USA > Missouri > Clinton County > The History of Clinton County, Missouri : containing a history of the County, its cities, towns, etc., biographical sketches of its citizens, Clinton County in the late war, general and local statistics, portraits of early settlers and prominent men etc > Part 22
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HISTORY OF CLINTON COUNTY.
who took him away from his home and shot him n cold blood. Joseph McCorkle and L. J. Wood were also among the carly settlers.
CHURCHES.
The first church building (log house) was erected on the farm of Lorenzo J. Froman, above named, between 1837 and 1840, and was then named Stony Point. The land upon which it stood, as well as the g ... ve- yard near it, was donated by Mr. Froman. The Rev. John Elliott, Cumberland Presbyterian minister, organized the church, and afterward married Lorenzo J. Froman and Cecil Gist in the old log church.
The next denomination to build a house of worship was the Mis- sionary Baptist, under the labors of the Rev. Brawley, from Clay County. Services were held at first in the house of J. W. Pulliam.
The churches of the township now (1881), are : Ebenezer Church, erected in 1871 or 1872, by the Methodists and Christians ; Elder W. C. Rogers, of St. Joseph, is the Christian minister, and Rev. Leeper, the Methodist. The Cumberland Presbyterian Church, built in 1875 or 1876, under the management of the Rev. W. O. H. Perry, who now resides at Stewartsville, DeKalb County, Missouri ; present minister in charge, O. D. Allen. Regular Baptist Church, called Pleasant Hill, built under the auspices of Eppe Tillery ; this church was organized in 1846; the names of the original members were : James Elliott, Thomas Fry, James C. Hall, Westley Gentry, Dillard Martin, Joel Mathews, Samuel Oldham, George B. Lingenfetter, Elizabeth Elliott, Catharine Fry, Virginia Hall, Polly A. Fry, Susan Fry, Fannie Mathews, Mary A. Fry, Cynthia S. Lingenfetter, and Sallie Hall ; the church was built in 1868, and cost $1,500; it was dedicated in October, 1868, by Thomas Wolverton and James Ward ; the pastors have been Rev's Eppe Tillery, L. W. Todd, and James C. Penny ; it has a membership of thirty-three. All neat frame buildings and are in a flourishing condition.
SCHOOLS.
There are seven school houses in the township, six white and one colored. They are known as the Hazeldell, Lott's, Hall's, Stony Point, McCully's, Oakland and the colored school. The first teacher was Wil- liam Rainey, from Kentucky, and taught at a very early day, on the farm of Lorenzo J. Froman. Mr. Rainey is said to have been an excellent teacher, but would occasionally imbibe too freely of stimulants, and while under their influence he was sure to practically demonstrate his belief in the scriptural injunction, "Spare the rod and spoil the child."
MILLS.
Among the earliest to erect mills in the township were Solomon and Benjamin Fry, Solomon putting up a mill in the southeast corner of the township, and Benjamin locating one | both horse mills near Bainbridge.
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HISTORY OF CLINTON COUNTY.
Uriah Bainbridge erected a flouring and saw mill on Robert's Branch, about the center of the township, to which he attached a distillery in 1856 or 1858.
Bird Hixon has now a saw and grist mill, on Smith's Fork of the Platte, built about 1878.
GRAYSON,
a small station in Hardin Township, is located on the southwestern branch of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, seven miles southwest of Plattsburg. The town was laid out in 1871, on land form- erly owned by H. B. Baker. The town was called Grayson, after Mrs. Baker, whose maiden name was Grayson. The first business house was that of Eaton & Baker, succeeded by Mr. Jacobs. The present business firms are Henry Owens, merchant and post master ; James Forsee, drug- gist, and a blacksmith. Grayson is located in the midst of a fertile region of country, and constitutes the shipping point for large lots of hogs and cattle.
CHAPTER XI.
SETTLEMENT OF JACKSON TOWNSHIP.
