USA > Missouri > A History of Northeast Missouri, Volume I > Part 73
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
We have no navigable streams but the soil is watered by four hundred miles of creeks and small water courses.
549
HISTORY OF NORTHEAST MISSOURI
AGRICULTURE AND MINING
This network of natural irrigation, aided by a mean annual rainfall of thirty-seven inches and an average July temperature of seventy-seven degrees, makes agriculture a dependable vocation. Sixty thousand acres of corn and forty thousand acres of timothy hay smile at the con- tented herds of kind-eyed kine. The kind of blue grass that makes race horses in Kentucky grows here voluntarily, where it is not killed by dense woodlands. The surplus of the plow brings an average of $10 per acre for every acre in the county, while that which is fed, supports live stock values of $15 to the acre. As if this were not enough, the bottom as well as the top of this valuable county is producing wealth. All but the central portion is underlaid with four feet of bituminous coal at varying depths of one hundred to two hundred feet. In many places it crops from the hillside. An annual output .of half a million tons at $2.50 per
MISSOURI COAL
ton, makes the mineral almost equal to the cereal products. The chief operator is the Northern Central Coal Company, holding 40,000 acres. Mining is conducted at Huntsville, Higbee, Renick, Elliott and Yates.
Brick shale is also one of the valuable minerals of Randolph county. It is found in the central portion where the coal has been destroyed by the opening of a crevasse a mile wide and eleven miles long, which has filled with shale to a depth of eighty to a hundred feet. It is manufac- tured into a superior quality of paving brick at Moberly and shipped to Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Illinois and North and South Dakota. The Moberly Brick and Paving Company convert this shale into 110,000 bricks per day, burning daily fifty tons of coal and working the year round. This shale has a blue color like soap-stone and its analysis is so similar to decomposed granite that it is inserted for comparison : Hygro- scopie water, 1.47; combined water, 5.42; silica, 66.34; alumina, 15.81; ferrous oxide, 5.12; lime, .97; magnesia, .78; potash, 2.97; soda, 1.24.
550
HISTORY OF NORTHEAST MISSOURI
A few of the industries which once were remunerative have passed away. The manufacture of salt at Randolph Springs, the making of hoop poles and railroad ties at Renick and Jacksonville, and the cultiva- tion of tobacco which in the '70s reached six million pounds are no more.
CITIES AND TOWNS
The cities, towns and villages of Randolph county hold nearly three- fifths of the population. Their citizenship aggregates 15,600 people, while the 2,500 farms hold the other 10,582. The census of these munic- ipalities in 1910 was: Moberly, 10,923; Huntsville, 2,247; Higbee, 1,215; Clark, 300; Cairo, 220; Renick, 213; Jacksonville, 200.
Moberly and Huntsville are cities of the third class. They deserve some separate mention.
Huntsville, the county seat, is the oldest and most historic town in the county. Its streets are paved with macadam and ancient elms grow in the yards and fringe with shade its avenues. It is hard to realize when looking down the spacious streets that the first county court ordered all persons cutting timber in the streets to remove the brush and cut the stumps not more than one foot high. Huntsville has five blocks of business houses and many beautiful homes. Two blocks of Main street are paved with vitrified brick and granitoid walks are being laid. It has three churches, two newspapers, two banks, a modern hotel, a rake factory and axe-handle factory, three livery barns, the public buildings, radium springs with salt baths, an electric light plant and new water works system owned by the city. It is the principal mining center and enjoys a large rural trade. Its Commercial Club is a wide- awake, aggressive body. The public school building is one of the largest and handsomest in the county and its school district is assessed at $600,000. The railroad station is about one-half mile from the court- house and all trains are met with a bus.
