USA > Missouri > A History of Northeast Missouri, Volume I > Part 71
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Among the early settlers were Joseph Wright, William Dabney, Robert Burns, Joshua Massey, G. W. Stubblefield, Achilles McGinnis, William Jameson (the founder of New London), Chauncy Honey, Thomas and Woodson Blankenship, Isaac Lord, James Chitwood, Absa- lom Phears, James Blair, Yuby Paris, John Tapley, Page Portwood, Anthony Thomas, James Voshel, Asa Glascock, John Fike, Hiram Thomp- son, William R. McAdams, Alexander Boarman, Joseph Evans, David Smallwood, Conrad Crossman, Silas Thompson, Francis Graham, Stephen Dodd, Jacob Seeley, John Turley, Isham Thompson, Josh Voshel, R. W. Jones, John McFarland, William Hays, William S. Sims, Radum Sims, James Muldron, Seth Chitwood, John Priest, James Chitwood, Griffin D. Shillon, Pleasant Hudson, Robert Jeffries, Alvan Foreman, Green Tapley, Thomas P. Norton, Josiah Fugate, Henry Butler, David Shep- herd, Daniel Smith, William McCormack, Isaac Ely, Oney Carstophen Aaron Bryce, James W. See, James Herrington, Joshua Ely, Jacob Clawson, John S. Miller, Morgan Paris, Silas Brocks, James Turley, Peter Grant, Benjamin A. Spalding, Rev. Christy Gentry and James Cox.
FIRST COUNTY OFFICERS
The first circuit judge of Ralls county was Rufus Pettibone, who presided in 1821. The present circuit judge is W. T. Ragland. The first incumbents of other county offices were: Prosecuting attorney, Edward Bates; state senator, William Biggs; representative, Peter Jour- ney; sheriff, Green DeWitt; circuit clerk, Stephen Glascock; probate judge, Stephen Glascock; assessor, Clement White; treasurer, Thomas J. Rhodes; surveyor, Thomas Marlin.
The present county officers are : Presiding judge of the county court, Henry J. Priest; judge of the county court from the Western district. Thos. Evans; judge of the county court from the Eastern district. W. T. Gore; judge of probate, Thomas E. Allison; clerk of the circuit court, Benton B. Megown; clerk of the county court, Jesse W. Pitt : recorder. J. Roy Rice; prosecuting attorney, Joseph F. Barry; sheriff, H. A. Pritchett; collector, Marshall Hulse; assessor, O. M. Fuqua ; treasurer. Miss Estelle Buchanan; coroner, Dr. Harry Norton; public adminis- trator, James F. Brown; surveyor, A. Victor Ely; superintendent of schools, O. E. Hulse.
The county has six banks, forty churches, sixty-six schools, four newspapers and the largest cement plant in the West. The towns are New London. Center. Perry, Hasco. Saverton, Rensselaer, Hassard, Sidney, Madisonville. Spalding, Hatch and Huntington.
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RAILROADS
The county is touched by six railroads, the Missouri, Kansas Texas; the Chicago & Alton; the St. Louis & Hannibal; the Hannibal Connecting Railroad; the St. Louis, Keokuk & Northwestern; and the Hannibal & St. Joseph. There are sixty-three miles of railway in the county.
The Chicago & Alton barely touches the southeast corner of the county, but the other roads run through it for some distance. The St. Louis & Hannibal has the largest mileage in the county. It runs through the county from north to south and has a branch running from Ralls Junction to Perry, in the western part of the county.
TOPOGRAPHY
The surface of Ralls county is diversified. About two-fifths is prairie and the remainder was originally timber land. In the eastern part the county is considerably broken. Along the Salt river and Missis- sippi river there are broad strips of bottom land. These have a rich alluvial soil containing some sand. The so-called "elmland" is next in fertility and is sufficiently undulating to afford good drainage. The white oak lands, underlaid in places with a reddish clay, are among the best for growing wheat and oats. The hills of the eastern part and the land near the streams are the best fruit lands.
The county is well drained by Salt river, which flows in a winding course from west to east. Lick creek, its chief tributary, flows from the south near the western border. Spencer creek and other smaller streams furnish all the necessary drainage for the rest of the county.
Many fresh and salt water springs are found in different parts of the county. The principal saline springs include Freemore, Ely, Spald- ing, Trabue and Fikes licks, and Saverton Springs.
RESOURCES
Coal is found in Ralls county near Spencer creek and a number of shafts have been sunk. Much cannel coal has been mined for home consumption. Mineral clay is used for paints and potter's clay of a fine quality is found in considerable deposits.
