This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Feb. 5, 2010 - In “From New Madrid to Claverach: How an Earthquake Spawned a St. Louis Suburb,” author James Sherby traces the development of a St. Louis county suburb that has its roots in a 200-year-old earthquake in the “bootheel” region of southeastern Missouri.
When the earthquakes of 1811-1812 erupted along the New Madrid fault, the Mississippi River changed not only its course, but also many lives. The federal government issued certificates to those who lost their land for unincorporated property westward of the river. Sherby tracks certificate number 465 from slave-owning farmland to one of St. Louis County's most highly valued properties, the Claverach neighborhood in Clayton.
The Beacon asked Sherby to write about what went into writing his book. Here's his response:
Writing a book is an ambitious project, and one that I did not set out to undertake. I had only intended to research the history of an area of Clayton in connection with an application for the National Register of Historic Places, and then return to my normal activity as a lawyer. However, in the course of the research I uncovered many historic events associated with that area and its early owners that I thought would be interesting to others. Several fortuitous events left me with no other choice but to start researching my book and sharing the stories.
After six months of research, I met Harry Boland, grandson of the last owners of much of the property before it was subdivided. We got acquainted, and he graciously shared pictures of the family and land dating back to the 1860s that he had never shown outside his immediate family.
Many of the early owners and individuals associated with the property have notable stories. he first is Bartholemi Tardiveau, a young man from France who came to America during the Revolutionary War and later migrated west to the Mississippi River region controlled by the Spanish. There he bought land in Nuevo Madrid (New Madrid) where he developed a flour mill. The mill went bankrupt, and he died later in 1801. His land and the name of Tardiveau were to continue on in history.
Pierre Menard of Kaskaskia, Ill., prominent in this area during the early 1800s, administered Tardiveau's estate in New Madrid. He still owned Tardiveau's property at the time of the great New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12 and when the New Madrid Relief Act was passed in 1817. This act allowed individual landowners to exchange their damaged land for a certificate entitling them to an equal amount of public land in the Missouri Territory.
Menard submitted a claim and obtained a certificate, but did not really want to spend all that time and money on surveys so he quickly sold the 204 acres to a St. Louis lawyer, Robert Wash, who was familiar with local real estate transactions. In 1818, Wash became the owner of New Madrid Certificate 465 and two years later located the certificate on the property that was later to be included in Clayton's city limits.
Wash, the third Missouri Supreme Court justice, was a wealthy lawyer, landowner, gentleman farmer who enjoyed using the land for fox hunting. He was personally involved in at least two suits where slaves in his household sued for their freedom. The compelling accounts of these “freedom suits” are told in a separate chapter of the book based on the court files and a rare book written by one of the freed slaves years later.
150 acres of the 204 acres were initially developed by Dr. John Kennedy, a frontier doctor who built his home on the first farm in 1835. His home is described in detail in the book and consisted of three dwellings: living and bedrooms, eating room, and kitchen with servant/slave sleeping quarters. Additional farm buildings were built after the mid 1800s by the subsequent owners: Benjamin Franklin Thomas who named the farm Claverach (a Welsh term for clover fields), and then Benjamin's daughter Katherine and her husband John Boland. In 1924, the land was sold and developed as a residential subdivision. It was designed by the well-known landscape architect Julius Pitzman, the so-called “Father of the Private Streets” in St. Louis.
Robert E. Carr and his wife Sarah Block Carr purchased the remaining 54 acres of Robert Wash's estate when he died in 1859. The Carrs developed their land as a country estate and rented some of the land to Martin Hanley's neighboring farm. Robert Carr also enjoyed his retirement on the estate he named Carrswold, a name that has been adopted by the subdivision there today.
The development of this Clayton neighborhood and the lives that it touched are detailed in the book along with a collection of photographs, maps, and documents illustrating Claverach's rich history.