Founded around 1740 by Canadian settlers and migrants from settlements in the Illinois Country just east of the Mississippi River, Ste.

The population to the east of the river needed more land, as the soils in the older villages had become exhausted.

[8] Prior to arrival of French Canadian settlers, indigenous peoples of succeeding cultures had lived in the region for more than one thousand years.

The best known prior to the historic tribes were the Mississippian culture, which developed complex earthworks at such sites as Cahokia, and had a broad cross-continental trading network along the Mississippi-Ohio river waterways, from the south to near the Great Lakes.

Genevieve on the east side of the river was Fort de Chartres (in the Illinois Country); it stood as the official capital of the area.

The Spanish moved the capital of Upper Louisiana from Fort de Chartres fifty miles upriver to St. Louis.

French-speaking people from Canada and settlers east of the Mississippi went west to live beyond British rule; they also flocked to Ste.

This transformed all of the captured French land between the Mississippi and the Appalachian Mountains, except Quebec, into an Indian reserve.

These requirements were regularly violated by European-American settlers, who resented efforts to restrict their expansion west of the Appalachians.

During the 1780s, some Shawnee and Lenape (Delaware) migrated to the west side of the Mississippi following rebel American victory in its Revolutionary War.

It was not until the 1790s that the Big Osage pressed the settlement harder; they conducted repeated raids, and killed some settlers.

[10] While at one point Spanish administrators wanted to attack the Big Osage, there were not sufficient French settlers to recruit for a militia to do so.

It continued to prosper as a village devoted to agriculture, especially wheat, maize and tobacco production.

The village raised sufficient grain to send many tons of flour annually for sale to Lower Louisiana and New Orleans.

Genevieve, tried to escape enslavement by crossing the Mississippi River towards Sparta, Illinois, "widely reputed as a haven for freedom seekers".

Genevieve, described as "French Creole colonial", were all built during the period of Spanish rule in the late 18th century.

As the wooden posts were partially set into dirt, the walls of such buildings were extremely vulnerable to flood damage, termites and rot.

One of the oldest structures is the Louis Bolduc House built in 1792, which has been designated as a National Historic Landmark.

Although much of the house was severely damaged by flooding, parts were dismantled and moved north as the community developed the new site in 1785.

This land was assigned and cultivated in the French style, in long, narrow strips that extended back from the river to the hills (at the first location) so that each settler would have some waterfront.

Genevieve continues to celebrate its French cultural heritage with numerous annual events.

Among them are La Guiannée, a celebration associated with Christmas; French Fest; Jour de Fête;[14] King's Ball, and many others.

Genevieve also had numerous lime kilns and quarries, important to the industrialization of nearby cities.

The city had numerous African-American families who had long been residents of the community, including people of color of partial French and German ancestry.

Like the ethnic European French, most of these African-American families were members of the Catholic church in the town, and some were educated and property owners.

[15] As the lime kilns and quarries were expanded, African-American migrant workers, mostly men, came from Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas to take jobs in these industries.

The riot was a four day disturbance, long shrouded in secrecy, during which vigilantes drove away most of the town's black residents, many of whom were recent arrivals recruited to work in local lime kilns and stone quarries.

The entire black population, with the exception of two families, left town after the threatened lynchings.”[16] The Ste.

Genevieve is located along the west bank of the Mississippi River near the Illinois state line along Interstate 55, U.S. Route 61, and Missouri Route 32, approximately 46 mi (74 km) south-southeast of St. Louis and 196 mi (315 km) north-northwest of Memphis, Tennessee.

[17] It has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen: Cfa) and average monthly temperatures range from 32.4 °F (0.2 °C) in January to 78.6 °F (25.9 °C) in July.