USA > Missouri > A History of Northeast Missouri, Volume I > Part 75
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The first act of the legislature after its organization was to recom- mend to the president eighteen men, nine of whom were to be selected by him and confirmed by the senate, to act as a council for the territory. The men selected from St. Charles were Ben Emmons, Sr., and James Flaugherty. Howard county was set off from St. Charles. It was or-
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ganized in 1814. In January, 1816, the general assembly passed an apportioning act, giving St. Charles three representatives and St. Louis city and county two. In 1818, the present limits of St. Charles, Mont- gomery and Lincoln counties were established and the representation of the county reduced to two.
THE FIRST LEGISLATORS
The county of St. Charles, soon after its organization, for municipal convenience, was divided into the following six townships: Portage, St. Charles, Dardenne, Femme Osage, Callaway and Cuivre.
From the earliest times in the history of the state, St. Charles county, as the mother county of north Missouri, has wielded a marked and envi- able influence in public affairs and private life, through the high char- acter and ability of her representative citizens. In the first territorial
HOUSE WHERE LEGISLATURE MET
assembly the county was represented by two men in the council and two in the house. These were men of intelligence and sterling integrity, and would have been acknowledged leaders in any assembly of men, Benja- min Emmons and James Flaugherty in the council; and John Pitman and Robert Spencer in the house.
Benjamin Emmons, the senior member of the council, was a New Englander by birth and education, and came to St. Charles with his family about 1795, while it was under Spanish control. He was well educated and a man of broad views and wide and varied information. He was gifted with many of the stronger and better qualities which fit a man for a popular leader. He was a man of irreproachable integrity, great public spirit, and withal of a genial temperament and pleasing man- ners. He was looked upon as one of the most able and influential men of the council. He was a man of original ideas and of sound views on the science of government. He was a clear, forcible, pleasing speaker. His decision of character and persuasive manners made him a successful
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legislator. In the War of 1812, he served as an adjutant, with honors to himself and to his country. He represented this county in the first state convention which met in St. Louis. He served again in both branches of the state legislature with distinguished ability. He was the father of Col. Benjamin Emmons, an able circuit clerk of the county, and of Edward Emmons, a successful practicing lawyer, of St. Louis.
James Flaugherty was a native of Virginia and of Irish descent. He was a man of ability and a born orator, and when he spoke he fairly elec- trified his audience. He was a man of great modesty and of a retiring disposition, entirely unconscious of his genius, and consequently he never became a political leader. He had no ambition for political preferment and sought to avoid it whenever he could do so. His prominence in that early day was solely a tribute to his ability and his purity of character. The magic of his eloquence had been handed down by tradition from gen- eration to generation. Had he been ambitious, he would have taken rank with the most influential men of that or perhaps any other time.
John Pitman, the first man to represent the county, was not a public speaker, nor was he a politician. He was a sturdy, clear-headed, thor- ough-going farmer, whose judgment was a safe guide on all legislative subjects. He was patient and industrious in his duties as a law-maker. He thoroughly digested every measure presented to the house, and his judgment was relied upon by his colleagues. His vote recorded for a bill always had a strong influence upon the votes of others. In those days politics exerted but small influence upon legislation. In 1812, he was commissioned colonel of the Fifteenth state militia.
Robert Spencer completed the quartette of St. Charles county mem- bers to this honored body of law-makers for the new territory. We doubt if any subsequent legislative body of the state has contained, in proportion to numbers, any more fertile brains than was to be found in that small assembly. Mr. Spencer was a lawyer by profession and one of the pioneers of the province. He was the first judge of the common pleas court for the district, having received his appointment from Thomas Jefferson in 1804. He was a man of native ability and of some wealth. He built the first brick house in the county below the town of St. Charles. He was chairman of the committee on jurisprudence and originated many of the important laws enacted at that session. He was a man of great hospitality, genial and companionable, of fine mind but mentally lazy. He was not a hard student, but had a retentive mind, and what he accom- plished was more by natural intellect than.by any application to study on his part. However, as a legislator, he was earnestly solicitous for the enactment of wise and just laws, and was an active and prominent mem- ber of the body.
