USA > Missouri > A History of Northeast Missouri, Volume I > Part 4
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90
The early residents of Northeast Missouri were not always from Virginia, the Carolinas, Kentucky or Tennessee. From the Middle and New England states also they came. It was a Pennsylvanian, Alexan- der McNair, who, settling with his brother in friendly boxing match
4
HISTORY OF NORTHEAST MISSOURI
who should inherit the old homestead and losing the match, became the first governor of Missouri. It was a South Carolinian, Daniel Dunklin, who was the father of the public school system of the state. From Connecticut came Rufus Easton, the new state's greatest law- yer. Tennessee gave Missouri one of her first United States senators, David Barton, and North Carolina the other, Thomas Hart Benton. Thomas F. Riddick, who gave to Missouri her public school lands, going horseback at his own expense from St. Louis to Washington to plead successfully therefor, John Scott, the first congressman, Frederick Bates, the second governor, State Senator Abraham J. Williams, the one-legged cobbler from Columbia who succeeded Bates as governor, John Miller, who succeeded Williams and served seven years the long- est term of any Missourian to hold the office-these were of Virginia nativity. The dominant life, however, in early Northeast Missouri- in all Missouri-was Virginian and Kentuckian, tempered by the frontier west.
DANIEL BOONE
FIRST SETTLER IN NORTHEAST MISSOURI
Louis Blanchette, surnamed Chasseur, the Hunter, a gay French sportsman, was probably the first settler in Northeast Missouri. He wandered from the hamlet of St. Louis in 1769 and built a cabin from which grew "the village of the hills," afterward St. Charles. The eyes of the white man had seen the glories of the land in earlier years. More than a century before Marquette and Joliet, Jesuit missionaries and explorers, came down the Mississippi river and doubtless landed on its attractive western shore. In 1680, a Franciscan friar, Louis Hennepin, ascended the Mississippi river from the mouth of the Illi- nois, staying his frail canoe for occasional converse with the Indians on the river banks. Trapper and hunter had, here and there, pene- trated the wilderness or rowed upon the streams, but there was no per- manent habitation. Following the lead of the adventuresome Blanch- ette, however, settlers began to enter the territory.
5
HISTORY OF NORTHEAST MISSOURI
BOONE AND ENGLISH-SPEAKING SETTLERS
Not until the closing years of the eighteenth century, however, did English-speaking settlers, chief among them Daniel Boone, America's most famous frontiersman, make their homes here. Others came with the birth of the new century and upon the close of the War of 1812 immigration fairly poured into the new country.
After St. Charles. there came the settlement of the Boon's Lick country and then the lands along the Missouri river between Boon's . Lick and St. Charles. Two sons of Daniel Boone, Nathan and Daniel M., made salt at the "lick" in Howard county and shipped it in hol- low logs down the Missouri river to St. Louis. Soon a settlement grew up nearby at Franklin on the river and the Boon's Lick country, name for all the region round about, came into existence, with Franklin, soon to be washed away by the muddy river, as its chief city. To Franklin came Nathaniel Patten and Benjamin Holliday, enterprising Missourians, and began the publication, April 23, 1819, of the Missouri Intelligencer and Boon's Lick Advertiser, the first newspaper west of St. Louis. In the same year the Independence, Capt. John Nelson com- manding, ascended the Missouri river and made landing at Franklin. "What think you, Mr. Reader," said the Albany (N. Y.) Ploughman, "of a newspaper at Boon's Lick in the wilds of Missouri, in 1819, where in 1809 there was not, we believe, a civilized being excepting the eccentric character who gave his name to the spot." Franklin became the metropolis of the Boon's Lick country. Only a single brick build- ing, once the Franklin Academy, now remains of all its early great- ness. In Callaway county the village of Cote Sans Dessein- the hill without design-had been established and in a few years was the center of a small settlement. In 1812, under the protection of Capt. William Head's fort in Howard county, there was a settlement on Thrall's Prairie in Boone county.
BOON'S LICK ROAD AND IMMIGRATION
The Boon's Lick road-from St. Charles westward-surveyed by the Boones in 1815, brought many settlers. The Intelligencer, April 23, 1819, in one of its brief references to local affairs, said: "The immigration to this territory, and particularly to this county, during the present season almost exceeds belief. Those who have arrived in this quarter are principally from Kentucky, Tennessee, etc. Immense numbers of wagons, carriages, carts, etc., with families, have for some time past been daily arriving. During the month of October it is stated that no less than 271 wagons and four-wheeled carriages and fifty- five two-wheeled carriages and carts passed near St. Charles, bound prob- ably for Boon's Lick. It is calculated that the number of persons accom- panying these wagons, etc., could not be less than three thousand. It is stated in the St. Louis Inquirer of the 10th instant that about twenty wagons, etc., per week had passed through St. Charles for the last nine or ten weeks, with wealthy and respectable immigrants from various states. Their united numbers are supposed to amount to twelve thou- sand. The county of Howard, already respectable in numbers, will soon possess a vast population, and no section of our country presents a fairer prospect to the immigrant."
