The Mississippi Valley Traveler Podcast
The Mississippi Valley Traveler Podcast
A French Village in the American Heartland: Historian Jim Gass on Sainte Genevieve, Missouri
In this episode, I talk with Jim Gass, Director of Research and Education at the Centre for French Colonial Life, about the long and rich history of Sainte Genevieve, Missouri. We begin with a discussion of what we know about the indigenous people who lived in the area before Europeans arrived, then talk about the French settlers who moved into the region in the 18th century. Jim describes their daily lives, the crops they grew, connections to other early settlements (including New Orleans), and how they had fun. We then talk about the architectural style the town is best known for today, including how it developed, what makes it unique, and its advantages and disadvantages. We talk about the different organizations working to preserve Sainte Genevieve’s architectural past and wrap up with a discussion of the work of the Center for French Colonial Life.
Some of the names would be, it would include the Valle family, the Pratte family. That's p, r, a, t, t, e. The Boyers are a big one. Some of their ancestors helped to settle what is now Old Mines, which is a community to the west of here, which ended up being inhabited by a lot of Missouri French families, especially after the Louisiana Purchase. Aubuchon is another one, is another big name that you see in the early documents, and several others. You know, at times you see these families that are immediately traceable back to French Canada. Others, I believe, are more readily traceable down to Lower Louisiana, to New Orleans, but generally the trend you see is families that came down from French Canada.
Dean Klinkenberg:Welcome to the Mississippi Valley Traveler Podcast. I'm Dean Klinkenberg, and I've been exploring the deep history and rich culture of the people and places along America's greatest river, the Mississippi, since 2007. Join me as I go deep into the characters and places along the river, and occasionally wander into other stories from the Midwest and other rivers. Read the episode show notes and get more information on the Mississippi at MississippiValleyTraveler.com. Let's get going. Welcome to Episode 69 of the Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast. Today, we're boarding our time machine, and we're going back to old Ste. Genevieve. I'm going to talk with Jim Gass, who is Director of Research and Education at the Center for French Colonial Life in Ste. Genevieve. A historian by background. So we focus on the telling the story of early Ste. Genevieve, after we cover his interest in history, how he got started in history himself, we talk about some of the what we know about the indigenous people who lived in the area before Europeans arrived. We talked about those early French settlers who arrived, who they were, where they came from, what crops they grew, what their day to day lives were like. We spent a little time talking about life under Spanish rule and who moved to Ste. Genevieve after the change in ownership of nearby lands. We talked a little bit about what you could do for fun in Old Ste. Genevieve, what some leisure activities might have been. And then we get into some of the things that the town is best known for today. We talk about the architecture, the architectural style that those early French settlers used to construct their buildings. Many of those buildings are still available to visit today, so we talk about the different players involved and who's managing what properties, if you're a visitor, where you should start, what kinds of sites you ought to put on your short list to visit, especially if you have limited time. And we just sort of wrap it up with a broader view of the work of the Center for Colonial Life. Ste. Genevieve is one of my favorite places to visit. It's a good spot to use as a base, especially if you're going to visit the area. They're known for their bed and breakfast inns. They have some nice places to eat. There's a lot to do in that immediate area. A lot of people go as a day trip, which is fine too. You can see most of the buildings in a day trip, but I think it's probably more rewarding to stick around for a couple of days, use Ste. Genevieve as your base and go out and see some of the other sites within an hour or two. Well, thanks to those of you who continue to show me some love through patreon for as little as$1 a month, you can join that community, and you get early access to these podcasts as a result of your generosity. Plus it makes me happy. So to join the patreon community, go to patreon.com/deanklinkenberg, and there you can decide what level you'd like to become a contributor at. Not your thing. Well, you can show me some love by buying me a coffee. I consume coffee every single day. I appreciate every little bit that helps me offset the cost of that wonderful habit. Want to know how to do that? Go to MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcast, and you'll find a link there can buy me a coffee. And at that same address, MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcast you'll find a list of all 68 previous episodes. You can read the show notes and see the photos I post with the show notes for each of these episodes. MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcast. And now on with the interview. Jim Gass currently serves as Director of Research and Education at the Center for French Colonial Life in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. Jim has worked for the Center for five years now, starting with an internship during graduate school in 2020. Jim holds an MA in Public History from the University of Missouri St Louis, and a BA in History from Illinois State University. His work at the Center entails archival research as well as supervising interns and new hires. Jim, welcome to the podcast.
Jim Gass:Thanks for having me, Dean.
Dean Klinkenberg:Tell us a little bit about your interest in history. How did you how did you become the go to person for French colonial history in Ste. Genevieve?
Jim Gass:Well, it really starts with museums to tell you the truth. I mean, I spent a lot of time in them. As a little kid, my grandparents took me to a lot of the same historic sites that you probably cover, Dean. Cahokia Mounds was always a favorite. Fort de Chartres was also a favorite. And you know that that was mostly, you know, before I was 10, but about the time that I wrapped up high school, I was interested in becoming a history teacher. That led me to Illinois State University, but I tended more towards research and language than anything else. Initially I studied East Asian history. In fact, I still have a minor in East Asian Studies from Illinois State but by the time I graduated my my focus shifted again, as it tends to do with a lot of us historians. It shifted pretty decisively to US history, especially around the end of the 19th century, early 20th century and World War I. But after I graduated, I took a couple years off, spent a lot of time traveling with AmeriCorps, and then started my master's degree during the first year of Covid. They sent me here as an intern, here to the Center for French Colonial Life. And as a result of doing a lot of the primary source research that you know, The Center has been kind enough to let me do, you know, I've really absorbed a lot of the lore and the history of this place, and that's that's why I've continued to remain on here, is so as not to let a lot of that accumulation of the historical knowledge go to waste.
Dean Klinkenberg:How much did you know about Ste. Genevieve history before you started as an intern?
Jim Gass:Not much to tell you the truth. I was vaguely aware that there was a town with that name to the south of St Louis, and I was beginning to become familiar with the French history of the City of St Louis specifically. I didn't know it at the time, but one of the authors that I was reading at the time also wrote the definitive book on Ste. Genevieve's history, Dr Carl Ekberg. And gradually I became aware of the site, and thought, well, this is kind of interesting that they still have these buildings down here. And then Ste. Genevieve came up as one of the historic sites that the University of Missouri St Louis partnered with for their internship program. And they asked me, Would I like to come down here? It was a bit of a drive that I was already at least passingly familiar with the site. So I said, Sure. You know, that sounds really interesting. Be a cool site to work for, and I've been here ever since, since August of 2020.
Dean Klinkenberg:Awesome. It's a good place to be. There's a deep history to this town, and we're going to get into some of that as we get going a little bit. Let's dig a little deeper into that history too, and tell me, like, what do we really know about the people who lived here before the first Europeans came about, the indigenous folks who lived in this area.
