Not bound.
Sept., 1793
by Poilievre, Francois - MISSOURI
Sept., 1793. Not bound.. Good; toning and browning; some mounting residue in the blank, vertical margin of the left side; old folds.. ADs meas. 320 x 208 mm. In French, recto/verso; on laid paper - watermark indistinct.
An interesting manuscript, in which Poilievre writes to Mon Ami Monsieur Don Zenon Trudeau (1748-1832) the lieutenant-governor of Upper Louisiana, requesting the transfer of a parcel of land owned by Jacques Clamorgan (1730-1814), so that he could "orm an establishment". The presence of a rapid near the land suggests Poilievre planned the construction of a mill. The land along the Meramec River was owned by Jacques Clamorgan, a key figure in the life of St. Louis and New Spain at the end of the 18th century. The parcel, 8 by 40 arpens, was located 5 leagues from the mouth of the Meramec and the Mississippi, at the bottom of a rapid and adjacent to the cart road which carried salt from Clamorgans salt works. Clamorgan needed tenants and settlers on the vast tracts of land he had purchased along the Meramec in order to monopolize its saline or salt deposits, and thus further his plans of becoming the sole salt supplier not only for St. Louis, but for the far larger market of New Orleans as well.This manuscript carries the signatures of two key figures in the history of St. Louis and of New Spain in the 1790s- Jacques Clamorgan, merchant, trader and promoter, and Zenon Trudeau, the lieutenant-governor of Upper Louisiana.
Jacques Clamorgan (c. 1730 - Oct. 30, 1814), frontiersman, born, perhaps, in the West Indies, is believed to have been of mixed race. He left the West Indies, where he was a trader in just about any commodity available, including slaves, for New Orleans, fleeing debts. In 1781 he illegally ascended the Mississippi from New Orleans to St. Louis. He returned to New Orleans but was back in the upper Louisiana area by 1784.He established himself as a leading figure in the mercantile life of St. Louis, as a slave dealer, fur trader, merchant, financier, and land speculator. Clamorgan was active living and trading in St. Louis and in the adjacent Illinois country, with merchants in Cahokia, Kaskaskia, and as far away as Michilimackinac and Montreal, for the next decade. As a land speculator he acquired vast tracts of land around St. Louis. A visionary promoter in many fields, he was engaged in cattle raising, salt refining, lead mining, and agriculture, and he traveled widely. He envisaged a strong and populous Spanish frontier in the Mississippi valley. He was the precursor of Lewis and Clark, having traversed Texas, and engaging in the Santa Fe trade, long before his successors made these trails famous. Clamorgan was a power in the Missouri Company, an expansionist and anti-British St. Louis enterprise, directing its operations and eventually bringing financial ruin upon himself and his associates. The company sent three expeditions up the Missouri, seeking to counter the British and explore the way to the Pacific; all failed. Clamorgan, however, succeeded in gaining exclusive trading rights on the upper Missouri, but lost most of them partly because of his endless machinations, impractical expansionist schemes and bad luck. When the Americans obtained Louisiana, he secured trading rights to the Pawnees, tried to use that as a lever to open trade with Santa Fe, and actually reached that city in 1807, was sent to Chihuahua and returned by way of Texas. He was the first to make a trading venture into Santa Fe and return to Missouri with his profits. He was then 63 years old. Clamorgan fell ill and died at St. Louis October 30, 1814. Clamorgan looms large as an outstanding figure in the history of the north-eastern frontier of New Spain. Clamorgan never married but fathered four children with his enslaved African-American women. His African American descendants would spend decades in the courts fighting to reclaim his vast empire. The present document deals with two aspects of Clamorgans burgeoning financial empire: salt refining and the acquisition of real estate. Clamorgan saw tremendous potential in real estate. He picked up parcels of land in St. Louis, confident they would increase in value as the community grew. He was also keen to acquire property on the Meramec River, which flowed through a good part of what is present-day southern Missouri before emptying into the Mississippi twenty miles below St. Louis. Farming land along its banks was good, and those same banks were