Immigration turned toward the north from St. Louis, the gateway, as toward the west. Maturin Bouvet, a Frenchman, had found salt springs in Ralls county in 1792 and shortly afterward, obtaining a grant of land, had built a cabin and warehouse in Marion county. At
6
HISTORY OF NORTHEAST MISSOURI
the close of the War of 1812, English-speaking settlers, "finding the Boon's Lick country crowded," moved on to the Salt River country in what is now Marion, Ralls, Shelby and other counties of that sec- tion and English civilization began.
GERMAN IMMIGRANTS
Shortly after the English occupancy a large number of German . immigrants came, chiefly as a result of a book of travels written by a scholarly German, Gottfried Duden, who had visited St. Charles, War- ren and Montgomery counties in 1824. The large German population of St. Charles and its neighbor counties dates its beginnings to the year 1833 and to the result of Gottfried Duden's illuminating volume. Thus came the early settlers to Missouri, the Spanish and French, then the English, the German and people of every nation and speech. It is a composite citizenship in every sense today.
PIONEERS OF ALL NATIONALITIES
The life of the pioneer was one of hardship and loneliness but of romance. Only men of courage make successful pioneers. Such were
BOON'S LICK IN A CASE CAR, FIRST . AUTOMOBILE, 1912, AT TERMINUS OF NORTHEAST MISSOURI'S MOST FAMOUS ROAD
the men who laid the foundations of Northeast Missouri. The pioneer was in peril of Indian attack. Beasts seized upon his cattle. He had few books and scarcely a newspaper. Schools were rare and the school term brief indeed. Manners were rough. But the pioneer was honest, brave, hospitable. He gave welcome to every decent stranger. He was industrious, sober, law-abiding. "An amiable and virtuous man," he is said to have been by the Rev. Timothy Flint, a New England visitor of 1816. The Spanish and French had sought for rich mines, for fur trading and for adventure. The English immigrants looked for agri- culture and for homesteads. There was never dispute or quarrel between the races. The few Spanish and the more numerous French mixed readily with the English, who soon far outnumbered the pioneers of different blood.
7
HISTORY OF NORTHEAST MISSOURI
The English-speaking pioneer differed from the French pioneer in life as well as in language. In nothing was this difference more mani- fest than in the building of homes. The Frenchman settled always in villages and his farm, if land held in common can be called a farm, came to the very edge of the village. His residence was in the village and he seldom tilled a farm so far away that he could not at night join in the amusements of the village. The Englishman, on the con- trary, cleared a farm in the wilderness. He located as far from a vil- lage as the presence of the Indians would permit. He "never wished
.1715.08
ORIGINAL THOMAS JEFFERSON MONUMENT, UNIVERSITY CAMPUS, COLUMBIA
to live near enough to hear the bark of his neighbor's dog." With the French the village came first and then the farm. With the Eng- lish the farm came first and afterward the village.
The house of the Englishman was constructed differently from that of his French neighbor. Both were log cabins, sometimes of one room, sometimes of two, with a wide open way between. The French- man put his logs on end and fastened horizontal seats to the walls. The Englishman, however, laid the logs for his house horizontally, notched them together at the ends and filled the spaces between with "chink-
8
HISTORY OF NORTHEAST MISSOURI
ing of mud and plaster." Hospitality was the rule. The door of the pioneer home was made of boards, swung on wooden hinges. It was fastened within by a latch. From the latch a string was hung through an opening in the door. "The latchstring is always on the outside" indicated the open-hearted welcome. The cabins had windows with- out glass. A shutter or greased paper in a sash was used instead. A "Virginia rail fence" made an enclosure around the cabin. The chim- ney was partly of stone and a huge fireplace gave warmth.
The food and clothing of the pioneer were products of the land. Bears, deer, turkey and small game were plentiful. Farm and garden furnished vegetables and from the corn came his bread. Skins of wild animals were made into rough but substantial garments and the loom in the cabin furnished homespun clothing. He had little money and little use for money. His wants were few and he could supply them with moderate ease. When he would buy anything at the village he could give peltries in exchange. Barter was common. "Pins, needles and sheets of coarse writing paper were used as money." Spanish silver dollars were the coin mostly seen. These were cut into small pieces known as "bits" for change. The expressions, "two bits" and "'six bits," have not yet disappeared. Thus was the life of the pioneer.
