St. Joseph Missouri History & Facts

St. Joseph is a city in and the county seat of Buchanan County, Missouri. Small parts of St. Joseph extend into Andrew County. Located on the Missouri River, it is the principal city of the St. Joseph Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes Buchanan, Andrew, and DeKalb counties in Missouri and Doniphan County, Kansas. As of the 2020 census, St. Joseph had a total population of 72,473, making it the eighth largest city in the state, and the third largest in Northwest Missouri.St. Joseph is located roughly thirty miles north of the Kansas City, Missouri, city limits and approximately 125 miles (201 km) south of Omaha, Nebraska.

The city was named after the town's founder Joseph Robidoux and the biblical Saint Joseph.St. Joseph is home to Missouri Western State University. It is the birthplace of rapper and songwriter Eminem, who grew up in and has made his career in Detroit, Michigan. In the nineteenth century, it was the death place of American outlaw Jesse James. It was also the starting point of the Pony Express serving the West.

St. Joseph was founded on the Missouri River by Joseph Robidoux, a local fur trader of French Canadian descent. It was officially incorporated in 1843.In its early days, it was a bustling outpost and rough frontier town, serving as a last supply point and jumping-off point for travelers on the Missouri River toward the "Wild West". It was the westernmost point in the United States accessible by rail until after the American Civil War.

The main east–west downtown streets were named for Robidoux's eight children: Faraon, Jules, Francois (Francis), Felix, Edmond, Charles, Sylvanie, and Messanie. The street between Sylvanie and Messanie was named for his second wife, Angelique.

St. Joseph, or "St. Joe", as it was called by many, was a "Jumping-Off Point" for those migrants headed to the Oregon Territory in the mid-1800s. Such cities, including Independence, and St. Joseph, were where pioneers would stay and purchase supplies before they headed out in wagon trains across the Great Plains. The town was a very lively place.

Between April 3, 1860, and late October 1861, St. Joseph was one of the two endpoints of the Pony Express, which operated for a short period over the land then inaccessible by rail, to provide fast mail service. Along with the mail, the riders carried a small personal Bible. Today the Pony Express Museum hosts visitors in the former stables of the company. St. Joseph is identified by the slogan, "Where the Pony Express started and Jesse James ended."

The town's main hotel was Patee House. In the post-Civil War years, when the economy was down, the hotel was used for a time by the Patee Female College. It was occupied by the St. Joseph Female College up to 1880.

Famous Peoples From St. Joseph Missouri

Charles S. L. Baker

Charles S. Lewis Baker (1859–1926) was an American inventor, who patented the friction heater.

Baker was born into slavery on August 3, 1859, in Savannah, Missouri. His mother, Betsy Mackay, died when he was three months old, leaving him to be brought up by the wife of his owner, Sallie Mackay, and his father, Abraham Baker. He was the youngest of five children, Susie, Peter, Annie, and Ellen, all of whom were freed after the Civil War. Baker later received an education at Franklin College. His father was employed as an express agent, and once Baker turned fifteen, he became his assistant.Baker worked with wagons and linchpins, which sparked an interest in mechanical sciences.

Baker worked over the span of decades on his product, attempting several different forms of friction, including rubbing two bricks together mechanically, as well as using various types of metals. After twenty-three years, the invention was perfected in the form of two metal cylinders, one inside of the other, with a spinning core in the center made of wood, that produced the friction.Baker started a business with several other men to manufacture the heater. The Friction Heat & Boiler Company was established in 1904, in St. Joseph, with Baker on the board of directors. The company worked up to $136,000 in capital, equal to nearly $4 million in 2018.

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