Encyclopedia of the history of Missouri, a compendium of history and biography for ready reference, Vol. I, Part 88

Author: Conard, Howard Louis, ed. 1n
Publication date: 1901
Publisher: New York, Louisville [etc.] The Southern history company, Haldeman, Conard & co., proprietors
Number of Pages: 856

USA > Missouri > Encyclopedia of the history of Missouri, a compendium of history and biography for ready reference, Vol. I > Part 88

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CAPE GIRARDEAU EXPEDITION-CAPEN

by William Williams, John Randol. Thomas Blair, Simon and Isaiah Poe, Charnel Glass- cock and the Seeley family. About 18 8 they built a church of poplar logs and had a camp ground near by. The first sermon preached in Cape Girardeau was in 1809 in the house of William Scripps, by Samuel Parker. Methodist, and presiding elder of the Indiana District. Of the Protestant denominations the Baptists were the first to locate in the district. In 1790 Thomas Bull, his wife, and Mrs. Lee, his mother-in-law, settled a mile and a half south of Jackson, all fervent Bap- tists. In 1798 Rev. Thomas Johnson visited the Bull family, and while there performed the first Protestant baptism west of the Mis- sissippi, the person baptized being a Mrs. Ballew. In 1805 Rev. David Green, of Vir- ginia, settled two miles south of Jackson. and July 19, 1806, organized the Bethel Bap- tist Church, and in October a meetinghouse, built of roughly hewn logs, was erected on the Bull farm. In 1812 this was replaced by a larger building. The first church to be built in the district by the Presbyterians was the "First Church of Apple Creek." organ- ized by Rev. Salmon Giddings, May 21, 1821. It had forty-one members at that time. The Rev. Thomas Horrell, from Maryland, was the first Episcopal minister to settle in Cape Girardeau District. He located in the town of Cape Girardeau in 1818 and held services in the houses of members of the church. No church was built until 1870. when Rev. George Moore. of New York. organized a congregation.

Private schools were established at Jack- son and Cape Girardeau prior to 1819. At Jackson the earliest teachers were Dr. Barr. Edward Criddle, Mrs. John Scripps and Mrs. Rhoda Ranney. The history of the estab- lishment of these schools is given in the sketches of Cape Girardeau and Jackson. The number of public schools in the county now is ninety, with one hundred and eight teachers in charge of them, and the school population is 8.000. The permanent school fund is $38.054.66. The population of the county in 1900 was 24.315. The estimated wealth of the county is $10,500,000. The townships in the county are Apple Creek. Byrd, Cape Girardeau, Hubble. Kinder, Lib . erty. Randol. Shawnee, Welch and White Water. The principal cities and towns are Cape Girardeau. Jackson. Oak Ridge, Apple-

ton. Allenville. Gordonville. Burfordville. Shawneetown, Millersville, Pocahontas and Stroderville.

Cape Girardeau Expedition. In the spring of 1803 General John S. Maria- duke, with 4,000 Confederates, marched from Batesville, Arkansas, into southeast Missouri on what is known in Confederate history as the "Cape Girardeau Expedition." Taking possession of l'atterson, whose small garri- son, under Colonel Smart, evacuated the place on their approach. the Confederates appeared before Cape Girardeau on Sunday morning. April 20th, and sent to General Me- Neil. the Union officer in command. a demand for surrender. This was promptly refused and the attack was begun by the Confederates under General J. O. Shelby, Colonel John Q. Burbridge and Colonel G. W. Thompson. of Missouri, and Colonel Carter, of Texas, with eight pieces of artillery. The Federals made a gallant defense, meeting the attack outside and in front of their works. The guns of the garrison were efficiently served and their fire told severely upon the ranks of the assailants, and the Confederates, seeing the hopelessness of the attack, withdrew under a heavy fire, leaving their dead and wounded on the field.

Capen, George D., was born in Brook- Ivn. Massachusetts, July 18. 1838, and died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania -to which city he had gone for medical treatment-May 1, 1893.