COUNTY OF PIKE AND MISSOURI "PIKERS"
Many Americans, in the early years of the nineteenth century, be- lieved that the republic of the United States would not extend beyond the Allegheny mountains. They thought the western country a wil- derness or desert unfit for human habitation. Others believed that the country would be divided into several nations, as they thought it impos- sible for so large a territory as that from the Atlantic ocean to Louisi- ana to be successful under one government. It was claimed by many that the amount of money, $15,000,000, paid by the United States for Louisiana, was too great. Surely, they said, the wild land west of the Mississippi was not worth this sum. To make answer to the criticisms and doubts the Lewis and Clark expedition was sent out by President Thomas Jefferson in 1804. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, offi- cers in the United States army, were at the head of the expedition which explored the Missouri river 1,200 miles and crossed to the Pacific ocean. This expedition and the later ones under the leadership of Lieutenant (afterwards General) Zebulon M. Pike were important and far-reaching in their effects upon Northeast Missouri. Pike's expe- ditions in 1805, 1806 and 1807, first to the sources of the Mississippi river and second to the sources of the Platte and Kansas rivers, turned attention to the Middle West of which Northeast Missouri was the frontier. Pike's Peak, in Colorado, and Pike county, in Missouri, are named for the explorer. For years many persons outside Missouri knew only one county in the state, the county of Pike in Northeast Missouri, and called all Missourians "Pikers.'
INITIAL COUNTY ORGANIZATION
Five counties were in Missouri territory in 1812, only one, St. Charles, in all Northeast Missouri. The western boundary of St. Charles . county was the Pacific ocean and the northern border the Canada line. When the state came into the union in 1821 there were fifteen counties, of which ten, Boone, Callaway, Chariton, Clark, Howard, Lincoln, Mont- gomery, Pike, Ralls and St. Charles, were in Northeast Missouri. This shows the growth of the region. Macon county was organized in 1826;
..
HISTORY OF NORTHEAST MISSOURI
9
Randolph in 1829; Monroe in 1831; Lewis and Warren in 1833; Shelby in 1835; Audrain in 1836; Linn and Macon in 1837; Adair and Scot- land in 1841; Sullivan in 1844; Schuyler, Putnam and Knox in 1845. These organization dates show the progress of the population.
BOUNDARY DISPUTE WITH IOWA
In 1840 the boundary line between Northeast Missouri and the state of Iowa was finally settled. There had been difference of opinion between the officers in the two states as to the ownership of a strip of land about twenty miles wide. Instead of pursuing a sensible policy and seeking to settle the difference by law, each state undertook to enforce its authority on the disputed strip. Finally troops were called out by both states. It looked as if there would be war. The tract of land, mostly covered by forest, was noted for wild bees and the dis-
LANDING OF LACLEDE ON THE SITE OF ST. LOUIS
pute was called "The Honey War." Seeing the folly of fighting, it was agreed by both sides to stop war preparations until the national gov- ernment could settle the boundary line. This was done and now in Northeast Missouri the counties of Clark, Scotland, Schuyler and Put- nam have their northern boundaries, the Missouri-Iowa state line, def- initely marked by iron posts, ten miles apart.
ST. CHARLES, OLD MISSOURI CAPITAL
The capital of Missouri was, for a time, in Northeast Missouri, at St. Charles, where the building in which the first general assembly met yet stands. Most of the members of the first Missouri legislature, in 1820, as well as the governor and other high dignitaries, rode to St. Charles on horseback. The members boarded at private houses. Pork sold at 11/2 cents a pound; venison hams, 25 cents each; eggs, 5 cents a dozen; honey, 5 cents a gallon; and coffee, $1 a pound. Sugar was not in the market and those who drank coffee sweetened it with honey. The legislators dressed in homespun clothes, buckskin leggins and hunt-
4. ...
LVJONTILLE.
N
M"
Y
SCOTLAND
2
CLARK_
.Intluck Winsbank
10
·
"Iver Ridge . Numberkill
L I.IL MONTICELLO
K
NO
W
S
S U
Pote
anne
Devices Hill allethe City
Durban
Nerte
Heater
N
N
M
C
N
YTILLE
Pelagra de
S
E IL
BY
MARIO
114
.Youhall
erdesile.
