Page:History of Southeast Missouri 1912 Volume 1.djvu/111

 HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST MISSOURI 51 the valley of the Mississippi. Kaskaskia, Viueennes, and a few others are older, but only a few of them. Before there was a set- tlement at St. Louis, or St. Charles, or Cape Girardeau, or New Madrid, Ste. Genevieve was a thriving and prosperous village. The original town was not located on the present site of Ste. Genevieve, hut in the great common field about three miles south of the present town. This old town was called "le vieux village de Ste. Genevieve" — the old village of Ste. Genevieve. The site on which it stood has been swept away by the river. This old site was -abandoned in 1785 owing to an unprecedented rise in the river which overflowed the entire town. So great was the flood and so vivid the impression it made on the people that this year was ever afterward known as the year of the great flood. By 1791 the removal to the new site was completed and the place where the old village had stood was gradually washed away by the river. It is a matter of regret that we cannot fix the precise time when the first settlement here was begun. This, as has been stated, is not possible. Several considerations, how- ever, enable us to fix the approximate date. In the year 1881 there was discovered an old well on the bank of the river in the Big Field of Ste. Genevieve. The river had eaten away the earth from about the well until it stood up like a stone chimney. On a stone in the top of this well was the date 1732. A part of the stone containing the date was chipped off by Leon Jokerst, who discovered the old well, and preserved by him. The re- mainder of the old well was swept away by the currents of the river. This old well evi- dently belonged to some house in the out- skirts of the old town, and the date is very probably the year in which the well was con- structed. If this is the case then the first settlement was made sometime prior to 1732.* There is still to be seen in the office of the recorder of deeds an affidavit made in 1825, by Julien Labriere, in which he deposes that he is fiftj^-six years of age, that he was born in the old village of Ste. Genevieve, that he remembered to have seen as a small child the first settler in the village, one Baptiste La Rose, then very old. The affidavit sets out also the recollections of Labriere concern- ing the removal to the new site. Pittman who visited Ste. Genevieve in 1765 says that the first settlers came to Ste. Genevieve about twenty-eight years ago from Cascasquias attracted by the goodness of the soil and the plentiful harvests, t Mrs. Menard of Ste. Genevieve as late as 1881 had in her possession what was perhaps the oldest legal document relating to the town. It was an account of the sale of a house and lot belonging to the estate of Lau- rent Gabouri. Jean Baptiste St. Gem was the purchaser. The property is described as lo- cated in the village of Ste. Genevieve which must have been an established village at the time of the transfer. The bill of sale is dated in December, 1754. The terms used in describing the property leave no doubt that the settlement was an old and well estab- lished one at that remote date and had been in existence for many yeai-s.J In the collection known as the Guibour Papers now in the Missouri Historical So- ciety files are to be seen copies of petitions to the commandants of the district for land. In one of these Francois Rivard asks for a grant of land, which from the terms of the petition, must have been located near the vil- + "Mississippi Settlements," p. 95. i Houck, ' ' History of Missouri, ' ' Vol. I, p. ?39.
 * "History of Southeast Missouri," p. 241.