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Washington County, Missouri (view source)
Revision as of 00:33, October 7, 2020
, 00:33, October 7, 2020Added to page
The mining activity soon spurred the development of permanent communities in the immediate vicinity. The first such was laid down in 1763 by a French entrepreneur, Francois Azor dit Breton (so called because he hailed from the French province of [[Brittany]]), who discovered another deposit of lead while hunting and dug a shaft to exploit it. The village that grew up around it was named Mine a Breton in his honor.<ref>https://collections.shsmo.org/manuscripts/columbia/C2366/washington-county</ref>
The mining activity soon spurred the development of permanent communities in the immediate vicinity. The first such was laid down in 1763 by a French entrepreneur, Francois Azor dit Breton (so called because he hailed from the French province of [[Brittany]]), who discovered another deposit of lead while hunting and dug a shaft to exploit it. The village that grew up around it was named Mine a Breton in his honor.<ref>https://collections.shsmo.org/manuscripts/columbia/C2366/washington-county</ref>
Mine a Breton and other settlements grew steadily in the following years, thanks to the nearby mines. At first these were mostly surface operations, but in 1799, Moses Austin, a [[New England]] entrepreneur who would later be instrumental in organizing American emigration to [[Texas]], moved to the area, became involved in the lead mines, and rapidly expanded them, digging deeper and more efficient shafts. Austin's efforts drew American pioneers to Mine a Breton and adjacent areas, such as the Belleview valley, and soon they had laid out a new town directly northeast of Mine a Breton, which they dubbed "Potosi" after the South American city of that name.
Washington County, owing to its economic importance and rapidly growing population, would be the first county organized in Missouri after the five original counties ([[Cape Girardeau County, Missouri|Cape Girardeau]], [[New Madrid County, Missouri|New Madrid]], St. Charles, St. Louis, and [[Ste. Genevieve County, Missouri|Ste. Genevieve]]). It was created by the territorial legislature on August 21, 1813, from the western part of Ste. Genevieve County, and named in honor of America's first President. Israel McGready was the first man to represent it in the legislature. Mine a Breton initially served as the county seat, but after 1814 this position passed to neighboring Potosi.<ref>Robert Sidney Douglass, ''History of Southeast Missouri'' (1912), p. 153, 169.</ref>
==Geography==
==Geography==