One of the first American settlements in the Ste. Genevieve District was at a cluster of land grants on the west side of Rivere Grande, or Big River, in present-day St. Francois County. The vanguard of settlers arrived in 1796, including John, Thomas, and William Alley; John Andrews; Abraham and Andrew Baker; Francis Starnater; and Henry Pagget/Padgett, AKA Henry Fry. Abraham Baker and Thomas Alley discovered ore deposits at the time of their settlement, and opened the mines known as “Alley’s mines” nearby. The community lay roughly on a line between Potosi and Ste. Genevieve.
The settlement finally received a name in 1823, when Thomas George and his son-in-law William Evans purchased two acres from John Baker to build a grist mill. The mill was the nucleus for a growing community. Farmers from a region extending beyond Farmington brought grain to what was the only large mill in the county for some years. The mill sat in the center of the river channel on four tall, square cribs, 16 feet on either side at the base and tapering to six feet square at the top. Prime cedar comprised the cribs and stone filled them. The new village of Big River Mills opened a post office in 1825. George operated the mill until nearly his death in 1840, when he sold it to Steven and John Tyler. The new owners named it Tyler Mill. Demand for mills stimulated construction of five more mills in nearby stretches of Big River, as well.
Local folklore remembers Big River Mills for an event that is supposed to have happened in 1796. The story, as recounted in 1890 by historian Firmin Rozier, is that Henry Pagget or Fry contracted to marry a sister of Aaron Baker. Roman Catholicism was the only religion allowed in Upper Louisiana, so the couple needed to travel to Ste. Genevieve to be legally married. Family members and friends set out with the couple to celebrate the wedding, and Fry loaded pelts and other items for sale in Ste. Genevieve in a wagon. Upon arriving in an open prairie near Terre Blue Creek, nine miles north of present-day Farmington, they encountered a band of Osage.
The band followed the wedding party and confiscated their horses, guns, and Fry’s furs and peltries. Even worse, the Osage stripped the party of their clothing, and in the language of the day, “reducing them to the condition of our first parents in the garden of Eden.” A later addition to the story is that Fry managed to reach a cabin on the outskirts of Ste. Genevieve and get some loaned clothing so the rest of the party could be decent. Pagget lived past 1860, and was purported to be well over 100 years old—although he was more likely no more than 90. A telling of the story by a local politician in 1876 purportedly came directly from Pagget.
Big River Mills persisted throughout much of the 19th century. During the Civil War, rebels ground grain at the mill and local Confederates used it as a meeting place. Big River Mills gradually lost population, the railroad bypassed it, and its post office closed in 1889. The Tyler Mill continued operating into the 1880s, and the owner sold the mill and land in 1899. A newspaper account in 1891 described the latter days of the mill and community, “The silence of desertion is within its walls…and the disintegration of decay is on the once prosperous hamlet.”
