Lead drew the first miners into the hills west of Ste. Genevieve, and two old books follow them. The 1888 History of Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Crawford and Gasconade Counties, Missouri and the 1912 History of Southeast Missouri run from Renault's French miners and Francis Breton's find at Mine a Breton, through Moses Austin's shaft and furnace at Potosi, to the companies that sank deep shafts at Bonne Terre, Doe Run and Flat River. Along the way they name diggers, smelters, merchants and superintendents.
Written from 2 old histories, all free to read on the Internet Archive: History of Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Crawford and Gasconade Counties, Missouri (1888); History of Southeast Missouri, Vol. 1 (1912). Everything below comes from those books, and where they give an opinion, we say so.
French miners on the Meramec and Fourche a Renault
The 1912 History of Southeast Missouri, by Robert Sidney Douglass, says the French probably began taking lead out of this district before 1700. The name both books come back to is Renault. In 1719 Philip Francois Renault left France with 200 skilled miners, and on the way his expedition stopped at San Domingo and bought 500 slaves for work in the mines. In 1720 he built a village called St. Phillip near Fort Chartres in Illinois, then opened a lead mine near Potosi that took his name, Mine a Renault. He worked the mines until he went back to France in 1742.
The 1888 county history says Renault's men went on to find Old Mines and the diggings along Fourche a Renault Creek and the Mineral Fork, and set up mining camps there. Their lead went first to Fort Chartres and later to Ste. Genevieve, then by boat to New Orleans and France. The 1912 book says Ste. Genevieve itself grew up at the river end of the road to the mines, out of the lead trade. The pigs were cast in the shape of a horse collar and hung over the horse's neck for the trip.
Francis Breton, Mine a Breton and the Old Mines families
Breton's find is the founding story of Potosi, and the books tell it two ways. The 1888 history, quoting Campbell's Gazetteer, says that about 1760 Francis Breton was chasing a bear when he discovered the mine that still bears his name, and that no families settled there until 1765. The 1912 history puts the discovery in 1773, when Francois Azar or Breton, out hunting, found lead ore lying on the ground near Potosi, yet it also dates the first settlement at Mine a Breton to about 1763. Most of the early settlers came from Ste. Genevieve, New Bourbon and Kaskaskia.
The 1888 book says Breton was born in northern France and served as a soldier under Marshal Saxe. When Schoolcraft visited him near Ste. Genevieve he was 109 years old. The 1912 book says he lived to 111, died in 1821, and got only a grant of four arpens for his discovery.
Spanish grants around the village name its first families. Basil Valle built a cabin on 639 acres between 1792 and 1795 and later sold the tract to John Perry. Amable Partina, also spelled Partney, had 500 arpents ceded to him on September 5, 1799. Others with grants in and around the old village included Louis Rencore, John T. McNeal, Joseph Blais, William, John and Samuel Perry, Joseph Decelle and Charles McLane.
Old Mines, north of Potosi, was a French town. The 1912 book says it was founded in 1802 by settlers from Ste. Genevieve, thirty-one families, most of them in mining. The Old Mines grant of 10,548 acres was made jointly on January 4, 1803. Its early settlers, as the 1888 book lists them, included P. P. Boyer, William C. Carr, John B. Portel, Pierce Martin, Jacob Boise, Charles P. Robert and Joseph Pratt. La Plant Boyer, the first white child born on the concession in 1801, was still living in 1888.
“This lead was transported to Ste. Genevieve on pack animals or great wooden carts without tires on the wheels.”
Moses Austin's shaft, furnace and shot tower
The 1888 history calls Moses Austin, formerly of Virginia, the most prominent early settler of Mine a Breton. In 1797 he got a Spanish grant of 6,085 acres on condition that he build furnaces and works for mining and smelting lead, and a shot tower. The 1912 book describes the grant as 7,000 arpens, including a third of Breton's original mine. His house, Durham Hall, was named for his birthplace of Durham, Connecticut. The 1888 book says it burned in the great fire of 1871; the 1912 book says 1872.
The 1912 book calls Austin's furnace the first reverberatory furnace west of the river and says that when it went up in 1797 there were twenty French furnaces in the district, but by 1802 Austin's was the only one running. The state chapter of the 1888 book dates it to 1789 and calls it the first in America. In 1799 Austin put up a shot tower about a mile northwest of Potosi, and about the same time Elias Bates was making sheet lead nearby. Austin also sank the first deep shaft through the cap rock, which the 1888 book says settled the mining character of the region for good.
In 1816 Austin reported to the General Land Office that 9,360,000 pounds of lead had been smelted at Mine a Breton over eighteen years. It went to Ste. Genevieve on pack animals or on big wooden carts with no tires on the wheels, which the Indians called bare-footed wagons. When Washington County was organized in 1813, Austin gave forty acres and John Rice Jones ten for the county seat. In 1820 Austin went to Bexar, Texas, with permission to settle 300 families, and he died at Tar Blue in St. Francois County on June 10, 1821.
