USA > Missouri > Saline County > History of Saline County, Missouri > Part 17
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The first mill in the county was established in the Big bottom in 1817. It was situated about a mile below where Cambridge now stands, on a little branch called Shockley's branch. It was run by horse-power, and merely ground the corn and wheat of the settlers; it had no bolting apparatus. The pioneers came to this mill not unfrequently a distance of thirty or forty miles. Clark, its founder and proprietor, is said to have been a " reformed preacher."
Prior to the establishment of this alleged " mill" the settlers depended mainly on their mortars and pestles for meal, or upon a mill across in the Boone's Lick settlement. This latter establishment did a rushing busi- ness. Like Clark's, it was a " horse mill"-run by horse power. The settlement, becoming tired of pounding corn, sent Jacob Ish to this mill, once on a time, to get some meal ground. He crossed the Missouri at the Arrow Rock, and encamped in the bottom on the opposite bank, in company with a number of other settlers from different parts of the country en route for the Boone's Lick mili. The night was spent very agreeably around the camp-fires, telling stories of encounters with Indians and wild beasts, of adventures in the war of 1812, etc., and in listening to the spirited music of a violin. There were two or three good performers
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on the instrument, and some of the members of the camp were limber as to legs and frisky as to heels. A few " pigeon wings" and "double shuffles" were executed in admirable style, to the great admiration of the look- ers-on.
The next morning camp was broken up early and the settlers started for the mill. Many of them had brought corn and shelled it in the wagons as they traveled. Upon reaching the mill it was found to be thronged with customers, many of whom had been there a week, patiently waiting their " turn." The mill ran night and day. About four hundred yards away was a cabin in which a very inferior article of corn whisky was dis- pensed. Ish and party visited this establishment, and its occupants, on learning their business, said to them:
" Good Lord! You won't get your grinding for a month. Better fix to camp, or else go back home!"
Mr. Ish had came forty-five miles, and did not propose to have all his trouble for nothing. He kept away from the grog-shop, and very wisely made friends with the miller's wife! He found some men who had been waiting their turn for two weeks, but he trusted in the Lord and the spouse of the jolly miller. Behold the sequel. The same night a man whose "turn" had come had gone to the grog-shop, and was oblivious to the fact that he had come to mill at all, or that corn had any use save to be liquified by a certain process, and made to possess certain properties. The miller's wife persuaded her husband to give Ish the "turn" of the boozy settler, and the next morning by nine o'clock he was on his way to the Big bottom in triumph, with forty bushels of unbolted meal in his wagon for himself and neighbors.
The pioneers of the Big bottom, and of Saline county generally, were people mostly from the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, and Vir- ginia, and accustomed to frontier life from youth. For the most part they were hunting people, and did not care much about acquiring extensive tracts of land, or raising large crops, or becoming farmers with no other avocation. They raised just as much corn as they thought would serve for the use of their families in furnishing bread and mush, and enough vegetables to give variety to their dinners of game. They raised almost everything they ate; they manufactured almost everything they wore. Their smoke-houses were always well supplied with meats of various kinds, and honey of the finest flavor, and after the first year or two there was always plenty of meal in the chest, and butter and milk in the cellar. Very little coffee and sugar were used, and tea was almost unknown. The family that had coffee once a week-Sunday morning for breakfast-were considered "high livers."
The settlers would hunt and trap, and secure furs and peltries, which they would exchange for powder and shot, and hunting knives for them
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selves, and cutlery, scissors, needles, thread, and a few simple articles for the use of the women. These latter articles were very rare. At this day the widow of Gov. M. M. Marmaduke, now residing in Saline county. retains a vivid recollection of searching for two or three days for a brass thimble she lost when she was a young miss in this country. The intrinsic value of such an article now-a-days would be about two cents, yet then it represented goodness only knows how many muskrat skins.
Their dress comported well with their style of living and their circum- stances. The male portion were clad chiefly in buckskin. A hunting- shirt was generally worn, made of this material, as were the pantaloons or "leggings." An inner shirt was worn, sometimes of linsey, or flannel, or even cotton, but more commonly of nettle linen. A 'coonskin cap, with the tail hanging down the back, and a pair of moccasins, completed the apparel. Sometimes a dandy of the settlement made his appearance, arrayed in a suit of Kentucky jeans with a woolen hat, leather shoes, and prouder than Solomon in all his glory. As the settlement grew older, shoes, made by themselves, of home-tanned leather, were substituted for moccasins. The tanning was done in a trough dug from the trunk of a tree, and by a decoction or preparation of oak bark.