Such were the four men who, without any training in law-making, left their undying impress for good upon the legal code of the new minia- ture state. They may be termed the "Irresistible Four," from the fact that their influence for good in shaping legislation was irresistible, and to a great extent, has shaped the destinies of the state.
LETTER FROM ONWARD BATES
In soliciting historical facts from the descendants of the pioneers of the county, the author wrote to Onward Bates, son of two of his dearest friends, Judge and Mrs. Barton Bates. Mr. Bates, who is an eminent civil engineer of Chicago, sent this reply :
"Dr. J. C. Edwards, O'Fallon, Missouri .- My dear Dr. Edwards: When I read your letter of May 30th, I felt so sympathetic an interest
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in your task of writing a history of St. Charles county, and withal such a desire to respond to any call for service from an old and valued friend, that I consented to do what I could to aid you. Since then I have been absent from home much of the time and have been unable to give consideration to the subject. Now that I take it up in earnest, I find myself so limited by the absence of reliable data, which should be the foundation of all history, that it is very difficult to keep my promise. You ask for my. family record as it relates to this history, and as I am the oldest of my generation, I am the proper person to supply this in- formation; and yet my records are so incomplete that I must depend mainly upon my memory of the conditions as they existed when I was a boy, and upon what I am able to remember of the incidents related to me by older people, most of whom have gone to their reward in the next world. Early impressions are the strongest, and these are empha- sized by the stirring events which occurred during my boyhood.
"I can distinctly remember Dardenne Prairie and its people, dating back for several years previous to the distressful Civil war. The picture of this prairie land which lingers with me, shows one of the most desir- able places for living that I have seen in any country. Family life was patriarchal. Residences were scattered and located according to the de- sire of the owners. Sufficient land was under cultivation to provide subsistence for the people who were privileged to live upon it, and the remainder, which consisted of undulating prairie and timber lands, was unenclosed as if it were intended that homesteads should be separated by natural parks. Nature was lavish in its provisions for man and beast, grass was plentiful for the latter, and an abundant variety of wild fruits and nuts, with an apparently unlimited supply of four-footed and feath- ered game, would maintain life and provide clothing for men, if they chose to live as did their predecessors, the Indians. Flowers blossomed on the prairie stretches and in the woodlands in many varieties, which seem to have disappeared as the country became fully settled. There was no rugged scenery, but Dardenne Prairie was a lovely and restful country designed for the use and enjoyment of its inhabitants, and an ideal loca- tion for homes. And such homesteads, buildings in primitive and simple style, occupied by large families with quarters never too small nor too crowded to interfere with an unbounded hospitality. Such friendships as existed between families, and such recognition of neighborly obliga- tions do not exist in our more 'advanced' condition. Slavery is inde- fensible, and was properly abolished, but there was a friendship and a recognition of human obligations between the whites and the blacks that never ought to be forgotten. Slavery on Dardenne Prairie was a name rather than a condition, and the visitor to one of these homesteads was sure of a genial welcome from white and black, as the negroes adopted the names and held all things in common with their masters, including their virtues and their manners. The conditions in those days for enjoy- able living cannot be duplicated under those which maintain at the present day.
"The Civil war came on with its bitterness and all of those good people were ranged, some on one side and some on the other. Some of them moved away, and among them all lines of separation were strictly drawn. The war exhausted the country, and when its bloody term was ended the old conditions were not restored. There were new methods of living, and more or less new people in every locality, and a new era was established.