Inheriting from ancestors of sterling worth and high character many of those qualities which have made the representatives of New England potent factors in the development of Western civilization. George D. Capen may be said to have begun life under fa- vorable auspices, although he was not a child of fortune in the sense of being born to the enjoyment of wealth. He was educated at Eliot High School, of Jamaica Plains, Mas- sachusetts, quitting the school at the age of fourteen to enter upon a course of train- ing for commercial pursuits as a clerk in a wholesale hat store in Boston. At twenty years of age he was well equipped for a bisi- ness career, energetic and ambitions, knew something of the world and looked to the West as a country of boundless resources and great opportunities for young men. The

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CAPITAL REMOVAL CONVENTION.

assurance that he could advance himself there more rapidly than in the East brought him to St. Louis in 1858, and, being with- out sufficient capital to establish himself in business. he first found employment in that city as a clerk in a hide and leather store. In 1863 he established a fire and marine in- surance and brokerage business in St. Louis, and rapidly advanced thereafter to a leading place among the financiers and capital- ists of the city. In 1866 he was the organ- izer of the Mississippi Valley Transportation Company, a corporation which placed on the river a line of towboats and barges for the purpose of carrying grain in bulk to New Orleans, and thence exporting it to Europe by steamers. In 1887 he assisted in organiz- ing the Missouri Safe Deposit Company, and became president of that corporation. In 1888 he purchased a large body of land in West St. Louis, known as the "Griswold tract," and organized a syndicate which en- tered upon the improvement of this prop- erty on a scale which had hardly been dreamed of in St. Louis prior to that time. The purchase price of this property was something more than a million dollars, and in its improvement the corporation, of which Mr. Capen became president and manager, expended within a few years one million sev- en hundred thousand dollars. The result was Forest Park Terrace, Westmoreland Place and Portland Place, a residence district hardly equaled in any other American city in beauty and attractiveness. He married, in 1862, Miss Frances Isabella Pond, daughter of Charles 11. Pond, a native of Massachu- setts, who was for some years well known as an architect and builder in St. Louis. Mrs. Capen's mother belonged to the noted Went- worth family, of New England, and was a descendant of Benning Wentworth, first Gov- ernor of the Province of New Hampshire.

Capital Removal Convention .- Ever since it became apparent that the "course of empire" was taking its way west- ward with great rapidity-if one may be allowed the liberty of changing somewhat Bishop Berkeley's famous line of verse- there have been persons, not inconsiderable in number, who believed that the capital of the United States must in time also take its way westward to a location more central to the empire. Inhabitants of the Mississippi Val-

ley have especially found it pleasing to cher- ish this illusion, and at times there has been active agitation of the question of capital removal. The climax of activity in this di- rection was reached in 1869, when, in re- sponse to invitations sent out by some of the warmest advocates of the project a con- vention assembled in St. Louis to inaugurate a capital removal crusade. It was called to order in the hall of the Mercantile Library, October 20, 1869, and a roll call of states showed that Alabama. Alaska, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennes- see and Utah were represented. Missouri was represented by a delegation of promi- nent citizens, headed by Governor J. W. Mc- Clurg, and the distinguished jurist, John D. Caton, of the Illinois Supreme Court, and Joseph Medill, of the "Chicago Tribune," were among the delegates from Illinois. Mr. Medill was the author of the resolution adopted by the convention, which set forth : That the present site of the national capital was selected when the people of this repub- lic were only a few millions in number and inhabited only a narrow strip of country along the Atlantic Coast; that the popula- tion of the republic had since increased thir- teenfold and spread over a vast continent, of which the States in existence when the seat of government was located formed only the eastern edge; that the present location of the capital is notoriously inconvenient in times of peace, and in times of war so dan- gerously exposed as to require vast arma- ments and untold millions of money for its especial defense, and that all the reasons which caused the location of the seat of gov- ernment where it now is have become utterly obsolete. By reason of these changed con- ditions, the resolutions following averred that it was absurd to say that the handful of in- habitants of 1789 possessed the authority or desired to exercise the power of fixing the site of the capital forever on the banks of the Potomac; that the people had .endured the present illy located capital for three- quarters of a century, and that the time had come for the selection of a permanent place of residence for the government; that the center of the continent was the proper place for the national capital; that the Mississippi Valley must, for all time, be the seat of em-

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CARBON CENTER-CARKENER.

pire for this continent ; that the natural, con- venient and inevitable place for the capital of the republic was in the heart of the val- ley, to which the center of population, wealth and power is irresistibly gravitating; that, while advocating the removal of the seat of government to the Mississippi Valley, it was not the intention of the convention to serve the interests of any particular locality, but to urge Congress to appoint a commission to select a site for the capital; and that, the removal of the national capital being only a question of time, the convention was em- phatically opposed to all expenditures of money for the enlargement of okl govern- ment buildings, or the erection of new ones at the present seat of government. The con- vention further declared that its representa- tives were in earnest in seeking to bring about a removal of the capital to the Missis- sippi Valley, and that they would not cease their efforts until that end was accomplished. A standing committee, composed of one member from each of the States and Terri- tories represented in the convention, was appointed to continue the agitation in favor of capital removal and to urge the necessary legislation upon Congress, and the conven- tion then adjourned, many of those present being firmly convinced that at no very dis- tant date the proposed change would be made, and the St. Louis delegates fondly cherished the hope that, when such change should be made, St. Louis, by reason of its central location, would become the national capital. It was a pleasant dream, but one which subsequent events have made it rea- sonably certain will never be realized.