dotted with salines, or salt deposits. In an era before refrigeration, a reliable supply of salt was vital for preserving meat. Jacques was eager to monopolize the salines, and he came close to doing so, acquiring in 1791 almost 13,500 acres on the Meramec at a place called the Tête de Boeuf. The Meramec holdings were ones he was especially eager to develop. Writing to the lieutenant governor of the territory (Zenon Trudeau) in the spring of 1793, he detailed all that he had done to increase the prosperity of the area. He had kept local farmers supplied with essentials and paid to set up a saltworks. But he had incurred debts.He sought to have the government establish a settlement on the Meramec. It would do much to curb the aggression of the Osage and give a real boost to the areas white inhabitants. Naturally, he did not mention that the settlement he proposed would drive up land values and benefit him personally. The answer he received that although a settlement would do much god in the region, international tensions would have to ease before the government could bring in farming families from Europe, as Clamorgan had suggested. Despite his disappointment, Jacques continued acquiring land along the Meramec. In June 1793 he talked the lieutenant-governor into giving him 800 arpents (equivalent to 670 acres). Over the course of the next few months he got two more concessions totaling 4,800 arpents. Some of it leased out. Whenever Jacques Clamorgan could get a grant along the Meramec he was happy to take it, and the authorities obliged him again and again, in one instance with no less than eight thousand arpents for the purpose of procuring wood for [his] saltworks. He also got a sizable grant on Gingras Creek, another rather exposed area to the north of St. Louis. His tenants would have to farm with one eye open for roving Osage, but that was no concern of Jacquess as long as the rent came in. By the mid-1790s Jacques Clamorgan was one of the largest private landholders in the region, and certainly one of the most aggressive. Winch, pp.18-19.
Zenon Trudeau (1748-1813), sixth Lieutenant Governor of Upper Louisiana, 1792-1799. Born in New Orleans, Trudeau joined the Spanish Army in his youth, he attained the rank of captain of the Regiment of Infantry and lieutenant-colonel. While serving as Upper Louisianas lieutenant-governor between 1792 and 1799, Zenon Trudeau showed himself to be a prudent but pragmatic administrator who adopted a commonsense approach in dealing with the manifold and complex problems that confronted his administration. Trudeau served in the conquests of Baton Rouge in 1779 and Pensacola in 1781. He married Eulalie Delassise in 1781, and the couple had several children. Trudeau assumed command in St. Louis in July 1792. The turbulent 1790s presented him with more than his share of problems in Upper Louisiana. He had to prepare for threatened invasions by British, French, and American forces as well as assaults from hostile Osage bands. Loyal to the Spanish government he served but realistic in the measures he advocated, Trudeau provided a steady hand at the helm in St. Louis. Following his arrival, Trudeau sought to confront the growing British domination of the trade with Native Americans north of St. Louis. Unable to provide enough merchandise for the fur trade, the Spaniards had in effect forced many of Louisianas Native tribes to turn to the better supplied British traders to the north. Upper Louisianas Spanish-licensed traders also had to look to foreign suppliers for merchandise. Trudeau quickly grasped that any attempts to prevent local merchants from doing business with British firms in Canada would be ruinous to commerce in St. Louis, so he chose to turn a blind eye to their illicit traffic. However, while willing to allow St. Louis merchants to enter the northern markets, Trudeau was determined not to let British traders engage in direct trade with Native Americans in Spanish territory. In 1793 he dispatched an expedition to the Des Moines River to arrest foreign traders. Later that year he summoned all of Upper Louisianas traders to consider new regulations designed to make governmentcontrolled trading operations more equitable and efficient. When Jacques Clamorgan spearheaded the formation of a company to promote Spanish trade along the upper Missouri, Trudeau gave the venture his unqualified support. The Missouri Company was organized in 1794 and eventually sent three costly but unsuccessful trading expeditions up the Missouri. Their