Long before European settlement, Native American tribes including the Missouria, Osage, Sac and Fox lived on or hunted this land. The French, followed by the Spanish, obtained the territory from the natives before the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and in the late 1700s the French established the village of La Charrette at the confluence of Charrette Creek and the Missouri River. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark identified it as the westernmost settlement of white men on their Missouri River expedition. The Boone family moved from Kentucky to Missouri in 1799 and founded Callaway Post near La Charrette, a group of cabins arranged for protection from Indian attacks; during the War of 1812, rangers led by Nathan Boone defended the village, but changing Missouri River currents flooded it a few years later. In 1817, Dr. John Young first advertised lots in a new town named Marthasville for his wife Martha, established about half a mile east of La Charrette. Marthasville grew slowly as a shipping and trading post, with about six houses in 1833, then German immigration from 1834 through the 1850s raised the population to 100 and helped make agriculture the area's economic base through corn, wheat, hemp, and livestock. William Wells Brown, born in Kentucky and later an African-American novelist, playwright, speaker, and author, spent his youth in the Marthasville and St. Louis areas while enslaved in Missouri under Dr. Young for a time, escaped in 1834, and later published Clotel in London in 1853, considered the first novel written by an African American. C.H. Schaaf operated Warren County's first horse mill in 1841 and replaced it with the first steam mill in 1854; the business later passed to Herman H. Bierbaum and then Carl in 1905, remaining in operation for over 70 years until about 1913. During the Civil War, Southern sympathizers gathered north of Marthasville at the Briscoe farmhouse to plan action against Federal troops, and on March 25, 1862, Union troops discovered Francis G. Henderson and his men near the farm, chased them to the house, and in the fighting a teenage Union militiaman was killed by a shot from inside, after which Henderson was mortally wounded while fleeing. Marthasville was Warren County's main Missouri River landing in 1840, expanded westward in 1892 with the Lagamann Addition beside the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, and repeatedly suffered from flooding, especially in 1844, 1951, and most severely in 1993. In the early 20th century, Henry August Lichtenberg founded a furniture business in Marthasville, added undertaking and opened a funeral home; his son Fred joined after graduating from the St. Louis College of Embalming in 1905, Adeline Lichtenberg became one of Missouri's first licensed women embalmers in 1928, Delmont Lichtenberg took the state embalming exams before Army service during World War II, and Kathryn became the fourth generation to operate the funeral home in 1988.