Carbon Center .- An important coal mining camp, in Vernon County, on the Kan- sas City, Fort Scott & Memphis Railway, eighteen miles north of Nevada. In 1900 the estimated population was 600.

Cardwell .- A village in Dunklin County, twenty-five miles south of Kennett, on the Paragould & Southeastern Railway. It has a public school, church, two staving and heading factories, an egg case factory, a hotel, and about half a dozen other business houses. Population, 1899 (estimated), 300.

Carkener, Stuart, lawyer, was born December 13, 1837, in Tecumseh, Lenawee

County, Michigan, son of George Y, and Sarah E. (llall) Carkener, both of whom were pioneers of southeastern Michigan. He was educated in the grammar and high schools of his home town and entered the University of Michigan, at Ann Arbor, in 1850. Four years later he was graduated from that institution. After leaving college he re- moved to Missouri, and was an educator in the Montgomery City College, at Montgom- ery City. In the meantime he had been read- ing law, and was faithfully preparing himself for the profession upon which he had settled for his life work. He was admitted to practice in the spring of 1862, and imme- diately after he opened an office at Danville, Montgomery County, Missouri. A call for more soldiers to fight for the Union cause appealed to him strongly, however, and he responded. He served throughout the war, and in the fall of 1865 he resumed the prac- tice of law at Danville. There he remained until 1877. when he removed to Louisiana, Pike County, Missouri, where he continued in the practice until 1887, when he removed to his present location, Kansas City. Dur- ing the last twelve years he has been engaged in the practice in Kansas City. His military experience was marked by distinction and constant promotion. Ile enrolled a large part of the company which went out from the town where he was residing during the early heat of hostilities, and was made first lieutenant of Company K of the Thirty-third Infantry, Missouri Volunteers. This body of sokliers was known as the Merchants' Regiment, hay- ing been raised largely through the efforts of Colonel, afterward General, Clinton B. Fisk, who was at that time the secretary of the St. Louis Merchants' Exchange. In June. 1863. Lieutenant Carkener became the . Captain of Company G. a part of the same regiment. In the spring of 1864 he was made judge advocate, on the staff of Major General Joseph A. Mower, also serving as division picket officer of the First Division, Sixteenth Army Corps, on the staff of Gen- eral Mower, and later on the staff of Major General John McArthur. At the close of the war he was appointed provost marshal of the city of Selma, Alabama. He was twice wounded at the battle of Helena, Arkansas, July 4. 1863. being shot through the left arm and through the body. From the effects of the latter wound he is still a sufferer. Dur-

492

CARLETON COLLEGE-CARLISLE.

ing the war Captain Carkener participated in most of the important campaigns in the West, and after a most brilliant career was mustered out of the service at St. Louis, Mis- souri, in August, 1865. From 1858 to 1869 he was circuit attorney of the Third Judicial Circuit of Missouri. composed of Montgom- ery, Warren, Lincoln and Pike Counties. He has always been a prominent Republican, and in 1880 was a delegate to the National Re- publican Convention, held at Chicago, where he was one of General Grant's supporters and a true and unflinching member of the historic "306." In 1882 he was nominated for Congress by the Republican Congres- sional Convention of the Seventh District of Missouri, but on account of ill health he did not accept the nomination. Captain Carkener is a member and ruling elder of the Westminster Presbyterian Church, of Kan- sas City. He is identified with the Masonic order, is a member of McPherson Post, Grand Army of the Republic, Kansas City, and a member of the Loyal Legion, and past junior vice commander of the Commandery of Missouri. He was married, November 14. 1866, to Miss Mary Ellen Drury, of Danville, Missouri, daughter of Charles J. Drury, one of the pioneers of that part of the State, and a native of New Hampshire. To them five children, four daughters and one son, have been born. With a personal history in which pride is pardonable, Captain Carkener is nev- ertheless of a retiring disposition, altogether unassuming, and the popular esteem in which he is held by those with whom he associates in social, church and professional circles is genuine and heartfelt.