poor showing caused Trudeau to conclude it was unlikely that Spain could ever gain control of the trade along the upper reaches of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. Closer at hand, Trudeau had to confront the continuing Osage threats to Upper Louisianas exposed settlements. Not long after he arrived in St. Louis, Trudeau received directives from Louisianas governor-general, the Baron de Carondelet, suspending all trade with errant Osages and declaring war on them. Trudeau, who doubted the efficacy of Carondelets strategy, procrastinated in carrying out his orders to launch a general attack against the main Osage villages. With solid support from St. Louis traders, he continued to urge his superiors to exercise caution in dealing with the powerful Osages. The outbreak of war between Spain and France compounded Trudeaus problems, especially after rumors of a pending Franco-American invasion led by George Rogers Clark began circulating throughout the region in 1794. Although that threat never materialized, it persuaded Carondelet to heed Trudeaus counsel and call off the Osage war. That decision cleared the way for a new approach to the Osage problem. With Trudeaus backing, St. Louis fur merchant Auguste Chouteau renewed his offer to assist the Spaniards in bringing the Osages under control by constructing a fort adjacent to the Osage River villages in return for a monopoly of the Osage trade. Carondelet accepted Chouteaus proposal and following the establishment of an installation in present-day Vernon County, Missouri, known as Fort Carondelet, tensions with the Osages gradually subsided, to the relief of all parties. The resumption of warfare between Great Britain and Spain in 1796 along with continuing rumors of French intrigues in Spanish Louisiana prompted Carondelet to dispatch additional military forces to St. Louis in 1797. These imminent dangers also led to renewed Spanish efforts to encourage American settlement in Upper Louisiana. Trudeau favored American immigration and was instrumental in persuading members of the legendary Daniel Boone family to leave Kentucky and take up residence in present day Missouri along the Femme Osage Creek. During his final days in St. Louis. Trudeau allegedly signed numerous blank land-concession forms that were distributed after his departure and filled in illegally by those who secured them. When Trudeau completed his term as lieutenant governor in 1799, the Spanish government offered him a pension which he declined. He returned to lower Louisiana and continued in Spanish service until 1803 when Spain relinquished its control of the province. Trudeau remained in Louisiana until his death a few years later in St. Charles Parish. I can find no records for the sale of Clamorgan or Trudeau manuscript material in auction records, Eberstadt, Streeter Sale, etc. Foley, William E., Dictionary of Missouri Biography; Nasatir, A. P., Jacques Clamorgan: Colonial Promoter of the Northern Border of New Spain, New Mexico Historical Review: Volume 17, number 2, 4-1-1942, https://digitalrepository.unm/nmhr/vol17.iss2/2. Thrapp, Dan L., Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography, vol. 1, p. 272; Winch, The Clamorgans One Familys History of Race in America. (Inventory #: 23110)
An interesting manuscript, in which Poilievre writes to Mon Ami Monsieur Don Zenon Trudeau (1748-1832) the lieutenant-governor of Upper Louisiana, requesting the transfer of a parcel of land owned by Jacques Clamorgan (1730-1814), so that he could "orm an establishment". The presence of a rapid near the land suggests Poilievre planned the construction of a mill. The land along the Meramec River was owned by Jacques Clamorgan, a key figure in the life of St. Louis and New Spain at the end of the 18th century. The parcel, 8 by 40 arpens, was located 5 leagues from the mouth of the Meramec and the Mississippi, at the bottom of a rapid and adjacent to the cart road which carried salt from Clamorgans salt works. Clamorgan needed tenants and settlers on the vast tracts of land he had purchased along the Meramec in order to monopolize its saline or salt deposits, and thus further his plans of becoming the sole salt supplier not only for St. Louis, but for the far larger market of New Orleans as well.This manuscript carries the signatures of two key figures in the history of St. Louis and of New Spain in the 1790s- Jacques Clamorgan, merchant, trader and promoter, and Zenon Trudeau, the lieutenant-governor of Upper Louisiana.
