USA > Missouri > Bates County > History of Bates County, Missouri > Part 11
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Bates county has indeed taken the blue ribbon at many pomologi- cal exhibitions and state fairs, and made most excellent showings in apples in size, beauty and varieties at several of the world's fairs, as part of the state's exhibit.
With an ample market so close at hand, and a remunerative price insured, the fruit yield of the county in both large and small fruits should be rapidly increased. General farming and stock raising has been considered principally all that was required to be a successful farmer, while horticulture has had a "back seat" or viewed from the gallery, yet, as a matter of fact, it is one of the most congenial pur- suits and should form a part of farm life if for no other purpose than the pleasure and comfort and luxuries thereby secured.
The study of horticulture has been neglected; the general public has given to this very interesting feature of farm and town life but little study or attention. Fruit, fruit, and more fruit, is the crying call from the cities. It is no longer considered simply a luxury, but a neces- sity, healthful, appetizing and one of Nature's greatest boons to man, even if it did originally cause all the sin mankind has been heir to for six thousand years. But just give the boys of today a chance and they will do the same as Adam and Eve and enjoy it regardless of consequences. The acids of the various kinds of fruit assimilate with the blood and enrich it. To be successful in fruit production, either
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large or small fruit, in this day of insect life of voracious appetites and pests of many kinds, one must give to horticulture the same study and consideration he is required to give successful general farming and stock raising. While we can gain much from books and farm and horticultural journals of how to handle the orchard and the fruit gar- den, how to meet and defeat the destructive insect life that prey upon the tree, plant and fruit alike, yet practical knowledge of our own and the experience of our neighbors is quite as requisite, and for this reason local horticultural societies should be encouraged. If one has but a few "back-lot" fruit trees or is raising small fruit for the family use, he should become a member of such an organization and thereby gain the necessary practical knowledge requisite to success in this particular locality.
The large holdings of land, the increase in tenanted farms, and a prevailing idea that the production of fruit is a specialty not belong- ing to legitimate farming, has been detrimental to this industry. Instead of fruits and flowers that should adorn every dining table at least in season, it has been too much "corn bread and bacon" or "hog and hominy" as the saying is. Every home should be surrounded by groves of nut and fruit bearing trees. Every farmer should have his garden of small fruit; blackberries, red and black raspberries, gooseberries, currants and strawberries. Hillhouse has aptly expressed the idea. "I would not waste my spring of youth in idle dalliance; I would plant rich seeds to blossom in my manhood, and bear fruit when I am old." One often hears the older settlers remark, "I wish I had planted a grove of nut bearing trees, walnuts and pecans, twenty or thirty years ago. I would now be enjoying a rich harvest of nuts." Another says, "I made a serious mistake in not planting an orchard when I first started out farming." Why not begin now? There is no time like the present to plant a nut or fruit bearing tree. No greater Christian labor can be performed even if it be the last work of one's life than plant a tree that another may reap the fruit and bless the one who planted it. Civilization is gauged more perhaps, by horticulture than any other branch of industry in utilizing the land, and the luxuries enjoyed thereby can only be measured or appreciated by home culture.
In some of the farming communities throughout the county can be scen thrifty, tidy homes surrounded by fruits, flowers and vines, and at once we realize these people are civilized, and know how to enjoy country life. The freshly painted house, the tasty garden fence.
FARM RESIDENCE OF W. M. HARDINGER.
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the white-washed fruit trees, cultivated garden, blooming roses and the fragrant honey-suckle-it is thus known the occupants own their own home, have "come to stay" and are devoted to Christian influ- ences. So it is, horticulture lies at the the foundation of home com- fort and family enjoyment and is a sure mark of progress and stability.
"Man, through all ages of revolving time, Unchanging man, in every varying clime, Deems his own land of every land the pride Beloved by heaven o'er all the world beside : His home, the spot supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest."
