USA > Missouri > Ray County > History of Ray county, Mo. > Part 12
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
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 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91
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
101
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.
102
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
103
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. 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, 1881, stated:
104
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
ยท
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.
RAILROADS IN MISSOURI.
The earliest account of any movement in this state with regard to rail- roads is to the effect that on the 20th of April, 1835, a railroad convention was held in St. Louis, and resolutions were adopted in favor of building two railroads-one from St. Louis to Fayette, in Howard county ; and the other one southward to Iron Mountain, Pilot Knob, etc .* The reason for projecting a railroad from St. Louis into the great iron region is obvious enough; but why they should at that early day have thought of building more than one hundred and fifty miles of railroad to reach a town that was only twelve miles from Old Franklin, on the banks of the Missouri river, is an unsolved mystery. It indicates, at least, that those "early
*The first steam railroad in this country was the Baltimore and Susquehanna line, in 1830; though horse railroads had been used before, especially at coal mines and marble quarries, and in two cases engines had been used on such roads.
-
105
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.
fathers" were not under the control of any narrow or shallow views con- cerning the practical value of railroads, or the future grandeur of St. Louis as the central point for all trans-Mississippi traffic. In this first railroad convention ever held west of the Allegheny Mountains there were sixty-four delegates in attendance, representing eleven counties; but practically nothing ever came of their deliberations.
In 1840 a State Board of Internal Improvement was created, and it made a survey for a railroad from St. Louis to the Iron Mountain, by the way of Big River. February 7th, 1849, Col. Thomas H. Benton, sena- tor from Missouri, introduced into the U. S. senate a bill to provide for the location and construction of a central national road from the Pacific ocean to the Mississippi river, to be an iron railway where practicable, and the rest a wagon way. February 20th, same year, a public meeting was held in St. Louis, which petitioned the legislature for a charter and right-of-way for a railway across the state from St. Louis to the western boundary; and on the 12th of March this charter was granted.
Next a meeting was held which called a national convention at St. Louis to consider the project of a national Pacific railway across the continent. This convention was held October 15, 16, 17, 18, 1849. Fif- teen states were represented; the grand project was warmly commended, and a strong memorial sent to Congress asking the public authorities to take some action in the matter.
Such was the beginning of definite moves toward a trans-continental railroad.
The Missouri Pacific was the first railroad commenced and first finished in the State. Incorporated March 12, 1849; authorized capital $10,000,- 000; opened to Cheltenham, March 23, 1852; amount of state aid, $7,000,000; St. Louis county aid $700,000; land sold, 127,209 acres; entire length from St. Louis to Kansas City, 382 miles; total cost, $14,- 382,20S.
The successive stages of its construction were: Chartered, March 12, 1859; first ground broken, by Mayor Kennett of St. Louis, July 4, 1851; road opened to Cheltenham, Dec. 23, 1852; to Kirkwood in May, and to Franklin July 23, 1853; completed to Washington, February 11, 1855; to Hermann, August 7, the same year ;* and to Jefferson City, March 12, 1856; completed to California in Moniteau county, May, 14, 1858; to Tipton, July 26, same year; and to Syracuse, August, 1, 1859; opened to Otter-
*November 1, 1855, a large excursion train left St. Louis to celebrate the opening of the railroad through to Medora station, about twenty miles beyond Hermann. It was a long train filled with business men of ths city and their families, and the occasion was one of great festivity and rejoieing. But while the train was crossing the Gaseonade river the bridge gave way, and plunged cars, bridge and people in one mixed and horrible wreck into the gulf of waters fifty feet down. The president and chief engineer of the road, and 30 prominent citizens of St. Louis were killed, while scores of others were more or less injured. It was the first and the most terrible railroad accident that has ever occurred in the state.
7
106
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.
ville, August 24, 1860; to Smithton, November 1, same year; and to Sedalia in February 1861. Here it stopped during the first two years of the war. But Pettis county voted $75,000 to aid it, and Jackson county $200,000. Commenced running trains to Dresden, May 10, 1863; to Warrensburg, July 3, 1864; in 1865 the road was opened to Holden, May 28; to Pleasant Hill, July 19; to Independence, September 19. Meanwhile work had been going on from Kansas City westward, the two gangs of workmen meeting at Independence; and on this 19th day of September, 1865, the last rail was laid and the last spike driven, which connected Missouri's two principal cities with iron bands unbroken from east to west line of the noble commonwealth. On the next day, the president of the road Mr. Daniel R. Garrison, left Kansas City at 3 A. M., and arrived in St. Louis at 5 P. M., thus making the first through trip over the completed line.
