Louis Blanchette

Who was Louis Blanchette?

Louis Blanchette was a French Canadian explorer in North America in the 18th century. After exploring parts of Missouri, he is remembered for founding the city of St. Charles in 1769.

According to Hopewell's Legends of the Missouri and Mississippi:

In the year 1765, a French Canadian, called Blanchette Chasseur, animated by that love of adventure which characterizes all who have lived a roving and restless life, ascended the Missouri, with a few followers, for the purpose of forming a settlement in the then remote wilderness.

He was one of those who encountered perils and endured privations, not from necessity, but from choice; for he had been born to affluence, and had every indulgence consistent with wealth and station, but from a boy had spurned, with Spartan prejudice, every effeminate trait, and had accomplished himself in every hardy and manly exercise. When he had attained his majority, he sailed for America, then the El Dorado of all the visionary, roving and restless spirits of the age.

According to Hopewell's rather romantic account, Blanchette met another Frenchman at the site of St. Charles in 1765.