Joseph Robidoux
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Joseph Robidoux III (1783-1868) established the Blacksnake Hills Trading Post that eventually became St. Joseph, Missouri.
Robidoux was the son of Joseph Robidoux II and Catherine Rollet. He spent most of his childhood in St. Louis, Missouri, where his father introduced him to the fur trade at an early age. In 1799, at the age of 16, young Joseph was already accompanying fur traders up the Missouri River.
In 1803, Robidoux's father sent him to organize a trading post at Fort Dearborn, IL, site of present-day Chicago. His early success there irritated other traders, who engaged Indians to harass Joseph and eventually drive him from the area.
In 1805, Robioux's wife of four years, Eugenie Delisle, died. She and Joseph had had two children, a daughter, Messanie, who preceded her mother in death, and a son, Joseph F. Robidoux.
In 1809, Robidoux established a trading post near the site of present-day North Omaha, Nebraska. In 1813, he married Angelique Vaudry, with whom he had six sons and a daughter (Faraon, Julius, Francis, Felix, Edmond, Charles and Sylvanie). Robidoux remained in the Council Bluffs area until 1822, when the American Fur Company bought him out and offered him $1,000 a year not to compete with them.
Robidoux returned to St. Louis, where he lived a tame life as a baker and confectioner. In 1826, he was hired by the American Fur Company to establish a trading post at the Blacksnake Hills (near the site of present day Saint Joseph, Missouri.) He remained their employee for four years, at the salary of $1,800 a year, before becoming an independent trader.
Robidoux prospered in the years between 1830 and 1843, employing as many as twenty Frenchmen to engage in trade with the Indians to the west of his post.
Robidoux's settlement was illegal at the time. When Missouri entered the union in 1821, the state's western boundary was based on the Kaw River mouth in the Kansas City West Bottoms (approximately 94 degrees 36 minutes West longitude). The land where St. Joseph now is belonged by treaty to the Ioway Tribe and the combined Sac Tribe and Fox Tribe.
Robidoux was the most spectacular example of several white settlers who encroached on Indian land. Faced with the possibilities of more encroachment the tribes in 1836 agreed to sell what is now the northwest corner of Missouri for $7,500 to the federal government in a deal at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas that was presided over by William Clark (of Lewis and Clark fame). The transaction called the Platte Purchase added an area almost the combined size of Rhode Island and Delaware to the State of Missouri.
[edit] Home of Joseph Robidoux
Built prior to 1830. Located at NW corner of 2nd & Jules in Saint Joseph, Missouri. First building in Saint Joseph. Structure later removed to Krug Park.
In 1843, Robidoux engaged two men, Frederick W. Smith and Simeon Kemper to design a town for him. Under Kemper's plan the town was to have been called Robidoux, a feature Kemper thought would appeal to Robidoux. However, Robidoux found Smith's plan more appealing as it would feature much narrower streets, thus leaving more land for Joseph to sell in the form of lots.
Plans for the town were filed with the clerk of Common Pleas in St. Louis on July 26, 1843. Shortly thereafter, Joseph began selling lots, with corner lots going for $150.00 and interior lots $100.00.
Saint Joseph prospered quickly in the years after it's founding, growing from a population of 800 in 1846 to 8,932 in 1860. Joseph Robidoux remained a prominent citizen and led in many development issues until his death, at the age of 85, in 1868.