Jim Gass:The first nation that usually comes up in that discussion would be the Osage people, the probably the biggest and most prevalent nation to live in what is now southern Missouri and northern Arkansas at the time that the first European settlers got here. They have a wealth of oral tradition that you know we that we lean on for for a better understanding of what their lives were like and what their culture was like. As far as what I can tell you, they lived throughout the southern half of what is now Missouri for centuries prior to the arrival of Europeans, and they spoke Dhegihan Siouan language, a southern Siouan language, meaning that their language is part of a group that includes the Lakota, the Crow, the Hidatsa, but is much closer to the languages of the Quapaw and the the Omaha people. Osage tradition holds that they and other Dhegihan peoples descend from the people who originally built The Mounds in what is now Cahokia Heights, Illinois, which I figured most of your listeners are probably pretty well aware
Dean Klinkenberg:I hope they are. They better be. of. Oh, yeah, considering it's a World Heritage Site and everything. No, the Osage were fully on this side of the Mississippi. However, by the time the first French settlements were built, the Cahokia Mounds civilization sort of peaks in population in the 1300s, I think is generally the range of years that's agreed upon. But the Osage were fully on this side of the river a few 100 years later, when the French first the first French settlements were built. Worth noting, the Osage Nation, very recently reacquired Sugarloaf Mound in St Louis, which is the last of the mounds that still remains on that side of the river in the City. It was built by their ancestors somewhere between 600 and 1200 A.D. and which speaks to how long they were in the area. I believe there are present plans to build a cultural center atop the Mound, which is in the southern part of the city. Right. You can catch a glimpse of it on Interstate 55 if you're going if you're south of downtown. So that very timely news that was it was just announced in the last week or so, I think they acquired all the properties associated with that. So that's really good. We destroyed all the rest of the mounds though.
Jim Gass:Right, and I was getting ready to say that is worth noting that the Missouri side of the river was, you know, you know, dotted with mounds of all different sizes and shapes for years. You know, when the when Europeans were first landing here. But, of course, they were, you know, gradually bulldozed with the land, you know, spread back around, you know, to clear fields for farming. The whole Mississippi River Valley, of course, is dotted with mounds from this, from this era. But it's, it's mentioned by a lot of the early French historians that the area directly around like Monks Mound in Cahokia Heights was was largely uninhabited at the time. There were, you know, some some native nations still in the area, but very few lived in close proximity to Monks Mound at the time that they arrived. The name Cahokia is the name of the nation that was living in the area at the time. But as for the original name of the people who built the mounds, that, as far as I know, is still lost to history.
Dean Klinkenberg:I don't think we know what they called themselves. So well, interesting. That's great. Let's move into the French history. Then I think one of the things that surprises a lot of people when they think about old communities along the Mississippi, they think about New Orleans, maybe Natchez, they think about the French presence at the southern end of the river. A lot of people don't think so much about the French presence here, but many of these communities were actually founded before there was a New Orleans or a Natchez. Tell us a little bit about some of the early French settlement in this part of the Mississippi, and when people started building what became Ste. Genevieve.
Jim Gass:Well, Ste. Genevieve is on the young side compared to some of those communities you just mentioned. Like the earliest French explorer to pass through the area along the Mississippi with Jacques Marquette in the summer of 1673, His expedition got well to the south of the Ohio River, where it intersects with the Mississippi, but they turned back around not long after there. Ste. Genevieve's exact year of founding has been debated, but it falls between 1735 and 1750 and its existence as a town was first documented 1750. There are definitely French speakers visiting the area as early as 1718, however, with the goal of harvesting salt from the Saline Creek, which is just a little to the south of here, along Highway 61. The river, at the time, was fed by a salt spring, and it was a great geological feature to build your settlement next to. All that saltwater that can then be boiled off for the solid stuff that can then be stored for long term usage. However, the soil along the Mississippi was ideal for grain production, and that had caused people to settle on the other side of the river well before 1718. The French founded the Village of Kaskaskia around 1703 initially, it was mostly Kaskaskia native peoples and missionaries that lived there. The Kaskaskia had moved several times due to ongoing wars with the Iroquois, and they ended up settling and just a little bit to the south of where we're sitting now, just on the Illinois side of the river. And soon they were joined by a great number of French settlers, including relatives of a lot of the people who initially settled Ste. Genevieve just a few decades later. So there are maps, you know, going back to as early as 1718 that show, you know, a couple little buildings right by the Saline Creek on the on the Missouri side, but you start to see a village formally referred to as Ste. Genevieve appear in the documents in the 1750s so that's, that's the date that we typically give people for when the town first, first gets its start.
Dean Klinkenberg:Right. And my understanding, too, is a lot of those early French folks who came here were the missionaries. I don't remember, were they Jesuit? I forget what order.
Jim Gass:Primarily. There are several orders involved in this at this time, like in the ministries to the native peoples, but the Jesuits are probably the biggest one. And yeah, they, you know, the black robes, as they were called, Jacques Gravier, I believe, is the main father who's responsible for a lot of the primary source documents that we have from the end of the 1600s for Kaskaskia, specifically.
Dean Klinkenberg:Right. Because this is one of the things I always point to, hopefully correctly. But my understanding is that Cahokia, what's now, Cahokia, Illinois, was really the first presence for missionaries, at least that 1699 there was a Catholic mission that was established at Cahokia, which is a suburb of St Louis today. I don't know if it's been continuously inhabited since 1699 but it's an area. It's certainly an area with probably the oldest history along the Mississippi, from what I can tell.
Jim Gass:That's accurate, to the best of my knowledge, and it's, you know, fits in with the dates of earlier settlements. You know, Peoria, Illinois had a French presence there in the in the late 1600s. See, a lot of these villages do tend to move several times over. So, you know, in the like in the case of Ste. Genevieve, the original village was a lot closer to the river. It was a couple miles from where we're standing right now, but it shifted over time due to repeat flooding by the Mississippi and you see the same story play out elsewhere in the Mississippi River Valley. So it may be, you know, continuously occupied site. It's just that the like the center of the settlement will have moved, you know, two or three miles over the course of its many, many years of existence.
Dean Klinkenberg:That pesky river has a has a habit of overflowing its bank and getting people to reconsider where they were building their homes and farming. So tell us a little bit then about what, regardless of the exact year who were some of those first people who settled at what became Ste. Genevieve?
Jim Gass:Most of them were of French Canadian descent. Most of them arrived down here by taking the Mississippi, but sometimes also coming by other routes, like taking the Illinois down from what is now the portage of Chicago, others came down the Wabash and then through the Ohio and then up the Mississippi, from there to the Ste. Genevieve area. At least at one point, a good number of settlers from Vincennes, Indiana came over here, though that might be a little bit later than the time period that we're describing most of or some of the names would be, it would include the Valle family, the Pratte family. That's P, R, A, T, T, E. The Boyers are a big one. Some of their ancestors helped to settle what is now Old Mines, which is a community to the west of here, which ended up being inhabited by a lot of Missouri French families, especially after the Louisiana Purchase. Aubuchon is another one, is another big name that you see in the early documents, and several others you know, at times you see these families that are immediately traceable back to French Canada. Others, I believe, are more readily traceable down to lower Louisiana to New Orleans. But generally, the trend you see is families that came down from French Canada.
