USA > Missouri > Carroll County > History of Carroll County, Missouri : carefully written and compiled from the most authentic official and private sources, including a history of its townships, cities, towns and villages, together with a condensed history of Missouri ; the Constitution of the United States, and State of Missouri ; a military record of its volunteers in either army of the Great Civil War ; general and local statistics ; miscellany ; reminiscences, grave, tragic and humorous ; biographical sketches of prominent men and citizens identified with the interests of the country > Part 11
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75
THE "GRASSHOPPER" IN MISSOURI.
As early as 1867, our state board of agriculture reported destruction by grasshoppers (the Rocky Mountain locust,) in the western part of the state the previous fall; and also, that there had been visitations more or less injurious in former years. But their greatest and most grievous invasion occurred in the fall of 1874, when 33 counties of western Mis- souri suffered from their ruthless ravages. Our state entomologist, Prof. C. V. Riley, made such a thorough, diligent and masterful study of their origin and habits, and the causes, methods and consequences of their migra- tions, that he became the standard authority on grasshoppers all over the civilized world. In 1876 the government appointed a special commission of entomologists to investigate the character and movements of these pests, and report for the benefit of the whole infested region, which com- prised the country west of St. Paul, Minnesota, Jefferson City, Missouri, and Galveston, Texas, ranging from the Gulf of Mexico on the south, to
*"Kentucky blue grass," (so-called), is not native to that state: it is the same as the En- glish spear grass, the New England June grass, or meadow grass-or, in botanical lan- guage, poa pratensis.
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.
Lake Winnipeg and Manitoba in the British possessions northward, and as far west as the headquarters of the Columbia river. The most prom- inent scientists on this commission were our own Prof. Riley, and Prof. Samuel Aughey, of the state university of Nebraska.
The results of this United States commission were little if anything more than a tedious elaboration of what Prof. Riley had presented in three annual reports as state entomologist of Missouri. No new points of any special importance were discovered concerning them. The devel- opment of this subject, therefore, belongs to the history of what Missouri has done for science, for agriculture and for the public weal. In his seventh annual report to our state board of agriculture, 1875, Prof. Riley says:
"There is some difference of opinion as to the precise natural habitat and breeding places of these insects, but the facts all indicate that it is by nature a denizen of high altitudes, breeding in the valleys, parks and plateaus of the Rocky Mountain region of Colorado, and especially of Montana, Wyoming and British America. Prof. Cyrus Thomas, who has had an excellent opportunity of studying it, through his connection with Hayden's geological survey of the territories, reports it as occurring from Texas to British America, and.from the Mississippi westward to the Sierra Nevada range. But in all this vast extent of country, and espe- cially in the more southern latitudes, there is every reason to believe that it breeds.only on the higher mountain elevations, and where the atmos- phere is very dry and attenuated, and the soil, seldom, if ever, gets soaked with moisture. Prof. Thomas found it most numerous in all stages of growth, along the higher valleys and canyons of Colorado, tracing it up above the perennial snows, where the insects must have hatched, as it was found in the adolescent stage. In crossing the mountains in Col- orado, it often gets chilled in passing snows, and thus perishes in immense numbers, where bears delight to feast upon it. My own belief is that the insect is at home in the higher altitudes of Utah, Idaho, Col- orado, Wyoming, Montana, northwest Dakota, and British America. It breeds in all this region, but particularly on the vast hot and dry plains and plateaus of the last named territories, and on the plains west of the mountains; its range being bounded, perhaps, on the east by that of the buffalo grass.