Jacques Clamorgan (c. 1730 - Oct. 30, 1814), frontiersman, born, perhaps, in the West Indies, is believed to have been of mixed race. He left the West Indies, where he was a trader in just about any commodity available, including slaves, for New Orleans, fleeing debts. In 1781 he illegally ascended the Mississippi from New Orleans to St. Louis. He returned to New Orleans but was back in the upper Louisiana area by 1784.He established himself as a leading figure in the mercantile life of St. Louis, as a slave dealer, fur trader, merchant, financier, and land speculator. Clamorgan was active living and trading in St. Louis and in the adjacent Illinois country, with merchants in Cahokia, Kaskaskia, and as far away as Michilimackinac and Montreal, for the next decade. As a land speculator he acquired vast tracts of land around St. Louis. A visionary promoter in many fields, he was engaged in cattle raising, salt refining, lead mining, and agriculture, and he traveled widely. He envisaged a strong and populous Spanish frontier in the Mississippi valley. He was the precursor of Lewis and Clark, having traversed Texas, and engaging in the Santa Fe trade, long before his successors made these trails famous. Clamorgan was a power in the Missouri Company, an expansionist and anti-British St. Louis enterprise, directing its operations and eventually bringing financial ruin upon himself and his associates. The company sent three expeditions up the Missouri, seeking to counter the British and explore the way to the Pacific; all failed. Clamorgan, however, succeeded in gaining exclusive trading rights on the upper Missouri, but lost most of them partly because of his endless machinations, impractical expansionist schemes and bad luck. When the Americans obtained Louisiana, he secured trading rights to the Pawnees, tried to use that as a lever to open trade with Santa Fe, and actually reached that city in 1807, was sent to Chihuahua and returned by way of Texas. He was the first to make a trading venture into Santa Fe and return to Missouri with his profits. He was then 63 years old. Clamorgan fell ill and died at St. Louis October 30, 1814. Clamorgan looms large as an outstanding figure in the history of the north-eastern frontier of New Spain. Clamorgan never married but fathered four children with his enslaved African-American women. His African American descendants would spend decades in the courts fighting to reclaim his vast empire. The present document deals with two aspects of Clamorgans burgeoning financial empire: salt refining and the acquisition of real estate. Clamorgan saw tremendous potential in real estate. He picked up parcels of land in St. Louis, confident they would increase in value as the community grew. He was also keen to acquire property on the Meramec River, which flowed through a good part of what is present-day southern Missouri before emptying into the Mississippi twenty miles below St. Louis. Farming land along its banks was good, and those same banks were dotted with salines, or salt deposits. In an era before refrigeration, a reliable supply of salt was vital for preserving meat. Jacques was eager to monopolize the salines, and he came close to doing so, acquiring in 1791 almost 13,500 acres on the Meramec at a place called the Tête de Boeuf. The Meramec holdings were ones he was especially eager to develop. Writing to the lieutenant governor of the territory (Zenon Trudeau) in the spring of 1793, he detailed all that he had done to increase the prosperity of the area. He had kept local farmers supplied with essentials and paid to set up a saltworks. But he had incurred debts.He sought to have the government establish a settlement on the Meramec. It would do much to curb the aggression of the Osage and give a real boost to the areas white inhabitants. Naturally, he did not mention that the settlement he proposed would drive up land values and benefit him personally. The answer he received that although a settlement would do much god in the region, international tensions would have to ease before the government could bring in farming families from Europe, as Clamorgan had suggested. Despite his disappointment, Jacques continued acquiring land along the Meramec. In June 1793 he talked the lieutenant-governor into giving him 800 arpents (equivalent to 670 acres). Over the course of the next few months he got two more concessions totaling 4,800 arpents. Some of it leased out. Whenever Jacques Clamorgan could get a grant along the Meramec he was happy to take it, and the authorities obliged him again and again, in one instance with no less than eight thousand arpents for the purpose of procuring wood for [his] saltworks. He also got a sizable grant on Gingras Creek, another rather exposed area to the north of St. Louis. His tenants would have to farm with one eye open for roving Osage, but that was no concern of Jacquess as long as the rent came in. By the mid-1790s Jacques Clamorgan was one of the largest private landholders in the region, and certainly one of the most aggressive. Winch, pp.18-19.