The women at first prepared a linen from the bark of nettles, which grew abundantly in the bottoms and on the islands in early days. The fibers were prepared similarly to the way in which flax is treated. The nettles were cut, spread out upon the ground, rotted by the fall and winter rains, and the next spring "broken," "scutched," hatcheled, spun and woven. It answered very well in the place of flax. This, mixed with cotton, furnished the material out of which their wearing apparel was chiefly made. After a time every family raised a small patch of cotton, which the women picked, ginned by hand, carded, and spun. They went barefoot in the summer, and in the fall and winter wore on their feet either moccasins or shoes made of home-tanned leather. . When they could procure enough calico to make, for themselves, caps to wear upon their heads they were happy, and the woman who could wear a dress made entirely of "store-goods " was the envy of dozens of her sisters.
Old pioneers say that buckskin makes a very fair article of clothing, but it has its drawbacks, or rather, its draw-ups, for when buckskin gets wet it shrinks or contracts. Oftimes a pioneer went out to hunt with his pantaloons of proper length, and having to wade through streams or wet grass, came home with the bottoms of his nether garments nearly up to his knees. In such a case, the next morning, before the rest of the family arose, he would take them out of doors, and, fastening one end of them to the logs of the cabin or to a sapling, would take hold of the other end and stretch them back again to their proper length.
The settlers did not seem to desire great riches, neither did "vaulting
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ambition" trouble them, or breed any discomfort or dissensions. The planting and hoeing of the corn-field, the chase, the hunt, bee-hunting, the shooting match-matters of this sort engrossed their time and their thoughts. They concerned themselves but little with either politics or religion. They were not irreligious to any distressing extent, but churches did not exist then, and preachers were few and scattering. Whenever religious services were held anywhere in the country within a reasonable distance they attended, taking their guns with them, and paid close atten- tion to what the preacher said. But occasions of this kind were rare. .
About the middle or latter part of September the men would go down to Old Franklin, St. Charles, Booneville or St. Louis, trade for ammuni- tion, etc., get their guns put in order, and upon returning home prepare for the annual fall hunt. By the fall of the first white frost they were ready to set out. On these occasions they would be absent some weeks, and always returned with their canoes and pack ponies laden with the finest and choicest trophies of the chase to be obtained. Buffalo, elk, bear, and deer meat were brought back in great abundance, and there was always honey enough to fill all the gums and spare household vessels. in the settlements. The smoke-house was uniformly well filled with veni- son and other choice wild meats, and though he might suffer other ills, the settler was able, after the first year or two, to snap his fingers at want and bid defiance to famine.
In 1819 there was a great deal of sickness in the settlement. Nearly every one was prostrated by some kind of ailment. The prevailing diseases were occasioned by the malaria of the bottoms. There was great distress, and the settlers long remembered that season. All left the settlement that could, and went to Howard county and elsewhere, and some never returned. Many sold 80 acres of partially improved land for an apology for a wagon and an insignificant pony or two in order to be able to cart away the wife and wee-weans to a place of safety. Many more would have gone, if they could have disposed of their little property, but they could find no one to purchase it, for in those days markets were not to be found for such things as the settlers had. Emigrants had previously bought something from them as they passed through on their way farther west, but now emigration had ceased. Corn rotted in the fields and pens,, bacon spoiled in the smoke houses, cattle and hogs strayed away into the woods and became wild-what the bears, wolves, and panthers left of them. In portions of the bottoms the rushes grew so rank and luxuri- antly that near the ground they could be found green, tender, and nourish- ing even in midwinter, and cattle could live from fall till spring without much feed from the hands of their owners. One spring a settler slaugh- tered a bullock, which had run wild the preceding winter, and lived on rushes and wild-pea vines, that weighed over 1,100 pounds net. Had it
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not been for this fortunate and bountiful provision of nature, almost all the stock of the settlement would have been lost.