Sometimes called the Magic City, in allusion to its sudden appear- ance and rapid growth, Moberly, located near the center of the county on the Wabash Railroad, is within forty miles of the center of the state, 148 miles west of St. Louis, 129 miles east of Kansas City and seventy- five miles from a larger city. At the close of the Civil war it contained a population of one man; its population now is fourteen thousand. It covers compactly two square miles of ground, and but few of its seven thousand town lots are unimproved. Half the people of the county live in Moberly. It has eighty miles of streets, twenty-five miles of which are paved with vitrified brick, and 160 miles of sidewalks, now changing from brick to granitoid by blocks and streets. Moberly never deserved the name of magic city more truly than now. During Mayor Rolla Rothwell's administration of four years, the city increased in value thirty-three per cent, or $3,000,000, purchased Forrest park and recon- structed every public utility in the city. The city is worth on the basis of its assessment, $10,000,000. From the date of the first lot sale to the last deed recorded is forty-six years. An old photograph of Seelens store, one of the first buildings in the town, shows a little barelegged boy leaning against the awning post, about ten years of age, named Johnnie Lynch. The Hon. J. E. Lynch is not yet fifty-seven years old. The city has developed in a lifetime. It was located upon a treeless, trackless prairie. A birdseye view of it from the top of one of its buildings shows it nestling now beneath a forest of shade. The seal of the old common pleas court had for an emblem, a deer chased by a pack of hounds. It was suggested by the judge, Hon. G. II. Burckhartt, he- cause he had caught a deer where the "white way" now sheds its
551
HISTORY OF NORTHEAST MISSOURI
lambent light upon the throngs of evening shoppers. The directors of the Randolph & Chariton Railroad first platted Moberly in 1858 and notified the village of Old Allen, one mile north to move down. Patrick Lynch put his house on wheels and with a yoke of oxen hauled it to Moberly and settled on lots 11 and 12 in block 12, original town, on Clark street opposite the Merchants hotel. The war stopped the build- ing of the new railroad and with it further development of the town. After the war, the North Missouri Railroad again laid out the town and on September 27, 1866, the lots were auctioned by Barlow, Valle & Bush, terms $10 cash and balance in one and two years. Tables were set near the Coates street crossing and solid and liquid refreshments were served. Lots brought an average of $45. Where the Merchants hotel stands, brought $150. A marshy pond of water was on the rear of that lot. Excavation for a gas main shows the original surface of the ground to have been four feet lower there than at present and where the brass bands now discourse sweet music beneath the verandas of that fashionable hostlery, the moping frogs did erstwhile to the moon complain. Bill Robinson, O. F. Chandler, Doctor Tannehill, Elijah Williams, John Grimes, Ernest Miller, C. Otto, J. G. Zahn and Patrick Lynch were bidders at the sale. Tate's hotel at the corner of Reed and Clark street was the first house completed. The first business houses were frame buildings. Adam Given sawed the lumber for the first house. One by one the first buildings were destroyed by fire and replaced with brick structures. The ordering out of the old board walks as the city grew met with much opposition and at times almost created conflicts. The miring of vehicles in the streets during the early spring thaws brought a demand for paving. The first laid was a square of wooden blocks on Reed street at the depot, by Superintendent Butler. Then Reed street in 1888 was laid with brick and Williams street next im- proved.
The location of the Wabash shops in Moberly in '72 was the beginning of lively times. The big pay roll of the Wabash ran riot through the veins of business and in the circulation was felt the mounting tide of life. The wheels began to turn, and not only the car wheels, but the buggy wheels also. Livery stables were more profitable than picture shows There was nothing to do and nowhere to go on the bare prairie except to go buggy riding. The street crossings were all wooden walks and placed above grade to keep foot travelers out of the mud, so when the joy riders hit the crossing on high gear the "auto sensation" was lost in the clouds of dust which arose. Family horses learned to trot a block and stop, then go another block and stop. Low license and dramshops prevailed.
One of the crises through which the town passed was the adoption of the stock law and withdrawing the keys of the city from the cows. . The fences were taken down. One of the handicaps of young Moberly was that the roofs of the houses were too small to keep the cisterns filled with water and at each drouth the city went dry. It was not known that an abundant supply of water was beneath the surface. In the early days when everybody went to the postoffice for their mail, it was the best business asset in the town. The postmaster was compelled to rent a building for the office and furnish the boxes at his own expense. This supplied both the incentive and the opportunity for keeping the office on wheels. The inside machinations of the removal conspirators plotting against each other would put to blush the courtiers of Genoa. In 1906 a $50,000 federal building was erected for the postoffice and an additional $35,000 has been appropriated for its enlargement. 1,500,000 pieces of mail were received and delivered and 1,181,000 pieces dis-
552
HISTORY OF NORTHEAST MISSOURI
patched last year. A money order business of $346,502.23 was handled in the same time. The monthly pay roll of the Moberly office is $3,000. Its rural carriers serve twenty-five thousand.
