Western Footprints – Saint Louis – a frontier town

By Anna Lee Ames Frohlich

Researcher, Western Historian, Writer, Presenter / Speaker

Before the West was “the West,” before steamboats and Mark Twain, Saint Louis sat on the western bank of the Mississippi River and was crossed by ferry from the east. In 1804 when my great-great-great grandfather William Russell traveled there from Tennessee, and for years afterwards, St. Louis was the launching spot for ventures westward. The great unsettled frontier lay just to the West.

When William Russell (1778-1857) arrived there, the roughly 900 inhabitants were mostly Spanish, French and American. The great Louisiana Purchase had been purchased from France on April 30, 1803. Napoleon had given up his dream of a North American empire. Louisiana had been ceded to Spain by France in 1762. The government was still Spanish when Russell crossed the Mississippi River on Feb. 8, 1804, on Calvin Adams’ ferry which was made of “two pirogues tied together with planks laid across the top.” Within a month everything had changed. On March 9, 1804, Spain surrendered upper Louisiana, which included St. Louis, to the French, and on March 10 the documents were signed transferring upper Louisiana from the French to the United States.

Russell became the deputy surveyor for the new American territorial government under Thomas Jefferson. His extensive travels around the area, surveying both private and public lands, gave him a judgment regarding land matters that was rarely equaled. Through his personal investments in land, he became one of the wealthiest men in St. Louis, though not the most public spirited. In an area where gambling on land purchases was extremely common, he was considered “the most audacious land pirate of all.”

Along the way he had his scrapes with the law. These articles are from Saint Louis Courthouse papers in 1812 when he was about 33-years-old:

RUSSELL,WILLIAM, 1812/Nov. 3

“Having thus seen William Russell…Draw a pistol on Robert Wash and the said Robert…was in the act of drawing a pistol on said Russell until prevented and the said parties exhibiting thereby determination to take each others lives, I therefore command you…take the said Robert and the said William and them safely keep….until they can be tried.”

RUSSELL/WILLIAM, 1812/ Nov. term of Grand Jury.

“Grand jury returned indictment. (R.Wash, Atty.Genl) against William Russell “late of the district aforesaid (Gentlemen) “who on June 6, 1812, in St. Louis “with force and arms in and upon one Mary Crosby (Spinster) there and then did beat, wound and ill-treat, so that her life was greatly despaired of,…against her will, there and then feloniously to ravish and carnally know…”

Tried, got verdict of “not guilty.”

Settling disputes by way of a duel was not uncommon at that time. Even Thomas Hart Benton [noted westward expansionist, father-in-law of the famed western explorer John C. Fremont, and Missouri’s U.S. Senator from 1821 to 1851] killed an opponent in a duel. (They stood 10 feet apart.) But attacking a woman ….?! A spinster lady might have been little protected, and, with her attacker being wealthy and a prominent member of the community, her chances for justice would be poor in a case like this. It was still rough and raw on the frontier.

But, wait! Looking more closely, there could be more to this story. William Russell’s opponent in the duel was one Robert Wash. Then note that the Atty. General in the other case was R. Wash. Is “R. Wash” the same person as Robert Wash? One can only surmise what the whole story might be. The exact dates of the two cases are not available, and the story could differ depending on in what order these took place.

Russell, “the master land speculator of the territorial period,” had widespread holdings. He influenced the choice of the site for Little Rock, Ark., and helped to lay out the plan for the city. With others he got the territorial legislature to have it declared the capital of the territory. Despite his extensive land holdings there, his home was always in St. Louis.

William Russell never married. In 1823 he had an illegitimate daughter (he referred to her as his “natural daughter”), Ann Clementine Russell, “by association” with Clementine Stillwell Peeler. (Clementine, who had two sons by her marriage, was divorced because of her relationship with Russell.) He saw that his daughter got the best possible education and made her heir to his considerable fortune. The stipulation was that it remain hers and that it would go directly to her descendants.

On July 12, 1842, Ann Clementine Russell married Thomas Allen, an up-and-coming young man of St. Louis and Pittsfield, Mass. Ann had met Thomas when she was spending a “season” in Washington and he was working there. This marriage turned out to be very beneficial to the city of St. Louis and further influenced western expansion.

That is another story, or stories.