A French Village in the American Heartland: Historian Jim Gass on Sainte Genevieve, Missouri

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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.

Episode Transcript

Jim Gass (00:00):
Some of the names would be, it would include the

(00:01):
Valle family, the Pratte family.
That's p, r, a, t, t, e. TheBoyers are a big one. Some of
their ancestors helped to settlewhat is now Old Mines, which is
a community to the west of here,which ended up being inhabited
by a lot of Missouri Frenchfamilies, especially after the
Louisiana Purchase. Aubuchon isanother one, is another big name

(00:23):
that you see in the earlydocuments, and several others.
You know, at times you see thesefamilies that are immediately
traceable back to French Canada.
Others, I believe, are morereadily traceable down to Lower
Louisiana, to New Orleans, butgenerally the trend you see is

(00:45):
families that came down fromFrench Canada.

Dean Klinkenberg (01:08):
Welcome to the Mississippi Valley Traveler
Podcast. I'm Dean Klinkenberg,and I've been exploring the deep
history and rich culture of thepeople and places along
America's greatest river, theMississippi, since 2007. Join me
as I go deep into the charactersand places along the river, and
occasionally wander into otherstories from the Midwest and

(01:28):
other rivers. Read the episodeshow notes and get more
information on the Mississippiat
MississippiValleyTraveler.com.
Let's get going. Welcome toEpisode 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 talkwith Jim Gass, who is Director

(01:51):
of Research and Education at theCenter for French Colonial Life
in Ste. Genevieve. A historianby background. So we focus on
the telling the story of earlySte. Genevieve, after we cover
his interest in history, how hegot started in history himself,
we talk about some of the whatwe know about the indigenous

(02:14):
people who lived in the areabefore Europeans arrived. We
talked about those early Frenchsettlers who arrived, who they
were, where they came from, whatcrops they grew, what their day
to day lives were like. We spenta little time talking about life
under Spanish rule and who movedto Ste. Genevieve after the
change in ownership of nearbylands. We talked a little bit

(02:38):
about what you could do for funin Old Ste. Genevieve, what some
leisure activities might havebeen. And then we get into some
of the things that the town isbest known for today. We talk
about the architecture, thearchitectural style that those
early French settlers used toconstruct their buildings. Many
of those buildings are stillavailable to visit today, so we

(03:01):
talk about the different playersinvolved and who's managing what
properties, if you're a visitor,where you should start, what
kinds of sites you ought to puton your short list to visit,
especially if you have limitedtime. And we just sort of wrap
it up with a broader view of thework of the Center for Colonial

(03:22):
Life.
Ste. Genevieve is one of myfavorite places to visit. It's a
good spot to use as a base,especially if you're going to
visit the area. They're knownfor their bed and breakfast
inns. They have some nice placesto eat. There's a lot to do in
that immediate area. A lot ofpeople go as a day trip, which
is fine too. You can see most ofthe buildings in a day trip, but

(03:46):
I think it's probably morerewarding to stick around for a
couple of days, use Ste.
Genevieve as your base and goout and see some of the other
sites within an hour or two.
Well, thanks to those of you whocontinue to show me some love
through patreon for as little as$1 a month, you can join that
community, and you get earlyaccess to these podcasts as a

(04:08):
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(04:29):
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you'll find a list of all 68previous episodes. You can read
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(04:53):
notes for each of theseepisodes.
MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcast.
And now on with the interview.

(05:15):
Jim Gass currently serves asDirector of Research and
Education at the Center forFrench Colonial Life in Ste.
Genevieve, Missouri. Jim hasworked for the Center for five
years now, starting with aninternship during graduate
school in 2020. Jim holds an MAin Public History from the
University of Missouri St Louis,and a BA in History from
Illinois State University. Hiswork at the Center entails

(05:38):
archival research as well assupervising interns and new
hires. Jim, welcome to thepodcast.

Jim Gass (05:44):
Thanks for having me, Dean.

Dean Klinkenberg (05:45):
Tell us a little bit about your interest
in history. How did you how didyou become the go to person for
French colonial history in Ste.
Genevieve?

Jim Gass (05:54):
Well, it really starts with museums to tell you the
truth. I mean, I spent a lot oftime in them. As a little kid,
my grandparents took me to a lotof the same historic sites that
you probably cover, Dean.
Cahokia Mounds was always afavorite. Fort de Chartres was
also a favorite. And you knowthat that was mostly, you know,
before I was 10, but about thetime that I wrapped up high

(06:16):
school, I was interested inbecoming a history teacher. That
led me to Illinois StateUniversity, but I tended more
towards research and languagethan anything else. Initially I
studied East Asian history. Infact, I still have a minor in
East Asian Studies from IllinoisState but by the time I
graduated my my focus shiftedagain, as it tends to do with a

(06:37):
lot of us historians. It shiftedpretty decisively to US history,
especially around the end of the19th century, early 20th century
and World War I. But after Igraduated, I took a couple years
off, spent a lot of timetraveling with AmeriCorps, and
then started my master's degreeduring the first year of Covid.

(06:59):
They sent me here as an intern,here to the Center for French
Colonial Life. And as a resultof doing a lot of the primary
source research that you know,The Center has been kind enough
to let me do, you know, I'vereally absorbed a lot of the
lore and the history of thisplace, and that's that's why

(07:21):
I've continued to remain onhere, is so as not to let a lot
of that accumulation of thehistorical knowledge go to
waste.

Dean Klinkenberg (07:31):
How much did you know about Ste. Genevieve
history before you started as anintern?

Jim Gass (07:35):
Not much to tell you the truth. I was vaguely aware
that there was a town with thatname to the south of St Louis,
and I was beginning to becomefamiliar with the French history
of the City of St Louisspecifically. I didn't know it
at the time, but one of theauthors that I was reading at

(07:56):
the time also wrote thedefinitive book on Ste.
Genevieve's history, Dr CarlEkberg. And gradually I became
aware of the site, and thought,well, this is kind of
interesting that they still havethese buildings down here. And
then Ste. Genevieve came up asone of the historic sites that
the University of Missouri StLouis partnered with for their

(08:17):
internship program. And theyasked me, Would I like to come
down here? It was a bit of adrive that I was already at
least passingly familiar withthe site. So I said, Sure. You
know, that sounds reallyinteresting. Be a cool site to
work for, and I've been hereever since, since August of
2020.

Dean Klinkenberg (08:33):
Awesome. It's a good place to be. There's a
deep history to this town, andwe're going to get into some of
that as we get going a littlebit. Let's dig a little deeper
into that history too, and tellme, like, what do we really know
about the people who lived herebefore the first Europeans came
about, the indigenous folks wholived in this area.

