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 23
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ยท The second mercantile enterprise in the town of Haynesville was established by Robert Harris, on a rather more extended scale than that of his predecessor, his stock to the value of $800, including, besides whisky and brandy, thread, buttons, chalk, cheese, grindstones, and various other articles of current demand in that time and locality. It appears that reading was a part of Mr. Harris' literary education to which not a great deal of attention had been given, while writing was an accomplishment which he entirely ignored. To a man of Mr. Harris' native resources of mind, however, this slight defect in mental culture was no desideratum. Fruitful in expedients, he instituted for his own personal convenience, a system of hieroglyphics wherein he recorded his daily business transactions. These it appears, however, were not as uniformly intelligible as might have been desired, and sometimes were the occasion of some trifling embarrassments, as the following occurrence goes to show : A customer calling one day to settle his account, Mr. Harris turning to his " books " (certain chalk marks on the wall) promptly enumerated among other articles, a cheese. This the customer emphat- ically denied ever having bought. The merchant, in the opinion of his patron, undoubtedly honest, was equally positive of the unfailing accur- acy of his " books," while he admitted that he had no recollection of the transaction. At this juncture the customer remarked that accuracy was certainly not a feature of Mr. Harris' style of book-keeping, for he had neglected to charge up a grindstone which he had purchased. The truth immediately flashed on the mind of the astute merchant and accomp- lished book-keeper, and, with many apologies, he proceeded to explain that the circle represented a cheese, and that the same figure with a dot in the center, for the hole, represented a grindstone. Making the entry hurriedly, in the press of business, he had neglected the central dot.
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HISTORY OF CLINTON COUNTY.
Hence the mistake. On a subsequent occasion, it is reported that this pioneer merchant manifested another peculiarity, or rather an idiosyn- cracy based upon an equitable principle. A customer, on one occasion, desired to purchase one dozen buttons, the entire stock in trade in the button line of Mr. Harris, and was informed by that gentleman that the thing was out of the question ; he could not be so unbusiness-like as to sell all his buttons to one man, as that, to use his own expression, what- ever it meant, "would break the assortment." The building in which this business was conducted was built of linden logs, and was afterwards weather boarded and painted red, in consequence of which color it was styled the "British house." At the end of his first year's experience in commercial pursuits, Mr. Harris found himself compelled to suspend business, and vacated the premises, which were afterwards occupied by Yelverton Green as a whisky house. The British house subsequently served various purposes, among others that of a private residence. It was finally torn down. Robert Harris was the first to hold the office of post master in Haynesville. After the suspension of Harris, several other small establishments of similar character started, and, in turn, sooner or later, closed out.
About 1845 or 1846, Abraham Funkhouser and James P. Gee opened in Haynesville a $2,300 stock of general merchandise. They long con- tinued to be the representative firm of the place, and subsequently pur- chased of Irvin Groomer a brick house, in which they continued to sell goods. This building still (1881) stands on the town site of Haynesville.
In 1849, James R. Coffman was appointed post master of Haynesville. He was the second to fill this office.
Shortly after Funkhouser & Gee, William Tracy opened a stock of goods in the place. The Rev. Franklin Graves, a Baptist minister, also about this time began to sell goods. They all did a safe and pros- perous business. Collins & Davis for a number of years did a large dry goods business, as did also Hubbard & McCroy.
In 1853, Sommers & Gee embarked in general merchandise, and for a time did the largest business ever conducted in Haynesville. The style of commerce in that day involved to a great extent the credit system ; and the breaking out of the civil war, which rendered the collection of debts of this character, in many instances next to impossible, ruined this firm. Hamilton & Evans did a large business in general merchandise, till December, 1864, when they suspended, in consequence of the dis- tracted state of the country. The last firm to do business in general merchandise in Haynesville was composed of George W. Mitchell and Thomas Huffaker. They moved their stock to Holt, in Clay County, in the spring of 1879.
The first mill established in Jackson Township was built in 1842, and operated by Joshua Walker. It was turned by horse power. In
15
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HISTORY OF CLINTON COUNTY.
