Historic St. Louis: 250 Years Exploring New Frontiers

T H E U N F U L F I L L E D P R O M I S E S
O F A N N I V E R S A R I E S
Major public anniversary celebrations represent the best and worst aspects of history.
They attract broad interest and temporarily make information about the past more popular,
but such popularity often encourages fleeting entertainment over lasting enlightenment
and the marketing of silly souvenirs instead of respect for serious research. Anniversaries
highlight the difference between popular heritage—often flawed personal memories,
mere rumors, and sheer fantasies about the past—and professional history, the disciplined
accumulation of accurate, verifiable evidence about events that no one remembers. The
arrival of the new millennium illustrated those differences. The many millions of people
who participated in that massive global revelry celebrated the wrong year—revealing an
astonishing level of ignorance about chronology in a commemoration that should have
been all about chronology.
St. Louisans have long had their own problems with chronology and seem incapable of
reaching a consensus about the correct founding date of their city. The Official Bicentennial
Celebration in 1964 honored the wrong “birth date” of February 14, and it has been
virtually impossible to alter erroneous personal memories with professional research ever
since. A popular publication recently proclaimed that “an actual date of the city’s
founding…is unknown due to the lack of documents from 1764 and inconsistencies of
these papers.” That is a lie fabricated by a PR promoter pretending to know history.
Historians, like lawyers, give far more credence to written records than hearsay
accounts, and the only founding date in a surviving manuscript written by an eyewitness
(the city’s eminent co-founder, Auguste Chouteau) is February 15, 1764, which he
consistently confirmed several times between 1804 and 1825—including testimony
under oath. All of the earliest historians of St. Louis accepted and repeated that date,
and the city’s first official public celebration of its founding was held on Monday,
February 15, 1847. But flawed English translations of Chouteau’s Narrative of the Founding
of St. Louis in 1858 and 1911 misread his “5” for an inaccurate “4”—and all of the leading
city historians in 1964 were too careless to note that discrepancy. That error proliferated
like a computer virus. As more and more citizens celebrated the wrong date in the past
fifty years (unfortunately made more popular due to its association with Valentine’s Day),
flawed memories became resistant to verified, irrefutable evidence from experts.
Once the mistakes of the early translators became widely known, however, all recent
scholarly historians have agreed that February 15 is correct. And national, neutral
commentators cannot fathom the local dispute, as when Charlie Rose on the CBS Morning
News wished St. Louis a happy birthday on February 15, 2013. Unless St. Louisans stop
trivializing historical dating as a personal whim, they will continue to perpetuate fictitious
heritage instead of factual history. How can we expect young students to respect history if
our most mature citizens disregard that most basic fact about their hometown? And how
many other of our biased beliefs defy accuracy and honesty?
Area, reminding them that human potential
and commercial capital for 250 years have
resolved crises far worse than those of today.
Sadly, however, few residents appreciate those
major milestones of impressive leadership
that stimulated civic loyalty in past generations.
The most relevant, resonating history is
usually local and personal, starting with an
awareness of family genealogy, progressing
to an appreciation of one’s unique neighborhood,
and resulting in a broader, advanced
understanding of the hometown and what it
has contributed to the state, the nation, and
the world.
H I S T O R I C S T . L O U I S
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