It is said that a man is what he eats. Moberly consumes annually : one million, seven hundred and fifty thousand loaves of bread, one million pounds of beef, one million pounds of pork, three million eggs, three hundred and twelve thousand pounds of butter, one million pounds of cheese, eighty thousand pounds of mutton, eighty thousand pounds of lard, fifty miles of sausage, thirty thousand pounds of flour, twenty- one thousand gallons of ice cream, fifteen thousands baskets of grapes, ten thousand bunches of bananas, eight thousand boxes of oranges, six thousand cases of strawberries, five thousand boxes of lemons, two thou- sand gallons of oysters, two thousand crates of pineapples, Moberly ex- ports twenty-six million eggs, three million, seven hundred and seventy- five thousand pounds of poultry, seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds of groceries. Her intellectual yearnings are satisfied with four thousand, five hundred volumes in the Carnegie Library.
Her artificial ice plant has a capacity of sixty tons daily. Her brick plant makes 110,000 brick daily. Her poultry house does an annual business of $752,688.11. Moberly has two wholesale grocery houses, three banks with $2,000,000 resources and gaining at the rate of $100,000 per year, a shoe factory employing 193 men and 124 women, who make 2,600 pairs of shoes daily, one Y. M. C. A. with a membership of 512, has $200,000 invested in churches, $160,000 in school buildings employing fifty teachers, with an enrollment of 1,500 and an enumeration of 4,500, disbursing $35,000 annually for instruction under the superintendence of J. C. Lilly, one of the foremost educators in the state. The assessed valuation of its school district is one-fourth million with $57,000 outstanding bonds. Moberly has two daily newspapers, a finely equipped hospital, two machine shops, a cold storage and produce plant, planing mill, Standard Oil storage capacity of 150,000 gallons.
Moberly owns her own water system at a cost of $150,000. The streets are lighted by 102 arc lights from a plant of 1,200 horse power. The main business street is illuminated with a decorative collection of many white globes creating a fairy scene of beauty. The gas plant has a capacity of 175,000 feet, and seventeen miles of mains. The telephone system cost $100,000 and has a switchboard of 3,500 capacity. The outstanding obligations of the city amount to $240,000.
These statistical statements are set out not that we may glory in our greatness now, but that future historians commenting upon their small- ness may have the data by which to measure the city's future growth. Looking at the marks upon the wall which have been made in the past we see how each time this child of destiny has been measured. the index shows a head taller. Many things of interest have been left out and that which has been said could have been told better. We believe, however, that it meets the essential requirements of truth. "The truth needs no ornaments and what she borrows from the pencil is but de- formity."
1
CHAPTER XXVIII ST. CHARLES COUNTY By Dr. J. C. Edwards, O'Fallon THE VILLAGE OF THE HILLS
The first settlement made in what is now the state of Missouri by Europeans was made at Ste. Genevieve about the middle of the eighteenth century. St. Louis was probably settled about ten years afterwards by Pierre Laclede with a few French adventurers. There was another settlement made on the Mississippi river below St. Louis called New Bourbon.
About the year 1770, a young and adventurous Frenchman named Louis Blanchette, called by the Indians "La Chasseur"-"the hunter" -found himself on the west side of the Missouri river, on a series of beautifully symmetrical hills overlooking to the north a lovely stretch of plains bordering the great rivers and clothed in all the wealth of spring-time verdure and summer flowers. No natural landscape could have been more entrancing than the Missouri and Mississippi valley covered with green grass and wild flowers as tall as a man on horse- back. This scene was viewed from the two beautiful mounds that over- looked it from the south. These mounds were named by the fanciful Frenchman the "Mau Melles." Here he erected his "wickiup," and decided to fix his abode. In what is now the town of St. Charles, he erected the first cabin and called the place "Les Petites Cotes," "Little Hills." Here, by the authority of the governor of Upper Louisiana, he built a house and established a trading post on what is now square No. 13 in the upper part of the town of St. Charles, near a little stream of water then called Blanchette, but now known as Factory Branch. Near here was afterward erected the government house and prison, built of logs hewn on two sides. This post was established while the French government still held control of Louisiana.