1850, Austin R. King and Russell McCrory put up in the town of Haynes- ville a grist mill, with one run of burrs. This also was a horse power institution, and turned out both flour and meal. King & McCrory oper- ated it about four years. In 1851, William Douglas established a circular saw mill in the town. It was turned by horse power. In 1853, William Clapp started a similar mill. The next and last erected in the town- ship was a steam power mill, put up by Newton Denny, in 1854, about one-half mile southeast of Haynesville, on the Richmond and Plattsburg road, and operated by him or his renters till the fall of 1865, when it was sold to A. P. Cutler, who, after operating it three or four years, sold the mill to parties who moved it to Vibbard, in Ray County.
In its palmy days, Haynesville included a population of nearly 800 souls, allowing a soul to each inhabitant, and had represented in its lim- its all the leading branches of ordinary commercial business, and these on no insignificant scale. Beside this, the manufacturing interests of the place were fully up to the demands of a large and daily advancing trib- utary country. Wagon makers, carriage makers, saddle and harness factories, agricultural implement makers, blacksmiths, tailors, tinsmiths, gunsmiths, silversmiths, cabinet makers and coopers, each and all did a lucrative and flourishing business.
Charles Kelsey, the leading gunsmith of the place, was a manufac- turer of rifles, a business in which he achieved an extended reputation.
Among the leading firms in this department of enterprise, were Williamson, Holt & Co., who carried on, till the breaking out of the civil war, an extensive carriage and buggy factor ; Cravens, Gant and others, manufactured extensively wagons, plows and other agricultural implements.
Hubbard & McCrory started the first livery stable in the place.
An important feature of the manufacturing industry of Hainesville was the wool carding factory, built in 1847, by Judge R. Coffman, Rus- sell McCrory and Joab Lamb. This was for a long time operated by William Nye, and afterwards by James Fitz Gerald, whose son, Dr. Fitz Gerald, is now (1881) a resident physician of the town of Lathrop, and President of the Kansas City District Medical Society. The factory was afterwards moved to Clay County.
The first tannery in the township was operated by a man by the name of Wade, who established it in an early day.
While other places of public entertainment had previously been conducted in the place, the first hotel proper, in Haynesville, was kept by Thomas Martin, a Missionary Baptist preacher, who also followed the tailoring business. He was generally called "Pap Martin," and had married a sister of Yelverton Green. Pap Martin often preached in New Hope (brick) Church, in Clay Connty, two and one-half miles south of Haynesville. The regular minister of this church was Rev. Robert
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HISTORY OF CLINTON COUNTY.
James, father of the notorious James boys. Mr. James was a graduate of Georgetown College, Kentucky. He was an exemplary christian, and highly respected in the community. He died, in 1849, while on his way to California.
The town of Haynesville was for a long time incorporated, with a board of trustees, and, up to the period of the breaking out of the civil war was recognized, wherever known, as an intelligent, moral, and well conducted community, while the credit of its business men abroad was unexceptionable. A notable event in the history of this town, was the preaching in Oakland Church in 1852, of Alexander Campbell, the great apostle of its religion. In the days of its prosperity, schools, churches, temperance, and benevolent societies flourished with a success unex- celled in any locality of corresponding importance in the state. The first school in the town of Haynesville was taught by William Thomp- son in 1852, in a good frame house, which was afterwards burned down. While ministers of both the Baptist and Methodist Churches from Clay, and perhaps, from other counties, occasionally preached within the limits of what is now Jackson Township, the first religious denomina- tion to organize into a church there were the Christians, on the occasion of Moses Lard's meeting in 1842, before referred to. Elders Payne and Warriner, of this church, had previously preached there. In 1850, the Christians erected in Haynesville a building for a place of worship. This was Oakland Church, the first church built within the limits of Jackson Township. It was a frame building sixty by forty-four feet, and was built by contributions of the members, chiefly in material and labor. Its cost was between $800 and $1,000. The church prospered abund- antly, and at the close of Lard's first meeting was organized with sixty names. It soon had a membership of over four hundred. The original members, at the period of its organization, when it was styled Oakland Church, included, together with others, A. R. King, Jesse Brown, Joshua Walker and wife ; Williams, his son-in-law, and wife, five members of the Harrington family, and Washington Huffaker. The latter, with A. R. King, was appointed deacon. Austin R. King was clerk of the con- gregation for many years after. In 1851, the first Sunday school in the township was organized in Oakland Church; Major D. H. Lindsay was superintendent, Wash. Huffaker assistant superintendent, and George B. White secretary and librarian. The next denomination to build a church in Haynesville was the Methodist Episcopal, South. This was in 1853. The building was a neat frame structure, erected at a cost of about one thousand two hundred dollars. Henry Younger was the con- tractor. Among the original members at the organization of this church were George S. Huffaker and wife, Andrew Fuller and wife, Abraham Funkhouser and wife, John R. King and wife, John W. Gill and wife, and
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HISTORY OF CLINTON COUNTY.
