USA > Missouri > Missouri the center state, 1821-1915 > Part 8
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MISSOURI, THE CENTER STATE
the emancipated slaves out of the State; the substitute adopted by the Senate, and now here for action, strikes this provision out, thus converting Missouri into a free negro State. You can not inflict a greater injury on Missouri than thus to fill up her communities with this kind of worthless population. . A free negro population is the greatest curse to any country."
Charcoals and Claybanks.
The Union men of Missouri divided sharply in 1862 upon the question of freeing the slaves in this State. The Charcoals were for immediate emancipation ; the Claybanks favored what Frank P. Blair, in a letter to Rudolph Doehn called a "gradual, peaceful and just measure of emancipation." Missourians recog- nized the fact that freedom of the slaves of the disloyal was coming as an act of war. The issue for this State was the course to be pursued regarding the slaves of the Union men. In the spring of 1863 there were held two local conventions in St. Louis, one called the Republican Emancipation Convention by the "Char- coals," and the other the Union Emancipation Convention by the "Claybanks." The "Charcoals" nominated Chauncey I. Filley for mayor; the "Claybanks" nominated his cousin, O. D. Filley, for mayor. The Democrats nominated Joseph O'Neill. The Charcoals resolved in their convention "Emancipation in Missouri should be sought in the most speedy manner consistent with law and order." The resolutions endorsed the President's proclamation of January 1, 1863, freeing the slaves in the Confederate States. The Claybanks resolved "That we regard slavery as an evil and believe that our State ought to adopt some constitutional mode of getting rid of an institution which has been a clog upon the wheels of her prosperity and the fruitful source of trouble and disaster." The Charcoals were successful, electing Chauncey I. Filley over the Claybank and the Democratic candidates.
In 1863 a plan of gradual emancipation was offered to the people of Missouri in the form of a constitutional amendment. But in 1865 a constitutional con- vention declared for immediate freedom of all slaves. Negro schools were started in St. Louis by voluntary contributions, the laws at that time forbidding use of public money for such a purpose.
Negro Education in Missouri.
A negro regiment, composed in the main of former Missouri slaves, started the fund which bought the site of Lincoln Institute at Jefferson City. The first contribution was $20, given by Maj. Samuel A. Love, for many years a leader among the negro Baptists of Missouri. The time was pay day for the colored troops ; also it was Sunday. J. Milton Turner, afterwards Minister to Liberia by appointment from General Grant, addressed the soldiers. He told them that education was the great need of their people now that freedom had been obtained. He explained that colored teachers must be trained. To accomplish that there must be a normal school. The fund thus started grew with contribu- tions from another negro regiment. It was sufficient to buy the site. The legis- lature was asked for help. An understanding was reached by which the State was pledged to recognize and support the Institute when the contributions from individuals reach $15,000. Capt. R. B. Foster who had been in the movement from the beginning went East with Turner. Anti-slavery people contributed freely. The guarantee fund was raised. The state administration redeemed its
Mayor Washington King
Mayor Nathan Cole
Mayor Henry Overstolz
Mayor John M. Krum
Mayor John D. Daggett
A GROUP OF ST. LOUIS MAYORS
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SLAVERY AND AFTER
promise and Missouri inaugurated one of the earliest training schools for colored teachers. Turner established, as he believed, the first negro school in Missouri outside of St. Louis. He said one of his supporters was Jesse James, who on several occasions contributed from $10 to $25. "But for Jesse James," said Turner, "I could not have kept up the school."
Samuel Cupples and Dr. Woodward.
The introduction of colored teachers for colored schools was one of the inno- vations which St. Louis tried with admirable results. It came about after Samuel Cupples and Dr. Calvin M. Woodward had become active in the public school board. For a number of years the teachers of the colored schools were white. When a young white woman was assigned to teach a colored school there followed an indignant protest from her friends. White teachers failed to arouse the interest among their pupils necessary for best results. Mr. Cupples was a trustee of the Lincoln Institute at Jefferson City. He made inquiries as to the capabilities of the students who were being educated at the institute and proposed the trial of colored teachers in the St. Louis colored schools. Dr. Harris, Dr. Woodward and others favored the experiment. At that time the enrollment of children in the colored schools was about two thousand. Mr. Cupples, Dr. Harris and Dr. Woodward visited the colored schools, invited the parents to a conference, had refreshments and explained the purpose to better the educational facilities for the children. They urged that they must have the cooperation of the parents to obtain the improvement desired. Children must attend regularly, must not be kept out on Mondays to go after the laundry and at other times to run errands, but must be present five days in the week. In a year the enrollment of the colored schools of St. Louis had doubled. The improved conditions under colored teachers has been so marked and gratifying that it brought the public school board to the conclusion to build a colored high school to cost $350,000, the best equipped high school for colored pupils in the United States.