There was no crime in the Big bottom until the year 1819. One of the settlers was regarded by his neighbors as no better than he should be, but nothing criminal was ever alleged against him until the year mentioned. Two young fellows, claiming to be from Arkansas, came into the settle- ment "hunting work." The settlers could afford to hire but little labor, and they were not given employment at once-although it is doubtful if they really desired it. They resorted to the house of the settler under suspicion and made it their abiding place during their stay in the bottom. One of the settlers had five fine horses. The suspicious character and the two "Arkansas travelers " were missing for a day or two-and so were three of the horses. The citizens were loth to believe that the ani- mals had been stolen, and that the three men referred to were the thieves, until the conviction forced itself upon their minds. It was ascertained that the rascals had departed with their plunder for Arkansas. Some of the best patrollers of the settlement were sent in pursuit, and followed the thieves for some days, but the track, in hunters' parlance, was very "cold," and the most of them soon returned. Three or four of the patrollers, however, went on to the White river, in Arkansas, where they captured two of the thieves and horses, and brought them back to the bottom. The thieves were tried by an improvised court, convicted and sentenced- not to the penitentiary, but to be soundly whipped. The sentence was thoroughly executed, and the rascals left the country.
THE SETTLEMENT OF EDMONDSON'S BOTTOM.
The first settler in this locality was he for whom it was afterward named-Richard Edmondson, a native of Madison county, Kentucky, who settled and built a cabin, and made a clearing on a New Madrid claim, located by General Thomas A. Smith, being section 34, township 53, range 20-Jefferson township. Just at what time Mr. Edmondson came to this bottom is not certainly known, but it must have been prior to November, 1816, for at that time he sold his cabin and " truck patch " to Abel Garrett and then removed farther west. Garrett was originally from Loudon county, Virginia. In 1817 Garrett was joined by Adam and William Hopper, Daniel Stout, John Young, George Yount, Thomas and Daniel Tillman, Richard Cummings, Mr. Rucker, Thomas Rogers and others, who improved and cultivated the " big field," an enclosure of one hundred acres, and cultivated as was the one of the same name in Big bottom-that is to say, in common by the settlers.
In the spring of 1818, Wm. J. Wolfskill left Howard county and came into this settlement. At first he joined in tilling the " big field," but after one crop he opened and settled on a farm out on the prairie, where he lived for the next fifty years. Mr. Wolfskill was originally from Madison
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county, Kentucky. He was a soldier in the war of 1812, being a mem- ber of Colonel-afterward Vice-President-R. M. Johnson's regiment of Kentuckians, and fighting, among other occasions, at the battle of the Thames, in Canada, where Tecumseh was killed, and where Gen. Harri- son gained such a decisive victory over the British and Indians. He was a thorough pioneer, and well conversant with all the details of frontier life.
About this time, that is to say, shortly after the settling of Wolfskill,- there joined him James Burlison, Wm. McDaniel, Rice Downey, the Browns-James, Henry and Coger-Jas. Wells, Uriah Davies, Jas. Wil- kinson, and Isaiah Huff. In 1819, came Jonathan Harris, with his sons, Timothy and William, and Mrs. Wheeler, with her sons, Samuel, Wil- liam, and Alfred. Mrs. Wheeler was the widow of Thomas Wheeler, a gallant Kentuckian, who had fallen under the cruel knife of the crueler savage, in "Dudley's defeat," on the river Raisin, in southeastern Michi- gan, during the war of 1812. Wm. Ish, Jas. Kuykendall, and Samuel Duckworth came about the year 1820. Of these settlers, Cummings, Rogers, and McDaniel were Tennesseeans; Davis, the Harrises, and Wheelers were from Kentucky; the Tillmans, the Hoppers, and Young were Virginians.
All of the settlers were hunters of greater or less degree; but William Hopper, Cummings, and Rogers were proficients. The accuracy of their shots was as remarkable as their frequency. It is said that Hopper sel- dom killed fewer than three deer a day, even when these animals had become scarce. Cummings and Rogers hunted bear together, but on one occasion Cummings' gun was accidentally discharged, the ball striking Rogers in the knee, inflicting a painful wound. "After this," said Rogers to his companion, " when we hunt 'bar,' by golly, I'll go it alone!"
