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1764 - Pierre Laclede (a French resident of New
Orleans) and Rene Auguste Chouteau, with a force of thirty men, begin building cabins and
plant the good city of St. Louis as a fur trading center. It was named in honor of Louis
XV, the reigning king of France, whose patron saint was Louis IX, better known as Saint
Louis. He secretly hoped that a city at St. Louis might lead to the peaceable transfer of
the original French settlements in nearby Illinois back to the rule of France which had
lost them to the British by the Treaty of Paris, 1763. The north side of St. Louis was
dotted with numerous Mississippian temple and burial mounds, giving it the nineteenth
century nickname, "Mound City." The town was laid out following a grid pattern
similar to that of New Orleans. The founding of St. Louis causes large numbers of French
settlers in Cahokia to leave that oft-flooded city and relocate in St. Louis which is
situated on higher ground.
Richard McCarty, a forty-year-old Irish Protestant, turns Catholic in order to marry a seventeen-year-old French girl in Montreal, Ursule Benoit. McCarty served as a supply officer and helped the British capture Montreal in the French and Indian War. McCarty is seen by many as a shady character because it was thought that he secretly worked for both sides in the recent conflict.
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