In different parts of the county plenty of stone for building purposes is found.
Cattle, hogs and sheep are raised in the county in large numbers and wheat, corn and oats are important grain crops. The county has always been noted for its wheat. The first premium for flour in the competition open to the world at the New York World's Fair in 1853 was awarded to a Ralls county man, Hiram Glascock, of four miles east of New London. The wheat was ground at Colonel RoBard's mill in Hannibal, which is near the northern boundary of the county.
Ralls county has one of the largest cement plants in the world. It is located at Ilasco on the Mississippi river, nine miles northeast of New London. Its output of cement in 1910 was 2,013,137 barrels. The market value of its agricultural products in 1910 was $1,736,458.
SCHOOLS
There are high schools at New London and Perry and a private educational institution, Van Rensselaer College, located at Rensselaer, in the extreme northern part of the county.
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While not model by any means, the schools of Ralls county are very good. The number of pupils enumerated has showed a slight de- crease during the last ten years.
TOWNS
New London, the county seat, is the largest town. According to the census of 1910, it has a population of 942. It has grown slowly, but steadily, for the last twenty years. In 1880 it had a population of 683.
In 1836, according to Wetmore's Gazetteer of Missouri, New London had a brick courthouse, five stories (four grocery stores and one tav- ern), a church, a clerk's office and a jail, which, the writer informs us, was "of little use."
Perry, with a population of 895, and Center, with 540, are the other incorporated towns. Both are supported mainly by agricultural and live stock interests. Perry has also coal fields of importance.
Ilasco, in the northeast part of the county, is a cement manufactur- ing center and Oakwood is the home of lime manufacture.
STATISTICAL
Ralls county is divided into seven townships-Center, Clay, Jasper, Saline, Salt River, Saverton and Spencer.
The population of the county in 1910 was 12,913; in 1900 it was 12,287 and in 1890, 12,294. The negro and foreign element comprise only a small part of the total population.
The county contains 313,600 acres of land, of which about 240,000 are in improved farms. The price of land varies greatly, the most val- uable being near New London. Some of the bluff lands along the Mis- sissippi river can be had for $25 an acre. This land is especially fav- orable to orcharding and live stock grazing.
There are four newspapers, the Ralls County Record and the Times, at New London ; the Herald at Center; and the Enterprise at Perry.
In politics Ralls county is Democratic by a ratio of more than 2 to 1. All of the present county officers are Democrats. The vote in the county in 1908 for president was: Bryan, Democrat, 1,947; Taft, Republican, 900.
At the March term, 1869, of the county court, composed of Judges Nathan S. Dimmitt, Nimrod Waters and William E. Harris, and George E. Mayhall, clerk, the court tendered to the St. Louis and Keokuk Rail- road a subscription of $275,000. Bonds were issued. Litigation fol- lowed. Interest piled up, the total debt reaching $325,000. Payment of the bonds was fought on the ground that they were illegal, as the people had voted against their issue on two separate occasions. After a long struggle, the Supreme Court finally decided that the bonds were legal and must be paid. The bonds, through the efforts of Judge J. M. Smith, were refunded and a tax of fifty cents on the $100 of valuation levied and the payment of the bonds began. In 1901, at the suggestion of Judge H. J. Priest, the court raised the assessment to sixty cents. Today the debt amounts to $34,000. It will be paid off in 1914. For forty-four years the taxpayers have labored under an unjust burden- money paid for a railroad that was never built. This debt has militated against the growth of the county, but now the outlook is better and peo- ple can come to Ralls county assured of fine land and low taxes.
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CHAPTER XXVII RANDOLPH COUNTY By G. F. Rothwell, Moberly LOCATION AND TOPOGRAPHY
The county of Randolph is located just north of the Missouri river and half way between the eastern and western borders of the state.
The nearest point upon the Big Muddy is at Glasgow, ten miles away while within fifty miles to the northeast at Quincy, rolls the Father of Waters. The Grand Divide between these two converging streams passes through Randolph county from north to south a little east of the middle line and forms its prairie lands. This belt of prairie plateau running through the county from north to south is narrowest in the middle, being there only about a mile and a half wide and then spreads out in fan-shape northward and southward to approximately eight miles in width. It has an elevation of eight hundred and twenty-five feet above the sea level. To the right and the left the waters of the county are parted. The streams rising upon the east of the divide flow to the Mississippi while those departing from the west empty into the Missouri river. In their descent of one hundred feet from the center to the borders of the county the gradually deepening and widening valleys of the streams give rise to corresponding hills and in this region remains all that is left of the great forests which once enriched their slopes. In these primeval gardens of the woods once grew the giant oaks and elms, walnuts and hickory, cottonwood and sycamore, in whose fastnesses the wild beasts had their habitats and beneath whose hospitable shades the first settlers found homes. But, like the first settlers, the first forests are now represented by a younger generation and the old monarchs of the glen have fallen in the clearing.