Like the other bottoms, Edmondson's contained plenty of rush and pea- vine pasturage, and afforded fine range for stock, both summer and winter. Cattle and hogs " boarded themselves " during the winter, and came out looking fat and thrifty in the spring. The soil was exceptionally produc- tive, and furnished corn, beans, potatoes, etc., in abundance, and of good quality. At quite an early day, flat-boats and keel-boats took cargoes of produce, as well as other commodities, from the settlement-bacon, corn, potatoes, furs, peltries, etc.,-down the river to St. Charles, St. Louis, Herculaneum, and other points on the Mississippi below.
In this settlement Laban Garret claims he taught the first school ever taught in Saline county. In 1876, Mr. Garrett stated to Mr. Jerrold Letcher that this school was taught in the year 1817, in the cabin built by Edmondson, and previously described. There were many children in the settlement and Mr. Garrett had a flourishing school, which lasted more than four months. The terms of tuition were $1 per scholar per month, payable in any sort of currency or commodity recognized by the com-
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munity as " legal tender." This included gold, silver, corn, potatoes, beaver, 'coon, and other skins, days' labor, and, it may be, something else. At the close of Garrett's school the settlers gathered in, and there was a barbecue and a grand good time generally. The school closed in the latter part of the summer of 1817. Garrett at that time was a spry and spruce young man of 20 years, and regarded as a personage of some dis- tinction and consequence, because he could teach school. According to Mr. Garrett, the second school taught in the county was by Mr. Rogers, in the Big bottom.
Edmondson's bottom was not without ministers and religious services either. Revs. Smith and Hancock, Presbyterians, expounded Calvinism and predestination; Rev. Harris, Methodist, proclaimed free grace; Long- don, Chism, Scott, and Rogers, Baptists, lifted up their voices in the wilderness, cried aloud, and made straight the paths of those who were to come after them. Subsequently came Trap and Day, "Schismatics," who created quite an interest, not to say excitement, in the vicinity of High hill.
SETTLEMENT OF THE MIAMI BOTTOM.
In 1815 the Miami bottom was occupied by a band of Indians of the Miami tribe, some of whom, after their overwhelming defeat by "Mad" Anthony Wayne, in Ohio, in 1791, had come west to grow up with the country. Their fort and village stood immediately on the bank of the river at the foot of the bluffs, near where the Marshall and Brunswick road crosses the discharge. From this tribe of Indians the rich bottom on the Missouri in the northern part of the county and the thriving town of Miami take their names. The bottom is fully the equal in fertility and general excellence, except in extent, to that of the same name in the state of Ohio.
In the year 1815 the Miamis had left their fort and village and gone into camp for the summer in a grove about one mile and a half east of the present town site of Miami. At this time a band of Sacs and Foxes came down from the north and attacked the white settlements in Howard county. They succeeded in shutting up the settlers in the forts and car- rying off considerable plunder left outside. The Sacs and Foxes retreated through the camp of the Miamis, and stopped and sold to them much. of the property they had captured and stolen. The settlers found this out, and many of them believed the Miami's had a hand in the attack on the settlements, and that, notwithstanding their professed friendship for the whites, they were really in league with the Sacs, Foxes and Iowas, and had done even more than to "give aid and comfort to the enemy." Their property was in the hands of the Indians, that was certain, and they believed that there was but one way in which it could get there.
The Miamis had about three or four hundred warriors in good fighting
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condition, and there were only about two hundred and fifty "men of valor " in the settlements. It was a hazardous experiment, therefore, to undertake a forcible recovery of their property, and so Uncle Sam was called upon for assistance. Major, afterward General, Henry Dodge was sent up to Boone's Lick with a battalion of regulars to make an attack on the fort and village of the Miamis, and not only recover the property taken from the settlers, but punish the savages for their rascality as well.
