Caldwell County MO Archives History .....MANN FAMILY IN DAVIESS COUNTY 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com September 3, 2008, 6:43 pm

THE MANN FAMILY IN DAVIESS COUNTY
	Narrator:  David Mann, 79, of Hamilton, Missouri

	Journey in Ox-Wagon          Home Made Furniture
                 Linch-pin Wagons             The First Home
	Game In the Fifties and Sixties.

     Mr. Mann's parents were Milton Mann and Julia Leech married 1851 in 
Kentucky whence they came later 1853 to Daviess County by a small ox-team.  
They were six weeks on the trip.  The wagon was a linch-pin wagon; the wheel 
had no iron around it but had a spindle which made the wheel revolve and they 
locked it fast by a key.  If the key loosened, the wheel came off.  He said 
that Milton Mann his "pap" always declared that all they had on arrival in 
Daviess County was a "little feather bed, a rifle gun, a $45 debt and nary a 
cent in his pocket."  But they did have more.  There were two spring seats in 
the wagon - a part of one they now possess; there was a hickory home made 
chair, bought by Pap for his Wedding outfit, which was one hundred years old 
and yet strong (the interviewer sat in it 1934).  It had a split bottom or 
rather hickory bar bottom.  The chair was made without nails or glue.  The 
rungs were seasoned.  The forms with the holes were green.  The latter dried 
and held the rungs in forever.  The spinning wheels were absolutely necessary 
for their existence.  The Mother did all the weaving and sewing for a big 
family, the boys filling the spindles for the loom.
     They went to mill at Groves's Mill.  Once a week (Sunday morning) they 
had white flour biscuits as a treat.  Even later than 1865 they saw deer.  
When they moved to Harrison township (still Daviess County) near Breckenridge 
in Caldwell County early one morning they ran down three wet young turkeys and 
ate the three for breakfast.
     Milton Mann was in Daviess County two or three years when he saw his 
first blue grass since he had left Kentucky.  It was a small patch and he 
thought "It won't live long here" for everywhere else was prairie grass.
     He entered timber land from the Government at $1.25 an acre for forty 
acres.  He chose timber because he had no plough heavy enough to cut the 
prairie sod.  In former timber land they used a jumping shovel plow made by a 
local blacksmith, which jumped over a stump and went on.
     His first home there was a log cabin, in November 1855 built by him and 
his neighbors - no floor and a rag being at the window instead of glass.  They 
built the stick and clay chimney too rapidly, since winter was on them, and it 
fell down part way but they used it that way all winter.
     At their first farm, David often walked to Gallatin (nine miles away) to 
do the trading since it was quicker to walk and carry groceries than to use 
the ox-team.
     While living there, he was in school when the pupils heard very plainly 
the big guns at the Battle of Lexington in Civil War.  The pupils were so 
upset that the teacher dismissed school for the day.
     At the second home near Breckenridge Mr. Mann recalls an early church at 
Lick Fork made of logs with clapboard roof in bad repair and parts of the wall 
fallen in.  His parents are buried in the Lick Fork graveyard; also his 
grandmother Rhoda Mann (1809-1878).
     The Mann family traces from Maryland to Virginia and from Virginia to 
Daviess County Missouri and then to Hamilton.  He says that they are not 
related to the other Mann families in Daviess County or to Jesse Mann who made 
the first settlement in Caldwell County.
     Interviewed  July 1934.


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