St. Louis History and Ethnic Groups 2 – Detailed

African Americans have played an important part in the culture, political, and spiritual history of St. Louis since 1764. They were members of the party that accompanied Pierre de Laclede Liguest when he founded the trading post and French village that became St. Louis.

In a 1799 census of the city, the total population of St. Louis was 925 of which 46% were people of African descent.

African American communities were established in St. Louis County as early as the 1860s, e.g., Webster Groves and Rock Hill. The community of Kinloch, which was mostly inhabited by Blacks, was not developed until the 1890s.

St. Louis City Hall has Certificate of Character documents dating from 1804 to 1860. These include filings for free born or emancipated persons of African ancestry. These records are unindexed.

Most African Americans in St. Louis were enslaved, but there was a community of "free negroes" allowed to live in the city, if they were licensed. Those free individuals appear in court records of the time.

• Free Negroes Licensed in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1835

African American marriages occurred in St. Louis, although they were not recognized legally until after the Civil War. Herman Steines and his son Frederick kept records of the marriages they performed. You can learn more on their pages:

• Names Mentioned in Records of Colored Marriage Performed by Herman Steines and Frederick W. Steines, J.P.s, 1865-1871
• Herman Steines, J.P. & Frederick W. Steines, J.P. Marriage Records

Many enslaved Missourians joined the Union army between 1863 and 1865 and at the time of enlistment, a descriptive recruitment list was made for each recruit. For these men, enlistment meant freedom.

If the former slave owner was loyal, he or she could later file a slave compensation claim for the lost services of the slave. Three hundred dollars could be claimed for slaves who enlisted; $100 could be claimed if slaves were drafted.

Because of the possibility of fraud, some of the recruitment officers wrote detailed personal notes in the remarks section of the descriptive recruitment list.

Most of Missouri’s descriptive recruitment lists have been preserved at the National Archives. The Julius K. Hunter & Friends African-American Research Collection in the Emerson History & Genealogy Center at the Clark Family Branch, St. Louis County Library, and the National Archives sponsored the microfilming of those records.

They are available to the public in National Archives microfilm publication M1894, Descriptive Recruitment Lists of Volunteers for the United States Colored Troops for the State of Missouri, 1863–1865. Besides providing a physical description of the recruit, it tells the county and state of birth of the slave and the name and county of residence of the former slave owner.

After the Civil War, as in many places with Southern sympathies, St. Louis remained segregated, with the African American community developing their own unique newspapers and society groupings.

A newspaper article in 1890 mentioned the African American Elite, which you can read about on that page.

The Czechs (Bohemians) from the Austrian Empire began arriving in St. Louis in 1848. They settled in an area of St. Louis which was then called Frenchtown. This section of St. Louis was later referred to as Bohemian Hill and today St. Louisans call it the Soulard area.

The boundaries of Bohemian Hill, on the near south side of the city, were Lafayette Avenue, 7th Street, Russell Boulevard, and 18th Street.

Ninety percent of the Czechs who immigrated to St. Louis were literate, making Czechs the most literate of any immigrant group to settle in St. Louis during the nineteenth century.

Many were bilingual with Czech as their native language and German as a second language, since German was the required language of the Austrian Empire.

The St. Louis Public Library operated the Soulard Branch on Bohemian Hill from 1911 until the late 1960s. At that time materials from the Eastern European (Slavic) portion of the collection were donated to the Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and were incorporated into a much larger Slavic collection.

By 1895, St. John Nepomuk Parish’s membership had grown so large it became necessary to begin another Czech parish. St. Wenceslaus Parish was formed to relieve the congestion.

In October 1931, the parish of St. John Nepomuk celebrated the 65th anniversary of the founding of the Young Men’s Sodality and the Young Women’s Sodality with a special edition of the parish magazine, The Saint John Nepomuk Messenger.

• Digitized The Saint John Nepomuk Messenger (October 1931 special edition)
• Index of People Mentioned or Pictured in the Special Issue

The required religion of the Austrian Empire was Roman Catholic. However, many nineteenth-century Czech immigrants did not remain in the Catholic Church when they arrived in America.

