SHSMO Center for Missouri Studies
605 Elm St.
Columbia, Mo.
The events of the American Revolution and its aftermath led to the settlement of Missouri. In the case of southeastern Missouri, Spanish officials founded New Madrid in 1788 on the site of a village settled by Shawnee-Delaware-Creek-Cherokee bands fleeing west of the Mississippi in the early 1780s. A Revolutionary War veteran, George Morgan, became the Spanish empresario in 1788 and recruited American settlers to the area. Cape Girardeau, founded in 1793 by Louis Lorimier, a British supporter who came to Missouri after his trading post in the old Northwest was burned by American troops, welcomed American families headed by many Revolutionary War patriots beginning in 1795. This program presented by Bill Eddleman, coordinator of SHSMO's Cape Girardeau Research Center, will outline the factors attracting Americans to Spanish Louisiana during this time and the background and Revolutionary War service of some leading settlers of the southeast Missouri region.