Chatillon DeMenil Mansion's Bastille Day Celebration

Chatillon-DeMenil House Celebrates Bastille Day with a Cast of Characters

Historic French characters both local and international came back to life on Sunday, July 13, 2008, as the Chatillon-DeMenil House Foundation sponsored its third annual Bastille Day celebration at the DeMenil Mansion, 3352 DeMenil Place in the Benton Park Neighborhood. The festivities began with the singing of the French National Anthem, “La Marseillaise,” by Chatillon-DeMenil Board member, Bill Hart, while the French flag of the monarchy was replaced by the French flag of the republic by the museum’s director, Kevin O’Neill. Volunteers Kevin St. John, John Mefford and Dennis Lybarger, who came from Fort de Chartres dressed as a color guard in period costume then fired their muskets in salute, and Congressman Russ Carnahan read from the “Rights of Man” from the Mansion’s front balcony.

From there, the program was turned over to frivolity as Charles Pool dressed in French Creole garb, strolled the grounds and played traditional Creole music on his fiddle. Cyndie Ahrens came dressed resplendently as Marie Antoinette, Phillip McGourty as Robspierre, a number of “Royals” came dressed in white with red ribbons around their necks, symbolizing the cuts of the revolutionary guillotines. Guests assembled under the pavilion at the adjacent Café DeMenil as Madame Marie-Therese Bourgeois Chouteau, played by historic impersonator Elizabeth Pickard, spoke of her life, her family, the purchase of the Territory of Louisiana, and her adopted city of St. Louis in Missouri.

The Chatillon-DeMenil House is a local house museum. It was saved from demolition in the early 1960s, when the fledgling Landmarks Association convinced the Highway Department to change its plans for Interstate 55. Through generous contributions of St. Louisans, it was restored and opened in 1964, in time for the City’s bicentennial celebration. The site is the former home of Henri Chatillon, who was a fur trapper and is most famous for his position as wilderness guide to Francis Parkman, who hired Chatillon to assist him and his cousin on their discovery journey on the Oregon Trail. Parkman went on to publish his diary of the trip of the same name. The home was enlarged into the Greek Revival mansion that we know today by the Nicholas DeMenil family. The DeMenils moved here full-time in 1864. Mrs. Nicholas N. DeMenil was the great-grand daughter of Marie-Therese Bourgeos Chouteau, the “mother of St. Louis” and common law wife of St. Louis founder Pierre Laclede Laguest.