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

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

Robert Campbell. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, N38642]

Robert Campbell’s lengthy life bridged the transition from fur trade to modern capitalistic…

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…

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…

Franscisco Cruzat served two terms as lieutenant governor of Upper Louisiana in New Spain. [Alcée Fortier, A History of Louisiana, 1904]

Francisco Cruzat, the only Spanish lieutenant governor of Upper Louisiana to occupy that…

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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]

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]

Following the Louisiana Purchase, Charles de Hault Delassus, Upper Louisiana’s last Spanish…

Jeffrey Deroine (second from right) with Ioways. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Robert Wright Photograph Collection, P0011]

Jeffrey Deroine (pronounced Der-oh-NAY…