Many of the early settlers around St. Louis had already been granted vast areas of land by the Spanish king, who ruled this section of North America through an appointed governor who had his headquarters in the city of New Orleans. One of the men who had gained one of these grants from the Spanish king was a Frenchman by the name of Gregoire Sarpy. Sarpy had a tract of about located just southwest of St. Louis in a section known as Carondelet (named after a Governor-General of New Orleans). Sarpy was a partner of another Frenchman, Chouteau, in a very profitable fur trade business. The tract of land that Sarpy owned extended from what is now the city of Webster Groves to a stream the Spaniards called "Rio de los Padres" and the French called "Riviere des Peres" ("River of the Fathers") after the early Jesuit missionaries who had a settlement at its mouth.