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RENE AUGUSTE CHOUTEAU
(1749 - 1829)
www.oocities.org/daniellla.geo/rene.html
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When the Co-Founder of St-Louis,
Rene AUGUSTE CHOUTEAU (1749-1829),
was 37 he married the 17 years old
Marie-Therese CERRE (1769-1842).
Auguste was the only son of
Rene-Auguste Chouteau(1723-1776)
and Marie-Therese BOURGEOIS (a.k.a. MME CHOUTEAU).
He was an American Fur Trader and with Pierre Laclede he was co-Founder of St.Louis, Missouri.
Auguste was born in 1749 in New-Orleans.
He had four siblings, born to his Mother and
Pierre Laclede,
after his Father (Rene-Auguste CHOUTEAU) returned to France
who also bore the name Chouteau, including Jean PIERRE CHOUTEAU, Pelagie, Victoire & Marie Louise CHOUTEAU.
Despite his youth (13), in 1763, he accompanied Pierre Laclede
(Maxent, Laclede & Co), head of the Louisiana Fur Trade Co,
to the Illinois Country.
PIERRE LACLEDE, who had received in 1762 an eight year monopoly for the Fur Trade of the Missouri region, had planned to use Fort de Chartres as a base for his operations and being twarted in that regard by the transfer to England he was now forced to find another suitable location.
Pierre Laclede and Auguste Chouteau searched the Western bank of the Mississipi for a suitable site for a fort to care for the Missouri Fur Trade.
There had been a Fur trading post at Sainte Genevieve, below the "now" St.Louis, on the Mississipi, just opposite Kaskaskia, where a few French families had settled, including the family of Marguerite Pepin who was born there and in 1740 she would marry Joseph Papin of Montreal . Their son, Joseph, born in 1741, would later on marry Marie-Louise Chouteau (b.1764), the sister of Rene-AUGUSTE and Jean-PIERRE CHOUTEAU.
Time was of the essence, so when the site was found, LACLEDE sent CHOUTEAU back to St,Louis with a party of men, in Feb 1764, to build the Storehouse and the Living Houses at the emplacement including the
LACLEDE-CHOUTEAU HOUSE (1764)
Auguste's Mother, Marie-Therese Bourgeois, having been abandonned by her husband (Rene-Auguste Chouteau 1723-1776) a New-Orleans innkeeper who decided to return to the Bearn, in France) decided to follow her son Auguste to St.Louis so two months after him, in May 1764, she came up the Mississippi from New-Orleans, on a raft, while pregnant (with Marie-Louise and Victoire) and she lived with Pierre Laclede Liguest (1729-1778) with whom she had four children. Marie-Therese Bourgeois (Chouteau) had obtained a dispensation from the Catholic Church to live away from her husband, but not to live with someone else...
Nevertheless, she decided to join her fortune with Laclede and finding herself pregnant again, she left New-Orleans, courageously going up the Mississipi on a raft with her youngest son to rejoin AUGUSTE and Pierre Laclede in St.Louis.
A tidbit about Rene AUGUSTE CHOUTEAU's WIFE:
Also on the Cerre connection, Didier (Chouteau) PAPIN, 12th son of Marie-Louise Chouteau, married Catherine Cerre
Auguste`s wife Therese CERRE Chouteau
St. Louis Missouri Fur ASSOCIATION Another interesting story on LACLEDE-CHOUTEAU HOUSE, built in 1764, residence for Pierre Laclede and
Auguste CHOUTEAU
Also see the
LACLEDE CHOUTEAU PAPIN website
The story of St.Louis:GATEWAY TO THE WEST Click here for the Grand Pre Louisiane CHAUVIN-CHOUTEAU etc GENEALOGY site Mrs York's GRADE 4 Project by the YORKIES: FRENCH EXPLORERS LOLO CHOUTEAU, born in 1849, a son of Frederick and Matilda Chouteau, grandson of Pierre Chouteau of St.Louis. Lolo's Mother was of Shawnee extraction and died when he was an infant. LOLO had two brothers: Fred, who is an artist living in Kansas City; and Peter, a resident of Oakland, California.
lived until 1842 and the couple had nine children.
When he died in 1829, Auguste left an enormous estate including 36 slaves who were sold at a Public Auction by the Probate Court of Missouri bringing $10,838.88 which was split 50% for his widow and 50% for his seven surviving children. Another twelve slaves remained with his widow.
He and his brother Jean-Pierre were the first of a famous family that extended and built up the Fur Trade to large proportion, while each of the three sisters (Victoire, Pelagie and Marie-Louise) married men who became exceedingly rich or important.
Sylvestre Labbadie, husband of Pelagie, is supposed to have been THE richest man in Colonial St.Louis, whereas Charles Gratiot, husband of Victoire, was an important merchant. 
Illustration: Charles Gratiot.
Pencil or charcoal on paper.
Acc. #1973.17.11.
Courtesy Missouri Historical Society
on the JNEM website
Charles Gratiot was born in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1752, a descendant of French Huguenots who fled Normandy to escape religious persecution. He lived in London, England then Montreal, Canada where he went into the fur trade then moved to the Illinois country in 1777 to go into business for himself. He opened a store at Cahokia and became one of the most influential merchant-traders of the Illinois country. In 1781 he moved across the river to St. Louis, to set up business and to get married: on June 26, 1781, Gratiot married Victoire Chouteau (b. 1764), a sister of Auguste and Pierre Chouteau. The alliance was an important one, with both Gratiot and the Chouteaus representing powerful mercantile interests. The Gratiots had 13 children, but only nine survived to adulthood.
See Scott Williams site
on LINKS in ST.LOUIS HISTORY at:
You can see a site on the Chouteau-Laclede at
Bend of the River Chouteau website
the Chouteau's Empire by SHIRL KASPER
SEE: www.nps.gov/jeff/LewisClark2/Circa1804/StLouis/BlockInfo/Block34A.htm
and www.nps.gov/jeff/LewisClark2/Circa1804/StLouis/BlockInfo/Block34AAChouteauSr.htm
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