USA > Missouri > Macon County > General history of Macon County, Missouri > Part 11
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People smile now, but it was very real then. The writer has the above, almost word for word, from a Macon county citizen who was a part of that great army of hopefuls in the year '49, and he said it was those thoughts which caused he and his comrades to endure uncom- plainingly the bitter hardships of the long overland journey.
One stormy evening a prairie schooner and oxen, an outfit exactly like hundreds that had been passing through the early spring, stopped on the public square of Bloomington. Four weary-looking young men climbed out and slowly attended to their oxen, and then went into the little tavern, where they put up for the night. In the early morning, before the travelers were up, someone painted these words on the canvas of their wagon:
"Success to these brave young men."
Later the wayfarers came out, proceeded to hitch up their oxen and resumed their journey to the west. Nothing much was thought of the incident at the time, but many years later B. M. Clark, then living in Shelby county, wrote the story of his trip to California in '49, and stated that he and his companion had become heartsick of their enter- prise when they reached Bloomington, and had decided to start next day from whence they came. But when they got up in the morning and read the blessing from their unknown friend at Bloomington-a stranger who had pronounced them "brave"-they unanimously resolved to make themselves worthy of his confidence. They had not found much gold in California, Mr. Clark wrote, but they had kept on until they had passed all obstacles on the way, and had reached the point at which they were aiming. The lesson was such that each of those young men had made it his life's philosophy, "once his hands were put to the plow, never to turn back until the end of the furrow was reached."
A few years ago a St. Louis newspaper beat the bush about Mis- souri, to scare up the remnants of the famous army that had treked across the desert and mountains in '49 in quest of gold. The result was much interesting lore of adventure and quaint incident. A writer who had traveled much, both in the gold and later days, said :
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"We sometimes think it an unfortunate thing that so much more money was invested by the Argonauts than they ever realized out of California; that $10 shonid be spent for teams, provisions and general layout, to every one that came back in gold dust. But it was not the purpose of the Almighty to make the nation rich when he tucked gold among the hills; it was to make men go over there and develop that country ; to hew down the timber, bridge the canyons, tunnel the moun- tains and make this nation great from ocean to ocean. That was the rich reward for the pilgrimage of 1849 and those of later years.
In the Macon county roundup but six men responded to the roll call.
James M. Green cleaned up $20,000 in gold dust and arrived safely back in Macon county with it. On the advice of friends, he invested nearly all this money in negro slaves. Soon after, the war came on and the slaves were made free. Mr. Green died janitor of the Bevier public school, an honest, hardworking citizen.
Ned Croarkin went out with Phil D. Armour, who later became the paeking king of Chicago. They were congenial spirits, working side by side with pan and sluice-box many days. Saturday night they would divide their pile by drawing a case knife through the center of it. Later, when Armour became rich, he educated one of "Unele Ned's" boys in a law school. "Uncle Ned" made frequent journeys from Macon to Chicago to see his old comrade of the gold days, and Armour was never so glad as when "Uncle Ned" was his guest. It is doubtful whether the great pork packer ever had a warmer friend or one who was more congenial to him than Mr. Croarkin.
Dave Nickell, after whom the town of Niekellton, Macon county was named, went to California in '49 with a crowd of gold hunters, journeying across with ox teams. Mr. Nickell met with moderate suc- cess, returned to Macon county and resumed his vocation as a farmer. One night he had a dream. He saw a rich gold ledge near where he had worked and became so strongly impressed that he hitched up the old ox team and drove back to California along the trail he had followed the first trip. He found the ledge of his dream all right, but it was as barren of gold as those bricks which are sold to the unsophisticated. Mr. Nickell returned home for the second time and remained here for good. He amassed a large fortune and died, leaving behind, as a greater heritage to his children, an honored name.
Jefferson Morrow, the first sheriff of Macon county, was also a part of that great pilgrimage to California. Among the others were Mike Hornback, J. B. Clarkson, John J. Jones, Dr. Al Ray, Daniel Cornelius, Jeptha Banta, S. S. Lingo, M. M. Turner, Aleck Nichols, Levi Cox, J. J.