Dean Klinkenberg:So a lot of them probably would be able to trace their roots back to Montreal or Quebec City or places like that. And over time, the families moved west. Why here? What attracted them to this particular plot of land?
Jim Gass:Well, it was the soil for one thing, just because you know, the upside to the Mississippi flooding again and again is the ongoing deposit of silt and minerals in the soil that fronts on the river makes it ideal for grain production. Historians of Ste. Genevieve note that the people here didn't even really feel the need to practice crop rotation it wouldn't seem, that they mostly just continuously plowed the fields there and were rewarded for their efforts time and time again. That's one of the big draws. Lead is another big draw. There's a good amount of that in the hills to the west of town, which some Missouri communities still bear, that their names that have mine as part of them, but, but as far as you know, what, more broadly, what drew people to this area, it was, I think, just the promise of a lot of open land and somewhat more hospitable climate than you would find down in Louisiana or lower Louisiana or up in up in Montreal, where the Missouri occupies kind of a nice middle ground between the two, where, you know, we we experienced some very hot, humid summers, but the winters are fairly mild and not not altogether bad to live as a wheat farmer.
Dean Klinkenberg:So was wheat the primary crop that they were growing then?
Jim Gass:That is the single big one. Yeah, there's a good amount of corn and tobacco grown grown down here as well. I couldn't give you a percentage for how much was for subsistence versus sale, but I can tell you that merchants from as far as like Philadelphia were exporting wheat to New Orleans in the 1790s so the few remaining French speaking communities on this side of the river were not meeting all of New Orleans grain needs, despite exporting a good amount of it every year. Now in times of not famine, but in times where the, you know, floods had wiped out most of the crops, there would typically be a brief moratorium on shipping grain down to the city, just to make sure, you know, people up here had plenty to eat. They also, I can tell you had to generally ship the wheat down there intact, as opposed to having it milled first, which you know leads to the spoilage, unfortunately, of some of the volume, but you do see periods in Ste. Genevieve's history where there wasn't a mill that was up and running that could keep up with the capacity of what was produced here at that time.
Dean Klinkenberg:That's really interesting. So there was, early on, there was a strong trade relationship, a mercantile connection, between this part of the river and New Orleans. So obviously it's easier to imagine, you know, loading up a boat with harvested wheat and shipping it down river. At some point, the money or other trade goods then have to come back up in exchange.
Jim Gass:That's, that's where our central figure, that we deal with here at the Center, Louis Bolduc, really comes in. He is, he's a much later settler to the area than a lot of his neighbors. Bolduc comes down from from a little bit east of Quebec City as a young man in about 1760 but that is what he spends most of his life here doing, is shipping large amounts of grain along with other products, down to New Orleans and then bringing a lot of finished manufactured products back up here to sell to his neighbors. So he makes himself pretty, pretty wealthy as a wholesale merchant, you know, for for the next 40 years of his life, doing pretty good business here in Ste. Genevieve, which was apparently had a large enough market for import goods to keep him and at least a few other merchants, like pretty well, pretty well supplied.
Dean Klinkenberg:So what during those 40 years then, was he basically kind of a distributor, like he would collect wheat that everybody in the area grew, that he would then bring down to New Orleans to sell, and then bring back payment for that, as well as things to sell. Or was he selling his own stuff?
Jim Gass:We figure it varied year to year because he was, he was a sizable landowner. He owned several tracts of land down by the Mississippi. I've also heard, but haven't seen the documents for tracts of land he owned closer to St Louis. He co owned a good sized acreage to the north of here, close to what is now Bloomsdale at one point. We have the document for that. So it would seem that during a lot of this time, there was a lot of grain being produced on his land, likely through slave labor. But it also seems that he probably bought and sold other people's grain too, you know, given the opportunity, or, you know, if he felt that he could, that the that it could be sold successfully in New Orleans, which given, given just how much they're, how hungry they were for wheat down there, it seems that it was pretty likely that, that he would have a market for it.
Dean Klinkenberg:So if you're, if you're living in Ste. Genevieve at that time, and you're, you're a farmer, you're maybe growing some wheat as a cash crop, what's your day to day life like? You must be growing or you must be having other animals and crops that you're growing to feed your own family too. So what's that look like?
Jim Gass:If you're living in town at the time, if you're of modest means, like more, say, more modest means than Monsieur Bolduc, who we figure was probably in the top five wealthiest men in town for much of his life. You might own a lot in town that's maybe just shy of 200 by 200 feet. The unit of measurement is the arpent, which is about 192 feet. Usually, you might have a sizable yard behind the house where there's going to be vegetable gardens that are being tended, you know, to produce produce, while your actual grain growing operation is going to be much further closer to the river, especially at a slight elevation decline, you know where the soil is, a lot closer to the water's edge. Your land will is, you know, part of a long, narrow strip that's maybe only about 200 feet wide, but it might extend for quite a distance, running up to the river's edge. That's how, that's how they draw it on the. On maps of farmland that are, you know, sketched from this time and for the next, you know, few decades, a lot of that land is going to be plowed by oxen, you know, with with iron plows. Some of those oxen, as well as other farm animals, will be fed on a kind of a common area of the fields that are, you know, you know there for the use of people's animals, that they're that they're that they're grazing. A good amount of the labor, depending on your level of you know, relative wealth, a good amount of the labor might be provided by enslaved people during this time, too. It was not uncommon to own at least one or two slaves of African descent that would often be working alongside you in the field, depending on the size of your estate. Of course, there are some who are, you know, having pretty much exclusively slaves tend their land, but one or two is a lot closer to the norm here and it and as a result, a lot of this grain is being produced, which, again, if, you know, if there's a merchant who is interested, you could have a lot. You could sell a lot of that to him, which he will then turn around in New Orleans, or, you know, later on in St Louis, where they where they badly need it during the first couple years of that city's existence. And, but again, yeah, you also might be raising cattle on the side, livestock for for slaughter, for the to feed your own family. You'd likely hunt whenever or fish whenever you get the chance to bring in extra food. That way. You see, in some properties, you don't see hardly any fish skeletons, you know. And the in the archeological digs and other properties, you see quite a few of them. So it does seem to have been to varied from family to family, just how much they took from the river.
Dean Klinkenberg:Social class thing maybe, like, if you were a poor person, where you may be more dependent on fishing for subsistence than if you were richer, you had livestock or whatever?
