Last updated: September 10, 2025
Place
Green Tree Tavern
NPS / Claire Casey
Quick Facts
Location:
244 St. Marys Road, Ste. Genevieve, Missouri 63670
Significance:
Oldest known building in Ste. Genevieve. Constructed 1790.
Amenities
3 listed
Fire Extinguisher, First Aid Kit Available, Parking - Auto
Since 1790, Green Tree Tavern has filled many roles for many people. As a home, business, and gathering place, it reflects the varied experiences of an international community moving to and through Ste. Genevieve.
Architecture
Green Tree Tavern is a French colonial poteaux-sur-sole (post-on-sill) building, meaning the vertical logs on the exterior walls rest on a wooden sill on a stone foundation. Typical French colonial architecture consists of two to four rooms of roughly the same size. Green Tree Tavern strays from the pattern by including a large central room flanked by two or three smaller rooms. The home was built with two triangular fireplaces, a wraparound galerie (porch), and a raised basement. Construction began in 1790, a date determined using dendrochronology. Scientific testing of five wood samples confirmed the house as the oldest surviving structure in Ste. Genevieve.
The Janis Family
Green Tree Tavern was built for the Janis family, for whom it was both a home and a business for over 40 years. Like many French colonists in Ste. Genevieve, Nicolas and Marie Janis migrated from Kaskaskia, Illinois, arriving around 1789.
The Janis family brought with them fifteen people who were enslaved. These individuals were viewed as property and willed to Nicolas’ son, François, along with the house after Nicolas died. Clarisse and her children were some of the people enslaved at Green Tree Tavern while François owned the home.
After inheriting the house, François opened the home up as an inn. One guest wrote about his stay in 1806: “I was by no means disappointed; the landlord, a lively Frenchman, looked after my horses, and his wife made me a cup of coffee with as much perfection as ever I drank it at the Palais Royale, or at the foot of Pont Neuf.”
When François died, the house was sold. Clarisse was willed to another Janis descendant and finally received a license for her freedom in 1836. Afterward, she bought her own home just down St. Marys Road from Green Tree Tavern, which stayed in her family for around 140 years. Her home still stands and is now known as the Bequette-Ribault House.
A Masonic Lodge
The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 encouraged many Americans to move west across the Mississippi River. Some of these individuals formed the West’s first Masonic Lodge. Masonic Lodges are meeting places for Freemasons, members of a fraternal organization that began with stonemasons in the medieval period.
In 1806, local Freemasons petitioned the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania to form the “Louisiana Lodge” in Ste. Genevieve. Their petition was approved on July 17, 1807, establishing Louisiana Lodge 109 as the first Masonic Lodge west of the Mississippi River. Masonic Lodges are identified by several symbols, such as “the square and compass.” Multiple Masonic symbols were carved into porch posts at Green Tree Tavern. These posts have since been removed and stored for preservation.
Louisiana Lodge 109 held its first meeting on November 14, 1807, using François’ house and tavern as their meeting space. The Lodge quickly fell into financial trouble as it struggled to collect and send its dues to the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania. As a result, Louisiana Lodge 109 lost its charter in 1824. By 1826, the dues had been settled, and a new Masonic Lodge was formed in Ste. Genevieve.
The Ziegler Family
The Janis family owned Green Tree Tavern until 1833, when Mathias and Barbara Ziegler bought the home. Mathias and Barbara were French-speaking Catholics who immigrated to Ste. Genevieve in the 1820s. They moved from an area of modern-day Germany that often switched between French and German rule.
After moving to town in 1827, Mathias established a business with Jean Baptiste Vallé. Under their original business agreement, Mathias manufactured tobacco, which Jean Baptiste sold in his general store. Mathias and Barbara raised their six children in the home while also using a portion of the house as a tobacco store. There are no records of Mathias and Barbara Ziegler enslaving people at the home. Instead, the family employed paid white servants, such as Mary Rion and Rosine Palmer, to assist in the home.
Mathias Ziegler died in 1835, leaving Barbara to manage the business and care for the family. Barbara maintained the tobacco store with assistance from her sons with her son Alexander working as a tobacconist. Barbara ran the tobacco store until the 1850s, when she began transferring the property to her son Francis.
Francis Ziegler took ownership of the home in 1860 and lived there with his mother and family. The Ziegler family were the longest residents of the house, living in the home until the 1920s and owning it until 1938.
The German Influence
The history of Green Tree Tavern mirrors broader changes happening in the community of Ste. Genevieve. Though Ste. Genevieve started as a French town, people of many nationalities migrated to and through the area. After 1763, land east of the Mississippi River was controlled by British Protestants, causing French Canadians and other Catholics to move across the river. Many eastern Native American Nations also crossed over as Europeans continued to force them from their homelands. Each political change, here and abroad, brought new waves of people to Ste. Genevieve.
Beginning around 1830, thousands of German immigrants came to the United States. German author Gottfried Duden wrote a book in which he painted Missouri as an ideal place to live, which may have inspired some of the German families who chose Missouri as their new home.
Many German families like the Zieglers settled in Ste. Genevieve. The German influx was significant. The church began offering services in German and German-language publications also became popular. By 1860, there were more German households in Ste. Genevieve than French. The German influence is still evident in the architecture and culture of the region.