There is now not a county north of the Missouri river which has not one or more railroads within its limits; and of the seventy counties south of the Missouri, only 22 have no railroad reaching them. However, new roads and branches are being built each year, so that within a few years every county will be provided with good railroad facilities.
January 1, 1880, there were, in round numbers, 3,600 miles of railroad in operation in the state, embraced in about fifty different main lines and branches, allowned by thirty-five different corporations, and operated by twenty-five different companies, as shown in the following table:
Atchison, Topeka and Sante Fe.
Missouri Pacific. 375
Burlington and Southwestern .. 64
Quincy, Missouri and Pacific. 75
Cherry Valley. 6
St. Joseph and Des Moines .. 45
Chicago and Alton.
264
St. Louis, Hannibal and Keokuk. 48
Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific. 16916 St. Louis, Iron Mount'n and Southr'n 380
Crystal City. 4 St. Louis, Keokuk and Northwestern 13216
Hannibal and St. Joseph. 29115
St. Louis, Salem and Little Rock .... 45
Kansas City and Eastern . 43
St. Louis and San Francisco ... 36316
Kansas City, Ft. Scott and Gulf. 8 Springfield and Western Missouri .. 20
Kansas City, St.Joe and Council Blff's 198
Union Railway and Transit Company 1
Little River Valley and Arkansas 27
Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific. 655
Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska. 70
Missouri, Kansas and Texas. 284
West End Narrow Guage. 16 Total.
3,607
POSTAL AND TELEGRAPH FACILITIES.
There are within the state 15,208 miles of postal routes, of which 10,426 miles are by stage and horseback, 575 miles by steamboat, and 4,207 miles by railroad, the whole involving a cost for the year 1878-9 of $768,904. There are 1,700 post towns-but four states in the union have a greater number. These are all offices of registration, where letters and parcels can be registered for transmission through the males to all parts of this and foreign countries. In 200 of these post-offices, money- orders may be purchased, payable at all similar offices in the United States, and a portion of them issue orders drawn on Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, etc.
107
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.
There are in the state 562 telegraph stations, whence messages can be sent all over the telegraph world; 2,423 miles of line and 6,000 miles of wire.
MANUFACTURING.
The following statistics of the capital employed in manufacturing indus- tries, and the amount of production, is collated from careful estimates made in 1876, the latest at hand, although it is well known that great increase of these industries has been made since that date. These esti- mates showed that the state then contained 14,245 manufacturing estab- lishments, using 1,965 steam engines, representing 58,101 horse-power, 465 water wheels, equaling 7,972 horse-power, and employing 80,000 hands. The capital employed in manufacturing was about $100,000,- 000; the material used in 1876 amounted to about $140,000,000; the wages paid were $40,000,000, and the products put upon the market were over $250,000,000. Outside of St. Louis the leading manufacturing counties of the state are Jackson, about $2,000,000; Buchanan, $7,000,- 000; St. Charles, $4,500,000; Marion, $3,500,000; Franklin, $3,000,000; Greene, $1,500,000; Cape Girardeau, $1,500,000; Platte, Boone and Lafayette, upwards of $1,000,000 each, followed by several counties nearly reaching the last sum.
The products of the different lines of manufacturing interests are, approximately, as follows:
Flouring Mills.
$30,000,000
Furniture
$5,000,000
Carpentering.
20,000,000
Paints and painting.
4,500,000
Meat Packing.
20,000,000
Carriages and Wagons.
4,500,000
Iron and Castings
15,000,000
Bricks. .
4,500,000
Tobacco.
14,000.000
Marble, Stone-work and Masonry. 4,000,000
Clothing
11,000,000
Bakery Products.
4,000,000
Liquors.
10,000,000
Tin, Copper and Sheet Iron
4,000,000
Lumber.
10,000,000
Sash, Doors and Blinds.
3,250,000
Bags and Bagging.
7,000,060
Cooperage.
3,000,000
Saddlery.
