Who was our namesake Pierre "Pig's Eye" Parrant?  Pierre "Pig's Eye" Parrant was portrayed by the marketing department at Minnesota Brewing Company as a cartoon Pirate.  In fact, "Pig's Eye" Parrant was an actual ... person; a bootlegger by trade, who set up shop on the banks of the Mississippi River at the foot of Ft. Snelling.  As his business grew, so did the the problems associated with his line of business.  The soldiers at Ft. Snelling forced him further and further downriver, until his camp was relocated to Fountain Cave.  As legend has it, his business thrived, along with the settlement that built up around his camp.  The rivermen and settlers began to refer to the area as "Pig's Eye". 

In the spring of 1840, Father Lucien Galtier was sent to the settlement of Pig's Eye to minister to the French Canadians, and to find a suitable place for worship. He selected a site on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River; construction of the chapel began in October 1841.  The chapel was dedicated later that year; Galtier placed the community and the chapel under the patronage of Saint Paul, with the hope that the entire Pig's Eye settlement would soon adopt the name, which did happen.

The Legend of Pierre "Pig's Eye" Parrant

 Back in 1838, about four miles south of Fort Snelling on the banks of the Mississippi River, sat Fountain Cave. Early explorers stopped to fill their canteens with the artesian spring water that ran freely from the mouth of the cave. Inside lived Pierre Parrant, an ornery old character with one eye serviceable. His other eye was marble-hued, crooked, with a sinister white ring around the pupil, giving a piggish expression to his sodden, low features. Parrant opened trade as a bootlegger, selling his homemade spirits. As legend has it, he did a thriving business and built the area's first log cabin.

 One day, in 1839, a Frenchman named Edmund Brisette was seated at a table in Parrant's hovel ready to write a letter to a friend. Geography puzzled the writer. Where should he date a letter from a place without a name? He looked up inquiringly to Parrant and was met by the dead, cold glare of that eye fixed upon him....... in jest, Brisette dated the letter from Pig's Eye...... and that was the first name of the city which later became St. Paul, Minnesota.