Caldwell County, Missouri History Interviews - Caldwell County, Missouri

THE FIRST DAYS OF KIDDER
Narrator:  Miss Nannie Beaumont of Kidder, Missouri

Miss Nannie Beaumont is a daughter of James Beaumont who came to Kidder
October 1860, when nothing was there but the depot and a start on the hotel.
Mr. and Mrs. Beaumont and their little daughter Nellie aged nine months
stayed in the depot till the hotel was finished.  This Hotel was the pro-
perty of the Kidder Land Company and was kept by A.W. Rice, Mrs. Beaumont's
father. This Kidder Land Company (New England Land Company) was a New Eng-
land corporation and induced a large number of "Yankees" from Massachusetts
to settle. George S. Harris was the superintendent of this company and laid
out the town, he was a cousin of James Beaumont which explains why the
Beaumonts came from Illinois very soon after the town was laid out August 3,
1860.  The Rice family was the first family to live in the town.  At first,
the town seemed a family affair with this Harris-Rice-Beaumont set-up.  Mr.
Beaumont was station and express agent, Post master in fact about everything.
He afterwards ran a general store with Ben Laribee under the firm name - J.
Beaumont and Company.  The two men never disagreed in their long partnership.
They were located on site of the Farmers Bank.

The Rice Hotel or "Kidder House" (where Nellie Beaumont lives as a child)
was a well known hostelry of the early sixties.  It stood west of the old
Kidder Bank.  Their nearest house at the start was the Judge P.S. Kenney
mansion nearly two miles to the west.  It still stands, and is well known
to this day as a land mark for travelers.

In time other buildings arose. One of these was the Drug Store kept by
Worth.  He sold out to Winston Bros. and they to Osborn.  Charlie Shaw
worked for Osborn and finally bought him out.  That Drug Store was mid way
in the block.  In 1880 occurred the Shaw fire and Mr. Charlie Shaw put up
the brick drug store on the well known Shaw Corner.  Which he and his
brother Frank kept till his death a few years ago.

During the later part of the Civil War the Kidder Hotel changed hands, M.E.
Conger being proprietor.  An interesting old dance invitation (now in the
possession of Mrs. James Kautz) inviting her Mother, Fanny Dodge to attend
a cotillion party to be given at the Kidder House January 20, 1863, with
three dance managers, all Soldiers; and supper at 10 P.M.

While Kidder was a younger town than Hamilton it soon became a bigger one;
but the Kidder Land Company made a sad mistake in placing too high a price
on its lots which sent home buyers away to cheaper sites.
Interviewed  August 1934.


THE REAM FAMILY AT KIDDER - 1867
Narrator:  Adam Ream, 80, of Hamilton

Mr. Ream was born Dec. 1854, the son of Conrad Ream and Amanda Grable.  On
March 13, 1867, the Ream family got off the train at Kidder, and Adam, the
boy of 12, saw a very small town.

The family had decided to move west from Summit County, Ohio.  They already
had moved to Stevenson County, Ill.  The story of how they chose to come to
Kidder is peculiar.  One of their old Ohio friends, John Hallam, a teacher
and preacher in Greensburg, Summit Co., had gone to Omaha for a job.  On
account of poor railway connections, he missed the job, and got on the train
to return.  When the family was near St. Joe one of the children became sick.
It was discovered that it had scarlet fever and the conductor forced the
whole family to get off at Kidder.  When the entire family had recovered
from the disease, the father was in love with Kidder people and Kidder
country and wanted to stay.  He bought a farm northeast of the present Allen
School and afterwards taught school in Hamilton in the old school on the
Methodist parsonage site walking over every day.

He wrote back to his Ohio friends about the country and they came and bought
farms.  There were the Heldbrand family, east of Winston, John Rohrbough,
near the Allen School, Michael Young, near Winston, Henry and Ephraim Koonse.
Henry H. Brown bought two and one-half miles southeast of Hamilton.  He
later married the widow Clampitt.  The Conrad Ream family bought one and
one-half miles southwest of Kidder, paying $3,000.00 for 233 acres.  They
bought it of Herman Townsend, whose predecessor had entered the land.  It
had a log cabin which they used for nine months.  Now, Kelley Strickland
owns one-half of it and Jesse Ream (Adam's son) the other half.  Conrad Ream
proceeded at once to fence.  He bought 1200 feet of fencing, paying $39.75.

