George Champlin Sibley was an American explorer, soldier, Indian agent, politician, and educator.
Background
George Champlin Sibley was born in Great Barrington, Massachussets, the descendant of John Sibley who emigrated from England to Plymouth about 1629 and later settled in Salem, Massachussets, and the son of John Sibley and Elizabeth (Hopkins) Sibley, the daughter of Samuel Hopkins, 1721-1803.
Education
The boy was reared and educated in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Career
Appointed a clerk in the Indian bureau, he went to St. Louis and in 1808 accompanied the military detachment sent up the Missouri to a point near the site of the present Sibley, Jackson County, Missouri, to build Fort Osage.
At this establishment, known also as Fiery Prairie Fort and Fort Clark, which included a government trading factory for the Indians and which for a decade was the furthermost outpost of the frontier, he was stationed as factor, and later as Indian agent, until about 1826.
In June and July 1811, escorted by a band of Osage warriors, he explored the Grand Saline, in the present Woodward County, Okla, and in August he made a tour of investigation among the Kansas Indians. Though his services in the War of 1812 seem not to have been conspicuous, they brought him the unofficial title of major, by which he was ever afterward known.
The Sibleys, in a large log building, furnished with many of the conveniences and some of the luxuries of city life brought by the bride on her wedding voyage, kept open house for all voyagers and wanderers who passed that way.
In 1825 Sibley served as one of the three commissioners to mark the Santa Fé trail from Council Grove to the Mexican boundary. A year or two afterward he retired from government service and made his home near St. Charles, where he developed a large and beautiful estate.
In 1844 he was a delegate to both the state and the national Whig conventions and also an unsuccessful candidate for the state Senate. Though a semi-invalid in his later years, he maintained a lively interest in political and social questions. Both of the Sibleys held somewhat advanced views for their time and place, and Mrs. Sibley was one of the first avowed advocates of woman's suffrage.
In 1827 they established a school for girls on a nearby tract named by them Lindenwood. This school, subsequently taken over by the presbytery of St. Louis and endowed with the gift of Sibley's estate, became Lindenwood College. Sibley died at his home.
Achievements
Connections
On August 19, 1815, in St. Louis, he was married to Mary, the accomplished daughter of Rufus B. Easton, who accompanied him to the fort.