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West, Col. Thomas Pool, Matt Halley, R. S. Halley, Lewis Cox, Hardin Butner, Hugh McCann, John Murphy, James and Carter Landrum. James Banning, D. D. Fowler, J. B. Hutchinson, Burrell and Enoch Griffin, John Tilley, John Fisher, Nathaniel Brogles, William Gates, William Stanfield, William Balmear, John Melone, John Midley, James M. Stone, Thomas Hale, Daniel C. Hubbard, the first county clerk; Wil- son Fletcher, Lewis Smith, Carter Wilkin, Thomas Bourk, Joseph Bourk, A. and S. Mendenhall, Washington and Benton Surber and George W. Anderson.
In presenting the history of the discovery of coal in Macon county and its development, the publishers of this work are indebted to the intelligent and painstaking research of the late Elder F. Theo Mayhew, Dr. W. P. Rowland, Frank D. Jones, editor of the Bevier Appeal ; R. S. Thomas, former state coal mine inspector, and to Robert Richards, the present efficient inspector of the mines.
The first discovery of coal in Macon county was made east of Macon by Hopkin Evans, just about the time the Hannibal & St. Joseph railroad began operating its trains. The place was known as Carbon, and for a while it looked like quite a town would spring up about the coal works. The coal produced by Evans was very hard and of an excellent quality. The vein was operated for only a short while, however, because of the instability of the roof, and the works there had to be abandoned. Mr. Evans afterwards went to Bevier and became a well-to-do citizen there as a result of his industry and investments.
In 1860 Alex Rector, then a young man of twenty, was employed by William Hughes to work on his farm, a mile and a half west of Bevier, between two streams known as Middle Fork and Garrett Branch. Rector's salary was $13 a month.
Rector's first work for Mr. Hughes was to sink a well for the pur- pose of striking water. The excavation was begun near the edge of a large hill. When he was down about twelve feet the digger struck two feet of slate and farther on a thick bed of coal. Later investigations discovered that this was a six-foot vein.
Rector thought he was unlucky; he had failed to get water. And even if he had struck it, that black material in his well would have destroyed the usefulness. Discouraged at his lost labor, he hunted up another place where he hoped to have better luck. Of course, he talked in a casual way about the stuff he had struck in Hughes' well, attaching no particular consequence to it, however.
Two railroad men, Thomas and Halleck, soon heard of Rector's discovery and established a shaft where Rector had dug for water.
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They employed Rector and his father and Cleve Stacy to chop hickory logs and wall the shaft. This was the first work of that character done in the mining district which was destined to become the greatest in the state. The logs walling the mine were placed a little ways apart, so as to form a sort of ladder for the workmen to climb up and down.
The parties operating this first shaft called the place New Castle, naming it after a famous coal town of England, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
The pioneer company did not operate long before it sold its coal rights to Mr. Hinton, of Hannibal, who installed a horse-gin, and hoisted from two to three cars of coal per day. The average weight of a car of coal then was from eight to ten tons.
By this time the excitement of the coal discovery about Bevier became intense. People were awakening to the fact that they had within arms' reach a mighty industry, one which promised to revolutionize trade conditions in that section. The Hannibal & St. Joseph locomotives all burned wood at that period, using great bonnet stacks, which looked like balloons. Fuel stations were scattered at frequent intervals along the line, and large forces of men were constantly at work in the forests chopping down valuable timber to be burned in the engines. This waste was even then discussed by the railroad officials, and they were tremen- dously interested in the discovery of coal about Bevier.
Colonel Robeau, who owned the farm just east of Mr. Hughes, employed David Reese to excavate a tunnel for coal on his farm near the railroad. Miners call a horizontal excavation a slope. This was the first slope mine in the district. Colonel Robean named the scene of his operations Hazleton.
This brings us to 1861, when the great coal man of the Bevier dis- trict came to Macon county. Thomas Wardell was born and reared in England, in the heart of the great coal producing section. He came to America to seek his fortune and was at Kewance, Illinois, when he picked up a Macon county newspaper and read a discourse on the embry- onic coal operations here. He took the next train to Macon county and managed to secure the lease of the Hazleton from Colonel Robeau. War- dell's main capital was energy, courage and thorough self-confidence. In later years he was the leader, and was even then, to some extent, of the coal operators. He was a man of sharp, decisive action, a thor- ough business man, and those who knew him longest and best maintain that he was always fair.