7.000,000
Blacksmithing.
3,000,000
Oil.
6,000,000
Bridge Building.
2,500,000
Machinery.
6,000,000
Patent Medicines
2,500,000
Printing and Publishing.
5,500,000
Soap and Candles.
2,500,000
Molasses
5,000,000
Agricultural Implements.
2,000,000
Boots and Shoes.
5,000,000
Plumbing and Gas-fitting.
2,000,000
Of the manufacturing in Missouri, more than three-fourths is done in St. Louis, which produced, in 1879, about $275,000,000 of manufactured articles. The city has, for some years past, ranked as the third in the United States in the amount of her manufactures, leaving a wide gap between her and Chicago and Boston, each of which cities manufactures a little more than one-half as much in amount as St. Louis, and leaves a doubt as to which of them is entitled to rank as the fourth manufactur- ing city.
FLOUR .- In St. Louis there are twenty-four flouring mills, having a daily productive capacity of 11,000 barrels. The total amount of flour received and manufactured by the dealers and millers of St. Louis, in
108
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.
1879, was 4,154,757 barrels, of which over 3,000,000 were exported. They also made 425,963 barrels of corn meal and 28,595 barrels of hominy and grits. Of their exports, 619,103 barrels were sent to European nations and to South America.
COTTON .- There are in the city two mills, which consume from 15,000 to 20,000 bales annually. To supply the manufactured cotton goods annually sold in St. Louis will require mills of ten times the capacity of those now in operation.
PRINCIPAL CITIES.
St. Louis is the commercial metropolis not only of the state of Missouri but also of the Mississippi and Missouri valley regions of country; and the history of Missouri is to a very large extent the history of St. Louis. There is so much concerning this imperial city embodied in other parts of this work that little need be added here.
St. Louis is situated upon the west bank of the Mississippi, at an altitude of four hundred feet above the level of the sea. It is far above the highest floods that ever swell the Father of Waters. Its latitude is 38 deg., 37 min., 28 sec., north, and its longitude 90 deg., 15 min., 16 sec., west. It is twenty miles below the mouth of the Missouri, and 200 above the conflu- ence of the Ohio. It is 744 miles below the falls of St. Anthony, and 1194 miles above New Orleans. Its location very nearly bisects the direct distance of 1,400 miles between Superior City and the Balize. It is the geographical center of a valley which embraces 1,200,000 square miles. In its course of 3,200 miles the Mississippi borders upon Missouri 470 miles. Of the 3,000 miles of the Missouri, 500 lie within the limits of our own state, and St. Louis is mistress of more than 16,500 miles of river navigation.
The Missouri Gazette, the first newspaper, was establised in 1808, by Joseph Charless, and subsequently merged in the present Missouri Republican. The town was incorporated in 1809, and a board of trustees elected to conduct the municipal government. In 1812 the territory of Missouri was designated, and a legislative assembly authorized. The Missouri Bank was incorporated in 1814. The first steamboat arrived at the foot of Market street in the year 1815, followed soon by others. In 1819 the first steamer ascended the Missouri, and the first through boat from New Orleans arrived, having occupied twenty-seven days in the trip. In 1821 a city directory was issued. The facts stated in this volume show that the town was then an important and thriving one. In 1825 Lafayette visited the city and received a grand public ovation. This year the United States arsenal and Jefferson barracks were established.
109
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.
In 1827 there were hardly a dozen German families in St. Louis, where now there are as many thousands of them. In 1830 the population was 6,654. In 1835 the first railroad convention was held. [See page 106.] In 1837 the population was 16,187, and 184 steamboats were engaged in the commerce of the city. The decade between 1840 and 1850 saw increased advancement in all kinds of industry, and in architectural growth. We find that in 1840 there were manufactured 19,075 barrels of flour, 18,656 barrels of whisky, and 1,075 barrels of beef inspected, and other branches of business had correspondingly increased. In 1846, the now extensive Mercantile Library was founded. The close of the decade, 1849, brought upon the city the double misfortune of fire and pestilence. On May 19th, the principal business section was swept away by a conflagration originating in a steamboat at the levee; and, during the summer of the same year, the population was scourged by cholera. In 1851, the first railroad enterprise-the building of the Missouri Pacific -was inaugurated, and quickly followed by others. [See page 105.]
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.