USA > Missouri > Bates County > History of Bates County, Missouri > Part 28
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HISTORY OF BATES COUNTY
house was built in 1866. This was in turn replaced by the court house built in 1870 and that one was torn down and replaced by the present one, built in 1900. The first voting precinct in the county was at Harmony Mission, and the first election held there was in 1841. The first grist mill I remember was the Charrett mill, built in 1833. He also ran a saw-mill and was succeeded by John Parks. William and Aaron Thomas had a grist mill in 1848; the first mill in the county was run by a treadwheel. They worked oxen on the wheel. George Thomas had a carding machine, run by the same kind of power, and worked horses on it. It was erected in 1848. He also bought a threshing machine at West Point in 1859, which was the only one I knew of before the war. Coal was dug out of the ground in several places as far back as I can remember, for use mostly in blacksmithing, but was not mined to any extent before the war."
In addition to the foregoing borrowed from the "Old Settlers' His- tory" we give the following interesting facts gathered from a biographical sketch of John H. Thomas. written by this author and approved by him at the time and published in the "Butler Free Press," September 24, 1897: "In the spring or summer of 1839 my parents, George and Mary Thomas, came to Lone Oak township and settled in section 11 and built the first frame house on the prairie. Everybody told father he could not build a house strong enough to stand the prairie winds, but he thought he could. There was a famous spring on the place and he wished to build near it. Nearly everybody since has hauled water from the spring in a dry time. The timbers in the house were all hewn ; the sills were 10 x 11 inches; the plates 8 x 10: the studding faced six inches, the joists eight inches and the braces 6 x 6 inches. It had a large chimney built inside the house. In a few years the early settlers began to build little houses on the prairie. They braved many hardships to get homes for their families and they shared all dangers in sympathy with one another, and were always ready to lend a helping hand. Most of them were God-fearing men. They did not try to see who could acquire the most wealth, but were willing their neighbors should share with them. Oh! for the spirit of the olden time !
"My father owned and operated a carding machine on the farm now owned by A. M. Thomas (since dead), and when a boy I knew many of the old settlers who came there with their wool. Among others I remember Mark West, father of Gent. West; John Woodfin, father of A. H. and Jason Woodfin; Melvin Dickey, who lived near "Dickey
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Ford" on the Marais des Cygnes river. We lived and worked in peace until the war broke out in 1861. On August 9, 1861, my brother and myself were ordered to report at the Confederate camp somewhere near Butler; but instead of obeying we left for Mound City, Kansas, and in August, 1863, I enlisted in the Fifteenth Kansas Cavalry Volun- teers, and served throughout the rest of the war. Our father was taken from home in December, 1861, and killed somewhere near 'Dickey Lake' on the river, as near as we could learn. His body was never found, nor do any of us know to this day the place of his burial, if buried at all. I returned to Bates county in 1869, and have seen it grow from small beginnings to wealth and power. The past is past; and the bitterness of the war and the separation and estrangement of neigh- bors are ended."
Recollections of Harmony Mission. (By J. N. Barrows, of Rich Hill.)
I was born within three miles of Harmony Mission site in 1847, and have lived all my life in Bates county, and in the vicinity of Papins- ville and Harmony. As a boy, youth and young man, I was familiar with the site of the Mission and the habitations of the Grand Osages. I played about the apple trees planted by the missionaries, drank out of the well they digged, and remember the Mission house well. It was a large two-story building, weatherboarded with walnut which had been sawed out by a whip-saw, dressed, but never painted. The sills and other dimension lumber were all hewn out or whip-sawed. It was all builded from trees cut right at their door from the tract of land ceded to them by the Grand Osages. I can recall that there were other smaller houses, built on the log cabin order, scattered about the premises when I was a boy.
Harmony Mission was situate about one and a quarter miles up the Marais des Cygnes river northwest from where Papinsville was afterward laid out and now is. In 1852, a Mr. Scroggins bought the main Mission dwelling, in which he lived until 1856, at which time he moved the building to Papinsville, where it, with two other buildings, was burned by unknown parties in the winter of 1863 and 1864, some months after General Ewing's "Order No. 11" became effective and everyone had left Bates county. The town of Papinsville had been principally burned by a battalion of a Kansas regiment under Major
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Anderson on December 20, 1861,-I think that is the correct date- about that date at least.
