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 71
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Possibly the recently adopted plan of county high schools may have a hint toward some improvement in the present conditions of the country church. Could the different denominations, whose differences may not be so vital as they are sometimes thought to be, agree to some form of that fed- eration which is beginning to be adopted in some places and is likely to be increasingly common in the near future, it might be possible to have more than the meager one Sunday a month, with a pastor nearer at hand than now. Better, still. if suggestions of some students of the country church problem could be carried out, and a minister could be found ready to link church and school and farm in a common interest, making for young and old a center of intellectual life. Many things already accomplished may help to hasten the better day when life in the country shall be no longer a dull monotonous treadmill of weary toil and hopeless isolation. Daily rural mail delivery, im- proved roads, telephone connections and automobile facilities, and last, but not least, improved agricultural methods, should do much to better condi- tions in the country and to make life on the farm really desirable. The agricultural department at our State University and our Horticultural Ex- periment Stations are already turning the mind of college-bred young men toward the honorable business of tilling the soil. The city must still look to the country for her leaders in business; but the country itself will offer to many of her finest sons and daughters allurements and opportunities not in- ferior to those of the city. With conditions like these the country church may be expected to assume a role far different from that which is hers in a 'arge part of our land today.
CHAPTER XX.
MANUFACTURING.
By Graham Young.
BEGINNING, GROWTH AND PRESENT CONDITION-EARLY PLANTS AND SHOPS-MODERN MILLS, FOUNDRIES, ETC.
The institutions which, during recent years, have made Springfield one of the most important manufacturing centers in the Southwest, originated in modest beginnings. They came in response to the demands of the times growing from primitive industries into great establishments with the pro- gress of the community from a village into a town and afterward into a city. The "fix it" man came into the country with the first pioneers, making re- pairs to everything that was needed by them from clothing to guns, tools and wagons.
The "tinker, the tailor, the candlestick maker" were in evidence among the first citizens of Springfield in the early days, occupying a place corre- sponding in importance to that of the proprietors of the most extensive estab- lishments of later times and relatively they were persons of greater conse- quence in the community than the managers of the great plants in which vast industries are now carried on. The all-around mechanic who opened a shop in a frontier settlement commanded business as soon as he was able to demonstrate skill and ability to handle the work which was needed in his line. He often carried on his business for years without additional help. His handiwork was his advertisement and he was known far and wide if he was able to meet the requirements of those whose welfare was largely de- pendent upon his thoroughness and efficiency.
One of the necessities of the pioneer's equipment was firearms, and the man who was skilled in the art of their manufacture and repair was one of the most useful craftsmen among them. Such was Jake Painter, son of Samuel Painter, who came to Springfield in 1831, dying here in 1836. Jake's brothers. John and Elisha were devoted to the sports of the field and con- tinued in the occupation of hunters and fishermen long after the big game had disappeared from this vicinity and the rivers and creeks had been de- pleted of much of the original abundance of the finny tribe. Jake bought a lot on Olive street near the northwestern corner of the public square in 1845 and established there a gunsmith shop which afterward became famous.
ITS
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Among other things he was the maker of a pistol known as "Jake's Best" which was much in favor with the adventurers who came through Spring- field in 1849, 1850 and 1851 bound for the California gold fields. It was one of the busiest shops in town where this redoubtable weapon was manufac- tured and all kinds of guns and pistols overhauled, repaired and remodeled.
About the same time another pioneer concern was established here by J. C., better known as "Chap" Bigbee, an unassuming descendant of the Vir- ginia family of whom the illustrious Patrick Henry was a member. He was a tailor, such a good one, it is related, that some of the old-timers would not wear any suit for their Sunday best except those made by the painstaking Bigbee. Another skilled artisan, Wilson Hackney, occupied the same shop with him, engaged in the making of hats.
Grandfather Jamison and John Lair were pioneer blacksmiths ; Michael Boren was a tinner of ante-bellum days who continued in the business here, until several years after the war. W. H. Lyman was a blacksmith of the Civil war period and the decade following. An ante-bellum shoemaker named Jopes had a shop on Boonville street.