David W. Reynolds and wife. The first sermon in this church was preached by the Rev. Philip E. Gill.
The third denomination to build in the town, was the Missionary Baptist. Their church, a frame structure, was erected in 1857, at a cost of about $1,400. The originial members were A. D. Stone and wife, Reuben Searcy and wife, William P. Garrett and wife, L. B. Garrett and wife, W. H. Smith and wife, Dr. James C. Bernard and wife, Miss Peggy Stone, Smith Allnut and wife, Mrs. Jane Gill, and Dr. J. C. Bernard and wife. Rev. Wm. C. Barrett was first minister.
The Christian Union Church was organized in Haynesville in the summer of 1870, with 125 members-Rev. J. V. B. Flack, minister. The church has prospered signally, and, notwithstanding the fact that many of the members have left to organize other congregations, in different localities, its present (1881) membership is 150. The church building, the best in the place, cost $2,700.
Prior to 1848, Haynesville and Jackson Township were supplied with medical attendance by physicians resident in Clay County. In that year, Dr. J. C. Bernard, the present (1881) sole physician of Haynesville, settled in the place.
SECRET AND BENEVOLENT SOCIETIES.
As before remarked, charitable and benevolent institutions, as well as churches, were early fostered in Hainesville.
In the fall of 1853, Hainesville Lodge, A. F. & A. M., was organized under dispensation, with the following officers : H. B. Hamilton, W. M .; George B. White, S. W .; D. W. Reynolds, J. W. May 25, 1854, the same was chartered, by the Grand Lodge of the state, as Haynesville Lodge No. 49, A. F. & A. M., with the following officers: Henry B. Hamilton, W. M .; John R. King, S. W .; D. W. Reynolds J. W. The other charter members were, Dr. Edward Martin, Samuel T. Brooken, John W. Collins, Simon G. Bigelow, John Bigelow and C. H. Kelsey. The first work in this lodge was the initiation of Alfred Davis and Jas. WV. Evans, October 22, 1853, while under dispensation.
In 1866, Eusebins Royal Arch Chapter was chartered in Haynesville, with P. Wilhoit as High Priest. It was moved one mile and a half to Holt, in Clay County, at the period of the removal of the Blue Lodge to that place, in 1879, and, shortly after, surrendered its charter. Haynesville Lodge, prior to its removal from the county, enjoyed a long season of uninterrupted prosperity. At one time, its membership was nearly two hundred. Out of it grew numerous similar organiza- tions, in Clay, Caldwell, and neighboring counties.
Contemporary with the Masonic, was a lodge of Odd Fellows, who long held their sessions in the hall of the former, which occupied the
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HISTORY OF CLINTON COUNTY.
second floor of Lewis Park's cabinet shop, in the place. The first Noble Grand of this organization was John R. King, since dead. He is referred to, by those who knew him in former days, as one of the largest hearted men who ever lived in this or any other country. This lodge has long since lost its existence.
Temperance societies were popular in those days with a large class, and the commercial center of this section was not without her share of this active element of moral excellence.
Time, the tomb-builder, however, has left his mark on Haynesville, and little now remains to speak of the prosperity of that period, when she had scarce a commercial rival in the county. Her palmiest days were the twelve or fifteen years immediately preceding the breaking out of the civil war. The ordeal through which she passed in those terrible days of wrath which succeeded, left, in common with others, their trace upon her front, but it was not until the scream of the iron horse began to awaken the echoes of those beautiful groves, amid which she stood embowered, that the death knell of her prosperity was sounded. On the building of the Cameron and Kansas City branch of the Hannibal & St. Joseph road, in 1867, the line of its track, passing down the valley, left Haynes- ville a mile to the eastward, just near enough to do a place of her size a vast amount of harm. Immediately the village of Holt, in Clay County, about one mile and a half southwest, was started on the railroad. This was was the signal for the abandonment of Haynesville, and most of its business was almost immediately moved to the new town. Soon the Masonic Lodge followed, and, afterward not a few private residences were moved away. Even brick buildings were taken down, and the material transported to aid in the building up of newer and more fortu- nate localities. In June, 1881, the finishing stroke was added in the removal of the post office to Holt. The drug store of Doctor J. C. Bernard, the pioneer physician of the place, still stands, and constitutes the last and only relic of the commercial importance of Haynesville, to-day extant, while the church buildings that once accommodated con- gregations, largely drawn from her populous midst, stand in comparative solitude, as so many monuments of a departed prosperity, to mark the mutability of all human affairs.
