The history of Johnson County, Missouri : including a reliable history of the townships, cities, and towns, together with a map of the county; a condensed history of Missouri; the state constitution; an abstract of the most important laws etc, Part 24

Author:
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Kansas City, Mo. : Kansas City Historical Company
Number of Pages: 1056


USA > Missouri > Johnson County > The history of Johnson County, Missouri : including a reliable history of the townships, cities, and towns, together with a map of the county; a condensed history of Missouri; the state constitution; an abstract of the most important laws etc > Part 24


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HISTORY OF JOHNSON COUNTY.


the wild wastes of an uncivilized district to the grand and glorious old county of Johnson. Like all other western countries, scientific investiga- tions in the county's natural history have never been extensively made. In the eagerness of the inhabitants to make a living and bring out of the soil the ordinary productions for the support of life, they have neglected nearly all questions of science, when from a knowledge of which they would often more thoroughly succeed in developing the resources of the county.


The author has aimed to give a general knowledge of the natural his- tory of the county without going much into detail, as the facts to be obtained on this subject are not sufficiently ample to warrent such a course, did the limits of the work permit. We first present to the reader her physical features, detailing at some length her water courses; then her geology, giving what few meagre facts we could gather; next, we furnish a botanical sketch of the various plants in the county.


PHYSICAL FEATURES.


Before we enter upon a detailed description of the natural history of this county, it is important to present to the reader a general knowl- edge of its physiognomy. In the description of any object, a general view of the whole should precede a more minute or particular description of the component parts.


JOHNSON COUNTY is situated in the western part of Missouri, being about midway between the northern and southern boundaries of the state, and the second tier of counties from the Kansas line. It lies between 34 degrees and 20 minutes, and 35 degrees and 5 minutes north latitude; and the county seat, Warrensburg, is about 93 degrees and 30 minutes west from Greenwich. The county embraces most of the land between ranges 23 and 30 west, and townships 43 and 48 north. It is bounded on the north by Lafayette county, on the east by Pettis county, on the south by Henry and Cass counties, and on the west by the counties of Jackson and Cass. This county is situated in one of the most fertile portions of the state, and, though it is not a river county, it is near enough to partake of many of the fine qualities for which the counties along the Missouri are so celebrated. All the water that falls upon the gently flowing landscape of the county, ultimately finds its way into the Missouri river. The great thoroughfare that connects the east with the west has always passed through Johnson county. It is on a direct line between St. Louis and Kansas City, and long before the Missouri, Pacific railway was built through this county, overland journeys to the great west were made through this portion of Missouri. This county is nearly rectangular in shape, a few square miles being taken from every corner, except the


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HISTORY. OF JOHNSON COUNTY.


, southeast corner. From the east side of the northeast corner, a narrow' strip three-eights of a mile wide and two miles long, is taken. From the north side of the northwest corner, a broad strip. two miles wide and thirteen miles long, is taken, making twenty-six square miles. And on the: west side of the southwest corner, a small strip three-fourths of a mile: wide and six miles long is out of the county. This makes, altogether,. thirty-one and one-fourth square miles cut from the corners, which the county lacks of being a perfect rectangle. Leaving out these differences: in the length of the boundary lines, the county may be said to be thirty- three miles in length and twenty-five miles in width, and contains 508,000 acres, being one of the largest. counties in. western Missouri. These small irregularities, occasioned: by defects in the early surveys of the: county, afford no inconvenience to the citizens. In fact, few counties in! the state bear this much regularity. The surface of the county is a beau- tiful undulating plane, there being but few marked elevations or depres- sions. The western part of the county is somewhat hilly and has a rather extensive growth of timber. In this portion of the county there are a number of natural mounds, some in the vicinity of Knob Noster, from which this city of the " knobs " is named. At least three-fourths of' the county is prairie, while the rest is timber land. Few counties present more attractive scenery to the eye of the traveler than the wide, rolling prairies and fine woodland streams in which Johnson county abounds. From some of the higher points the eye commands views of exquisite lov- liness, embracing the winding course of creeks, the waving foliage of trees, the undulating surface of prairie with cultivated farms, with farm houses-from the log hut of the first settler to the brick or painted houses and barns of the more advanced cultivators of the soil, and even the- splendid mansions of the wealthy.