Jim Gass (08:50):
The first nation that usually comes up in that
discussion would be the Osagepeople, the probably the biggest
and most prevalent nation tolive in what is now southern
Missouri and northern Arkansasat the time that the first
European settlers got here. Theyhave a wealth of oral tradition
that you know we that we lean onfor for a better understanding

(09:14):
of what their lives were likeand what their culture was like.
As far as what I can tell you,they lived throughout the
southern half of what is nowMissouri for centuries prior to
the arrival of Europeans, andthey spoke Dhegihan Siouan
language, a southern Siouanlanguage, meaning that their

(09:34):
language is part of a group thatincludes the Lakota, the Crow,
the Hidatsa, but is much closerto the languages of the Quapaw
and the the Omaha people. Osagetradition holds that they and
other Dhegihan peoples descendfrom the people who originally
built The Mounds in what is nowCahokia Heights, Illinois, which

(09:54):
I figured most of your listenersare probably pretty well aware

Dean Klinkenberg (09:56):
I hope they are. They better be.
of.
Oh, yeah, considering it's aWorld Heritage Site and
everything. No, the Osage werefully on this side of the
Mississippi. However, by thetime the first French
settlements were built, theCahokia Mounds civilization sort
of peaks in population in the1300s, I think is generally the

(10:17):
range of years that's agreedupon. But the Osage were fully
on this side of the river a few100 years later, when the French
first the first Frenchsettlements were built. Worth
noting, the Osage Nation, veryrecently reacquired Sugarloaf
Mound in St Louis, which is thelast of the mounds that still
remains on that side of theriver in the City. It was built

(10:40):
by their ancestors somewherebetween 600 and 1200 A.D. and
which speaks to how long theywere in the area. I believe
there are present plans to builda cultural center atop the
Mound, which is in the southernpart of the city.
Right. You can catch a glimpseof it on Interstate 55 if you're
going if you're south ofdowntown. So that very timely
news that was it was justannounced in the last week or

(11:01):
so, I think they acquired allthe properties associated with
that. So that's really good. Wedestroyed all the rest of the
mounds though.

Jim Gass (11:07):
Right, and I was getting ready to say that is
worth noting that the Missouriside of the river was, you know,
you know, dotted with mounds ofall different sizes and shapes
for years. You know, when thewhen Europeans were first
landing here. But, of course,they were, you know, gradually
bulldozed with the land, youknow, spread back around, you

(11:30):
know, to clear fields forfarming. The whole Mississippi
River Valley, of course, isdotted with mounds from this,
from this era. But it's, it'smentioned by a lot of the early
French historians that the areadirectly around like Monks Mound
in Cahokia Heights was waslargely uninhabited at the time.
There were, you know, some somenative nations still in the

(11:53):
area, but very few lived inclose proximity to Monks Mound
at the time that they arrived.
The name Cahokia is the name ofthe nation that was living in
the area at the time. But as forthe original name of the people
who built the mounds, that, asfar as I know, is still lost to history.

Dean Klinkenberg (12:12):
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 thingsthat surprises a lot of people
when they think about oldcommunities along the
Mississippi, they think aboutNew Orleans, maybe Natchez, they
think about the French presenceat the southern end of the

(12:32):
river. A lot of people don'tthink so much about the French
presence here, but many of thesecommunities were actually
founded before there was a NewOrleans or a Natchez. Tell us a
little bit about some of theearly French settlement in this
part of the Mississippi, andwhen people started building
what became Ste. Genevieve.

Jim Gass (12:51):
Well, Ste. Genevieve is on the young side compared to
some of those communities youjust mentioned. Like the
earliest French explorer to passthrough the area along the
Mississippi with JacquesMarquette in the summer of 1673,
His expedition got well to thesouth of the Ohio River, where
it intersects with theMississippi, but they turned
back around not long afterthere. Ste. Genevieve's exact

(13:13):
year of founding has beendebated, but it falls between
1735 and 1750 and its existenceas a town was first documented
1750. There are definitelyFrench speakers visiting the
area as early as 1718, however,with the goal of harvesting salt
from the Saline Creek, which isjust a little to the south of
here, along Highway 61. Theriver, at the time, was fed by a

(13:38):
salt spring, and it was a greatgeological feature to build your
settlement next to. All thatsaltwater that can then be
boiled off for the solid stuffthat can then be stored for long
term usage. However, the soilalong the Mississippi was ideal
for grain production, and thathad caused people to settle on
the other side of the river wellbefore 1718. The French founded

(14:01):
the Village of Kaskaskia around1703 initially, it was mostly
Kaskaskia native peoples andmissionaries that lived there.
The Kaskaskia had moved severaltimes due to ongoing wars with
the Iroquois, and they ended upsettling and just a little bit
to the south of where we'resitting now, just on the
Illinois side of the river. Andsoon they were joined by a great

(14:25):
number of French settlers,including relatives of a lot of
the people who initially settledSte. Genevieve just a few
decades later. So there aremaps, you know, going back to as
early as 1718 that show, youknow, a couple little buildings
right by the Saline Creek on theon the Missouri side, but you
start to see a village formallyreferred to as Ste. Genevieve

(14:47):
appear in the documents in the1750s so that's, that's the date
that we typically give peoplefor when the town first, first
gets its start.

Dean Klinkenberg (14:54):
Right. And my understanding, too, is a lot of
those early French folks whocame here were the missionaries.
I don't remember, were theyJesuit? I forget what order.

Jim Gass (15:04):
Primarily. There are several orders involved in this
at this time, like in theministries to the native
peoples, but the Jesuits areprobably the biggest one. And
yeah, they, you know, the blackrobes, as they were called,
Jacques Gravier, I believe, isthe main father who's
responsible for a lot of theprimary source documents that we

(15:25):
have from the end of the 1600sfor Kaskaskia, specifically.

Dean Klinkenberg (15:29):
Right. Because this is one of the things I
always point to, hopefullycorrectly. But my understanding
is that Cahokia, what's now,Cahokia, Illinois, was really
the first presence formissionaries, at least that 1699
there was a Catholic missionthat was established at Cahokia,
which is a suburb of St Louistoday. I don't know if it's been

(15:50):
continuously inhabited since1699 but it's an area. It's
certainly an area with probablythe oldest history along the
Mississippi, from what I cantell.

Jim Gass (16:01):
That's accurate, to the best of my knowledge, and
it's, you know, fits in with thedates of earlier settlements.
You know, Peoria, Illinois had aFrench presence there in the in
the late 1600s. See, a lot ofthese villages do tend to move
several times over. So, youknow, in the like in the case of
Ste. Genevieve, the originalvillage was a lot closer to the

(16:23):
river. It was a couple milesfrom where we're standing right
now, but it shifted over timedue to repeat flooding by the
Mississippi and you see the samestory play out elsewhere in the
Mississippi River Valley. So itmay be, you know, continuously
occupied site. It's just thatthe like the center of the
settlement will have moved, youknow, two or three miles over

(16:46):
the course of its many, manyyears of existence.

Dean Klinkenberg (16:47):
That pesky river has a has a habit of
overflowing its bank and gettingpeople to reconsider where they
were building their homes andfarming. So tell us a little bit
then about what, regardless ofthe exact year who were some of
those first people who settledat what became Ste. Genevieve?

Jim Gass (17:07):
Most of them were of French Canadian descent. Most of
them arrived down here by takingthe Mississippi, but sometimes
also coming by other routes,like taking the Illinois down
from what is now the portage ofChicago, others came down the
Wabash and then through the Ohioand then up the Mississippi,
from there to the Ste. Genevievearea. At least at one point, a

(17:30):
good number of settlers fromVincennes, Indiana came over
here, though that might be alittle bit later than the time
period that we're describingmost of or some of the names
would be, it would include theValle family, the Pratte family.
That's P, R, A, T, T, E. TheBoyers are a big one. Some of
their ancestors helped to settlewhat is now Old Mines, which is

(17:53):
a community to the west of here,which ended up being inhabited
by a lot of Missouri Frenchfamilies, especially after the
Louisiana Purchase. Aubuchon isanother one, is another big name
that you see in the earlydocuments, and several others
you know, at times you see thesefamilies that are immediately

(18:15):
traceable back to French Canada.
Others, I believe, are morereadily traceable down to lower
Louisiana to New Orleans. Butgenerally, the trend you see is
families that came down fromFrench Canada.

