Historical May 1984 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
It seems the horse is often looked upon as a genial beast of burden, the happy hauler of intrepid explorers, trappers and frontiersmen (and women).
We had three horses on our farm in the wilds of Minnesota when I was a kid, and none of them were genial.
As a matter of fact, Pa said never to get up on a horse unless there was no choice and the matter at hand was significant enough to require the indignity of having one’s kidneys loosened in public.
I have never ridden a horse, and since I began to study the history of those who had no choice but to ride them, I am glad we do not have to deal with the critters. Let me give you a couple of examples.
One of the most important men at the turn of the eighteenth century in the area of Ste. Genevieve was the Rev. James Maxwell.
He was an Irish priest hired by the Spanish to take care of the pastoral needs of the French Catholics in Upper Louisiana (if that makes sense I have a bridge to sell you!).
The Rev. Maxwell arrived in Ste. Genevieve in 1796 and, by 1799, was representing as attorney nearly all the French residents of the town in New Orleans as they made requests for land in the area of the lead mines.
The Rev. Maxwell also managed to get himself a large land grant of four square leagues (about 36 square miles) at the fork of the Black River.
His intention was to have a place for his Irish people to emigrate to in the face of English persecution. That area is now called the Irish Wilderness and is still a matter for litigation due to its mineral wealth and natural beauty. Soon after the Louisiana Purchase, the Rev. Maxwell became active in the new American politics.
He headed a committee to start the Louisiana Academy in 1807.
In 1813, he was appointed by the president of the United States to the Missouri Territorial Council, and was elected the president of the Council by its members in 1813.
In 1814, he was killed by his horse.
The Rev. Maxwell lived in New Bourbon and rode to Ste. Genevieve to fulfill his pastoral duties.
On the way home one Sunday, his horse threw him and he died. Such a cause of death was really rather common.
Another major political and cultural leader killed by his horse was Edward Hempstead, the first man elected to Congress as Territorial Representative from the Missouri Territory. Born in Connecticut in 1780, he came to St. Louis when William Henry Harrison was named the first governor of the Louisiana Territory in 1804.
He didn’t move into the town until 1805, preferring St. Charles at first. Within a short period of time, he had talked his father and the rest of the family into moving to St. Louis.
His sister married Henry Gratiot, the son of the brother-in-law of Auguste Chouteau, Charles Gratiot, Sr. Edward himself married Clarissa Dubreuil, the sister-inlaw of Jacques St. Vrain, one of the major merchants of the soon-to-be-opened Santa Fe trade.
A year after his marriage, 1809, Edward Hempstead was elected with Auguste Chouteau, Jean Cabanne, William C. Carr, and William Christy to the first Board of Trustees of the newly incorporated City of St. Louis.
In 1812, he was elected the first territorial representative of the Missouri Territory to Congress.
In 1817, returning by horse from St. Charles on August 5, he was mortally injured in a fall from his horse and died four days later.
He left no children since they had all died shortly after birth—another rather common cause of death on the frontier.
A close analysis of these and other horse accidents suggests that medical science was a bit shy in those days.
In the 1820s, the Mullanphy boys, Robert and Bryan, gave a good deal of money to establish what we would probably call a hospice. Hospitals were not founded in St. Louis until after the cholera epidemic of 1849, but it was not until Robert A. Barnes gave the first million-dollar gift in the history of St. Louis to Washington University to found a medical school and hospital that the health business really got started here. Barnes was born in 1808 in Washington, D.C., into a family of English men and women who came to America in 1662.
He moved to St. Louis from Louisville in 1830 and got into the dry goods business.
His company supplied the Jefferson Hotel, then owned by Peter Blow, the original owner of Dred Scott, and some of the bills signed by Barnes are in the archives of the Old Courthouse. Barnes eventually became the owner of the dry goods business he worked in; by 1840, he was very successful.
He became a bank director and, after the Civil War, only saw to the growth of his investments and businesses.
In 1845 he married Louisa DeMun, but all their children died rather young as was common at that time.
Before he died he made the gift of one million dollars to start medical sciences at Washington University.
In 1892, the Barnes Medical College was established as such, and the Barnes Hospital Complex is named for Robert A. Barnes in honor of that first gift.
It was to Barnes Hospital that I was taken to have my left leg and arm fixed after being hit by a car downtown, and the Orthopedic Department of Barnes Hospital is quite capable. I’m quite certain if I had been thrown from a horse during the first decades of the nineteenth century I would have gone the way of Maxwell and Hempstead.
On the whole I would rather go to Barnes Hospital—thank you, Robert A. Barnes.
Originally published in The Paper, May 1984.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: James Maxwell, Edward Hempstead, hospital-founding and Barnes Medical College claims are the author’s historical account, not independently verified. Eighteenth-century phrase beside 1796–1814 dates is retained.
Original source: SD_Times1984_05.pdf, printed page(s) 5; PDF page(s) 5.
