Caldwell County MO Archives History .....AN OLD CALDWELL COUNTY STATE ROAD 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com September 4, 2008, 1:11 pm

AN OLD CALDWELL COUNTY STATE ROAD
	Narrator:  Charles Gurley, Hamilton Twp.

     Mr. Gurley is a son of the last Geo. and Sarah Gurley who came into 
Caldwell county 1868 and settled in Gomer township.  He grew up out there and 
recalls a road, commonly called "The Old State Road."  It appears from several 
sources that there were several State Roads, hence this is not to be 
identified with the one called "The Old State Road of 1855" in this series of 
interviews.
     This old state road which Mr. Gurley recalls ran by the old Gurley place, 
now its trace lies in the front yard of the Ed Gurley farm.  He thus knew the 
road by boyhood experience and in later years heard farmers speak of certain 
parts of their farms as being hard to plow because the old state road ran 
there.
     He recalls that it came from Chillicothe from the N.E. then ran in order 
across the following farms at the corners, Charl, Gurley, Dole, Levi Conner, 
Cramer, and he did not know exactly thru what farms it ran before the Clark 
farm or after the Cramer farm.  It went past the Clampitt farm, so several 
narrators say, south west to Kingston.
     There was an early stage coach road, and the Wm. Clampitt house, or hotel 
as it virtually came to be, was a stage stop before the stage coach thru 
Hamilton to Kingston and Lexington was popular.  Besides, it went to different 
places.  (See Mrs. Dawson paper for the Clampitt Hotel.)
     Mr. Gurley said that in coming to Hamilton in the early 70s, they drove 
south west from their house on the old state road to the Clampitt house, then 
struck a trail in the prairie that went north west to Hamilton.  The first 
trail they used went through the farm known now as the Steve Hicks farm, but 
when the land along that trail was taken up and fenced, they used a trail that 
led through the so called Kellogg farm, further east that also led to town.
     He as others recalled the Wm. Clampitt house as the place where many 
early dances were held.
     In this connection with the old trails leading from Hamilton south-west, 
Mrs. E. Dawson says that when they wanted to go from their farm two miles east 
of Hamilton to visit their friends in the "York Settlement" in the 1870, they 
drove bee line off south east, crossing the Ed. Gurley section from N.W. to 
S.E. and passing the Clampitt house.  This road was terrible, when they struck 
it, but the prairie trail was even worse.
     Interviews  1934.


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