This township occupies the extreme southeastern corner of Clinton County, including township 54, range 30. It extends east and west eight miles, and north and south five miles. Shortly after the first organization of the county, in 1833, the same was divided into two townships, the eastern of which was styled Jackson. Of this, the first justice of the peace appointed was John Biggerstaff, and the first con- stable Ezekiel Smith. Other townships, from time to time, were made out of this territory, till finally the term Jackson Township became exclusively applied to that district of the county above referred to, as at present so designated. Though other portions of the county were, perhaps, a little earlier settled than the territory included in what is now known as Jackson Township, some of the leading pioneers of Clinton undoubtedly made their first settlement in that section. While Jackson, beyond question, compares favorably, in an agricultural point of view, . with any other section of the county, it is, nevertheless, in some portions, more broken, or rather less uniformly level than other parts of the same. It is well watered by Clear Creek, Muddy Creek, and other tributaries of Fishing River, the banks of which streams are all more or less heavily clothed with excellent timber of different varieties, including oak, wal- nut, ash, hackberry, hard maple, sycamore, linden, and other growths indigenous to these latitudes. Indeed, this township may be termed a timbered section of Clinton, most of its area being originally heavily wooded. Its soil, in common with that of other portions of the county, is generally rich, producing excellent crops of the staples now raised. In anti-bellum days, it was one of the finest hemp producing sections of a county that had no superior in that yield in the state. Along the banks of the creeks, excellent limestone, suitable for building purposes, is readily quarried. Sand stone is, also, occasionally found, but of inferior quality. As yet, no positive evidence of the existence of coal within the limits of the township has appeared.
Those who settled, in an early day, in this locality, testify to the exuberant growth of the different varieties of prairie grass in this sec- tion, some of which, especially the well known Bluestem, has been known, here, to attain a growth of seven or eight feet.
Among the earliest of Clinton County's
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HISTORY OF CLINTON COUNTY.
PIONEERS
to settle in what is now Jackson Township was probably Hiram Smith, who located about the center of the same as early as 1826. In 1828, Mrs. Nellie Coffman, with her mother and her son, afterwards Judge J. R. Coffman, then a small boy, came from Kentucky, and settled on or near the site of what afterwards became the thriving and important town of Haynesville. Judge Coffman's grandmother lived to the ยท remarkable age of one hundred and seven years, and died in Haynes- ville in 1844. His mother, Mrs. Nellie Coffman, also died there in the spring of 1877, at the advanced age of ninety-three years. The judge himself for many years a representative citizen of the county, was thrown from his carriage in the streets of Lathrop, and died in the Lathrop House, in that town, from the effects of this fall, August 3, 1881, at the age of sixty-one years. He had filled several important offices in the county, the duties of which he discharged with zeal and efficiency. He was an honorable and upright citizen and died regretted by all. Collins, in his History of Kentucky, records the following amusing incident : It appears that Jacob Coffman, a pioneer of that state, lost his life in one of the many expeditions against the Indians in which the settlers of that day were, from time to time, engaged. When the news was brought to his widow, afterwards the venerable pioneer of Jackson Township, who died as above stated, at the age of one hundred and seven years, the sorrowing widow, in the bitterness of her deep affliction, exclaimed : "Jake dead ! well, I would as soon have lost the best cow and calf on the place !"
Drew Cogdill, the bold hunter, his brother, Josiah, and George Denny, Sr., settled near Haynesville, in 1835. Collet Haynes also settled about this period, together with others from different sections, among whom came Austin R. King, the first in Jackson Township to teach the young idea how to shoot. Mr. King, who is a native of North Carolina, now (1881 in his eighty-second year, is still living, in the enjoyment of robust health, and, seemingly, in full possession of all his faculties, on the farm on which he settled forty-six years ago, one and a half miles west of Haynesville, where, ten days after his arrival in the neighbor- hood, he established the first school ever opened in the township, and which he continued to teach for a period of three successive years. The school building was a rude log house, with puncheon floor, and windows and furniture in correspondence. With these appliances and surround- ings, the pioneer teacher, endowed with attainments worthy of a better experience, began his first efforts in the distant West. The fame of his ability, and consequent success, soon reached remote districts, and pupils flocked to his school not only.from his own county, but from the remote Grand River country, and even from more distant localities.
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HISTORY OF CLINTON COUNTY.
At one time, his academy numbered over eighty pupils, a rare circum- stance in that early day and sparsely settled country.