Carleton College .- A private acad- emy, located at Farmington, St. Francois County. It was founded in 1854, by Miss E. A. Carleton, and incorporated by the State Legislature in 1859. The institution was lo- cated eight miles north of Farmington. In 1878 a four-story brick building was built at Farmington, with attractive grounds (six- teen acres), and the institute established in it. In 1884 an addition of four stories was added, known as the "Henry Annex," named in honor of Ilenry Carleton. The school is under the control of the Methodist Episcopal Church. It has a library of 1,900 volumes.

Carlisle, James L., lawyer and ex- postmaster of St. Louis, was born in that

city, January 13, 1851. He was educated in the public schools, at Washington University and at Central College, Fayette, Missouri. He then spent two years at the St. Louis Law School, from which institution he was gradu- ated in 1873, and was soon afterward ad- mitted to the bar. For three years he was in the law office of Glover & Shepley, and after leaving this firm formed a partnership with Robert E. Collins, with whom he was associated for two years thereafter. Later he became head of the firm of Carlisle & Ottofy, which was dissolved after his ap- pointment to the postmastership. From May, 1883, to January, 1891, he held, by appoint- ment of the circuit court, the responsible po- sition of jury commissioner. Mr. Carlisle very early developed a predilection and apti- tude for politics. He was reared in the Dem- ocratic faith. For four years he was chair- man of the city Democratic committee, and was the first man ever elected to that post by a convention of the party. While holding the position of chairman of this committee Governor Francis tendered him the office of recorder of voters for St. Louis, and he accepted the appointment. As recorder of voters, at the time of the introduction of the Australian ballot system, he was brought in contact with all classes of politicians, and his rulings did not always suit the most zealous partisans, but he was unswerving in his in- terpretations of the law, and administered the office to the general satisfaction of the public. In 1894 he was, by President Cleve- land, appointed postmaster of St. Louis, serv- ing from April Ist of that year to August 15, 1898. As postmaster he perfected the sys- tem of street car transportation of the local mails to and from outlying stations on sev- eral of the city railroad lines; established a considerable number of new substations, per- sonally superintending the rearrangement of the carrier routes, with the view of utiliz- ing to the farthest extent an inadequate force of men, in point of numbers, in a service that had largely outgrown the provisions made for it. His demeanor in office, both to the pub- lic and to employes, was marked by courtesy, and in the case of the latter, by a considerate kindness, for which he is held in the highest esteem.

December 30, 1880, Mr. Carlisle was mar- ried, at her home, on Dardenne Prairie, St. Charles, Missouri, to Katherine Otey John-

493

CARLISLE TRAINING SCHOOL-CARONDELET LAAND CLAIM.

son, daughter of George Steptoe Johnson and Eliza Johnson.

Carlisle Training School .- A private school, at Jackson, Cape Girardeau County, established about 1880. Its buildings are valued at $10,000, and it has a library of about 3,000 volumes.

Carl Junction .- An incorporated city of the fourth class, in Jasper County, at the intersection of the Kansas City division and the Girard branch of the St. Louis & San Francisco Railway, fifteen miles west of Carthage. It was given the German form of the Christian name of Charles Skinner, who platted it in 1877. It was formerly known as Twin Groves. It has a public school. Presby- terian, Baptist, Methodist Episcopal North, and Holiness Churches, a bank, the "Stand- ard," an independent newspaper; the re- pair shops of the St. Louis & San Francisco Railway, a planing mill, a flourmill, and sev- eral stores. In 1890 the population was 690. The extensive Lehigh lead and zinc mines are just outside the town.

Carondelet .- The first settlement at Carondelet was made in 1767, when Clement de Treget Delor, a native of France, who came of good family, and had served as an officer in the French Army, built a stone house at the foot of the rock bluff about five and a half miles south of the site of the St. Louis courthouse. Gradually other settlers gathered around him, and, in 1804, the vil- lage, which thus came into existence, had a population of 250 souls. Its inhabitants were much more inclined to agriculture than the inhabitants of the neighboring village of St. Louis-who were mostly traders-and at that time their occupation was by no means a remunerative one. The fact that they were less prosperous than their neighbors gave rise to the appellation, "Vide Poche" .-- "Empty Pocket"-by which name the place was frequently called by the early settlers of St. Louis. It was first named Prairie a Catalan, after one Louis Catalan. Later the name was changed to Lonisbourg, and, in 1794. to Carondelet, the latter name being given it in honor of Baron de Carondelet, at that time Governor General of Louisiana. the village of Carondelet was incorporated by the County Court of St. Louis County in 1832,

and the first plat of the town was made by Laurentius M. Eiler soon afterward. It was incorporated as a city by legislative enact- ment, March 1, 1851, and divided into three wards. James B. Walsh was first mayor of the city. It was annexed to and became a part of St. Louis in 1870.