The first foundry in Springfield was started by Martin Ingram in 1858. It was during this year that Charles Gottfried opened a furniture shop on Boonville street in a location since continuously occupied by him and his sons, the concern now being known as the Gottfried Furniture and Carpet Company.
The rapid extension of commerce in every direction during the years immediately preceding the Civil war, opened the way for the establishment here of stores carrying stocks of goods sufficient to fill large and small orders for merchandise of various kinds. Among these was one opened in 1862 by J. T. Keet and William Massey on the west side of the square. Newton Rountree became identified with the firm afterward and it is now known as the Keet-Rountree Dry Goods Company. G. D. Milligan who started in the grocery business on the east side of the square was the pioneer jobber in his line. This was the beginning of the wholesale trade of Springfield, which has had much to do with making this city a manufacturing center.
At that time an old-fashioned pioneer mill. a one-horse affair, was grinding the grist for the community and sawmills were still in operation in the vicinity of Springfield, no great inroads yet having been made into the forest primeval hereabouts which was soon afterward denuded of its most valuable timber by the ravages of the Civil war and the activities of the years which followed.
EARLY GROWTH.
During the first thirty years of her existence Springfield grew from a' frontier settlement into an enterprising community of two thousand in-
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habitants the industrial progress of which corresponded to that which had been made in a gradual development of the natural resources of the country in its immediate vicinity and the beginning of the extension of its commerce to other sections. The rush to the California gold fields and the initial movement of emigration to Texas had opened up lines of travel and traffic to the far West and Southwest, but Springfield was still surrounded by dense forests and wide prairies reaching in every direction over the plateau on which the town was situated into the rugged country beyond, a vast region of almost unbroken wilderness spreading over an interminable succession of hills and hollows, in which the inhabitants lived mostly in log cabins and divided their attention between hunting and fishing and the pursuits of agri- culture. There were some fine farms around Springfield and other towns. but farther away it had not been thought worth while to cultivate the land except in the valleys along the principal streams and in other choice loca- tions. Prospecting for mineral had scarcely been begun except in a wild- eyed search for a certain "Lost Louisiana" gold mine sought in vain for a hundred years through the Ozark and other ranges of lesser mountains run- ning south and west to the foot hills of the Rockies. In this quest the ad- venturers passed over a world of mineral wealth in lead, zinc, iron and other ores the partial development of which has been the basis upon which great manufacturing interests have been built up, to say nothing of the coal mining industry in which millions of dollars are now invested and thousands of men employed. No attention was paid to coal and other mineral products which were of comparatively little value as long as the country was without the means of transportation required for their utilization.
The growth of the milling interest of the city to its present great dimen- sions illustrates in an interesting manner the development of manufacturing industry from the arduous labor and painful processes of early days to the facilities and prodigious capacity of the present.
When the first settlers reached this section of country not quite a hundred years ago they brought with them in addition to such tools, implements and supplies as were necessary, an industry and ability indispensable to the wel- fare, sometimes even the existence of the pioneer. There was abundance of fish and wild game to furnish meat, the woods were full of wild fruits. berries and nuts and it is related by veracious chroniclers that wild honey was so abundant that it retailed at a cent per pound, being not only a cheap and delicious article of diet but making an excellent substitute for wagon grease. But bread, the staff of life was lacking. It was too far to haul flour from St. Louis and it was years before communities were sufficiently large for the establishment of even the one-horse grist mills which marked the first step in the development of the present system. As soon, however, as the first corn crop was gathered, not reverting to the method of the Indians in
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its preparation for food but by a process almost as crude, the settlers began to produce their daily bread. A conical shaped hole was made by boring or burning into the top of a stump or a section of a large tree, the hole being about a foot wide and eighteen inches deep. A great wooden pestle was made to fit the hole, sometimes it was swung to a pole when it was called a sweep pestle, sometimes it was lifted up and down by hand. The hole was filled with grain and the process continued as long as was necessary for the reduction of the grain to something like the corn meal of later days. The bread made from it was called "pound cake."