Among the blessings that nature bestows upon man, none is more important or necessary than a bouutiful supply of water, and the natura advantages of a country are probably more readily seen from an examina- tion of its water courses than by any other means. In this particular, John- son county is especially fortunate. There are no rivers in the county, but several very large creeks and numerous small streams which furnish an abundance of water for all the purposes of the county, except proba- bly for mill power. The largest stream in the county is Blackwater, which takes its name from the fact that the water which flows along its bed is very dark and humid. The main stream of this creek is formed by the junction of two branches, which rise in the northwest corner of the county; one called the North Fork, and the other the South Fork of Blackwater. The South Fork rises in the extreme northern part of Jack- son township, and runs southeast through Columbus township and part


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of Centerview, carrying with it the water of many small tributaries among which are James Branch, Spanish Oak and Lizzard Creeks. The South Fork rises a little east of the center of Jackson township, and runs south till very near the township line, when it turns and runs southeast through the northeast corner of Kingsville township. It then turns again and goes due east through most of the northern part of: Madison township, but, turning northwest before it leaves the township, and uniting with the North Fork in the northern part of Centerview township. This branch has numerous large streams, both from the north and the south running into it. From the junction of these two forks, Blackwater runs in an easterly direction, but in a very zigzag course through the rest of Center- view township, and most of the way through the northern portion of War- rensburg township. This stream then runs northeast through Simpson and Grover townships, passing out of the county very near the northeast corner. This stream goes through eight of the fourteen townships of Johnson county, meandering along in a very sluggish manner but at the same time furnishing water for most of the inhabitants of the county.' This stream was formerly lined on both sides by large bodies of timber, but to a great extent these timbered lands have been cleared up, though' much still remains. Blackwater has four large branches on the north, besides those already mentioned. Honey creek rises in Lafayette county, and runs southeast through the corner of three townships, viz., Columbus, Hazelhill and Centerview. Walnut creek rises and flows through Hazel- hill, emptying itself into Blackwater in Warrensburg township. Cotton creek and Flag Staff flow east through Simpson township. One of the largest of the southern tributaries is Post Oak, which rises in the southern portion of Chilhowee township, and runs north through this and Warrens -. burg township, passing the city of Warrensburg, and finally emptying its waters into Blackwater. This stream waters an extensive portion of the central part of the county. Probably the largest of all Blackwater's trib- utaries is the Clear Fork creek. This stream takes its rise in the south- ern part of the county in Post Oak township, flows northeast through this township, and then through the northwest corner of Jefferson township, whence it flows due north through Washington, then northwest through part of Grover and Simpson townships into the Blackwater near Kirk Pat- rick's mill. Besides these large tributaries of Blackwater, many other branches might be mentioned did time and space allow, but these are suf- ficient to show the immense benefit Blackwater confers upon Johnson county, draining as it does, all except the extreme southwest and southeast. But the southwestern part of the county is drained by Big creek and its tributaries, the two principal branches of which are Walnut and Bear creeks.


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HISTORY OF JOHNSON COUNTY.