"We may be grateful that the enmity of those war days was buried with those who so bravely took part in that great struggle, and that those who were willing to meet at one time in mortal combat, are now recon-
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ciled in a friendship made strong by remembrance of the trials which led to it. The war and all that preceded it is but a memory, and we live under the new conditions which are, doubtless, better than the old ones. We must not, however, forget that the people of the old times are the par- ents of those who now occupy their places, and the historian must deal with the ancestry of people and of conditions. We may enjoy the per- sonal comforts of this 'age of progress,' due to the increased conven- iences at our command; but it is to be questioned whether people are happier or worthier than when you and I were young, Doctor. (This remark is made with due respect to the fact that you are a contemporary to my parents.) You did not ask me for an eulogy of our county, but being a Missourian, born on Dardenne Prairie, in St. Charles county, the one place in all the world I would choose for such an event, I cannot be expected to refrain from offering my tribute, unworthy as it may be, to such a favored portion of the earth's surface.
"The history of Missouri, and, indeed, the history of the great West cannot be written without taking into account St. Charles county. This county was a starting point, being one of the first localities settled in the territory of Louisiana. Its historical importance is perhaps due to the character of its settlers more than to any other cause. The county should be noted, not only for the people who occupied it, but as well for the people and the influence it gave to other parts of the West. Daniel Boone explored and lived for a time in St. Charles county. The road skirting my father's place was called the Boon's Lick road, or in the vernacular of ante-bellum days, the 'Big Road.' After him came a host of good people, many, perhaps most of them, from Virginia, bringing their families, their slaves, their household goods and their live stock, making a new home without expectation of returning to the places from whence they came.
"A country is blessed by the goodness of the people who inhabit it, and no better people ever emigrated than those who settled in this fair county. I know many of the old families personally, and if I name some of them it is because of this personal knowledge, and not that they were any different from those I did not know, and I name them in the order of acquaintance and without respect to particular merits. Such people as Coalter, Woodson, Hatcher, Randolph, Watson, Wilson, McCluer, Muschaney, Howell, Pitman, Gill, Naylor, Edwards, Bates, and so on throughout the list of Dardenne Prairie settlers were fit to build a com- munity characterized by honor and righteousness. It is amongst such people that a minister may preach in the same church for forty-odd years, making his preaching effective by his blameless life, shepherding his flock, holding the love and veneration of each member, and then to be followed in his office by a worthy son. And in what other community can be found one who has been physician and friend and counsellor in the same families for more than fifty years! I may name the minister whom I have described, since we have only his beloved memory, the Reverend Thomas Watson, but out of consideration for you, Doctor, I will not name the physician.
"I am related to some of the families whose names I have mentioned, and such information as I am able to collate is at your service to be used in any way you think best in preparing your history of the county. I shall not be able to suppress a proper pride of ancestry and of family connections, but will try to tell the truth according to the best of my understanding. I will also try to be as brief as possible, and will ask you to revise and condense my notes. In biographical notes it will be im- possible to separate St. Charles county from the state at large, or even from a greater territory, for our characters moved from their home
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states into the Mississippi Valley and, while their families are represented in the county, their sphere of activity and influence was not confined to . the county limits.
"Beginning with the family whose surname I bear-
"It has been said that the family name of Bates is one which the state of Missouri delights to honor and as that statement refers particu- larly to members of the family not numbered among the living, it may with propriety be quoted by their descendants.
"Thomas Fleming Bates, son of Fleming Bates and Sarah Jordan, was born in York county, Virginia, November 1, 1741. He was a man of peace, born and bred in the doctrines of the Quaker sect and so im- bued with these doctrines that they were illustrated in his whole life and transmitted to his posterity. But this did not deter him from fight- ing for his country in the War of the Revolution. The old flintlock musket, which he carried throughout the war, and which is said to have been used by his son, Edward, in the year 1813, in the second war with England, is still possessed by his oldest great-grandchild. In the stock of this gun there is a silver plate placed there by Edward Bates, which bears the inscription, 'Thomas F. Bates, Whig of the Revolution, fought for liberty and independence with this gun. His descendants keep it to defend what he helped to win.' On August 8, 1771, he was married to Caroline Matilda Woodson, who was born in Henrico county, Virginia, October 17, 1751, and who was the daughter of Charles Woodson and Agnes Parsons. There were twelve children born to this pair, seven sons and five daughters. The first three children were born in Henrico county and the remaining nine at Belmont, the family seat in Goochland county. From the family letters which have been preserved it is appar- ent that the seven sons were all exceptionally able and enterprising, tak- ing active parts in the public affairs of the Old Dominion State and in the settlement of the Mississippi Valley. They attracted the attenion of President Jefferson, who commissioned several of them to perform im- portant duties in the country west of the Ohio. The performance of these duties was so satisfactory that these young men won the confidence of the president, who increased their responsibilities and their honors. It was remarkable that great trusts were given to men who were so youthful, and it is related of Frederick that during his journey from Virginia to the Northwest, at the age of twenty-one, he was so youthful in appearance that a man with whom he wished to lodge mistook him for a runaway from home. Of these seven sons, three were identified with the history of their native Virginia, and of the four who moved West, some mention is due them in this account.