Wardell immediately inaugurated improvements in the Hazleton mines; secured contracts with the railroad for taking his coal, and
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inspired the confidence of the men about Bevier to back him in all his earlier enterprises.
East of Hazleton John Cross and John Clifton sunk a shaft, calling it Oakwood. That was in 1862.
W. S. Watson, a brother-in-law of Wardell, came from Knoxville, Iowa, and put down a shaft on the George Parker farm, calling the scene of his operations Centerville. It will be noted that in the early days of the industry the various coal mines were designated by names instead of by numbers as they are now.
In 1862-3 the railroad company took a hand in the coal mining operations about Bevier and sunk a shaft near the depot, where the first steam engine in the district was used to hoist coal. This shaft would load from eight to twelve cars a day. All the other plants were then depending upon horsepower to get their product to the surface.
The mines discovered above were all west of the Bevier depot.
In 1866-7 the Centerville Coal & Mining Company was organized, including all the mines then in operation at Bevier.
Five mines east of Bevier were sunk during the seventies.
Eleven mines altogether were working out along the railroad track and the various operators were forced to follow the production south- ward, where new mining towns were established. Within recent years the Central Coal & Coke Company has constructed a road extending sixteen miles southward to Ardmore. This road, which is put up in modern style and is equipped with high class rolling stock, handles gen- eral freight and passenger traffic along its line and takes care of the coal produced by the Northwestern Coal & Mining Company just south of Bevier. The division headquarters of the road are at Bevier.
The following figures are furnished by Elder Mayhew in the course of his sketch concerning Mr. Rector and the coal industry.
"The largest output of coal in one day for 1904 was 175 cars; total number of cars sent out during the year 1904, 47,764. The average tonnage per car was from forty to fifty."
Rector died at the age of seventy, having devoted all his working years to mine labor. He was contented with his lot, made good wages and had plenty to eat and wear. The end came to Mr. Wardell, the man who made such energetic use of Rector's discovery, in 1888. The lives of the two men are interesting in comparison. When Wardell reached Bevier he and Rector were on the same footing as regards worldly goods. Wardell went into the mines with pick and shovel as a laborer, but his active brain soon furnished wider avenues for his endeavors. He died one of the most successful and one of the wealthiest
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coal operators in the west. Rector lived longer than Wardell, and at his death was worth abont the same as he was when his pick struck coal on the Hughes farm in 1860.
The land which now constitutes Bevier was entered by Lewis Gil- strap. When the railroad was located Mr. Gilstrap sold out to Mr. Bevier for whose son, Col. R. S. Bevier, a lawyer employed by the rail- road company, the town was named.
The next proprietors were Duff & Co., a Boston firm. In 1858 this company laid out the future city, extending, as originally platted, from the railroad on the south to Livingston street on the north, and from Carroll street on the west to Adair street on the east.
In 1859 the railroad was extended through Bevier and it at once became a distributing point for supplies to College Mound to the south, and Bloomington, then the county seat, to the north.
In 1861 a slope called No. 6 was put down on what is at present the Black Diamond farm, then owned by Lewis Robeau, near the rail- road and a little east of the first trestle west of town. This was named Hazleton, but it also was abandoned on account of too much water. In the same year came No. 4, known as Oakwood, which was located on land now owned by Lew Lewis, one mile west of Bevier. This proved to be a pocket and was soon worked out.
Nos. 1, 2 and 3 were put down during the winter of 1861-2. The site of No. 3, one-half mile west of town, owned by W. S. Watson, was known as Centerville. A store building now occupied by Lewis L. Williams was the nucleus for the new town. Streets were laid ont and are still found on the township maps.
At mine No. 2, owned by Hopkin Evans, just at western limits of the city, apparently no effort was made to establish a town. Mine No. 1, located at the west end of the depot platform, put down by the railroad company under the direction of C. O. Godfrey, with Thomas Wardell as superintendent, and the location of a large company store on what is now known as the Watson Block site, with the precedence of an estab- lished depot, settled the matter in favor of building a permanent town on the present site of Bevier. For some five years or more, until 1867, there was not a great deal of centralizing of dwellings, though the inde- pendent small storekeepers all opened in Bevier.