Zenon Trudeau (1748-1813), sixth Lieutenant Governor of Upper Louisiana, 1792-1799. Born in New Orleans, Trudeau joined the Spanish Army in his youth, he attained the rank of captain of the Regiment of Infantry and lieutenant-colonel. While serving as Upper Louisianas lieutenant-governor between 1792 and 1799, Zenon Trudeau showed himself to be a prudent but pragmatic administrator who adopted a commonsense approach in dealing with the manifold and complex problems that confronted his administration. Trudeau served in the conquests of Baton Rouge in 1779 and Pensacola in 1781. He married Eulalie Delassise in 1781, and the couple had several children. Trudeau assumed command in St. Louis in July 1792. The turbulent 1790s presented him with more than his share of problems in Upper Louisiana. He had to prepare for threatened invasions by British, French, and American forces as well as assaults from hostile Osage bands. Loyal to the Spanish government he served but realistic in the measures he advocated, Trudeau provided a steady hand at the helm in St. Louis. Following his arrival, Trudeau sought to confront the growing British domination of the trade with Native Americans north of St. Louis. Unable to provide enough merchandise for the fur trade, the Spaniards had in effect forced many of Louisianas Native tribes to turn to the better supplied British traders to the north. Upper Louisianas Spanish-licensed traders also had to look to foreign suppliers for merchandise. Trudeau quickly grasped that any attempts to prevent local merchants from doing business with British firms in Canada would be ruinous to commerce in St. Louis, so he chose to turn a blind eye to their illicit traffic. However, while willing to allow St. Louis merchants to enter the northern markets, Trudeau was determined not to let British traders engage in direct trade with Native Americans in Spanish territory. In 1793 he dispatched an expedition to the Des Moines River to arrest foreign traders. Later that year he summoned all of Upper Louisianas traders to consider new regulations designed to make governmentcontrolled trading operations more equitable and efficient. When Jacques Clamorgan spearheaded the formation of a company to promote Spanish trade along the upper Missouri, Trudeau gave the venture his unqualified support. The Missouri Company was organized in 1794 and eventually sent three costly but unsuccessful trading expeditions up the Missouri. Their poor showing caused Trudeau to conclude it was unlikely that Spain could ever gain control of the trade along the upper reaches of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. Closer at hand, Trudeau had to confront the continuing Osage threats to Upper Louisianas exposed settlements. Not long after he arrived in St. Louis, Trudeau received directives from Louisianas governor-general, the Baron de Carondelet, suspending all trade with errant Osages and declaring war on them. Trudeau, who doubted the efficacy of Carondelets strategy, procrastinated in carrying out his orders to launch a general attack against the main Osage villages. With solid support from St. Louis traders, he continued to urge his superiors to exercise caution in dealing with the powerful Osages. The outbreak of war between Spain and France compounded Trudeaus problems, especially after rumors of a pending Franco-American invasion led by George Rogers Clark began circulating throughout the region in 1794. Although that threat never materialized, it persuaded Carondelet to heed Trudeaus counsel and call off the Osage war. That decision cleared the way for a new approach to the Osage problem. With Trudeaus backing, St. Louis fur merchant Auguste Chouteau renewed his offer to assist the Spaniards in bringing the Osages under control by constructing a fort adjacent to the Osage River villages in return for a monopoly of the Osage trade. Carondelet accepted Chouteaus proposal and following the establishment of an installation in present-day Vernon County, Missouri, known as Fort Carondelet, tensions with the Osages gradually subsided, to the relief of all parties. The resumption of warfare between Great Britain and Spain in 1796 along with continuing rumors of French intrigues in Spanish Louisiana prompted Carondelet to dispatch additional military forces to St. Louis in 1797. These imminent dangers also led to renewed Spanish efforts to encourage American settlement in Upper Louisiana. Trudeau favored American immigration and was instrumental in persuading members of the legendary Daniel Boone family to leave Kentucky and take up residence in present day Missouri along the Femme Osage Creek. During his final days in St. Louis. Trudeau allegedly signed numerous blank land-concession forms that were distributed after his departure and filled in illegally by those who secured them. When Trudeau completed his term as lieutenant governor in 1799, the Spanish government offered him a pension which he declined. He returned to lower Louisiana and continued in Spanish service until 1803 when Spain relinquished its control of the province. Trudeau remained in Louisiana until his death a few years later in St. Charles Parish. I can find no records for the sale of Clamorgan or Trudeau manuscript material in auction records, Eberstadt, Streeter Sale, etc. Foley, William E., Dictionary of Missouri Biography; Nasatir, A. P., Jacques Clamorgan: Colonial Promoter of the Northern Border of New Spain, New Mexico Historical Review: Volume 17, number 2, 4-1-1942, https://digitalrepository.unm/nmhr/vol17.iss2/2. Thrapp, Dan L., Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography, vol. 1, p. 272; Winch, The Clamorgans One Familys History of Race in America. (Inventory #: 23110)
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