"Mr. Wm. N. Byers, of Denver, Colorado, shows that they hatch in immense quantities in the valleys of the three forks of the Missouri river and along the Yellowstone, and how they move on from there, when fledged, in a southeast direction, at about ten miles a day. The swarms of 1867 were traced, as he states, from their hatching grounds in west Dakota, and Montana, along the east flank of the Rocky Mountains, in the valleys and plains of the Black Hills, and between them and the main Rocky Mountain range. It all this immense stretch of country, as is well known, there are immense tracts of barren, almost desert land, while other tracts for hundreds of miles bear only a scanty vegetation, the short buffalo grass of the more fertile prairies giving way now to a more luxu- riant vegetation along the water courses, now to the sage bush and a few cacti. Another physical peculiarity is found in the fact that while the
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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURL
spring on these immense plains often opens as early, even away up into British America, as it does with us in the latitude of St. Louis, yet the veg- etation is often dried and actually burned out before the first of July, so that not a green thing is to be found. Our Rocky Mountain locust, therefore, hatching out in untold myriads in the hot sandy plains, five or six thousand feet above the level of the sea, will often perish in immense numbers if the scant vegetation of its native home dries up before it acquires wings; but if the season is propitious, and the insect becomes fledged before its food supplies is exhausted, the newly acquired wings prove its salvation. It may also become periodically so prodigiously mul- tiplied in its native breeding place, that, even in favorable seasons, every- thing green is devoured by the time it becomes winged.
" In either case, prompted by that most exigent law of hunger-spurred on for very life-it rises in immense clouds in the air to seek for fresh pastures where it may stay its ravenous appetite. Borne along by pre- vailing winds that sweep over these immense treeless plains from the north- west, often at the rate of fifty or sixty miles an hour, the darkening locust clouds are soon carried into the more moist and fertile country to the southeast, where, with sharpened appetites, they fall upon the crops like a plague and a blight.
" Many of the more feeble or of the more recently fledged perish, no doubt, on he way, but the main army succeeds, with favorable wind, in bridging over the parched country which offers no nourishment. The hotter and dryer the season, and the greater the extent of the drouth, the earlier will they be prompted to migrate, and the farther will they push on to the east and south.
"The comparatively sudden change from the attenuated and dry atmos- phere of five to eight thousand feet or more above the sea level, to the more humid and dense atmosphere of one thousand feet below that level, does not agree with them. The first generation hatched in this low coun- try is unhealthy, and the few that attain maturity do not breed, but become intestate and go to the dogs. At least such is the case in our own state and the whole of the Mississippi valley proper. As we go west or northwest and approach nearer and nearer the insect's native home, the power to propagateitself and become localized, becomes, of course, greater and greater, until at last we reach the country where it is found per- petually. Thus in the western parts of Kansas and Nebraska the pro- geny from the mountain swarms may multiply to the second or even third generation, and wing their way in more local and feeble bevies to the country east and south. Yet eventually they vanish from off the face of the earth, unless fortunate enough to be carried back by favorable winds to the high and dry country where they flourish.
"That they often instinctively seek to return to their native haunts is proven by the fact that they are often seen flying early in the season in a northwesterly direction. As a rule, however, the wind which saved the first comers from starvation by bearing them away from their native home, keeps them and their issue to the east and south, and thus, in the end proves their destruction. For in the Mississippi valley they are doomed, sooner or later. There is nothing more certain than that the insect is not antochthonous in west Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, or even Minnesota, and that when forced to migrate from its native home, from the causes already mentioned, it no longer thrives in this country."
99
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.
February 23, 1877, our state legislature passed a law providing for the payment of a bounty of one dollar per bushel in March, fifty cents per bushel in April, and twenty-five cents per bushel in May, for grass- hoppers; and five dollars per bushel for their eggs at any time. Nebraska did still better, by making every road supervisor in the state a grasshop- per policeman, and giving him authority to call out every man from six- teen to sixty years old, to spend two days killing young grasshoppers from the time they begin to hatch in the spring.
All the grasshopper states now have some sort of protective laws; and if another invasion occurs, by concerted and organized effort the amount of damage suffered can be reduced to a small per cent as compared with our last " plague of the locusts."
PART III .- NAVIGATION AND COMMERCE.
NAVIGATION-ANCIENT AND MODERN.