"Tarlton, second son of Thomas Fleming Bates, was born at Belmont, May 22, 1775, and was killed in a duel near Pittsburg, January 7, 1806. At the time of his death he was prothonotary of the county of Alleghany. The following account of the duel and the circumstances leading up to it is copied from a Pittsburgh newspaper published nearly a hundred years later than the incident: 'Bates' antagonist was a young man named Thomas Stewart, about whom little information can be found, except that he was a partner in a small store in Pittsburgh for the sale of dry goods and groceries. The origin of the trouble leading to this event may be traced to the violent newspaper controversies of that day. The "Democratic," or, as it was generally called, the "Republican" party, at that time had for several years carried all before it in this state. The Federalist party, formerly so strong under the leadership of Wash- ington and Hamilton, who were both dead at the time, was in a state of hopeless collapse. History repeats itself always, and this great success of the party was followed by dissensions within itself. The spoils of office
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were not sufficient to satisfy all, and a faction whose organ was a paper called the Commonwealth was formed in this vicinity. The columns of this sheet teemed with abuse of the regular "Jeffersonians," who were styled "Quids." The origin of this designation is wrapped in obscurity, but it was probably equivalent to the modern "mugwump." Of course, they were also styled "apostates," "traitors," etc. The most conspicuous mem- bers of the regular Jefferson party in the county at this time, 1804-05, seem to have been Henry Baldwin, Tarlton Bates and Walter Forward, the latter having been editor of the Tree of Liberty, the regular Demo- cratic organ.
" 'Henry Baldwin attained later eminence as judge of the supreme court of the United States, and Walter Forward also became a great lawyer in after years, and was minister to Denmark at one time. The opposition paper, under the conduct of a young man named Pentland, was unsparing in its attacks on these men, and finally Bates was pro- voked into making a personal assault on the editor, who promptly sought safety in flight. Bates, a day or two afterward, inserted a card in the Tree of Liberty, of which he was associate editor, giving his version of the occurrence, and saying that he had been traduced, and also his father and grandfather, so often in the pages of the Commonwealth that he had been provoked into correcting "the licentiousness of the press with the liberty of the cudgel." He also stated in his card that the editor had challenged him, but that he would pay no attention to it, as he con- sidered the editor as merely an apprentice, and of no social standing. This was not, unfortunately, the end of the matter, for it would appear that the clique of personal and political enemies who had inspired these attacks on Bates and his associates succeeded in putting forward the obscure individual, Stewart, as another challenger, in place of the editor. This challenge was accepted, and on the afternoon of July 8, 1806, the parties went out to about where Craft avenue is now located in Oakland. They were placed at a distance of twelve paces apart, and fought with pistols. The first fire was ineffective, but at the second fire Bates fell, shot through the body, and died within an hour.'
"His friend, Walter Forward, wrote a few days after: 'Thus per- ished one of the best of men, who by a long series of systematic persecu- tion was drawn to this dreadful fate. The public has lost an invaluable servant, society one of its brightest ornaments, the poor their best friend.'