A few years ago Sir William Mather, accompanied by Lady Mather, visited St. Louis to observe the progress made in manual training. From the white schools they went to the colored and saw the boys and girls receiving the same practical instruction in the use of their hands as well as their minds.
"I am surprised," exclaimed the lady. "Wasn't this a slave State? I am sur- prised that you are doing so much for the negroes."
"Madame," said Mr. Cupples, "the only people who understand the negroes and who know how to make good citizens of them are those who lived in the former slave States."
Then Lady Mather insisted upon having some pictures of the colored school children of St. Louis at their studies and especially engaged in the manual training and domestic science work.
"When we go up to Khartoum," she said to Sir William, "I want to show what these people are doing for the little Africans in St. Louis."
The Missouri Negro.
When the bill to reimburse the depositors of the Freedman's Savings Bank was before Congress, Senator Vest opposed it. He said that the bill was in the interest, not of the original depositors, but for the benefit of claim agents. And
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then he paid this touching tribute to the negro as he had known him in Missouri: "I have nothing to say to any man who thinks that I would grind the African race out of one cent. If any man in this world has reason to be their friend, I am that man-raised with them, nursed by one of them, an humble owner of them as inherited property. I never bought or sold one for gain in my life. They are a docile, gentle, inoffensive race, and the Southern man who would wrong them deserves to be blotted from the roll of manhood. When our wives and children were in their hands during the war they acted so as to make every man in the South their friend who had one particle of manhood about him."
According to Commissioner Fitzpatrick, of the state bureau of labor statistics, there were in 1913 nearly 3,800 Missouri farms owned by negroes and these farms were worth $27,768,000, taking the average value of a farm in the State as a basis. Investigation by the bureau showed that these farms, as a rule, were well kept and well stocked and productive, growing wheat, corn, oats, grasses, watermelons, strawberries, peaches, apples and all other food necessities. Negroes raised poultry for the market, sold eggs, milk and butter, had bee hives and plenty of honey, produced sugar cane, which, in fall, they boiled out for sorghum molasses. Their daily menu was made of the best things they produced. Nearly every negro farmer in Missouri, the commissioner stated, had a bank account.
In 1913 the sweepstakes premium for "the highest yield of corn on one acre," awarded at the University of Missouri, went to a negro farmer. It was given to N. C. Bruce, connected with the Bartlett Farm and School for negroes at Dalton in Chariton county. Bruce raised 108 bushels on a single acre. The average for a field of sixty acres at the Dalton institution where negroes are taught agriculture and other useful branches, was between sixty-five and seventy-five bushels an acre. One of the chief promoters of the Dalton school was the late Professor Calvin M. Woodward, father of manual training.
CHAPTER IV.
JACK AND GALENA.
Missouri's Mineral Prodigies-Uncle Sampson Barker's Bullets-Revelation of Zinc- Granby's Awakening-Burton's Bear Hunt-Tom Benton, the Reporter-Moses Austin's Arrival-How the Connecticut Man Smelted-Renault, the Pioneer Miner-A Century Old Claim-Mine La Motte's Vicissitudes-The Golden Vein-Lead for Washington's Soldiers-The Valles and the Roziers-Dry Bone Turned to Account-The Flat River Country-La Grave and the Disseminated-Bonne Terre's Beginning-Evolution of the St. Joe Enterprise-Parson's Policy-Gophering at Valle Mines-Dr. Keith's Reminis- cences-Matrimony Under Difficulty-The Granby Company-Herculaneum's Era of Prosperity-The Maclot Shot Tower-Missouri Lead for Jackson's Army-The City that Jack Built-Joplin's Site a Cattle Ranch-Moffett & Sargent-Some of the Lucky Strikes-A Show and a Fortune- Bartlett's Invention-White Lead from Smelter Fumes -Early Prospectors-Ten O'Clock Run-Webb City and Carterville-The Story of Two Farms-Morgan County's Fame Before the War-How Oronogo Got Its Name-"The Chatter."
