USA > Missouri > Greene County > Past and present of Greene County Missouri, early and recent history and genealogical records of many of the representative citizens, Volume I > Part 15
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The year 1831 also saw the coming of the Alsups, Scroggins and John- sons, who settled upon Little Sac. In that year, too, came Thomas P. Whit- lock, who arrived in June from Hardeman county, Tennessee. He settled in what is now Franklin township. About the same time there settled, as neigh- bors to Mr. Whitlock, Zachariah Simms, Benjamin Johnson, Henry Morrison, David and John Roper, Drury Upshaw and Larkin De Witt. Nearly all these family names are yet borne by residents of the township where their fore- fathers first made their homes. The year 1831 or '32 also saw the coming of John Brisco and his two sons-in-law, Jacob and Andrew Roller, who came from Tennessee and located in the southern part of the county.
Bennett Robberson came from Roane county, Tennessee, in 1832, with his wife and family. About a year later his mother came with her sons, Wil- liam, Allen, John, Edwin, Russell and Rufus, as well as three daughters who afterward married, respectively, Rey. David Ross, Thomas Stokes and Rich- ard Say. The widow, with her numerous family, settled on the beautiful lit- tle prairie which still bears their name, as does Robberson township, wherein that prairie is located.
Bennett Robberson's son, Edwin Taylor Robberson, became a prominent physician and honored citizen of this county .. One of God's noblest noblemen, throughout a long and active life he was first in every good word and deed; with a heart large enough to take in all mankind, he was the helper of the helpless, the father of the fatherless. By sagacious investments in lands and city realty, and by a large and actively followed practice of his profession, Dr. Robberson amassed a large fortune. His family are still residents of Springfield, and among the most prominent citizens.
The words of an old farmer, whom, among hundreds of others, the Doc- tor had at one time befriended, are a fitting and truthful epitaph for this no- ble man : "God Almighty never made a better man."
In 1832 Humphrey Warren located in the prairie some three miles east of what is now the northern part of Springfield, at the extreme head of Wilson creek. This place was afterward owned and occupied until his death by James Massey, progenitor of the prominent family of that name.
In 1832 also came Thomas Dollison, who settled near the present three- story brick building owned and occupied by one part of the United Iron Works, in the eastern part of town. This building was built for, and occu- pied for some years as, a cotton factory. But for some reason the enterprise was not successful. Thomas Dollison was one of the first judges of the County Court. Dollison street gets its name from him.
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DANIEL BOONE'S SON.
In the extreme northwestern part of the present limits of Greene county, in what is now Walnut Grove township, there settled, during the first three years after 1830, Allen Williams, Michael Walsh, William Mallory, Joseph Moss, Sloane, whose son was a practising physician for many years, and Hugh Leeper, from whom the large and beautiful Leeper prairie in Boone township gets its name.
Greene county has not been without association with one of the great nantes of American frontier history. Long before the region was open for the settlement of white men the county was explored by Nathan Boone, the youngest son of the immortal pioneer of Kentucky. Nathan Boone was a captain in the United States army, and was without doubt one of the first men of white blood to see the prairies and forests of beautiful Greene county. So well pleased was he with the northwestern part of what is now included in our county limits, that he selected some land near where the little city of Ash Grove now stands, twenty miles northwest from Springfield, and as soon as possible sent his son out to take pre-emption rights. Later on Nathan him- self located in the center of a fine grove consisting mostly of ash trees, from which the town that afterward sprang up took its name.
Several of the Boone family have lived in the county. The sons of Na- than Boone were James, John, Benjamin and Howard, and two of his daugh- ters married, respectively, William Caulfield and Alfred Horseman. Nathan owned several hundred acres of fine land in the neighborhood of his home. He died in 1856 and is buried about one and a half miles north of the city of Aslı Grove.
Mr. John H. Miller, a son of Joseph Miller, who has been mentioned among the very earliest settlers, has laid all succeeding generations in debt to him by printing, some thirty-five years ago, in the columns of the Springfield Leader, a series of articles giving his personal recollections and experiences of the very dawning of Greene county history. The writer will quote from some of these articles of Mr. Miller's, for they are the words of one who had an actual part in the scenes and incidents that he describes. And in these words of his it can truthfully be said of him: "He, being dead, yet speaketh." In one of his sketches he says :
"In 1831 a strange, odd and remarkable individual, in the person of an old and somewhat demented white man, appeared among us, named Jesse Bayles. He had some English education, but lived a wilderness life, among the wild beasts and Indians, seemed half crazy, dressed very scant and odd, and wore an old white wool hat tucked up at the sides, and written thereon in large red letters, 'Death!'