It is not certainly known just what modes of navigation were used by the prehistoric mound-builders, although we have some relics of their time, or possibly of a still earlier race, which are deemed to show that they made wooden dug-outs or troughs, by burning them into a sort of boat-like shape and condition. And it is supposed that, prior to this they lashed together logs or fragments of drift-wood, and made rude rafts upon which they could cross rivers or float down, but of course could not return with them. Some remains have been found in northwestern Iowa* which are supposed to prove that men used wooden dug-out boats during the age when Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska were the bottom of a vast inland sea or lake, into which the Missouri and Platte rivers emptied their muddy waters and deposited what Prof. Swallow calls the "bluff formation " over these states; and Prof. Whitney found in California undisputable proof of man's existence there a whole geolog- ical age prior to the period when the great fresh water Missouri sea existed, (see note to chart, on page 67); hence the fact that raft and dug- out navigation was in use among the islands and shallows of this immense mud-lake or inland sea, seems not improbable.
However, the modern Indians, before the white man appeared in these western wilds, had the art of making light and elegant canoes of birch bark, and could manage them in the water with wonderful skill. They made long journeys in them, both up and down stream; and when they wanted to go from one stream to another these canoes were so light that two men could carry one on their shoulders and march twenty or twenty- five miles a day with it if necessary. But they were too light and frail for the freighting service of the white man's commerce.
* Reported to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at its St. Louis meeting, in August, 1878, by W. J. McGee, geologist, of Farley, Iowa.
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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.
The European explorers of this new world utilized the Indian canoes as far as practicable, often making considerable voyages in them; some- times two were lashed together by means of coupling poles laid across on top of them, thus making a boat with two hulls. This rig could not be upset, and was easy to tow or paddle, besides making a sort of over- deck on which to carry baggage. But the thin, frail material was too easily punctured to be safe, and boats made of plank were always in demand. At first the boats were built in the "scow" fashion, with full width flat bottom and full width sled-runner bow. But they soon learned that in order to make any headway going up stream they must adopt the keel bottom and water-cutter prow style; and for more than a hundred years the traffic of all our navigable western rivers was carried on mainly by means of what were called keel-boats. The manner of propelling them up stream we have described elsewhere.
THE LEWIS AND CLARKE EXPEDITION.
The Missouri river was first opened to commerce and geography by Lewis and Clarke, who were commissioned by President Jefferson, in 1803, to explore it. They left St. Louis May 14, 1804. The outfit con- sisted of twenty-six men; one keel-boat fifty-five feet long, drawing three feet of water, and provided with one large square sail and twenty-two oars. Also. two open boats, one of six, and one of seven oars. May 16th they were at St. Charles; on the 25th they reached LaCharrette, a small village sixty-five miles above the mouth of the river, not far from where Marthasville, in Warren county, is now located, and which was the last white settlement up the river. June 1st they reached the mouth of the Osage river, which was so called because the Osage tribe of Indians dwelt along its course. June 26th, they reached the mouth of the Kansas river, where Kansas City now flourishes in all her glory, and remained here two days for rest and repairs. The Kansas tribe of Indians had two villages in this vicinity. July Sth they were at the mouth of the Nodawa, where now is the village of Amazonia, in Andrew county; and on the 11th they landed at the mouth of the Nemaha river. On the 14th they passed the mouth of the Nishnabotna river, and noted that it was only 300 yards distant from the Missouri at a point twelve miles above its mouth.
This was their last point within the boundaries of the present state of Missouri. St. Louis was then the territorial capital of the whole region they were to explore through to the mouth of the Columbia river on the Pacific coast. This was one of the great exploring adventures of the world's history, and its narrative is full of romantic and thrilling interest, but space forbids its presentation here. The party followed up the entire length of the Missouri river, . then down the Columbia to the Pacific ocean, reaching that point November 14th, 1805. Here they wintered; and on March 23d, 1806, they started on their return trip by the same
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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.
route, arriving at St. Louis September 23d, at 12 o'clock-not a man missing from the party that first started out; and the people of St. Louis gave them an enthusiastic ovation.
FIRST STEAMBOATS IN MISSOURI.
Steam came at last, and revolutionized the business of navigation and commerce throughout the world. The first steamboat that ever lashed the Missouri shore with its waves, or made our river hills and forests echo back her pulsating puffs, was the "General Pike," from Louisville, which landed at St. Louis, August 2, 1817. Such boats had passed a few times up and down the whole length of the Ohio river, and between Louisville and New Orleans, before this, so that the people of St. Louis had heard about them from the keel-boat navigators. They were therefore over- joyed when the first one landed at the foot of their main business street, and thus placed them for the first time in steam communication with the rest of the civilized world. The event was celebrated with the most enthusiastic manifestations of delight by the ringing of bells, firing of guns, floating of flags and streamers, building of bonfires, etc. The second one, the "Constitution," arrived October 2; and from that onward the arrival of steamboats became a very commonplace affair.