When I examine the statistics of the mineral fields of the world I find there is not another country on the globe embracing as it (Missouri) does so many varieties of minerals in such great abundance .- Firman A. Rozier.
Nature was profligate in the distribution of lead in Missouri. When Uncle Sampson Barker was a boy he went out in a hollow of Taney County almost anywhere and picked up some fragments of lead ore. He selected a stump, white oak preferred. The hole he filled with lightwood. He struck a flint or touched a match, if he happened to have one of those new fangled things called lucifers. He piled on the ore and went away. When the home-made smelter had cooled off, Sampson went back, raked the lead out of the ashes and molded his bullets. Uncle Sampson Barker lived to be one of the oldest hunters in the White River region. He never thought of going to the store for cartridges, even when fixed ammuni- tion became cheap, but down to the end of the century smelted his lead and molded his bullets. And the lead seemed to be about as plentiful as in his boy- hood. There is today almost no part of the South Missouri country where "float" lead, as it is called, cannot be found. With every heavy rain fragments are washed out of the soil.
The production of zinc became a Missouri industry fifty years ago. The Civil war was over. The spirit of enterprise was abroad in the State. Several resi- dents of Carondelet, not then a part of St. Louis, organized a company and built a small smelter at Potosi, the old mining center in Washington county. They opened the new industry with speech-making. George D. Reynolds, later to become presiding justice of the Court of Appeals, then fresh from admission to the bar, had settled in Potosi; he was selected for the orator of the occasion. The shelter was to be supplied with zinc ore from pockets ten or fifteen feet deep in the surrounding country. A relative of one of the investors in the enterprise
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MISSOURI, THE CENTER STATE
was pursuing a mineralogical course in a German university. He was induced to come to Missouri and take employment with the smelter company. His first work was to tramp through the counties of Washington and St. Francois, find indica- tions of ore, and induce the country miners to dig. Lead miners, born and bred in Southeast Missouri, were numerous. They were descendants of the pioneer miners who had come to Missouri in the early years of American occupation and even before, when there were Spanish governors. They knew lead, but zinc ore had been thrown aside as worthless. They had to be coaxed to mine it.
. The Potosi smelter languished. The promoters, in time, learned it was cheaper to carry the ore to the coal than to haul the coal to the ore. Three carloads of coal to one carload of ore was the proportion. On advice of their mineralogist, the smelter people moved the plant to Carondelet, the mineralogist having a narrow escape from harsh treatment at the hands of the indignant citizens of Potosi.
About the time he was leaving for his post as American minister at Rio Janeiro, Henry T. Blow, whose home was in Carondelet, visited the zinc smelter. He had long been interested in the lead business and had been a pioneer manu- facturer of white lead. He examined the process of zinc smelting and handled the ore. "We've got stuff that looks like this down in Southwest Missouri," Mr. Blow said to the mineralogist. "We've never done anything with it. We didn't think it was worth saving. I wish you'd go down to Granby some time, look at what we have there and tell me what you think of it."
The Discovery of Jack.
Granby had been a wonderful lead camp for years. As soon as the min- eralogist saw the dumps he reported that there were thousands of tons of good zinc ore heaped up about the shafts, left there as worthless. He traveled through Southwest Missouri and found zinc ore of the finest quality in inexhaustible quantities.
The railroads were headed toward these zinc fields, but had not reached them. For some time the mineralogist went among the lead mines reaping his harvest. "Jack" and sometimes "black jack" were the scoffing names which the lead miner had bestowed upon this zinc, which added so much to the work of mining galena and which he considered of no value. The representative of the Carondelet smelter bought for trifling sums the privilege of helping himself to the "jack" on the dumps. He said little and paid little. but he accumulated zinc ore in great quantities. He trained a few buyers who selected the very richest of the zinc ore, loaded it upon wagons and hauled it to the nearest railroad stations for ship- ment to Carondelet. Some of the best of this ore was not dug. It had been gathered from the surface. One day the mineralogist, traveling along a road in the zinc country of Southwest Missouri, came to a farm, the "home lot" of which was walled in with rugged, massive chunks. After a brief ex- amination the mineralogist opened negotiations with the farmer. He acquired the wall of "jack" which the farmer had picked up on the ground. He built the farmer a better wall of smooth stone and gave a few dollars in addition. The original wall of chunks was loaded in the ore wagons and hauled away. It was a great joke on the city crank in the estimation of the farmer until the latter learned that the mineralogist had made a clear profit of $1.750. The chunks
HILDERBRAND'S BLUFF FROM WHICH THE GUERRILLA LEAPED HIS HORSE
THE OLD STYLE LEAD SMELTER
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JACK AND GALENA
were zinc ore of exceptionally high grade. The black jack, which had been ac- cumulating on dumps throughout the Ozarks for generations, was bought up and shipped for reduction. Down at Granby there was an industrial revolution. There the black jack lay already mined in small mountains. The company trans- formed it into dividends and began to dig for more. Lead ore was the by- product. The zinc field spread. Joplin became the center ..
