Jackson County (Mo.) Historical Society

Historical Perspective

by David W. Jackson

Jackson County’s ‘mother’

Before schools reconvene, march towards Fort Osage! The Fort and the newly constructed educational center are real charmers…and they provide an intimate view of life and early Native and European-Americans in Jackson County more than 200 years ago.

In her book, Kansas City Women of Independent Minds” author and local historic preservationist Jane Flynn named Berenice Chouteau (the wife of early French settler, Francois) as the Mother of Kansas City. In putting together a speaking presentation using the title of Flynn’s book, I ask audiences to join me in re-nominating the Mother of Jackson County--Mrs. Mary (Easton) Sibley--wife of Maj. George Champlin Sibley, the factor or government trade representative at Fort Osage.

Mary Easton came to this area more than 10 years before Jackson County was formed, after her marriage on August 19, 1815. The Sibleys left St. Louis on October 1^st and took a 30-day keelboat entourage up the Missouri River from St. Louis to Fort Clark as it was then known. The 15-year-old bride wrote home to her father: “We could only go about four or five miles a day because of the current. The banks of the Missouri are covered with timber. Occasionally an Indian would shot an arrow from behind a tree, but never hit us. We never saw a white settler from the time we left until we got within a mile of the fort.”

George Sibley’s beautiful, vivacious wife forsook her comfortable life as a St. Louis belle to accompany her serious-minded husband. Sibley said to his brother of his wife, “She will willingly share with me the privations of a forest life. I mean to have a very comfortable establishment…in the howling wilderness.”

To every extent possible, the Sibleys surrounded themselves with the comforts of civilization at Fort Osage. Mrs. Sibley would play her beloved piano and entertain (even if unknowingly) the fascinated Indians who sat outside the widows of her home to hear the piano with fife-and-drum (orchestral) attachments. Her husband wrote, “Mary amuses me and herself every day for an hour or two with her piano, on which she performs extremely well….You may be sure Mary is a very great favorite among the Indians, indeed they literally idolize her since they have seen her play.”

Mary Sibley also brought with her to the frontier her books and much of her furniture. The couple returned to St. Louis for a short visit between December 1815 and March 1816, when they returned to the Fort with Mary’s younger sister, Louisa. The young ladies set out to teach the Native-American Indian children to read and write.

And, Mary Sibley entertained traveling visitors (famous and infamous), soldiers, hunters, and trappers. Every boat that landed at Fort Osage was met with a cordial welcome and an invitation for the passengers to stop at her home where hospitality was as free as the air.

Theirs was the first home purportedly built outside the high stockade of Fort Osage. In the summer of 1820, Sibley began erecting a dwelling house a mile west of the Fort, named “Fountain Cottage,” which he said would provide more comfort for his family than did the factory building. In 1824, they owned five slaves, five mares, a jennet, a pony, and thirty head of cattle.

After Fort Osage was decommissioned, however, the Sibleys returned to Mary’s girlhood home in the St. Charles area, and by May 1828 had settled on a tract of property they called “Linden Wood” for its large grove of Linden trees. There, they founded a boarding school for young ladies. This became Lindenwood College, the first female college west of the Mississippi River.

Mary Sibley died on June 20, 1878. She was buried beside her husband at Lindenwood College.

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