The southeastern portion of the county is the source of another large creek, the Big Muddy, which flows from Jefferson township northeast through the county of Pettis, discharging its waters into the La Mine, in Cooper county. Most of these large creeks retain water all through the long dry seasons of summer, thus furnishing to the stock of the county an ample supply of water. Probably no county in the state has its creeks so well and so universally distributed over its surface. The timber in this county, as in all this western country, is found contiguous to the streams, lining these on both sides and sometimes extending a mile or more away from them; the larger streams are surrounded by a larger belt of timber. As we have seen that the country is cut up into a complete net work by the streams, so it is evident the timber can be seen extending in every direction, lining the prairies, and thus presenting to the eye a most beauti- ful variety of prairie and timber. The timber near the creeks in the bot- tom land, is much the largest, furnishing fine material for making farm houses, barns, and other buildings useful to the farmer. It is a charac- teristic of all the woods of this country, that the size and beauty of the trees diminish as they recede from the streams, and this is especially true in Johnson county. The forest trees stand near the creeks while the small trees and shrubs line the woods. In the early settlement of this county these timber lands furnished all the material for the improvement of the country and all the fuel for the inhabitants in winter. So in this way much of the best timber has been consumed, but as the supply of wood has decreased, the resources of the country have been developed, bringing out of the ground coal to be used instead of wood for fuel, and introducing railroads, and in other ways facilitating conveyance, so that the resources of other countries have been rendered accessible to this county. The timber of the county has been extremely useful in the construction of fen- ces, but long before there was any apparent scarcity of timber, hedges were planted by many of the farmers, thus supplying themselves with permanent fences and leaving the timber to grow. While more recently, barbed wire fences have in many cases supplanted the old fashioned rail fence. The timber is yet in sufficiently large quantity to furnish plenty of shade for stock, and even to be used in many places for fencing purposes. It is the general custom of the farmers to reserve all their timber lands for pastures and put most of their prairie land under cultivation, but in some few cases the timber has been cleared off and the land rendered arable. Missouri is emphatically one of the great prairie states of the west, in which Johnson county is not wanting in her part. But the prairies are not so large as those in some other counties, being cut up into smaller parts by the various streams which intersect the county. The undulations. of the prairies are just enough to make them beautiful to the eye, and at


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HISTORY OF JOHNSON COUNTY.


the same time to give them ample drainage. There is very little swamp land in this county, a few swamps being found in the bottoms of Black- water.


GEOLOGY.


The geological characteristics of the county are varied and interesting, and in this country, as in every other part of the world, there is a most intimate connection between the configuration of the surface and the geo- logical structure of any particular district. Every peculiarity of its topog- raphy is due to the nature of its underlying strata, modified by those agencies which are to-day operating to change the entire aspect of nature. The geological history of this county affords some very suggestive facts in regard to its past vicissitudes. It extends chronologically over perhaps millions of years, and includes periods of long repose and periods of extra- ordinary change. The history of its climate has been one of deep interest, and embraces changes so radical and so directly at variance with one another as to be almost beyond credulity.


There have been long ages when it basked under a torrid sun, and then these ages gave place to others equally remarkable for polar frosts. Life in all the variety and luxuriance of a tropical climate gave place to the desert wastes of an artic zone. Nor were these changes sudden. They are there, stamped in every rock at your door, and lined upon the land- scape of your valleys, not as great and far reaching catastrophes, but as gradual transitions, indisputably marked as such by your fossil forms that roll out from the rock you crush, or see traced with a delicacy no draughts- man can imitate. There have been times when old ocean, heedless of his doings, dashed against the rocky barrier that dared dispute his sway, or rolled in solemn conscious might above its highest point; times when a beautiful and varied flora thrived on its surface, and times when there was. naught save a waste of desert matter. We strike our picks in the shales on the hillside, and behold there in the coal that gives us warmth and drives our engines, are the fairy forms that made the fern paradise of the coal period-beautiful arguments, those, of changes that thousands of years, as we measure time, would not compass.


In this progressive age, and the advanced stage of scientific research, the intelligent people of this county cannot fail to be interested in a brief dissertation upon the subject of local geology, as applied to the formation of their own lands, and the constituent elements of their own soil. In the discussion of the subject, the author has been placed under many. disad- vantages. No regular geological surveys of Johnson have ever been, published, and it seems no citizens of the county have devoted any of their time to a study of its geological relations.


