Caldwell County MO Archives History .....TIMOTHY BURKETT FAMILY IN KIDDER TOWNSHIP 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com September 4, 2008, 4:21 pm

THE TIMOTHY BURKETT FAMILY IN KIDDER TOWNSHIP
	Narrator:  Mrs. Retta Burkett Misenhelter
  
     Mrs. Misenhelter is the wife of J.W. Misenhelter of an early family 
here.  She is 72 years old and the daughter of Timothy Burkett and Miss 
Hawkins who was born in Ireland, came to Ohio with her parents and settled 
near the Burketts.
     Mrs. Misenhelter's grandfather, William Burkett (born 1807 in Va. died 
1880), came into Caldwell county 1865 and brought most of children with him.  
Retta was about 4 when they moved.  The Ohio neighbors thought that the 
Burketts were coming to the jumping off place when they came to Missouri, for 
as compared to Ohio, this country in 1865 was very wild.  But Mr. Burkett 
wanted cheap land and by selling his nice Ohio place, he bought a much larger 
farm in Caldwell county, northwest toward Cameron.  The farm was under 
cultivation when he bought it, and a house was on it.
     The house was built of sawed lumber, very long with a fire place at each 
end.  It was on a by road, but now is on a main road.  There was a spring near 
by and a spring house where the water ran thru a trough for cooling milk and 
cream.  The farm now belongs to Mr. Rice, she thinks.
     They attended church in the earlier days at Barwick school house.  A 
Methodist preacher named Phillips held revival meetings and was so successful 
in getting members that he soon built Barwick Chapel.  She recalls the Plumb 
family as zealous workers in that church.  She attended school at Center 
school, on the present No. 36 road.  Some of her early teachers were Mrs. 
Fisher and Susan Knoch (aunt of Susie Knoch Frost).  
     Her first visit to any town was to Mirabile when she was quite small.  It 
was a sight to her.  Her father was taking a bag of corn to get it ground at 
the Mirabile mill and to get wool carded there.  The hamlet was then in 1870 
about the size as now, but the stores were better, since more people bought 
there on account of the mill.
     She remembers the reputation of Pat Kenney of Kidder, since he lived not 
far from them in his wonderful mansion, as it was called.  He was regarded as 
a wonderfully rich man.  Her father worked for him as a sheep shearer.  
Kenney's flocks were so large that often Timothy Burkett and two helpers would 
go there and stay for weeks shearing sheep.  Kenney lost much of his wealth 
and his home also largely thru law suits, but his house still stands as a 
prominent landmark with a cupola on its roof.
     The women folks of her family provided for winter by drying quantities of 
corn, apples, peaches even blackberries.  They made apple butter outdoors, but 
she could not remember that they made jelly in those days.  Brown sugar, light 
and dark, was more common than white, and green coffee was the kind ordinarily 
bought on trips to town.  The flavor of home roasted coffee, she says is 
preferable to store roasted coffee.
     She met her husband, J.W. Misenhelter, in her own neighborhood, the 
Misenhelter farm joining her father's.  They have three children who lived to 
maturity,  Harry M. of Lathrop, Beulah Gregg, Ralph of St. Joseph who married 
Cleo Kerns whose father's farm touched his father's farm.  Her grandparents, 
William Burkett and his wife Rhoda, are buried in the Kidder cemetery but most 
of the Burkett dead lie in Highland at Hamilton.
     Interview  October 1934.


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