What one has accomplished, all can. What a contrast there is when one drives past these tenanted farms or one where the owner persists in not keeping up with the twentieth century civilization-the house and out-buildings unpainted, shingles curled up and ragged from age, porches falling down, rail fence in front and bars to let down to gain entrance, with thorns. and thistles growing broader and higher, and jimpson, bull-thistles and cockle burrs ready to cling to your clothes if you attempt to enter or to learn if the premises are inhabited or a coroner is wanted. It is a pleasure to know, however, that but few farms in the county outside the tenements, are lacking in thrift and not up-to-date in modern methods and improvements and even some of the landlords have not lost all their pride and supervision, for :
"Order is heaven's first law: and this confessed, Some are, and must be, greater than the rest."
As a voucher that Bates county is one of Nature's homes for the cultivation of fruit ; one has only to observe the wild fruits of all the species known in this latitude abound throughout the county; wild plums, crab apples, persimmons, high bush huckleberry, grapes, black cherries, mulberries, paw paws, raspberries, blackberries, straw- berries, etc.
Along the rivers and streams walnuts, pecans and hickory nuts abound and the most afford nutritious food for swine during the fall and early winter months. Grand river and the Marais des Cygnes, tributaries of the Osage, passing through the county from northwest to southeast, together with the Deepwater, Mormon Fork, Mulberry, Panther, Walnut. Miami, Muddy and streams of lesser note, with their numerous branches, furnish an abundant water supply for live stock.
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Many lakes and springs of limpid water of more or less medicinal value are found throughout the county, while water from wells can be had for the digging or drilling anywhere. The streams and lakes abound in excellent fish, perch, bass, buffalo and catfish being among the varie- ties of the finny tribe, while the Government-State Fish Commission of Missouri has been liberal in stocking these lakes and streams with other kinds of food fish.
Besides the evergrowing timber supply along the streams, aver- aging in width from one-quarter of a mile to three miles, sandstone and limestone for building material exist in all sections of the county; in fact, there is not a township but shows evidence of their existence, cropping out along the bluffs and by excavating a few feet can be quarried to advantage, being in stratas one on top of the other, varying in thickness from three to eighteen inches. The sandstone is of fine grain and texture and is said to be superior to the famous white rock of Carroll county, and more easily worked for building purposes. The front of the Rich Hill Bank building at Rich Hill, is faced with sand- stone quarried on the town site, while the quarries in the southeastern portion of the county have been worked remuneratively for many years. During Sedalia's boom, in the hope of securing the state capital, scores of cars of sandstone were shipped over the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railroad to Sedalia for sidewalks, street crossings, curbing, and build- ing purposes. Much of this sandstone north of Rockville is handsomely variegated, streaked with red. purple. and blue from the ochers and iron ore that permeates the soil or exists in the numerous boulders found in the vicinity. The front of the fine residence of Doctor Mun- ford, editor of the "Kansas City Times," built in the eighties, was con- structed with variegated sandstone from these quarries.
Shale, sand and blue clay and fire clay for brick making. are found in inexhaustible quantities in various localities. . In some sections, espe- cially in excavations made for surface coal around Rich Hill and in New Home township, a very high grade of kaolin for fine crockery and delft ware is found above and below the coal stratas. Fire clay brick pressed in standard moulds and burned in the retorts of the Rich Hill Gas Works took the blue ribbon at the last state fair in Kansas City in competition with the brick from the celebrated fire-clay brick works at St. Louis, being heavier in weight, the bricks being of like dimensions.
The wealth of coal existing in Osage, New Home, and Walnut
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townships is too well known to need any extended remarks concern- ing the same; millions of tons have been mined and shipped out over the Missouri Pacific, the Kansas City, Fort Scott & Gulf branch to Rich Hill, and later over the Kansas City & Southern and the Empo- ria branch from Butler. While shipments in not so large a measure are still going on, both from shaft and surface mines, the coal supply from these localities, at least for all local purposes, will be ample for many future generations, as new mines are constantly being developed and the older ones are still producing satisfactorily.