"He carried a long butcher knife and a tomahawk, and seemed dangerous
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to look at, but was harmless and even lively. I was with him considerably. He was fifty or sixty years old. He said that no harm should befall me ; that · he intended to keep the panthers, wolves and Indians from 'a'hold' of me. In a year or two he disappeared. He either died or followed the Indians."
Another writer, Col. Gilmore, in a sketch in the Springfield Patriot in 1867, says of this strange character :
"Jesse Range Bayles was, like Wilson, a resident among the Indians when Mr. Campbell came here. Poor Jesse was an educated man, but his mind was disordered. He was a quiet, inoffensive person, constantly wan- dering around the country, dividing his time pretty equally between hunting for lead mines and a wife, but it is said he never found either. Some wicked boys caught Jesse at one time, saturated his clothes with turpentine and set him on fire. He was shockingly burned. He wore what was then called a 'Bee Gum,' and is now called a "stovepipe' hat, and he told his disaster by placarding his hat in large letters, "Death, Hell and Destruction !" and point- ing all he met to the inscription. He remained here when his friends, the Delawares, left, and died about 1835."
Mr. Miller tells as follows of another human derelict that had drifted into the wilderness in those early days :
"About the same time another extraordinary and remarkable old man, then over sixty years old, came 'round amongst the few settlers. His name was Robert Alexander; originally from North Carolina. Came west alone in 1825; lived for several years with the Miami Indians at the mouth of Swan (at present Forsyth, Taney county). He was well educated, had been a fine looking man and had been in high life, but ardent spirits had 'got away' with him, as it is getting the best of some of our American statesmen at this date. This old man, Alexander, came within a few votes of being elected governor of the State of North Carolina, in 1824, but by domestic and politi- cal trouble he came west and lived a roving, reckless and dissipated life. He was a man of fine sense, always had fine horses, would gamble with cards, race horses and drink whiskey. Finally, in 1835, he found his way to William C. Campbell's, in Polk county, and, drunk, undertook to swim Sac river on horseback, and was drowned, just below Orleans, and that was the last of poor old Bob Alexander."
In 1832 came William Townsend, from Logan county Kentucky. Mr. Townsend bought out Alexander McKenzie, who had come in from Pulaski county, Kentucky, two years before. The sons of Mr. Townsend, A. M., Thomas B. and William M. A., were long prominent in Springfield and Greene county.
I will close this part of this chapter by giving a list printed in a history of the county published over thirty years ago, and which has with many other
GREENE COUNTY, MISSOURI.
sources been of great aid in compiling the records of the first settlers in Greene county :
This list is called : "\\ partial list of carly settlers in what was then Camp- bell Township, Greene county, in August 1833:
"John Roberts, Peter Apperson, John D. Shannon, James Carter, Joseph Porter, Chas. P. Bullock, Chesley Cannefax, Wm. H. Duncan, E. Brantly, G. Gay, Randolph Britt, J. P. Campbell, Samuel Martin, John Patten Camp- bell, James Fielding, Daniel Gray, Thomas Caulfield, E. R. Fulbright, G. N. Shelon, Jos. Price, Sr., Radford Cannefax, David Roper, Moses Matthews, Zenas M. Rountree, A. Morris. J. R. Robberson, G. Maberry, A. Stillion, John Buden, Jas. Wilson, Jos. Smith, John Fulbright, Stephen Fisher, William Stacy, Wash Williams, A. Shaddock, Spencer O'Neill, F. Leeper, William Price. Thomas Horn. William Stout, A. S. Borne, Kindred Rose, Edward Thompson, James R. Smith, Cornelius D. Terrell, Newell Hayden, Larkin Dewitt, J. Mckinney, David Johnson, Martin B. Borne, Joseph Weaver, B. W. Cannefax, C. Hottler, J. L. Martin, Wm. Fulbright, William McFarland, J. Woods, Richard C. Martin, John Sturdevant, L. Fulbright, Watson Forbes, John Roberts, Jr., John R. Brock, John Ross, H. C. Morrison, John Slagles, George Shoemaker, Abram Slagles, Jerry Pierson, James McCarroll, John Mc- Kay, Elisha Painter, Joseph Rountree, Alexander Younger, D. B. Miller, David Wilson, Julius Rountree, Thomas F. Wright, Samuel Lasley, Gilbert Mckay, Littleberry Hendricks, James Cooper, John Roper, Drury Upshaw, James Dollison, James McMahan, James Renfro, John Pennington, William Birdsong, Thomas Stokes, John W. Triplett, A. J. Burnett, R. Harper, S. G. Martin, Jolin Williams, James Price, Jr., Simeon Postion, Thomas Pat- terson, Robert Patterson, William Ross, R. Ross, Samuel Painter."
