Pain Court => St. Louis? (fwd)

[Koontz John E]

On Sat, 3 Apr 2004, Michael Mccafferty wrote:
> Does this imply that St. Louis is originally a Spanish designation for the
> place? That would be interesting.

No, it was founded in 1764 by Pierre Laclede and Auguste Choteau (c. 15 at
the time), on a site they had selected the previous year.  They named St.
Louis in honor of Louis IX (the crusader king).  Laclede noted in his
journal that he wondered if it might not become an important place some
day.

He didn't know it, but France had already secretly signed the territory
over to Spain in 1762.  The French in Illinois thought that France would
retain the Missouri even though they realized that the Illinois would be
ceded to England.  San Luis is used in the letter because Spanish document
tend to refer to everything in terms of Spanish equivalents.  (The
documents in the collection are all translated, of course.)  There are
even some Germans around named Juan Couns in censuses, though I don't
think they are relatives.  Anyway, I think that using conversions into
one's own language was the fashion in the 1700s.  So Louis is Luis in
Spanish, but Lewis in English and Ludwig in German, and so on.  I'm not
sure why Paincour isn't "translated" too.  Maybe it didn't seem to make
enough sense to translate.

Ste Genevieve was founded in 1735.  At least that's one story.
Apparently evidence suggests it was actually founded in the 1750s.  I
wonder if its nickname Misere might be a punning reference to Missouri.
That's entirely speculative on my part, of course.  It is rather to the
south of St. Louis, which is south of the mouth of the Missouri.  Ste
Genevieve is prone to flooding, as we were all reminded in 1993.  (See
http://www.stegenevieve.net/sg-floods.htm.)

Incidentally, I looked and there is definitely a Pincourt in Quebec, and
there are Pincourts in France.  It is also attested as a surname.