Among the students of this pioneer institution of learning were two youths, both of whom afterward rose to eminence. One of these was Moses E. Lard, who achieved a national reputation, and the other Benjamin Baxter, afterward a distinguished Methodist preacher. The family of young Lard were extremely poor, and such was the impression which the youth made on the kindly heart of his young teacher, Austin R. King, that he not only taught him gratis, but boarded him without charge, in order that he might properly avail himself of the opportunity of study. His brother, William Lard, was also a pupil in A. R. King's school; but he does not seem to have manifested that desire for learning for which his great brother was, afterward, so pre-eminently distin - guished. At the time that Moses E. Lard accepted the kind offer of his teacher, he was about to be bound apprentice to a tailor in Liberty, by the name of Dougherty. Leven Lard, the father of Moses, had six children, three sons, Moses E .. John and William, and three daughters Elizabeth, Polly Anne and Jenny. He was, in his way, a remarkable man. About the year 1832 or 1833, he had emigrated from his home in Tennessee to the west and settled in Clinton County, Missouri, for the sake of the game, which, at that day, there abounded. He is described as a man of quick, strong sense ; tall and straight as an Indian, with a flashing eye and black hair ; of manly bearing, candid, frank and gener- ous to a fault ; loved his friends with an intense love, and hated his enemy with an intense hate-a man of great courage, quick temper, but cool and self possessed. His rifle, his pony, and his dog, were the idols of his heart. Alas for the buck on whom he drew that bead or touched that fatal trigger! He was as tender hearted as a woman, per- fectly truthful and exceedingly improvident. He never owned less than one horse and a gun, seldom two of either, and never a home in his life. Though himself irreligious, he respected religion in others; never suffered his children to use improper language, and encouraged them, with his whole heart, to speak the truth always. He detested oppression and sympathized with the humble and the injured to a degree which, at times, made him wild and dangerous. When he could boast of a tent for his wife and children, with a boundless prospect of deer, his spirits were high, and life was a luxury. Such was the picture which, more than thirty years after his arrival in this county, the distinguished Moses E. Lard, drew of his honored father, who died of small pox a few months after he landed in Missouri, leaving an almost destitute family. In speaking, in after life, of a religious meeting which he conducted near what is now Haynesville, Moses E. Lard thus feelingly referred to his quondam preceptor, the venerable Austin R. King : "Among the many that joined at that meeting, I take much pleasure in naming my
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HISTORY OF CLINTON COUNTY.
old school teacher, Austin R. King. I owe him a debt of deep gratitude. which I am not ashamed to confess. His education was not high, nor his ability as a teacher, uncommon. Yet he possessed this eminent merit-that he inspired his boys with a most uncommon love of learn- ing. Their thirst under him for the Pierian spring, became romantic and intense. He awakened hopes, sneered at obstacles, cited illustrious names, till he left his pupil feeling that none but a dastard shrink to bear the toil for the dazzling honor that beckoned on ; and if more did not leave him to become honorable and useful, if not distinguished, let none lay the charge to the tremulous form that still resides a mile west of Haynesville. When the time comes for the Great Teacher to mete out to the obscure humble worker, the reward due the cup of cool water, I pray Him to remember my old benefactor with a fitting honor."
With many others besides, who came about the same time, may be mentioned J. Holt, a native of North Carolina, who settled, in 1837, about one mile from Haynesville. The town, long after built in Clay County on the Kansas City branch of the Hannibal & St. Joseph Rail- road, was named Holt, in honor of this pioneer. Michael Holt, a nephew of his, also came from the same locality.
About the same time, or shortly after, came Marvel Jones, Wilson Potter, and Mart Reels. Alfred Whitsett, Sr., settled in the township in 1839 ; Jesse B. Truggle, in. 1843. Some of the other representative settlers, included, James Allen, who died in California, William Goddard, who also moved to California, Smith Crawford, Anderson Smith, G. W. Stokwell, and family, Washington Huffaker, one of the earliest officials of the county, Joseph Hunter, the Palmers, Wm. Coulter, the Douglasses, the Reed family, William Jones, Judge David Cooper, the Lindsays, Reuben Rogers and family, the Toddhunters, Wade, who started the first tannery in the township, Josiah Walker, James Williams, Allen Denny, the Perkins family, the widow Henderson and her six grown sons, the Rowe family, the Ferrils, J. Brown, Richard Millar, Ben. Riley and son, Peter Boggess, Israel Johns, the Pullens, James Dagley, Sr., and Jackson Estes : Dennis Parsons, William Holt, a brother of Jesse above men- tioned, Jesse Brown, Silas Henderson, now (1881) living in his eightieth year, and John Henderson, his brother, in his eighty-second year, Silas Moreland, T. J. Hubbard, from Madison County, Kentucky, who came in 1847, and the first to introduce into the neighborhood the breed of short horn Durham cattle ; David Reynolds, from Garrard County, Kentucky, who came to Haynesville in 1847, now living there in his seventy-sixth year. John and William Albright, Rev. Philip Gill, and his brother John, settled, in an early day, within the limits of Clay County, but so near the town of Haynesville as to be almost identified with its population. Many of the above mentioned, indeed most of them, are dead.
