Cape Girardeau Main & Broadway circa 1880
My name is Bob
Jenkins and I am the Cape Girardeau County
Coordinator.
We have many genealogical
resources available here.
We would appreciate
any contributions you would like to make
to this site.
Cape
Girardeau County, Missouri
Cape Girardeau County grew from a French trading post established in the early 1700s by Ensign Jean Baptiste Girardot, whose name and rocky Mississippi River cape gave the area its identity. The region had long been home to Indigenous peoples, including Mississippian‑culture communities and later Osage, Otoe‑Missouria, and Ioway groups. After the Louisiana Purchase, the county became one of Missouri’s five original counties, officially organized on October 1, 1812. Jackson, platted in 1815, became the county seat, while the riverfront town of Cape Girardeau developed into a major port shaped by steamboats, agriculture, and later the railroad. Today, the county remains a historic anchor of southeast Missouri, rooted in its river heritage and early frontier settlement.
Featured Resource: Slavery Acknowledgement Project
DePaul University Special Collections and Archives has launched a major new digital resource documenting the presence and use of enslaved labor in the early operation of Vincentian institutions in Perryville and Cape Girardeau from 1819–1865. Financial ledgers, correspondence, and corrected transcriptions provide evidence of individuals held in bondage and the labor they performed.
The project includes searchable transcriptions, page‑level notes identifying mentions of enslaved or free Black individuals, and a “People” index linking names to the records in which they appear. This resource may be especially valuable to genealogists researching early Southeast Missouri.