Dean Klinkenberg (18:28):
So a lot of them probably would be able to
trace their roots back toMontreal or Quebec City or
places like that. And over time,the families moved west. Why
here? What attracted them tothis particular plot of land?

Jim Gass (18:41):
Well, it was the soil for one thing, just because you
know, the upside to theMississippi flooding again and
again is the ongoing deposit ofsilt and minerals in the soil
that fronts on the river makesit ideal for grain production.
Historians of Ste. Genevievenote that the people here didn't
even really feel the need topractice crop rotation it

(19:02):
wouldn't seem, that they mostlyjust continuously plowed the
fields there and were rewardedfor their efforts time and time
again. That's one of the bigdraws. Lead is another big draw.
There's a good amount of that inthe hills to the west of town,
which some Missouri communitiesstill bear, that their names

(19:23):
that have mine as part of them,but, but as far as you know,
what, more broadly, what drewpeople to this area, it was, I
think, just the promise of a lotof open land and somewhat more
hospitable climate than youwould find down in Louisiana or
lower Louisiana or up in up inMontreal, where the Missouri

(19:48):
occupies kind of a nice middleground between the two, where,
you know, we we experienced somevery hot, humid summers, but the
winters are fairly mild and notnot altogether bad to live as a
wheat farmer.

Dean Klinkenberg (20:03):
So was wheat the primary crop that they were
growing then?

Jim Gass (20:06):
That is the single big one. Yeah, there's a good amount
of corn and tobacco grown growndown here as well. I couldn't
give you a percentage for howmuch was for subsistence versus
sale, but I can tell you thatmerchants from as far as like
Philadelphia were exportingwheat to New Orleans in the
1790s so the few remainingFrench speaking communities on

(20:27):
this side of the river were notmeeting all of New Orleans grain
needs, despite exporting a goodamount of it every year. Now in
times of not famine, but intimes where the, you know,
floods had wiped out most of thecrops, there would typically be
a brief moratorium on shippinggrain down to the city, just to
make sure, you know, people uphere had plenty to eat. They

(20:50):
also, I can tell you had togenerally ship the wheat down
there intact, as opposed tohaving it milled first, which
you know leads to the spoilage,unfortunately, of some of the
volume, but you do see periodsin Ste. Genevieve's history
where there wasn't a mill thatwas up and running that could
keep up with the capacity ofwhat was produced here at that time.

Dean Klinkenberg (21:12):
That's really interesting. So there was, early
on, there was a strong traderelationship, a mercantile
connection, between this part ofthe river and New Orleans. So
obviously it's easier toimagine, you know, loading up a
boat with harvested wheat andshipping it down river. At some
point, the money or other tradegoods then have to come back up
in exchange.

Jim Gass (21:33):
That's, that's where our central figure, that we deal
with here at the Center, LouisBolduc, really comes in. He is,
he's a much later settler to thearea than a lot of his
neighbors. Bolduc comes downfrom from a little bit east of
Quebec City as a young man inabout 1760 but that is what he
spends most of his life heredoing, is shipping large amounts

(21:55):
of grain along with otherproducts, down to New Orleans
and then bringing a lot offinished manufactured products
back up here to sell to hisneighbors. So he makes himself
pretty, pretty wealthy as awholesale merchant, you know,
for for the next 40 years of hislife, doing pretty good business
here in Ste. Genevieve, whichwas apparently had a large

(22:16):
enough market for import goodsto keep him and at least a few
other merchants, like prettywell, pretty well supplied.

Dean Klinkenberg (22:24):
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, thathe would then bring down to New
Orleans to sell, and then bringback payment for that, as well
as things to sell. Or was heselling his own stuff?

Jim Gass (22:41):
We figure it varied year to year because he was, he
was a sizable landowner. Heowned several tracts of land
down by the Mississippi. I'vealso heard, but haven't seen the
documents for tracts of land heowned closer to St Louis. He co
owned a good sized acreage tothe north of here, close to what

(23:02):
is now Bloomsdale at one point.
We have the document for that.
So it would seem that during alot of this time, there was a
lot of grain being produced onhis land, likely through slave
labor. But it also seems that heprobably bought and sold other
people's grain too, you know,given the opportunity, or, you

(23:22):
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 werefor wheat down there, it seems
that it was pretty likely that,that he would have a market for
it.

Dean Klinkenberg (23:39):
So if you're, if you're living in Ste.
Genevieve at that time, andyou're, you're a farmer, you're
maybe growing some wheat as acash crop, what's your day to
day life like? You must begrowing or you must be having
other animals and crops thatyou're growing to feed your own
family too. So what's that looklike?

Jim Gass (23:59):
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 wasprobably in the top five
wealthiest men in town for muchof his life. You might own a lot
in town that's maybe just shy of200 by 200 feet. The unit of
measurement is the arpent, whichis about 192 feet. Usually, you

(24:24):
might have a sizable yard behindthe house where there's going to
be vegetable gardens that arebeing tended, you know, to
produce produce, while youractual grain growing operation
is going to be much furthercloser to the river, especially
at a slight elevation decline,you know where the soil is, a

(24:44):
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 feetwide, but it might extend for
quite a distance, running up tothe 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

(25:07):
is going to be plowed by oxen,you know, with with iron plows.
Some of those oxen, as well asother farm animals, will be fed
on a kind of a common area ofthe fields that are, you know,
you know there for the use ofpeople's animals, that they're
that they're that they'regrazing. A good amount of the

(25:30):
labor, depending on your levelof you know, relative wealth, a
good amount of the labor mightbe provided by enslaved people
during this time, too. It wasnot uncommon to own at least one
or two slaves of African descentthat would often be working
alongside you in the field,depending on the size of your
estate. Of course, there aresome who are, you know, having

(25:52):
pretty much exclusively slavestend their land, but one or two
is a lot closer to the norm hereand it and as a result, a lot of
this grain is being produced,which, again, if, you know, if
there's a merchant who isinterested, you could have a
lot. You could sell a lot ofthat to him, which he will then
turn around in New Orleans, or,you know, later on in St Louis,

(26:16):
where they where they badly needit 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 orfish whenever you get the chance
to bring in extra food. Thatway. You see, in some
properties, you don't see hardlyany fish skeletons, you know.

(26:40):
And the in the archeologicaldigs and other properties, you
see quite a few of them. So itdoes seem to have been to varied
from family to family, just howmuch they took from the river.

Dean Klinkenberg (26:51):
Social class thing maybe, like, if you were a
poor person, where you may bemore dependent on fishing for
subsistence than if you werericher, you had livestock or
whatever?

Jim Gass (27:00):
That seems to be pretty accurate. I mean, you
know, one or two, you know, oneor two farm animals seem within
the reach of most people here,based on what I've read. But
also, of course, we don't reallyget the voices of, like, the
poorest people in town, youknow, recorded for us to read
generations later. You know, wemost of the documents we have,

(27:21):
most of the primary sourcedocuments we have are, you know,
business papers, you know, willsand estate documents, land
transactions, that sort ofthing. And you know, those, even
among the people concerned inthose documents, they tell us
fairly little about the day today experiences of those people.
But, you know, we can figure orwe can get quite a bit from the

(27:43):
existing literature on whattheir lives were like back in
French Canada, and on documentsand letters from Spanish and
before that, French officials inthis area, who can kind of relay
some of these stories back to ussecondhand, hundreds of years
later, of course.