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HISTORY OF CLINTON COUNTY.
James W. Evans, at different times a saddler, a merchant, and a farmer in Jackson Township, came to Haynesville in 1844. He recently moved to the neighborhood of Lathrop, where he owns a fine farm of three quarter sections of land in a body, around and upon which are about ten miles of hedge fence.
Settlers began to flock in, attracted by the fertility of the soil and other elements of excellence. Meetings for religious services and gath- erings of a social nature bringing the people together from time to time, suggested the idea of a village. Accordingly, in July, 1840, Solomon Kimsey, William F. Franklin, and James R. Coffman laid out a town about eleven miles southeast of Plattsburg. This, in honor of Collet Haynes, whose farm was nearest the proposed town site, they named
HAYNESVILLE.
It was also in the immediate neighborhood of a well known spot called Oakland, to which Moses E. Lard once thus referred : "My first meeting was held far, very far out in the west, at a place called Oakland. The place was so named from a fine old oak, beneath whose grand shade the meeting was held, and from the forest of puerile oaks that grew round it far and near, all of which, for ought I know to the contrary, may have been the true, lineal, and I will even say, legitimate descend- ants of that same patriarchal tree, for it looked as if it might have been the sire of an endless breed of oaks. Shortly after the meeting, and close to Oakland, a little town sprang rapidly up called Haynesville. It was so called after Collet Haynes, a plain, honest farmer of the neigh- borhood, whose greatest sin was that he used to predict, in my young days, as I have been told, that I would certainly at some time be hanged. Hitherto, I am thankful Collet's vaticinations have not been realized, etc. Haynesville I still remember with becoming gratitude ; I remem- ber it chiefly for its mince pies, honest men, virtuous women, muddy streets, and numerous tribes of dogs. It is no great town, to be sure, and properly enough, has never made any great pretentions to town- ship. Yet Haynesville has its merit-it has never produced a politician nor a rhymster-two of the greatest calamities that can befall a village. Haynesville stands in the midst of a district of great fertility of soil -a district which, I am sorry to add, has ceased within the last few years to be very eminent for anything. A long time ago, that is to say in the days of Solomon Kimsey, it used to be noted for its numerous Baptist and Methodist revivals, and for the innumerable ghosts that infested it. The statement is made on the authority of Drew Cogdill, a bold hun- ter, a brave man, very apt to see ghosts, and sure to tell when he did. Most of the men in the neighborhood could read Chronicles by spelling half the words, while all had either read Bunyan and the eighth of Romans, or heard them read. Bunyan supplied them with experiences,
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HISTORY OF CLINTON COUNTY.
Romans with texts to prove predestination. On Sundays, most of the country flocked to meeting, the wags to swap horses and whistles, and to bet on the coming races ; the Christians, as was fitting, to hear the sermon and relate their experiences. The sermon was sure to be on foreknowledge or free will, and to contain a definition of eternity. The experiences embraced reminiscences of headless apparitions, or voices of pulseless corpses wrapped in coffin sheets. Of that antique age, Solomon Kimsey, of whom honorable mention has already been made; was the oracle, his brother-in-law, Brawley, the butt. Solomon aye preached the same sermon, which aye had the same effect-that is, it left the women crying and the men discussing election. He had a taste for the marvelous and delighted in the tales of Drew. He relished a tough story well, laughed heartily, smoked a pipe in decency, and never said so fervent a grace as when a huge turkey-cock, just from the spit, lay before him .
Another feature of those primitive days which deserves mention here, was the neighborhood fortune teller. She was always a noticeable character, with a squint eye, a single tooth, "a nose and chin that threatened 'ither,' a weird voice, stiff fore finger, wore specs and took snuff. The instrument with which she divined was a tea cup with coffee grounds in it. The wife you were going to marry, the children to have, she could tell with infallible certainty. The very spot she could name where you might find your stolen horse, or stray pig. She could tell where bags of gold lay deep emboweled in the earth; where the bones of murdered men lay rotting, and was the true conservator of the vicin- age. During her life no rake might attempt illicit love, belle play false with her lover, or neighbor steal his neighbor's hams or kail. All feared her and kept the peace, as decent folks should do.