I can remember back to 1854-5 and I know that there were some Indians, mostly half-breeds, scattered along up the Marais des Cygnes river, where they fished and hunted unmolested. They were peace- able and harmless. This was not Indian country after the treaty of 1825; but I have always understood that the main body of the Grand Osages did not move beyond the borders of this state for several years after the treaty-in fact, somewhere about 1836 or 1837; and they returned and temporarily dwelt and hunted along the Marais des Cygnes and Little Osage as late as the latter fifties-a sort of nomadic life, living in tepees and few together. A good many would come out of their own country in Kansas Territory, spending the summer and autumn along these rivers, and return to their principal village for the winter.
The missionaries arrived in August, 1821, got their cession from old White Hair and the lesser chiefs, and settled on the margin of the Marais des Cygnes river at the point stated above. I ought to state that Harmony Mission was about three miles from the junction of the Marais des Cygnes with the Marmiton river almost directly south of the village of Papinsville; thence east from this confluence it is the Osage river proper, which finds its way to the Missouri river at Osage City about eight miles east of Jefferson City.
The missionaries continued their labors at Harmony Mission until the body of the Grand Osages had gone West into their own country, and did not abandon the mission until 1837 or 1838.
I know there has been some confusion among writers as to the exact location of the principal village of the Grand Osages at the time the missionaries settled at Harmony in 1821 and thereafter until they went further West. On this point I can give only my best information and the reader will take it for what it is worth. While many of the incidents making history for southern Bates county come directly under my own observation, much has been obtained from my father and mother, my father having come to Harmony Mission in April, 1838. where for two years he assisted Captain William Waldo in the sale of goods. In 1840. Bates county was first organized into a county. My father, Freeman Barrows, was elected the first county clerk and by vir- tue of this office became ex-officio recorder and circuit clerk. which
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HISTORY OF BATES COUNTY
office he held for twelve years. During this period father bought and improved a farm two miles east of Papinsville, where I was born, Decem- ber 17, 1847. He continued to occupy this place until his death, April 26, 1861. My mother was a Miss Asenath A. Vaill, daughter of a Presbyterian minister, a graduate of Yale College, who under the auspi- ces of the Board of Foreign Missions, established in 1819 the Union Mission fifteen miles east of what is now Ft. Gibson in the state of Oklahoma, where mother was born, January 5, 1822. After her edu- cation was completed at Munson and Mount Holyoke seminaries in Massachusetts she returned to western Missouri to visit her sister, wife of Capt. William Waldo. There she became acquainted with and mar- ried Freeman Barrows, August 23, 1842. Hence the early arrival of my parents to this country put them in a position in after years to give me an account of incidents occurring before my time and recol- lection. The main town of the Grand Osages was one-quarter mile north of Papinsville, which would fix the village about three-quarters of a mile a little southeast of Harmony Mission, on the high land there, in the edge of the timber, some of which is still there; and as a boy and young man, living within two miles of the spot, I often visited it. It was perfectly plain then where the principal village had been. They had killed out the timber in a considerable tract where their houses had been and where their ponies had been kept.
In 1853, the contractor who built the first brick court house in Papinsville discovered suitable soil right where the Grand Osage village had been, for brick-making and erected his kilns there, and made the brick there that went into the walls of the first brick court house in Bates county. The Indians always built their principal villages on high land. above overflow, and mostly in the timber, but close to the edge of the open prairie. This was that kind of a location. Of course, the Indians were doubtless scattered about, as was their custom, but I always understood, and so did all the early settlers, that here was the principal Grand Osage village when the missionaries settled at Harmony and builded their school house and opened their school for Indian children in 1822. There may have been other villages south of the Osage and on the Little Osage river in what is now Vernon county, at an earlier date. The fact that the missionaries selected, in conference with the chiefs, the place they did select. is strong presump- tive argument that the principal village was not far away, or where I say it was. For, if the main body of the Grand Osages lived near the
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junction of the Marmiton creek with the Little Osage river where Gen. Z. B. Pike's crude map locates them in 1806, a distance of about eight miles as the crow flies from Harmony, and ten or twelve miles around by rivers, by land it would have been necessary for parents and chil- dren to come through a heavily timbered swampy bottom covered with tall grass, full of surface lakes and lagoons, and to cross the Little Osage, Muddy creek and the Marais des Cygnes river to get to the Mission school. It is not reasonable that a school and a religious estab- lishment, bottomed upon the purpose and hope to reach these Indians, men, women and children, would have been located so far from the main village of the tribe. So, whatever may be thought of Pike's map, or wherever the principal village may have been in 1806, it is certain that the main body of the Grand Osage dwelt about a quarter mile north of the present village of Papinsville and about three-quarters of a mile from the Mission school and other buildings, on the Marais des Cygnes river, at least three miles north of the head of the Osage river, in Bates county, in 1821, and thereafter until they moved to their new country further west.