Dean Klinkenberg (28:01):
right, wasn't it something like 40% of
households in Ste. Genevieve inthe 18th century at least had at
least one slave

Jim Gass (28:11):
Yeah, I don't have the exact percentage in my notes,
but to give you an idea, thelargest slaveholder that I'm
aware of during the colonialperiod would have been Jean
Baptiste Valle towards the endof the colonial period, who had
around 30 people enslaved on hisvarious properties. So that was,
that was sort of where thatfigure topped out for the
colonial period here.

Dean Klinkenberg (28:31):
All right, so then there was a major change
across the river that impactedSte. Genevieve's future at the
end of the French and IndianWar, 1770?

Jim Gass (28:45):
Little bit earlier than that. 1763 is when the
Spaniards, or sorry, 1762 iswhen the Spaniards technically
take possession of this side ofthe river of what we now call
the Louisiana Territory. The waritself, I believe, ends in '63
but '62 is when the French andthe Spaniards signed the treaty

(29:08):
that transfers all of this overto Spain. And then that comes up
in the negotiations for the endof the French and Indian War,
where the British are not overlythrilled that the Spaniards are
taking possession of everythingwest of the Mississippi, but
they're getting everything tothe east, and the French are
gone. So that you know that thatis where the status quo ends up

(29:31):
after the war ends. And it's inabout 1768 that the Spaniards
really move in and establishtheir their presence as the as
the governors of of theLouisiana Territory.

Dean Klinkenberg (29:44):
On the Illinois side. Then they became
British subjects. And there werea number of people in some of
those villages, Kaskaskia, forexample, that didn't really want
to be British subjects, so theymoved over here. I think right?

Jim Gass (29:56):
Good number from Cahokia, from Kaskaskia, from
Vincennes. Probably a goodnumber from further north than
that, up in French Canada andsome of the other French towns
around the Great Lakes. But yes,there's plenty of them that
moved over to Ste. Genevievespecifically to continue to be
under the rule of a Catholicmonarch, as opposed to a

(30:17):
Protestant one.

Dean Klinkenberg (30:18):
Was there much change in day to day life for
people under Spanish rule?

Jim Gass (30:21):
Generally, not really.
The Spaniards tended to governin what you might relatively
hands off kind of way. They lefta 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 ofSte. Genevieve. They entrusted

(30:43):
him with quite a lot. Theyactually rented a house from his
family to serve as a barracksfor the few Spanish soldiers
that lived in the area. Theywere known for being a little
the Spaniards were known forbeing kind of tight fisted when
it came to trade with the nativepeoples, much less open handed
than the French had been, andthis generated some tension

(31:05):
where there had been a littlebit less prior to their arrival,
but really, especially in acommunity this remote, they were
content to let most thingscontinue on as they had for the
previous few decades. Theyreally focused more of their
governing efforts on New Orleansand the immediate environment
around there, because the Portof New Orleans was really the

(31:27):
most valuable part of theLouisiana Territory, as they saw
it. There are some minorchanges, though, at the time of
the American Revolution, forinstance, Carlos III is on the
throne of Spain. He's seen askind of a enlightenment monarch.
He's trying, with some success,to sort of modernize the way the

(31:47):
Spaniards govern the New World,to sort of cut through the
layers of bureaucracy that haddeveloped over the previous few
centuries. One of the bigreforms that we see at this time
is referred to as coartación, iswhere an enslaved person in what
is now Spanish Louisiana is ableto demand that their master set

(32:10):
a price on their freedom. And ifthen they can raise, they can
raise that amount of money, thenthey're able to buy their way
out of bondage, which waspossible in many cases in these
French speaking communitieswhere enslaved people, people
typically took the day off aftermass and then just went and did
more work, but for pay, youknow, for other folks in town.

(32:31):
So you do see the possibility offreedom, you know, appearing to
some of these people, possiblyfor the first time. You also see
a decrease in the enslavement ofnative peoples at this time
throughout Spanish Louisiana. Itwas something I really read into
when I first started workinghere, trying to kind of figure

(32:53):
out if that was totally set instone among the Spaniards. We
know that the initial militarygovernor of Louisiana, Alejandro
O'Reilly, outlawed theenslavement of native peoples,
or at least the trade andenslaved native peoples. But I
believe a lot of scholars havelooked and have not been able to

(33:15):
find if the king finally, like,signed off, ultimately signed
off on that. So it carried someweight of the law. You know,
while O'Reilly was still ingovernment or still governor,
but how well it was reallyenforced is kind of up for
debate.

Dean Klinkenberg (33:30):
Interesting.
There was a lot going on in thatperiod of time, like government,
changes in government and theAmerican Revolution happened. Do
you know, like, is there muchwritten about the what folks
thought about the AmericanRevolution here on the Ste.
Genevieve side of things?

Jim Gass (33:47):
Not much in terms of what they thought about the
revolution as it was ongoing.
The Spaniards, you're probablyaware were pretty sympathetic to
the revolution and were happy toship a lot of supplies up the
river and then up the Ohio to,you know, be used by the
Continental Army. There's acouple American merchants who
are already very active in NewOrleans at this time. But as far
as what people felt about therevolution here in Ste.

(34:11):
Genevieve, it's pretty it'spretty unclear. Some of their
cousins over in, you know,Cahokia and Kaskaskia were, were
apparently pretty amicable, youknow, to George Rogers Clark
when the opportunity arose to,you know, to to at least
somewhat oppose, you know, thecontinued British rule of that

(34:36):
side of the island and or thatside of the river.

Dean Klinkenberg (34:41):
Yeah, they practically laid out the welcome
mats when he showed up with histroops.

Jim Gass (34:46):
Some of them were also happy to redeclare their
allegiance to Britain once theBritish came back through. But
you can't, you can't blamepeople you know, for, for, you
know, being this far out on thefrontier, and you know, see,
seeing this, this disruption oftheir daily life as something
that will, you know, pass whenit passes, and just, you know,
trying to keep afloat untilthen. You know, after the

(35:07):
revolution begins, is whenrelations with Spain start to
take kind of a turn. You also,you also see the Spaniards
actively recruiting people, youknow, ostensibly American
citizens to sort of defect overto this side of the river to
begin, you know, filling up alot of the territories here in

(35:29):
Louisiana that the Spaniardswere hoping to reinforce. They
were offering pretty good rateson land. I think in some cases,
they were offering, like, freeland grants to people who would
move over to the side of theriver, who would take a loyalty
oath to Spain and at leastnominally convert to
Catholicism, though, I thinkthey dropped that requirement

(35:49):
after a couple years. And youmay be familiar with the town of
New Madrid, which is to thesouth of here that that was
initially settled under Spanishauthority, but was primarily
Americans who settled there andand as a result, you know, you
get a lot of English speakingpeoples that are moving to the
side of the river. Those folks,the French settlers of Ste.

(36:13):
Genevieve, were not as big afans. I can I can tell you that
much, depending on who you ask.
Some of them were modelcitizens. Others were rabble
rousers, a change that I wantedto cite specifically is Henry
Marie Brackenridge, who was oneof the early chroniclers of the
history of Louisiana at thistime. He spends time in Ste.
Genevieve as a very young boy tolearn French and to kind of

(36:35):
learn to navigate thesesettlements. 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 whenthey even when they go to court.
It's something that he noted asa marked change in the 20 or so
years since he had, since he hadspent his boyhood here. I think

(36:57):
just the rapid increase in thesize of the settlement and the
development of the sort offrontier ethic that was being
created at the time thatinvolved somewhat of a readiness
to violence that is associatedwith the early 1800s and the
growth of towns along thefrontier.

