Keating Ancestry

Hello, family!  Cousin Carolyn and I just got back from a trip to the St. Louis area. We got a chance to visit Portage des Sioux, Missouri.  This was the village where Felicity and her husband, Francois, lived from approximately 1807 until the late 1830s. After living in Missouri most of her life, middle-aged Felicite traveled up the river to Davenport, Iowa to be near her son, Joseph. (In my imagination, she took a steamboat up the river.) Portage des Sioux is a small village located on the southern banks of the Mississippi river (the river is heading east/west at this point).  The village is north of city of St. Louis and the Missouri river. This map from approximately 1850 shows the location.  It's named for the Sioux who used it as a place to portage (carry their canoes) between the Mississippi and Missouri river to save time, evade enemies or other reasons of convenience.   The village was founded in 1799 by Spanish Lt. Governor Zenon Trudeau and Francois ...