Jim Gass:That seems to be pretty accurate. I mean, you know, one or two, you know, one or two farm animals seem within the reach of most people here, based on what I've read. But also, of course, we don't really get the voices of, like, the poorest people in town, you know, recorded for us to read generations later. You know, we most of the documents we have, most of the primary source documents we have are, you know, business papers, you know, wills and estate documents, land transactions, that sort of thing. And you know, those, even among the people concerned in those documents, they tell us fairly little about the day to day experiences of those people. But, you know, we can figure or we can get quite a bit from the existing literature on what their lives were like back in French Canada, and on documents and letters from Spanish and before that, French officials in this area, who can kind of relay some of these stories back to us secondhand, hundreds of years later, of course.
Dean Klinkenberg:right, wasn't it something like 40% of households in Ste. Genevieve in the 18th century at least had at least one slave
Jim Gass:Yeah, I don't have the exact percentage in my notes, but to give you an idea, the largest slaveholder that I'm aware of during the colonial period would have been Jean Baptiste Valle towards the end of the colonial period, who had around 30 people enslaved on his various properties. So that was, that was sort of where that figure topped out for the colonial period here.
Dean Klinkenberg:All right, so then there was a major change across the river that impacted Ste. Genevieve's future at the end of the French and Indian War, 1770?
Jim Gass:Little bit earlier than that. 1763 is when the Spaniards, or sorry, 1762 is when the Spaniards technically take possession of this side of the river of what we now call the Louisiana Territory. The war itself, I believe, ends in '63 but '62 is when the French and the Spaniards signed the treaty that transfers all of this over to Spain. And then that comes up in the negotiations for the end of the French and Indian War, where the British are not overly thrilled that the Spaniards are taking possession of everything west of the Mississippi, but they're getting everything to the east, and the French are gone. So that you know that that is where the status quo ends up after the war ends. And it's in about 1768 that the Spaniards really move in and establish their their presence as the as the governors of of the Louisiana Territory.
Dean Klinkenberg:On the Illinois side. Then they became British subjects. And there were a number of people in some of those villages, Kaskaskia, for example, that didn't really want to be British subjects, so they moved over here. I think right?
Jim Gass:Good number from Cahokia, from Kaskaskia, from Vincennes. Probably a good number from further north than that, up in French Canada and some of the other French towns around the Great Lakes. But yes, there's plenty of them that moved over to Ste. Genevieve specifically to continue to be under the rule of a Catholic monarch, as opposed to a Protestant one.
Dean Klinkenberg:Was there much change in day to day life for people under Spanish rule?
Jim Gass:Generally, not really. The Spaniards tended to govern in what you might relatively hands off kind of way. They left a lot of administrative duties actually to like Francois Valle, the first who was one of the central figures of Ste. Genevieve, of the early years of Ste. Genevieve. They entrusted him with quite a lot. They actually rented a house from his family to serve as a barracks for the few Spanish soldiers that lived in the area. They were known for being a little the Spaniards were known for being kind of tight fisted when it came to trade with the native peoples, much less open handed than the French had been, and this generated some tension where there had been a little bit less prior to their arrival, but really, especially in a community this remote, they were content to let most things continue on as they had for the previous few decades. They really focused more of their governing efforts on New Orleans and the immediate environment around there, because the Port of New Orleans was really the most valuable part of the Louisiana Territory, as they saw it. There are some minor changes, though, at the time of the American Revolution, for instance, Carlos III is on the throne of Spain. He's seen as kind of a enlightenment monarch. He's trying, with some success, to sort of modernize the way the Spaniards govern the New World, to sort of cut through the layers of bureaucracy that had developed over the previous few centuries. One of the big reforms that we see at this time is referred to as coartación, is where an enslaved person in what is now Spanish Louisiana is able to demand that their master set a price on their freedom. And if then they can raise, they can raise that amount of money, then they're able to buy their way out of bondage, which was possible in many cases in these French speaking communities where enslaved people, people typically took the day off after mass and then just went and did more work, but for pay, you know, for other folks in town. So you do see the possibility of freedom, you know, appearing to some of these people, possibly for the first time. You also see a decrease in the enslavement of native peoples at this time throughout Spanish Louisiana. It was something I really read into when I first started working here, trying to kind of figure out if that was totally set in stone among the Spaniards. We know that the initial military governor of Louisiana, Alejandro O'Reilly, outlawed the enslavement of native peoples, or at least the trade and enslaved native peoples. But I believe a lot of scholars have looked and have not been able to find if the king finally, like, signed off, ultimately signed off on that. So it carried some weight of the law. You know, while O'Reilly was still in government or still governor, but how well it was really enforced is kind of up for debate.
Dean Klinkenberg:Interesting. There was a lot going on in that period of time, like government, changes in government and the American Revolution happened. Do you know, like, is there much written about the what folks thought about the American Revolution here on the Ste. Genevieve side of things?
Jim Gass:Not much in terms of what they thought about the revolution as it was ongoing. The Spaniards, you're probably aware were pretty sympathetic to the revolution and were happy to ship a lot of supplies up the river and then up the Ohio to, you know, be used by the Continental Army. There's a couple American merchants who are already very active in New Orleans at this time. But as far as what people felt about the revolution here in Ste. Genevieve, it's pretty it's pretty unclear. Some of their cousins over in, you know, Cahokia and Kaskaskia were, were apparently pretty amicable, you know, to George Rogers Clark when the opportunity arose to, you know, to to at least somewhat oppose, you know, the continued British rule of that side of the island and or that side of the river.
Dean Klinkenberg:Yeah, they practically laid out the welcome mats when he showed up with his troops.
Jim Gass:Some of them were also happy to redeclare their allegiance to Britain once the British came back through. But you can't, you can't blame people you know, for, for, you know, being this far out on the frontier, and you know, see, seeing this, this disruption of their daily life as something that will, you know, pass when it passes, and just, you know, trying to keep afloat until then. You know, after the revolution begins, is when relations with Spain start to take kind of a turn. You also, you also see the Spaniards actively recruiting people, you know, ostensibly American citizens to sort of defect over to this side of the river to begin, you know, filling up a lot of the territories here in Louisiana that the Spaniards were hoping to reinforce. They were offering pretty good rates on land. I think in some cases, they were offering, like, free land grants to people who would move over to the side of the river, who would take a loyalty oath to Spain and at least nominally convert to Catholicism, though, I think they dropped that requirement after a couple years. And you may be familiar with the town of New Madrid, which is to the south of here that that was initially settled under Spanish authority, but was primarily Americans who settled there and and as a result, you know, you get a lot of English speaking peoples that are moving to the side of the river. Those folks, the French settlers of Ste. Genevieve, were not as big a fans. I can I can tell you that much, depending on who you ask. Some of them were model citizens. Others were rabble rousers, a change that I wanted to cite specifically is Henry Marie Brackenridge, who was one of the early chroniclers of the history of Louisiana at this time. He spends time in Ste. Genevieve as a very young boy to learn French and to kind of learn to navigate these settlements. He comes back as an adult and is dismayed. He says, to find that people are openly wearing weapons, you know, through the streets in Ste. Genevieve, including like when they even when they go to court. It's something that he noted as a marked change in the 20 or so years since he had, since he had spent his boyhood here. I think just the rapid increase in the size of the settlement and the development of the sort of frontier ethic that was being created at the time that involved somewhat of a readiness to violence that is associated with the early 1800s and the growth of towns along the frontier.
