[MUSIC] >> When the Mississippi River destroyed the town of Kaskaskia in the late 1800s, much of the community was lost.

But not all of it.

On a hill above that mighty river sits a home that not only survived multiple floods, but still stands today as a window back to a time when Illinois first became a state.

[MUSIC] I'm Mark Kiesling.

This historic home is our latest stop on Illinois backroads.

[MUSIC] The Pierre Menard Home State Historic Site is located on Kaskaskia Road in Randolph County.

The state of Illinois bought the site in 1929.

It's also on the National Register of Historic Places and designated a National Historic Landmark.

It blends French, Creole and French-Canadian cultures.

[MUSIC] >> This home, even though it's a little bit after the French colonial period, is a good illustration of that because the man, Pierre Menard, comes from Canada.

The home very much comes from Louisiana, and that Creole architecture that we see with the raised basement, the post on sill framing and the dormers and that in the top.

>> Shane Wagner is the site ranger here.

And at nearby Fort Kaskaskia.

He gave us a tour of this home once owned by Pierre Menard, the state's first lieutenant governor, who also helped write the state's first constitution.

>> It's very similar to how it was when Menard and his family would have lived here from 1802 to his death in 1844.

A lot of the items that we have here in the home belonged either to Pierre Menard and his family, or they have a nexus to other Kaskaskia institutions like the Masonic Lodge, for example.

Um, the there's pieces in here that belong to Shadrach Bond, first Governor Ninian Edwards.

>> And so and Bond and Menard were friends.

>> Yeah.

They were political contemporaries.

And, you know, right at the time of Illinois statehood, uh, it's possible, looking at the history of that era, that Pierre Menard might have been the first governor, but he was, um, not naturalized as a citizen until 1816.

So, um, he was selected as the consensus candidate for lieutenant governor, kind of rounding out the ticket.

>> So the leaders of the state of Illinois, when it was made into a state, came from right here.

>> Yeah.

They're all, uh, people who are either like Pierre Menard and Shadrach Bond from Kaskaskia, or they're are people who are coming to Illinois and stopping here first.

All of our notable people in the first many decades of Illinois history have some sort of nexus to Kaskaskia.

>> We're told.

Menard welcomed friends and visiting dignitaries to his home.

And it's possible his daughters entertained those guests on a piano similar to this one.

There is also a card table in the room, a place where the men likely gathered wine decanters and other period pieces.

Most prominent is the painting of Menard above the fireplace.

>> The painting came from the Convent and Academy of the sisters of the visitation, which was a group that Pierre Menard brought here to Kaskaskia in 1833.

The sisters commissioned that painting of Menard in 1839, and then in 1939.

They're located in Saint Louis.

They're still in Saint Louis today.

They donated the painting back to our home.

Their records, too, are a great resource for us about what Kaskaskia was like when they arrived.

You can see the village from an outsider's perspective.

One of the things that one of the nuns says is, where's the town?

And they said, well, you're in it.

This is this is the town.

>> As we surveyed the items in the room, Wagner shared more about Menard's background and what brought him to this area.

>> He actually is born in French Canada in 1766.

That would have been just after the French and Indian War was concluded.

The territories gone to British control.

Um, Menard's father sided with the colonists and the American Revolution.

And that may have something to do with why he leaves and comes to America.

So Pierre Menard leaves his home up there.

It's about 30 miles from Montreal on the Richelieu River.

In 1788 or so, he winds up here at Kaskaskia in 1790, establishes himself in the fur trade.

We think he builds at least a quarter of this home in the year 1802.

He gets involved in politics when Illinois becomes its own territory in 1809.

Pierre Menard is the speaker of the Territorial Assembly.

That's a. You know, when Illinois is a territory, that would be like a federal role.

So that's how he gets a lot of contacts in Washington.

When Illinois becomes a state with Kaskaskia as the capital in 1818, Menard is the first lieutenant governor and serves one term in that capacity.

>> Menard had a very large family, but surprisingly, the home has few bedrooms.

>> And so at the at the back of the home, on both sides.

This home is very symmetrical.

There are two of these small bedrooms.

This one's actually a little larger.

The one on the south side of the home incorporates the stairwell.

And so it's a little, little smaller.

>> And I see these clothes laying on the bed here.

>> Yeah.

So the way that they chose to interpret this many years ago is that they would say, this is the boys room.

That's the girls room.

The other one, um, Menard had 14 children, uh, most of whom lived, did live to adulthood.