ORGANIZATION AND AREA
Among the fifteen original counties which had been organized in the Territory of Missouri at the time of the admission of the state was How- ard county. Out of Howard county the first General Assembly, in 1820, carved the county of Chariton and eight years later out of Chariton county was taken the boundaries of Randolph. Thus we stand related to these contiguous territories, not only by the bond of blood of a common ancestry but by heredity of soil as well. As originally organized the county of Randolph extended northward to the Iowa line. From this un- wieldy scope she has been trimmed to her present symmetrical form of a rectangular card with the lower left hand corner folded down. The county is twenty-one miles wide and twenty-five miles long and contains 470 square miles of surface. The sections along the north line and those lying along the west side of its middle range overrun so that it contains
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but 432 sections. The soil of the prairie lands is a yellow loam turning to black soil in the low lands and along the streams. It produces with great fecundity all the fruits and vegetables, grasses and grains of com- merce which are indigenous to this climate but is chiefly devoted to the production of corn and hay. Except in a limited portion of the central region, it is underlaid with a four foot vein of coal and a two foot vein above it. In many places this coal crops out along the hillsides. A de- posit of shale one mile wide and eleven miles long and from eighty to one hundred feet in thickness runs east and west through the central part and is used for making vitrified paving brick. Fire-clay and limestone also abound.
Randolph county was named for the shrill-voiced orator of Roanoke, Virginia, John Randolph.
WHEN THE FIRST WHITE MEN CAME
At the time of the organization of the county, January 22, 1829, there were within her borders nearly three thousand people. Ten years later the census of 1840 shows a population of 7,198. We do not know definitely when the first white man arrived. In 1810 one hundred and fifty settlers came from Kentucky to Old Franklin in Howard county. The first settlement known to have been made in the locality now known as Randolph county was made in 1818 by emigrants from Kentucky, Virginia and North Carolina. At some time between these dates we may infer that the land had been reconnoitered by pioneer trappers and hunters from the old settlements near by. The early settlers entered the county from the south and made their settlements along the timber line. They took to the woods, chiefly because of the convenience of water and fuel and because the soil was richer and the sod easier to turn. In the timber they were safe from prairie fires and the green-head flies which. in vast numbers, tortured their beasts of burden to distraction in the open. The forest was also a shelter in the time of storm and the material was there at hand for his cabin which was built of logs.
This home of the pioneer was one of the institutions of his times. It pictures his family life, it measures his privations and suggests our prog- ress. It has mouldered into decay and passed from view. On its door posts he hung the strings of scarlet pepper like the red symbol of the Passover, but the grim reaper did not spare this first born of the wilder- ness. Posterity will not see the log cabin and taxidermy can not preserve it. A brief description of it may deserve the space: "These were of round logs, notched together at the corners, ribbed with poles and cov- ered with split boards from a tree. A puncheon floor was laid down, a hole cut in the end and a stick chimney run up. A clapboard door is made, a window is opened by cutting out a hole in the side or end. two feet square and finished without glass or transparency. The house is then chinked and daubed with mud. The cabin is now ready to go into. The household and kitchen furniture is adjusted and life on the frontier is begun. It was furnished with the one-legged bedstead which was made by boring holes in the side and end of the cabin the proper distance for the width and length and into these were fastened poles whose intersec- tion was joined with a corner post at right angles. Clapboards were laid down across the poles and on this structure the bed was laid. The convenience of a cook stove was not thought of, but instead, the cooking was done by the faithful housewife in pots, kettles or skillets on and about the big fireplace and frequently over and around too, the distended pedal extremities of the legal souvenir of the household, while the latter was indulging in the luxuries of a cob. pipe and discussing the probable
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results of a contemplated deer hunt on the Chariton river." The meal, if plain, was wholesome.