Bridge
In ties fetdry
RANDO
P
:
1 .4 5
M
O
N
R
O LE
marille
cheri)
Vis l'opente
R
alle
P
apelia
A
U.D.R E
IN osa
HOW TETTE
RD
BOON
R.
Niht-tale.
Apring
Derin
Freshlis ar
Washet
CA
LAWAY
Tunt
.
V RREN!
Partha,
C
S .T.
MAP OF THE TWENTY-FIVE COUNTIES OF NORTHEAST MISSOURI
HISTORY OF NORTHEAST MISSOURI
CHARITON intersted
PARIN
..
A STSVILLE
U
T.
s C
CONTGO
deAley
I
11
HISTORY OF NORTHEAST MISSOURI
ing shirts. Some wore rough shoes of their own manufacture, while others encased their feet in buckskin moccasins. Some had slouched hats, but the greater number wore caps made of the skins of wild- cats and raccoons. Governor McNair was the only man who had a fine cloth coat cut in the old "pigeon-tail" style. He also wore a beaver hat and endeavored to carry himself with the dignity becoming a man holding the highest executive office in the state.
GENERAL DEVELOPMENT
The growth and development of Northeast Missouri, the story of its progress, is told in the separate county histories. Written by high authorities, they make a real contribution to the history of the important territory. The life of the pioneer, the part played by women, the building of roadways to bind the population together, the waterways, the organization of churches, the literature, the dark days of the civil war, the history of the state as a whole-these are presented ade- quately and admirably in separate chapters and need not be considered here.
Northeast Missouri is a section of many interests. Largely rural, it contains no city of more than 20,000 population. It's chief interest is agriculture, but manufacturing and mining are of much importance. It is a center of fine stock growing. Half the land is underlaid with coal. Diverse industries, an extended crop season and fertility of soil make, because of the skill, intelligence and energy of the people, a prosperous community. The Mississippi and Missouri river bottom lands are like the Nile valley for richness. The uplands are unexcelled for fruit. The prairies afford abundant harvests. Nor is there neglect of those things which make for the higher life of the citizenship.
EMINENT MEN
The list of eminent men who have been residents of Northeast Mis- souri is a long one. In the county histories that follow, their names are recorded. Here may be mentioned, among the dead, James S. Rollins, the eloquent father of the University of Missouri, Bishop Enoch R. Marvin, James O. Broadhead, James S. Green, Edward Bates, John Miller, George C. Sibley, Sterling Price, Claiborne F. Jackson, Charles H. Hardin, John A. Hockaday, George C. Bingham, Eugene Field, Mark Twain, Abiel Leonard, James L. Stephens, John H. Lathrop, Daniel Boone, Kit Carson, soldiers of war and soldiers of peace, educators, statesmen.
The spirit of its people is the spirit of progress, tempered by sane con- servatism. It rejects not the old because of its age nor refuses the new because it is not old. It is the spirit of a community conscious of its own secure position, somewhat too careless at times of the world's opinion, hospitable, generous, brave. The dream of the greatest statesman is a nation of citizens dwelling in happy homes. In Northeast Missouri the dream finds realization.
A HOME HISTORY OF A HOME LAND
This is a home history, not a story of trumpet and drum, and is told by men who live among and know the people. The individual county histories and special chapters, gathered by, this editor to give compre- hensive and composite view of Northeast Missouri, have been written with fine discrimination and loving, sympathetic hand. They record the
12
HISTORY OF NORTHEAST MISSOURI
Missourian's good deeds and the rich romances of his life for the edifying of the generations that come after him.
This is a home history of a home land. Long the western outpost of American civilization, its chief contribution to history is the homes it founded in the wilderness and sustained amid privation, stress and danger unto the abundant home life of today. The energy the old home of Northeast Missouri stored, the iron it put into the blood, the clear eyes and unclouded brain and the faith and love it has bequeathed enable the men and women of today to walk in straighter path and more safely. This home-in country or on city street-is the old Missouri's heritage to humanity. First of all and always the Missourian was a home builder. And with the perishing of the homes he builded and others like unto them, the republic-no matter its cities or its commerce, its courts or its governors-will be at an end. Upon the historic past we build the historic present. The New Missouri rests upon the Old Missouri.
Let those in Northeast Missouri who know tell of the Old and of the New, a home history of a home land.
-
CHAPTER II THE STORY OF THE PIONEER By John L. RoBards, Hannibal
For we have seen the land, and behold it is very good, a place where there is no want of any thing that is in the earth .- Judges XVIII:9-10.
I have traveled all over the world, to find in the heart of Missouri, the most magnificent scenery the human eye has ever beheld-Bayard Taylor.