Dean Klinkenberg:Lots of new people coming through, a lot of transient people coming through. So yeah, probably created a sense of vulnerability. If you were a person living here.
Jim Gass:That's fair to say. I would think, I would think, and around that same time too, especially after the Louisiana Purchase, when Brackenridge is writing from as an adult, you also see a good number of French speakers moving westward to Old Mines and to other communities that are further out from Ste. Genevieve. And I, you know, based on what I've read, I can't help but contribute or attribute that to the influx of American settlers. You know, who, again, were, you know, spoke a different language and were largely Protestant. And this would tend to and you know, as they were coming to outnumber the people here who spoke French, you would tend to see some of those French speakers move away to places that might still more consistently use their language, as opposed to English.
Dean Klinkenberg:Hey, Dean Klinkenberg here, interrupting myself, just wanted to remind you that if you'd like to know more about the Mississippi River, check out my books. I write the Mississippi Valley Traveler guide books for people who want to get to know the Mississippi better. I also write the Frank Dodge mystery series that is set in places along the Mississippi. My newest book, The Wild Mississippi, goes deep into the world of Old Man River. Learn about the varied and complex ecosystems supported by the Mississippi, the plant and animal life that depends on them. And where you can go to experience it all. Find any of these wherever books are sold. So if you're, if you're living here in the colonial period, what do you do for fun?
Jim Gass:As far as the leisure time that they really had? We see a lot of card games that were becoming popular, you know, across across Europe at this time, that are also becoming popular here. Faro is the big one that we demonstrate to people at the living history house, which we keep open on Saturdays, that's that's sort of a banking game, similar to Blackjack, in some ways. But a lot of other card games are really becoming popular at this time. A lot of people are unaware the standard deck of 52 cards that were that we're used to today, that is something that comes to us from France. There are playing card sets of all different kinds throughout Europe, you know, from about the 1500s on, but the one that we are most used to is specifically French. You see other games, like Monty, like Euchre appeal, appear during this time. You know, gambling, while frowned upon you know, by some authorities, was something that was likely very popular. Billiards is something that we also know they played here in Ste. Genevieve. There are documents where the local priest was complaining of the amount of time that people spent in billiards halls. You know, here in town in Ste. Genevieve in the 1790s there's also a good number of, you know, of seasonal holidays and feasts that people took part in. I know one of your other questions was about Guignolée, that is a New Year's Eve festival that takes place every year that has a that sees sort of carolers, you know, make their way from home to home on New Year's Eve, singing and dancing, specific, specific seasonal songs with the hope of being rewarded with with a bite to eat or a few drinks, you know, either beers or spirits, with, with the idea that they continue to rove through town as and the whole thing gets merrier and merrier over.
Dean Klinkenberg:Well, a lot of that food and drinks are better, right? So this is a New Year's Eve tradition?
Jim Gass:Still practiced around here. There's still an association that does that and busses people around from Prairie du Rocher to here and some of the other communities. And it's a good time. You know, people, people get really into it consistently from year to year.
Dean Klinkenberg:Yeah, we'll come back to that. Maybe we'll maybe, yeah, when we get to contemporary Ste. Genevieve too. So this is, this wasn't Puritan New England, right? So there were places to play billiards. Like you said, drinking was fine. Generally speaking, there was not a frown. People didn't frown on drinking so much.
Jim Gass:It's something you see in the primary sources where there's a constant back or there's a constant tension between some of the religious authorities in the area who are appealing to the government, like the secular authorities, to kind of curb some of the tendencies towards partying that you see throughout these communities, and just based on how it's an ongoing item of complaint. You get the sense that the secular authorities really weren't putting a stop to all of it, that it was sort of ongoing throughout the French period. I mean, it's something that the Jesuits were complaining about going back to the late 1600s for fear that the habits of some of these French settlers would be a bad influence on the native folks that they were trying to convert, perhaps not without reason given, you know, the proliferation of alcohol in some of those communities as a result of, you know, contact with French traders, but, but yeah, it you're correct, and it is not Puritan New England by, by any means.
Dean Klinkenberg:So what would, what would it be like to step into a tavern, then, like you would have people from across social class, maybe some travelers passing through. What would you drink? Would there be food? What would the experience be like?
Jim Gass:As far as the specifics on food or drink, the documentation is pretty sparse on that. We know that there were a couple stills and a couple breweries that were in operation here as early as the 1790s. You actually see the Valles, I believe, buy the rights to a couple of these from some of the early American settlers to make it to this side of the river. So beer and spirits were both available. As far as the food goes, I couldn't point to any specific recipe, and, you know, it is a great tragedy, but the documentation we have on early Ste. Genevieve is really, really light in terms of recipes, you know, that would be characteristic of the region or the town itself.
Dean Klinkenberg:So do we know even have a sense for what people might eat at home?
Jim Gass:As far as what people ate at home. A lot of a lot of stews, gumbo was big up here too, same as it was down in Louisiana. You know, wheat bread of all different consistencies and qualities, was available here too. You know, they, they sort of lived and died based, based around wheat. You know, that was the single biggest thing that they produced here in town, so is the it was sort of the centerpiece of a lot of their diets, you know, usually, you know, stew with several kind of game meats, some livestock and a large hunk of bread to soak it up. That's something that you see in a lot of the histories of the area. Beyond that there, you know, were, there were things like persimmons and pawpaws and pecans that were available, you know, for forage here that people did come to enjoy. And some in parts of Louisiana, not, not all of them, but in parts of Louisiana, people were coming to appreciate corn as well as something that they would grow and assist and subsist on.
Dean Klinkenberg:That took a while. They were wheat first people, right?
Jim Gass:Very much so, yeah.
Dean Klinkenberg:All right. So let's talk about the buildings, then tell us a little bit about their style of architecture, what they built and and how it was built.