Dean Klinkenberg (37:19):
Lots of new people coming through, a lot of
transient people coming through.
So yeah, probably created asense of vulnerability. If you
were a person living here.

Jim Gass (37:30):
That's fair to say. I would think, I would think, and
around that same time too,especially after the Louisiana
Purchase, when Brackenridge iswriting from as an adult, you
also see a good number of Frenchspeakers moving westward to Old
Mines and to other communitiesthat are further out from Ste.
Genevieve. And I, you know,based on what I've read, I can't

(37:51):
help but contribute or attributethat to the influx of American
settlers. You know, who, again,were, you know, spoke a
different language and werelargely Protestant. And this
would tend to and you know, asthey were coming to outnumber
the people here who spokeFrench, you would tend to see
some of those French speakersmove away to places that might

(38:13):
still more consistently usetheir language, as opposed to
English.

Dean Klinkenberg (38:20):
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myself, just wanted to remindyou that if you'd like to know
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(38:44):
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these wherever books are sold.
So if you're, if you're livinghere in the colonial period,
what do you do for fun?

Jim Gass (39:06):
As far as the leisure time that they really had? We
see a lot of card games thatwere becoming popular, you know,
across across Europe at thistime, that are also becoming
popular here. Faro is the bigone that we demonstrate to
people at the living historyhouse, which we keep open on
Saturdays, that's that's sort ofa banking game, similar to

(39:29):
Blackjack, in some ways. But alot of other card games are
really becoming popular at thistime. A lot of people are
unaware the standard deck of 52cards that were that we're used
to today, that is something thatcomes to us from France. There
are playing card sets of alldifferent kinds throughout
Europe, you know, from about the1500s on, but the one that we

(39:50):
are most used to is specificallyFrench. You see other games,
like Monty, like Euchre appeal,appear during this time. You
know, gambling, while frownedupon you know, by some
authorities, was something thatwas likely very popular.
Billiards is something that wealso know they played here in
Ste. Genevieve. There aredocuments where the local priest

(40:10):
was complaining of the amount oftime that people spent in
billiards halls. You know, herein town in Ste. Genevieve in the
1790s there's also a good numberof, you know, of seasonal
holidays and feasts that peopletook part in. I know one of your
other questions was aboutGuignolée, that is a New Year's
Eve festival that takes placeevery year that has a that sees

(40:34):
sort of carolers, you know, maketheir way from home to home on
New Year's Eve, singing anddancing, specific, specific
seasonal songs with the hope ofbeing rewarded with with a bite
to eat or a few drinks, youknow, either beers or spirits,
with, with the idea that theycontinue to rove through town as
and the whole thing gets merrierand merrier over.

Dean Klinkenberg (40:57):
Well, a lot of that food and drinks are better,
right? So this is a New Year'sEve tradition?

Jim Gass (41:02):
Still practiced around here. There's still an
association that does that andbusses people around from
Prairie du Rocher to here andsome of the other communities.
And it's a good time. You know,people, people get really into
it consistently from year toyear.

Dean Klinkenberg (41:16):
Yeah, we'll come back to that. Maybe we'll
maybe, yeah, when we get tocontemporary Ste. Genevieve too.
So this is, this wasn't PuritanNew England, right? So there
were places to play billiards.
Like you said, drinking wasfine. Generally speaking, there
was not a frown. People didn'tfrown on drinking so much.

Jim Gass (41:35):
It's something you see in the primary sources where
there's a constant back orthere's a constant tension
between some of the religiousauthorities in the area who are
appealing to the government,like the secular authorities, to
kind of curb some of thetendencies towards partying that
you see throughout thesecommunities, and just based on

(41:59):
how it's an ongoing item ofcomplaint. You get the sense
that the secular authoritiesreally weren't putting a stop to
all of it, that it was sort ofongoing throughout the French
period. I mean, it's somethingthat the Jesuits were
complaining about going back tothe late 1600s for fear that the
habits of some of these Frenchsettlers would be a bad

(42:20):
influence on the native folksthat they were trying to
convert, perhaps not withoutreason given, you know, the
proliferation of alcohol in someof those communities as a result
of, you know, contact withFrench traders, but, but yeah,
it you're correct, and it is notPuritan New England by, by any
means.

Dean Klinkenberg (42:38):
So what would, what would it be like to step
into a tavern, then, like youwould have people from across
social class, maybe sometravelers passing through. What
would you drink? Would there befood? What would the experience
be like?

Jim Gass (42:51):
As far as the specifics on food or drink, the
documentation is pretty sparseon that. We know that there were
a couple stills and a couplebreweries that were in operation
here as early as the 1790s. Youactually see the Valles, I
believe, buy the rights to acouple of these from some of the
early American settlers to makeit to this side of the river. So

(43:13):
beer and spirits were bothavailable. As far as the food
goes, I couldn't point to anyspecific recipe, and, you know,
it is a great tragedy, but thedocumentation we have on early
Ste. Genevieve is really, reallylight in terms of recipes, you
know, that would becharacteristic of the region or

(43:33):
the town itself.

Dean Klinkenberg (43:34):
So do we know even have a sense for what
people might eat at home?

Jim Gass (43:37):
As far as what people ate at home. A lot of a lot of
stews, gumbo was big up heretoo, same as it was down in
Louisiana. You know, wheat breadof all different consistencies
and qualities, was availablehere too. You know, they, they
sort of lived and died based,based around wheat. You know,

(43:57):
that was the single biggestthing that they produced here in
town, so is the it was sort ofthe centerpiece of a lot of
their diets, you know, usually,you know, stew with several kind
of game meats, some livestockand a large hunk of bread to
soak it up. That's somethingthat you see in a lot of the

(44:18):
histories of the area. Beyondthat there, you know, were,
there were things likepersimmons and pawpaws and
pecans that were available, youknow, for forage here that
people did come to enjoy. Andsome in parts of Louisiana, not,
not all of them, but in parts ofLouisiana, people were coming to

(44:38):
appreciate corn as well assomething that they would grow
and assist and subsist on.

Dean Klinkenberg (44:44):
That took a while. They were wheat first
people, right?

Jim Gass (44:47):
Very much so, yeah.

Dean Klinkenberg (44:50):
All right. So let's talk about the buildings,
then tell us a little bit abouttheir style of architecture,
what they built and and how itwas built.

Jim Gass (45:01):
So the styles of architecture used by the French
colonists here fall into thecategories 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 verticallogs that would then be placed

(45:25):
upright in a trench that was dugin the shape of a house, and the
post would sit directly in theearth. And then you would fill
the spaces between the thoselogs with a mix of mud and clay
and straw. Bousillage was theterm that the French used for it
at the time, although thecontemporary term in Normandy
France is torchis , spelled witha T the and this is probably the

(45:51):
most like what you see mostpeople in Ste. Genevieve have at
this time. The building, theposts themselves are very thick,
sometimes up to a foot in width.
You know, they were built tolast. And this is a style that
goes back to Normandy, Francespecifically, that's where not
just a lot of the families here,but a lot of the families that
settle French Canada, morebroadly, draw their descent

(46:12):
from. It makes for a for a verysturdy building. In the long
term, they tend to build theroofs very steep. They mostly
build those roofs without nailsas well. Like the beams that
actually hold them together arepinned in place using mortise
and tenon joints and the andthen heavy wooden spikes run
through those joints to lockthem in place. Makes them very

(46:34):
sturdy in the long term, butalso very flexible in the sense
that they can sort of readjustas the ground settles out
underneath them. Now, for forwealthier folks in town, you
would see the emergence of whatwe call poteaux-sur-sol, which
is post on sill. Same basicdesign, but instead of building
directly on the ground, theywould create an elevated sill

