The History of The Vital Sainte Gemme Beauvais Home
Joseph-Vital Beauvais was born about the year 1739 in the village of Kaskaskia, which at the time was in the Illinois Country of French Upper Louisiana. The Beauvais family of Kaskaskia was only one generation removed from Montreal.
In early 1775, Vital married Félicité Janis and the couple's first children were born in Kaskaskia, the original site of the home. However, after the devastating flood of 1785, the village inhabitants gradually relocated to higher ground.
The transition from the low-lying old town to the new town of Sainte Genevieve took place over five years, from 1787 to 1792.
This home was constructed in 1792, however, according to a dendochronologist study from the 1970's, some of the cedar timbers which make up the exterior walls and ceiling date approximately
17–20 years older.
The house was built using the poteaux-en-terre,
or posts-in-ground, method -
a construction popular in the Illinois Country throughout the 18th Century.
In this type of construction hand-hewn timbers are set vertically in an earthen trench, three feet in the ground. Each timber rests on a single stone creating the walls of the house. The sides of each post are scooped out and packed with pierrotage (stones and mud) to form the walls which, in the Vital Ste. Gemme Beauvais home, were brought in directly from the Mississippi river.
Casement windows were installed and the entire structure was coated in whitewash. In the renovation of the home, the four original windows in the main living area remain. The rest of the windows in the home were added at a later date in the 1800's when alterations were made.
A composite drawing of the poteaux-en-terre construction and flooring system.
Large timbers which are not attached to the walls are supported on pilings.
This design is likely the reason the home has remained structurally sound through the years, including withstanding an early 1800's earthquake.
This one-of-a-kind home is one of only four remaining poteaux-en-terre structures in North America.
Of the four remaining poteaux-en-terre homes in the country, the Vital Sainte Gemme Beauvais home
is the only residence, the others having been turned into museums.
Though somewhat altered over time, the home retains many of its original qualities.
Most of the changes took place between 1893 and 1901.
The roof was raised, dormers were added, and two staircases were built on each end of the home.
Originally, the home was about sixty-two feet long and nearly twenty-three feet wide, with its first floor being uncharacteristically low at the time, only about a foot above ground level. The house retained its front and back porches,
and the addition of a kitchen on the southeast rear made the house 'L' shaped. A second floor porch was added across the entire rear of the house. A single stone fireplace still occupies a central location in the house, but physical evidence suggests that it is a replacement for an earlier, larger fireplace and chimney.
A massive wooden truss system in the attic supported the steeply-pitched roof, reminiscent of those in French Canada.
The original roof system used a second series of rafters which covered the porches, forming the double-pitch roof profile seen so commonly in Ste. Genevieve today. Though the roof was altered in 1893 to form a simple single pitch,
portions of the original truss work and roof rafters survive as proof of the double pitch.
The Norman Truss roof beams with the original roof line were left exposed in the restoration.
An early image of what is thought to be the Wilder family.
William W. Wilder bought the house in 1893.
In 1893, a sixteen foot section at the northern end of the house was removed, possibly due to damage to the kingpost.
This section of the house originally housed cabinets, or enclosed sleeping rooms.
In much of the same fashion as the remaining 18th and early 19th Century homes in Sainte Genevieve,
the Beauvais house was located near the front of its residential lot, only thirteen feet from the street.
The yard at the rear of the house, which backed to the Mississippi river, provided space for the numerous outbuildings, slave quarters, and work areas required in colonial life. Of the colonial features at the rear of the homestead,
a finely crafted stone well remains to this day, as does the 1820's brick summer kitchen/smokehouse.
The summer kitchen was divided in half and in the smoke house portion, the original meat hooks still remain.
After Vital Beauvais died in 1822 or 1823, Madame Beauvais supplemented her widow's income by selling fruits, vegetables, dairy products and smoked meats from her gardens, orchards and smokehouse.
The yard was inclosed with cedar pickets, eight or ten inches in diameter and seven feet high,
placed upright and sharpened at the top, in the manner of a stockade fort.
A photograph dating from the early 1900's just after the kitchen, second floor, and dormers were added.
The asbestos roofing shingles were added in the 1940's or 1950's.