I have read what some of the missionaries and travelers have said about a "solid bed of stone coal" existing in the bed of the river, but I never saw, or heard of any such thing; and I am sure I would have known about it, if true, during the half century that I lived in the immediate vicinity. There was, and I presume there is yet, a thin out- cropping in the bank of the Marais des Cygnes river just in front of the Mission buildings: and this may have been the basis of the story.
There was quite a settlement in an early day at Rapid de Kaw, or Colin's (Kolee's) Ford on the north bank of the Osage river about a mile from where I was born, about three miles southeast from Papins- ville, and when a boy I frequently picked up arrow heads and the con- choidal chips of flint thrown off in the making or manufacturing of arrow heads. I have also picked up similar relics across the river about the base of Halley's Bluff.
Among the early events or occurrences of southeast Butler county was the enterprise of Captain William Waldo in bringing two steamboats up the Osage loaded with merchandise from St. Louis to Harmony Mission-the "Wave" in 1844, and the "Maid of the Osage" in 1845. Captain Waldo was in the mercantile business at Harmony from 1837 to 1846. It was through his enterprise and foresight that the naviga- tion of the Osage was greatly improved by the construction of "wing dam" which threw the volume of water that spread over a broad shoals
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HISTORY OF BATES COUNTY
into a narrow channel. This was done in removing by a primitive dredg- ing system the gravel and other stony formation from this artificial channel for the formation of the wing dam. To carry out this plan Captain Waldo secured an appropriation by the state of the sum of $25,000 to complete the work. This improvement proved to be of very material aid to navigation in times of low water. At the time of these events, which occurred between 1840 and 1848, the county seat of Bates county was at Harmony Mission and might have remained there indefi- nitely ; but on account of the narrow channel of the Marais des Cygnes (the river on which Harmony Mission was located), it was thought best to lay out a town for the county seat at some suitable place on or near the banks of the main Osage river, which was a convenient stream and navi- gable for boats most of the time. This plan was conceived by three men of this portion of Bates county, William Waldo, George Douglass, and Freeman Barrows. Accordingly, a site was selected on the north half of the northeast 14 of section 23, township 38, range 30, two miles east of Papinsville, and one-half mile north of the banks of the Osage river at Rapid de Kaw. This place was agreed to, there being no apparent opposition. This was in 1842. The town was laid off in lots, blocks and streets, and named Selden; and settlement of the townsite commenced; but when it came to moving the county seat from Harmony Mission, there arose an opposing faction, which was headed by John McHenry, Bates county's representative in the Legislature, and the leader of the Democratic party of the county. The opposition claimed it should be more centrally located in the county ; and another argument was intro- duced against the establishing of the county seat at the new town of Selden was the fact that its three projectors were all "old line Whigs." The matter of the locating of the county seat was very hotly con- tested. In one of McHenry's speeches he called it the "town of Sel- dom." and said it was appropriately named, as it was very "Seldom" that anyone ever went to the place. The factions however finally com- promised the matter by placing it at Papinsville, Mr. Papin, of St. Louis, one of the American Fur Company, donating forty acres of land for the townsite, this point being once famous in Indian history as one of the most celebrated Indian towns and the home of the most noted Indian chiefs. All that had been done for the laying out of the town of Selden was promptly revoked. Freeman Barrows, one of the pro- moters, bought the land and much of that adjoining it, upon which he built a house.