(46:57):
made of dressed or undressedstone that would that you would
then build on top of thevertical logs would sit on that
and thus be insulated from themoisture and the bacteria and
whatnot in the ground enables,you know, the building of houses
with materials like oak, they'revery sturdy, but not exactly rot
proof, versus the cypress andthe mulberry and the other rot

(47:20):
resistant timbers that theywould be limited to for building
a post in Earth structure. Andwhat's more, the presence of
those stone sills creates kindof a half basement underneath
the house. I tend to call it acrawl space, generally, not that
deep, unless you built a reallylarge sill to elevate the house

(47:41):
very far off the ground, whichis not, you know, not outside
the realm of possibility for alot of these wealthier builders.
What you also see in Ste.
Genevieve and elsewhere, youknow, further to the south is
the emergence of the gallery,the wrap around covered porch
that characterizes so many orour image of buildings in French

(48:03):
Louisiana and the FrenchCaribbean that was also present
up here in Ste. Genevievebecause, not just because of the
influence of the Caribbean andLouisiana making its way up the
river, but also because it tendsto cool the house down
substantially. It keeps the sunand the rain off, cuts down on
light that's getting through thewindows and heating up the

(48:23):
building and and also gives youa comfortable place to
potentially sleep at night ifit's just too hot to bear inside
the house.

Dean Klinkenberg (48:32):
Basically an extra room, in a sense, right?

Jim Gass (48:34):
Yeah, and at times they even built extra rooms on
the porch. The Bolduc House hasone example of this. It's
something you see, especially atthe end of the 1790s where they
just walled off sections of theporch and called it good. You
suddenly had a new utility roomadded to the building without
having to redo the whole roof inthe process.

Dean Klinkenberg (48:52):
So basically, would it be if you're a person
of regular means, not a richperson, it's one room, like you
build this house and you haveone room that you kind of figure
out ways to divide the space foryour use.

Jim Gass (49:05):
One or two, yeah. The something that we hear about in
some texts is that they that theFrench crown, and later to the
Spaniards tax these propertiesbased on the number of rooms
that you saw. I haven't seen thedocumentation for that. So I'm
not positive that that there'snot more to it than that, but it

(49:25):
would make sense given just howfew rooms they tend to build to
start with. You do see somepeople of means draw plans for
like, a house with, say, sixrooms, like in the case of
Delassus, who was a French Noblewho fled here from the
revolution, but that's thethat's the only indication of a
house of that size that I'veseen others, even folks like

(49:48):
Louis Bolduc, had one or tworooms, maximum three over the
course of their lives.

Dean Klinkenberg (49:53):
So they they built with posts vertically, and
probably because that's thestyle they knew. From their
their family, their theircultural history. Are there
advantages or disadvantages tothat building style compared to
what was more common on theAmerican frontier, where the
posts would be horizontal to theground rather than vertical to

Jim Gass (50:13):
As far as disadvantages, I can the big one
it?

Dean Klinkenberg (50:14):
So for the roofs, then, would they
you know that really jumps rightout at you, are these posts are
incredibly heavy. They would bevery labor intensive to build.
They would have to be hauled agreat distance, and then, you
know, then hauled upright, whichI'm sure is no easy task. The
advantages was include that, youknow, the house would be

(50:35):
incredibly sturdy as a result,the parts, like the beams
themselves could be replacedfairly easily with, you know,
another with another log thatyou would pre cut to fill to,
you know, fill in for it.
Although a lot of the time, ifthere was, you know, an instance
where there was rot or insectdamage, they would just saw the
that piece off. And, you know,find a new, new use for that

(50:57):
particular log. The longevity ofthese structures, you know, is
pretty readily testified to,given that, you know, we still
have five or six of them withthe original walls, you know,
still here in town. In additionthe thickness of the walls, as
well as other measures taken,probably made for a building
that was much more livableduring the wintertime up in

(51:20):
French Canada and in thenorthwest of France. Of course,
you see buildings that aresomewhat more lightly built over
time. As you know, as you know,sawmills become more and more
available as sawn timber becomesbit about the
river. Let's touch on that justmore and more available. In
addition the way that they theyfilled the spaces between the
timbers with the bousillagematerial, you know. All of that

(51:43):
was very readily available, youknow, and it tended to pack very
dense and act as a goodinsulator. But so you could
read, you could easily fill thespaces between your walls to
keep out a lot of the drafts,but then you could also readily
replace it in the event thatsome of it started to rot.

(53:11):
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 byriver. And then for some folks,
there was some subsistenceprovided by fishing from the
river. And then I guess, likethe you mentioned, the way the

(53:32):
properties were laid out. It'sso common in French territories.
You see this so clearly in mapsof between Baton Rouge and New
Orleans in particular, whereeverybody's got a little bit of
frontage on the river, and thesereally 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 (53:54):
It seems to really have just been the French
practice throughout the NewWorld, because you see old maps
of The St Lawrence River, wherethe lots take pretty much the
same shape. So as for whetherthat was to guarantee river
access, I couldn't really say,but at least to we tend to think
of them packing a lot of themost intensively farmed areas in

(54:17):
to a central location so thatthey're more easily monitored
and possibly defended againstattacks from say, say, hostile
native folks or possibly theEnglish, you know, at different
times, and that those practiceswould tend to hold over even
during times of relative peace.
And it, you know, it also madethe community more centralized.

(54:38):
You don't see as much of a trendwith the French settlers as you
would later see with Americansettlers, where their farms
would be pretty far spread out,you know, over throughout the
frontier, where, whereas theFrench settlements tend to be
much more closely packed, wherepeople are living in a closer

(54:59):
proximity to each other withwith relatively few people
permanently settling out in the hinterland.

Dean Klinkenberg (55:07):
Right. So I guess I wanted to clarify that
too, because, as I understand itthen, so you'd probably have a
house in town, but the land thatyou farmed would be you'd have
to travel to a little bit, butthen there so they were, you
would grow grains and cropsthere. But then there were also
common grounds for the city,where most people would graze

(55:28):
some of their livestock?

Jim Gass (55:29):
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 oneof 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 headover time, but that, that one

(55:49):
may be from the earliest yearsof after the Louisiana Purchase.
But yeah, it's, I believe it islabeled like the common field,
but that is, it is worthdifferentiating that from Le
Grand Champ, "the big field,"which was the collective name
for the individual lots thatwere all stacked next to each

(56:09):
other at this time.

Dean Klinkenberg (56:11):
Okay, all right. So 1785 we had a big
flood, and so prior to thatyear, the actual town was a
little further downriver wherewe the town is.

Jim Gass (56:26):
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 ofthe layout or the exact location
of any particular buildingwithin the old village. But the
Army Corps of Engineers has donea little bit of scanning of the

(56:48):
route, the approximate spot.
And, you know, found at leastsome, you know, at least some
archeological evidence in theform of, I think, impacted lots
where the old village would havebeen. But by now, the rivers
changed course enough that mostof its underwater. But yeah, the
1785 flood, it was it. Itwasn't. It wasn't so

(57:09):
catastrophic that it justchanged everybody's perspective
all at once. It was just thelatest in a series of floods,
and it was a particularlydestructive one. I I dug through
or back through accounts of theflood the other day, I couldn't
find evidence that anybody waskilled, you know, as a
consequence of it, but it diddestroy a good number of crops

(57:29):
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 furtheraway from the river and at
slightly higher ground. Someaccounts say they moved at the
suggestion of the Osage too.
That it was the Osage who toldthem that this would be a much

(57:50):
more suitable location for apermanent settlement.