It is related that a man named Ingle erected the first grist mill in south- western Missouri at a point on the James river about eight miles south of Springfield, where the first settlement was made in this vicinity in 1821. There is record of another mill being put up by William Fulbright in 1832 near the head of Little Sac.
Mills driven by horse power and small water falls became numerous in southwestern Missouri as the population increased and one of them was operated in Springfield, known as the Julian mill.
In similar manner gradual progress was made toward the sawmill and planing mill of these days. When the settlers built their first houses the logs used were round with the bark on. Then came the logs hewn flat on two sides and the squared logs. Puncheon floors followed the dirt floors of the first hastily constructed cabins. Then came the whipsawed boards. Logs were laid across frames and boards sawed out with tedious labor. Then followed the mill with the circular saw. Planing mills and lumber yards were soon among the busiest institutions in the city when the people of Springfield began the work of rehabitation, immediately after the war, in 1866. Quarries were opened and brick yards and lime kilns started to meet the extraordinary activity in building operations which in a few years trans- formed the town into a populous little city. Among the planing mills in operation at that time was one owned by "Uncle" Davy C. See, a venerable gentleman who soon disposed of his interest to S. W. Mclaughlin and he to Redington and Chester of Chicago. They shortly afterward sold their interest to R. E. Everett and his associates, who have since built up the great institution known as the Springfield Planing Mill, Lumber and Construction Company.
PRIMITIVE INDUSTRIES.
Among the industries which flourished here in the early days were the carding of wool to be used in the making of homespun cloth and the tanning of hides to furnish leather for various purposes. Two important institu- tions of ante-bellum days were a carding machine operated by horse power on the east side of the Boonville street bridge over Jordan and a tan yard on
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the west side of Boonville street near by. Thus the manufacture of leather goods was begun with the initial process of converting the raw material supplied by the hides into the leather which was worked up into boots, shoes, harness, saddles and whatever else in this line was needed by the pioneers.
There has been continuous progress in the manufacturing of saddlery and harness, carriages and other vehicles and, in recent years, the accession of collateral industries in connection with the automobile business. Minor industries are represented by numerous concerns some of which have pros- pered greatly. Charles Perkins established a carriage factory soon after the war and continued in business a number of years. His shop was on Boon- ville street. The City Carriage Shop was established in 1876 and conducted for years by Jess & Sturdy, Mr. Sturdy coming in later. M. Bowerman was the proprietor of a popular paint shop which was in operation a number of years. William McAdams was a leader in the saddlery and harness busi- ness. John S. Carson head of a family who have been well known here for many years was one of the first skilled leather workers employed in the McAdams and other establishments. Hackney and Speaker opened a tin :shop in 1880 and built up a prosperous business.
In the meantime the spinning wheel and the hand loom have been succeeded by textile mills which flourished here for years but did not con- tinue in operation, a failure concerning which it is outside the province of this chapter to speculate. A brewery has been built up and disappeared in a nave of prohibition sweeping over the western country and a distillery also, perhaps on the same account. When the sawmill gave place to the planing mill it was but the beginning of a diversification of industry which in this day has given us the furniture factory and other shops in which nearly every kind of wood work is done.
The development of the southwestern country during the decade from 1850 to 1860 made busy times in Springfield in which industrial progress was fully proportionate to increase of population. There was as yet no opening for anything like a factory in a community of a few hundred people engaged in various occupations but the hum of industry was heard on every hand in small shops located on Boonville and South streets, St. Louis and College, Walnut and Olive, all close in around the public square. The long- est street was made by the continuation of Boonville and South streets from the present location of Center on the north to Mt. Vernon on the south.
A census of Springfield in 1854 showed a population of five hundred and fifty. A school enumeration made by Reuben Blakey two years later showed an increase of about two hundred. Cary Jamison and John Lair established blacksmith shops here about this time, the former on what is now West Walnut street and the latter on St. Louis street.