Carondelet La and Claim .- The prop- erty now known as Jefferson Barracks, em- bracing 1,702 acres of land, was conveyed to the United States by the city of Caronde- let on the 25th of October, 1854. In 1859 the city of Carondelet instituted a suit in the Court of Claims at Washington for the re- covery of this property, and Carondelet hay- ing, by an act of the Legislature, become merged into the city of St. Louis, the lat- ter city was afterward substituted as plain- tiff. In this suit the deed of Carondelet to the United States was claimed to be invalid on the ground that it was without considera- tion and that it was improperly coerced from the authorities of Carondelet by the officers of the government who had charge of the department of public lands, by an unjust and illegal exercise of authority in refusing to confirm and threatening to set aside the sur- vey of the Carondelet Commons. The history of events leading up to the filing of this suit may be summarized as follows: The origin of the claim of Carondelet was a concession of six thousand arpens of land by Zenon Trudeau, Lieutenant Governor of Upper Louisiana, made in 1796. The first attempt to give location to this possession was made by Soulard, in 1797, but the first actual sur- vey was made in 1818, by Elias Rector, who was deputy surveyor under William Rector, the surveyor of public lands in the Terri- tories of Illinois and Missouri. This survey was never approved by the surveyor general. In 1834 Elias T. Langham, the surveyor general. caused J. C. Brown to retrace and . re-establish Rector's survey, and he duly ap- proved it. The survey contains 9,904 acres of land, according to the metes and bounds as described in the field notes, and the Court of Claims found that after the deduction of the 1,700 acres included in the Jefferson Bar- racks tract, there still remained nearly 1,000 acres more than the 6,000 arpens. This was not brought to the attention of the Land Department at Washington until 1839. An investigation was then made of the whole

494

CARPENTER.

matter, the result of which was an order, made in 1841 by the Commissioner of the General Land Office to Surveyor General Millburn, directing a new survey of the Com- mons, reserving 1,702 acres for military pur- poses-the barracks having been previously located at their present site in 1826-upon the ground that it was public land-allowing 6,000 arpens to Carondelet for her commons, and restoring the remainder not covered by private claims to sale as publie lands. But this order was never carried out. Finally, the authorities of Carondelet, perceiving that if the title of the United States to the reserva- tion was made good the main difficulty in the way of this settlement would be removed. made the deed of October, 1854, and on the 8th of October, 1855, another survey, on the basis of Brown's, but marking the barracks property as reserved, was made and con- firmed by the Commissioner of the General Land Office as the true survey of the Caron- delet Commons. Dissatisfied with this adjudi- cation of the matter, the Carondelet authori- ties afterward brought suit, as already stated. This suit was carried to the court of last re- sort, and it has been held by the Supreme Court of the United States that the deed to the barracks property was valid, as based upon an equitable compromise of a long pending and doubtful question of title. (See City of St. Louis vs. United States, 92 U. S., P. 462.)

JAMES O. BROADHEAD.

Carpenter, George Oliver, was born February 17, 1852, in Wakefield, formerly known as South Reading, a town ten miles from Boston, Massachusetts. When he was ten years old the elder Carpenter removed his family to Boston, and the son grew to manhood and completed his education in that city. He attended the Park Latin School and English High School, and had the dis- tinction of being what is known as a "Frank- lin Medal Scholar" at the last named institu- tion. After graduating from the high school he took a special course in chemistry at the Massachusetts School of Technology, and then came West to enter upon a business ca- reer in St. Louis. He arrived there in Sep- tember of 1870, and was first employed as an entry clerk in the office of the St. Louis Lead & Oil Company. He filled successively all the office positions in connection with that establishment, and finally became secretary

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Encyclopedia of the history of Missouri, a compendium of history and biography for ready reference, Vol. I, Part 88

Author: Conard, Howard Louis, ed. 1n Publication date: 1901 Publisher: New York, Louisville [etc.] The Southern history company, Haldeman, Conard & co., proprietors Number of Pages: 856

Author: Conard, Howard Louis, ed. 1n
Publication date: 1901
Publisher: New York, Louisville [etc.] The Southern history company, Haldeman, Conard & co., proprietors
Number of Pages: 856