the State Historical Society of Missouri
![A seventeenth-century engraving of Paris’s Hôpital Général de la Salpêtrière, where Marie-Claire Catoire spent her childhood as an orphan. [Courtesy of the Wellcome Collection (CCBY 4.0)]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2023-12/2.-marie-claire-catoire-billeron.jpg?itok=E78WqsG0 "A seventeenth-century engraving of Paris’s Hôpital Général de la Salpêtrière, where Marie-Claire Catoire spent her childhood as an orphan. [Courtesy of the Wellcome Collection (CCBY 4.0)]")
Marie-Claire Catoire Billeron’s name first appears in North America on the…
![The Louis Bolduc House in Ste. Genevieve. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Missouri Postcard Collection, P0032]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2023-07/1.%20Louis%20Bolduc.jpg?h=e43fa61c&itok=4C_WHq6g "The Louis Bolduc House in Ste. Genevieve. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Missouri Postcard Collection, P0032]")
Louis Bolduc was born near Quebec City in the village of St. Joachim around 1739 (his…
![Bollinger’s Mill. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith. [Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-highsm-65211]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2022-07/1.%20George%20Frederick%20Bollinger.jpg?h=2e7ead55&itok=rso3eV9U "Bollinger’s Mill. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith. [Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-highsm-65211]")
A group of German-Swiss immigrants landed in Philadelphia in 1710 and settled in southeast…
Although Alexander Buckner served in Missouri’s 1820 Constitutional Convention, the state…
Henri Peyroux de Ia Coudrenière was born in France around 1743, the son of Marguerite-…
![A detail from Thomas Hutchins’s 1778 map of the Illinois Country showing Ste. Genevieve, Kaskaskia, and Fort de Chartres. [Courtesy of the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, Image 5045002]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2023-07/1.%20Marie-Joseph%20Deguire.jpg?itok=qusVsjPP "A detail from Thomas Hutchins’s 1778 map of the Illinois Country showing Ste. Genevieve, Kaskaskia, and Fort de Chartres. [Courtesy of the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, Image 5045002]")
During the first half of the eighteenth century, marriages between Native Americans and…
![Charles de Hault Delassus. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, N36696]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2023-07/1.%20Charles%20de%20Hault%20Delassus.jpg?h=9a83fe1d&itok=iH6qI-8F "Charles de Hault Delassus. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, N36696]")
Following the Louisiana Purchase, Charles de Hault Delassus, Upper Louisiana’s last Spanish lieutenant…
![1. This watercolor portrait of Henry Dodge was painted by George Catlin during the Dodge-Leavenworth Expedition of 1834. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, 1962-192-0001]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2022-03/1.%20Henry%20Dodge.jpg?h=300a9ea0&itok=b4wr44H6 "1. This watercolor portrait of Henry Dodge was painted by George Catlin during the Dodge-Leavenworth Expedition of 1834. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, 1962-192-0001]")
Henry Dodge served his nation in a long and prosperous life on the nineteenth-century…
![This 1778 map of the Illinois Country by Thomas Hutchins depicts the region as it appeared during Israel Dodge’s lifetime. [Courtesy of the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, Image 5045002]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2023-06/1.%20Israel%20Dodge.jpg?h=4e0e6038&itok=J2Zc_h4S "This 1778 map of the Illinois Country by Thomas Hutchins depicts the region as it appeared during Israel Dodge’s lifetime. [Courtesy of the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, Image 5045002]")
Israel Dodge exemplified the adventurous spirit of a young, expanding United States at the turn of the…
![John Wesley Emerson, circa 1880. Photograph by John A. Scholten. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, P0233-2542]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2021-03/1-John-Wesley-Emerson.jpg?h=698ee15c&itok=_VkQiIl9 "John Wesley Emerson, circa 1880. Photograph by John A. Scholten. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, P0233-2542]")
John Emerson, a lawyer in Ironton, Missouri, became a small-town Victorian gentleman who…