USA > Missouri > Bates County > History of Bates County, Missouri > Part 30
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O. D. Austin was then editor of the "Record." W. A. Feely had recently begun the publication of the "Democrat." The writer in Octo- ber, 1870, assisted John R. Walker, N. A. Wade and others in carrying the type and material of the "Democrat" up-stairs in a frame building that stood where the Missouri State Bank now is, and from that room was published the "Bates County Democrat." Feely died several years later and is buried in the old cemetery. There was much of bitterness in politics then. The Republicans called the Southerners "Rebels." The Southerners called the Republicans "Radicals," neither side showing much liberality. We had not then learned this truth-that each man's peculiar views are the natural outgrowth of his environment-that education and surroundings in youth largely mould and shape opin- ions.
Had Jeff Davis been born and raised in Maine he would doubtless have been an abolitionist, and John Brown if born and brought up in South Carolina would in all probability have been a secessionist.
We had no railroads but our people were anxious to secure one. Under the law. bonds could be voted by the tax-payers to aid in building railroads. In a year or two almost every county in Missouri had issued two or three hundred thousand dollars in bonds, sold them in the market for cash and afterward paid the money to wild cat compa- nies that had nothing to build railroads with outside of this money. The roads were half finished when the money gave out. Litigation followed for years. The courts generally held the bonds legal.
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In September, 1874, grasshoppers came. Being late in the season but little damage was done crops. They deposited their eggs in the ground and early in the following spring hatched out by the million and proceeded at once with voracious appetites to devour everything green. The whole country was covered with them. They were as thick on the ground as bees sometimes get on the outside of a hive. Our people were much discouraged for it looked as if nothing could be raised. But to our great joy one day late in the spring the "hoppers" took flight, and we have never seen them since.
Talks and Tales of Olden Times. (By Clark Wix, of Deepwater Township.)
My father, Joseph Wix, came from Fulton county, Illinois, and set- tled in Bates county (being then only nineteen years old), in October, 1839, two miles northeast of Pleasant Gap, where I was born February 5, 1850, on the farm where my youngest brother, Seth Wix, now lives. My father bought a claim and continued to live on the same farm until his death in February, 1895, except three years during the Civil War we lived in Jefferson county, Kansas. We returned to the old home, the well and land still there, April 10, 1866; and by hard work and close application soon had several hundred acres fenced with eight-foot rails hauled with ox-teams two and three miles; and I had some of the honor of the rail-hauling and splitting, too. Deer and wild turkey were plenti- ful; also prairie chickens by the thousands. I have seen my father many times shoot wild turkeys off the oat stacks with a trusty old rifle, as they were among our tame ones on the stacks. On one occa- sion we had hauled shock corn out to our cattle. There was a big snow on the ground. I saw my father kill two big deer feeding among the cattle at one shot with a rifle-got them in range.
Among the first settlers that I can remember in and around Pleas- ant Gap in my childhood days were Uncle Joe Smith, the merchant at Pleasant Gap; James S. Ridge; Horace Melton; Jesse, Ivan and Elijah Deweese ; Levi Bechtal; Peter Trimble ; George and Boly Rains; Richard Andrew; Jonathan and Riley and Daniel Blevens; Jacob Freeman and three sons, Jonathan, Jake and William ; Judge John D. Myers, his son, John, and four step-sons, James H., Elihu, W. B., and George Ray-
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bourn; John M., W. G., Ben and Alvis Cumpton; Hillery Pitts; the Doyles; John Dillon; Doctor McNeal; John Wix, R. B. Wix's father and a brother to my father. He settled on the farm that his son, Robert, now owns in the year 1840, and died in 1862. Corneal Nafus and Daniel Smith and my uncle, Joseph Beatty; Uncle Martin White and his three sons, James M., Wesley and Griffis; Uncle Billy Campbell, Judge Camp- bell's father; and a Mr. Beckelhammer-all were among the very early settlers that I can remember. Uncle Martin White was an "old school" Baptist preacher, and a good man. I can remember on one occasion he came to preach at the Wix school house. He preached for about two hours, while I sat in the line on a puncheon seat. Uncle Martin went home with us for dinner; and before dinner was announced my father, knowing the hard work of a two hours' effort, got the old five-gallon demijohn from under the bed, and Uncle Martin took a glass tumbler full and remarked that it was a good article. Most every man kept it in those days to ward off chills and fever and to cure snake bites, and very poisonous snakes were plentiful. So were the chills, also, in those days.