The amusements of the early settler were simple, in keeping with his primitive life. His labors were often lightened and converted into social pleasures at house-raisings, log-rollings, corn-shuckings and quilting bees. They would assemble from miles around and, at the close of their merrymaking, dined upon the first fruits of a virgin world. Nowhere on the globe can that life be ever lived again. The frontier is gone. The juicy venison and bear steaks, the wild honey and sweet milk, turkey and corn pone, cooked with the lid on the skillet, were placed on the boards. At the close of the meal cob pipes were filled with plain, honest, robust natural leaf and while they offered up a fragrant incense to the Goddess of Contentment and expectoration was flowing free, they talked about the things which concerned their daily life, "their homely joys and destiny obscure." They talked about the new comers and the prob- ability of an Indian raid, about the prairie fires, the chills and fever, the green flies and the rattlesnakes, talked about their yoke oxen and bull-tongue plows and spinning wheels, the candles they had made and the yarn spun, about the time they had to borrow fire from the neigh- bors, about the big sleet, the cholera, when the stars fell and quoted "scripter." Their voices are hushed and their times are obsolete. Their tallow dips have sputtered out and the embers on the hearth no longer glow. The house is gone. The forest, where it stood, has been cut down. The prairie has been burned over and plowed. The pioneer sleeps here and there in the little clumps of locust trees which he planted, forgotten. Many of the old family names still cling to the soil in the vicinity of their preemptions and some of their descendants comprise the first fam- ilies of the county while others of them have gone to occupy leading places in other states.
THE FIRSTS
Only a few of the names of the first settlers of Randolph county are known. I will place them under the corner stone of this article for preservation, if not for reading. They are as follows: Wm. Holman, Squire Holman, James Dysart, Iverson Sears, John Sears, Asa Kerby, Hardy Sears, David R. Denny, Younger Rowland, Archie Rowland, Saml. Humphries, Wright Hill, Rev. James Barnes, Uriah Davis, Abra- ham Goss, Isaiah Humphreys, Rev. S. C. Davis, James Davis, John Viley, Jacob Medley, Thos. Mayo, Sr., Jas. M. Baker, Charles M. Baker, Jr., Chas. Finnell, Val. Mayo, Chas. Mathis, Tillman Bell, James Beatty, Chas. Baker, Sr., Dr. Wm. Fort, Jer. Summers, John Welden, Wm. Elliott, Neal Murphy, Wm. Cross, Nat. Hunt, Blandermin Smith, Geo. Burckhartt, John C. Reed, Capt. Robt. Sconce, James Goodring, Elijah Hammett, John J. Turner, Joseph Wilcox, James Cochran, Thos. Gor- ham, T. R. C. Gorham, Daniel Hunt, William Goggin, Reuben Samuel, Thos. J. Samuel, John Head, Robert Boucher, Joseph Hammett, Dr. W. B. McLean, F. K. Collins, Paul Christian, Sr., Joseph Cockrill, Robert W. Wells, Nathan Hunt, Robert Wilson and Hancock Jackson.
The first three named settled in the county as early as 1818, and some of the "Recollections" of one of these men, Squire Holman, taken from the Macon Truc Democrat, thirty years ago, are of such interest in detailing the pre-historic facts and incidents of early times that they are here incorporated :
"Squire Holman was born in Madison county, Ky., Oct. 31st, 1807, and with his father's family, emigrated to the Territory of Missouri in 1817. They settled just a few miles below Old Franklin. in Howard county, and from thence moved in the spring of 1818 to Silver Spring,
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in what is now Randolph county. His father (Wm. Holman), James Dysart (the father of Rev. James Dysart, of Macon) and Joseph Holman (the uncle of Squire Holman) were the first settlers of Randolph county.
"When Randolph county was organized it included Macon and all the territory north to the Iowa line or Indian Territory.
"The Indians were numerous and frequently came into the settle- ments. Huntsville was laid out shortly after Squire Holman was grown but he does not remember the first officers. The early settlers had fre- quently to beat their corn in wooden mortars, and when they went to mill, had to go to Snoddy's Mill, near Glasgow. The first school ever taught, as far as he recollects, in Randolph county, was by Jack Dysart, who afterwards became colonel of the militia (and. was father of B. R. Dysart of Macon) about 1822. This school was kept in a log house seven or eight miles southwest of the present site of Huntsville, on Fos- ter's Prairie.
"The first church was a log house used by the Old School Baptists, near Silver Creek, and the first sermon preached was by the elder Mer- riman, between the years 1822 and 1825, the early settlers previously going to Mt. Ararat in Howard county to hear Elder Edward Turner.
"For a number of years the settlers of Randolph went to Fayette for such groceries and dry goods as they absolutely needed. The set- tlers, male and female, wore home-made clothes. Many beautiful young ladies were married in home-made striped cotton and handsome young men in home-made jeans.