Jim Gass:So the styles of architecture used by the French colonists here fall into the categories of poteaux-sur-sol or poteaux-en-terre. Poteaux-en-terre, post in earth, is probably the most basic form of this type of construction. Probably goes back the furthest, very simply put, you would simply make, make these vertical logs that would then be placed upright in a trench that was dug in the shape of a house, and the post would sit directly in the earth. And then you would fill the spaces between the those logs with a mix of mud and clay and straw. Bousillage was the term that the French used for it at the time, although the contemporary term in Normandy France is torchis , spelled with a T the and this is probably the most like what you see most people in Ste. Genevieve have at this time. The building, the posts themselves are very thick, sometimes up to a foot in width. You know, they were built to last. And this is a style that goes back to Normandy, France specifically, that's where not just a lot of the families here, but a lot of the families that settle French Canada, more broadly, draw their descent from. It makes for a for a very sturdy building. In the long term, they tend to build the roofs very steep. They mostly build those roofs without nails as well. Like the beams that actually hold them together are pinned in place using mortise and tenon joints and the and then heavy wooden spikes run through those joints to lock them in place. Makes them very sturdy in the long term, but also very flexible in the sense that they can sort of readjust as the ground settles out underneath them. Now, for for wealthier folks in town, you would see the emergence of what we call poteaux-sur-sol, which is post on sill. Same basic design, but instead of building directly on the ground, they would create an elevated sill made of dressed or undressed stone that would that you would then build on top of the vertical logs would sit on that and thus be insulated from the moisture and the bacteria and whatnot in the ground enables, you know, the building of houses with materials like oak, they're very sturdy, but not exactly rot proof, versus the cypress and the mulberry and the other rot resistant timbers that they would be limited to for building a post in Earth structure. And what's more, the presence of those stone sills creates kind of a half basement underneath the house. I tend to call it a crawl space, generally, not that deep, unless you built a really large sill to elevate the house very far off the ground, which is not, you know, not outside the realm of possibility for a lot of these wealthier builders. What you also see in Ste. Genevieve and elsewhere, you know, further to the south is the emergence of the gallery, the wrap around covered porch that characterizes so many or our image of buildings in French Louisiana and the French Caribbean that was also present up here in Ste. Genevieve because, not just because of the influence of the Caribbean and Louisiana making its way up the river, but also because it tends to cool the house down substantially. It keeps the sun and the rain off, cuts down on light that's getting through the windows and heating up the building and and also gives you a comfortable place to potentially sleep at night if it's just too hot to bear inside the house.
Dean Klinkenberg:Basically an extra room, in a sense, right?
Jim Gass:Yeah, and at times they even built extra rooms on the porch. The Bolduc House has one example of this. It's something you see, especially at the end of the 1790s where they just walled off sections of the porch and called it good. You suddenly had a new utility room added to the building without having to redo the whole roof in the process.
Dean Klinkenberg:So basically, would it be if you're a person of regular means, not a rich person, it's one room, like you build this house and you have one room that you kind of figure out ways to divide the space for your use.
Jim Gass:One or two, yeah. The something that we hear about in some texts is that they that the French crown, and later to the Spaniards tax these properties based on the number of rooms that you saw. I haven't seen the documentation for that. So I'm not positive that that there's not more to it than that, but it would make sense given just how few rooms they tend to build to start with. You do see some people of means draw plans for like, a house with, say, six rooms, like in the case of Delassus, who was a French Noble who fled here from the revolution, but that's the that's the only indication of a house of that size that I've seen others, even folks like Louis Bolduc, had one or two rooms, maximum three over the course of their lives.
Dean Klinkenberg:So they they built with posts vertically, and probably because that's the style they knew. From their their family, their their cultural history. Are there advantages or disadvantages to that building style compared to what was more common on the American frontier, where the posts would be horizontal to the ground rather than vertical to
Jim Gass:As far as disadvantages, I can the big one it?
Dean Klinkenberg:So for the roofs, then, would they you know that really jumps right out at you, are these posts are incredibly heavy. They would be very labor intensive to build. They would have to be hauled a great distance, and then, you know, then hauled upright, which I'm sure is no easy task. The advantages was include that, you know, the house would be incredibly sturdy as a result, the parts, like the beams themselves could be replaced fairly easily with, you know, another with another log that you would pre cut to fill to, you know, fill in for it. Although a lot of the time, if there was, you know, an instance where there was rot or insect damage, they would just saw the that piece off. And, you know, find a new, new use for that particular log. The longevity of these structures, you know, is pretty readily testified to, given that, you know, we still have five or six of them with the original walls, you know, still here in town. In addition the thickness of the walls, as well as other measures taken, probably made for a building that was much more livable during the wintertime up in French Canada and in the northwest of France. Of course, you see buildings that are somewhat more lightly built over time. As you know, as you know, sawmills become more and more available as sawn timber becomes bit about the river. Let's touch on that just more and more available. In addition the way that they they filled the spaces between the timbers with the bousillage material, you know. All of that was very readily available, you know, and it tended to pack very dense and act as a good insulator. But so you could read, you could easily fill the spaces between your walls to keep out a lot of the drafts, but then you could also readily replace it in the event that some of it started to rot. a little bit more. Obviously, the river was important for trading. For a lot of people, that's how they came here initially, was probably by river. And then for some folks, there was some subsistence provided by fishing from the river. And then I guess, like the you mentioned, the way the properties were laid out. It's so common in French territories. You see this so clearly in maps of between Baton Rouge and New Orleans in particular, where everybody's got a little bit of frontage on the river, and these really deep, long, narrow plots, and that was the case here too, I guess, for the same reason, so that everybody had river access, in theory?
Jim Gass:It seems to really have just been the French practice throughout the New World, because you see old maps of The St Lawrence River, where the lots take pretty much the same shape. So as for whether that was to guarantee river access, I couldn't really say, but at least to we tend to think of them packing a lot of the most intensively farmed areas in to a central location so that they're more easily monitored and possibly defended against attacks from say, say, hostile native folks or possibly the English, you know, at different times, and that those practices would tend to hold over even during times of relative peace. And it, you know, it also made the community more centralized. You don't see as much of a trend with the French settlers as you would later see with American settlers, where their farms would be pretty far spread out, you know, over throughout the frontier, where, whereas the French settlements tend to be much more closely packed, where people are living in a closer proximity to each other with with relatively few people permanently settling out in the hinterland.
Dean Klinkenberg:Right. So I guess I wanted to clarify that too, because, as I understand it then, so you'd probably have a house in town, but the land that you farmed would be you'd have to travel to a little bit, but then there so they were, you would grow grains and crops there. But then there were also common grounds for the city, where most people would graze some of their livestock?
Jim Gass:Graze their livestock, and I believe, collect firewood as well. But yes, yeah, that is, believe there is one of those common areas delineated in one of the maps that we have of the riverfront at this time, though, that map, a lot of these maps tend to blur together in my head over time, but that, that one may be from the earliest years of after the Louisiana Purchase. But yeah, it's, I believe it is labeled like the common field, but that is, it is worth differentiating that from Le Grand Champ, "the big field," which was the collective name for the individual lots that were all stacked next to each other at this time.
Dean Klinkenberg:Okay, all right. So 1785 we had a big flood, and so prior to that year, the actual town was a little further downriver where we the town is.
