Two major European allies assisted the fight for American Independence: France and Spain. One of the consequences of the alliance with Spain was a more favorable view of Americans by the Spanish authorities in Louisiana. France ceded Louisiana to Spain in the 1762 Treaty of Fontainebleau. Few Spanish colonists settled, and the Spanish presence largely consisted of officials in leadership positions. The authorities desired more settlement to provide economic benefits from Louisiana.
George Morgan was a Revolutionary War veteran and entrepreneur who visited the West from the time of the 1762 treaty. He acquired land from Native Americans, but the grant was not considered valid by the U. S. government. Searching for other economic opportunities, he corresponded with Don Diego Gardoqui, the Spanish minister in Washington, and convinced him of the importance of American colonization of Louisiana. Under the deal they transacted, Morgan would receive a grant extending from Cinque Hommes in modern Perry County to the mouth of the St. Francois River in Arkansas, extending 12-15 miles inland. The grant encompasses 12-15 million acres. The deal also included tax exemption for American settlers and the right to self-government. Morgan would offer cheap land to settlers from his grant.
Morgan desired a site near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers for a settlement and commercial center to be named New Madrid. A small settlement already existed at the site, made in 1783 by Francois and Joseph LeSieur, Canadian trappers who traded with Shawnee, Delaware, Muskogee, and Cherokee forced west of the Mississippi for siding with the British during the war. The trading post was named “L’Anse a la Graise,” translated as “cove of grease.” The name’s origin is uncertain but may have referred to stores of bear meat kept for sale. The site was on the east bank of St. Johns Bayou on a low ridge, heavily timbered and with access to a clear lake.
Morgan had a grand vision for his town. He assembled an expedition of colonists, surveyors, and others to proceed from Pennsylvania down the Ohio to the site of the town. His detailed plan was a town centered on an existing lake. On each side, 100-foot-wide streets would be decorated with trees spared from cutting. Another street 120 feet wide would lead from the Mississippi. A 12-acre public park would be set aside at the city’s center, and forty lots of one and a half acres each set aside for public works or uses. Another twelve acres would be at the King’s disposition, and 5-acre lots outside the city reserved for the first six hundred settlers.
Morgan had his surveyors map the town and developed detailed plans for how to disperse land to settlers. The expedition members constructed cabins and a storehouse, made gardens to grow food, and cleared about one hundred acres in “the most beautiful meadow in the world” to grow corn, hemp, flax, cotton, tobacco, and potatoes.
What ultimately doomed Morgan’s vision was a combination of a misunderstanding about the security of his grant from the Spanish and the intervention of the American official James Wilkinson, who was a paid Spanish agent and viewed Morgan as a threat to his schemes. The Spanish withdrew much of their support, and Morgan left Louisiana, his plans undone. However, New Madrid was established a mile south of the present town and on a lesser scale. The village and fort built at the site collapsed into the river over the years, whereupon the town moved to its present site.
