The Midwest Summer Sale 2014
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Please Note: A 15% Buyers' Premium is added to the hammer price of all lots in this sale.
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(About The Images)
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Lot Title:
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Missouri Territorial - Ste Genevieve $1 signed by Auguste Chouteau.
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Description:
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Marie-Therese Bourgeois married French immigrant Rene Chouteau in 1848 and bore him their only child, a son named Auguste, perhaps a year or so later. Chouteau was said to have been abusive and drove his wife away such that she returned to her original hometown of New Orleans where she met Pierre de Laclede and became his common-law wife around 1758. Laclede may have adopted young Auguste Chouteau, and at any rate seems to have provided him with a formal education, later bringing him into his trading business as an assistant.
Laclede desired to set up a trading post in French territory just north of Ste. Genevieve in the Missouri territory, a town that itself had been the first European settlement west of the Mississippi River in 1735. As such, he assembled a cache of supplies and trading goods, and in July, 1763, Laclede, Chouteau and a group of thirty hired men transported the supplies up the Mississippi River to Ste. Genevieve.
A few months prior to this venture, the Treaty of Paris had been signed between France and Great Britain (along with Spain and Portugal), ceding much of France’s possessions in North America to the British. Thus, the land between the east bank of the Mississippi all the way to the Appalachian mountains now fell under British rule. Inevitable post-war upheaval followed and was such that French authorities actually suggested the new arrivals follow other displaced Frenchmen and go back to New Orleans. Instead, Laclede decided to expand his vision for just a trading post into that of an entirely new village. Believing that the French in the area would gravitate to a new community, he instructed Chouteau to begin clearing land on the west bank of the river, so that St. Louis was founded there on February 15, 1764. Laclede and Chouteau both lived out the remainder of their lives in the new St. Louis area, growing their trading business and essentially driving the local economy with their very successful fur trading business.
By 1817, Chouteau was an esteemed and wealthy citizen, having greatly expanded his trading businesses and branched out into land and finance. The Bank of Missouri [territory] was chartered on January 31, 1817 with Chouteau as President, and benefited from designation as an official depository for federal funds. It eventually failed due to bad loans that had been made out to the stockholders of the bank themselves, who ultimately defaulted due to their own financial difficulties. The present offering represents a very rare opportunity to obtain a note hand-signed by Chouteau himself, and despite a grade of perhaps “fine” still presents up in beautiful historic fashion.
This lot may contain an item not certified by ANACS, PCGS, or NGC. While Scotsman Auction Co. is typically conservative in our descriptions of items not certified by one of these companies, we cannot guarantee our grading estimation will match their grade. We highly recommend that collectors seeking items certified by a third-party grading service only bid on items that have already been certified. No lot can be returned because of a variance in judgment with regards to grade.
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Low Estimate:
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$2,000.00 |
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High Estimate:
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$3,000.00 |
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Lot Status:
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Bidding has been closed for this lot. |
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Hammered Price: |
$1,250.00
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Price Realized:
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$1,437.50 |
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Price history for items of the same classification:
No history for this lot classification has been found. |