In order for justice to be done to a work on local geology, the accu- mulated facts of years of investigation on this subject should be within


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HISTORY OF JOHNSON COUNTY.


reach of the writer. The various fossiliferous remains of the plants and animals of the different epochs, should be collected from time to time as they are discovered in the county. The peculiar structure and arrange- ment of the rocks should be observed in all places possible. But as there are no researches of this kind accessible to the author, he has been com- pelled to make this portion of his work less thorough and complete than he would prefer, combining the few meager facts he has obtained from other sources with his personal examination of different portions of the county. For millions of years, during the time when the earliest form- ations of the earth's strata were being made, this part of the world was an immense sea. During all the different epochs of the Azoic, the Eozoic, the Silurian and Devonian ages, the county of Johnson was the bed of a mighty ocean. The American continent began its emergence from the surrounding sea in the eastern portion of British America, and, gradually extending its lands southward, it comprehended nearly all the territory east of the Mississippi before this state was rescued from the briny deep.


Nearly all west of the Missouri, including several of those vast ranges of mountains that now form the back bone of the west coast of America, were reclaimed from the seas during or after the great mesozoic upheaval. It was during, perhaps, the latter part of the carboniferous period that this country formed the sea coast of a vast ocean, that was gradually, but surely, receding from the outlines of the continent, as it then existed. The great coal measures, that form a thick stratum under almost the entire surface of the county indicate a most rank and luxuriant growth of vege- · tation in this age. When the era of the coal measures had fairly set in, the great interior region of the continent, even from the eastern limits of the Appalachian region to the western borders of Kansas and Nebraska, as the extent of the coal formation shows, slowly emerged; and the continent then, for the first time, extended from the remote arctic zone, south to Alabama. The emergence, giving so great an extent to the young continent, was not. complete until the first of the great beds of veg- etable debris began to form. Then North America, within the limits stated, was one vast forest, except where fresh waters lay too deep for forests to grow, and the lakes probably had islands of shrubbery floating over the waters, as is now true of some of the tropical lakes of India. Over these marshes, then, grew the clumsy sigillarids and calamites, and the more graceful tree-ferns, sepidodendrids, and conifers, with an under- growth of ferns, and upon the dry slopes near by, forests of sepsepidoden- drids, conifers, and tree-ferns. This luxuriant growth was prolonged until the creeping centuries had piled up vegetable debris enough for a coal bed. Trees and shrubs were expanding and shedding their leaves and fruits, and dying, making a great accumulation of vegetable remains. Islands of


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. HISTORY OF JOHNSON COUNTY.


vegetation, floating over the lakes, may have contributed largely to the vegetable debris. Stumps stood and decayed in the swamps, while the debris of growing vegetation, or, in some cases, the debrilus, borne by the waters, accumulated around them, and their hollow interiors received sands, or leaves, or bones, or became the haunts of reptiles, as was their .chance. Such is a brief narration of the events that took place in Johnson county many thousands of years ago-a history, recorded in the registry of her rocks, as truly as that compiled within the memory of the present generation.


Many generations, many ages, must have rolled by, during which time . Johnson county stood between the confines of the land and the water, and could have said to the surging deep, as it washed her shores: "Thus far thou shalt go, and no farther." But we must hasten on to a more detailed description of the county's geology. The county slopes from the northern and southern sides, in a somewhat easterly direction, toward the center, where it is drained by its main stream, the Blackwater. This creek is lined on both sides by a deep alluvial deposit, as is indicated by the bot- tom land found there.


The different formations, as they are found in the successive strata of the county, are now to be given to the reader: First, in the quartenary system, we have, as in all other parts of the state, the alluvium, which con- stitutes the soil of the county. This alluvium is formed by the earthy deposits of running streams, especially during times of flood. And the general prevalence of this kind of soil shows the existence of mighty tor- rents of water, continued from time to time through many ages, in the formation of the surface of the county.


This alluvium reposes upon different kinds of strata, in the various parts of the county. In the southwestern portion of the county, where the land is drained by Big creek, the soil rests upon bottom prairie, a dark, tena- ceous clay, forming often a flat prairie. Correct types of this clay are found in all parts of the Mississippi and Missouri river bottoms. These clays are black, stiff, and pointed, with, sometimes, but rarely, beds of sand, and often contain small concretions of bog iron. The alluvium of other parts of the county rests upon sandstone beds, but, generally, a layer of clay is interposed between the soil and the sandstone.