Dodge was joined at Boone's Lick by two hundred and fifty mounted riflemen under Col. Benjamin Cooper. Dodge assumed command of the expedition by virtue of his rank and position. The command crossed the Missouri at the Arrow Rock, swimming their horses, and followed the old Indian trail up to within the vicinity of the Miami fort, when it halted, and began to arrange for an attack upon the fortification with all the "pomp and circumstance of glorious war." An assault was made, the works scaled, and the fort captured in gallant style-but not an Indian could be found! Every Miami was down in the grove, serene and happy and wholly unconscious of what was taking place at the fort .*
The whereabouts of the Miamis was soon discovered by some friendly Shawnees, who had accompanied the whites, and they at once surrendered. They said they had purchased the property claimed by the whites from the other Indians, that they were "innocent purchasers for value," and denied that they had joined in or aided and abetted the attack on the white settlements. The mên from Boone's Lick immediately recognized several articles in the Miami camp as belonging to them, and began to take pos- session of them. Major Dodge commanded that this sort of proceeding cease, and that the articles must be restored in quite a different manner- by an investigation, etc. The pioneers despised any sort of red-tape pro- ceeding, and refused to obey. Dodge called out his regulars to reforce his authority. Whereupon Colonel Ben Cooper drew his sword, and taking Dodge by the collar with one hand, with the other lifted his weapon and said: "By G-, sir, if you attempt to enforce that order, your head will fly off your shoulders like pop-corn off a hot shovel!"
Other officers interfered, and the affair was quieted and arranged to the satisfaction of all concerned. But the men from Boone's Lick got the property. The Indians protested that they were guilty of no intentional wrong, but very many disbelieved them, and this was one reason that led to their removal not long afterward. Subsequent developments showed, however, that they were as innocent as they claimed to be. The Sacs and Foxes had visited and attacked the settlements, secured what prop- erty they could and returned through the camp of the Miamis and traded it to them on terms very advantageous to the latter.
*Some accounts are to the effect that the Miamis had been apprised of the approach of the whites, and had abandoned the fort to avoid a conflict with them.
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It is not certain where the Miamis were removed to. The "Annals of the West " (1840), says they were " taken back to the rest of the tribe, in the Wabash country." Many old settlers declare that they went west, reserving the right to return and hunt in Saline county, from time to time, which they often did.
Gen. Henry Dodge was afterward United States marshal for Missouri. In the Black Hawk war he was the principal commander of the Ameri- cans, and it was he who fought the most of the battles of that war. He was an old resident of Missouri, but settled in Wisconsin, and shortly after the admission of that state into the Union he was elected United States senator. He served in the senate with his son, Gen. A. C. Dodge, then senator from Iowa, the only instance on record where father and son were at the same time members of that body.
Prior to the year 1817, no permanent settlement was made on the Miami bottom by white men. John Ferrill, and his son Henry, had trapped beaver and otter along the river, and many a time had camped temporarily on the bottom, but no actual settlement was made until the year named, when John Cook and family settled about one and a half miles northeast of Miami, being section 33, township 52, range 22.
Soon after, or perhaps not until 1818, came Samuel Perry, Wm. Clem- mons, Thomas Clemmons, Henry Ferrill, John McMahan, William McMahan, and Robert Patrick. The first settlers in the bottom were all Kentuckians, and as a consequence, were all hospitable, manly, generous and brave.
August 10, 1819, Wm. Miller, a Virginian, entered the southeast quar- ter of section 35, and July 6th, Wm. Renick entered the west half of the southeast quarter of section 33, township 52, range 22. May 14th, of the same year, Miller entered the northwest quarter of section 10, township 51, range 22. June 10th, Louis Rees entered the southeast quarter of section 13, township 51, range 22. July 16th, Wm. Renick entered the east half of southeast quarter of section S, and the northwest quarter of section 4, townhip 51, range 22. Miller was never an actual settler. He was a spec- ulator. During the year 1819, in addition to the tracts of land already described, he entered considerable portions of sections 1, 2, 3, and 4, in township 51, range 22. January 15, 1819, A. L. Langham entered the east half of the northwest quarter of section 9, township 51, range 22.
Other entries and settlements were made from time to time, and upon the organization of the county this settlement contained a considerable population. Mr. Robert Patrick was the contractor for supplying the western parts with beef. He was faithful and honest to a phenomenal extent for a government contractor. He swam his cattle across all the streams from the Missouri river westward, frequently when it was dan- gerous to do so. He was the contractor from 1817 to 1826. He owned
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