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 (1773?–1844)

Big Soldier, a Little Osage war leader, was probably born in 1773 in a village near the…

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Frederic L. Billon. [Billon, Annals of St. Louis in Its Territorial Days from 1804 to 1821 (St. Louis: Nixon-Jones Printing Co., 1888), frontispiece]
Frederic L. Billon (1801–1895)

Frederic L. Billon’s amateur antiquarian pursuits in the mid-nineteenth century resulted in…

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Morris Birkbeck. [Morris Birkbeck and George Flower, History of the English Settlement in Edwards County, Illinois (Chicago: Fergus Printing Co., 1882)]
Morris Birkbeck (1764–1825)

An early pioneer-farming expert and author, Morris Birkbeck exerted an enormous influence…

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Daniel Bissell. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, Portraits, N38584]
Daniel Bissell (1768?-1833)

The builder and commandant of Fort Bellefontaine, General Daniel Bissell served with…

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Portrait of William Clark by Charles Willson Peale, c. 1807–1809. [Courtesy of the Independence National Historical Park]
William Clark (1770–1838)

William Clark, the celebrated explorer who joined Meriwether Lewis …

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1. This lithograph depicts Sister Rose Philippine Duchesne late in life. No known photographs of Sister Duchesne are known to exist.
Rose Philippine Duchesne (1769–1852)

Rose Philippine Duchesne, a French pioneer missionary on the American frontier, was born on…

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Aerial of Fort Osage
Fort Osage

Established in 1808 under the superintendence of William Clark, Fort Osage served as a US military outpost and a…

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John Hardeman (1776–1829)

John Hardeman, best remembered for the botanical showplace he created on the banks of the…

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Samuel Hawken. [Missouri Historical Society, Prints and Photographs Division, N38641]
Jacob Hawken (1786–1849) and Samuel Hawken (1792–1884)

Christian Hawken, a respected gunsmith of Hagerstown, Maryland, taught his six sons and…

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Edward Hempstead. [Louis Houck, A History of Missouri from the Earliest Explorations and Settlements until the Admission of the State into the Union, vol. 3 (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons, 1908), p. 2]
Edward Hempstead (1780–1817)

Edward Hempstead, a prominent early Missouri attorney and politician, was born in New…

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