We would butcher eighteen to twenty-five big hogs for our meat and what we could not use would trade the bacon to some fellow for his work making rails or hoeing corn. There was no market for hogs on foot as there is now. All the neighbors were good, honest people and would go for miles to help each other butcher or build a log cabin. I remember going to mill, with a sack of corn, eight miles north. Went to a little tread mill owned and operated by Thomas and Jesse Fowler-Thomas being Isaac Fowler's father ; on the farm where Willis Walbridge now lives. It was a very industrious little mill, as fast as it ground one grain it jumped on another one at once and ground it. I have waited all day for my grist. I told the miller one day I could eat it all as fast as it ground it out and he said, "How long would you live and eat all that?" I told him until I starved to death. In going to this mill on an old sorrel mare I went as the crow flies and only passed two houses in the eight miles, all open prairie and tall prairie grass. Saw lots of deer, wolves and prairie chickens on the way. Land was then worth three dollars to five dollars an acre; now all fenced and fine houses and barns on it and selling for sixty-five to one hundred dollars an acre and more ; and it is owned by a prosperous and up-to-date class of people. Many of them are the descendants of the very early settlers, who came mostly from Tennessee via Kentucky,
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North and South Carolina, and a few from Illinois and Indiana. As a boy I have been in old Pleasant Gap on Saturday afternoons, and have seen a dozen drunks and soon some fellow would announce that he was the best man in town and it was sure to be disputed; and from one to a half a dozen fights would follow as a result of a lot of bad booze; but all this has changed and Pleasant Gap is surrounded by a good, law-abiding, Christian people, who frown on such things; and all are prosperous, good citizens and all believe in good roads, good churches and school houses, and neat, well-improved farms.
I well remember when I was about seventeen years old I fell in love with a little golden-haired girl over in Lone Oak township and I learned, by note of course, that she would be at my aunt's, Bob Wix's mother, on a certain Saturday night. So I greased my shoes with sheep's tallow, put some bear's oil on my raven locks and walked over there to meet her, only a five-mile walk, and I made good time. She had to milk the cows; so I went along to mind the calves away while she pailed the cows. She said there was to be a "singing" at Major Hancock's just north over the creek, and said: "Hadn't we better go?" and I bit my finger and said, "I 'spect so." So after supper several young people came by my aunt's on their way to the singing-Bob Walters, Bob Wix, and others-so we all started. The girls ahead of us caught the boys in the elbow; then I was scared and walked apart from my girl but she did look sweet to me. There was a big foot-log to walk across the creek on, and water was high. I lived on high, dry land and had never walked a foot-log-nor had hold of a girl's hand ; but I saw the other boys take hold of their girls' hands and lead them over. So I tremblingly took a firm hold on my girl's hand and got as far as mid-stream. My head began to swim and I went off that foot-log and forgot to let loose of her hand. But while all the boys and girls laughed we waded ashore and got to the singing and dried our duds by the big fireplace by standing in front of it; but my raven locks never appeared to appeal to her after that.
The first mowing machine I ever saw in this country was an old John P. Mannie, one big wheel, bought by my father, and hauled from Boonville, Missouri, in 1857. It took four horses to pull it to cut prairie grass. People came for ten miles to see it cut grass, it beat a scythe so bad. We made a wooden rake.
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The first railroad engine I saw at Otterville, in 1862, after night. I was scared and looked closely to see if that train was coming end-ways or side-ways, for I knew if it did come up side-ways it would kill us all. I have threshed wheat and oats with a hickory flail and rode one horse and led another to tramp out wheat and oats when a boy. We had no saddle and some days I would make the horse's back very sore. Those were trying times for the early settler, but after all, we look back to those days with a degree of pleasure. If a neighbor needed $50 or $500 no chattel mortgage was needed or given, nor bankable note required. They all did what they agreed to do with each other; but this was in the days before the wooden nut-meg was put on the market. At this date almost all of the early settlers I have mentioned above have long since been called home. I will mention a few more early settlers that I have overlooked: William, Simeon, and Stephen Gilbreath; Ava E. Page; Uncle Jim Hook, father of Emmett and Ed; Henry Myer; John Klostermier; Capt. John B. Newberry; Davis and Charles Rad- ford; James M. Simpson; T. H. Dickison. Most of these men came to Bates in the early forties.
