Henry Marie Brackenridge. [State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory]

A lawyer, author, diplomat, and journalist in the early Federal and Jacksonian eras, Henry…

Missouri Encyclopedia logo

Although Alexander Buckner served in Missouri’s 1820 Constitutional Convention, the state…

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…

William C. Carr. Portrait by George Caleb Bingham. [Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, 1970.156]

William C. Carr, one of the first attorneys to practice law in Missouri, was born in…

Joseph Charless. [Thomas J. Scharf, History of St. Louis City and County, vol. 2, 1883]

Joseph Charless, the first printer in St. Louis and father of journalism west of the…

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]

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]

Marie Thérèse Bourgeois Chouteau was born in New Orleans on January 14, 1733, but she was…

Pierre Chouteau Jr. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, 1922-024-0001]

Pierre Chouteau Jr., scion of the powerful early St. Louis family and the most influential…

Note of Jacques Clamorgan agreeing to pay skins worth $153 to Pierre Chouteau on July 19, 1807. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Clamorgan Family Papers, A0288-00017]

Jacques Phillippe Clamorgan arrived on the Missouri frontier in the early 1780s and spent the rest of his…