Page:History of Southeast Missouri 1912 Volume 1.djvu/292

 232 HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST MISSOURI sustained their claims by perjury. This is evidenced by the fact that the claims located under this act, presumably by people owning land in New Madrid county, covered more than the entire area of the county. Out of these grants there arose a very fa- mous lawsuit. It is known in legal history as De Lisle vs. State of Missouri. The De Lisle family was one of the earliest in New ]Iadrid. Eustache De Lisle and John Baptiste De Lisle came to New Madrid in 1795 from Detroit. They were brothers of the third wife of Francois LeSieur. It should be said that the family continued to reside in New Madrid and that many of its descend- ants are among the prominent and influential citizens of the county now. In 1808 John Baptiste De Lisle left New Madrid for a visit to his sister, JMrs. Gremar, who then lived in Vincennes, Indiana. This was about the be- ginning of the war with Great Britain, and De Lisle enlisted in the United States army and served through the war. He then settled in New York, where he married, but was de- prived of all of his family during the great epidemic of cholera in 1839. He returned to Vincennes in 1841 and found his sister yet living. Up to this time he had supposed that his brother, Eustache, and his sister, the wife of Francois LeSieur, had been killed in the earth- quakes; he was informed by his sister, how- ever, that his relatives in New Madrid were still living. He at once communicated with them, to their very great astonishment, for in consequence, as the inhabitants say and as was also affirmed in New JIadrid, of the land having sunk 10 feet or more below its former level." (Nuttall Journal, pp. 78-79. '( The force of the shocks was felt over a very wide area and extended as far north as the Missouri river. Flagg, who visited Cape Gir- they had considered him to be dead; in fact, after his leaving New Madrid in 1808, a re- port had come back to the post of his death, and they had sold the land that had been granted to him, consisting of 160 arpens of land, for a veiy small sum. This land had then passed into the hands of the persons who speculated in the land grants after the time of the earthquake. The state of Missouri had given to the purchasers of the Delisle land the right to locate an equal amount of land at some other place in the state and they had located this claim on the Missouri river where the city of Jeiferson City now is. This grant from the state included within it the capitol grounds. Now, when John Baptiste De Lisle received this information that the land which he had possessed had passed away from him in this manner and that the state had given to the purchasers of his land a valuable grant, he brought suit against the state of iVIissouri to have the title to the lands thus granted declared to be in him. After various trials, the case was finally appealed to the Supreme court of the United States. It continued in that court from 1844 to 1862. In that year the court rendered a decision denying the claim of De Lisle to the land. The earthquakes resulted in an immediate loss of population throughout all the region affected. Most people who could do so moved away at once. Those who remained were either the more determined and daring of the population or they were the poorest who could not afford to leave. The flourishing village ardeau in 1836, says that the great earthquake of 1811 agitated the site of Cape Girardeau very severely, many brick houses were shat- tered, chimneys thrown down and other dam- age effected, traces of the repairs of which are yet to be viewed. (Flagg, Far West, p. 87.)