In 1864, on account of war conditions and the depreciation of paper currency, and in order, too, to hold men there, the companies informed the men that they would pay them one per cent per bushel more than they had been paying. A meeting was called to accept this generous offer, when it was thought only fair to ask for another cent-the miner
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was not to be outdone in generosity. The request was promptly granted.
In 1865 the operators refused to recognize the union any longer and a strike was called, resulting in the union's defeat.
In 1867 an effort was again made to organize a union and a strike was on. In this strike, for the first and last time, women were called to the front and with tongues, tinpans and stale eggs they succeeded in a fair way to humiliate the "black legs," as those taking the places of the men were at that time termed. But on one rainy Saturday, when the women had the blacklegs corralled in the engine house of mine No. 1, afraid to venture out, the sheriff of the county, with twenty-nine deputies, swooped down on the crowd and corralled the women. They were all taken to Macon, retained over Sunday and then allowed to come home. This broke the strike, the union losing out.
About this time-1867-the three mines, 1, 2, and 3 were consoli- dated into a joint stock company known as the Central Coal & Mining Company. From this time Bevier grew rapidly. The first settlers were Welsh and English, with a scattering of Irish and Scotch, and an occa- sional American to leaven the mass. The independent merchants, who, with one exception, had gone to the wall, again took heart. One-story frame store buildings sprang up on front street and two and three- room frame dwellings were soon ornamenting numberless lots of the platted town. The First Congregational church was the first building erected for purposes of worship, and as there was no schoolhouse nearer than the Miners' Hall, one mile west of town, it was used also for school purposes. The Welsh Congregational church, built immediately after, was a elose second.
In 1870 the schoolhouse, consisting of two large rooms, was com- pleted and occupied. From 1867 to 1873 was a period of unbroken prosperity. Everybody had money and paid his bills, and with what was left over enjoyed life as best he could.
Bevier was a regular western boom town these days. The saloons were wide open and the ducats flowed into them steadily. The rural enthusiast, booted and spurred, the "best man in sixteen counties, sir !" charged into town on Saturday afternoons, filled his long-necked bottles with more ginger, and then tried his lungs. He rode hard up and down the streets, proclaiming his constitutional rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and defying any one-gallus galoot in the bailiwick to debate the matter with him. There was usually a "round-up" the Saturday following pay-day, furnishing enough western color to stock a magazine writer the balance of his days. That, however, has been the universal characteristic of young mining towns of the west, and at
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all times there were in Bevier a solid, substantial citizenship, working quietly and steadily for law and order, for the observance of Sunday and the better things of life, and to this constantly growing element is due the splendid position Bevier occupies today as a city of churches, of good morals and a thorough respect for the law.
In 1873 the panie following the Civil war affected Bevier as it did all the other sections of the country. An effort on the part of the coal companies to reduce the price of mining from 6 cents to 5 cents a bushel cansed another strike, which dragged along for months, when the union again lost and one of the concerns, the Central Coal & Mining Company, went into bankruptey. This was the darkest period of Bevier's history. For five or six years there was but little work in winter and practically idle summers, and nowhere to go to better conditions, for a succession of crop failures over the country generally and grasshopper plagues in Kansas added to the money panie, and made it impossible to recuper- ate. But after this depression the town went forward, keeping pace with the rest of the world. Loomis & Snively bought up the remains of the Central Coal & Mining Company, with the exception of mine No. 2 which had fallen into the hands of Mr. Atwill, of St. Joseph. They proceeded to open up mine No. 4, one-fourth of a mile east of the depot, and W. S. Watson about the same time opened up his mine No. 1 a little further east. These added to mine No. 3 still further east, opened up by Thomas Wardell, in addition to the Summit mines, which he had purchased, placed Bevier again on the prosperous way, and so it continued until 1885, when the coal companies decided to fight the union. Negroes were for the first time brought to work in the mines, and after a bitter and protracted struggle they became established as a permanent part of the population. For a few years peace again reigned, when under an effort to reduce the wages, which was resisted by the men, the companies in 1888 brought in Swedes from Chicago to break the strike and again the men lost out. After this until the disastrous panie of 1893 prosperity was noted on every hand. During and following this period, mines 43 and 46, Watson No. 2, Black Diamond No. 7, and 61 and 66 were opened.