The first boat that ever entered the Missouri river was the "Independ- ence," commanded by Captain Nelson. She left St. Louis May 15, 1819, and on the 28th arrived at Franklin, a flourishing young city that stood on the north bank. of the Missouri river, opposite where Boonville is now located. There was a U. S. land office at Franklin, and it was the metropolis of the up-Missouri region, or as it was then called, the "Boone's Lick Country."* When this first steamboat arrived the citi- zens got up a grand reception and public dinner in honor of the captain and crew. The boat proceeded up as far as the mouth of the' Chariton river, where there was then a small village called Chariton, but from that point turned back, picking up freight for St. Louis and Louisville at the settlements as she passed down. The town site of Old Franklin was long ago all washed away, and the Missouri river now flows over the very spot where then were going on all the industries of a busy, thriving, populous young city.
The second steamboat to enter the Missouri river (and what is given in most histories as the first) was in connection with Major S. H. Long's U. S. exploring expedition, and occurred June 21, 1819, not quite a month after the trip of the "Independence." Major Long's fleet consisted of four steamboats, the " Western Engineer," "Expedition," "Thomas Jef- ferson" and "R. M. Johnson," together with nine keel-boats. The "Jefferson," however, was wrecked and lost a few days after. The
*Daniel Boone had first explored this region and discovered some rich salt springs, and two of his sons manufactured salt and shipped it from Franklin for several years.
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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.
"Western Engineer " was a double stern wheel boat, and had projecting from her bow a figure-head representing a huge open-jawed, red-mouthed, forked-tongued serpent, and out of this hideous orifice the puffs of steam escaped from the engines. The men on board had many a hearty laugh from watching the Indians on shore. When the strange monster came in sight, rolling out smoke and sparks from its chimney like a fiery mane, and puffing great mouthfuls of steam from its wide open jaws, they would look an instant, then yell, and run like deer to hide away from their terrible visitor. They thought it was the Spirit of Evil, the very devil himself, coming to devour them. But their ideas and their actions were not a whit more foolish than those of the sailors on the Hudson river, who leaped from their vessels and swam ashore to hide, when Ful- ton's first steamboat came puffing and glaring and smoking and splashing toward them, like a wheezy demon broke loose from the bottomless pit. Major Long was engaged five years in exploring all the region between the Mississippi river and the Rocky Mountains which is drained by the Missouri and its tributaries; and his steamboats were certainly the first that ever passed up the Missouri to any great distance. Long's Peak, in Colorado, 14,272 feet high, was named after him.
From this time forward the commerce and travel by steamboats to and from St. Louis grew rapidly into enormous proportions, and small towns sprung up in quick succession on every stream where a boat with paddle wheels could make its way. For half a century steamboating was the most economical and expeditious mode of commerce in vogue for inland traffic; and Missouri, with her whole eastern boundary washed by the "'Father of Waters," and the equally large and navigable "Big Muddy" meandering entirely across her territory from east to west, and for nearly two hundred miles along her northwestern border, became an imperial center of the steamboating interest and industry.
About 1830 the art of constructing iron-railed traffic-ways, with steam- propelled carriages upon them, began to be developed in our eastern states. But it was not until 1855 that these new devices for quick transit began to affect the steamboating interests of Missouri. (The first rail- roads to St. Louis were opened in that year; the railroad history of the state will be found in another place.) Then commenced the memorable struggle of the western steamboat interests, with headquarters at St. Louis, to prevent any railroad bridge from being built across the Missis- sippi, Missouri or Ohio rivers. They held that such structures would inevitably be an artificial obstruction to the free and safe navigation of these great natural highways. But it was evident enough to clear- thinking people that the steamboat business must decline if railroads were permitted to cross the great rivers without the expense of breaking bulk, and this was the "true inwardness" of the anti-railroad bridge
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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.
combination. The issue was made against the first railroad bridge that ever spanned the Mississippi, the one at Rock Island, Illinois. In a long course of controversy and litigation the railroads came out ahead, and steamboating gradually declined, both in the freight and passenger traffic, to less than half its former proportions.
