In 1790, the year tax assessor
visited the home of Joshua and Nancy Pilcher in
Culpeper Co., Virginia. He enumerated a household
of eight children including Shadrach, Fielding,
Margaret, Moses, Benjamin, Zachariah, John, and
their infant son Joshua who had been born on the
15th of March.
Working from
sunrise to sunset plowing and planting fields of
grain and tobacco while caring for the cattle and
hogs, Joshua Sr. was able to do little more than
provide a living for his family and began to fall
into debt. Believing there was little future for
him or his children who would likely grow up as
illiterate as he and his wife, Joshua decided to
leave Virginia in 1793 for the new land of
Kentucky. After five hundred miles of travel, the
family reached Lexington. The town, which was not
yet a major market place, consisted of about
three or four hundred homes clustered around the
courthouse, with shops belonging to shoemakers,
blacksmiths and hatters. A local brewer supplied
the town taverns.
After carefully
searching for land, Joshua chose a few acres in
the summer of 1795 and arranged to share crop a
tract south of town. The move was
beneficial to the family. A year later, records
indicate he had paid taxes on twice as much
livestock as he had owned in Virginia, and by
1804 had paid taxes for a slave.
It was here that
Joshua and Nancy's children grew to adulthood,
left the farm and married. Their son Shadrach
married Sarah Proctor at the age of twenty-nine,
and continued to reside in Fayette County where
they raised a family of four sons: Ezekiel,
Moses, Jeptha Dudley and Shadrach. Their three
daughters were Sarah who married John Paine, Mary
who married Anderson Foreman, and Margaret who
married Greenbury True.
Joshua’s son
Moses lived in Jessamine county, married
Elizabeth Collins and was the father of at least
Merritt S. and Nancy Pilcher. Son Fielding
became a lieutenant in the Kentucky militia,
moved to Woodford County and was the father of at
least Mason and Lewis Pilcher. Daughter
Margaret married Hiram Shaw who was a merchant
hatter, on Christmas day of 1800 and lived in
Lexington where they raised a family of seven
children - Sarah, Nathaniel, Ann, Ammi, Hiram,
Nancy, and John Pilcher Shaw.
Young Joshua who
had worked in the fields and tended to the stock,
moved into Lexington. He became an
apprentice hatter under his brother-in-law, Hiram
Shaw, who ran a hatter's shop situated on the
corner of Main and Broadway; and within a few
years had learned the hatter's trade. It’s
possible that during his time as an apprentice
hatter, he had also studied medicine. Although no
records indicate he had any formal training,
it’s probable by his familiarity with
medicine in his later years with the Indians that
he may have studied the medical books in the
library, bookstores, or some of the private
collections of a reputable physician who
practiced in Lexington.
What he had
intended to do with his life prior to 1810 one
cannot say, but in the mid-summer of that year
his father died at the age of sixty-one, and left
his him a four-year-old brown horse and his
portion of the household goods. With his widowed
mother settled in with one of his brothers or
possibly his sister Margaret, young Joshua
decided to strike out on his own.
He chose Nashville
- a town only one-third the size of Lexington and
arrived in late spring. With a limited amount of
capital he invested with a merchant named John
Lowry. It is quite possible this was the same
Lowry or family who was previous owner or partner
of Hiram Shaw in Lexington. Like his
brother-in-law, Joshua bought out Lowry and
became proprietor of the Hat Store at Nashville.
He also made the decision to rent rather than own
his building which turned out to be a fortunate
decision because in the winter of 1811-1812 major
earthquakes rocked the Ohio and Mississippi
valleys and many of the buildings were
"thrown down."
While in Nashville
the next three years, Joshua earned a comfortable
living as a merchant-craftsman. When the War of
1812 broke out, he chose not to enlist to fight
for the southwestern frontier as did his eldest
brother Shadrach, his nephews, and his
cousins. Instead, Joshua involved himself
in his business until on the evening of March 2nd
of 1814, a fire broke out in Anthony Foster's
home which spread to his warehouse resulting in
loss and damage of his stock.
While in Nashville
he was also admitted as a member of the Masonic
Grand Lodge of Tennessee, but in 1814 announced
he was closing his shop in Nashville and calling
upon his customers to settle their accounts. This
time he set out for St. Louis in the Missouri
Territory which was largely undeveloped.
Not long after his arrival, he invested his
capital in a business partnership with N.S.
Anderson. Their business, known as Anderson &
Pilcher, sold dry goods, rented storage space to
other merchants, and may have dealt in a wide
variety of general merchandise; but the
partnership was short-lived when his partner died
in the summer of 1816.