The O. K. Flouring mill on what is now West Mill street was established
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by Allen Mitchell and John Caynor shortly afterward. Hancock Haden & Company established a small tobacco factory in 1858 near the present site of the gas tank on Main street. A. M. Julian was operating a carding ma- chine on the east side of Boonville and there was a tan yard on the opposite side of the street.
W. J. McDaniel, who came to the city in 1862, from Ozark, at first en- gaged in the tinning business, starting a small bank at the same time, after- ward becoming prominent in the business and financial affairs of the com- munity. Jonathan Fairbanks embarked in the planing mill business on his arrival here from Ohio. Others whose names have since become household words were early identified with the establishment of different industries.
The first foundry was opened with elaborate ceremonies in 1858. It occupied a site near the present location of the Woodruff building. W. H. Worrell opened a confectionery in 1858 on the lot at the corner of College street and the square afterward occupied many years by the Greene county court house. Cy M. Eversole and others of his family established the Eagle mill on a farm southwest of the city in 1867.
Doctor Bailey, a pioneer citizen, took the lead in the establishment of the cotton mill in the interest of which the Messrs. Sheppard, McGregor and others were active. The financing of this and other manufacturing con- cerns was the beginning of promotive enterprise in Springfield.
The industrious printer was on hand early in the history of the city beginning his activities with the establishment of the Ozark Standard in 1837. Job work was incidental to the occupation of the typographical force in the shops from which different newspapers were issued. There was con- tinuous improvement in the "art preservative" with progress in other lines but it was long before ambitious projects and concentration of effort in different lines made way for separation of the newspaper and job office in different departments and eventually for the establishment of concerns which in the extent of their operations and the value of their products have attained the importance of manufacturing institutions.
The establishment of a trans-continental stage line through the city in 1858 and the extension of the government telegraph line to Fort Smith in 1860 marked the beginning of a period of great development following the lines indicated by those pioneer movements in the extension of the facilities of communication. Of similar signficance was the formulation of plans for the building of railroads through this section, projects which engaged the attention of public-spirited citizens early in the history of Springfield and were consummated in the successful inauguration of great enterprises which bridged the bloody chasm of the Civil war with high hopes of prosperity that was interrupted but not long delayed by the great conflict.
Bountiful crops in 1861 had given people here a great surplus which
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was of inestimable value in meeting the demands made upon them during the first two years of the conflict. Growing scarcity resulting from the depredations of contending armies and the waste of war caused a great advance in prices of products. This was maintained for several years after the close of hostilities by abundant circulation of currency, stimulating enter- prise of every kind in a new country in which the development of vast natural resources had but just begun and the people, anticipating a general revival of business, were fully awake to the opportunities of the times. Thus the inter- ruption of material progress here was brief and inconsequential compared with the results of arrested development in other parts of the country not so fortunately situated. There was an influx of enterprising men during the next few years some of whom were to make their mark in the shaping of Springfield's destiny. Among those who came just before during and immediately after the war were John McGregor who in 1866 opened a hard- ware store which afterward grew into a great wholesale and retail establish- ment; James Abbott who was instrumental in the establishment of a well equipped foundry and other institutions of permanent value; Job Newton, pioneer dealer in grain, hides and other products; Doctor Bailey, one of the principal promoters of the cotton mill; Jared E. Smith, who introduced the use of steam in Springfield in a planing mill afterward owned by John Schmook; Dr. E. T. Robberson, prominent in public enterprises of all kinds, who started a steam elevator at North Springfield; Jonathan Fairbanks, who helped put in one of the first new planing mills after the war, in 1866; William Nagler who established a small meat packing establishment in this year, and a score of others who were active in starting new enterprises and developing old ones and in a general way shaping the industrial affairs of the city so as to make possible the achievements of the present.