Lead Mining Nomenclature.
In the early times when the enterprising Frenchmen were dominant in South- east Missouri, they had a pleasant way of naming their mines. When one of them discovered valuable mineral, obtained a grant and began to work it, every- body knew the place by the name of the discoverer or owner, to which was pre- fixed "Mine-a." Thus Mine-a-La Motte received its name, which has been con- tracted into Mine La Motte. In the heart of the Flat River district of St. Francois county is Mine-a-Joe, so called after the pioneer Joe Bogy, who obtained the grant and gathered in royalties from the miners who searched for nuggets of galena on his land. And Mine-a-Burton, now Potosi, got its title from a famous pioneer, M. Burton, who discovered this rich field while pursuing a bear. The name of this Frenchman was Breton, but with the American occupation it was anglicized into Burton.
Before he entered upon his "Thirty Years in the American Senate," Thomas H. Benton was not above working up an item for the newspapers. In 1818 he furnished a sketch of Burton for the St. Louis Enquirer, and this is what he wrote :
"Burton is a Frenchman, from the north of France. In the fore part of the last century he served in the low countries under the orders of Marshal Saxe. He was at Fontenoy when the Duke of Cumberland was beaten by that marshal. He was at the siege of Ber- gen-op-Zoom, and assisted in the assault of that place when it was assailed by a division of Saxe's army under Count Luvesdahe. He had also seen service upon the continent. He was at the building of Fort Chartres, on the American bottom, and was present at Braddock's defeat. From the life of a soldier Burton passed to that of a hunter, and in that character, about half a century ago, while pursuing a bear to the west of the Mississippi, he discovered the rich lead mines which have borne his name ever since. The most moderate computation will make him at the present writing (1818) 106. He now lives in the family of Mr. Micheaux, at the Little Rock ferry, three miles above Ste. Genevieve, and walks to that village almost every Sunday to attend mass. He is what we call a square-built man, of 5 feet and 8 inches in height, full chest and forehead. His senses of seeing and hearing are somewhat impaired, but free from disease, and apparently able to hold out against time for many years to come."
The name of the hotel is all that Potosi has preserved as a reminder of the man who hunted bear and found galena. Near the Burton Hotel is the Micheaux Spring, called after the pioneer whom Mr. Benton speaks of as entertaining Burton in his old age. Micheaux is said to have been the first white man who drank of this spring.
About 1797 the Spanish Government granted to Moses Austin a tract of land a league square. Austin was a practical miner. The consideration for the grant was that Austin should erect furnaces and other works for mining and smelting the lead, and should build a shot-tower. Austin became the nabob of Mine-a-
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Burton. He built a residence which was the most magnificent private structure in Missouri for many years. It stood the pride of Potosi until the great fire of 1871, which swept through the town.
Austin worked his grant on the same scale that he built his house and did everything. He was a man of business methods, and left a statement showing exactly what he accomplished with the property. From this it appears that he manufactured lead as follows :
"From 1798 to 1804, an average of 360,000 pounds per annum, or a total of 2,160,000 pounds.
"From 1804 to 1808, an average of 800,000 pounds per annum, or a total of 3,200,000 pounds.
"From 1808 to 1816, an average of 500,000 pounds per annum, or a total of 4,000,000 pounds."
Thus in eighteen years Austin turned out what for that time was an extraordi- nary product, 9,360,000 pounds. This lead was transported to Ste. Genevieve either on pack animals or in great wooden carts without tires. The Indians used to call these carts "barefooted wagons."
Moses Austin's Invention.
