the State Historical Society of Missouri
![French artist Louis-Leopold Boilly’s rendering of members of an Osage traveling party in Europe, including Big Soldier (at right). [Smithsonian Institution, National Portrait Gallery, object # S/NPG.2011.5]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2020-07/Big-Soldier.jpg?h=86a29125&itok=SubP6M24 "French artist Louis-Leopold Boilly’s rendering of members of an Osage traveling party in Europe, including Big Soldier (at right). [Smithsonian Institution, National Portrait Gallery, object # S/NPG.2011.5]")
Big Soldier, a Little Osage war leader, was probably born in 1773 in a village near the Missouri River, in…
![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…
![Daniel Bissell. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, Portraits, N38584]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2020-07/Daniel-Bissell.jpg?h=a09a8e46&itok=sWzc640r "Daniel Bissell. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, Portraits, N38584]")
The builder and commandant of Fort Bellefontaine, General Daniel Bissell served with…
![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…
![Daniel Boone. Boone sat for artist Chester Harding shortly before his death in 1820. It is the only known portrait of Boone painted from life. [National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, NPG.2015.102]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2022-12/1.%20Daniel%20Boone.jpg?h=edafc073&itok=DQIaObCl "Daniel Boone. Boone sat for artist Chester Harding shortly before his death in 1820. It is the only known portrait of Boone painted from life. [National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, NPG.2015.102]")
Daniel Boone is most commonly known as a hunter, trapper, and frontier settler, but he also…
![This lunette in the Missouri State Capitol, painted by Victor Higgins, depicts the sons of Daniel Boone manufacturing salt at Boone’s Lick in central Missouri. [Missouri State Archives, Ken Raveill Collection, MS386, 004-030]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2023-01/1.%20Daniel%20Morgan%20Boone.jpg?h=92b7ab8c&itok=BifpiXWB "This lunette in the Missouri State Capitol, painted by Victor Higgins, depicts the sons of Daniel Boone manufacturing salt at Boone’s Lick in central Missouri. [Missouri State Archives, Ken Raveill Collection, MS386, 004-030]")
Daniel Morgan Boone was born on December 23, 1769, the seventh child of …
![The Administration Building at the Missouri State Penitentiary, 1955. Missouri carried out executions at the penitentiary’s gas chamber from 1937 until switching to lethal injection in 1989 and moving its death row to the Potosi Correctional Center in Washington County. [Missouri State Archives/Missouri Digital Heritage, Mark Schreiber Collection, MS297_255_009]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2024-06/1.-capital-punishment-in-missouri.jpg?h=436a5d0a&itok=-rpMGoZ7 "The Administration Building at the Missouri State Penitentiary, 1955. Missouri carried out executions at the penitentiary’s gas chamber from 1937 until switching to lethal injection in 1989 and moving its death row to the Potosi Correctional Center in Washington County. [Missouri State Archives/Missouri Digital Heritage, Mark Schreiber Collection, MS297_255_009]")
With the exception of two years in the early twentieth century, the state of Missouri has always allowed the…
![Auguste Chouteau. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, 1869-001-0001]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2023-01/1.%20Auguste%20Chouteau.jpg?h=3727f4e6&itok=pVycVU5w "Auguste Chouteau. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, 1869-001-0001]")
In the early history of St. Louis and its trans-Mississippi hinterlands, Auguste Chouteau…
![Jean Pierre Chouteau Sr. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, N22207]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2023-02/1.%20Jean%20Pierre%20Chouteau.jpg?h=3c8849c0&itok=Tmt5XONW "Jean Pierre Chouteau Sr. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, N22207]")
Jean Pierre Chouteau, known as Pierre, was a pioneer settler in St. Louis and the territory that was to…
![Francois M. Guyol de Guiran created this portrait of Marie Therese Bourgeois Chouteau, the “founding mother” of St. Louis, in 1810. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, MHS Objects Collection, 1950-084-0002]](/sites/default/files/styles/article_header_image/public/2021-03/1-Marie-Therese-Bourgeois-Chouteau.jpg?h=fa71d962&itok=Z7OIpIoD "Francois M. Guyol de Guiran created this portrait of Marie Therese Bourgeois Chouteau, the “founding mother” of St. Louis, in 1810. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, MHS Objects Collection, 1950-084-0002]")
Marie Thérèse Bourgeois Chouteau was born in New Orleans on January 14, 1733, but she was…