Jim Gass:Yeah, right about two or three miles is to the southeast of here, and, yes, directly on the river. And you know, nobody is totally sure of the layout or the exact location of any particular building within the old village. But the Army Corps of Engineers has done a little bit of scanning of the route, the approximate spot. And, you know, found at least some, you know, at least some archeological evidence in the form of, I think, impacted lots where the old village would have been. But by now, the rivers changed course enough that most of its underwater. But yeah, the 1785 flood, it was it. It wasn't. It wasn't so catastrophic that it just changed everybody's perspective all at once. It was just the latest in a series of floods, and it was a particularly destructive one. I I dug through or back through accounts of the flood the other day, I couldn't find evidence that anybody was killed, you know, as a consequence of it, but it did destroy a good number of crops down there at Le Grand Champ, and encourage people to begin moving up in this direction, which is to the north and west, to settle a little bit further away from the river and at slightly higher ground. Some accounts say they moved at the suggestion of the Osage too. That it was the Osage who told them that this would be a much more suitable location for a permanent settlement.
Dean Klinkenberg:So did the river ever get high enough to flood up here too?
Jim Gass:The closest it ever came, to the best of my knowledge, would be 1993 the main street that runs in front of the Bolduc house dips a little bit when you get towards the railroad bridge, and as far as I know, the river almost reached the top of that little hill there in 1993 so it didn't affect the Bolduc House, but it did affect a great number of houses that were that are only about five feet lower in terms of elevation, from what I understand, they called it Lake Ste. Genevieve for a little while, because the river from pretty close by resembled more so a giant lake.
Dean Klinkenberg:Right. It was kind of an epic battle to continually reinforce the levee to protect the town in 1993 and for the most part, it worked. So, all right, so at some point, Ste. Genevieve starts to lose its sort of exclusively French character. So tell us a little bit about that transition.
Jim Gass:Well, the transition begins, you know formally, after 1803 after the Louisiana Purchase, like I said earlier, there were a decent number of Americans that had started to move over to this side of the river well before that. But with the Louisiana Purchase, with the opening of the territories to the west of the Mississippi, you see a much larger influx of people starting to move west here and they don't necessarily, you know, remain in Ste. Genevieve forever. A lot of people just move through on their way to found, you know, other communities to the west of here, we have, you know, within, within a few miles, we have communities with German names like Zell or Weingarten and and you start to, but you do start to see, you know, the relatively small French population overtaken by this larger population of Anglo Americans as well as Germans that are starting to move to the area at the time and the. But there the language is, you know, maintained colloquially, you know, by the old families for quite a while. But it is, you know, it ceases to be the language of public affairs. Like prior to 1800 all the business documents were done in French originally. After say, 1803 you start to see a number of them done in English, some of them translated into both languages, you know, for the convenience of all parties involved. But then by the time, by the time of, like, the 1840s pretty much all the documents I see, at least in the Ste. Genevieve collections that have been compiled, pretty much all of them are English language and, you know, done more in a format that was suitable to the to the United States government, as opposed to the Spaniards who had been governing up until that point in 1803. Yeah, the territory does retro seed back to France in 1800 but the Spaniards are the ones continuing to administer this territory on the ground all the way up until 1803
Dean Klinkenberg:So it's interesting that, you know, basically like this transition away from exclusively French begins around 1803, 220 years ago, and here we are today, in 2025, and you can still feel the French influence. There's still these cultural relics, you know, French cultural relics in town. How did, how did they survive?
Jim Gass:Tradition, you know, is maintained, I think, by a lot of the descendants of the original families, until, you know, really recently as late as the 1950s or '60s. In a lot of cases, they say that even in St Louis as late as the 1930s you could still hear people speaking to each other in "paw paw French." You know, if you happen by the right kitchen window at the right time, I've heard it lasts even longer in some families, you know, further into the rural parts of Southeast Missouri. As for what accounts for how that those traditions are maintained since that time, I do really think it's the relative isolation, you know, that a lot of people were able to live out their lives in, you know, but, but over time, you know, we it we, everybody comes to speak English as their primary language, and to just find further fewer and fewer uses for this older dialect that, you know, that is mostly spoken by the by the elderly that are still in the area. It's, you know, more interesting to us today, because it is such a curiosity. It's and it's, you know, something that you know, in hindsight, we all you know wish had you know been maintained, you know, on equal footing with English, you know, to preserve sort of the region's identity going back to the French period. But, you know, unfortunately, you see that disappear in a lot of places. So lower Louisiana is the same. Is you know, much the same vein, but on a much larger scale, just given how many more speakers of French dialects that you see down there compared to up here.
Dean Klinkenberg:When did the interest in building preservation in particular begin? you
Jim Gass:That really begins, I think going back to at least the'30s, the you see, if you go on the Library of Congress website, the Historic American Building Survey collections, some of the earliest photos in those collections are of Ste. Genevieve, of historic houses that were, you know, photographed down here. There are a number of scholars and museum professionals from St Louis that you know gravitate towards Ste. Genevieve as a place that is worth studying for its architectural history. Some of those figures go on to assist with our parent organization, with the National Society of Colonial Dames, in preserving some of these buildings in the long term, the Dames provide the organization and fundraising necessary to to buy and then restore the Bolduc House, starting in about 1949 that lasts for about that process takes almost 10 years in terms of getting the house restored, but also getting the museum collections put together so that the house can open, and that that starts right before the start of the 1960s and that's really where I would place the dawn of interest in preserving these structures. That starts off a wave of historic preservation here in town that hasn't really ended to tell you the truth. I mean, National Park Service moved in in about 2017. As of now, they, you know, operate four structures here in town. And, you know, good on them for maintaining these the structural integrity of these buildings, you know, long enough for them to continually be is 1790s and they also maintain updated and restored. We try to do the same thing with our with our resources. Yeah, and it attracted, you know, numerous groups that are interested in historic preservation, and we all try to maintain a good working relationship with each other, sending guests in each other's directions to, you know, can hopefully continue to spread, you know, the our various missions through word of mouth. their headquarters at the Kiel Schwent House, which is a masonry building with a lot of German history, as well as their library that they maintain there. And there's other historic buildings in town, but they're all owned by private individuals. Some of them live actively, lived in. Others, not or others are empty, but relatively well maintained by their private owners.
Dean Klinkenberg:So if you want to you know if somebody's coming into town and they want to tour some of the properties, what would you recommend as kind of, what are the must see places that people should go? And you could start with the Center for French Colonial Life.