With the advent of the Atlantic and Pacific railroad which reached North Springfield in 1870 came a tremendous impetus to business followed by a short period of bounding prosperity. It was at this time that the first railroad shops were built and several manufacturing enterprises which have figured prominently in the history of the city were established. Among these were the improved foundry with James Abbott at the head of it; the Spring- field Wagon Works, started by H. F. Fellows; the cotton mills, with Doctor Bailey and other prominent citizens in charge; and the woolen mills oper- ated by M. K. Smith.
Twenty-two thousand dollars in bonds in aid of manufacturing enter- prises was voted by the city to encourage manufacturing, in 1872. Spring- field had an extensive trade in cotton and wool in those days, as well as in hides, furs and other products in which there has been a falling off while there have been steady gains in the volume of trade in grain, fruit, vege-
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tables, etc., all of which has affected the different manufacturing interests to a considerable extent.
There were one hundred and fifty business houses in the old town, with stocks aggregating a million dollars in value in 1878, according to Escott's city directory. The Springfield Gaslight Company had then, after three years of operation, eighty-two regular consumers, and fixtures and furnish- ings for about forty more. The company had thirteen thousand feet of first-class mains and the city had leased fifty street lamps.
Rapid development of mining interests followed discoveries of lead and zinc at different points in southwestern Missouri during the decade between 1870 and 1880. Joplin became famous and rich strikes were made at other points in that vicinity and later at Aurora in Lawrence county and Ash Grove in Greene county. Meanwhile extensive coal fields were tapped by new railroads in this section, assuring abundant supplies of fuel needed by the great manufacturing institutions which had begun to grow up in Spring- field. Later lead and zinc mines were opened in the southern part of Greene county and in Christian county.
Minor industries of the old town at that time included the job offices of the Springfield Leader. Times and Patriot-Advertiser, and book-binding and blank book manufacturing concerns of J. A. Harris and C. B. McIntyre. The Frisco machine shop, erected in 1873, was the principal institution of North Springfield employing one hundred and seventy men and turning out over a hundred new cars in addition to keeping up repairs on three hundred and sixty-three miles of road. Among other industries of North Spring- field in 1878 was mentioned a new steam elevator erected by Dr. E. T. Rob- berson ; F. A. Heacker's cigar and tobacco factory and the Southwester job office.
The period of business depression which followed the panic of 1873 was now drawing to a close. Springfield had successfully weathered this storm of adversity, from the effects of which some important cities had scarcely begun to recover. Immigrants continued to come into the country, the de- velopment of which continued steadily.
Meantime plans for improvement of the situation were being worked out, including, among a number of important new enterprises, the building of Kansas City, Ft. Scott and Memphis railway to this city and the building of new branches of the Frisco, all of which were in the end to contribute greatly to the prosperity of this city.
The Springfield Directory of 1881, published by the United States Com- pany, gives an interesting review of the city's industries. The Springfield cotton mills, established in 1872, now employed about three thousand spindles, driving sixty looms, with an annual capacity of one thousand bales of cotton converted into fabrics, which, it is stated, found a ready and profitable market
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at home. There was also a ready sale in the vicinity for products of the Springfield Woolen Mills, in operation at that time, manufacturing a superior grade of cloths and yarns from wool grown in this section. The Queen City Mills, established in 1879, supplied with the best improved machinery, were turning out one hundred and fifty barrels of flour per day, most of which was shipped to Eastern and Southern markets. The Eagle Mills, with capacity for fifty barrels, produced an excellent grade of flour, which found favor in the home market. The Springfield Wagon Works, giving employment to one hundred hands, was turning out annually two thousand wagons of light weight and great strength and durability, a type of vehicle much needed for the rough country of southwestern Missouri and northwestern Arkansas, in which most of them were sold. The spokes, felloes and axles were made from choice timber procured in this section. There was at this time another wagon fac- tory, conducted by James Hodnett. About this time the manufacture of white lime of superior quality from the lime stone abounding in this vicinity be- came an important industry, which has since grown into great magnitude here and Ash Grove and other points in this vicinity.
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