É Boulevar
Biographical History of Bates County
CHAPTER XXVI.
BIOGRAPHICAL.
Theodrick C. Boulware, physician, a native of Missouri and leader of the medical profession of Bates county, was born in Callaway county, son of Stephen G. and Mary ( Ratekin) Boulware, the former, a native of Kentucky and a son of Theodrick Boulware, Sr., who was born in Essex county, Virginia in 1780. Early in the life of Theodrick Boul- ware, Sr., and in the year 1784, his parents removed from Virginia to Kentucky. At that time, he was a mere child but, with the rest of the family, walked the entire distance, the packhorses being employed to carry the necessary household goods. The records of that state show that they were numbered among the founders of the commonwealth. They were constantly surrounded by dangers incident to life in the wilderness at that period, and it is related of them that when they went to church the head of the family always carried his musket on his shoulder in order to protect his family in event of an attack by Indians, who were then numerous and warlike in that region. The Boulware family is of Scotch descent, though the date of the original ancestor's coming to America is not known. Several representatives of the family have risen to prominence. An uncle of the subject of this sketch was for many years a resident of Albany, New York and was known as one of the most prominent physicians and surgeons of the Empire State.
Stephen G. Boulware, the father of Dr. Boulware, accompanied his parents from Kentucky to Missouri in 1826, in the pioneer days of this state. His father finally settled in Callaway county, near Fulton. where he developed a fine farm and also preached in Fulton and the vicinity for many years. He died in 1868 on his daughter's plantation near Georgetown, Kentucky. As indicating his character and the prin- ciples which governed him, we transcribe the following rules which he adopted soon after his marriage, when quite young, and to which he
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adhered throughout life: "First. Read the Scriptures and worship God in the family. Second. Use regular industry and prudent econ- omy. Third. Never deal on credit or go in debt, except through unavoidable necessity. Fourth. Make expenses less than your regular profits. Fifth. Keep a regular book both of profits and expenses." Reverend Boulware was not a voluminous writer, but he published an autobiography, two or three volumes on doctrinal subjects, and a considerable number of sermons. Stephen G. Boulware grew to man- hood on his father's farm, married, and reared a large family. His son, Dr. Theodrick C. Boulware, was reared at the old homestead and began his education in the common schools of the neighborhood.
After completing his preparatory course, Dr. Boulware entered Westminster College, a Presbyterian institution at Fulton, where he pursued the scientific course. Upon leaving this school, he became a student in the Missouri Medical College at St. Louis, from which he was graduated with the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1868. In the same year, he located for practice in Walnut township. Bates county, but one year later moved to Butler, becoming one of the pioneers of that city, where he has remained ever since. At the time he located at Butler, there were but eight or ten small houses in the town. Deer and other game were abundant in the neighborhood and he could ride a distance of ten miles on the prairie without seeing a single house, for, by Order Number 11. issued by General Ewing on August 21, 1863, all houses in the surrounding country had been burned for the purpose of depriving the Confederate forces places of refuge. The court house of Bates county was a small frame building and the town had no rail- road facilities. At that time, Butler was the principal station on the stage route between Pleasant Hill and Fort Scott, this route having been established in 1865. No roads had been laid out and no bridges spanned any of the streams in this vicinity. Horses were not thought to be capable of breaking sod on the raw prairie and oxen were employed in the work. The doctor relates that he has seen as many as one thousand prairie chickens at one time, while herds containing a dozen or fifteen deer were not uncommon. In the fall of 1874, he witnessed the memorable plagne of grasshoppers. In the middle of the day, the hoppers began to descend like snowflakes, literally covering the ground. Everything growing, in the line of vegetation, was completely destroyed in a few hours. Even the bark of trees was eaten. The insects deposited billions of eggs in the ground and, with the amount of warm weather
.