Joshua then became
partner to a fellow-Virginian by the name of
Thomas F. Riddick who was an influential
merchant, politician, and banker who had lived in
St. Louis ten or twelve years. They opened a
downtown auction house in November of 1816 which
was so conveniently located that the Bank of
Saint Louis rented space there temporarily as did
the Christ Church which was the first Protestant
Episcopal congregation to have organized west of
the Mississippi.
During this time,
Joshua joined the Masons who finally organized a
permanent lodge in Missouri, and was involved in
other enterprises including the lead-processing
industry at Herculaneum and the banking business
of which his partner had been involved. Riddick
had been one of the original bank commissioners
of the Bank of Saint Louis which had struggled
then failed, and during this time the Bank of
Missouri had opened, Riddick, Benton and probably
Joshua, allied themselves with several of the
powerful French families who needed a bank to
support their investment in the fur trade north
and west of St. Louis.
Joshua by now had
learned more about the fur trade and its general
structure through some of his Masonic brothers.
Though he had little knowledge of the Indian
country, he decided to join the Missouri Fur Company. He joined in the
summer or early fall of 1819 and may have
purchased his portion of shares from the capital
he borrowed on a business trip to New Orleans and
Havana in the spring of that year. It was a risky
investment since the fur trade was a gamble, but
Joshua had faith in its founder Manuel
Lisa. Lisa was a Creole trader who had
organized the company in about 1808 and had as
his partners such men as William Clark, Pierre
Chouteau, Auguste Chouteau and Sylvester
Labbadie. Believing a handsome profit was
attainable if the company could push the Indian
trade closer to the Rockies and the headwaters of
the Missouri as Lisa planned to do, he invested
with Thomas Hempstead, Andrew Woods, Joseph
Perkins (one of Joshua's Masonic brother), Moses
B. Carson (another Mason and brother of Kit
Carson), and John B. Zenoni.
While Manuel Lisa
remained at Fort Lisa at Council Bluff, Joshua
moved from Indian camp to Indian camp trading for
furs during the unusually bitter winter of
1819-1820. Lisa's health began to deteriorate and
he returned to St. Louis in early April leaving
Joshua at Council Bluffs to observe the details
of the fur trade. Lisa's health worsened
and he died the morning of August 12th with the
hope that his partners would persevere in the fur
trade despite the various problems they were
having with supplies, competition and some of the
Indians. Joshua did his best in taking over the
company, but after five years of attempting to
make the company a success, The Missouri Fur
Company became bankrupt and they closed its books
forever.
Not long after
Joshua wrote to friends in Washington D.C.
requesting an appointment as United States Consul
at Chihuahua. He was nominated by President Adams
on the 5th of March 1825, and the Senate
consented to it two days later. The immediate
confirmation and the timing of the appointment
suggests Joshua might have favored Adams in the
controversial election of 1824; and although his
friend Benton had supported Clay, it seems he
backed Joshua for this consular post.
Hoping to encourage American trade in the
Southwest, Benton also shepherded a bill through
the Senate which went into law early in 1825
appropriating $30,000 for an immediate survey of
the Santa Fe Trail. Unfortunately Joshua was ill
and became unable to fulfill this position.
In September 1827,
using the last of his capital, he and his former
partners assembled a party of forty-five mounted
men and led pack horses laden with goods and
equipment west from Council Bluffs toward the
Platte River. They moved up the valley of the
Platte to the forks of the river in western
Nebraska but were on foot by time they reached
the upper Sweetwater west of the north fork of
the Platte because the Crow Indians had stolen
their horses. With Winter upon them, they cached
whatever merchandise and property their men were
unable to carry, and led them over the
snow-covered Continental Divide, down into the
valley of the Colorado River, and encamped there
for the winter. They traded horses from the Snake
Indians and when the weather improved in spring,
one of the partners re-crossed the pass and dug
up the cache only to find that seepage had
destroyed a considerable part of the merchandise.
From here they
moved west to Bear Lake for the summer rendezvous
of 1828 and sold their remaining goods to the
trappers. Picking their way slowly over the
mountains, they trapped a few beaver and reached
Clark's Fork in western Montana where they made
winter camp while the snow drifted and waited for
spring. In fact, it wasn't until Joshua accepted
an appointment as a sub-agent, that he lived in
one location for more than a few months. At
Council Bluffs, between spring of 1833 and 1835,
he seldom left the area and took for his
"wife", a woman who is thought to have
been Cabanné's former servant woman. She was the
half-blood daughter of a french trader named
Michel Barada and an Omaha woman. In early 1834
she gave birth to their son, John Pilcher, but
died not long after of cholera. Joshua showed
little concern for the boy who was then taken and
raised by Big Elk, an Omaha chief. Although
raised by the Omahas on the reservation in
eastern Nebraska, he kept his family name of
Pilcher. He grew to manhood, married Harriet
Arlington, and fathered ten children. At the time
of his death in January 1898 near Walthill, there
were dozens of descendants bearing the Pilcher
name.
