The area was first granted by the Spanish colonial authorities to Joseph Manning, with the first European settler in the Brazeau Bottom was George A. Hamilton, a Catholic from Maryland. Hamilton had lived in New Madrid and received permission from Spanish authorities to settle in the Brazeau Bottom in 1797. Other early settlers in the Brazeau Bottom were Hinckson who settled in 1800; Joseph James who settled in 1801, under the verbal permission of the De Luziere, the colonial commandant of New Bourbon, David L. Johnson (1802), William Johnson from Kentucky who settled in 1802, Charles Duncaster, and Samuel Hinch. In 1803, Joseph Fenwick and twenty other Kentucky Catholics established the Fenwick Settlement at the mouth of the Brazeau Creek. The German Saxon Lutheran immigration of 1938-39 brought numerous German settlers to the area and the establishment of Wittenberg.