The transfer of this territory to Spain took place about 1762, but the French held control of it till 1770. Planchette, who had been appointed commandant of the post by the French governor, remained commandant till 1793. The town, which had grown to quite a village, in 1784 changed the name of "Village Des Cotes" to "St. Charles," in honor of Don Carlos, the reigning monarch of Spain, at that time the mother country. Blanchette lived in peace with the Indians and we have no record of any murder by them during his lifetime. He com- manded the post till his death. He was respected as a commander and a magistrate. In 1793 he died of a fever and was buried in September beneath the walls of a little Roman Catholic church, which he had erected, and which was the first church built west of the Missouri river. Thus St. Charles contains the ashes of its founder.
Don Carlos Tyon succeeded to the command of the post. Upon his
553
554
-
HISTORY OF NORTHEAST MISSOURI
resignation in 1802, he was succeeded by a Scotch-Irishman, Capt. Charles Mackay, or as his name appears, "Don Santiago Mackay." He was in office one year when the country was ceded by Napoleon Bonaparte to the government of the United States. At this time the village contained about four hundred inhabitants, nearly all of whom were French.
The village of St. Charles on the west bank of the Missouri river, gave name to the county, or province as it was termed under French rule. At that time it was an empire in dimensions. It was bounded on the north by the Mississippi river, extending to the British posses- sions; and on the south, extending from where the Missouri emptied into the Mississippi, west to the Pacific ocean. Out of this tract were formed many of the now wealthy states of the Union, with millions of popula- tion and billions of wealth, the result of a little more than one hundred years of development. In laying out the town, each settler received from France a plot of ground 120x150 feet. In addition to this there were the "common fields." These fields were one arpent wide and forty arpents long. One such lot of about thirty-four acres was set apart for each head of a family for farming purposes. Besides these grants, there was laid off a larger tract of land for common use, 88 pasturage, fire wood and building timber. This tract belonged to the town and was known as "St. Charles Commons." This has long since been disposed of to settlers and ceased to be city property. These "commons" were enclosed and enlarged as the population increased and the necessities of the people demanded. The commons were first en- closed in 1793.
The first Spanish grant of commons was made in 1790, and two years afterwards, Governor Delassus made an additional grant. The entire grant aggregated fourteen thousand arpents. Many other grants were made about this time. One was to Pierre Chouteau in 1789, for building a water mill at the mouth of a small stream at the southern or upper end of the town, some traces of which still remain. The secretary of Delassus, Jacques St. Vrain, for public services, also received a grant on Cuivre river in 1799, on which he afterwards settled. John Baptiste Blondeau, an early settler, also received a large grant in 1796. These grants were always made for some supposed public service rendered or to be rendered.
One enterprising Frenchman, at an early date in the history of the village, finding that the inhabitants of the territory were in great need of peach brandy, solicited and received a grant of land that he might plant an orchard and supply the want. The governor fully appreciated the request and at once yielded to the demand. These grants were of various sizes, ranging from eighty acres to several thousand.
Daniel Boone, in consideration of his promise to introduce one hundred families into the territory, was to receive ten thousand arpents, but owing to his oversight in not having his deeds signed in New Orleans by the governor-general, failed, under the United States government, to secure title. The Arend Rutgers Survey on the upper waters of Dardenne creek contained six square miles or 5,760 acres. The average grant was about eight hundred arpents. The surveys were not made on meridian lines, but to suit the fancy of the grantee.
The growth of the little Village of the Hills, in the western wilds, was slow. In 1781, it contained less than a dozen houses and perhaps not over thirty white inhabitants. Ten years afterwards it had increased to about two hundred inhabitants, with fifty or more houses. In 1796, the place had acquired more importance and settlers of Anglo-Saxon blood were beginning to come in and make homes among the happy-go-
555
HISTORY OF NORTHEAST MISSOURI
lucky Frenchmen. The irregularities of the boundaries of much of the land in the county is due to the way the Spanish grants were surveyed, most of them running to any point of the compass, so as to suit the claim- ant. In 1797, the place had become sufficiently important to demand a young ladies' school and the Baron of Carondelet appointed Madame Blanche tutoress of the village, with a salary of fifteen dollars a month, but the salary was never paid, there being no funds in the school treasury for such a purpose. Her assignee, however, received a grant of 1,600 arpents of rich alluvial lands, which would now be worth a small fortune.
THE FIRSTS IN THE COUNTY
The first assembly of the people of the county, of which we have any record, was held on a certain Sunday in 1801, due and timely notice having been given by Monsieur Tyon, commander of the post, to deter- mine the question of fencing in the new addition to the commons in the lower part of the town. This was unanimously agreed upon and signed by ninety-three persons, which we suppose comprised the total number of heads of families.
