Historical November 1990 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
William C. Carr was one of the most formidable legal minds in St. Louis early in the nineteenth century. Originally from Albemarle County. Virginia (just like Meriwether Lewis), Carr came to St. Louis on March 31, 1804. Just three weeks earlier, on March 9-10, 1804, Captain Amos Stoddard had completed the Louisiana Purchase with the transfer of Upper Louisiana from Spain to France and then to the United States. Carried out on the Place de Publique where the Gateway Arch now stands, that transfer doubled the size of the fledgling United States.
A couple months later, May 14, 1804, the Lewis and Clark Expedition departed for its 28 month trip of discovery into the new frontier after spending the winter of 1803-4 putting supplies together largely from St. Louis merchants.
In short, William C. Carr came to St. Louis at a most exciting time—from our viewpoint.
He apparently found St. Louis less than thrilling. Within one month he had decided Ste. Genevieve would be the seat of power and had moved there.
He was not even in town when Lewis and Clark left.
He married Miss Anna Maria Elliott, daughter of Dr. Aaron Elliott. one of the leaders of the Ste. Genevieve community and active in the effort to bring public education for the Louisiana Territory to that village.
It took Carr a full year to realize that St. Louis was really in the better location and would soon outstrip the much older and more-exposedto-flood community of Ste. Genevieve.
He moved back to St. Louis at the same time that the Louisiana Purchase Land Commission was appointed by President Thomas Jefferson-1805.
With that appointment, St. Louis became the legal center of the efforts to resolve the land questions left from French and Spanish land grant practices.
And with that move, Carr made his final decision that St. Louis would emerge as the economic and political center of the West. Carr’s indecision reflects nearly 100 years of attempts to locate a power center for the opening of the West.
The history of the fur trade reveals part of this problem, and it was this earlier history which influenced Carr and other Americans moving into the new frontier along the Mississippi’s west bank.
The very year that St. Louis was founded. 1764. saw the closing of what was thought originally by many in the French economic and military circles to be the answer to stopping the expansion of the English fur trading efforts west of the Mississippi. Much of the history of the fur trade is the history of conflict among companies of English extraction and between England and France. Over twenty years prior to the founding of St. Louis, on December 18, 1743, plans were drawn for Fort de Cavagnial on the Missouri River about two miles above what is now Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
This fort was to be the major western arm of the French fur trading efforts in the West. which efforts were coordinated at Fort de Chartres and Ste. Genevieve, and they were intended to put a stop to English fur success in the West.
On April 25,1746. at the court of Louis XV in Paris, Jean Frederick Phelipeaux, Comte de Maurepas and Minister of Colonies, personally ordered both the completion of Fort de Cavagnial and the appointment of military and commercial leadership for the fort. Fort Cavagnial was to be the center of French efforts to stem the English fur traders, the Northwest and Hudson Bay Companies, coming from the north over the historic voyageur routes originally blazed from Montreal in the seventeenth century.
The hopes for Fort Cavagnial were dependent upon French financial fortunes in Europe.
The British were doing their level best to thwart the French, and the result was the Seven Years War in Europe, called the French and Indian War in North America.
With so many military and financial resources going to active war in Europe and along the St. Lawrence and Ohio Rivers. Fort Cavagnial on the Missouri was never able to mature to the expectations of the French imperialists.
By 1763, it was all but abandoned.
In that year, Pierre Laclede received his monopoly to trade with the Osage Indians on the Missouri River, and this was the final undercutting of potential revenue in not only Fort Cavagnial but also Fort Orleans. Fort Orleans, at the mouth of the Osage River. was likewise falling into disrepair just like Fort Cavagnial.
All French interests fell back to the Mississippi line at Fort de Chartres and Ste. Genevieve.
As St. Louis was beginning, the French forces on the Missouri River were withdrawing to the east.
By 1770, when the Spanish took over the French imperial posts west of the Mississippi, including St. Louis, it was clear the British had carried the day in opening fur hunting areas of the American West. Attempts to stem the British were carried on by Jacques Glamorgan, Manuel Lisa, and Pierre Menard who played to Spanish imperial interests and hatred for England in the West. Only when the Americans came in full force after the Louisiana Purchase were the British really challenged.
It was this knowledge that all the fur trade posts in the West, like St. Louis, were fighting a -losing battle with the powerful English companies which William C. Carr shared.
He saw St. Louis as just another one of those fur trader forts which would eventually succumb and not amount to anything. What changed that was the appointment of a land commission to be housed at St. Louis along with the movement of the governorship of the Louisiana Territory from Vincennes to St. Louis. William Henry Harrison was replaced by General Wilkinson, and the latter was stationed at St. Louis. Immediately the locus of power and influence moved upriver from Ste. Genevieve. William Carr moved again also, eventually building the first brick building built solely as a house in St. Louis at the corner of Spruce and First Streets in 1815.
When his first wife died in 1826, Carr married Dorcas Bent in 1829, daughter of Silas Bent. Sr., then clerk of the court. William C. Carr became the brother-in-law of Charles and William Bent. the partners of Ceran St. Vrain, and the builders of Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas River along the Santa Fe Trail. Thus William Carr married into one of the most active families in the westward expansion of the United States.
Not only was he shrewd enough to follow the legal center of the frontier movement; he was also wise enough to choose his family connections and stay in the middle of the westward movement. Of course, with the founding of the American Fur Company in 1808 by John Jacob Astor, and the movement of the active center of that company to St. Louis by 1821, even the fur trade business in the Rockies was won against the Hudson Bay Company. Astor did it in part by incorporating the Chouteau family into his efforts and by taking over old Northwest Company factors such as Kenneth McKenzie. Astor’s second in command, Ramsey Crooks, married into the Chouteau family in 1825, cementing the economic relationship with a substantial personal involvement. What William C. Carr represents is the image of the pragmatic determination both to live at the center of Westward Expansion and to make sure that that center is active. Carr was never impressed with the importance of river interests.
He was impressed by the need to cultivate power and economic ability in a location which should take advantage of any natural assets. River interests and the Riverfront are successful if the political and economic muscle are in place to cultivate them.
The rivers were simply a datum to William C. Carr.
He knew the significance of effort and connections.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, November 1990.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1990_11.pdf, printed page(s) 7; PDF page(s) 6.
