Caldwell County MO Archives History .....THE SCANLON FAMILY IN BRECKENRIDGE TOWNSHIP - 1858 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com August 30, 2008, 4:10 pm

THE SCANLON FAMILY IN BRECKENRIDGE TOWNSHIP - 1858
	Narrator:  Patrick Scanlon of Breckenridge

     Patrick Scanlon's father, John Scanlon, came from Valley Glass, Ireland.
In the party were his two brothers and one sister, his father, Thomas Scanlon 
and John, Patrick, Michael and Anna McNicholas.  These were his wife's 
people.  They came first to Indiana where they worked on the railroad.  At 
that time they had no steel rails, only two by fours with strap iron fastened 
on them.
     They traveled to St. Louis and then by boat to Brunswick.  There, Bill 
Colvin moved them by ox-team to land two miles south of Breckenridge.  They 
were due south of the log store, one mile east of Breckenridge, run by Allan 
Rial.  Then they moved into Breckenridge and lived in the section house.  They 
built their own big rock house in 1864.  The present members of the family 
live in this house.  Patrick Keely and Jim O'Toole did a great share of the 
work on the house.  Here they kept a boarding house and fed the train and 
section hands, buying flour by the carload, and meat and potatoes from the 
farmers.  They herded cattle west of town on the prairies and the boys became 
quite expert in cutting off the heads of prairie chickens with a cattle whip.  
The wild geese were so thick they ate the grain in the fields.  They took 
their grain for grinding to the Ed. Groves mill at Lick Fork.  Across from the 
depot was the Ollie McMillan Store.  Also, the Rial Store.  Early families of 
the times were Trospers, Bennetts, Gants, Greenwoods, Terrills and McCubbins.
     The men all worked on the section and John Scanlon was the whiskey boss, 
issuing the allowance of whiskey to the men five times a day.  During the 
Civil War, prisoners were confined there in box cars.  The guards made them 
carry water from springs in the east part of town.  One batch of prisoners 
killed three guards and escaped.  The men of the town served as local militia 
to guard the bridges.  It was a common practice of the town to bury their gold 
in their gardens during the war.  The railroad was built by mules and wheel 
barrows.  They hauled ties with horses and hauled the steel rails along the 
roadbed on mule cars.  Trains only ran once a week and there was a large wood 
yard east of the depot for they had nothing but wood-burning engines then.  
The family did not have to do their own spinning and weaving but a lady called 
Grandma Hershberger did this for a great many people of the community.
     Interviewed  July 1934.


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