In 1854, a group of Czech immigrants in St. Louis formed a secular organization for fraternal and financial support: Cesko-Slovansky Podporujici Spolek, or C.S.P.S. (Czech-Slavonic Benevolent Association).

Within a few years the C.S.P.S. evolved into a national freethinking organization with members in areas with large Czech populations. In 1890, the C.S.P.S. built the Czech National Hall at Allen and Dolman Streets on Bohemian Hill. They also formed several other cultural and social groups.

In the early 1950s, Bohemian Hill became threatened by urban development. The Czechoslovak Society of America (formerly the Cesko-Slovansky Podporujici Spolek) and the other Czech groups still operating in St. Louis moved to 4690 Lansdowne Avenue in St. Louis and remain active in that location.

Czechoslovak Society of America website

There were never many Czech Protestants in the St. Louis area. The Czech Evangelical Church in St. Louis was a mission sponsored by the Congregational Church.

(Thanks to June M. Sommer for originally creating this material. See her articles in the StLGS Quarterly, “Czech (Bohemian) Resources in St. Louis, Missouri, and the Surrounding Area, Part I,” volume 39, number 3 (Fall 2006), pgs. 80–84 and volume 4 (Winter 2006), pgs. 115–120.)

In the 1700s, French settlers migrated up the Mississippi north from New Orleans and south along the rivers from Quebec and Detroit, often settling on Kaskaskia Island.

Pierre Laclède and his stepson, Auguste Chouteau, along with a group of thirty men, established a village on the west bank of the Mississippi River in 1764, thus becoming the first non-indigenous citizens of St. Louis.

They laid out three north-south streets: la Grande Rue (The Large Street), rue de l’Eglise (Church Street), and rue des Granges (Street of the Barns; now First, Second and Third Streets) and narrower east-west streets: Rue de la Tour (Tower Street), Rue de la Place (Street of the [village] Square), and Rue Missouri (Missouri Street; today’s Walnut, Market and Chestnut).

A one-story stone building with a high cellar was erected to serve as both Laclède’s business and residence. The next block west was dedicated for a church and graveyard. (The Old Cathedral, built in 1834, still occupies this site.) A central public plaza for assembly and a public market was drawn up between Laclède’s house and the river.

Laclède’s decision to expand the post into a village was made following receipt of news that France had transferred the land east of the Mississippi to Great Britain. French settlers in the east bank villages of Cahokia and St. Philippe speedily moved to the new settlement on the west bank, causing it to expand immediately into what came to be known as Laclède’s Village.

However, the official name of St. Louis was given to the village by its founder in honor of King Louis IX of France.

In 1770, the village contained fifteen stone houses and one hundred wooden ones, of which about seventy-five had been erected during 1765 and 1766. The population numbered 500. A census by the Spanish lieutenant-governor Delassus in 1798 showed that the population of St. Louis had grown to 925 inhabitants.

Most of the first residents of St. Louis made their living from the fur trade; however, provisions for the division of land for farming were laid out as early as the village itself.

In a tradition which probably comes from Canadian settlements, a large tract of partly wooded land southwest of the village became the St. Louis Commons and was shared jointly by all inhabitants. The land was used for cattle grazing, and timber was logged for building materials and fuel.

Originally, the Commons occupied the area now bounded by 4th, Clark and 10th Streets, and Park Avenue, but it increased in size along with St. Louis, eventually reaching the River des Pères, seven miles away.

Because the territory was first ruled by Spain and then France, the earliest land grants in St. Louis were issued by those governments. After the Louisiana Purchase, however, some of these grants were disputed by new settlers, and struggle for land ownership persisted well into the mid-1800s.

• French & Spanish Land Grants
• The French in St. Louis (City of St. Louis article)
• Collet’s Index (double surnames / dit names)

The town gained fame in 1803 as the jumping-off point for the Louisiana Purchase Expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. After 1804, more New Englanders and other East Coast emigrants settled in St. Louis, but the population remained predominantly French until well into the nineteenth century.