The coal measures, however, in Hudson, Pleasant Gap, and Prairie townships, in the southeastern part of the county, have not been equally developed for the want of adequate railroad facilities for transportation, but quite sufficient to show that a vein of superior quality of soft coal from three and one-half to five feet in thickness covers a large area of these three townships, and mines are in operation continuously for local purposes and some shipments over the "Katy" are made. That a branch line of road from the M. K. & T. or an extension of the "Frisco" to these coal fields is only a question of time, is probable; for this coal has good roofing and is susceptible to large mining for commercial purposes at a good profit.
Writing of the development of the coal veins in Osage township, years ago, Professor Broadhead, state geologist, had this to say: "More general prospecting in southern Bates, in and through the lower tier of townships, reveals the fact that the coal area of this section is vastly greater than has been supposed and beyond even our present conception." It is hardly questionable but that future development of the county on a scientific basis will reveal not only the wealth in coal as predicted by Professor Broadhead, but that there existed valuable deposits of asphaltum, rock oil, and natural gas in quantity to be of commercial value. Iron ore and paint boulders are known to exist near the border of Vernon county in the southeastern township. The sand- stone rock is so permeated with a sort of gummy oil that it burns like coal for a time leaving fine white sandstone. When the Craig brothers were making brick in Rich Hill years ago, by the old-fashioned method, when the fires had gotten under full headway under the kilns and the pressed raw bricks had become sufficiently heated, a blue blaze per- meated through the entire kilns and had all the appearance that the very brick was burning up, so saturated had been the clay, sand and shale with this oily substance and no further firing was necessary.
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Crude oil, or rock oil, as it is called, is known to rise out of the earth. It never is infused into the soil or sand rock from above. It must rise from an oil producing or oil holding sand far below the surface. This oil is found in considerable quantities at Mormon Fork in Boone town- ship and other numerous places in the western tier of townships and in the southeastern portion of the county. Some day prospecting will be undertaken with sufficient capital and determination to use it in making a thorough test for oil and gas in this county and undoubtedly will meet with the same success as has been had in the section of. country southwest in Kansas and Oklahoma. There never has been any deep borings in the county. In reaching the gas and oil sand strata in some of the field's in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, borings to the depth of three thousand feet and more are made and required to reach . the best producing oil and gas stratas. There's no telling what a thorough investigation in those localities might reveal.
"Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt ; Nothing's so hard but search will find it out."
Bates county has a most successful poultry organization. This industry has had a most wonderful and successful growth within the last decade, not only generally among the farmers and town and vil- lage inhabitants, but has been made a specialty by those who thoroughly understand the poultry business and the profits arising, therefrom. No very great outlay of capital is' required to start in this business and no end to the demand at your very door, for the various products of the industry; whether it be turkeys, geese, ducks, fancy chickens or the old-fashioned barn-yard fowls, great profits are assured. Fresh eggs are ever in demand and at prices quite sufficient to not require the government to intervene. If you are short on business.or long' on inactivity, start a poultry farm. No landed estate is necessary. Any old acreage answers the purpose. Down in the Ozarks, turkeys roost in the trees and get most of their grub in the fields and forests. Make a pond for the ducks and geese and watch themg swim with all the grace of a mermaid, and listen to the squawking of the geese and the quacking of the ducks and keep in mind they all lay the "golden egg." The present officers of the Bates County Poultry Association for 1918 are: Miss Elva Church, president: L. C. Culbertson, vice-president ; George M. Hatrick, secretary. Directors: Mrs. Hardin, Mrs. J. H. Baker, Mrs. J. R. Baum, and Mrs. Maggie Poffenbarger.
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Corn In Missouri.
(By Lucien Green, Hudson, Missouri, from 1915 "Year Book.")
According to the forty-sixth annual report of the State Board of Agriculture of Missouri, corn raised in Bates county in 1913 was 1,144,469 bushels from 162,067 acres, an average of seven bushels an acre. Assuming that the acreage is the same this year and the average is a little less than twenty-five bushels an acre, the amount raised is about 4,000,000 bushels.