So there were a lot of people living in this home.

It was a very busy place.

>> I bet with 14 kids over the years.

>> One of the things that they talk about is that the gallery, you know, the porch would be used as part of the living space.

There's actually a bench out there that's a form of modular furniture, and it can be turned into like a bed.

>> The parents would have used this bedroom on the opposite side of the house.

It also displays an area for sewing or embroidery.

and there is a table set for tea.

Next to the fireplace is a bed warmer.

The family may have used on cold nights.

The girls may have squeezed into this adjoining bedroom, which features a trundle bed with a primitive dowel resting on the pillows.

Adjacent to this room is an office where Menard conducted his fur trading business.

This room was once accessible only from the wraparound porch or gallery.

>> The home is sort of serving as the headquarters of the Kaskaskia branch of the firm of Menard and valet.

The valet in that is Felix, valet from Sainte Genevieve, and the Felix Vallé house still stands as well on its Missouri State Historic site and its combination mercantile and residence.

Um, we're fairly certain this is pure Menard's home office, because the door behind me was likely not here in Menard's time.

That's a later addition.

It's the only way to access this room is from the gallery.

And this would have been the place, you know, where he's conducting the business of his, um, of his fur trade and also, uh, acting as the territorial Indian subagent.

He lived here in his home throughout the time that he was doing that as well.

Uh, that's his secretary, we believe.

And, um, this desk is also from the period where they would have kept the ledger books and things like that.

>> Menard was hired by the US government in 1813 as an Indian subagent for the territory.

He continued in that role until 1833.

Menard found the Native Americans willing trade partners and used his friendly relationship with them to further his fur trading business.

His stock of furs was likely kept in the large attic of the home.

>> We suspect that it's probably part of the working area of the home where, um, you know, people who work for Menard, the enslaved people that were here are probably conducting some of the fur trade business in the attic.

The furs are likely hung there.

Business is being done off the back porch of the home here beside us.

And that's probably how, um, why you've got such a large space with a floor, but no finished walls or anything.

[MUSIC] >> Wagner mentioned enslaved people.

Yes.

Pierre Menard, the successful politician, businessman and Indian liaison, was also a slave owner.

Historians suspect he used slave labor to build the home and the other structures.

[MUSIC] >> There was a controversial side of Pierre Menard.

He was a slave owner, as were many of the French inhabitants of this area during that time.

What can you tell us about that?

>> So, um, there are two forms of slavery that take place on this property.

One it appears that, um, through piers second wife, Angelique Saucier, she's the granddaughter of the commandant who built the fort.

There are in the 1820s, it's recorded some elderly enslaved people here that would have come into Pierre Menard's household through his wife, um, the slaves that Pierre Menard, um, had himself appeared to be a form of indentured servitude that exists in the first decades of of Illinois history.

Um, there have been archaeological digs that have been done here, I think in the late 90s, looking for the cabins that the enslaved people would have lived in, and we believe they were south of the home.

There's actually a lithograph in the basement where you can see what may have been one of those cabins.

So slavery existed on this property probably until the 1840s, we believe, which is, um, not what you think about when you think of Illinois as the land of Lincoln, you know?

So that's an interesting fold in in the story.

[MUSIC] >> Historians say as many as 18 slaves may have lived on this property.

Various forms of slavery existed in Illinois until the adoption of the state's second Constitution in 1848, four years after Menard's death, Menard's history of slave ownership came to the forefront in 2020, prompting the state of Illinois to remove a statue of him from the Capitol grounds.

A statue of Stephen Douglas was removed for the same reason.

[MUSIC] Still, the Menard home serves as a history lesson.

The basement contains a museum depicting the people who lived in this area and their culture, described through artifacts, drawings and photographs.

There you'll see a painting based on a lithograph of what Kaskaskia Village would have looked like in the 1830s, before the great Floods of 1844 and 81.

>> This was a WPA commissioned work around the time the overlook was built, and Menard's home is not visible, unfortunately, but it's right here where the ferry is at.

Okay, so I don't know if the cabin is just an artist thing for perspective, or if it really was a structure that was here.

The lithographer that did this originally in the 1830s Probably would have seen written references to a bridge across the Kaskaskia.

That's something that's attempted by Menard's competitor in business, William Morrison, and he was not successful in bridging the river.

It was, you know, it would get washed away at the at the first high water.

But that's a good illustration of that competition between the two prominent merchants here.

The way that you got to the village, unless you came down this neck of land was across Menard's Ferry right here.