In the spring of
1835, Joshua was appointed sub-agent for a
portion of the Sioux Indians high up on the
Missouri River. Two years later he was nominated
by President Van Buren as Indian Agent to the
Sioux, Cheyenne, and Ponca Indians; and four
years later was nominated for and supported by
him as Superintendent of Indian Affairs over
thirty-five agents, sub-agents, interpreters,
blacksmiths, farmers, and others who worked at
Fort Leavenworth, Council Bluffs, the Upper
Missouri, and the Osage River.
The stress of the
position, which was made more difficult by the
additional task of dispersing agent for the
jurisdictions of St. Louis, Iowa, and Wisconsin,
wore on him as he had never fully improved from
the previous bouts of exposure. Suspecting his
death was to follow shortly, he wrote his will on
the 29th of May requesting to be buried in Lot
No. 10 in St. Luke Square of the Episcopal
Cemetery. He appointed Edward Brooks, Druggist of
the City of City Louis, as his sole Exector,
and first stated, "Should I die
on my tour to the South..." His will
mentions Susan Brooks, sister Margaret Shaw of
Lexington and her sons Nathaniel and Hiram; John
Haverty of St. Louis, Mrs. Eliz M. Riddick, wife
of the late Colonel Thomas F. Riddick; daughter
of Charles P. Billon; and John Randolph Benton,
the only son of Colonel Thomas H. Benton.
Joshua was laid to
rest in St. Louis on 07 Jun 1843 at Christ Church
Cemetery with a large and lavish funeral with
dozens of carriages hired by Edward Brooks to
carry the many mourners. His death notice
appeared in the St. Louis New Era and the Daily
Evening Gazette, but the Missouri Reporter defended his reputation
and critcized the national administration for
firing him soley on political grounds. The
Republican, which had not been so kind to him in
life, justly credited him with an unsullied
reputation and having had the high esteem of many
friends.
According to Joshua's last Will and Testament, and directions given by
him respecting his lot in the Episcopal Cemetery,
dated 29 May 1843, he instructed "a solid
stone wall one foot thick and fifteen feet square
to be place around" Lot No. 10 in St. Luke
Square. He also requested a heaving iron railing
to be placed on top of the wall around the
enclosure with the simple inscription to be
placed on Italian marble: "In Memory of
Joshua Pilcher who was born in Culpeper County
State of Virginia on the 15th day of March 1790.
Died at St. Louis ... aged .... "
When Christ Church
Cemetery was closed, Virginia (Riddick) Brooks
authorized Joshua's remains to be removed to the
Brooks plot in Bellefontaine Cemetery, where his remains are
marked by a headstone honoring his achievements.
Almost fifty years
later, a handful of interesting articles appeared
in two St. Louis newspapers concerning him and a
casket that was found. The first was published in
the St. Louis Republic on December 1st 1892,
headline reading: "An Old Resident's
Recollections About a Wealthy Fur Trade Who Died
Fifty Years Ago - The Iron Coffin May Have
Been Pilcher's." This article was
followed up by others and the matter apparently
resolved in the St. Louis Star published on the
6th of December. This paper read in part:
"Joseph Warren Pilcher, the man who has been
for the past ten days entertained by newspapers
accounts of how his body had been disinterred
after forty years, walked into the Four Courts
yesterday afternoon and requested the privilege
of a statement. Mr. Pilcher has borne patiently
with lengthy obituaries of himself, but he has
felt that he must draw the line somewhere, and
therefore, when he read the statement that he had
been ejected for rent, he emerged from his
retirement and made a statement.
Mr. Joseph Warren
Pilcher explained in this news article that the
man referred to was his grand-uncle, Joshua
Pilcher, who had been found dead in his bed on
the morning after a banquet at Senator Bentons,
and that his father Ezekiel was a great favorite
with the fur trader. It was, he stated, a great
surprise to his father that he had not been
remembered in the will and employed a Lexington
lawyer to clear up the mystery of the will and
his grand-uncle's sudden death. The will did not
appear to Mr. Pilcher to have been that of a
business man and it was his opinion that Joshua
Pilcher never made the will, but that it was
written by the parties named in it. He had
worked to clear up the mystery that surrounded
Joshua's death, but dropped the whole affair when
the war began.
Although the
casket (which was dug up and created quite a stir
in 1892) turned out not to be that of the fur
trader, Joshua's life was later chronicled in a
book by John E. Sunder, and is mentioned in many
others regarding the American fur trade. He
is remembered by his Pilcher descendants not only
as a hatter, merchant, fur trader, and Indian
Agent, but a man of integrity and good will who
once was as his name states - a maker of furs.
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