Saint Charles

Mary Easton Sibley, the Lindenwood founder the plaque names with her husband, reached past her own school. She tried to teach the region's enslaved people, until slaveholders who feared rebellion forced her to stop. Widowed in 1863, she moved to St. Louis and from 1866 to 1869 led Bethany House, a mission for the city's poor. In 1873 a letter from Isaac K. Yokoyama asked for educators for Japan, and in her mid-seventies she set out to go, falling ill before she could board. She died on June 20, 1878, and lies in the family cemetery on the campus.

What the plaque says

Saint Charles First permanent settlement on the Missouri River, known as Les Petites Cotes (Fr. Little Hills) until after dedication of Church of St. Charles Borromeo, 1791. Though 1780 is given as date of founding French-Canadian Louis Blanchette first settled here in 1769. The area was first settled by the French and later largely by Americans and Germans. Prominent early settlers were Daniel Boone and his family. Some 25 miles southwest is home of Boone's son Nathan. The Boon's Lick and Salt River trails began at St. Charles. During the War of 1812 military activity in Missouri centered at Portage des Sioux, a 1799 French settlement, 14 miles northeast. In Fort Zumwalt State Park, 20 miles west, stand the remains of one of many family forts of the area erected against Indian attacks. Here were established the first school of the Sacred Heart in the U.S., 1818, by Mother Duchesne; Baptist and Presbyterian churches, 1818; first Masonic lodge north of Missouri River, 1819; a town academy, chartered, 1820; a newspaper, "The Missourian," 1820; and the Methodist St. Charles College, chartered, 1837. (See other side) Erected by State Historical Society of Missouri and State Highway Commission, 1953 Saint Charles (Continued from other side) St. Charles was made the temporary State capital, 1821-1826, by act of the First General Assembly, meeting in St. Louis, 1820. Here the Legislature, by affirming in a "Solemn Public Act" that the rights of any U.S. citizen would not be abridged, met the final Congressional requirement for statehood. Debate over the slavery issue that greeted Missouri's petition for statehood resolved itself in the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Slavery was prohibited north of 36°30' except in Missouri. On Aug. 10, 1821, Missouri became the 24th state. Near here is the junction of the Missouri and Mississippi. Marquette and Jolliet noted this point, 1673, and here the Lewis and Clark Expedition began its ascent of the Missouri, 1804. Three bridges cross the Missouri and two the Mississippi in St. Charles County. Seat of justice for one of Missouri's first 5 counties, earlier one of 5 Spanish districts, St. Charles serves a farming and industrial area. Here are the old Capitol; Sacred Heart Convent; St. Charles Borromeo Cemetery; and Lindenwood College, chartered, 1853, founded earlier by George and Mary Sibley, one of oldest schools for women in Mississippi Valley. Erected by State Historical Society of Missouri and State Highway Commission, 1953

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• St. Charles Riverfront and First Missouri State Capitol — 0.3 mi
  The riverbank where the Corps of Discovery waited a week and pushed off on May 21, 1804, and the rooms over a dry goods store where Missouri's first legislature met.
• Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis — 15 mi
  A Romanesque and Byzantine cathedral on Lindell Boulevard begun in 1907, whose mosaics took until 1988 to finish and now hold 41.5 million tesserae.
• Old Chain of Rocks Bridge — 16 mi
  A mile-long 1929 truss bridge over the Mississippi with a 22-degree bend in the middle, once Route 66's bypass around St. Louis and now a walking and cycling crossing to Illinois.
• Missouri Botanical Garden — 16 mi
  Henry Shaw's 1859 garden in south St. Louis, with his 1849 country house, the geodesic Climatron of 1960 and a Japanese garden laid around a four-acre lake.

More markers nearby

• Saint Louis — 18 mi