Bluff, or loess, constitutes the underlying clay in some parts of the .county, especially in that portion near the river. }It is generally a fine, comminuted, silicious marl, of a light brown color, and often weathers into perpendicular escarpments. Concretions of limestone are often found, and to the marly character of these clays.may be ascribed the richness of the overlying soil.


The drift formation, which is so extensive in the northern part of the


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HISTORY OF JOHNSON COUNTY.


state is not found in Johnson county. Underlying the deposits of the quarternary age, are the great coal measures and sandstone formations of the carboniferous age. Nearly the whole county seems to have for its foundation, these immense beds of coal or sandstone. 'But these will be mentioned more minutely, a little further on, in the sections in which they belong. In this county we find about every variety of soil, including rich, poor, sandy and of stiff clay. The character and quality of all soils are mainly dependent on the underlying geological formations. Where sand- stones exclusively prevail, the soils will not stand severe drouths, but with frequent refreshing rains are rendered productive. A soil composed in part of sand, but also largely of lime and humus or vegetable mould is · always productive. 'In wet seasons the sand affords proper digestion of refuse, decomposing vegetable matter, while the other useful promotives of vegetable growth, push forward the crops to vigor and productiveness. This is the character of the soil we find in the north and northeastern parts of Johnson county. This soil is underlaid by the upper coal meas- ure with the middle coal measures beneath. This soil, extending as it does north and east of Johnson county, to nearly all the counties on the Missouri river, is the richest soil in the state. There are, of course, occasional tracts of inferior land included within these limits, but the soil is generally from one to six feet thick and quite black, yielding splendid crops of corn, grass, pumpkins, squashes, potatoes, turnips, etc. Where the underlying material is clayey with some lime, but no sand, and but little humus, we have a soil that will retain too much water on the surface to yield good crops, and in dry seasons the clays are too hard for moisture to penetrate and reach the delicate roots and fibres of the growing crops. The soil in the southern part of the county seems to be more of this character than any other, though it ranges in quality all the way from this class up to the thickest and best loam.


Johnson county coal fields are probably the most abundant of all her natural resources. Most of the mineral coal of this county consists mainly of carbon with some hydrogen and oxygen, traces of nitrogen and more or less of earthy impurities.


The immense debris of vegetable matter, which we have mentioned was made in the carboniferous age, being turned into coal by decomposi- tion under water. When the vegetable material is under water, the atmospheric oxygen is excluded, except the small part contained in water, and this oxygen, with some proceeding from the growing plants in the waters, is all that comes from external sources.


Under this diminished supply, part of the carbon and hydrogen escapes oxydation and a coal supply is left behind. The covering of water prevents a complete combustion of the material, just like the covering of earth over


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HISTORY OF JOHNSON COUNTY.


burning wood, when charcoal is made. The air might also be partly or wholly excluded from vegetable debris, by a covering of clay or earth, and this is what generally happend sooner or later in the carboniferous period. Nearly all the coal of this county belongs to the lower coal meas- ures, and much of the coal in the western part of the county belongs to the same class as the Lexington coal.


The thick beds of coal found in the eastern part of the county probably. belong to the Marais Des Cygnes coal. This coal representing a thick- ness of from 22 to 5 feet veins seems to extend over a large portion of the southwest of the state. It is found near Moundville, and in the south part of Vernon; next seen along the line of Bates and Vernon; thence of good thickness near Rich Hill; again on the waters of Panther creek at several places, may be traced by its thickness farther north and northeast through St. Clair into Henry. Passing northeastward we find it on Grand river near Clinton and Windsor. Grover township, in this county, seems to be entirely underlined with a bed of coal four or five feet thick.


The most extensively worked mine in this county is at Mount Serrat, where for several years two or three hundred convicts from the state penitentiary were employed. The coal in this mine is nearly five feet thick and is found one hundred feet below the surface. We give below the analysis of a bed of coal found on the farm occupied by Mr. J. S. Porter, near Dunksburg, as taken from the state geological survey, made by Prof. Garland C. Broadhead, in the years 1873 and 1874.




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