A GLIMPSE OF FRONTIER LIFE.
These determined, patient and industrious men, and their equally brave wives, laid the foundation on which has been raised the superstructure of the Greene county of today. More than that, they laid those foundations so broad and strong that though the fair edifice of the queen county of the Ozarks shall certainly grow and increase in the future as in the past, it shall forever remain firm, to the days of remote generations. Before passing to other items natur- ally coming under the headings of this chapter I am tempted to quote again from the story of Mr. John H. Miller, as he tells something of the life lived in the then far backwoods of Greene county :
"The settlers in those days were driven by necessity to use their inven- tive wits. Doors were made of clap-boards, floors of mother earth, bedsteads with one leg were fastened to the walls in the corners of the houses, and wagon grease was made of honey, which was only twenty-five cents a gallon or about
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one cent a pound in the comb. When they were able to afford good puncheon floors and two bedsteads it seemed quite like civilization.
"Bread was scarce, and what little crops were made were liberally divided, so that all could have a little bread. Very few hogs, and pork was very hard to get, but wild game was abundant, and with the faithful dog and flint-lock rifle everyone had plenty. The meal was made by pounding the corn in a stump mortar, the coarsest for hominy and the finest for bread, and very dark at that. Men worked then at fifty cents per day, and I say this to put a correct idea and feeling into men who now-a-days think it a disgrace to work at that price: Honest labor at even twenty-five cents a day, where a man can't do better, is far more profitable and honorable than idleness.
"In those days neighbors were few and far between, but everybody was friendly and willing to divide to the last mouthful. The first grist of corn was ground on a little wing-dam mill that old John Marshall had on James, near the mouth of Finley, although Jerry Pearson had a little rattle-trap of a mill some nearer, but it was hardly competent to grind for his own use."
Old timers have told me that one of the first tasks of the pioneer, after he had found a suitable place for a home, and had thrown together some sort of a rude shelter to protect his family from storm and cold, was to fashion a mortar wherein to reduce the grains of corn to particles small enough to serve as food. And this, we may be sure, was no small under- taking to a man whose only implement for the purpose was, in most cases, his faithful axe.
The best mortars, so those who know have assured us, were those made in the standing stump of a post oak, or white oak, tree. At the same time the extra labor required to form a sufficiently large cavity in the tough perpen- dicular grain of the stump was ten-fold that of fashioning the mortar in the horizontal grain of a prostrate tree or log. Hence most of these home-made contrivances were in logs, and the farmer who boasted of a well proportioned and deep mortar in a solid post oak stump congratulated himself on his own industry and good fortune. In both cases fire was used to aid the axe in hollowing out the necessary cavity, and the result is hinted at in Mr. Miller's statement, which I have quoted, that the bread "was very dark at that !"
After the mortar was at length completed a wooden pestle was made, and with this the corn was laboriously pounded until it was more or less pul- verized, when it was sifted through a thin bit of muslin, the coarser particles used for hominy and the finer for meal or corn-bread. Most of these rude contrivances were soon improved by what the settlers called a "Sweep pestle." This was a much heavier pestle than could be worked by hand, and was hung on a balanced pole something after the style of an old fashioned well-sweep.
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A single blow from this improved machine was much more effective than a dozen from a hand-worked pestle. Many of the farmers continued to use these spring-pole mortars even after there were, here and there, small mills in the region.
WATER POWER WASTED.
