300 Years of the French in Old Mines: A Narrative History of the Oldest Village in Missouri

The village of Old Mines is the oldest settlement in the state of Missouri. Lead miners were in Old Mines as early as 1719. The founding of Old Mines in 1723 coincides with the land grant awarded to Philippe Francois Renault by French authorities on June 26 1723 to mine lead. Thus the oldest village in Missouri began as a mining town. In 2023 the village marks three hundred years of the French in Old Mines. This book narrates the history of people in remote Louisiana and how they have kept alive a French heritage of culture and customs. The history of Old Mines is tightly bound to the Catholic faith the French settlers brought with them the parish they founded and the church schools rectories and convents they built. The decade of the 2020s is filled with over twenty anniversaries to be marked and celebrated in the oldest mining town in Missouri itself marking its Bicentennial in 2021. This is not a scholarly writing of history; it is a thirty-chapter narrative grounded in research of the continual presence of the French in Old Mines for three hundred years.