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in 1875, the new generation created even greater havoc than the origi- nal pests. So general and complete was the devastation resulting from their ravages, that the inhabitants of western Missouri were compelled to apply to the outside world for food to keep them from starvation. Even the common weeds were destroyed. But the marvelous part of the story is that the destructive visit of these pests was followed by the greatest yield of farm products that this section of the country has ever known.
Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, Doctor Boulware, then a lad of sixteen and a student in Westminster College, was seized with the martial fever, so common with boys at that time, and enlisted in the Confederate service. Though his expectations were that the demand for his services would cease at the end of two or three weeks, his ser- vices covered a period of four years, or until the close of the war. He at once became a member of the personal escort of Gen. Sterling Price, remaining with that noted commander until the close of the conflict and witnessing all the campaigns in which he participated. He was never seriously injured, though he had more than one narrow escape from injury or capture.
Dr. Boulware has always exhibited a deep interest in matters per- taining to the advancement of his profession. For many years, he has been a member of the American Medical Association, the Missouri State Medical Society, of which he has been vice-president, the Inter- national Association of Railway Surgeons, and the Hodgen Medical Society, of which he has served as president. During the second admin- istration of President Cleveland, he was chairman of the local board of pension examiners, and for thirty years Dr. Boulware was the local surgeon for the Missouri Pacific Railway Company.
Though a lifelong Democrat, Dr. Boulware has never sought or consented to fill public office. Fraternally, he is a member of the Inde- pendent Order of Odd Fellows. He is one of the incorporators and still a director of the Missouri State Bank and he is identified with other interests calculated to promote the welfare of the city, of which he has been a prominent and influential citizen for nearly fifty years.
Dr. Boulware's first marriage occurred June 21, 1877. He was married to Nettie Humphrey, a native of Iowa and a daughter of A. H. Humphrey, who was for many years a resident of Bates county, Missouri. Dr. and Mrs. Boulware had one child, who died in infancy, and Mrs. Boulware died in 1882. October 25, 1887, Doctor Boulware
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married Miss Dixie Ostrom, of St. Louis, Missouri. She was formerly a resident of Butler. She died April 26, 1896, leaving one son, John B., now a citizen of Butler.
Doctor Boulware is a man of the highest moral character, and his professional career has been without spot or blemish. Of great liber- ality of heart, deeply interested in all matters pertaining to the well being of the community in which he has resided so long, he has assisted in the promotion of numerous measures calculated to advance the material welfare of Butler. His record is that of a liberal, broad-minded, upright, and useful member of society. Doctor Boulware has been practicing medicine longer than any doctor in the county and he is still an active practitioner, thoroughly alive to the new things that come up in the medical profession. The long experience under the trying conditions of the early days has given him a fund of anecdotes, which, when related by him in his inimitable, humorous art, delight his hearers. At the meetings of the medical associations in the state, a talk from Doctor Boulware will receive the closest attention and the point he desires to make is so well placed, with his original humor interspersed, that the audience never fails to get the full benefit of the lesson he intends to convey.
Doctor Boulware states that a Mr. McFarland, a pioneer of the early seventies, was the first man to introduce barbed-wire fencing in this vicinity. He fenced his farm with wire and one night a party of men, residing in the neighborhood, destroyed the fence, claiming that it was dangerous to stock. In time, this prejudice was overcome and a few years later all the farms in the county had more or less wire fencing on them. Farm land in 1869 sold here for from two to four dollars an acre and when land rose in value to six dollars an acre there were many who thought it too high and the same land today is worth more than a hundred dollars an acre. Doctor Boulware says that if steamboats then had been selling for five dollars, he couldn't have bought a skiff.
In the early days in Bates county, in the days when the rivers and streams were unbridged and at times of high water were practically impassable, Dr. Boulware conceived the idea of building a vehicle which should be so high that any swollen creek or stream in the county might be forded in safety and comfort by the occupant. Accordingly, a buggy was specially made to order for the doctor, a buggy having unusually large, high wheels, high springs, and seat, the running gear costing
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one hundred ten dollars, and when complete two steps had to be added so that one could climb into it. Doctor Boulware then could travel on the worst roads and in the worst weather and no swollen stream might delay him on any journey for his horses would swim across and the doctor, "high and dry," would land in safety on the opposite bank. Doctor Boulware's buggy became as famous in its day as Doctor Holmes' "Wonderful One-Hoss Shay" and throughout the countryside was known as Doctor Boulware's "Two-Story Buggy."
