300 Years of the French in Old Mines

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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.