Peter A. Sarpy was born in
St. Louis in 1804. His father Gregoire Berald Sarpy was born in
New Orleans in 1764 and moved to St. Louis in 1786;
Gregoire Sarpy was one of 10 children of Charles and Susanne Trenty Sarpy, immigrants from
Fumel,
Gascony,
France. He was christened Pierre Sylvester Grégoire Sarpy, but he later anglicized his name. He also took his mother's maiden name, L'Abadie, using "A" for his middle initial. Peter's father was Grégoire Sarpy, who died in 1824. Peter had two brothers. The family was
French Creole from Louisiana. They joined other ethnic French in migrating to the growing town of St. Louis after the
Louisiana Purchase in 1803 by the United States. The lucrative fur trade and much of the economy of St. Louis was originally dominated by ethnic French families. They established trading posts along the upper Missouri River and also to the Southwest in Spanish territory.
Nebraska Territory In 1824 at the age of 19, Sarpy went to the upper
Missouri River, in the
Nebraska Territory, to work at the
American Fur Company's trading post at
Council Bluff, north of present-day
Bellevue, Nebraska. He was based at Fort Bellevue until 1831. Cabanné's Post and
Pilcher's Post, the latter established at Bellevue by the
Missouri Fur Company, competed for the fur trade of area Indian tribes: the
Omaha,
Ponca,
Otoe, and
Pawnee. The Missouri Fur Company was founded by
French Creole families of St. Louis. Some of their ancestors had migrated to the new settlement of St. Louis in the late eighteenth century from farms in western Illinois. They left when the latter area was transferred from French to British control following Great Britain's victory over France in the
Seven Years' War. More migrated after the
American Revolution, as they wanted to evade US Protestant rule in Illinois. The fur trade in the region yielded such profits that for decades it was the most important driver of the St. Louis economy. In 1821 it represented $600,000 of the town's annual commerce of $2 million. Sarpy later established a trading post and supply point for white settlers and pioneers on the
Iowa side of the upper
Missouri River. It went by various names, including Sarpy's Point and the "Trader's Post". In 1832 Cabanné ordered Sarpy to head a group of American Fur Company employees to take over a
keelboat and goods which belonged to a competing company. Because of its profits, the fur trade business had cutthroat competition. After they were caught, US authorities ordered Cabanné and Sarpy to leave the Indian Territory for a year. The company replaced Cabanné with
Joshua Pilcher at Cabanné's Trading Post in North Omaha. Sarpy operated the Council Bluff trading post during 1835.
Colorado Sarpy moved westward the next year, and in 1837 he established
Fort Jackson on the upper
South Platte River in present-day
Colorado. Financed by Pratt, Chouteau, and Company, Sarpy established the fort with the help of
Henry Fraeb, an experienced trapper and former Rocky Mountain Fur Company man. At Fort Jackson, the two traded tin ware, traps, clothes, blankets, powder, lead, and whiskey for pelts. Sarpy did well at this trading post, maintaining an inventory of $12,000 and paying his employees $200 a year. Bent, St. Vrain & Company bought out Fort Jackson to avoid competing with the Sarpy operation. After the sale, Sarpy cut ties with Fraeb. Fraeb was killed in 1850 by Sioux Indians (
Lakota) along the
Snake River.
Returning to Nebraska In 1838, Sarpy returned to the Bellevue area and built another trading post. He lived primarily at Fort Bellevue for the next twenty-six years. Sarpy expanded his ferry business in two other locations: to cross the
Elkhorn River at Elkhorn City, later called
Elk City, and also at a fork of the
Loup River near present-day
Columbus. By the 1850s, his fleet included a steam-powered ferry. Through his efforts, in 1849 a United States post office, mark of a rising town, was established in Bellevue. Following the United States' negotiation in 1854 of a treaty by which the
Omaha people ceded their land in Nebraska, that year Sarpy was among the group that laid out the town of
Bellevue. In 1857 Sarpy joined
Stephen Decatur and others in founding
Decatur along the Missouri in northeastern
Burt County. Sarpy and his family moved to
Plattsmouth in 1862. He died there on January 4, 1865. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery in
St. Louis, Missouri. ==Marriage and family==