Believed to be spread from Irish immigrant ships from England to the United States, cholera spreads throughout the Mississippi river system, killing over forty-five hundred in St. Louis and ...

Saint Louis University School of Law becomes the first law school west of the Mississippi River in  1843.

John C. Frémont had broken camp in California and headed east across the Great Basin to the vicinity of the Great Salt Lake and finally east across the Colorado Rockies.

He returns in August 1844 to Saint Louis, having verified the existence of the Great Salt Lake and the enormous interior drainage field that is the Great Basin, proving the nonexistence of the San Buenaventura River that was thought to flow from the Rockies to California, and showing that the South Pass is the route of choice through the mountains.

George Catlin, born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, had early abandoned a brief career as a lawyer.

Claiming his interest in America’s 'vanishing race' had been sparked by a visiting American Indian delegation in Philadelphia, he sets out to record the appearance and customs of America’s native people.

Catlin had begun his journey in 1830 when he accompanied General William Clark on a diplomatic mission up the Mississippi River into Native American territory.

St. Louis had become Catlin’s base of operations for five trips he has taken between 1830 and 1836, eventually visiting fifty tribes.

The St. Louis Fire starts on May 17, 1849, when a steamboat catches fire.

The fire destroys a significant part of the city and many of the steamboats using the Mississippi River and Missouri River.

The flames leap from the burning steamboats to buildings on the shore and is soon burning everything on the waterfront levee for four blocks.

The fire extends to Main Street westward and crossing Olive Street

It completely guts the three blocks between Olive and 2nd Street and goes as far south as Market Street

It then ignites a large copper shop three blocks away and burns out two more city blocks.

The volunteer firemen, after laboring for eight hours, are nearly completely demoralized and exhausted.

The entire business district of the city appears doomed unless something is done.

Six businesses in front of the fire are loaded with kegs of black powder and blown up in succession.

Captain Thomas B. Targee of Missouri Company No. 5 dies while he is spreading powder into Phillips Music store, the last store chosen to be blown up.

This fire is the largest and most destructive fire St. Louis has ever experienced.

When the fire is finally contained after eleven hours, four hundred and thirty buildings are destroyed, twenty-three steamboats along with over a dozen other boats are lost and three people have died including a Fire Captain.

As a result of these fires, a new building code will require new structures to be built of stone or brick and an extensive new water and sewage system will be started.

Washington University in St. Louis, founded as Eliot Seminary on February 22, 1853, had been conceived by seventeen St. Louis business, political, and religious leaders concerned by the lack of institutions of higher learning in the Midwest.

Missouri State Senator Wayman Crow and Unitarian minister William Greenleaf Eliot, grandfather of the poet T.S. Eliot, led the effort.

The university's first chancellor is Joseph Gibson Hoyt.

Crow had secured the university charter from the Missouri General Assembly in 1853, and Eliot had been named President of the Board of Trustees.

Early on, Eliot had solicited support from members of the local business community, including John O'Fallon, but Eliot had failed to secure a permanent endowment.

Washington University is unusual among major American universities in not having had a prior financial endowment.

The institution has no backing of a religious organization, single wealthy patron, or earmarked government support.

During the three years following its inception, the university bears three different names.

The board first approves "Eliot Seminary," but William Eliot is uncomfortable with naming a university after himself and objects to the establishment of a seminary, which would implicitly be charged with teaching a religious faith.

He favors a nonsectarian university.

In 1854, the Board of Trustees had changed the name to "Washington Institute" in honor of George Washington.

Naming the University after the nation's first president during a time of bitter national division is no coincidence.

Americans universally admired George Washington as the father of the United States and a symbol of national unity.

The Board of Trustees believes that the university should be a force of unity in a strongly divided Missouri.

In 1856, the University amends its name to "Washington University."

The university will amend its name once more in 1976, when the Board of Trustees votes to add the suffix "in St. Louis" to distinguish the university from the nearly two dozen other universities bearing Washington's name.

Colonel Nathaniel Lyon, now a fanatical abolitionist, is transferred in February 1861 to St. Louis in Missouri, a state sharply divided between a pro-Confederate governor, Claiborne F. Jackson, and a pro-Union legislature, with a valuable arsenal in St. Louis as the prize for the victor.

Lyon and his company are assigned to bolster the weak defenses of the arsenal, which contains 60,000 muskets, 90,000 pounds of powder, 1.5 million ball cartridges, 40 field pieces and the machinery for manufacture of arms.

Also located downtown is the Federal Sub-Treasury which houses over a million dollars in gold and silver.

As both facilities are severely under guarded, Lyon is ordered to fortify the compounds.

Arming twenty-five hundred volunteers loyal to the Union, he inducts them into Federal service as per his instructions from Washington.

The Missouri Volunteers elect Lyon general of their regiment by general consensus.

Colonel Nathaniel Lyon grows suspicious when Governor Jackson calls out the Missouri state militia, allegedly to train for home defense, and disguises himself as a farm woman to spy on the militia's camp.

Concluding that Jackson intends to use the militia to seize the arsenal for the Confederacy, Lyon gathers his command of about seven thousand men and starts on a six mile journey toward “Camp Jackson”, arriving from several directions and surrounding the camp.

Lyon demands and receives the camp's unconditional surrender.

When he parades his eight hundred prisoners through St. Louis, a riot breaks out in the city, which remains on the edge of chaos with violence erupting sporadically.

Lyon is officially promoted to brigadier general on May 17.

Lyon angrily declares war on Jackson’s State Guard under the command of General Sterling Price in June, despite Lincoln’s assurance to Southerners in his first inaugural address that the North would not initiate aggression.

Jackson responds by openly declaring for the Confederacy and calling for outright insurrection.

Lyon mounts a campaign to drive him from the state.

Union Major General John Charles Frémont, in command of the newly created Western Department, proclaims on August 30 that slaves of Missourians fighting against the U. S. are free.