The plentiful water power, running to waste in every Ozark creek, river and spring branch, at once suggested to the first comers the utilizing of some of this waste energy to grind their corn, and later to saw their timber into lumber. We have seen that among those who came in from the direction of Arkansas, in 1822, and who so soon had to vacate because of the prior rights of the Delawares, there was one, a Mr. Ingle, who is recorded to have built a mill on the James river, at about the old bridge over that stream on the Ozark road. This mill was probably operated by power ob- tained from a wing-dam, for evidently anything approaching a regular dam sufficient to restrain the James at that point was far beyond the ability of a few pioneers at that time. Long after the writer came to Greene county, in 1868, there was the remains of an old dam of this sort, at the ford just below the old bridge. It is probably there yet. This I have been told was the remains of Ingle's work.
Jerry Pearson also built, at a very early date, a mill below the spring that is at the head of the creek that still bears his name. We have seen that Mr. Miller speaks rather contemptuously of this "mill," stating that it would hardly do Mr. Pearson's own grinding. Mr. Miller, too, tells us that the first grist was ground at a little wing-dam mill, operated by John Marshall, on James river near the mouth of Finley. This man, Marshall by the way, was a "squaw man," living with the Indians until his death, just before they finally removed from the region. His mill was the same that Ingle had put up on the James, and had been bought by Wilson and moved to the lower loca- tion when Ingle was forced to vacate his claim.
Another mill was built at a very early date (I have never been able to learn the exact time), by William Fulbright, just below the great spring flowing from under a bluff on Little Sac, some two miles and a half north of Springfield, on section 3. township 29, range 22, and which is now the source from which the Springfield Water Company draws the supply for the city.
This mill, with some later improvements, was standing and operating as late as 1870, and I think some years later. I have stood by its great over- shot water-wheel and heard the whirling of its old fashioned mill stones my- self. Augustine Friend, one of those driven out in 1822 and returning in 1830, had a mill at the large spring on section 27, township 29, range 21, about five miles east of Springfield. This was in 1832 or 1833. This spring was afterwards the site of Henderson Jones' distillery, and still bears the
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name of Jones' spring. Most of these pioneer mills were rude contrivances, yet withal constructed with marvelous ingenuity. I remember coming onto one of them in Stone county forty years ago, which the old settlers there- abouts told me it was certainly forty years old at the time. That would have placed its building well within the time when Stone county still formed a part of Greene. This was a characteristic old pioneer mill, and as such it merits a short description.
It was located nearly at the head of one of the tributaries flowing into the James from the east-I think it was Aunt's creek, but am not certain. Just above it a fine bold spring gushed out of the hill. This was led by a raceway of hewed logs to the top of a huge over-shot wheel, nearly or quite eighteen feet in diameter. The wheel was geared on to a horizontal shaft, and that to the shaft that operated the mill stones. There was not an iron wheel or shaft in the whole concern. The wheels were hewed out with an axe or an adze and fitted together with wonderfully perfect joints. The cogs were hickory pegs, varying from one to three inches square, and fitted into holes mortised in the edge of the wheels, or upon the circumference of the shafts.
This machinery had no roof over it, and had stood the storms of years without any protection whatever. There was no house near it, and no one seemed to be in charge. While we were looking over the curious contri- vance a boy came riding horseback, on top of a sack of corn, and dis- mounted at the mill. He poured his grain into the hopper and then lowered a gate that sent the stream along the race onto the wheel, and with creaking joints the ancient affair took up its duties and a pretty fair article of corn- meal began to trickle from below the mill stones. That undoubtedly was a fair specimen of the first mills that supplanted the mortars in Greene county.
The early routes of travel were of course merely foot paths or, at the best, bridle pathis. Most of them followed the old Indian trails. Such were the "Traces" which we find frequently mentioned in the descriptions of township boundaries and the like.
EARLY-DAY ROADS.
At the very first term of Greene County Court we find the Court giving attention to the matter of public highways. There we see on the record that : "The road leading from Springfield to Delaware Town, and thence to Fayette- ville in Arkansas Territory, be, and the same is hereby declared to be, a public highway in Greene county to the State line."
Long before the outbreak of the war, in 1861, the Fayetteville road had abandoned the route through Delaware Town and passed far to the westward of the old road.
(10)
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Another order of that initial term of the County Court, appointed six commissioners to "View, lay out and mark a public road or highway from Springfield, in Greene county, westwardly until it strikes the main fork of the Six Bulls, at or near Samuel Bogard's, thence in the direction of Fayette- ville, in Arkansas Territory, until it reaches the State line."
