LaBarge managed to avoid the first cholera epidemic in the United States, which at that time killed half the crew aboard the Yellowstone.

After years of success in the shipping business, LaBarge, his brother, and other partners formed their own trading firm on the upper Missouri River.

[3] His father, at the age of 21, traveled from Quebec in a birch-bark canoe over lakes and rivers and settled in St. Louis at a time when the city was the center of the enormous fur trade.

He first attended classes at the residence of Jean Baptiste Trudeau, a noted and reputable teacher in St. Louis, where he studied the common branches in education, all in French.

[15] From 1831 to 1846 steamboat navigation on the upper Missouri River was confined almost entirely to riverboats owned by the American Fur Company.

[19] In 1833 LaBarge, aboard the steamship Yellowstone, left Saint Louis and was headed for Fort Pierre on the upper Missouri River.

[22] When news of the cholera outbreak aboard the Yellowstone spread, a pro tempore board of health from Jackson County ordered the boat to move on, threatening to burn the craft if it remained.

[23] Now acting as both pilot and engineer, and realizing the danger, LaBarge took the boat up a short distance from the mouth of the Kansas on the west shore of the Missouri, where there were no inhabitants.

About a mile from the trading post, which had quarantined itself from the cholera epidemic, LaBarge was intercepted by a man stationed there, wary of the outbreak, and watching for anyone coming from Missouri.

For several years Captain Sire had made this journey but had decided to retire from the river, leaving LaBarge in command of the boat and in charge of the company's business.

The trip north went without incident until they arrived at Crow Creek in the Dakota Territory, not far from a trading post owned and operated by Colin Campbell, who had a large supply of fire-wood ready as fuel for the steamer.

In an effort to prevent refueling the vessel, a raiding party of Yanktonian Sioux Indians took possession of the woodpile, demanding payment.

[13][27] In 1850 LaBarge was making a voyage aboard the steamer Saint Ange heading for Fort Union,[k] on the upper Missouri River in the dense wilderness of north-west North Dakota.

[34][35] In 1852, Captain Edward Salt-Marsh arrived from Ohio to Saint Louis with the Sonora, a steamboat that LaBarge considered "an excellent craft".

During the previous winter Colonel Crossman, of the U.S. Army Quartermaster stationed in St. Louis, contracted a shipbuilding company operating on the Osage River for a steamboat for use by the government.

[38] In the spring of 1859 the American Fur Company sent two vessels up the Missouri River, commanded by LaBarge and his brother, John, with its annual outfit of men and supplies.

It was a light vessel and her owner, Captain Crabtree, was contracted to reach Fort Benton, 31 miles below the Great Falls, or as far past this point as was possible.

[38] LaBarge permanently ended his service to the American Fur Company in 1857 and spent the next three years mainly on the lower Missouri river, rarely venturing beyond Council Bluffs, Iowa.

[41][42] In the summer of 1859 Abraham Lincoln came west and toured the Missouri River looking into real estate investments, where LaBarge saw the future president for the first time.

[43][40] During autumn of that year, river ice prevented the Emilie from proceeding while docked near Atchison, Kansas, which kept LaBarge there for the duration of the winter.

The incident landed LaBarge in trouble with Union authorities, but under the circumstances he was allowed to continue operating on the river for the remainder of the war.

Several days before the two steamboats embarked, Harkness had gone ahead by railroad to Saint Joseph where he began recording the venture in his private journal.

Bailey was soon held accountable for damages and reckless endangerment when he returned to Saint Louis, but LaBarge one month later pardoned him, allowing his reinstatement.

In the autumn, when water levels on the upper Missouri River were low, a light-draft riverboat was needed, prompting the U.S. government to commission LaBarge and his steamboat, the John M. Chambers, to transport food and supplies to Fort Buford.

LaBarge made about thirty miles (48 km) that day, making one stop at Fort Union to drop off General William Babcock Hazen and pick up a load of beef for the troops.

The next day the party stopped to investigate a broken-down hospital ship abandoned on the shore, which was found to have been used by Major Marcus Reno's troops who were now pursuing the Indians.

The Indians had already crossed the river, and Captain LaBarge immediately began the task of ferrying Reno's troops over, which was accomplished before nightfall.

[55] In 1896, LaBarge biographer Hiram M. Chittenden, an officer in the Army Corps of Engineers,[56] decided to publish an account of steamboat wrecks that occurred on the Missouri River in an attempt to determine which types of improvements for navigation were needed.

Searching for information he sought out LaBarge, who was now retired, and who possessed an extensive and often first-hand knowledge of steamboat history from his many years of navigating on the Missouri River.

Chittenden's pledge reached LaBarge, who had been suffering from a tumor on his neck, just before he died one and a half hours later,[57] after an unsuccessful surgery, from blood poisoning on April 3, 1899, in Saint Louis.