Dean Klinkenberg (57:54):
So did the river ever get high enough to
flood up here too?

Jim Gass (57:56):
The closest it ever came, to the best of my
knowledge, would be 1993 themain street that runs in front
of the Bolduc house dips alittle bit when you get towards
the railroad bridge, and as faras I know, the river almost
reached the top of that littlehill there in 1993 so it didn't
affect the Bolduc House, but itdid affect a great number of

(58:18):
houses that were that are onlyabout five feet lower in terms
of elevation, from what Iunderstand, they called it Lake
Ste. Genevieve for a littlewhile, because the river from
pretty close by resembled moreso a giant lake.

Dean Klinkenberg (58:33):
Right. It was kind of an epic battle to
continually reinforce the leveeto 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 Frenchcharacter. So tell us a little
bit about that transition.

Jim Gass (58:56):
Well, the transition begins, you know formally, after
1803 after the LouisianaPurchase, like I said earlier,
there were a decent number ofAmericans that had started to
move over to this side of theriver well before that. But with
the Louisiana Purchase, with theopening of the territories to

(59:16):
the west of the Mississippi, yousee a much larger influx of
people starting to move westhere and they don't necessarily,
you know, remain in Ste.
Genevieve forever. A lot ofpeople 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 nameslike Zell or Weingarten and and

(59:38):
you start to, but you do startto see, you know, the relatively
small French populationovertaken by this larger
population of Anglo Americans aswell as Germans that are
starting to move to the area atthe time and the. But there the
language is, you know,maintained colloquially, you

(01:00:02):
know, by the old families forquite a while. But it is, you
know, it ceases to be thelanguage of public affairs. Like
prior to 1800 all the businessdocuments were done in French
originally. After say, 1803 youstart to see a number of them
done in English, some of themtranslated into both languages,

(01:00:23):
you know, for the convenience ofall parties involved. But then
by the time, by the time of,like, the 1840s pretty much all
the documents I see, at least inthe Ste. Genevieve collections
that have been compiled, prettymuch all of them are English
language and, you know, donemore in a format that was
suitable to the to the UnitedStates government, as opposed to

(01:00:43):
the Spaniards who had beengoverning up until that point in
1803. Yeah, the territory doesretro seed back to France in
1800 but the Spaniards are theones continuing to administer
this territory on the ground allthe way up until 1803

Dean Klinkenberg (01:01:00):
So it's interesting that, you know,
basically like this transitionaway from exclusively French
begins around 1803, 220 yearsago, and here we are today, in
2025, and you can still feel theFrench influence. There's still
these cultural relics, you know,French cultural relics in town.

(01:01:23):
How did, how did they survive?

Jim Gass (01:01:27):
Tradition, you know, is maintained, I think, by a lot
of the descendants of theoriginal families, until, you
know, really recently as late asthe 1950s or '60s. In a lot of
cases, they say that even in StLouis as late as the 1930s you
could still hear people speakingto each other in "paw paw
French." You know, if you happenby the right kitchen window at

(01:01:50):
the right time, I've heard itlasts even longer in some
families, you know, further intothe rural parts of Southeast
Missouri. As for what accountsfor 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

(01:02:12):
to live out their lives in, youknow, but, but over time, you
know, we it we, everybody comesto speak English as their
primary language, and to justfind further fewer and fewer
uses for this older dialectthat, you know, that is mostly
spoken by the by the elderlythat are still in the area.

(01:02:36):
It's, you know, more interestingto us today, because it is such
a curiosity. It's and it's, youknow, something that you know,
in hindsight, we all you knowwish had you know been
maintained, you know, on equalfooting with English, you know,
to preserve sort of the region'sidentity going back to the
French period. But, you know,unfortunately, you see that

(01:02:59):
disappear in a lot of places. Solower Louisiana is the same. Is
you know, much the same vein,but on a much larger scale, just
given how many more speakers ofFrench dialects that you see
down there compared to up here.

Dean Klinkenberg (01:03:13):
When did the interest in building
preservation in particularbegin?
you

Jim Gass (01:03:18):
That really begins, I think going back to at least the
'30s, the you see, if you go onthe Library of Congress website,
the Historic American BuildingSurvey collections, some of the
earliest photos in thosecollections are of Ste.
Genevieve, of historic housesthat were, you know,
photographed down here. Thereare a number of scholars and

(01:03:40):
museum professionals from StLouis that you know gravitate
towards Ste. Genevieve as aplace that is worth studying for
its architectural history. Someof those figures go on to assist
with our parent organization,with the National Society of
Colonial Dames, in preservingsome of these buildings in the
long term, the Dames provide theorganization and fundraising

(01:04:04):
necessary to to buy and thenrestore the Bolduc House,
starting in about 1949 thatlasts for about that process
takes almost 10 years in termsof getting the house restored,
but also getting the museumcollections put together so that
the house can open, and thatthat starts right before the
start of the 1960s and that'sreally where I would place the

(01:04:27):
dawn of interest in preservingthese structures. That starts
off a wave of historicpreservation here in town that
hasn't really ended to tell youthe 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 onthem for maintaining these the
structural integrity of thesebuildings, you know, long enough

(01:04:50):
for them to continually be is1790s and they also maintain
updated and restored. We try todo the same thing with our with
our resources. Yeah, and itattracted, you know, numerous
groups that are interested inhistoric preservation, and we
all try to maintain a goodworking relationship with each
other, sending guests in eachother's directions to, you know,

(01:05:13):
can hopefully continue tospread, you know, the our
various missions through word ofmouth.

(01:06:34):
their headquarters at the KielSchwent House, which is a
masonry building with a lot ofGerman history, as well as their
library that they maintainthere. And there's other
historic buildings in town, butthey're all owned by private
individuals. Some of them liveactively, lived in. Others, not
or others are empty, butrelatively well maintained by

(01:06:59):
their private owners.

Dean Klinkenberg (01:07:00):
So if you want to you know if somebody's coming
into town and they want to toursome of the properties, what
would you recommend as kind of,what are the must see places
that people should go? And youcould start with the Center for
French Colonial Life.

Jim Gass (01:07:12):
I mean, I always recommend the Bolduc House. You
know, is that really the firstone to see? But also the Green
Tree Tavern. The Bolduc House isnot as old as the Green Tree.
The Green Tree is older by aboutthree years, is the general
consensus. But the Bolduc Househas, you know, some of the most
intact original parts still, youknow, still on it, probably as a

(01:07:36):
result of the family continuingto live there through the end of
the 1940s and maintaining a lotof the original structural
elements all the way through.
Then I try to direct people tooutbuildings and other
structures that are lost to usthe 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 evenmore on the later development of

(01:08:00):
the town through, you know,through the perspective of Felix
Valle, who's a grandson to theValle family and is one of these
Creole descendants who reallymakes good on his family's
connections, and is a is ableto, you know, find a pretty
lucrative place in the newAmerican order. But that's the,
you know, that's the state'sstory to tell there. I would let

(01:08:23):
them explain better, you know,the story of his life and the
house that he inhabited.

(01:09:32):
today, in addition to thesurviving houses, and those are
the two that we have currently.
They get updated every two orthree years, depending on the
you know, what resources areavailable and like, what we're
able to to research and write inthat time. But it is worth, even
if you visited before, you know,it's worth checking out a couple
additional times every every fewyears or so. You know, we

(01:09:54):
continue to update this stuffperiodically.

