Caldwell County MO Archives History .....McCLELLAND KIN IN CALDWELL COUNTY 
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Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com September 1, 2008, 4:31 pm

THE McCLELLAND KIN IN CALDWELL COUNTY
	Narrator:  Joseph Dennison McClelland, 72, of Hamilton
 
     Mr. Joe McClelland says he is related to most everyone in the north part 
of Caldwell County and all his kin belong to the older families, so he 
undertook to prove it.  Besides the family of his brothers and sisters, he is 
related more or less to the Richey, Baker, Jones, McBride, Snider, Rymal, 
Doddridge, Tospon families in this county.
     First in time comes the Richey family who came in 1833.  His mother was 
Aramintha Richey, who was the child of Sam Richey and a McBride who became a 
local character as Mother Richey who ran the Richey Mill after the death of 
her husband.  She was so capable and strong that she could stand in a bushel 
basket measure and lift two bushels of wheat (120 pounds) in her hand.  She 
had seven children, Sam, Robt. R., Alex (killed in the Civil War), Aramintha 
McClelland, Joe (for whom Mr. McClelland was named), also killed in the war, 
Thos., Mary Baker.  The Richeys had their own graveyard on their farm on the 
Salem townsite; The McClelland grandparents are buried in the McClelland 
cemetery, where the present owner years ago forbad any more burials.  
Grandfather Wm. McClelland died 1854, aged, 64, while his wife Elizabeth died 
fifty years ago, July 4, 1884 and was up in her 80's.  Her father from 
Virginia was Major Dennison of the Revolutionary Army and from him, Mr. 
McClelland gets his middle name.  Thus at the desolate McClelland cemetery 
near Kingston lies a Daughter of a Revolutionary Soldier, with grave stone 
down and covered by dirt and bushes.  The McClellands came here about 1845 
from Virginia.
     Mr. McClelland's great grandfather McClelland was in the 1812 war.  After 
his return to Virginia, he went on a trip with considerable money on him.  He 
never returned and was probably killed by road-robbers for the money.
     The Baker family into which his Aunt Mary Richey married was an early 
southern family down on Crabapple Creek in the southern part of the county.  
Many of that family were killed in the fall of 1864 in the militia warfare on 
southern sympathizers.  Geo., Wm. Sr., and James were killed but Dan Baker, 
Mr. McClelland's uncle by marriage, managed to escape.  The rest of the Baker 
family sold their farm to Mr. Cheshire and moved away.
     A McClelland aunt married Geo. Rymal, a Canadian, who came to Kingston 
before the war but went back to Canada during the war because of the militia 
activities in this county.  After the war, he returned and became a Hamilton 
butcher and carpenter.  Only one of his descendents is now alive - Mrs. Wm. 
Parmenter.  Another McClelland aunt married Wm. (Billy) Jones as his first 
wife and she died in 1849.  They lived a mile south of Kingston.  His uncle 
Robt. Richey married into the Mormon Smiths who were left in this county after 
the Mormon War.  James Richey or "Jim" as he is known is these parts, is a son 
of that marriage and is a staunch Mormon.  (see his paper)  These Smiths were 
some kind of cousins to the prophet Joseph and followed him here.  While the 
McClellands are related to several Mormons as the Sniders and Richeys, they 
them selves are not of that faith.  It probably came about because they 
settled near a left-over Mormon community and intermarried.
     The Snider connection is as follows; David and Jane Snider were original 
Mormon settlers in Caldwell County with Joseph Smith.  They stayed on after 
the migration to Illinois.  They lie in unmarked graves in the Duston 
graveyard.  They had a daughter who married a Hinkle and Hinkle's daughter, 
Ellen, married Joe McClelland (the narrator).  The Sniders had a daughter Jane 
who married Hilton Hooker, whose son Sam married Hattie McClelland, Joe's 
sister.
     The McBride connection is the "Mother Richey" who was a sister of John 
McBride, born 1802 in Hampshire Co., Va.  They were strong Presbyterians in 
Va. which explains why Mother Richey was one, too.  John McBride came into the 
county in 1851 and the McBride family has grown to large proportions 
hereabouts.
 
     His daughter, Florence, married first a Tospon, second George Doddridge 
whose grandfather Dr. Joseph Doddridge came here to Mo. from Ohio in 1875.
     Interviewed  January 1934.


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