Indian corn was the gift of the Indians to American civilization. They taught the Pilgrim fathers how to raise it, how to pound it into meal and how to bake it into bread. Corn meal was the basis of Whit- tier's "Samp and Milk" and mush and milk and hasty pudding of people living west of the Alleghanies.
Corn meal is made into corn bread, corn pone, corndodgers, corn gems and a hundred other kinds of bread, "and all very good."
Corn meal mixed with rye flour and baked on the hearth in a spider or bake kettle into loaves weighing fifteen or thirty pounds are appe- tizing and gives the rail splitter more energy than any other bread.
Fried mush sweetened with maple molasses, accompanied by fresh pork sausage-the result of corn and hog-will keep the boy on the farm-as long as the molasses and sausage lasts, and perhaps longer !
We are told that three-fifths of the world's production of corn is raised in the United States. Much corn is raised in the Argentine Republic and in the region near the Black sea. Corn is raised with more or less success in all countries that are free of frost for ninety days. Corn specialists have bred varieties of corn that do well in Minnesota and other Northern states.
The average yield of corn in our county is about twenty-eight bushels per acre. The record yield on one acre is 256 bushels in North Carolina. One hundred twenty ears of average Missouri corn is called a bushel. Sixty ears of good seed corn weighs about one bushel. An average ear of seed corn consists of about 900 grains. The cobs from seventy pounds of good St. Charles white corn weigh about nine pounds. Corn cobs boiled in water and sweetened with brown sugar give the molasses a maple flavor and it is sold in the fall by wholesale merchants as fresh maple syrup. The early settlers of the West frequently sold corn for eight to ten cents a bushel. The farmers of the treeless regions of the West usually shell their corn and save the cobs for fuel. Corn is of
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many colors and varieties: white, red, yellow, black, blue, calico, bloody butcher and a mixture of all.
A choice ear of sweet corn, well lubricated with butter and eaten from the cob-hog fashion-pleases the palate beyond the ability of words to explain. The science of corn breeding, selection of seed corn and making our soil richer and more resistant to drouth and insects is in its infancy, and no doubt will continue to be studied until the average yield in Missouri is forty or fifty or more bushels per acre.
The wrong use of corn has brought millions of our people to poverty and broken up many homes. The right use of corn has paid off more mortgages, built more happy homes, more school houses, churches and palaces for the rich than all of our minerals. Fortunate is the young farmer who takes pride in raising good corn and in improving the soil!
CHAPTER IX.
COUNTY ORGANIZATION. (By Judge Charles A. Denton.)
NATIONAL, TERRITORIAL, STATE, AND COUNTY GOVERNMENTS-FRENCH POSSES- SION-SPANISH POSSESSION-PROVINCE OF LOUISIANA-ACT OF MARCH 26, 1804-ACT OF MARCH 31, 1805-ACT OF JULY 4, 1812-MISSOURI ADMITTED -TREATY OF NOVEMBER 10, 1808-LEGISLATIVE ACTS.
We deem a re-capitulation of the different national, territorial, state and county governments, under which the territory now within the present boundary lines of Bates county has been, would be of interest and profit to those who are interested in the history of the government of the county.
It was of the French possessions up to 1763, then of Spanish pos- session until 1800 when it again came under the control of the French government, and so continued up to April 30, 1803, when France ceded the Province of Louisiana to the United States of which it was a part.
On March 26, 1804, by act of Congress it became a part of "Dis- trict of Louisiana," and was placed under the jurisdiction of what was then known as "Indian Territory." On March 3, 1805. it became a part of the "Territory of Louisiana," and so continued until July 4, 1812, when the Territory of Missouri was organized, Missouri being admitted as a state on August 10, 1821, it has therefore been under its jurisdiction since that time.