The steamer "United States Mail" came up from St. Louis to Har-
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mony Mission in 1858, stopping at Papinsville on its way up and down. Harmony was only about a mile or two by water up the Marais des Cygnes river. Then the Civil War came on and no more steamboats arrived until 1867, when the large steamer, "The Osage," came as far as Rapid de Kaw and there unloaded, not being able to get up over the rapids to Papinsville. She made. two trips up, and the "Tom Stephens" made three that year, and being a lighter boat was enabled to reach and land at Papinsville. In 1869 the "Tom Stephens" made six trips from St. Louis to Papinsville and that was the end of merchant marine service on the Osage and the Marais des Cygnes. But about 1905 or '06, Congressman David A. DeArmond and a party of friends chartered a little steamer at Monegaw Springs and came up the Osage, thence up the Marais des Cygnes to a point near Cornland or Athol, where they disembarked and the congressman took the Missouri Pacific railroad train for his home in Butler, about six miles north, and the party of friends returned on the steamer to Monegaw Springs, stopping at the towns and villages along the way. Since then no attempt has been made to navigate the Osage above Osceola, and for some years not above Warsaw, the county seat of Benton, and in fact nothing like reg- ular transportation by water above Tuscumbia in Miller county is maintained on the beautiful Osage. Railroads reaching Bugnell, War- saw, and Osceola, put river service out of business.
Bates County in the Fifties. (By Hon. J. B. Newberry.)
To the Reader .- The following personal recollections have been written wholly from memory, and as I have not attempted to write anything like a history of Bates county, many incidents of interest have been left out which are matters of record. The effort to recall and record some of the incidents connected with my early residence in Bates county has awakened many pleasant memories of the past, for truly I can look back to those early times with the very pleasant con- viction that they were among the most happy of my life and, if I have succeeded in writing anything which will interest or amuse the reader of the history of Bates county, I shall feel amply repaid for the effort. I think I can safely claim the indulgence of the reader to overlook the faults and shortcomings of the writer in his efforts to contribute, however slightly, to the history of Bates county previous to the war of 1861 to 1865.
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HISTORY OF BATES COUNTY
Bates County As I Saw It in 1853 .- I came to Bates county in the spring of 1853, and located at Papinsville. There were seven fami- lies living there at that time: S. H. Loring, F. F. Eddy, F. H. Eddins, Geo. L. Duke, S. S. Duke, D. B. McDonald and James McCool. S. H. Loring was engaged in merchandising, as was the firm of Eddy & Eddins. James McCool kept a dram shop. Geo. L. Duke operated a wool carding machine, the motive power of which was an inclined wheel. S. S. Duke worked at the carpenter's trade. D. B. McDonald was clerk in Eddy & Eddin's store. There were several others employed at work of various kinds about town. Papinsville was at that time the county seat of Bates county, which at that time comprised the territory out of which Vernon county was erected. I shall not attempt to give a history of the changes in the county lines of the causes which led up to the same. An old log building was serving as a court house at this time. In 1854 a new brick court house was erected, which enlivened and greatly added to the business of the town. Newcomers began to arrive, new buildings were erected and the population continued to increase until the county seat was removed in 1856. During the year 1853 Richardson & Onay brought in and operated a saw-mill, for which eight or ten horses furnished the motive power. Onay was accidentally thrown against the saw in the summer of 1854, receiving injuries from which he died in a few days. Richardson, assisted by Eddy & Eddins, soon changed the motive power to steam and operated it until his death, when it was taken charge of by others.
In the season of 1854 or 1855 a bridge was built across the river, which was a great convenience to the traveling public as well as to the community.
In 1852-3-4 and 1855 there was considerable immigration to Cali- fornia and thousands of cattle were brought to be driven across the plains, leaving thousands of dollars of gold coin in the hands of the people, which made prosperous times for the country. In fact, it was sometimes boastingly said that the people all had their pockets full of twenty dollar gold pieces.
