Peter Sarpy
| Peter Abadie Sarpy | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 3, 1805 St. Louis, Missouri |
| Died | January 4, 1865 Plattsmouth, Nebraska |
| Occupation | Fur trader |
| Known for | Civic activities |
Peter Abadie Sarpy (1805–1865) was the French-American owner and operator of several fur trading posts, essential to the development of the Nebraska Territory, and a thriving ferry business. A prominent businessman, he helped lay out the towns of Bellevue and Decatur, Nebraska. Nebraska's legislature named Sarpy County after him in honor of his service to the state.
Peter A. Sarpy was likely born in St. Louis, Missouri on November 3, 1805. He was christened Pierre Sylvester Gregoire Sarpy, but he later anglicized his name and took his mother's maiden name, L'Abadie for his middle initial. Peter's father was Gregoire Sarpy, who died in 1824. Peter had two brothers. The family was French Creole, and joined other ethnic French in migrating to the growing town of St. Louis after the Louisiana Purchase by the United States. Its lucrative fur trade and much of the economy was originally dominated by ethnic French families.
In 1824 at the age of 19, Sarpy went to the upper Missouri River, in the Nebraska Territory, to work at the American Fur Company's trading post at Council Bluff, north of present-day Bellevue, Nebraska. He was based at Fort Bellevue until 1831. That company was owned by renowned fur baron John Jacob Astor. Sarpy next worked for his brother's father-in-law, John Pierre Cabanné, who ran Cabanne's Trading Post.
Cabanné's Post and Pilcher's Post, the latter established at Bellevue by the Missouri Fur Company, competed for the fur trade of area Indian tribes: the Siouan-speaking Omaha, Ponca, Otoe, and Pawnee. The Missouri Fur Company was founded by French Creole families in St. Louis. Some of their ancestors had migrated to the new settlement of St. Louis in the late eighteenth century from farms in Illinois. They left when the latter was transferred from French to British control after the Seven Years' War. More migrated after the American Revolution, as they wanted to evade US Protestant rule in Illinois.
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