1673 During their voyage down the Mississippi River, Father Jacques
Marquette and Louis Joliet were the first Europeans to set
foot on land that would later become Missouri
1682 Explorer Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle took possession
of the Louisiana Territory area for France (Apr. 9)
1724 Fort Orleans built on the north bank of the Missouri River
by Etienne de Bourgmont in today’s Carroll County; it
was abandoned six years later
1750 Approximate date of the founding of Ste. Genevieve, the first
permanent white settlement
1762 Spain gained control of the Louisiana Territory in the Treaty
of Fontainebleau (Nov. 13)
1764 City of St. Louis was founded by Pierre Laclede Liguest (Feb.
15)
1769 City of St. Charles was established by Louis Blanchette as
a trading post
1770 The Spanish government officially assumed control of the Territory
of Louisiana (May 20)
1773 Mine au Breton (later Potosi) founded
1789 Colonel George Morgan established the city of New Madrid (Feb.
14)
1793 Louis Lorimer received trading privileges and authority to
establish a post at Cape Girardeau (Jan. 4)
1798 Lieutenant Governor Zenon Trudeau of the Spanish government
offered Daniel Boone 1000 arpents to settle in the Louisiana
Territory.
1800 Moses Austin made the first sheet lead and cannonballs manufactured
in Missouri; Spain returned the Louisiana Territory to France
(Oct. 30)
Fort Osage
1803 The Louisiana Purchase was signed (Apr. 30)
1804 The Lewis and Clark Expedition set out from St. Louis (May
21)
1805 The Territory of Louisiana was established; the seat of government
was St. Louis (Mar. 3)
1808 The city of Ste. Genevieve was incorporated (June 18); Joseph
Charless founded the first newspaper in Missouri, the "Missouri
Gazette"; Fort Osage was established on the Missouri
River
1809 The Missouri Fur Company was organized in St. Louis. The abundance
of animal pelts in the Mississippi Valley region played a
key role in the development of the Upper Louisiana territory.
Prominent members of the Company included fur trader Manuel
Lisa, Auguste and Pierre Chouteau, and William Clark
1811 The first shocks of the New Madrid earthquakes, the worst
in US history, occurred (Dec. 16)
1812 A portion of the Territory of Louisiana became the Territory
of Missouri (June 4); The first general assembly of the Territory
of Missouri met (Oct. 1); the five original counties were
organized: Cape Girardeau, New Madrid, St. Charles, St. Louis,
and Ste. Genevieve
1816 Mid-Missouri’s first circuit court opened at Cole’s
Fort (July 8)
1817 The steamboat Zebulon M. Pike reached St. Louis, the first
steamboat to navigate the Mississippi River above the mouth
of the Ohio River (Aug. 2)
1818 The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives presented
the first petition to Congress from Missouri requesting statehood
(Jan. 8)
1820 The Missouri statehood controversy became a national issue
as the issue of slavery was debated. The "Missouri Compromise"
allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state and Maine
as a free state, thus keeping the balance of slave and free
states equal in Congress. Although Missouri was allowed to
enter as a slave state, the remaining portion of the Louisiana
Purchase area north of the 36° 30¢ line was to be
forever free of slavery; Missouri’s Enabling Act was
passed and approved by President James Monroe (Mar. 6)
Governor Alexander McNair; Missouri’s first Constitution
was adopted (July 19); Missouri’s first state elections
were held and Alexander McNair was elected Missouri’s
first governor (Aug. 28); Missouri's first General Assembly
began its first session at the Missouri Hotel in St. Louis
(Sept. 18)
1821 President James Monroe admitted Missouri as the 24th state;
the state capitol was located in St. Charles until a permanent
location was designated (Aug. 10); The Santa Fe Trail was
opened by William Becknell’s successful trading expeditions
to Santa Fe (Sept. 1); Governor Alexander McNair signed the
bill designating the site for the City of Jefferson (Dec.
31)
1822 A bill to create the Missouri State Seal was adopted (Jan.
11)
1825 William Beaumont began research observing the human digestive
system (Aug. 1)
1826 Jefferson City was designated Missouri’s permanent seat
of government; all state records, equipment, and the Great
Seal were moved to Jefferson City on October 1st.
1829 Missouri State Library established by law (Jan. 22)
1835 Writer Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) was born in Florida,
Missouri (November 30)
1836 Missouri State Penitentiary received its first prisoner (Mar.
8)
1837 President Martin Van Buren issued a proclamation which completed
the annexation of the Platte Purchase area to Missouri, establishing
the northwestern border of the state (Mar. 28)
The Gregory School, Bollinger Co, Mo. 1916; Missouri’s
first capitol in Jefferson City was destroyed by fire (Nov.
15)
1838 Governor Lilburn Boggs issued the "Extermination Order"
against Mormons living in Missouri, demanding that members
of the Mormon church leave the state (Oct. 27)
1839 The Geyer Act, the foundation of Missouri’s public school
system, was approved (Feb. 9)
1841 The University of Missouri, the first state university west
of the Mississippi River, opened (Apr. 14)
1843 Joseph Robidoux filed a plat of a town which he called St.
Joseph (July 26); Susan Elizabeth Blow, founder of the public
kindergarten movement, was born in St. Louis (June 7)
1847 Legislation was enacted to establish a hospital for care and
treatment of the insane; State Hospital No. 1 was established
in Fulton and began receiving patients in 1851; Boatmen’s
Bank, the oldest bank west of the Mississippi River, was established
(Oct. 18); St. Louis was connected to the East Coast by telegraph
(Dec. 20)
1849 U.S. Senator David Rice Atchison, from Missouri, was President
for a day (Mar. 4); With the discovery of gold in California,
the Missouri towns of St. Louis, Independence, Westport, and
St. Joseph became points of departure for emigrants bound
for California, making Missouri the "Gateway to the West";
The second, and most serious, cholera epidemic struck St.
