Pain Court => St. Louis?

[Koontz John E]

On Sat, 3 Apr 2004, Rory M Larson wrote:
> Does anyone have a sense of when the site was still
> Pain Court, and when the name shifted to St. Louis?
> Was this shift at the time of St. Louis' foundation
> in 1764, or was it not until later?

As far as I can tell the site was unnamed until the town was founded as
St. Louis.  The nickname followed on the heels of the formal name.

Houck, p. 67, quotes in a letter of October 31, 1769, from Pedro Piernas,
lieut. commanding in St.  Louis, to Alexander O'Reilly, captain general
and governor of Louisiana, the lines:  "I set out for Misera [= St.
Genevieve or Santa Genoveva] on the 6th of December. ...  and could not
... reach Misera until the 29th [of January] ... on the 30th [of February]
I reached Paincour, called San Luis, the second French settlment, which is
20 leagues from the first."

JEK