Dean Klinkenberg (01:09:58):
So then, in terms of, like, I, I'm always a
fan of trying to find some ofthe lesser visited or maybe less
well known places, and I may bea weirdo for this, but I like
cemeteries, so the old cemeteryjust on Market Street. Can you
tell us a little bit about that?

Jim Gass (01:10:13):
I can tell you that a lot of the stones in there at
least go back to the firstcouple decades of the 1800s and
some of them back further thanthat. It's been a long time
since I took a walk throughthere, I'll admit. But there are
headstones that had rubbingsdone of their their surfaces
back in the 1940s that werealready old then. So it is, it

(01:10:35):
is worth checking out just tosee if you can still discern
what is carved into them.
Because, you know, time is notkind to these, these limes,
these lime headstones,unfortunately, but yeah, a lot
of those graves go back, atleast to the end of the colonial
period, lots of Valles, lots ofPrattes, you know, lots of
Boyers, and probably quite a fewmore names that I'm just not

(01:10:56):
thinking of at the moment.

Dean Klinkenberg (01:10:59):
And then there are some festivals or annual
events here that celebratedifferent aspects of you know,
that have some French connectionto them. You mentioned the New
Year's Eve. Tell us a little bitabout that.

Jim Gass (01:11:12):
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 stillthat, you know, transports a lot
of the Guignolée crew, you know,we have a good relationship with
them. We see them every NewYear's Eve, usually a little bit

(01:11:34):
before midnight, where they arebussed from site to site,
usually wearing a variety ofperiod clothing and singing, you
know, the traditional Frenchcarols that are sung on that
night, you know, and having beengiven quite a few drinks, you
know, at different pointsthroughout the night, depending
where they've stopped and, andit's, you know, it's, it was a

(01:11:56):
very merry occasion, you know,200 years ago. It still is
today. And typically, there'smore than one organization
involved in that. I'm a littlebit less familiar with the
actual administrative dutiesthat go into that. That's,
Guignolée.

Dean Klinkenberg (01:12:11):
Anybody's welcome to be part of that?

Jim Gass (01:12:13):
You'd have to contact the right folks to sign up for
it. But yes, that's, that'soverall, that's, that's the
impression I get. And thenagain, we typically open our
site for a couple hours aroundthe time that they show up, so
people are able to come throughand peruse the exhibits and wait
for the carolers to arrive.
That's New Year's Eve. There'salso Jour de Fete, which

(01:12:35):
translates to "feast day."That's usually midway through
August. That's typically thebiggest draw for people from out
of town. It also draws a lot ofpeople who grew up in Ste.
Genevieve back if they've movedoutside the area. As far as
specific French culturalpractices that are on display
there. There's nothing inparticular that I can point to,

(01:12:56):
but it is also the appointeddate for Project Pioneer, which
is done by a separate initiativehere in town to honor at least
one French family going back tothe colonial period every year
by sort of reexamining andrepublishing a lot of the
genealogical records, requestingnew photos or new narrative
details from surviving familymembers and and, you know,

(01:13:19):
that's, that's, that's worthchecking out whenever, whenever
they do that in early August.
Those are the two big ones I canpoint to there. As far as other
festivals go, there's plentywithout a specific, you know,
without a specific historicfocus. We have the Pecan

(01:13:40):
Festival, Pecanapalooza, everyfall, as well as Rural Heritage
Day, that usually falls a littlebit earlier in the in the early
autumn. But it is worth checkingthe town's website for all the
way from August to November,because they will usually have a

(01:14:01):
lot of those dates laid out wellin advance.

Dean Klinkenberg (01:14:03):
And what about the church? The there are some
burials in there, maybe, orthere, I kind of vaguely
remember some connections to theFrench history too?

Jim Gass (01:14:14):
Francois Valle II is buried underneath that church
that you know, his house is theone that we're hoping to open by
this this coming year, he is oneof the very few individuals that
is honored in that way. He and Ibelieve his young son, who died
in infancy, are both buriedunderneath the church. You can
see the stone marker for it nextto the altar. The that church

(01:14:37):
itself only goes back to theearly 20th century. However, the
lot on which it sits wasoccupied by Ste. Genevieve's
Catholic church for manyiterations prior to that, so
that his remains are still downthere to this day. But yeah,
it's very worth visitingregardless of your faith. It's a
beautiful building and you know,it's, as a result, pretty

(01:15:01):
representative of the faith andheritage of Ste. Genevieve as a
at one point, a predominantlyCatholic settlement.

Dean Klinkenberg (01:15:09):
And it's free, yes. So there is that.

Jim Gass (01:15:11):
There is that.

Dean Klinkenberg (01:15:12):
Did I miss anything? Is there anything else
you want to highlight about thisFrench, the French Connection
here at Ste. Genevieve?

Jim Gass (01:15:20):
I just want to elaborate just on the work of
our organization. Originally, itreally was just limited to
maintaining the Bolduc House andconducting tours. Used to be the
museum was just that propertyand a few people in period
costume that would take youthrough the house, you know,
during the summers and earlyautumns. But since then, we have
expanded to offering House toursyear round, every day, how the

(01:15:44):
out of the year, except, exceptusually Christmas. We also
maintain the Bolduc LeMeilleurHouse, which is a nice bookend
to the colonial period beingbuilt in 1820. On Saturdays
during the warmer months, weopen the Living History House
where we have a lot ofreenactors hang out and explain
their crafts to people. And thenagain, we're hoping to open the

(01:16:06):
Francois Valle II House sometimenext year, and that will be our
fourth one. So in addition toour main building, the center
that we're currently sitting in,we offer quite a lot for just
the one organization, and we arecontinuously expanding. Our
historic mission has gone beyondjust the preservation of one

(01:16:27):
building and overall the overtowards the overall preservation
of the French culture andhistory that is available here.
That's about all that I reallywanted to point to there, just
emphasizing our mission and ourongoing role here in town.

Dean Klinkenberg (01:16:44):
So if folks want to learn more about the
Center, what are the main placeswhere they can go? I can post a
link to the website in the shownotes. Are there social media
accounts where you post verymuch?

Jim Gass (01:16:57):
We are active on Facebook and that, and that's
really the other place to lookfor us. But other than that, the
website is the first place thatwe would recommend checking out.
We can also be reached [e-mail],
if you have any questions, or ifyou want to ask about putting

(01:17:17):
together a group tour or a groupvisit, we offer discounts to
groups above 30.

Dean Klinkenberg (01:17:23):
All right, Jim, thank you so much for your
time and for sharing yourexpertise. That was fantastic. I
really appreciate it.

Jim Gass (01:17:32):
Thanks for having us on Dean. We also appreciate it.
You know, we figure you got alot of listeners who are very
interested in the history of theMississippi Valley, and you
know, we're happy to to help addto that in any way we can.

Dean Klinkenberg (01:17:47):
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this
episode, subscribe to the serieson your favorite podcast app so
you don't miss out on futureepisodes. I offer the podcast
for free, but when you supportthe show with a few bucks
through Patreon you help keepthe program going. Just go to
patreon.com/deanklinkenberg. Ifyou want to know more about the

(01:18:07):
Mississippi River, check out mybooks. I write the Mississippi
Valley Traveler guidebooks forpeople who want to get to know
the Mississippi better. I alsowrite the Frank Dodge mystery
series that's set in placesalong the river. Find them
wherever books are sold. TheMississippi Valley Traveler
podcast is written and producedby me Dean Klinkenberg. Original
Music by Noah Fence. See younext time.