Jefferson Barracks and National Cemetery

Jefferson Barracks

Two days after purchasing the property in 1826, the first military troops arrived on the grounds, the next year it was named to honor Thomas Jefferson who had died the year earlier and was designated an Infantry School of Practice.

Stone that was over the main gate was found buried in the dump after being missing for about 50 years.

Men from JB have been involved in every war or conflict since the Black Hawk War of 1832, that year the Dragoons (later renamed Calvary) were formed and trained to fight both mounted and dismounted and stationed here.

During the Civil War a hospital was built, by the end of the war it had treated over 18,000 soldier from both sides.

The first parachute jump from an airplane was made here on the parade grounds March 1 1912

During WWI the base was used for recruiting and training,

In the 30's it was also used for the Citizens Military Training Camp, later to become ROTC.

WWII it was a major recruiting and training center with tens of thousands of troop passing through.

1946 following the end of WWII it was decommissioned as a Military Post.

More then 230 General Officers Passed through JB during its time,from Cook the Indian fighter to General Eisenhower, the one that missed JB was General Custer and look how that worked out for him.

Today it is divided up and contains two county parks, a National Guard Base, a National Cemetery and a VA Hospital.

We started out at the visitors center and were met by a lady that has lived in the area since before WWII and has a great memory about everything that has happened in this area. She not only answered every question that we had but told us about enough places to go and see to last us two days.

Our first stop was at one of the two museums, this one changes displays every few months and wasn't exactly what we were looking for.

The second one was all about JB and this is what we wanted. They have a great history of the base and cover it from the start till after it was closed and then some. We spent about a hour here and its not a very big museum, one of the volunteers walked us through to make sure we didn't miss any of the little interesting things.

As a kid we had a huge Army surplus store near by and we were still using these when I was in High School.

Click to read
A great story, escape from lockup, steal a plane and end up with the Medal of Honor.

From here we drove over to the National Cemetery, this has to be the largest, not counting Arlington, cemetery we have ever been to, National or not. We always make a stop at the National cemeteries (this makes about 45) but this one needs a at least a few hours to park and walk around.

The cemetery picture were taken at different areas of the cemetery just to show you how big this place is and how many graves are here. I have not idea how many graves are here but they told us that they average 21 burials a day.
NOTE: After some checking I found out that as of 04/01/10 there were 180,000 graves.

There are eight MOH burials here,a few recently discovered bodies from both WWII and Vietnam that were identified by DNA, a Minuteman that fought at Lexington and Concord, all of the graves from Fort Bellefontaine were moved here, 1,140 Confederate Soldiers, 2 German and 5 Italian POW's, 564 Group Burials the largest consists of 175 victims of the 56th United States Colored Infantry and a lot more that I can't remember. This were the things that the lady at the visitors center told us about, we managed to see a few things but will have to return to really do it justice.

An interesting thought.

I think the most unique grave is is that of 1st Lt. Michael Joseph Blassie who was interred in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for 14 years until his mother insisted on DNA testing that identified him and had his remains moved to Jefferson Barracks.

It's been a fun week here in St Louis, when we were here before (Camped on the north side) we did all the downtown stuff, we're glad that we camped on the south side this time since we were able to see a lot of things that would have been to long of a drive last time.

College football Saturday, tough day for us Michigan vs Michigan State both undefeated, and then moving day Sunday.

US Grant - Missouri Gardens

White Haven, Home of the 18^th President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant.

That's where we started our day at, it is now under the control of the US National Park Service. They start you out with a 20 minute film that explains how Grant came to White Haven and his life here. After the film a Ranger takes you on a tour of the house, then they turn you loose to wander the grounds and the museum.

The house never was painted white.

The Ranger explained that after graduating from West Point Grant was stationed at Jefferson Barracks about 5 miles from here, his roommate's family owned White Haven and he made Grant promise to stop by and visit with them. Grant visited once a week until their daughter Julia returned from school in St Louis, after they met he visited everyday. They had a secret engagement and Grant was shipped of to fight in the Mexican War. They wrote each other every day and when he returned they were married.

We found out a lot of little interesting twist that took place during his life, such as his father worked as an apprentice for a tanner side by side with John Brown and would not attend the wedding because it took place in Dent's (Grants father-in-law) house and Dent owned 30 slaves. Another thing was that Grant never wanted a life in the military, he was doing what his father wanted him to do when he went to the Point, he always wanted to be a farmer.

What we thought would be about an hour stop turned into a very interesting and informative three hours.

We grabbed a quick lunch then stopped by the Penzey's Spice store to stock up on a few things, then it was over to the Missouri Botanical Gardens.

This is one of our very favorite gardens, everything is spotlessly clean, always flowers in bloom and special displays scattered around the grounds. Since this is our second time here in the last three years I'll just post a few pictures.

Water lily










Glass floats in with the lily pads










Clematis going to seed










The yellow thingys look to be hand blown glass.

French Mississippi

It was another long day today, we left the rig around 9:30 ended up driving about 125 miles and got home around 5:00. For us this is a very long day.

We started out heading south on the interstate for about 5 miles before it went down to one lane and was stop and go traffic, mostly stop, so we got off the next exit and just took the backroads. Our first stop was in the town of Sainte Genevieve,MO, our reason for going here was to take the ferry across the river to Illinois but the town looked to interesting to just drive through. We ended up spending about two hours here walking around and touring two of the homes. Sainte Genevieve is a french riverfront settlement started around 1750, in 1785 it was destroyed by a fllod and the citizen moved the city back from the river three miles. The two homes we toured were built in the late 1700's and are mostly original, most of the building in the historic district were built in the mid 1800's and are still in use.

The bottom of the shoes are wood and the tops leather.


This is a Bread Cage, it was mounted about 4 feet off the floor and had a lock to prevent the kids from getting in.

We found out that only the rich hand foot lockers with a domed top, Since another foot locker could not be stacked on the rounded dome, their bag was always on top.

It turns out that we didn't take the ferry, it was $12.00 and would have only saved us about 20 miles of driving and we would have had to wait for it, but we did find a great little town that will come back to another time. Besides the Historic district, they had a ton of little shops with artsy things, crafts and eating places. One, the Old Brick House, which is the first brick building in Illinois and is now a restaurant and Inn.

We crossed over the Mississippi into Chester, the home town of Popeye the Sailor Man, but that's another story.

Next stop was the Pierre Menard House in Kaskaskia, he was the first Lt Governor of Illinois and Kaskaskia was the first state capitol of Illinois. The house build in the early 1800's, at a cost of over $3000, is one of the only surviving buildings from the flood that destroyed the town.

Click to enlarge and read about the floor that destroyed the first Capitol of Illinois and see how the Mississippi changed it's course and history.

Some of the 3000+ graves that they dug up and move to this location because of the flood, the original cemetery along with the town is now under the Mississippi.

History of Fort Kaskaskia.

Onto Fort de Chartres,which was first manned in the very early 1700's, the first two forts were small outpost type but during the French Indian War ( 1753) France built a large stone fort which after the war was occupied by the British for a short time then abandon and it fell to ruins. The original stone foundations were still there when the state of Illinois rebuilt it to its original state.

One of the original foundations.

Six to eight soldiers would sleep in this super king size bed.

The Chapel

This is the Powder Magazine and is the oldest building in Illinois.









This is a picture they have on display showing the fort during the 1993 flood.

Enlarge the picture on the right and look for the bluffs in the background, during the 1993 flood the Mississippi reached those bluffs over a mile away.

Time to fight our way through rush hour traffic and call it a day.