We are all one man's sons .- Genesis XLII: 11.
ANCESTRY OF THE PIONEER
Who were the pioneers of Northeast Missouri, and who were eligible to that distinction ?
We affirm that the pioneers were not prehistoric men, nor men evoluted from protoplasm, nor men of spontaneous growth, but men living within the past century, who left lasting memorials of their potential existence; men of democratic sympathies and high ideals of the true principles and purposes of constitutional government.
Alfred the Great, King of England in the ninth century, incorporated the Ten Commandments into the law of the land.
King James the First issued Letters Patent, dated April 10, 1606, to Sir Thomas Gates, and others, for the Colony of Virginia in North America: "In propagating the Christian religion to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge of the worship of God, and may in time bring the infidels and savages living in those parts to human civility, and to a settled and quiet government · shall have and enjoy all liberties, franchises and immunities within as if abiding and born within the realm of England," etc.
It is thus manifest that one aim of the Virginia settlers was the extension in missionary spirit, of the Divine Redeemer's kingdom.
In virtue of that kingly prerogative, the first permanent English settlement established at Jamestown, Virginia, on May 13, 1607, the world known Christian civilization of the United States. That leading event was of the utmost significance. The Church of England sent with that expedition of three ships, a missionary preacher, the Rev. Robert Hunt, a Holy Bible, library, etc. A church edifice was soon built with materials for that purpose shipped from England and formally dedicated for the worship therein of the Christian religion. Other European immigrants mostly English, Welsh, Scotch, Irish, German, and French Huguenots of the best blood of Europe came and made homes in Virginia and in other colonies. They populated the eastern ocean belt of North America and formed the original thirteen colonies all subjects of Great Britain. The Virginia colony rapidly increased in population and elected, by popular vote in 1619, a legislature which made laws suitable for their new environment, and adopted, as far as applicable
13
14
HISTORY OF NORTHEAST MISSOURI
to the times and conditions, the common law of England to govern the people.
THE BEGINNINGS OF SLAVERY
A Dutch merchant ship sold some negro slaves to the planters on the James river in 1619.
The Plymouth pioneers of the Massachusetts colony of 1620 and others, built a ship in 1638, and exported and sold their enslaved Indians to the planters of the West India islands. They also built ships and engaged in the slave trade in importing negroes from Africa for market sale in Massachusetts and the various colonies, and prohibited in 1638 · the marriage of white persons with negroes; but the legislature of Massachusetts repealed that law in 1838.
The Royal African Company composed of the nobility of England, also engaged largely in the slave traffic at the same time.
England persistently imposed many unjust and oppressive laws on the colonies; transported colonists accused of crime across the ocean for trial; incited insurrection; prompted negroes, whom Virginia desired to exclude by law, to rise in arms against the colonists.
THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION
In September, 1774, the battle of Point Pleasant, between Virginia troops of Gen. Andrew Lewis, and the army of Indian allies of the British under Cornstalk, the noted chief and warrior, was fiercely fought with heavy loss of many hundreds killed and wounded on both sides, resulting in a decisive victory of the Virginia army of patriots. That battle was in the history of Virginia, by John Esten Cooke, described, "as the first bloodshed in the American revolution." John G. Saxe, the noted historian, wrote, "formal defiance came first from Virginia."
In June, 1775, Gen. George Washington, of Virginia, the richest man of all the colonies, was by John Adams, of Massachusetts, in the colonial congress, nominated commander in chief of the continental army of the united colonies, and unanimously elected. He voluntarily stipulated that he would not accept pay for his services. His first military strategy was to drive the British army under General Howe, ten thousand strong, from Boston, and save Massachusetts from British tyranny, a wonderful deliverance for New England. The Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, at Philadelphia, in the congress of the colonists, written by Thomas Jefferson, a Virginian, renounced all allegiance to the crown of Great Britain.
Gen. George Rogers Clark of Virginia, in 1779, with troops and arms solely of that colony, conquered the immense Northwest Territory, com- prising now the five states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wis- consin, from the English army and its Indian allies under General Hamilton, who was captured and imprisoned at Williamsburg, the capital of Virginia. After eight years of varying success and disaster, with un- paralleled privation, struggle, and patriotic valor, under Divine provi- dence, victory perched forever upon the American flag of stars and stripes. The war triumphantly closed with the final defeat of the British army under Lord Cornwallis, by the allied armies of America and France under Gen. George Washington at Yorktown, Virginia, on October 19, 1781. The treaty of peace was signed in Paris in 1783.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.