There are in the township two other unimportant business points. These are Barnesville and Converse.
BARNESVILLE,
in the eastern part of Jackson Township, is situated in section 11, near the eastern line of the same, in township 54, range 30, and about one mile west of the Ray County line. It is a small trading point, and was started in 1857, when Solon Moore built a steam saw and grist mill on
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HISTORY OF CLINTON COUNTY.
the town site. This he operated two years, when he sold out to James Green and William Moberly, who, after running the mill one year, made a change, Green selling his half to Samuel Hargrave. In the following year, Moberly sold his half to J. P. Martin. Hargrave & Martin, after operating the mill about six months, sold it to parties who immediately moved it away. The first merchants in the place were Wasson, Har- grave & Co., who sold goods there from the spring of 1860 to 1862. They were succeeded in this business by Hargrave & Perkins, who con- tinued to sell till 1866. Hargrave & Crowley then composed the firm till 1868 or 1869. D. B. Palmer then sold goods about a year, at the end of which time his house was destroyed by fire. No business of any importance has since been conducted there. Barnesville, however, has a very neat frame church, the property of the Presbyterians. The congre- gation was organized June 14, 1847, with the following members : George Denny and wife, Benjamin McLean and wife, M. Riley, John Crosset, James Riley and wife, David Cooper and wife, Kizza McNealy, J. B. Green, and Newton Denny. It was designated by the name and style of Crooked River Presbyterian Church. Its first pastor was the Rev. R. Scott. He was succeeded by Rev. I. N. Canfield, after whom Rev. G. C. Crow filled the pulpit. The other ministers in succession were : Rev. Dr. J. C. Barnes, Rev. J. P. Fox, Rev. W. Dixon, Rev. Charles Price, Rev. J. P. Foreman, Rev. Edward Yantis, and Rev. J. P. Foreman, the present (1881) incumbent. The church has a present membership of eighty. The elders are P. Clark, T. D. Paisley, G. O. Barnes, E. Estill and E. C. Green.
CONVERSE,
a railroad station on the Wabash Railway, is located near the center of Jackson Township, in the southwest corner of section 9, township 54, range 30. R. S. Brazelton, the station agent, merchant and postmaster of the place, built, in 1872, the first, and only store now occupied in the place. John Henderson and his son, Mart, were the first to settle on the present town site. This was long before the railroad was built and the town located. The population of Converse includes two or three families.
CHAPTER XII.
SETTLEMENT OF LATHROP TOWNSHIP.
Lathrop Township is in the eastern part of Clinton County, and is bounded on the north by Shoal Township and one mile of Platte, on the east by Caldwell County, on the south by Jackson Township, and on the west by Concord. It includes the entire territory embraced within the limits of township 55, range 30, besides twenty-six sections on the north and west sides of the latter, aggregating an area of sixty-two sections of magnificent agricultural country. Generally a prairie surface, it is not without its ample share of the timber peculiar to this section of the northwest. Its generally uniform plain is veined with numerous streams, many of which afford unfailing supplies of stock water, and with their sinuous banks fringed with grateful shade of no insignificant growth, serve to vary the general monotony of the prairie scenery. Principal among these streams are Shoal and Deer Creeks, with their numerous tributaries flowing generally in a northerly direction. The present township of Lathrop was originally included in the limits of Jackson Township at a period when the latter embraced one-half the area of the county. It was erected into its present proportions out of territory included in the southern part of Shoal, a portion of the original eastern division of the county, and the northern part of the reduced township of Jackson. The western part of Lathrop Township is tra- versed from north to south by the line of the Kansas City branch of the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, a distance of over eight miles, including sinuosities of the track. The St. Joseph division of the Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway cuts the southwest corner of the township in a bend a mile and a half east and west, going through the southwest corner of the townsite of Lathrop, and one mile in a south- erly by easterly course into Jackson Township.
The early settlers of the eastern and southern sections of the county being drawn, to a considerable extent, from among the dwellers of Clay County, that portion of Clinton bordering on the latter was, of course, first settled, and Jackson was. a comparatively populous district before the territory afterwards included in the limits of Lathrop Township had a settler.