The first marriage in St. Charles, of which there is any record, was that of John Baptiste Provost and Angelique Savanges, on the 25th of September, 1792. But there were doubtless marriages before that.
The first infant baptism which we find recorded was Perry Belland, son of Baptiste Belland and Catherine Lelande Belland. There were doubtless others before, for Blanchette, the founder of the village, had built a small church in which religious services had doubtless been held by some passing missionary priest.
The first records we have of the village describe it as being on the river bank on the level ground at the foot of the range of small hills rising above the river. This is now Main street and the town as it is now is built back on this gentle elevation to the level country back of it, presenting a beautiful view when approached from the east on the opposite side of the river. It now has a population of about twelve thousand prosperous and happy people, the growth of a little over one hundred years. A stranger once approaching St. Charles in its earlier days was struck by its quaint appearance like a string extending for a mile along the bank of the river, and exclaimed, "My! but this would be a tall town if it was standing on its end."
There is no record or tradition of any trouble between the earlier French settlers of St. Charles and the Indians. Their relations seem to have been amicable. There was a system of barter carried on between the two races, the Indians giving peltry and furs in exchange for such trinkets and goods, guns and tomahawks as the white man had to offer.
THE INDIAN TRIBES
The Indian tribes who were near neighbors of the village were the Kickapoos, an inoffensive, friendly people, who had a village two and a half miles southwest of town up the Missouri river, and another below on the Mississippi; the Osages and the Sioux were also in possession of much of the St. Charles territory. They were much more warlike than the Kickapoos, and were almost constantly engaged in war with each other. They gave the early American settlers of the country much trouble and murdered a number of the earlier American settlers during the War of 1812 and even as late as 1830. After the death of Tecumseh
.
556
HISTORY OF NORTHEAST MISSOURI
a treaty of peace was made in 1815 at Portage des Sioux between the Confederate tribes and United States. This place had been named by the Indians, and afterwards settled by the French, who retained the name.
The Osage Indians were the most warlike and blood-thirsty of these tribes and were hostile to the Sioux. The Osages lived on the Missouri river and the Sioux on the Mississippi. A hunting party of the Osages, trespassing on the hunting grounds and encountering some of the latter, killed a few of them. The enraged Sioux resolved on revenge and a bloody feud followed. The warriors were assembled and a formidable fleet of bark canoes well-manned descended the Mississippi to the mouth of the Missouri, ascended that river to the possessions of the Osages, and surprising them, the Sioux, in a night attack, made a great slaughter of their unsuspecting enemies. They then returned to their canoes and fled down the river. The enraged Osages collected a large war party and gave hot pursuit. Both parties were skilled in water-craft and in dextrous handling of the canoe and a life and death race began down the turbid stream. On they sped, pursuers and pursued, the one impelled by fear of cruel death, and the other urged on by the mad hope of a bloody revenge. The Sioux made good speed down the river, but the Osages, filled with rage, were gaining on their foes. On, on they sped, day and night, until in a long straight channel of the river, the pursued were sighted. A loud, wild war-whoop arose from the pursuers, and pallid fear filled the hearts of the pursued. Who can tell the savage joy and the no less savage fear of poor Lo at such a time as this. But a friendly bend in the mad stream, twelve miles above its mouth, gave the Sioux a renewal of hope and, quickly landing and lifting out of the river their frail barks and secreting themselves in high grass, permitted the wild and impetuous Osages to speed on towards the mouth of the river. Manitou had favored the Sioux and the Osages were foiled. The wily Sioux then transported their light canoes across the narrow strip of land to the Mississippi, thirty miles above its mouth, and thus made their escape. The point where they re-embarked received the name of "Portage des Sioux"-"The Passage of the Sioux"- and was sometimes afterwards settled by the following Frenchmen and their families : Francis Saucier, Francis Sesieure, Simon Lepage, Charles Hibert, Julean Roi, Augustia Clairmount, Etine Papan, Abraham Du- mont, Louis Grand, Jaquies Godfroid, and a number of others from the village of St. Charles, and the name was retained. Some of the descend- ants of these men still reside in what is called the Point Prairie, the beautiful bottom lands between the two great rivers. Below it on the river is now West Alton in a most beautiful and highly cultivated valley, richly remunerating the faithful husbandmen for his toil.
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.