Mine La Motte Township is an inactive township in Madison County, in the U.S. state of Missouri. [1]
A civil township is a widely used unit of local government in the United States that is subordinate to a county. The term town is used in New England, New York, and Wisconsin to refer to the equivalent of the civil township in these states. Specific responsibilities and the degree of autonomy vary based on each state. Civil townships are distinct from survey townships, but in states that have both, the boundaries often coincide and may completely geographically subdivide a county. The U.S. Census Bureau classifies civil townships as minor civil divisions. Currently, there are 20 states with civil townships.
Madison County is a county located in the Lead Belt region of the U.S. state of Missouri. As of the 2010 census, the population was 12,226. Its county seat and largest city is Fredericktown. The county was officially organized on December 14, 1818, and was named after President James Madison.
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are currently 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory and shares its sovereignty with the federal government. Due to this shared sovereignty, Americans are citizens both of the federal republic and of the state in which they reside. State citizenship and residency are flexible, and no government approval is required to move between states, except for persons restricted by certain types of court orders. Four states use the term commonwealth rather than state in their full official names.
Mine La Motte Township was established in 1909, taking its name from Mine La Motte, Missouri. [2]
Mine La Motte is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Madison County, Missouri, United States. It is located about six miles north of Fredericktown. Europeans discovered lead here and had also hoped to find silver. The French Governor of Louisiana Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac failed to find silver, but succeeded in recruiting investors in The Company of the West which was organized in 1717. Mine La Motte was eventually settled by about 200 French settlers along with their slaves from Santo Domingo, under the leadership of Philip François Renault, to develop mines in 1717 making it one of the oldest settlements west of the Mississippi River. The presence of lead, a critical ingredient for ammunition, attracted unusually early mining by French colonists in this otherwise remote interior region of the North American continent. That same lead, still used for ammunition at the time of the American Civil War, was also a factor in the Battle of Fredericktown in which forces aligned with the Confederated States of America fought for control of the lead smelters in nearby Freericktown with the Unionist forces, aligned with the United States of America.
