Before European settlement, the area now recognized as St. Louis was home first to a large Mississippian community numbering in the thousands and later to peoples including the Osage, Missouri, Illinois, and Fox. When the French settled along the riverfront in February 1764, the West End was prairie and forest reached from the levee only after several hours by horse or carriage. In 1796, the Spanish lieutenant governor of St. Louis granted land in U.S. Survey Number 378 to Madame Marie Louis Chouteau Papin; in 1818 Josephine Loisel and Hypolite Papin purchased it, and in 1829 they sold part to Emmanuel de Hodiamont, who soon built the house at 951 Maple, the oldest residence in the West End and the second oldest in the city. As parcels were sold off, Ringrose Watson and James Spillman bought the last acreage in 1871, and with Mary E. Page and James C. Page platted part of Survey 378 as Maryville. James C. Page and Dr. Erastus Wells also helped create the West End Narrow Gauge Railroad in 1875, later called the Hodiamont streetcar line, making travel easier and encouraging affluent families to move outward. Another large part of Survey 378 was the 400-acre Rose Hill estate of Hamilton Rowan Gamble, who served as Missouri attorney general, sat on the Missouri Supreme Court, became governor of Missouri from 1861 until his death in 1864, and favored emancipation for Dred and Harriet Scott in their freedom suit. After his death, Rose Hill was subdivided, with 579 lots offered for sale in 1871, and in 1876 the city annexed the subdivision. The West End then developed rapidly as a suburban district of large homes and estates for wealthy residents, with subdivisions including Clemens Place in 1885, Hamilton Place and Cabanne subdivision in 1887, Rosedale in 1888, and the Arcade Addition in 1893, while Rose Hill was further divided into Chamberlain Park, Horton Place, Amherst Place, and Mount Gamble. Its reputation as a fashionable district grew with the 1904 World's Fair, and the Hamilton Hotel advertised its view of the fairgrounds and its short walk to the main gates. African Americans had long lived in the West End, though until the mid-twentieth century they generally worked as servants and were not part of community life. As the city's black population increased and the destruction of Mill Creek in the 1950s displaced 20,000 black residents, African Americans increasingly sought housing farther west. In 1955, Dr. Charles Herriot became the first black resident west of Union Avenue when he bought a house at 2 Windermere Place. He was followed by other affluent and prominent African American residents on Windermere Place, including Dr. Jerome Williams, Rev. Herman Gore, Dr. Bearmanoir Prophete, Sidney Redmond, Dr. Paul Williams and his daughter Paulette, later known as Ntozake Shange, and Chuck Berry and his wife Themetta. In the 1950s and 1960s, Windermere Place gained national attention as a model of integration and has remained diverse.