J. B. Rice, farmer and dairyman, Mound township, was born in Nicholas county, Kentucky, near the town of Carlisle, September 20, 1856. He is a son of Morgan and Courtney (Dayton) Rice, both of whom were born and reared in Kentucky, where they spent their lives in the honorable pursuits of agriculture. They were parents of seven children, as follow: William, Indianapolis, Indiana; Lynn B., Lexing- ton, Kentucky; Mary, deceased; Alice, deceased; Courtney, wife of . Marion Buchanan, now deceased; Mrs. Sally Martin, Paris, Kentucky; and J. B., subject of this review, who was reared and educated in his native state where he resided until he attained the age of twenty-eight years.
Mr. Rice came to Bates county, Missouri, in 1884 and here purchased a tract of one hundred six acres of land, upon which he has been suc- cessfully following farming, stock raising, and dairying. He keeps a herd of ten milch cows and hauls the cream from his dairy to the nearest shipping point. He also raises and feeds a large number of hogs each year and has become fairly well-to-do and is prominently identified with Bates county interests.
J. B. Rice was first married in 1881 with Emma Barnett, of Ken- tucky, who died in 1907, leaving three children: Walter M. and Dayton E., who are conducting a general store at Passaic, Missouri, under the firm name of Rice Brothers; and Vesta L., wife of C. A. Falk, of Pas- saic, Wyoming. Mr. Rice was married, on May 10, 1911, to May Craw- ford, a native of Fleming county, Kentucky. Mrs. Rice accompanied her parents to Bates county in 1879. She is a daughter of William Crawford, who settled in West Point township, near Amsterdam, in 1879.
Mr. Rice is a leader of the Democratic party in this county and has served two terms as township assessor. His conduct of the duties of his office was such as to give satisfaction to all concerned. He has (22)
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been closely identified with party affairs and has served as a member of the county central committee for six years. He has several times served as delegate to county and state conventions and wields much influence in political affairs. He is affiliated with the Modern Woodmen of America and is a member of the Methodist Episcopal church, South. Mrs. Rice is a member of the Baptist church. Both Mr. and Mrs. Rice have many friends in Bates county and they take an active part in social affairs in their neighborhood.
. A. C. Rosier .- The individual who enlarges his sphere of usefulness and extends his activities beyond the immediate confines of his own personal needs is conferring a benefit upon his home community and doing some good in the world other than reaping the profits of his own enterprise. Endowed with ability of a high order, equipped with a broad education, which fitted him for the role which he has played in the social life of Bates county, A. C. Rosier, successful farmer and stock- man of Mound township, has devoted his life to the cause of Christian- ity and has spent his spare time in religious and Sunday school work, thereby preparing the youth of his neighborhood to lead more upright lives. Mr. Rosier was born in Fayette county, Iowa, in 1864, a son of J. K. and Susan Ann (Chambers). Rosier, both of whom were born and reared in Logan county, Ohio.
J. K. Rosier was married in his native state, and, doubtless, being of pioneer stock, he and his devoted wife, located in the territory of Iowa, in Fayette county, at a period when settlers were few and far between. Their home was situated forty miles from the nearest rail- road. Here they built a rude house and began the work of founding a homestead on the rich soil of Iowa. They endured the hardships of frontier life and withstood the rigors of the severe winters of their adopted state, until prosperity was their inevitable reward. Both Mr. and Mrs. Rosier were cultured, refined people of excellent education. Both were great readers and it was the custom of the mother to gather her children about her in front of the wide, open fireplace of the living room of the Rosier home and read to them nightly, tales of other lands and entertaining books which broadened their minds and made them ambitious to be able to thus read as they grew older. In those days, in the Iowa wilderness, schools were few and were held but a few months of the year. The early education of the Rosier children thus devolved upon their devoted parents. J. K. Rosier was a close student and an authority upon the Holy Bible which he read completely no less than
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