Jim Gass:I mean, I always recommend the Bolduc House. You know, is that really the first one to see? But also the Green Tree Tavern. The Bolduc House is not as old as the Green Tree. The Green Tree is older by about three years, is the general consensus. But the Bolduc House has, you know, some of the most intact original parts still, you know, still on it, probably as a result of the family continuing to live there through the end of the 1940s and maintaining a lot of the original structural elements all the way through. Then I try to direct people to outbuildings and other structures that are lost to us the Felix Valle House too. Because if you take our tour, you see the Bolduc House 1793 and the Bolduc-LeMeilleur House, 1820. If you go to the Felix Valle House, you're getting even more on the later development of the town through, you know, through the perspective of Felix Valle, who's a grandson to the Valle family and is one of these Creole descendants who really makes good on his family's connections, and is a is able to, you know, find a pretty lucrative place in the new American order. But that's the, you know, that's the state's story to tell there. I would let them explain better, you know, the story of his life and the house that he inhabited. today, in addition to the surviving houses, and those are the two that we have currently. They get updated every two or three years, depending on the you know, what resources are available and like, what we're able to to research and write in that time. But it is worth, even if you visited before, you know, it's worth checking out a couple additional times every every few years or so. You know, we continue to update this stuff periodically.
Dean Klinkenberg:So then, in terms of, like, I, I'm always a fan of trying to find some of the lesser visited or maybe less well known places, and I may be a weirdo for this, but I like cemeteries, so the old cemetery just on Market Street. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Jim Gass:I can tell you that a lot of the stones in there at least go back to the first couple decades of the 1800s and some of them back further than that. It's been a long time since I took a walk through there, I'll admit. But there are headstones that had rubbings done of their their surfaces back in the 1940s that were already old then. So it is, it is worth checking out just to see if you can still discern what is carved into them. Because, you know, time is not kind to these, these limes, these lime headstones, unfortunately, but yeah, a lot of those graves go back, at least to the end of the colonial period, lots of Valles, lots of Prattes, you know, lots of Boyers, and probably quite a few more names that I'm just not thinking of at the moment.
Dean Klinkenberg:And then there are some festivals or annual events here that celebrate different aspects of you know, that have some French connection to them. You mentioned the New Year's Eve. Tell us a little bit about that.
Jim Gass:Yeah, so that that we'll typically be open for a couple hours on that night. That's, that's New Year's Eve. The organization that still that, you know, transports a lot of the Guignolée crew, you know, we have a good relationship with them. We see them every New Year's Eve, usually a little bit before midnight, where they are bussed from site to site, usually wearing a variety of period clothing and singing, you know, the traditional French carols that are sung on that night, you know, and having been given quite a few drinks, you know, at different points throughout the night, depending where they've stopped and, and it's, you know, it's, it was a very merry occasion, you know, 200 years ago. It still is today. And typically, there's more than one organization involved in that. I'm a little bit less familiar with the actual administrative duties that go into that. That's, Guignolée.
Dean Klinkenberg:Anybody's welcome to be part of that?
Jim Gass:You'd have to contact the right folks to sign up for it. But yes, that's, that's overall, that's, that's the impression I get. And then again, we typically open our site for a couple hours around the time that they show up, so people are able to come through and peruse the exhibits and wait for the carolers to arrive. That's New Year's Eve. There's also Jour de Fete, which translates to "feast day." That's usually midway through August. That's typically the biggest draw for people from out of town. It also draws a lot of people who grew up in Ste. Genevieve back if they've moved outside the area. As far as specific French cultural practices that are on display there. There's nothing in particular that I can point to, but it is also the appointed date for Project Pioneer, which is done by a separate initiative here in town to honor at least one French family going back to the colonial period every year by sort of reexamining and republishing a lot of the genealogical records, requesting new photos or new narrative details from surviving family members and and, you know, that's, that's, that's worth checking out whenever, whenever they do that in early August. Those are the two big ones I can point to there. As far as other festivals go, there's plenty without a specific, you know, without a specific historic focus. We have the Pecan Festival, Pecanapalooza, every fall, as well as Rural Heritage Day, that usually falls a little bit earlier in the in the early autumn. But it is worth checking the town's website for all the way from August to November, because they will usually have a lot of those dates laid out well in advance.
Dean Klinkenberg:And what about the church? The there are some burials in there, maybe, or there, I kind of vaguely remember some connections to the French history too?
Jim Gass:Francois Valle II is buried underneath that church that you know, his house is the one that we're hoping to open by this this coming year, he is one of the very few individuals that is honored in that way. He and I believe his young son, who died in infancy, are both buried underneath the church. You can see the stone marker for it next to the altar. The that church itself only goes back to the early 20th century. However, the lot on which it sits was occupied by Ste. Genevieve's Catholic church for many iterations prior to that, so that his remains are still down there to this day. But yeah, it's very worth visiting regardless of your faith. It's a beautiful building and you know, it's, as a result, pretty representative of the faith and heritage of Ste. Genevieve as a at one point, a predominantly Catholic settlement.
Dean Klinkenberg:And it's free, yes. So there is that.
Jim Gass:There is that.
Dean Klinkenberg:Did I miss anything? Is there anything else you want to highlight about this French, the French Connection here at Ste. Genevieve?
Jim Gass:I just want to elaborate just on the work of our organization. Originally, it really was just limited to maintaining the Bolduc House and conducting tours. Used to be the museum was just that property and a few people in period costume that would take you through the house, you know, during the summers and early autumns. But since then, we have expanded to offering House tours year round, every day, how the out of the year, except, except usually Christmas. We also maintain the Bolduc LeMeilleur House, which is a nice bookend to the colonial period being built in 1820. On Saturdays during the warmer months, we open the Living History House where we have a lot of reenactors hang out and explain their crafts to people. And then again, we're hoping to open the Francois Valle II House sometime next year, and that will be our fourth one. So in addition to our main building, the center that we're currently sitting in, we offer quite a lot for just the one organization, and we are continuously expanding. Our historic mission has gone beyond just the preservation of one building and overall the over towards the overall preservation of the French culture and history that is available here. That's about all that I really wanted to point to there, just emphasizing our mission and our ongoing role here in town.
Dean Klinkenberg:So if folks want to learn more about the Center, what are the main places where they can go? I can post a link to the website in the show notes. Are there social media accounts where you post very much?
Jim Gass:We are active on Facebook and that, and that's really the other place to look for us. But other than that, the website is the first place that we would recommend checking out. We can also be reached at info@frenchcolonialamerica.org, if you have any questions, or if you want to ask about putting together a group tour or a group visit, we offer discounts to groups above 30.
Dean Klinkenberg:All right, Jim, thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise. That was fantastic. I really appreciate it.
Jim Gass:Thanks for having us on Dean. We also appreciate it. You know, we figure you got a lot of listeners who are very interested in the history of the Mississippi Valley, and you know, we're happy to to help add to that in any way we can.
Dean Klinkenberg:Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the series on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss out on future episodes. I offer the podcast for free, but when you support the show with a few bucks through Patreon you help keep the program going. Just go to patreon.com/deanklinkenberg. If you want to know more about the Mississippi River, check out my books. I write the Mississippi Valley Traveler guidebooks for people who want to get to know the Mississippi better. I also write the Frank Dodge mystery series that's set in places along the river. Find them wherever books are sold. The Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast is written and produced by me Dean Klinkenberg. Original Music by Noah Fence. See you next time.