The country pedagogue of those unregenerate days also merits a paragraph. He was generally a chuffy man, five feet six, with gray hair and a fine girth-a man who cracked off definite articles, copulative conjunctions, Hooglys Bay and ciphering ; could tell the day of the month by the almanac, and brogue your moccasins ; pulled teeth, bled and puked the neighbors; tock grog with you when dry ; wrote your will and prayed for you when you were dying. He was a deacon in the church, justice of the peace, and general counsellor at law, and was a robust believer in witchcraft ; he was always elected captain on muster days; was president of the debating club, judge at shooting matches, held children when christened, and gave lectures as to the best time in the moon to salt meat and plant snaps. In the school room he was a philosopher and a tyrant, made few impressions on the mind, and left many on the back, taught the boys to make manners, and the girls to curtsy ; at noon played bull-pen and knucks, and at all other times was a gentleman and an astrologer.
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HISTORY OF CLINTON COUNTY.
The corn shucking of those days was an occasion which always brought the whole neighborhood together. The women met to brag on their babies, drink stew, knit and discuss the best method of setting blue dye ; the men to shuck corn, take rye, recount battles with bruin, and tell of long shots at deer ; the boys to spark and blush ; the girls to ogle and fall in love.
Next to corn shucking, the winter quilting and hoe-down were the pride of this long past. To me the chief attraction at the quilting was the huge stacks of pumpkin pies which graced it, of which I am not con- scious that I ever had enough.
Deer roamed through the woods, foxes burrowed in the cliffs, panthers scramed, wolves howled, and squirrels lived in almost every hollow tree. To hunt these foxes and climb these trees was my con- stant Sunday calling. This was the great sin of my early life. It was for this sin that Collet Haynes argued my future end. As predestina- rians rode to meeting and heard my hounds, they sighed and muttered, " the hemp is growing that hoists him." But for all their hard wishes and hard sayings, I now take deep pleasure in forgiving them. It is proper here to add, that the forerunning narrative antedates the time of my meeting by several years. It relates to a more primative time-a time when the red man's track was still in the land, and bears were a weekly sight. At the time of my meeting (1842), great advances had been made on those times. The men had ceased to wear buckskin, the women, dressed in calico and drank green tea, ghosts were more rare, and Drew had migrated. Tents covered with elm bark were now quite out of fashion, boots were occasionally seen, the men used handkerchiefs and the women sidecombs. Soap was no longer a myth to the children, though starched bosoms still attracted much attention. The more able families could afford tables, and biscuit on Sunday morning, while almost all had learned what sausage and spare-rib meant. Buggies and steamships were still fabulous things, while cock fighting and log rolling had fallen into disuetude. Collet Haynes had long ceased to prophesy ; old Henry Green was dead ; though Andrew Fuller still prosecuted truants for climbing his saplings, and regularly made the circuit of his estate every Sabbath to see if any neighbor had broken a twig or stolen a pig nut. Austin King, dear man, was now justice of the peace, and Wash. Huffaker, county judge, though Wash. still used his thumb and finger, and not his handkerchief.
A shingled roof and a brick stack were now not absolutely unknown, and men used chains instead of withes in plowing. The use of pins was altogether abandoned, and. fish were caught with hooks, as in other countries. In Haynesville, shotguns, pacing horses and red top boots, however, had not yet made their appearance, although deer skins were thrown aside and the young men were using saddles. Such was the state
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HISTORY OF. CLINTON COUNTY.
of the country about the time of my meeting, etc." At the close of this, the Oakland meeting, which lasted two weeks, some sixty names were included in the church organization.
In July, 1842, the town of Haynesville was laid out by Solomon Kim- sey, William F. Franklin and James R. Coffman. It is evident, however, from the statement of Lard, that at the time of his first meeting in 1842, there were no buildings yet erected on the site. This perhaps, is not strictly correct. The town, at all events, soon after took its start, and rapidly became the trading center of a vast area of country. The first to build on the site of the town was Burnett Scott, who, about 1842, put up a wagon shop, a blacksmith shop and a dwelling. The first man to give mercantile consequence to the town was William Ligget, who opened the first store in the place in 1845. His stock in trade consisted of whisky and leaf tobacco. He continued in business here about twelve months, when he concluded to abandon commercial pursuits, and went into the live stock business. He died.some years after.
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