How the diggings worked in Schoolcraft's day
Schoolcraft came to the mines as a government agent and made Potosi his headquarters, and both books lean on his report. Mining was seasonal. Poor families went to the mines after harvest, and rich families sent their slaves at the same time, so most digging was done from August to December.
A miner needed a pick ax, shovel, drill, rammer and priming rod. He marked off a square of eight feet and shoveled down 8 to 15 feet before he needed a windlass and bucket. Most shafts were ten to thirty feet deep in stiff red clay. Only two went into the rock: Austin's, eighty feet deep, and John Rice Jones's. Ore was roasted in a wood fire for 24 to 36 hours, which got about half the lead out, and refiring the ashes saved about 15 per cent more. In 1819 Schoolcraft found one regular hearth furnace in the whole district, four or five real shafts among forty diggings, and no engine to pump water.
His count for 1819 shows the size of the crews. The 1888 book prints Mine a Breton at 1,500,000 pounds and 100 hands; the 1912 book prints the same output with 160 miners. Both give Shibboleth 2,700,000 pounds and 240 men. The 1888 table also gives La Motte at 2,400,000 pounds and 210 hands, Richwoods at 1,300,000 and 140, and Bryan's and Daggat's mines at 910,000 and 80. Lead brought $4.00 a hundredweight at the mines, $4.50 at St. Louis or Herculaneum, $5.50 at New Orleans and $6.00 at Philadelphia. Schoolcraft counted about 1,100 men mining, fewer than in earlier years, yet the 1888 book says that as late as 1824 the mines near Potosi employed nearly 2,000 men.
“On some days a hundred pack-mules and ponies, some of which came from a great distance and many of them belonging to Indians, could be seen tied on the street.”
Potosi traders and the operators of 1888
Potosi was the trading town for the lead country. In its early years the stores on Jefferson Street were kept by Samuel Perry, John and William Perry, and James F. Perry, and on some days a hundred pack mules and ponies, some from a great distance, stood tied in the street. Firman Desloge opened a store in 1823 and stayed in business for many years. Col. Michael Taney, brother of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, was among the very early settlers; he died at the Potosi hotel in 1848 with nothing to pay for his funeral.
The 1888 history lists who was mining when it was written. James Long had bought about 3,400 acres of the old Austin grant, had fifty families living on it, and took out 800,000 pounds of lead, 1,500,000 of zinc and 2,500,000 of barytes a year. J. P. and R. M. Bugg ran a furnace near Potosi on 3,600 acres and in one year shipped 525,000 pounds of lead, in car loads of 300 pigs at seventy pounds each. John O. Long was superintendent of the Union Mining and Smelting Company, whose furnaces at Old Mines turned out over 1,000,000 pounds of lead and 2,000,000 of barytes, called tiff, a year.
Alexander Harrison ran the old Webster mines for the Palmer Lead Company, smelting 1,000,000 pounds a year. J. B. Lathey was superintendent of the Shibboleth Mining Company on 1,600 acres. Filmore Higginbotham worked the mines at Fertile, R. T. Brown the Kingston claim of about 6,000 acres, and James D. Lowry the diggings at Old Mines. In one year Potosi shipped 1,404,000 pounds of lead, 4,623,000 of barytes and 432,000 of zinc. Experienced miners believed deeper shafts would reach the same ore then being worked at Bonne Terre and Doe Run.
The biographical pages fill in families. Jacob Boas settled in Washington County in 1825 to mine and smelt, and his son Robert J. Boas smelted lead at the old town of Webster. George Cresswell, a native of England, built the county's second blast furnace. John Evens of Leicestershire, born in 1797, set out west in the fall of 1822, walked from Ste. Genevieve to the New Diggings near Potosi, later mined at Valle's Mines, went into lead smelting in 1827 and built a blast furnace in 1837.
Bonne Terre, Doe Run, Desloge and Flat River
The St. Francois County mines have old roots. The 1912 book says the mines later worked by the St. Joseph Lead Company at Bonne Terre were granted in 1800, with 800 arpens, to John B. Pratte, and the 1888 book reports 19,483,382 pounds of lead made at Valle's Mine in St. Francois County and sent to Ste. Genevieve. But the first furnace at Bonne Terre went up only about 1856, and until after the Civil War the place was a cluster of miners' huts and tents. Its name is French for good land, because the lead was scattered through the clay and could be got by washing.
Near the close of the war the St. Joseph Lead Company was organized, and it sank the first extensive shafts for lead in southeast Missouri. Its man on the ground was Charles Bunyan Parsons, born in Benson, Vermont, in 1836. J. Wyman Jones and associates had bought the LaGrave mines, and Parsons took charge for them in 1867, leaving his family at DeSoto until late June. The first shaft to the lower deposits was started in March 1870. Parsons died at Riverside on January 28, 1910, and by 1912 Roscoe R. S. Parsons was the company's general manager. The company leased its town lots rather than selling them, and fires in February 1883 and March 1885 largely destroyed its works. The 1912 book calls the smelter at Bonne Terre the largest lead smelter in the United States.