"Tarlton was never married. Letters which passed between him and different members of the family indicate that he possessed a brilliant mind, and had begun a career of great promise, which was cut short by his untimely death.
"In Fergus' History of Early Illinois, Frederick Bates is mentioned as follows: 'Frederick Bates, third of seven sons of Thomas Fleming Bates, merchant, was born at Belmont, Goochland county, Virginia, June 23, 1777; after receiving a rudimentary education, was, when about seventeen, apprenticed to a court clerk, thereby supporting him- self, by doing the practical duties of the place, and studying law, intend- ing, as was then the common practice in Virginia, to go through the clerk's office to the bar. About 1795, he obtained employment in the quartermaster's department of the Army of the Northwest on the frontier, intending to return as soon as he was able to the study and practice of his profession. He was stationed at Detroit but was often on business at Mackinac and other posts. In a few years he acquired some capital as a merchant but lost the greater portion of it by the fire of 1805, which was a lucky turn, as it forced him from a business that was unsuited to his taste and talent. Having by this time acquired a large
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experience of frontier character and business, he was about to enter the profession when in 1805 he was appointed senior associate judge of the territorial district and land commissioner by President Jefferson, who with his secretary of state, James Madison, were friends of his family. In 1807 he was transferred to St. Louis, Upper Louisiana, as secretary of the territory and United States recorder of land titles; these offices he held many years, as secretary till the admission of Missouri in 1820, and the recordership till 1824, when he was elected the second governor of Missouri, and died in office August 4, 1825. Edward Bates, Lincoln's attorney-general, was his youngest brother.'
"Frederick Bates was the first member of his family to settle Upper Louisiana, at that time a village whose inhabitants were principally of French descent. It is to be remarked that he was in the government service at the age of eighteen, and as indicating the principles which guided his life and may be of value to young men who read this, the following extracts are taken from a letter written him by his father:
BELMONT, VIRGINIA, 27th December, 1793 .- My Dear Frederick: Having written frequently to you in the early part of your residence at Detroit, and not having an acknowledgment of the reception of one of my letters, made me despair of a con- veyance to you, but having lately received your very acceptable favor of the 7th October, and finding that Tarlton is still at Pittsburgh, this is intended for the next post. Though I lament your separation to such a distance it is a pleasing consolation to hear that you enjoy good health, and possess the esteem and confidence of the worthy Captain Ernest, whose polite and friendly attention to you demands my warm- est acknowledgments, but I cannot doubt of your steady attachment to business, or your inflexible adherence to principles of honor, which will insure the esteem of the good and virtuous, and afford lasting comfort to the man conscious of the rectitude of his conduct.
I must once more intreat you, my Dear Son, to omit no opportunity of writing to us, that being all we can expect at present; indeed I believe a partial visit and to lose you again would add poignancy to my present feelings. All here have you in tender remembrance, and join me in best wishes for you-be assured of the hearty prayers and warm benediction of your ever affectionate father, THOMAS F. BATES.
"Frederick Bates married Nancy Opie Ball, and had children as follows: Emily Caroline, born January 5, 1820, who married Mr. Robert Alfred Walton, by whom she had eight children, and whose family home was the city of St. Charles. Lucius Lee, born March, 1821, who married Dulcinea Conway, daughter of Samuel Conway, of St. Louis county. His widow and his children, Conway Bates and Lucia Lee Bates, are liv- ing in St. Louis. Woodville, born July 29, 1823, died, unmarried, Febru- ary 12, 1840. Frederick, born February 1, 1826, died October 18, 1862. James Woodson, sixth son of Thomas Fleming Bates, was born at Bel- mont, August 25, 1787, died December 26, 1846. He left no descendants. He followed his brother Frederick to Upper Louisiana, and Batesville, Arkansas, is said to be named for him. The writer has no further record of his life. Edward Bates of Missouri, the seventh son and youngest of the twelve children of Thomas Fleming Bates, was born at Belmont, September 4, 1793. He died in St. Louis, March 25, 1869, in the seventy-sixth year of his age.
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