With the prosperons times following the panie of 1873, the people felt the need of a better government, so on September 5, 1881, the County Conrt was indueed to incorporate the village of Bevier, with Daniel Rowland as its first chairman of the Board. During the negro and Swede strikes, as they were termed, there had occurred riots, with which the village found itself powerless to cope and on one occasion the state militia was called upon to protect life and property. This was following the killing of Thomas Wardell, one of the leading operators, by parties
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who have never been located. Two men were brought to trial for the affair, but after a stubborn legal battle, lasting the greater part of a week, the defendants were acquitted, and the tragedy is as much of a mystery as ever.
The killing of Mr. Wardell was the most unfortunate occurrence in Bevier's history. It gave the town an unpleasant reputation abroad, a reputation which has been entirely obliterated by its good record of later years. The death of Mr. Wardell deprived the Macon county coal district of one of its most energetic and forceful characters, a man who had in him the capacity and the will to do great things for the devel- opment of the county's industries. Bevier had a sentimental as well as a material interest for the great coal operator. It was here he made his real start in life, showed what he could do and enjoyed the first fruits of his intelligent effort. He felt closer to the place than to any other point where his great interests had ever drawn him.
On March 16, 1889, through an election called for the purpose. the village of Bevier was reorganized into a city and, on April 2 following, Lewis Nowlan was elected its first mayor.
During the twenty years from 1873 to 1893, Bevier grew in popu- lation, houses sprung up on all sides and wooden sidewalks replaced the pathways; the one-story business houses on Front street, which were burned out during the Swede strike, were partly replaced with brick, and Maeon street was converted into a business street, the one- story frame dwellings giving way to the business honses. The year 1893 found the Watson block erected, with the Northwestern building and Odd Fellows' Temple under way. During these years, two more churches had been added until there numbered nine, and a handsome central school building, costing $30,000, has been included in the archi- tectural development of the town.
The panic of 1893, which continued four years, again set matters baek. One of the companies, thie Loomis Coal Company, crippled by the importation of strike breakers, went into bankruptcy. Building was at a standstill and predictions were heard on all sides of the city's doom. Strikes against the reduction of wages were numerous, the men invari- ably losing. The present union was formed the following year and the tide turned. One company, the Kansas & Texas Coal Company, which held out against recognition, was forced to sell out after spending $200,- 000 in the fight. Since this time wages have been increased and Bevier has moved forward smoothly and steadily. Brick business blocks are the rule, two-story frame and briek dwellings as well as a large number of handsome one-story cottages, have been built in and around the city.
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Two prosperous, substantial banks are now housed in brick buildings and a three-story brick structure with opera house on the ground floor, second to none in cities of twice Bevier's population in Missouri, attest the faith of all in the great mining center. Wooden sidewalks are rap- idly giving way to brick and granitoid, and the outlying districts have been taken into the city limits, so that the population has increased to between 2,000 and 3,000. In this time, too, the Missouri & Louisiana railroad has made Bevier its terminal and along its line have been sunk mines 24, 25 and 28, which, added to mines 8, 9, 10 and 66, make Bevier the most important coal producer of Missouri. Other mines will be opened in the years to come and there is no reason why Bevier should not furnish the men to do the work in the future as in the past, and as Bevier must be the distributing point for the coal from the vast coal field to the south, the city must in the prosperous years continue to grow even greater than before.
Since the advent of the United Mine Workers of America in the Bevier field, embracing all the miners and mine workers within the folds of that splendid organization, and the plan of joint agreements have been adopted by the operators and miners through the organization, there have been but few mining difficulties to mar the harmonious rela- tionship between them, so that good contracts and steady employment have marked the industry for years past. As a result, the annual coal production has been increasing almost every year. Statisties indicate that the high-water mark in coal production in the Bevier coal field was reaclied during the year 1907, when a total of 29,439 cars, or 1,032,- 143 tons were mined and shipped. The greatest montli of that year was October-3,042 cars, or 108,782 tons.
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