The first notable improvement in lead mining methods was introduced by the adventurous Connecticut man-Moses Austin. He visited the lead mines and saw at once the opportunity for improvement. It is tradition that until Austin came sheet lead was unknown. The New Englander smelted ore and poured it on a flat rock to produce the first sheet. Governor Trudeau was impressed with Austin's shrewdness. He was encouraging American settlers. On conditions, the governor granted Austin a league which included about one-third of the Mine- a-Burton lead field. In accordance with the proviso, Austin built a furnace and sunk a shaft. He increased the production largely. His home was an imposing stone castle, which was one of the wonders of the lead country. It was called "Durham Hall." Ostensibly the fortifications were for protection against the Indians. Subsequent events rather indicated that Austin never forgot that he was an American, and looked forward to the time when the American flag would fly west of the Mississippi, forcibly, if not peaceably. He borrowed Spanish cannon from the commandant at Ste. Genevieve, and failed to return them when the Spaniards evacuated Upper Louisiana. Austin seems to have entertained the hope of silver, although he didn't waste time looking for it, but turned out lead for several years. When the American occupation took place, Austin told Captain Stoddard that the ore of Mine La Motte carried fifty ounces of silver to the ton. The Mine La Motte, up to 1804, had produced 8,000 tons of lead, but it had not shown enough silver to pay for the extraction. Austin grew tired of his lead min- ing and smelting soon after the American occupation. He went to Mexico and got a grant in Texas for colonization purposes. On his way back to Missouri to raise his colony he was killed. His son, Stephen Austin, took up his father's prospect and led the colony to Texas. Stephen Austin was one of the pioneers in the movement for Texas independence, and the capital of the State was named after him.
MOSES AUSTIN
TOMB OF MOSES AUSTIN AT POTOSI
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JACK AND GALENA
Renault, the Explorer.
Fourche-a-Renault is one of the best-known streams of Southeast Missouri. It obtains its name from the man who probably did the earliest mining, on any extended scale, in Missouri. Philip Francis Renault was a native of Picardy, France. Renault sailed from France in 1719 with 200 mechanics, miners and laborers to engage in mining. He stopped in the West Indies and bought 500 negroes to do the rough labor of the mines. With this force he came up the Mississippi and worked the large grants of mineral lands made to him in South- east Missouri. This importation of slaves was the first made into Missouri, or, indeed, into the Mississippi Valley. The ruins of the furnaces in which Renault smelted lead are to be seen today along the banks of the Fourche-a-Renault. Descendants of the miners and mechanics who came over in 1719 are still living in and around Potosi. They speak a patois of their own, and the relationship to the French is easily recognized. The 500 slaves bought in the West Indies have disappeared without leaving a trace. Renault shipped his product down the river to New Orleans.
As late as 1894 a committee of Congress was called upon to investigate a claim for the relief of the heirs of Philip Francis Renault. These heirs pro- duced what purported to be a record of ancient French grants made between 1722 and 1740. Under the grant made to Renault they claimed title to Mine La Motte. Thomas T. Gantt of St. Louis made an investigation of this claim many years ago. He found that the heirs of Renault, eighty-five years after the grant was alleged to have been made and after three changes of government and after forty-five years of adverse possession of Mine La Motte by Pratte and his asso- ciates, had appeared by attorney in 1808 and had laid claim to the property. The claim was a subject of repeated investigation by commissions and by Con- gress. In 1828 Congress confirmed the title of Pratte and his associates. In 1834 a committee reported against the claim of the Renault heirs. In 1844 a claim was presented in the United States court at St. Louis. That went to the Supreme Court of the United States and was decided against the heirs. Under all these circumstances the committee of Congress in 1894 reported against the claim of the Renaults.
Mine La Motte.
The lead which defeated Braddock's army came from Mine La Motte. That is an historical fact for which Judge Allen, of Fredericktown, was willing to be held responsible. The first correspondent who wrote up the mine was Moses Austin. He made this famous place the subject of a letter in 1804. The letter was short, but it wasn't published until half a dozen years after it was written. This is what Correspondent Austin learned at that early day :
"Mine a la Motte was discovered by Mr. Renault about the year 1723 or 1724. who made an exploration, but, finding no silver ore. he abandoned it. About the year 1725 a man by the name of La Motte opened and wrought the mine. after whom it was called. About the years 1738-40 the Mine a la Motte was considered a public property, and the people in general were allowed to work it. At that time it furnished almost all the lead exported from the Illinois. But soon after the discovery and opening of the Mine a Burton (at Potosi) the Mine a la Motte was in a great measure abandoned. the mineral at Mine a Burton being much easier melted. The Mine a la Motte is at this time ( 1804) claimed as private property :
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