Bérénice Chouteau

Berenice Thérèse Menard Chouteau (c. 1801 – November 20, 1888) 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.

François managed the commercial aspects of Chouteau's Post, and Berenice transformed the area into a livable community called Chouteau's Town. She recruited other French-speaking families to the area, establishing the French Bottoms as a distinct cultural and social hub on the frontier. As a devout Catholic, she was the primary benefactress for the settlement's first church, a log chapel that was the direct predecessor of the modern Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

After her husband's death in 1838, Chouteau chose to remain the frontier community's matriarch for the next fifty years. She demonstrated what was regarded as profound resilience after the Great Flood of 1844 destroyed her riverfront home, relocating to the blufftop portion of Chouteau's Town that was slowly assimilated into a more legally formal settlement called Kansas. She was a significant landowner and central figure among the elite of Kansas, and engaged in a long and ultimately unsuccessful legal battle to defend her family's large and pioneering land claims. She was forced into a voluntary exile during the Civil War, but returned to Kansas City and remained a prominent citizen and patron of the Catholic Church.

François and Bérénice Chouteau were the first permanent pioneers of the wild frontier that became the nucleus of Kansas City, Missouri, specifically East Bottoms, West Bottoms, River Market, and Quality Hill. The Martin City Telegraph summarized their impact: "This early commerce on the western side of Missouri was launched when a newly-married couple took a risk by settling on the edge of the frontier." Her life connected the region's early French Creole fur-trading era to the rise of Kansas City. She was variously called the "Mother of Kansas City", "the soul of the colony", and a "liberal benefactress" of the settlement's first church.