The immediate vicinity of Papinsville was sparcely settled at this time. Freeman Barrows lived about one and one-half or two miles southeast of town; Peter Colin (pronounced Collee), lived about one mile south of him; J. N. Durand lived about three miles due east from town. There were quite a number of settlers living along Panther creek and its tributaries, among whom I remember W. H. Anderson,
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James S. Hook, who still lives at the same place, Jacob Housinger and several members of his family who had families of their own, Robert Bilcher and family, William Milton, John Gilbreath and sons, William, Simeon and Stephen, were living in what was called Round Prairie, as did Richard Stratton, Peter B. Stratton, who was afterward elected circuit and county clerk, lived farther west and on the north side of the creek and William Hedrick, who is still living and has passed the ninety-fifth mile-stone on life's journey, and is hale and hearty. John D. Myres, also afterward elected circuit and county clerk. Col. George Douglass, George Rains, Widow Blevins and family, mother of Judge C. I. Robards; hers was the first house I saw the inside of in Bates county, and I have greatly held in remembrance her kindness, and also the cup of cold coffee she gave me, for I was very thirsty as well as weary, and was greatly refreshed by it. The next settlement north of Panther creek was on Deepwater. Among the settlers I might mention Hiram Snodgrass and his sons, Isaac, Richard, William and James V., the latter of whom and two sisters, Mrs. White and Mrs. Jennings, are still living in Bates, widow Lutsenhizer's family, two of whom, T. B. Lutsenhizer and Mrs. Simpson, wife of J. R. Simpson, are still living here, George Ludwick and family of whom John L. and Mrs. Vanhoy are living in this county, and William is temporarily staying in Colorado, Oliver Drake, Peter Gutridge, W. B. Price, Samuel Scott and Joseph Beatty.
On north Deepwater at Johnstown and vicinity, were living John Harbert and family: John Hull lived in the town: R. L. Pettus, J. B. Pettus, Samuel Pyle, James McCool and others.
In the north part of the county on Peter creek, Elk Fork and Grand river there were settlements, among others whom I remember, Martin Hackler, J. Leakey, Alexander Erhart, Austin Reeder, Joseph Reeder, J. C. Gragg, Joseph Highly, George Sears, William Crawford, Martin Owens, Hiram Edwards, William France, R. DeJarnett, Lewis C. Hag- gard, John Pardee, John Evans, John S. McCraw, the last two of whom are still living at the same place they were then, Enoch Rolling, George L. Smith, Barton Holderman, Alexander Feely, Frank R. Berry, Joseph Clymer, Vincent Johnson and John Green.
On the Miami, Mulberry and Marais des Cygnes there were a 1111n1- ber of settlers, among whom were Samuel Dobbins, Clark Vermillion,
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Oliver Elswick, H. B. Francis, Bluford Merchant, Messrs. Ramsy, Jack- son and J. Rogers.
On Mound Branch lived Major Glass and widow Hersell and family and probably others.
About Pleasant Gap and Double Branches the following names are remembered: James Ridge, Joseph Wix, William Deweese and sons, Jesse, Evan and Elijah; Livy Bethol, Peter Trimble, Doctor McNeil, Cornelius Nafus, Hugh Campbell, John Dillon, Dr. William Requa, William, George and Aaron Thomas, John, Lindsey and Thomas Wine, James Coe, Enoch Humphrey, George Requa and family including Aus- tin, James, George and Cyrus, Jesse Rinehart, J. O. Starr and John Hartman.
On Mission branch and Sycamore I remember George Weddle, Abraham Goodwin, Widow Zimmerman and family, Mrs. Charette and family, also an Osage Indian half-breed named Gesso Chouteau, who had been educated at Harmony Mission, but who still retained the Indian . characteristics of shiftlessness and laziness and was fond of whiskey, and while possessing a fairly good education, gave little evidence of it except when his tongue got limbered up with liquor.
Of those who were living on the south side of the Marais des Cygnes river I remember M. Parks, Jeremiah Burnett, William, Thomas and B. F. Jennings, O. H. P. Miller, Widow West and family, Edmund Bartlett, Jason and A. H. Woodfin.
In the foregoing list of names I have intended to include only those who were living in the county at the time of my coming to the county. but as it is written from memory it is possible it may contain names of some few who came to the county after 1853.
There are many left off for the reason that their names have escaped my memory at the time of writing, but whom I formerly was well acquainted with.
From this time (1853) on, the county settled up very fast. Many immigrants came from other states every year, aside from those who came from other countries within the state. New farms were opened up, new houses built and improvements of all kinds were added. New settlements were made out on the prairie, miles away from timber, which was a surprise to some of the old settlers most of whom came from sections of country heavily timbered, and I have heard more than one
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