St. Michel is an

abandoned village An abandoned village is a village that has, for some reason, been deserted. In many countries, and throughout history, thousands of villages have been deserted for a variety of causes. Abandonment of villages is often related to epidemic, f ...

located in Madison County,

Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...

, United States. St. Michel is now incorporated into Fredericktown.

Etymology

Although the origin of the name is not certain, one of the original founders of the village of St. Michel − Nicholas Caillot − had been a "Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michel" in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

, and this most likely accounts for the name. It might be pointed out also, however, that there was a Michael Caillot in the group, and a Nicholas Caillot had a son Michel, whose patron saints were Michel.State Historical Society of Missouri: Madison County http://shs.umsystem.edu/manuscripts/ramsay/ramsay_madison.html

History

Founded in the years between 1790−1800, St. Michel was established as a lead-mining village. The founders of St. Michel were a cohesive group of thirteen families,

French Creoles The French Louisianians (french: Louisianais), also known as Louisiana Frenchmen, are Latin French people native to the states that were established out of French Louisiana. They are commonly referred to as French Creoles (french: Créoles). T ...

of the

Illinois Country The Illinois Country (french: Pays des Illinois ; , i.e. the Illinois people)—sometimes referred to as Upper Louisiana (french: Haute-Louisiane ; es, Alta Luisiana)—was a vast region of New France claimed in the 1600s in what is n ...

with roots in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

and a few native French who had lived for some time in the valley. Eight of these families were from New Bourbon. Among these first settlers were Antoine, Gabriel, Nicholas, Joseph, Francois, and Michel Caillot det La Chance; Peter Chevalier, Gabriel Nicollet, Pierre Variat; Paul, Andrew, and Baptiste De Guire, and Jerome Matis, who were French-Canadians from Ste. Genevieve and New Bourbon. These men were given concessions of land by the Spanish authorities of

Upper Louisiana Upper may refer to: * Shoe upper or ''vamp'', the part of a shoe on the top of the foot * Stimulant, drugs which induce temporary improvements in either mental or physical function or both * ''Upper'', the original film title for the 2013 found fo ...

with each family receiving 400 arpents of land extending from the Little St. Francis River to Saline Creek. The village of St. Michel was forced to move to higher ground by the floods of 1814 when the Saline and Castor Creeks overflowed their banks, and drove the inhabitants out. Some of the families refused to return, and established what was known as the ''new village'', one and one-half miles north of St. Michel.A Directory of Towns, Villages, and Hamlets Past and Present of Madison County, Missouri http://thelibrary.org/lochist/moser/madisonpl.html The old site was referred to as "The Village" although there is nothing there to indicate the spot except Calvary Cemetery. The new village numbered about 50 people in 1823. Soon after, on the Saline opposite the village, Germans had settled, as well as other groups from North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia, and these settlers evidently outnumbered their French neighbors. In 1819 when a county seat was to be laid out, the commissioners bought land from one of the settlers from North Carolina and laid out a town, which they called Fredericktown. This new town gradually absorbed St. Michel so that today the name is preserved only in the Catholic Church and in the name of the township.

Village

The French Creoles of St. Michel built their homes in the American

log cabin A log cabin is a small log house, especially a less finished or less architecturally sophisticated structure. Log cabins have an ancient history in Europe, and in America are often associated with first generation home building by settlers. Eur ...

style, which the French referred to as ''pièces sur pièces'' (horizontal logs) rather than in the French vertical log

Poteaux en terre A post in ground construction, also called earthfast or hole-set posts, is a type of construction in which vertical, roof-bearing timbers, called posts, are in direct contact with the ground. They may be placed into excavated postholes, driven ...

(posts-in-the-ground) or

Poteaux-sur-sol Poteaux-sur-sol ("posts on a sill" – sol is also spelled sole and solle) is a style of timber framing in which relatively closely spaced posts rest on a timber sill. Poteaux-en-terre and pieux-en-terre are similar, but the closely spaced posts ...

(post-on-a-sill) style, with perpendicular log posts set closely together in the ground or on a sill, and with clay chinked in-between filling the interstices. This suggests either that St. Michel housed a lower economic class or that Americans nearby aided the Creoles in house raising and the Creoles accepted the American style of log house construction. The Catholic church of St. Michel was established in 1802 and named after the Archangel Michel, to whom early Christians gave the care of their sick. Whether the church was blessed on St. Michael's day or was dedicated to the patron saint of one of the members, is not known. The original church was a log church.

Population

St. Michel had a population of 65 in the year 1804, and was estimated to have had approximately 100 inhabitants in the years 1815−1816, with 300 inhabitants in the years 1818−1820. Some 250 persons were counted in 1830.

Mining

The purpose of the settlement was to extract lead for the

colony. The French smelted lead ore in the simplest way by piling it on top of logs in pits that were then set alight, leaving the smelted lead to gather at the bottom of the pit, and these log smelters or furnaces numbered around twenty. Eventually, an American miner,

Moses Austin Moses Austin (October 4, 1761 – June 10, 1821) was an American businessman and pioneer who played a large part in the development of the lead industry in the early United States. He was the father of Stephen F. Austin, one of the earliest ...

, arrived in 1797 and built a Scotch hearth, or

reverberatory furnace A reverberatory furnace is a metallurgical or process furnace that isolates the material being processed from contact with the fuel, but not from contact with combustion gases. The term ''reverberation'' is used here in a generic sense of ''rebo ...

, to replace the grossly inefficient log-pit furnaces, and the miners brought their lead to it to be smelted. The construction of the Scotch hearth furnace led to the complete abandonment of log smelting. The cutting of lumber to feed the furnaces also led to a quick depletion of trees in the area. The bonanza community and the wealth generated by mining attracted gamblers and adventurers to St. Michel.

References

{{coord missing, Missouri French colonial settlements of Upper Louisiana Villages in Madison County, Missouri