St. Louis incorporated as a city in 1823. During the nineteenth century, St. Louis grew into an important center of commerce and trade, attracting thousands of immigrants eager to find a new life on the edge of the frontier.

Other French settlers migrated to St. Louis from Kaskaskia Island, New Orleans, and Detroit expanding the population of the newly formed community. Another French village, St. Ferdinand, was formed along the Missouri River just miles beyond the confluence of the Missouri River and the Mississippi River.

French citizens continued to influence growth of St. Louis until after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. After that event, westward expansion of Americans from Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia overwhelmed the St. Louis area.

When researching early French St. Louisans, be aware of dit names (pronounced "dee"), a unique naming tradition similar to modern nicknames. Sometimes called double surnames, they were used interchangeably by some families.

German immigration into St. Louis began in the 1820s but began to increase in 1830s. Gottfried Duden came to Missouri in 1824 and stayed until 1827 when he returned to Germany and wrote a book on his experiences in Missouri.

This book, along with many others of that period, as well as letters from the early German arrivals, promoted German emigration. At the same time in Germany the organization of emigration aid societies, rulers forcing churches to unite, quicker travel by rail as well as steam instead of sail, and rapidly increasing German taxation all contributed to a desire to emigrate.

From the mid-1830s until the World Wars, Germans flooded into St. Louis. Because many forms of transportation centered in St. Louis, some only passed through on their way to other destinations. But because so many stayed, population in St. Louis more than tripled from 4,977 in 1830 to 16,469 by 1840.

The first German church in St. Louis was founded in 1834 by German Evangelical Protestants, but it was quickly followed by German Catholics and German Lutherans, who also formed churches in 1835/6 and 1839.

A small number of German Jews also came to St. Louis during this time. They formed a synagogue and began a cemetery. In 1850, more than half of the nearly 78,000 St. Louisans were of German descent. Many joined Union supporters in the Civil War, helping keep Missouri, a slave state, from seceding.

On 3 November 1856, a group of German immigrants on their way to St. Louis arrived in New Orleans aboard the bark Mississippi.

• Partial list of passengers aboard the bark Mississippi (3 November 1856)
• German Special Interest Group (G-SIG)

The rapid influx of immigrants into St. Louis led to a housing shortage, overcrowding, diseases, and the death of many. But it also resulted in opportunities for both the skilled and the unskilled.

Most German immigrants had some education and often arrived trained in a trade. They quickly established themselves and contributed to St. Louis’s growth. Many of the industries in St. Louis today were originally established by German immigrants.

Germans also published newspapers which lasted into the twentieth century: the Anzeiger des Westens, 1835 to 1912; the Westliche Post, 1857 to 1938; and two Roman Catholic papers, the Amerika, 1872 to 1924, and St. Louis Herald des Glaubens, 1889–1899.

A Jewish newspaper called The Modern View was published from 1901 to 1943 and focused mostly on the German-Jewish community. Most of these have been microfilmed and/or digitized and are available online or at local repositories.

The St. Louis Genealogical Society sponsors a German Special Interest Group (G-SIG), which meets four times a year. Their meetings feature many aspects of German culture, history, and genealogy, and classes on German genealogy are offered by the G-SIG regularly.

The largest St. Louis Irish community was called Kerry Patch, named after the Irish immigrants that arrived from County Kerry, Ireland. The approximate boundaries of this community were between 12th and 18th Streets, from Mullanphy to O’Fallon Streets.

Many Irish families that migrated to St. Louis attended St. Bridget’s Church, which was near Kerry Patch.

Another St. Louis Irish community, Dogtown, is located in the Oakland neighborhood on the western border of the city, near Forest Park. The Irish formed St. James the Greater Catholic Church in that area.

• Irish vital records from newspaper files
• Repeal Association of the Friends of Ireland list (1842)
• Catholic Churches (addresses for comparison with ancestor addresses)
• Irish Special Interest Group (SIG)

Some information about Irish St. Louisans was published in local newspapers. A small collection of Irish vital records is available on the Irish vital records page above.

Another list of Irish citizens of St. Louis was published in 1842, and this one included locations of birth, so it could be a valuable resource to those researching early Irish St. Louisans.

