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Join the roomBerenice Thérèse Menard Chouteau was a French-American pioneer who is widely regarded as a co-founder of what became Kansas City, Missouri. In 1821, she and her husband, François Chouteau, established the first permanent European-American settlement in that remote area of Wild West frontier. She was the daughter of Illinois's first lieutenant governor, Pierre Menard, and she had married into the powerful Chouteau family, a dynasty that dominated the North American fur trade.