Louis; over 4000 people died
1850 The town of Kansas (later Kansas City) was incorporated (Feb.
4); Poet Eugene Field was born in St. Louis (Sept. 3)
1851 Groundbreaking ceremonies for the construction of the Pacific
Railroad were held in St. Louis; the line was to go from St.
Louis to Jefferson City and then to some point on the western
boundary (July 4)
Missouri Botanical Gardens
1854 President Franklin Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act,
allowing the notion of "popular sovereignty" in
determining if a territory would be a slave state or a free
state. This act set the stage for the violent Kansas-Missouri
border wars where the Missouri "Border Ruffians"
and the Kansas "Jayhawkers" transformed a frontier
quarrel over slavery’s borders into a national issue
(May 30)
1857 The Dred Scott decision was handed down by U.S. Chief Justice
Roger B. Taney; the case originated in St. Louis. Under Missouri
statutes, in 1846 Scott was allowed to sue for his freedom
from slavery based on the fact that he had previously lived
in a free territory (Wisconsin) before his return to the slave
state of Missouri (Mar. 6); Work began on the Missouri Botanical
Gardens in St. Louis, established by Henry Shaw
1860 The short-lived Pony Express started its first run from St.
Joseph to Sacramento, California (Apr. 3)
1861 The Battle of Wilson’s Creek resulted in a Union retreat
and southwestern Missouri was left in Confederate hands until
the Battle of Pea Ridge (Aug. 10); President Abraham Lincoln
revoked John Fremont’s emancipation proclamation for
Missouri (Sept. 11)
Lincoln University, c1900; Missouri’s "Rebel Legislature"
adopted an Act of Secession (Oct. 28)
1862 In a three-day battle at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, the Union Army
forced the Confederates, excluding the state guard from Missouri,
to retreat; this battle effectively ended the threat of Confederate
military control in Missouri (Mar. 6-8)
1863 William Clarke Quantrill and his band of pro-Southern guerillas
raided the pro-Union town of Lawrence, Kansas, killing nearly
150 men and boys. This attack served to avenge the imprisonment
of their wives, mothers, and sisters in Kansas City (Aug.
21); Brigadier General Thomas Ewing issued General Order No.
11, requiring all people living in Jackson, Cass, Bates, and
northern Vernon counties to vacate the area unless their loyalty
to the Union could be proven (Aug. 25)
1864 George Washington Carver born near Diamond, Missouri
1865 Slavery was abolished in Missouri by an ordinance of immediate
emancipation, making Missouri the first slave state to emancipate
its slaves before the adoption of the 13th Amendment to the
US Constitution (Jan. 11); Missouri’s second Constitution
(Drake Constitution) was adopted. A group of politicians,
known as "Radicals," favored emancipation of slaves
and disfranchisement of persons who were sympathetic to the
Confederacy during the Civil War. The Radicals included an
"Ironclad Oath" in the new constitution to exclude
former Confederate sympathizers from the vote and certain
occupations, severely limiting their civil rights (Apr. 10)
1866 Lincoln Institute (later Lincoln University) was incorporated
(Apr. 6) as an institution for black students in Missouri;
The Missouri Historical Society was organized in St. Louis
(Aug. 11)
1867 The Missouri Woman’s Suffrage Club was organized in
St. Louis; the sole purpose of this organization was the political
enfranchisement of women, the first such organization in the
United States (May 8)
1868 Ragtime composer Scott Joplin was born in Sedalia, Missouri
(Nov. 24)
1870 M. Lemma Barkeloo was the first woman lawyer in Missouri (St.
Louis); She was the first woman trial lawyer in the United
States, and the first woman lawyer to try a case in federal
court.
1871 Phoebe W. Couzins of St. Louis became Missouri's first woman
law school graduate when she graduated from the Washington
University Law Department (May 8) Couzins later became the
nation's first Woman U.S. Marshal in 1887
1872 Governor B. Gratz Brown and family moved into the newly completed
Governor’s Mansion (Jan. 20)
Eads Bridge, St. Louis, Mo.
1873 The Missouri Supreme Court upheld a decision by the St. Louis
Circuit Court, denying Virginia Minor the right to register
to vote; Susan Blow opened the first public kindergarten in
the United States in St. Louis
1874 The first train robbery by the James Gang took place at Gads
Hill (Jan. 31); The Eads Bridge, spanning the Mississippi
River, was opened in St. Louis (July 4)
1875 Grasshopper plague in Missouri caused an estimated $15 million
worth of damages; Missouri’s third Constitution was
adopted (Oct. 30)
1881 Governor Thomas Crittenden offered a $5000 reward for the
arrest and conviction of members of the Jesse James gang (July
28)
1882 Jesse James was killed by Bob Ford in St. Joseph (Apr. 3)
1891 St. Louis’ Wainwright Building, one of America’s
first skyscrapers, was designed by Louis Sullivan.
1894 The American School of Osteopathy was incorporated by Dr.
Andrew Taylor Still in Kirksville (Oct. 30)
1898 Volunteers for the Spanish-American War began arriving in
St. Louis (May 4)
1899 The State Historical Society of Missouri was incorporated
in Columbia (Mar. 9)