I have made diligent search of maps and have asked many of our oldest citizens as to the identity of this stream, "Six Bulls," but without being able to locate it. Commissioners were also appointed on this first day of the court to lay out a road from Bledsoe's ferry, on Pomme De Terre river, to some point on the Twenty-five mile prairie. On the second day of the court, March 12, 1833, additional commissioners were ordered to view and lay out a road from Springfield to the Twenty-five mile prairie, in "the direc- tion of Boonville." This is the road still known as the "Boonville Road," and gives its name to Boonville street, in Springfield. Another road was ordered established from Springfield to Swan creek. Swan creek is now in Christian and Taney counties. Forsyth, the county-seat of Taney, is at the mouth of this stream, and the road in question was long known as the Forsyth road.
On the next day of the court A. J. Burnett was named to "lay out road districts and apportion hands to work on the road in Campbell township." Campbell township, as we have seen elsewhere, covered more than twice the present area of Greene county, so that Mr. Burnett's office was no small job.
Thus we see that in the important matter of affording easy communica- tion between the different parts of the county, and with the outside world, Greene county was active from the very first. Steadily, year after year, better roads, bridges and culverts have been built, until with the advent of automo- biles, and the passage of the legislation allowing of road districts issuing bonds for road building, the county is rapidly acquiring a system of roadways second to none in any part of the United States.
From the very earliest days the people of Greene county have believed in, and sacrificed to obtain, the two great foundation stones of American institutions, the church and the school. Rev. James H. Slavens, a celebrated Methodist preacher, is probably entitled to being recorded as having preached the first sermon in the county. This was in the house of John P. Campbell, in what was soon to be the town of Springfield, that good pioneer father of Springfield being first in this as in nearly all else for the benefit of the town he founded. There was another Methodist preacher, named Alderson, who labored through this region at a very early date.
The Rev. James H. Slavens, above mentioned, was appointed at the con- ference held at Cape Girardeau, Missouri, on September 15, 1831, to what the conference denoted as "The James Fork of White River Mission." He at once started for his field of work. He had left the record that he preached
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the first Sunday after conference at Greenville, Wayne county. By the next sabbath he had reached the Gasconade, where he again preached. About the middle of the next week he was in the little hamlet of Springfield, and stopped with William Fulbright, in the western part of town. The next Sunday, October 10, 1831, he preached to his new charge for the first time. I have stated from what seemed good authority that this first sermon was delivered in the house of John P. Campbell. Another source of information says it was at William Fulbright's house. At all events this was undoubtedly the first sermon in Greene county.
Three weeks later, October 31, 1831, Mr. Slavens again preached, and afterwards organized the first class of the Methodist Episcopal church in Missouri, west of the Gasconade and south of the Osage river. It is of interest to here record the names of these first members of a Methodist class in this region. They were:
Mrs. Ruth Fulbright, Isaac Woods and his wife, Jane Woods, Bennett Robberson, Elvira Robberson, Samuel S. Mackey and Sarah Mackey. At the close of 1831 Mr. Slavens reported that he had forty-seven members on his circuit. This circuit covered a vast territory, and its boundaries give a strong light on the strenuous work of the pioneer circuit rider. With Spring- field as a center, this faithful pastor covered a field reaching from Hartville on the east to Greenfield on the west, and from Bolivar on the north and Buffalo on the northeast to James Fork on the south. A region something like one hundred miles square. Much of it a rough and hilly section of the Ozarks, and all of it just emerging out of the wilderness.
FIRST CHURCHES.
This first leader of the Methodists was a man of great force of character and versatility. It is told of him that he practiced medicine in Greene county for many years, thus being a healer of the body as well as a "cure of souls." An old story is that when Mr. Slavens was on his long journey from the conference that appointed him, to his field of work, he one noon overtook a party of movers who had halted at the roadside for dinner. Being invited, in the wholesome pioneer fashion, to alight from his horse and eat dinner with them the parson did so. Evidently there was a strong case of "love at first sight" that noon, for that family afterward settled near Springfield, and within a year one of the daughters became the wife of the preacher. It is also of record that before he could be united to the girl of his choice Brother Slavens had to go to Cooper county, Missouri, a long hundred miles to the north, to find a preacher to tie the knot. But he certainly found one, brought him back to Greene county with him and was married. It would be interesting to know the amount of that wedding fee. The chances are that the officiating
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