"Mr. Holman remembers when the early settlers, of what is now Randolph, had to go to Fayette to court where Gen. Owens kept a tav- ern. The General used to laugh and say that he could always tell a Randolphian by the color of his clothes. The early male settlers gen- erally wore jeans dyed with walnut bark. They would have passed during the war for No. 1 Butternuts. Squire Holman was married to Arethusa Barnes. of Randolph county, in 1832, and of their twelve children, raised nearly all.
"Mr. Holman believes that the first store opened in Randolph county was by Daniel G. Davis near the residence of William Goggin, which site was afterward made Huntsville. He did not remember the first post office, but said the mail was carried on horseback.
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"The first mill was Hickman's horse mill between Silver Creek and Huntsville. The father of Mr. Holman also had a horse mill and cotton gin. In those days the settlers raised their own cotton for all domestic purposes.
"When Mr. Holman's father settled, in what is now Randolph county, the government had not offered any land for sale. The emi- grant selected his land and settled on it and when the land came into market, purchased it of the government at Franklin, where a land office was opened. .. The wolves were very numerous, both gray and prairie. The wolves became so troublesome that a premium was offered and his father killed and took the scalps. that brought several hundred dollars. They were good for paying taxes.
"About the year 1833 Mr. Holman, with several others, made a trip for honey between the Chariton and Grand rivers and in three weeks time took eight barrels of strained honey and left fifteen bee trees stand- ing, having no need of packing more. He remembers when elk were plenty within the present limits of Randolph and bears and catamounts were numerous."
Thus did the pioneers of old Randolph county live. The sons of these sires now pay taxes to hunt, rather than hunt to pay taxes, for
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Randolph contributes annually $500 to the state game commissioner. The Virginia quail and the common hare are the only surviving speci- mens of game. The wire fence has destroyed their breeding places in the weedy corners of the old rail fence and the bird dog and the automatic gun are gradually eliminating them. The noble ardor of the chase is turning its pursuit to the clay pigeon and the effete frog leg. "To such base uses do we come at last."
When we open the first records entered by the first courts which were instituted at the organization of the county we feel all the interest that is aroused by the first movements of an embryo society. At the same time these first pages are treasured as keepsakes like the little shoes in which babyhood learns to walk.
The county had been organized by law on the 22nd of January, 1829, and on the 2nd of February following, the three justices of the first county court met at the residence of Blandermin Smith, one mile north- east of the present seat of justice, for the purpose of convening the first court. This place had been designated by law as a temporary court- house. James Head, Wm. Fort, and Joseph M. Baker, the men appointed judges, having assembled at the appointed time and place, exhibited to each other their commissions from the governor as justices of the county court. They qualified by taking the oath of office and elected James Head to be presiding justice and Robert Wilson to be the first clerk. Wilson was the clerk of the circuit court of that district and had come up to Mr. Smith's new county seat to show the county court how to put on the ermine. After the court had been sworn in it directed that all persons who wished to become candidates for the other county offices should file their applications with the clerk in writing. The court then adjourned from its ardous labors until the next day. On the second day it divided the county into four townships by the intersection of the township and range lines which intersect near Huntsville. The north- west quarter of the county was named Salt Spring township, the north- east Sugar Creek township, the southwest Silver Creek township and the southeast Prairie township. The governor had the appointment of jus- tices of the peace but upon the recommendation of the court. The follow- ing were recommended and appointed as the first justices of the peace : Blandermin Smith, James Wells and Archibald Shoemaker for Salt Spring township; John Peeler and Elisha McDaniel for Sugar Creek township; Thomas Bradley, John Viley and John Dysart for Silver Creek township and Charles McLean for Prairie township. There is nothing of record to indicate whether the failure of the court to appoint a full set of justices for some of the townships was due to an exhaustion of legal talent or to the good behavior of the people. Constables were appointed for the above townships in the order named, as follows : Nathan Hunt, Abraham Gooding, John MeCully and Nathan Floyd, with bonds of $800 each. Thomas Gorham was appointed first surveyor. Terry Bradley first assessor and Jacob Medley first collector. There being no money on hand for a treasurer to keep, the appointment to that empty honor was deferred. Eleven road overseers were appointed who were also without funds and their labors could not have extended further under their oath of office than to "support the constitution of the United States." Certified copies of the necessary records were ordered to be procured by the clerk from Chariton county. The court adjourned to May, and Randolph county was on her way. Those four townships have since grown to eleven, the nine justices to twenty-four and the eleven road overseers to about seventy and disburse a fund of $7.000. in addition to a road and bridge fund expended by the court annually.
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