Acquittances being receipts.......

Donations or gifts of property..........................

Inventories of property of deceased persons......

5

5

3

4

1

2

2

2

2

1

1

1

2

2

194

Documents in all.. ....

All the above enumerated papers were executed by Labusciere, as notary, and ex-officio secretary of the temporary government, in whose custody they were kept until handed over by him to Governor Piernas, May 20, 1770, on which day our infant village had grown to contain 100 wooden and 15 stone houses, a total of 115, with a population of about five hundred souls, in the six years since its commencement in the 1764. year

This house of upright posts, 35 feet front by 25 deep, built by Nicholas Beaugenou, Sr., at the southwest corner of Almond and Main streets, in the year 1765, was one of the first built in St. Louis, and in which the first marriage on record in the archives of St. Louis took place, on April 20, 1766, that of Beaugenou's eldest daughter, Maria Josepha, then in her eighteenth year, to Toussaint Hunaut, a young Canadian trader.

The house was occupied by the Beaugenou family for some years. Subsequently by others until 1815, when it was purchased by Gen. Wm. Clark. It was occupied by Major Mackey Wherry, our first Town Register, for a number of years from about that period, and was removed not many years back to give place to the present brick structure.

BEAUGENOU HOUSE, 1765.

[Drawn by C. Heberer under direction of F. L. Billon.]

ANNALS OF ST. LOUIS.

PART SECOND.

THE SPANISH DOMINATION.

1770-1804.

The Spanish domination in Upper Louisiana dates from May 20, 1770, on which day Capt. Pierre Joseph Piernas, appointed by O'Reilly, assumed authority as lieutenant-governor and military commandant of the upper portion of the province.

Piernas was a Spaniard by birth, and came to New Orleans, a captain in the Spanish service, with Count Ulloa in 1766. He was married in that city to Felicité Portneuf, a French lady of the place, and came to St. Louis with his family in the spring of 1770. On May 20 of that year Capt. St. Ange de Bellerive delivered over to him the possession of this Upper Louisiana, and from that date the Spanish rule on this side commenced.