SCHOLARSHIP FUNDRAISER!!
$20 per Ticket – from any chapter director.
1st Prize ~ **Henry Golden Boy Lever Action 30/30*
2nd Prize ~ **Framed Re-Print of Robert E. Lee’s Map of the Harbor of St. Louis**
Only 200 raffle tickets available!
All proceeds benefit the St. Louis Chapter Scholarship Fund.
For ticket purchases:
This document brings together a fascinating combination of people who lived and worked in St. Louis at the same time: two famous Civil war generals from opposing sides, the father of modern gastric study, and one of the best known explorers in American history.
Long before the outbreak of the Civil War, Robert E. Lee served in the Army Corps of Engineers. In 1838, at the age of 31, Lt. Lee was assigned to St. Louis to study the river and make recommendations to fix the problem of silt filling the harbor and making it difficult for boats to use.
During part of the time that Lee was in St. Louis he lived, along with his family, on what are now the Arch grounds as a tenant on property belonging to William Clark, of Lewis and Clark fame. In this same area on the north end of the park ground, Clark owned the northern half of Block 12, located at First Street and Vine, a block south of the Eads Bridge. On this property he had built a large home, blacksmith shops and warehouses near the river, a small cottage for his son to live in, and a 100-foot long building housing his Indian Council Chamber and museum. During the early portion of 1838, Clark rented the cottage to the Lee family (Clark’s son had acquired a home of his own), and the upper level of the museum building to the physician Dr. William Beaumont, known as the “Father of Gastric Physiology.” Clark didn’t get to spend much time with his tenants; he died later that year (on September 1) at the age of sixty-eight.
National Park Service Page about Robert E. Lee’s Map of the Harbor of St. Louis