More Information on Jean Marie Papin or Pepin:

Jean Marie Papin dit Lachance (the name is more often spelled Pepin), was one of two well-known stone masons in early St. Louis. Born in Canada about 1740, he came to St. Louis at least by 1767, when he made a contract with Joseph Labrosse to build a house in exchange for 1,400 livres in pelts. By 1772, Pepin was a master mason who owned a house, land, two slaves, and several domestic animals. He was appointed to a citizen's committee to improve the drainage of the streets in 1778, and was listed among the 226 militiamen of St. Louis on November 9, 1779. This means that he may have participated in the defense of the city during the British-Indian attack of May 26, 1780, although he is not listed on the militia roster of July 5, 1780 (see Block 100).

According to Charles Peterson's book Colonial St. Louis: Building a Creole Capital, Pepin was a troublemaker during the post-Revolutionary War period, "in official eyes, at least. After being run out of Cahokia [Illinois] for disturbing the peace on the American side of the river, he helped organize a 'sans coulottes' society in St. Louis which caused the Spanish authorities much anxiety." The sans-coulottes supported the revolutionaries who overthrew Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in the French Revolution. Baron de Carondelet, governor of Louisiana, ordered Pepin's arrest in 1795, calling him "a peevish fellow and an enemy of our Government." Pepin fled to Vincennes, Indiana to avoid arrest. He must have returned to St. Louis, however, for the book Lion of the Valley, by James Neal Primm, records that Pepin's Sans-Coulottes society held a noisy celebration in St. Louis on September 22, 1796, "New Year's day by the revolutionary calendar. By songs, toasts, and parades they denounced royal tyranny and saluted the imminent return of Louisiana to France, this time to an egalitarian France. The Jacobin songs and shouts were loudest under the windows of the merchant elite who were not amused." [p. 70].