Disappointment and excitement
August 24, 2009

I’m so excited that I hardly know where to start, so I’ll just begin at the end. We’ve just gotten off the ferry that transported us across the Mississippi River. I love riding on ferry boats, but crossing that particular river is way fun for me - the coolest ever!

I’m sure there is a name for that type of boat, but I have no idea what it is; however, we took one like it across the Illinois River last summer with the same sense of vertigo. First, the thing comes over to get us and basically crashes into the bank with a huge clatter. The gates are opened and we drive on as if we are willing to pay money to ride with someone who crashes boats into banks. We move out, turning downriver. Suddenly, the two-story pilot house seems to detach from our platform, leaving us to drift down the mighty waterway until we are wrecked along the way. No, wait, we’re still attached to the tow boat, thank heaven; he has just moved around behind us, where he remains until we crash into the opposite bank.

Between watching the current moving one way, the pilot boat moving another way and ourselves heading a third direction, it all makes me feel a bit queasy.

Just before getting to the ferry, we waited for a coal train to pass. I was astonished to see that it was trailed by a caboose. I haven’t seen one of those outside a museum for years. I said something to Chris about waiting for John (coal train, get it?) and he actually managed a "heh-heh".

I am beginning to wonder about the climate here, have noticed a number of banana trees. Can it actually be warm enough for them in this locale? Evidently so.

St. Genevieve . . .
Our friend Andrew, the ranger at the Pierre Menard house, suggested that we would like to see St. Genevieve - the town, not the woman of Paris in the fifth century. That was excellent advice, marred only by the late time of day we arrived there. I am just about ready to relocate: it’s a lovely, charming, fascinating village with history enough to knock off a person’s socks presuming a person is wearing socks which a person is not because it’s summer.

There are houses/museums/places to tour and a self-guided walking tour, so we have determined to return this trip. We took a couple of photos of old Creole houses. I am a bit embarrassed that I knew/know so little about this region’s history. Always we think of American colonies, but for me at least, French colonization in the Americas was a chapter in the history book only. In this area, things are not old unless they’re from the 1700s.

We landed in St. Genevieve on advice, but were in that section really because we were curious about Kaskaskia, the village that was washed away by the Mississippi. Kaskaskia is called an island because one side is bordered by the Mississippi and the other by the former channel of that same river. When the flood came, the Mississippi left its channel, jumped across the peninsula’s neck and changed its course into the Kaskaskia’s channel. It’s taken me a while to get my head around how this all took place.

Off to the west was the town of St. Mary’s sited and most likely thriving on the banks of the Mississippi when . . . wham . . . their river was gone along with their economy doubtless. Dry land at the neck of the peninsula became a 66-foot-deep raging muddy torrent.

Kaskaskia . . .
We really expected that Kaskaskia (the present-day village) would be pretty much like any other area small town or nothing at all. Highway signs led the way to the site of the replacement town. Once again, I was flabbergasted at the antiquity of early settlements here. There remains a beautiful church building (Roman Catholic, of course; we’re talking about the French here). The Church of the Immaculate Conception was founded here in 1675; the current building is the third; however, the steps to the original are on display outside. They were found near the river in 2005.

The only other actual artifact is the Kaskaskia bell, safely stowed in an edifice built for the purpose. It was cast in 1741 in France, arrived via New Orleans in 1743, a gift from King Louis XV.

This is a Lewis & Clark historic trail site. Those adventurers arrived here in 1803 on a recruitment mission, buying vessels and hiring the remainder of their boatmen and party. Our Ezra Owen might have been here at the time, or at least very shortly afterward.

At Kaskaskia, we find ourselves out in the middle of the old river bed - flat as the proverbial pancake for several miles with rocky bluffs defining the edges. Whatever were they thinking building a town out here?

Courthouses, weapons, research . . .
Earlier, we arrived at the Randolph County Courthouse in Chester (remember - the home of Popeye) and were divested of our armory, a pocketknife and pepper spray. After having been in hundreds of courthouses, you would think we would remember to stash the knife in the truck, but noooo, usually it requires a return trip to get it put away before we gain entry. In this case, they were accommodating about holding our weapons until we completed our research.

Although the County has amazing holdings, some actually as early as 1709, the first land records were 1802, still pretty surprising that they are extant. The bad news was that those early ones inexplicably are indexed only for the grantors (sellers). This made it impossible for us to determine exactly when and where Ezra Owen purchased property there. Even more inexplicably, we couldn’t locate him even in the grantor (seller) index although we know he was a landowner and Williamsburg Township supervisor.

It was extremely frustrating to finally get here and then be stymied. Of course we could always read the deeds themselves, providing we could spare a year or two and had a spare pair of eyes. We did find information about Ezra and his clan, but certainly not what I had expected.

We would also have surveyed the holdings of the historical society, but for the fact that their building’s top collapsed on them. They were housed in one of the old commercial structures attached one to the other, but somehow, their section is kaput. We watched workmen risking life and limb as they began the process of clearing out the rubble. A phone call to a spokeswoman informed us that their collection is residing in boxes at the moment.

Town father, collecting, wineries . . .
We have yet to find another mention about the “town” of Blenheim that Ezra was developing, except that it was located at the confluence of Horse Creek and the Kaskaskia River. Now if we could just find that . . . obviously the town did not materialize, or if it did, it was relatively short-lived. No one seems to have heard of it. We did a little foray attempting to find where those two waterways converge but no luck so far. We know that it was not far from the town of Redbud, which is my second favorite local municipality. If I don’t move to St. Genevieve, Redbud will be my alternate.

I had great fun at a gift shop in St. Genevieve learning all about santons, certain tiny hand-painted figurines, and Quimper china. Can’t wait to start collecting; however, the prices caused me to defer that hobby for now.

I gained a new favorite painter at the visitor’s center - Florence Boeffer Brenner. The place is in possession of an absolutely wonderful striking painting of hers - not for sale unfortunately.

Interesting to see a small herd of belted Galway cattle. They are often referred to as Oreo cows because of the wide vertical white stripe on their torsos banded by black front and back. I’ve only ever seen them at the County fair.

This morning, we saw a large tractor rig spraying (insecticide?) soybeans. I hadn’t heard of any pests that bothered that crop, but I have next to no experience with growing them. Maybe he was spraying fertilizer?

This seems to be major apple country in addition to the expected corn and beans plus lots of grapes with wineries. Hmmm, why haven’t we checked that out yet?