However, the tables have been turned again; and now, in 1881,
THE BARGE SYSTEM
has suddenly leaped forth to break the threatening power of monopoly which the great east and west railroad lines for a while enjoyed.
The first step in the historic progress of this grand revolution in the commercial relations and connections of the entire Mississippi and Mis- souri valley regions, was the successful construction of the jetties at the mouth of the Mississippi river by Capt. James B. Eads, a worthy and distinguished citizen of St. Louis. This great enterprise was undertaken by Capt. Eads under an act of congress approved March 3d, 1875. It required him to obtain a channel 20 feet deep and 200 feet wide at the bottom, within thirty months from the passage of the act, upon which a payment of $500,000 would be made; and upon obtaining channels of two feet additional depth, with correspondingly increased widths at bottom, until a depth of 30 feet and a width at bottom of 350 feet was secured, payments of $500,000 were to be made, with additional payments for maintenance of channel. The total cost to the government of a channel 30 feet deep by 350 feet wide would be $5,250,000. ยท Capt. Eads was also to receive $100,000 per year for twenty years, to keep the works in repair and maintain the channel.
Before the jetty works were commenced, there existed an immense bar of sand or silt, with a depth of only eight feet of water over it, between the deep water of the Mississippi and the navigable water of the Gulf. But at the close of the year there was a wide and ample channel of 23} feet; and for the greater portion of the distance between the jetties, over this same bar, there was a channel from 28 to 35 feet deep. The scheme has been so entirely successful that it has attained a world-wide celebrity and commercial importance, owing to the fact that the largest class of sea-going vessels can now be towed in and out of the Mississippi river without risk or difficulty; and it is this achievement by our honored fellow- citizen which has made possible the success of the grain-barge system of shipments from St. Louis direct to Europe, that is now revolutionizing the entire trade and commerce of the major half of the United States. The following facts will serve to show what has already been accomplished in this direction.
The total shipments of grain by the barge lines from St. Louis to New Orleans in the month of March 1881, was 2,348,093 bushels.
The St. Louis Republican of April 2d, 1S81, stated:
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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.
" There were started from St. Louis yesterday about eighty trains of grain to New Orleans, or what amounts to the same thing, three different barge companies started tows down the river with 567,000 bushels of grain. This amount would have filled about 1,200 railway cars, and would have taken eighty trains of fifteen cars or sixty trains of twenty cars each to transport. All this grain was put into fifteen barges, and a matter of 2,600 tons of miscellaneous freight besides. All these three tow-boats started down the river with a freight list that would have filled between thirteen and fourteen hundred railway cars, and will be delivered to New Orleans in from five to nine days.
"The exact statement of the cost of transportation of flour from St. Louis via New Orleans to Liverpool and to Boston, per barrel, is ninety cents freight and four cents drayage to boat at levee at St. Louis, or ninety- four cents to Liverpool, while the freight per barrel to Boston by rail, in car-loads of one hundred and twenty-five barrels, from East St. Louis, is ninety-one cents, or from St. Louis (eight cents transfer across the bridge added,) ninety-nine cents, or five cents less to Liverpool by river and ocean, than by rail to Boston. This rate to Liverpool via New Orleans was negotiated March 30 by the St. Louis, New Orleans and Foreign Dispatch Company."
George H. Morgan, Esq., secretary of the St. Louis "Merchant's Exchange," furnished the writer of this history with the following state- ment of grain shipments by barge line from St. Louis to New Orleans:
1881.
Wheat.
Corn.
Oats.
Rye. 22,423
February .
232,248
126,770
March.
796,710
1,541,505
25,162
April.
819,038
1,312,432
24,916
. ... .
Total
1,847,996
2,980,707
50,078
22,423
Thus it will be seen that the tide has fairly turned; that St, Louis is now practically a commercial seaport, and will, within the next twelve months, become the greatest grain-shipping city on the American continent.
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