November 10, 1808, at a place or fort called at that time Fort Clark which was located on the Missouri river, at or near what is now the town of Sibley in Jackson county, a treaty was entered into by the United States with the Great and Little Osage Indians, by which the said Indians relinquished to the United States all claim or right to the land lying east of a line commencing at said Fort Clark and running due south to the Arkansas river. From data and information gathered from the general land office at Washington, it appears that this boundary line so agreed upon as separating the lands to be thereafter claimed and used by the Osage Indians for their home and hunting ground,
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entered this present territory at a point on the south bank of the Grand river at or near the center of section 14, of Grand River township and continuing south until the township of Pleasant Gap is reached, when its location would be about, or on the line between sections 3 and + of said township, and would therefore as it continued south pass on the east line of the town of Papinsville or about one-half mile east of the bank of the Marais des Cygnes river. All that part of the present terri- tory lying west of that line continued to be under the jurisdiction and control of the Osage Indians until the treaty of the United States with said Indians on June 22, 1825, by which treaty the Osage Indians relin- quished all their right or claim to lands lying within the State of Mis- souri.
That part of the present territory of the county lying east of said Osage boundary line, or a strip about seven and one-half miles of the present territory, first came under the jurisdiction of county organiza- tion, by act of the Legislature, Laws of 1813 and 1814. in the organiz- ing of St. Louis county. By an act of the territorial Legislature of January 23, 1816, that part of now Bates county lying east of the Osage boundary line became a part of Howard county. This same territory was made a part of Cooper county, Territorial Laws 1818, act December 17, 1818.
By act of the Legislature of November 16, 1820 all that part of now Bates county lying north of the middle of the main channel of the Osage river to the west boundary line of the state, was organized with other territory into a county named Lillard.
From the fact that at that time what is now called the Marais des Cygnes, was then probably called the Osage river, that the said south- ern line of Lillard county was to west line of the state, understood and intended to be the main channel of the now Marais des Cygnes river.
By act of Legislature February 16, 1825, all that part of the present territory of Bates county lying west of the middle line of Mingo, Spruce. Deepwater, Hudson, Rockville townships, and north of a line starting at a point where the above said line crosses the middle of the channel of the Osage river and thence west to the state line, was organized into a county named Jackson. This south boundary line was about three- fourths of a mile south of the present southern boundary line of Bates county.
That part lying east of the middle line of Mingo township and the other townships south of it, was organized February 16. 1825, as a part of a county named Lafayette.
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That part of the present territory of the county lying north of a line starting at the northeast corner of Hudson township and running west to the state line was by act of the Legislature of January 16, 1833, made a part of a county called Van Buren and that part lying south of this line with attached territory was organized into a county called Bates. It appears that the territory of both the said counties of Van Buren and Bates were attached to the county of Jackson, for all civil and military purposes until they should be established and organized as separate counties by law. It appears that the southern boundary of said Jackson county was by this act fixed at about its present boundary line.
On the 29th day of January, 1841. by act of the Legislature, Bates county was organized for civil and military purposes and included with other territory lying south of it, only that part of the present territory lying south of the line, commencing at the northeast corner of Hudson township and running thence west to the state line. By law March 28, 1845, the north boundary line of Bates county was moved six miles further north so that its northern boundary was a line commencing at the southeast corner of township 41, range 29. (Spruce township) thence west to the state line.
By act of the Legislature, 1849, the name of Van Buren county was changed to Cass county, consequently all that part of what is now Bates county lying north of the line above described as being the north line of Bates county was from that time a part of Cass county.
By act of the Legislature February 17, 1851. all that part of the present county from what is now its northern boundary line south to a line for a southern boundary, which commenced on the state line at the northwest corner of section 18, running thence east to the line now dividing Bates and St. Clair counties, was organized into a county named Vernon. It will be noted that this line, with reference to the following towns as now located, would pass through the town of Hume, just south of Rich Hill, through Prairie City and strike the northern boundary line of Rockville. It was about three-fourths of a mile north of Papinsville, which was at that time the county seat of Bates county.
The said act organizing Vernon county provided, however that there should be an election held within its prescribed boundary line, on the first Monday of August, 1851, and if a majority of the voters in the said new county did not vote therefor then the act should be void and inoperative. The election was so held, and a majority of the votes cast was for the organization.
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