Peter A. Sarpy

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. Biography Peter A. Sarpy was likely born in St. Louis, Missouri on November 3, 1805. He was christened Pierre Sylvester Grégoire Sarpy, but he later anglicized his name. He also took his mother's maiden name, L'Abadie, using "A" for his middle initial. Peter's father was Grégoire Sarpy, who died in 1824. Peter had two brothers. The family was French Creole from Louisiana. They joined other ethnic French in migrating to the growing town of St. Louis after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 by the United States. The lucrative fur trade and much of the economy of St. Louis was originally dominated by ethnic French families. They established trading posts along the upper Missouri River and also to the Southwest in Spanish territory. Nebraska Territory 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 American fur baron John Jacob Astor, who established a monopoly in the industry. Sarpy next worked for his brother's father-in-law, John Pierre Cabanné, who ran Cabanne's Trading Post.