>> And then.

Is this the church?

>> Yes.

Very good.

You notice that that's the Immaculate Conception Church, the original site.

And then one of these structures down here, this plaza was where the Randolph County Courthouse was.

So the courthouse is is one of those buildings likely that's also preserved in modern Kaskaskia.

And this is the visitation academy and convent.

Okay, that we discussed upstairs.

>> You can also see the original interpretive plaques from the site dating back to the 1930s.

Wagner found them in storage and now has them on display.

[MUSIC] As you tour the grounds, you get a better understanding of what life must have been like here.

[MUSIC] We walked behind the home to view the other structures.

[MUSIC] Some are from the 1930s.

Others are as old as the home itself.

>> This is the privy.

>> Yep.

And that is an original, uh, post on sill, uh, privy.

Uh, we know that it's dates from Menard's ownership because it's built with that post on sill framing, just like the house.

If it was later American structure, it would be stud framed or something.

>> It seems awfully far away from the house.

>> Um, we're not certain of its original location.

It's probably been relocated.

>> Okay.

>> Um, It may have been relocated many times, you know, through the years.

>> And then behind here, this is a public restroom that you recently.

Yeah.

>> Yeah.

So we've done some renovations in the restroom.

It's got a new Hvac system.

Ceilings have been redone.

And then that was built in 1930 along with the carriage house behind us.

The original structures here is the home, the summer kitchen, the privy, and the two story building on the hill, which we believe is a smokehouse and a place for salt storage.

Okay.

Um.

>> And this well here.

>> Yeah.

So the well is not, uh, pure Menards, but it does have an interesting story.

When they established Fort Kaskaskia State Park in 1929, they had a spring house over on the entry road to the park.

And they actually trenched a water line in all the way through this bluff.

And this is the well that was fed by that spring house, and it was used until 1995 when we got Chester City water here.

>> And where did the millstones come from?

>> Um, just north of this property are the remnants of one of the oldest water powered mills in Illinois.

It's on private ground, but it was originally called Paget's Mill.

Later it was Riley's Mill.

And we think that, uh, one of those two is from that.

>> Okay.

Now, the kitchen was purposely kept separate from the house, right?

>> That's right.

Um, they were actually in its earliest iteration.

They were separate structures.

And the fact that the roof and the breezeway was built afterward, along with these rear dormers, preserved something very interesting that you almost never see in these French Creole homes.

Um, above the dormers and above this roof addition, there are original shingles on the old roof deck that are probably 220 years old.

And interestingly, they're not cedar like what we use on these buildings today.

They're cottonwood.

Um, but they've even corroborated that with advertisements in the Sainte Genevieve papers from the 1790s where they're selling cottonwood shingles.

>> What was the advantage of having cottonwood shingles?

>> I wouldn't think there would be a whole lot of advantages, but but the one thing is that, um, the cottonwood would likely swell up quite a bit when it's wet and it may have been had a, you know, fairly good degree of waterproofing, but it's interesting they were using Cottonwood because there is a tremendous amount of cedar, um, especially on the Missouri side of the river and even over here.

So they would have had cedar available, but they were using cottonwood originally.

[MUSIC] >> The smokehouse behind the kitchen is currently used for storage and is not open to the public.

In Menard's time, it would have been used for salting and smoking meat.

[MUSIC] There is also a springhouse near the home's north parking lot.

Visitors can look inside and see how the spring water runs through the stone building, which keeps the water free of leaves and other debris.

Besides providing drinking water, the spring kept dairy and other food items cool.

Those items would eventually be brought here to this kitchen, which is open for tours, allowing visitors to see how Menard's family or his servants would have prepared meals.

[MUSIC] >> What was this like?

Originally, when the state took over?

>> So when the state acquired the property in the late 1920s, this was finished in what they were calling a modern kitchen.

So you can imagine there was probably some sort of a, you know, coal stove or an oven in here.

It had a wooden floor.

The wooden floor went all the way through the breezeway to the back of the house.

And there were walls on the sides.

Oh, um, that actually frame this all in.

Okay, so this was one of the first restorations that the state undertook after they acquired the property.

And one thing they were very proud of way back then was the restoration of this very large bake oven.

Um, it actually has its own roof behind the roof, um, and covers a lot of, lot of space to feed the people who lived in the home and worked at the home and so on.

>> So when Pierre Menard lived here, they would do the cooking out here.

So you had a this hearth here opened fire and they could hang their pots.