Among the first pioneers to make their homes in the latter were I. N. Rogers, from Tennessee, who arrived in 1840. Samuel T. Brooking,
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HISTORY OF CLINTON COUNTY.
who came from Woodford County, Kentucky, in 1845. Lewis Rogers, of North Carolina, who settled in 1848. Daniel Allnut, in 1854. Edward Brooking, in 1856. Among others were John Tillery, Abner Webber, John Bedford, Spencer Tuggle, Smith Pope; James Cheek, William Hobbs, John Combs, John Saint John, Samuel Tipton, Edward Parks, Ensley Cooper, of North Carolina, and Samuel Seaton. The first farm in the immediate neighborhood of what is now Lathrop city, was settled in 1857, by James Leake, its present (1881) owner and occupant. In the following year his brother Edward settled the adjacent quarter. The first school in Lathrop Township was taught by Charles Ingles at the Brooking school house, five miles east of Lathrop city. This was in the fall and winter of 1856.
At the time of the building of the Cameron and Kansas City Branch of the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, the present site of the
TOWN OF LATHROP
was designated as a station on the same, and the place laid out by J. S. Harris, land commissioner of the road. This was in the fall of 1867. It is at the junction of the Hannibal and St. Joseph with the Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railroad, thirty-nine miles from Kansas City and thirty miles from St. Joseph. At that period, prairie grass of unusual luxuriance waved its tall and dense masses over the spot that was destined at no remote day, to afford homes and habitations to a popula- tion of largely over one thousand in an active and prosperous business center. Then the only sign of human occupancy in that wide expanse of waiving verdure was the smoke that arose from a primitive farm house, about a mile to the southeastward of the prospective depot. This was the habitation of James Leake, to the northern limits of whose farm the southern boundary of the subsequent town of Lathrop after- wards extended. Deer abounded in the neighborhood, and frequently appeared in the tall grass that then grew on the town site. The first building erected in the immediate neighborhood, in consequence of the construction of the road, was a section house near the southern limits of the town site.
The first actual settler in what is now the town of Lathrop was J. O. Daniels, present (1881) proprietor of the Lathrop House, the leading hotel of the place. About the Ist of November, 1867, he arrived, with James Murdock, who afterwards erected a frame building for a store house, and each purchased a lot. They came from Utica, Livingston County, Missouri, a small town on the main line of the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad. Returning home on the 22d of the same month, Mr. Daniels again arrived on the train, bringing a carload or two of pine lumber. He was accompanied by P. H. Brace, his clerk, afterwards the
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HISTORY OF CLINTON COUNTY.
first post master and express agent of Lathrop, opening their offices in the lumber office of J. O. Daniels, which also was used as a railroad depot before the company built one. Scarcely a visible stake in the rank prairie grass marked the location of the town when this lumber was unshipped. Before evening, however, a pedestrian, wading through the over-topping verdure, made his appearance at the new lumber yard. This was D. E. Main, a farmer of the neighborhood, and afterwards a merchant in the town, and to him the pioneer dealer made the first sale of merchandise ever effected within the limits of Lathrop. This con- sisted of four pine boads, price 84 cents.
The news of the arrival soon spread, and customers flocked in. For the period of sixty days J. O. D. continued to sell lumber without any office and with scarcely a temporary shelter.
In the meantime, James Murdock had returned, and in January, 1868, erected for a grocery store the first building ever put up in Lathrop. This was kept by Henry Murdock, his brother. It was on lot 12, in block 25, on the northwest corner of Oak and East Streets. The build- ing has since been enlarged, and is now (1881) occupied by L. V. Smith as a grocery and queensware house. Mr. Murdock had been engaged in the grocery business in Utica, where also Mr. Daniels was at that time operating a saw mill and lumber yard. Together they had explored the entire length of the Kansas City branch of the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, on the completion of the same, and finally selected as the probable future town the site of Lathrop, as above stated. The first train of cars that ran through the town of Lathrop was conducted by Daniel L. Patch, a native of Vermont. He afterwards continued for sev- eral successive years to run a passenger train on the same line. He was a man six feet and a half high, of muscular build, and weighed 195 pounds. He is, said to have been one of the best known and most pop- ular conductors ever connected with the road. He is now a resident of Galesburg, Illinois.
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