiana, and for Governor Bernardo de Galvez to retake Pensacola in Florida.
The Sainte Genevieve Art Colony
Ste. Genevieve became the site of an artists’ colony and summer art school in the 1930’s, founded by a group of famous and near-famous American artists who wrote an important chapter in the annals of Midwestern painting. The Sainte Genevieve Art Colony began in 1932 and lasted until the unrest leading up to World War II ended the endeavor in 1940. Along with its offshoot, the Summer School of Art, the Colony attracted some of the period’s best known regional artists and several who went on to national fame. Throughout its tenure, the Colony was headquartered at the Shaw House, and the artists and students focused on the subjects they found here: the beauty of the countryside, the quaint charm of the little town’s historic architecture, and the people who lived in this small community. The works are vibrant examples of the Regionalism movement and a vivid portrait of the town as it was then.Three figures were largely responsible for the creation of the summer art colony: Jessie Beard Rickly, Aimee Goldstone Schweig, and Bernard E. Peters. All three were St. Louisans who had experienced the creative stimulation of participating in already-famous artists’ communities on the East Coast. Hoping to be able to create a similar environment for artists in the Midwest, in the summer of 1932 they migrated to Sainte Genevieve. Other artists joined the founders over the years, and by 1934 the Summer School of Art had been established. Over the next few years, notable artists were associated with the group, including Fred Conway, E. Oscar Thalinger, Joseph “Joe” Jones (who visited the Colony during its initial year), Joseph Paul Vorst, and art world luminary Thomas Hart Benton.
The African American Legacy of Ste. Genevieve
Ste. Genevieve’s position as being governed from New Orleans rather than Quebec, like the northern French provinces, shaped its social structure in profound ways. Unlike settlements to the north, Ste. Genevieve participated in the institution of slavery, with enslaved individuals comprising approximately 25-30% of the early French colony’s population. Under French colonial rule, “Le Code Noir” (The Black Code) regulated all aspects of enslaved peoples’ lives, mandating Roman Catholicism and establishing strict regulations regarding interactions between enslavers and the enslaved. Prominent figures like Felix Valle and Louis Bolduc owned nine and thirty-two enslaved individuals, respectively. This code created a unique circumstance: baptismal and marriage records were meticulously kept by the Catholic church, giving us some of the best data in the U.S. for connecting people of African descent to their past. Additionally, some of Ste. Genevieve’s most carefully preserved historic properties, including the Bauvais-Amoureux home and the Bequette-Ribault property, were eventually owned by formerly enslaved people and their descendants. Their stories are awe inspiring. There is currently a documentary on Pelagie Amoureux in production. The African American community maintained strong connections to French culture and were the last residents to speak French as their primary language, preserving this cultural element until 1930, when racial tensions during the Great Depression erupted into violence, forcing most Black families to relocate to Festus, Missouri.