Robert Street Bridge & Louis Robert

The Robert Street Bridge

Photo by Gabe Ormsby © 2005 Friends of the Mississippi River

Site submitted by: Steve Lee

Location

River Mile 839.20 — On Both Banks

Significance

History
Infrastructure

Description

Louis Robert (Row-bear') was a fur trader, an early St.Paul land owner, and a steamboat owner and pilot. Louis Robert had arrived in St. Paul in the winter of 1843, walking through the snow and wilderness from Prairie du Chien, 150 miles to the south. Before that he had been a trapper in the Rocky Mountains and a trader on several rivers. Robert bought Pigs Eye Parrant's claim where the lower landing is now, and extensive tracts of property in St. Paul. His house was on the bluff where Kellogg and Robert Street now meet, and his trading post made of tamarack poles was where is now the east side of Jackson Street under the bluff. This was a good steamboat landing site, and became the "Lower Landing." Robert bought a steamboat named "The Greek Slave" in 1853, then "The Time and Tide," "The Globe" and the "Jeannette Roberts," which was named after his daughter. Even though he gave up steamboating by 1859, he was known as Captain Roberts since that period. Robert remained active in trading posts along the Minnesota River. During the Dakota uprising of 1862 Louis Robert escaped death near Fort Ridgely by crawling into a swamp and lying with only his nose above water while Dakota braves searched for him. In 1869 Louis Robert gave bells to the frame church of the French speakers of the city. The bells remain at the "new" church, built in 1909, at the corner of Tenth and Cedar Street. The bells have an inscription "Presente a la Congregation Francaise de l'Englise St.Louis par Capt. Louis Robert, Juillet, 1869." (Condon, Patricia)

Content © 2005 Friends of the Mississippi River and each item's authors.
The Mississippi River Field Guide is provided by Friends of the Mississippi River.
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