Historical September 1985 report or notice. Original dates, prices and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
One year ago Congress passed legislation initiating a process to expand Jefferson National Expansion Memorial to the east side of the Mississippi.
The Gateway Arch and Old Courthouse make up the oldest national historic site in the National Park Service and the first national monument to Thomas Jefferson.
The architectural plans for the national park had always included both sides of the Mississippi—despite the political accident of two states which at one time had been two countries until Jefferson’s fortuitous purchase of the western half of the continent in 1803. Curiously, those on the western side of the river know little of the history of “the other side!” Few have ever heard of Captain James Piggott and the first trans-river ferry service at St. Louis. Originally from Connecticut, James Piggott migrated to Pennsylvania just before the start of the Revolutionary War. Appointed a captain in the Pennsylvania Associators in 1776, he served with distinction as captain of the 8th Pennsylvania brigade in the battles of Brandywine and Saratoga.
His health forced him to resign his military position, however, and he moved shortly to Illinois country.
He apparently served with George Rogers Clark when the latter went to Kaskaskia.
In 1783, he was among those establishing Grand Ruisseau just west of Columbia in Monroe County, Illinois.
The American Bottoms, as the eastern shore of the Mississippi was called by the French, was something of judicial and political battleground as the Americans fought for control in the courts of Kaskaskia and Cahokia. Captain Piggott led a movement against the French domination for which he and some of his cohorts were put in chains for twenty-four hours during the summer of 1787.
But the effort paid off and, by October 1787, they were allowed to elect their own judges in the Cahokia Court.
By 1790, the first civil government in Illinois was formed and James Piggott was appointed a militia captain and a justice of the peace at Cahokia. Governor Arthur St. Clair arrived in Kaskaskia on March 5, 1790, to put the territorial government together: in April of that year, St. Clair County was established as the first county jurisdiction on the east side with Cahokia as its seat. Piggott, as judge, held considerable power in the newly formed political entity.
In his position of judicial and political importance, James Piggott got to know the Spanish officials at St. Louis and discussed the sanctioning of a ferry operation between the bottoms and St. Louis.
During the winter of 1792/93, he built a couple log cabins across from the Spanish power center.
The following year he built a bridge over Cahokia Creek permitting wheeled vehicles to arrive at the shore of the river directly across from St. Louis after traveling over the new road from Cahokia to the proposed ferry landing—a distance of five miles. Piggott moved his family to the proposed landing area in 1795 and in 1797 applied for a monopoly permit with the Spanish officials, directing it to Lt. Governor Zenon Trudeau on August 15 of that year.
He specifically requested the Spanish to not allow anyone else to transport and set people across the river at St. Louis.
He received exclusive ferriage rights between his land and St. Louis only after Trudeau made him a citizen of St. Louis. Piggott erected a ferry house below Market Street on the St. Louis side of the river.
His own landing was about where the Peabody Coal facility is now on the east bank. Captain Piggott died in February 1799.
His wife let a man named Campbell run the ferry and he renamed it Campbell’s Ferry.
The Piggott children eventually sued Campbell and retrieved all their rights but could not cooperate among themselves to operate the business. Five of the seven Piggott heirs sold their interest to the merchants John McKnight and Thomas Brady, early dry goods store owners in St. Louis.
The remaining heirs apparently sold out to Samuel Wiggins in March 1820.
A wealthy and new arrival from New York, Wiggins bought the rest of the rights from McKnight and Brady in 1821, eventually receiving from the state of Illinois total monopoly of the trade to St. Louis from Illinoistown—the original name of what is now called East St. Louis. Samuel C. Christy bought the ferry operation and its rights from Samuel Wiggins in 1832; Christy’s syndicate included William Wiggins, brother of Samuel.
The ferry continued to be known as Wiggins ferry—indeed that is the way everyone has referred to the business begun by James Piggott to this day. Eventually the Christy syndicate, opposed to the bridge of Eads, moved into the railroad orbit and teamed up with William Taussig to form Terminal Railroad Association shortly after Ead’s bridge was completed in 1874.
The monopoly for ferriage continued into and is still part of the Terminal’s hold on transfer of boat and rail merchandise along the St. Louis riverfront.
The Revolutionary War hero, Captain James Piggott, began a business which his heirs could not manage and had to sell to a New Yorker who in turn sold to a New Englander until the present situation emerged.
There is still a Piggott Street in East St. Louis, but the reason for its name is as lost to the Illinois residents as it appears to be to those of the western shore although it is a part of our common past and heritage.
The MOVIE SHOP
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, September 1985.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1985_09.pdf, printed page(s) 7; PDF page(s) 7.