Irish Catholic churches opened as early as 1843 and continued to grow with the Irish community. This is a list of Irish Catholic churches in St. Louis with the year they were established. To determine the church where your ancestor worshiped, compare the church address and your ancestor’s address on a St. Louis map.

• St. Patrick’s, 1843
• St. Michael’s, 1849
• St. Bridget of Erin, 1853
• St. Lawrence O’Toole, 1853
• St. James the Greater, 1860
• Holy Name of Jesus, 1865
• St. Theresa of Avila, 1865
• St. Alphonsus Liguori, 1867
• Sacred Heart, 1871
• Our Lady of Mount Carmel, 1872
• St. Columbkille, 1872
• St. Kevin’s, 1876
• St. Cronan, 1878
• St. Rose of Lima, 1880
• St. Thomas of Aquinas, 1882
• St. Leo, 1888
• Holy Rosary, 1891
• St. Agnes, 1891
• St. Edward’s, 1893
• St. Matthew, 1893

St. Louis Genealogical Society has an Irish Special Interest Group (SIG), which meets four times a year and concentrates on Irish research, with emphasis on the Irish in St. Louis.

Most Italians came to St. Louis in the late 1880s. They lived in what is now downtown St. Louis among the Germans, Greeks, and Irish and attended St. Patrick’s Catholic Church or Our Lady Help of Christians in an area referred to as Little Italy, along Cole Street.

In the early 1900s, Italians started another community southwest of Little Italy called The Hill. By the mid-1900s, most Italians had left Little Italy and moved to The Hill.

The Hill is still a vibrant community in St. Louis with a rich Italian heritage. St. Ambrose Catholic Church is in the center of the area, along with fine Italian restaurants and local establishments that support bocce ball games in warmer weather.

Two favorite sons from this community were professional baseball players, Yogi Berra and Joe Garagiola.

Records for Italian families likely may be found in the archives of one of the following Catholic churches:

• St. James the Greater—1860
• St. Bonaventure—1872
• Our Lady Help of Christians—1900
• St. Charles Borromeo—1903
• St. Ambrose—1903

Italians created a burial society in 1866 called the Fratellanza Society, with burials at Calvary Cemetery. Although they closed the society in 1900, burials continued until 1941.

Fratellanza Society Burial Records

Poland has had a long, troubled history. Between 1795 and 1918, it was part of Prussia, then Germany, Austria-Hungary, and finally, Russia. In 1918, after World War I, Poland won its independence.

During these years of turmoil, many thousands of Poles fled their homeland, searching for both economic and religious freedom.

Polish immigrants began coming to St. Louis in the mid to late 1800s. For the most part, the Polish community lived on the near north side of St. Louis. This area, now called Old North St. Louis, was teeming with commerce by the turn of the twentieth century.

As with most cities, as new waves of immigrants arrived, their predecessors accumulated more wealth. In St. Louis, that has meant that Poles have left the confines of their original neighborhoods and dispersed throughout the city and county.

Polish Jews began arriving in St. Louis in the late 1800s also, for the same reasons as Catholic Poles. The Polish Jews were also escaping pogroms, acts of violence in small Jewish villages perpetrated by Russian soldiers.

These Polish immigrants, too, settled in the downtown area, although not as far north.

St. Louis Jewish timeline

The French founded St. Louis, but it was ruled by Spain for approximately thirty years. Spain owned this region until Napoleon and France regained control in 1802. Then Napoleon sold the land west of the Mississippi River to the United States in 1803, creating the Louisiana Purchase.

The Spanish records were retained and moved to Havana, Cuba, and finally moved to Seville, Spain. Those records were microfilmed and are now available on the Missouri Digital Heritage website.

An outline of the early Spanish land grants is shown on early St. Louis maps. An index to some Spanish land grants can be found on the Spanish Land Grants index.

The Spanish granted property to numerous early citizens; however, the Board of Land Commissioners reversed about seventy percent of these transactions in the early 1800s.

Early St. Louis records are in French, Spanish, and English; however, many of the deeds have been translated into English.