Caldwell County MO Archives History .....THE 1874 DROUGHT AND THE GRASSHOPPER YEAR 1875 
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Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com September 4, 2008, 1:23 pm

THE 1874 DROUGHT AND THE GRASSHOPPER YEAR 1875
	Narrator:  William Morrow of Daviess Co.

     Mr. Morrow is competent to speak on both these subjects, having been here 
at that time.  He lived then and still lives northwest of Hamilton in Daviess 
County.  He well recalls the   drought of 1874 which everyone mentioned last 
summer in the 1934 drought.
     As a young man, Mr. Morrow worked on what was known as the Bradley place 
southeast of Hamilton (farm later owned by Jason Kinne).  In 1874, he was on 
that job.  He cut fence posts on Shoal creek and drove these posts that year, 
the subsoil being wet.  (This was not true in 1934.)  There was not much corn 
raised that year, but fodder was good, pastures were fair, and there was a 
good crop of oats which sold at about 35 cents.
     Mr. Morrow says that Jacob Wonsettler went to Clay county where the 
grasshoppers had eaten all the crops and bought a bunch of two year old 
cattle.  He drove them to Caldwell county and having wintered them on fodder, 
he sold them later at a fine profit, building up the Wonsettler money.
     Mitchell Bowers, Jacob and Samuel Wonsettler (brothers) and Ira Houghton, 
all of this county, went to Illinois along the Mississippi south of Quincy and 
bought several loads of corn that fall.  Buying up 700 to 800 head of cattle 
there from drought - sufferers they shipped them to Quincy where the feed was, 
and after fattening them, sold them on the Quincy market.  In the spring of 
1875, seed corn was in great demand and sold readily at one dollar and quarter 
a bushel.
     While 1875 is known in local history as the grasshopper year, Mr. Morrow 
says that one of the biggest corn crops in the history of this section was 
grown that year.  The grasshoppers came about the middle of July, as he 
recalls, stayed two or three days, then went east, having done comparatively 
little damage in these parts.  They travelled in swarms, and made a noise like 
a wind in their passage, sometimes almost obscuring the sunlight, and making 
the appearance of a dark cloud.
     
(Interviewer's note:  The interviewer recently met an old man who happened to 
be in Hamilton as a stranger on the occasion of the visit of the 
grasshoppers.  He had come up from Mississippi intending to buy a farm here; 
but as he sat on the veranda of the old Hamilton House opposite the depot and 
saw the clouds of grasshoppers as they swept through the air, he walked over 
to the depot and bought a ticket back to his own state where the grasshoppers 
did not come.)
     Interview  September 1934.


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