Businessman and Co-founder of the Present-Day City of Saint Louis, Missouri. He was born in Bedous, Bearn, France and traveled to the French Louisiana Territory in 1755, where he started a commercial establishment in New Orleans. In 1763 he was sponsored by New Orleans merchant Gilbert Antoine Maxent to construct a trading post near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. He and his stepson, Auguste Chouteau (his common-law wife's son by her husband, Rene Auguste Chouteau who had abandoned her and returned to France), left New Orleans in August 1763 and reached the area in December. Finding the area too marshy to build a town, they chose a site 18 miles downriver. Leaving Chouteau to oversee the clearing of the land, he left for New Orleans and returned in April 1764 with a design for the new town and his family joined him shortly afterward. He named it Saint Louis, in honor of the Crusader King Louis IX of France. While he prospered in the fur trade with the Osage Native Americans, he was not a good businessman. In June 1778, on a return trip from New Orleans to rectify his financial situation, he died on his boat near the mouth of the Arkansas River and was buried in an unmarked grave. The Saint Louis downtown riverfront is named Laclede's Landing in his honor and he was given a star on the Saint Louis Walk of Fame.
Businessman and Co-founder of the Present-Day City of Saint Louis, Missouri. He was born in Bedous, Bearn, France and traveled to the French Louisiana Territory in 1755, where he started a commercial establishment in New Orleans. In 1763 he was sponsored by New Orleans merchant Gilbert Antoine Maxent to construct a trading post near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. He and his stepson, Auguste Chouteau (his common-law wife's son by her husband, Rene Auguste Chouteau who had abandoned her and returned to France), left New Orleans in August 1763 and reached the area in December. Finding the area too marshy to build a town, they chose a site 18 miles downriver. Leaving Chouteau to oversee the clearing of the land, he left for New Orleans and returned in April 1764 with a design for the new town and his family joined him shortly afterward. He named it Saint Louis, in honor of the Crusader King Louis IX of France. While he prospered in the fur trade with the Osage Native Americans, he was not a good businessman. In June 1778, on a return trip from New Orleans to rectify his financial situation, he died on his boat near the mouth of the Arkansas River and was buried in an unmarked grave. The Saint Louis downtown riverfront is named Laclede's Landing in his honor and he was given a star on the Saint Louis Walk of Fame.
Bio by: William Bjornstad
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