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| Pleasant Valley
Forest Subdivision occupies land that was originally a homestead plot of
forty acres applied for by Samuel Charles Stuart between 1827 and 1831.
He and his brothers and sisters had |
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recently arrived
in St. Louis from Bowling Green, Kentucky. They had traveled
to the Ohio River in covered wagons, floated down to the Mississippi and
cordelled a boat up river to St. Louis. First settling on land that is
now part of Fairgrounds Park, Samuel decided
he wanted to move further west and laid claim to a plot in |
| Historic
Log Cabin |
| what is now
Pleasant Valley. Here he met Adeline Shepard, a young woman whose family
had moved west from Philadelphia and settled in the Ellisville area prior
to the arrival of Samuel himself. Samuel and
Adeline were married August 25, 1831 and moved into a small log cabin
that Samuel had mistakenly built on another man's land. They moved to
their own property a short distance away and built a four-room cabin with
two rooms on the ground floor, two sleeping rooms above, and a long front
porch that ran the full length of the house. During their life together,
the Stuarts had 11 children and continued to expand the cabin to accommodate
their ever-growing family. |
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| On September
9, 1835, for 25 cents an acre, Samuel Stuart received a land title bearing
the name of President Andrew Jackson. As the story goes, Samuel lacked the
twenty dollars necessary to finalize the grant. Late in the afternoon
of the next-to-last day, a neighbor, Mr. Hamilton, offered Samuel not only
the money but also the use of his |
| fastest horse
to ride into St. Louis to be at the land office when the doors opened the
next morning. The Stuarts continued to purchase land until their farm consisted
of 240 acres, some of which they later had to sell in order to pay
for the college education all of their children
received.
Pleasant Valley was also home to
a community of "Prairie Indians" numbering about 450. Another
story relates that, during the "hungry" month of January, members
of the tribe would appear in the Stuart kitchen, point to flour and
meal, and, once this was received, walk out to the smoke house, take several
hams, give appreciative grunts and leave. Nothing more would be heard
from them until April or May when a dressed deer would be found lying
outside the kitchen door. |
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Today, all that remains
of the Stuart cabin is one of the large ground floor rooms with a large
sleeping room above. The Stuart farm was designated
a Centennial Farm by St. Louis County in 1976 and the cabin is listed in
the 100 Historic Buildings |
| of St. Louis
County. The last Stuart to occupy the farm was Ms. Frances Rachel Stuart,
a great-granddaughter of Samuel and Adeline. Pleasant
Valley Forest was indentured by Ridgley Properties, Inc. on August 6,
1979. The land was purchased from Ms. Stuart so she could pay inheritance
taxes on the homestead. Included in the purchase is the cemetery where
the Stuart family, as well as the families of several other early settlers
who came to farm in Pleasant Valley in the 19th and early 20th centuries,
are buried. |
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