>> Right.

>> Off of this, do some cooking, and then at the same time use this bake oven for bread.

That's right.

Other things.

And then what is this.

>> So stone uh, wash basin, uh, unusual sight in a home today.

So it's pretty neat that it was preserved for all that time.

One of the reasons that this property in general is in close to original condition is because the states owned it for so long.

Um, since the 1920s, and there's a fairly limited chain of custody between the Menards and the state.

>> The.

The water for the wash basin.

Did it flow in?

>> No, that would just be a drain, I guess.

Okay.

You know your water in a pitcher.

>> So you bring water in, you would clean off things and then it would drain out the back.

That's right.

Okay.

And then this was, I guess would be similar to a prep area or an island in our modern day kitchen.

>> Yeah.

Yeah.

>> Where they would do preparation and the cooking and then to eat, they would take it all inside the main house.

Right.

>> Um, some of these structures have, you know, basement kitchens.

Um, this one doesn't appear to have had that.

This was the kitchen the whole time.

The only kitchen that they used.

>> Having the kitchen separate from the main house also helped reduce the heat inside the home during the summer months.

References from the late 1800s indicate these massive flagstones in the breezeway were moved here by Menard from the original town of Kaskaskia.

>> These are from Kaskaskias original Jesuit monastery, so the core of the village.

Therefore, they're also from Fort Gage.

So George Rogers Clark may have walked on these when he captured Kaskaskia that well.

>> Menard's time at this home ended in 1844.

He died just as Kaskaskia was experiencing its worst flooding to that time.

>> So at the beginning of that event, Pierre Menard passes away.

He's almost 78 years old by that point.

The waters continue to rise, and a few weeks later, the village is inundated a rooftop level people, including the Visitation Sisters who commissioned this painting, are taking refuge here on the lawn.

Um, after that event, the visitation Academy moves to Saint Louis.

The county seat moves to Chester and Kaskaskia persists as this diminished farming village until the breach of the river channels occurs.

In the 1880s.

[MUSIC] >> That breach in 1881 was the start of the Mississippi River, carving away the town.

Over the next decade, local leaders decided to move the bodies of the people buried in old Kaskaskia to safer resting places on Garrison Hill, just north of the home.

The bodies of Pierre Menard and some of his family members were among those exhumed, but they were not moved to Garrison Hill.

[MUSIC] >> This cemetery is separate from Garrison Hill.

What is the.

Why did they put this cemetery here and not bury these people at Garrison Hill?

>> So this is Pierre Menard and a lot of.

Not all of.

But a lot of his immediate relatives are buried here in this plot.

Some of the family wanted Menard to be exhumed and moved to the side of the bond monument at Chester.

Okay.

I remember that had been done about ten years before Garrison Hill.

Um, ultimately this is what was done.

And this was not part of the state's Garrison Hill project.

This land actually still belonged to the Menard family when this happened.

So, um, we have, uh, Pierre, some of his children and grandchildren, uh, buried here at this site.

>> Over the past few years, the state of Illinois has allocated funds for improvements at the historic site.

Wagner and his staff have added new steps that lead from the family cemetery and Fort Kaskaskia down to the Menard home.

They are also working to reclaim some of the perimeter areas lost to invasive trees and plants over the years.

That work is evident on the trail leading from the fort to the home.

Another project is in the works thanks to funding from the county.

It involves the stairway leading to the gallery and the home's front door.

>> The state's been working over the past several years, including before I was here.

The roof was done in 2022, but they've been working to restore the Menard home.

My staff here is doing everything we can with the grounds.

We've done a lot with perimeter maintenance.

Like you said, the trail step reconstruction, utilizing parts of Fort Kaskaskia and different in new ways.

And the next major thing that we're going to be doing here is replacing the front entry stair.

My staff is has already removed the flagstone from the old staircase, and then it's going to be replaced with a parallel wing design stair.

And that's how they were on the home until 1965 when they were replaced with this perpendicular layout.

So we'll be returning it to an earlier era.

Some of the older folks in our community will recognize that, and they'll remember how it had looked, you know, prior to 65.

So we're excited about that.

And that'll be done by this fall.

[MUSIC] >> Pierre Menard and his family may be long gone from these premises, but the home and its history remain.

[MUSIC] As uncomfortable as some of that history is.

It helps us better understand the people who helped settle the land we now call Illinois.

[MUSIC] Until next time, enjoy your travels on Illinois backroads.

[MUSIC]