Firmin DesLoge, born at Potosi to a father from Nantes, France, built a smelter beside the St. Joseph works for the DesLoge Lead Company and ran it until it was sold to St. Joseph in 1887. He then formed the DesLoge Consolidated Lead Company from Bogy Lead Mine Company and St. Francois Mining Company property, and the town of DesLoge was named for him. F. P. Graves came to the Bonne Terre mines about 1869, worked in the mill and shops, was the company's cashier for seventeen years, and in 1887 helped organize the Doe Run Lead Company. Doe Run itself was pasture and orchard in 1880; lead was found there about 1885.
Until 1880 the St. Joseph company hauled by wagon to the Iron Mountain railroad. That year it and the DesLoge company built a narrow gauge line thirteen and a half miles to Summit. The Mississippi River and Bonne Terre Railway was chartered in 1888 and later extended to Doe Run. About 1880 lead in paying quantity turned up in the Flat River district, and mines opened at Flat River, DesLoge, Leadwood and Elvins. George K. Williams, born in St. Francois County in 1864, took the first diamond drill to Flat River, struck the first deep disseminated ore there, and was appointed state mine inspector in 1901. The 1912 book sums up the change: once any strong man could dig ore for himself, but by then a few large companies did nearly all the mining, and in 1911 St. Francois County shipped more than seven million dollars in mine products.
Finding a lead-mining family in these books
Start with the 1888 Washington County chapters for early families. They print the Spanish grants by township with acreage, such as Moses Bates with 680 acres and Michael, David and Jacob Horine in Township 40, and the joint Old Mines grant with its settlers. They also list the first land entries in each township, and the authors warn that these names were copied from the public records as spelled there. Schoolcraft's 1819 mine table, with the crew at each mine, appears in both books.
For the later mines, use the 1888 list of working operators and the village notes on Old Mines, which name the Union company's furnace, James D. Lowry's furnace and the stores of Owen Campbell, Adrian Coleman and C. B. Gray. The 1888 biographical appendix has mining and smelting families such as Boas, Cresswell, Evens and Long. The 1912 book's biographies cover the Bonne Terre and Flat River years: Parsons, Graves, DesLoge and Williams, plus Dr. Poston, chief surgeon for the St. Joseph Lead Company and its railroad for thirty-five years and succeeded by his son Harry P., and Harry A. Guess, manager since 1908 of the Federal Lead Company and its experimental plant at Flat River.
The counties in this history
Where to look next on this site for families from Washington and St. Francois Counties.
- Washington County: Biographies from the county histories
- St. Francois County: Biographies from the county histories
Finding your ancestor in Washington and St. Francois Counties
- Census records (free through 1950) list each person's occupation and town, so a work family shows up decade by decade.
- Death records: search our Missouri database by surname.
- The county histories themselves: the biographical sections of History of Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Crawford and Gasconade Counties, Missouri and History of Southeast Missouri, Vol. 1 hold hundreds of family sketches.
- Newspapers on the Library of Congress's Chronicling America carried obituaries, accidents, and local news.
Tell us one grandparent's name. We'll take a free first look at the records and email you back.
Ask about my family →Frequently asked questions
Who discovered the lead mine at Potosi, Missouri?
Both books credit Francis Breton, and the mine was called Mine a Breton. The 1888 county history, quoting Campbell's Gazetteer, says he found it about 1760 while chasing a bear. The 1912 History of Southeast Missouri says he found lead ore lying on the ground in 1773 while hunting. Schoolcraft met him near Ste. Genevieve in 1819, when he was 109 years old.
What did Moses Austin build at Mine a Breton?
Under a 1797 Spanish grant of 6,085 acres, Austin agreed to build furnaces and a shot tower. The 1912 book calls his the first reverberatory furnace west of the Mississippi. He built a shot tower in 1799, sank the first deep shaft through the cap rock, and built the mansion later called Durham Hall. He died at Tar Blue on June 10, 1821.
When did big lead mining start at Bonne Terre and Flat River?
The first furnace at Bonne Terre went up about 1856, and the St. Joseph Lead Company was organized near the close of the Civil War. Charles B. Parsons took charge in 1867 and the first shaft to the lower deposits was started in 1870. Lead in paying quantity was found in the Flat River district about 1880, and at Doe Run about 1885.
How many men worked the Missouri lead mines in 1819?
Schoolcraft counted about 1,100 men in mining in 1819, fewer than in earlier years. His table gives Shibboleth 240 men and La Motte 210; for Mine a Breton the 1888 book prints 100 hands and the 1912 book 160 miners. The 1888 book also says the mines near Potosi employed nearly 2,000 men as late as 1824.