Philip François Renault

Philippe François Renault (c. 1686 – 24 April 1755) was a French explorer and favorite courtier of King Louis XV, who left his native Picardy in 1719 for the Illinois Country.

He was to lead efforts to develop mining in the Illinois Country. He was more successful with his concession of land fronting the Mississippi River on which he founded St. Philippe, an agricultural community. It was quickly exporting surpluses to French settlements in lower Louisiana, as well as ones on the mid-Mississippi River which were less successful than those of Illinois.

Career

Renault had been appointed by the Company of the West which acquired the French East India Company and became the Company of the Indies, also in 1719. The Company was formed by the French for the exploitation of their American possessions. Along the way, he purchased 200 African slaves in Santo Domingo, for use in the mines he expected to develop. These men were the first enslaved Africans brought to Illinois or Missouri.

In 1723, Renault was granted “in freehold, in order to make his establishment upon the mines” of a tract of land a league and a half in a width by six in depth on the “Little Marameig” in Upper Louisiana (Missouri); another tract of two leagues “at the mine called the mine of Lamothe;” another of one league in front of Pimeteau on the river Illinois; and “one league fronting on the Mississippi, at the place called the Great Marsh, adjoining on one side to the Illinois Indians, settled near Fort de Chartres, with a depth of two leagues, this place being the situation which has been granted to him for the raising of provisions, and to enable him to furnish then to all the settlements he shall make upon the mines.” Upon the latter grant in Illinois Country, Renault expected to grow the food for his mining operations in the rich, black soil of what would become known as the American Bottom.

He founded a settlement, St Philippe, in the southern part of present day Monroe County, Illinois, about three miles north along the river from Fort de Chartres. Agriculture was the most successful of his enterprises. The community of St. Philippe quickly produced a surplus which it sold to settlers downriver in New Orleans, as well as at other French settlements, such as Arkansas Post, less successful in farming.

Renault's efforts in Illinois to locate exploitable metals were largely futile; in Missouri he fared slightly better, and he is credited with operating the first viable lead mines in Missouri's Lead Belt at La Vieille Mine (Old Mines). He returned to France in 1749, passing his interests in the area on to others. He died intestate and without heirs. In the early and late 19th century, attempts by persons' claiming to represent his estate to reclaim lands he was granted, did not meet with success.

By the late 19th century, the descendants of Renault's brothers Armand and Jacques, both of whom had emigrated to the East Coast of the U.S., had changed the spelling of their name to Reno, an anglicization of the sound. In 1888, the Reno Association, comprising 400 descendants mostly in New York and Pennsylvania, tried to claim the earlier holdings to Renault, without success. By then his former lands in Illinois and Missouri were estimated to be worth $40,000,000.

The deforestation of river banks caused by crews' cutting trees to fuel steamboats led to increased flooding and channel shifts in the Mississippi River in the 19th century. It ate away at St. Philippe, and the village and its archeological resources were lost to the river.