When the Reams came in 1867, Kidder had about twenty houses.  One mile west
of Kidder was the Kenney mansion around which much local interest has
centered, and about which arose the Kenney-Hemry quarrel in the early
eighties.  To this same P.S. Kenney belonged the three-story frame on site
of the present garage opposite the old Shaw corner.  This was the site of
one of the first wells.  The first story of the building was Kenney's
general store, the second was the home of Kenney's mother, the third was
the Catholic Chapel for services once a month.  A little earlier, the
services were held in the mother's apartment and the third story was the
office of the land company.  Then there was a one story store where the
Farmers Bank is, a general store owned by D.G. Chubbuck's widow and run by
Ben Laribee, his brother-in-law.  In 1867, James Beaumont's term as
postmaster ran out and he and Laribee became partners in the above general
store.  Fitzpatrick had a wagon shop on the street north of Front Street.

Mr. Ream attended the one-room Kidder school several years, it being on the
same lot as the present school.  Some of his teachers were Miss Mary Sackett,
Charlie Fletcher, C.W. Smylie who was a farmer teacher living near the
present Manson district and the father of Prof. C.N. Smylie, now of Carlton
College, Minn.  They afterwards lived in Hamilton on the corner northeast of
the park.  Mr. Ream also was a student at old Thayer College both down town
under Van Collem and out on the hill in the new building when Dr. Cochran
came from Grinnell.  But he grew tired of school and did not stay long.  The
enrollment varied from thirty to sixty with three and four teachers.  Dr.
Cochran had a charming young lady daughter, Minnie, who taught music.  They
lived north of Thayer Hall in a house built by Miss Mary Sackett who also
built the one-story part of the Burbank home.  The old Cochran home later
was known as the Prof. Burmeister house (Prof. Burmeister and his wife
taught music at Kidder Institute) and is now the property of Sterling Shaw
(son of Prof. G.W. Shaw).

Mr. Ream talked about the church history of Kidder.  The Catholics, as had
been said, met in the Kenney Hall.  The Congregationalists being the
predominant class in Kidder ran the town in those days; hence they took the
public school building for their church-house and wouldn't let anyone else
in.  G.G. Perkins was the pastor, afterwards a pastor in the church at
Hamilton.  Little by little the Yankee element in Kidder decreased, either
by death or removal elsewhere and the church dwindled.  Mrs. Purple, mother
of Ed Purple, the wealthy stove manufacturer in Chicago, was a great worker
in it and for her sake Ed gave much money to its support.  Now it is unused.

The Methodists held monthly services in the home of J.G. Thompson.  Kidder
and Hamilton at that time were on one circuit.  He finally moved to Hamilton
and bought land from the present Methodist Church corner out north to the
Doll home, intending to make it into a Thompson addition.  Finally A.H.
Gurney came to Kidder in 1869 and being a strong Methodist, circulated a
subscription paper to raise money to build a church.  The Methodist church
had the first church building in Kidder.


KIDDER NEAR CENTENARIAN
Narrator:  Mrs. Eliza (Thornhill) Stephenson  Kidder, Missouri

Covered Wagon Days
Indians in Daviess County
Frank James Story

Mrs. Stephenson was born 1834 and almost reached her one hundred years.  She
was born in Kentucky and was sixteen years old when her parents left their
farm and brought a dozen slaves and two covered wagons to Missouri settling
near Gallatin in Daviess County.  It took them a month to come, but it was
a wonderful trip especially to the youngsters, with out door meals and new
sights every day.  After they built their new home she saw Indians but they
were what people called "friendly or begging Indians."  By 1860 the
occasional wandering Indians in this section did not bother anyone except
for cooked food.

During the Civil War, the Thornhills sided with the South.  One day a body
of Union troops passed their home.  Her brother promptly showed his mother's
training by yelling "Hurrah for Jeff Davis."  The soldiers quickly scared
him into silence.

She loved to tell a story about Frank James, the famous Missouri bandit.  She
had then moved to Kidder.  One of the family was called back to Kidder on
account of illness in the home.  She got on a train, by mistake, which did
not stop at Kidder.  She pled in vain to have the train stop there to let
her off.  Suddenly a passenger informed the Conductor that the train WAS
GOING to stop at Kidder.  When the astounded Conductor recognized the
passenger as Frank James he naturally stopped the train at once.

Miss Thornhill was married 1862 to William Vallandingham and to A.J.
Stephenson in 1882.

Interview taken  1934 (shortly before her death).


THE BEGINNING OF THAYER COLLEGE
Narrator:  Frank Shaw of Kidder, Mo.

The plan for a College at the New England village of Kidder came from George
S. Harris Superintendent of the Kidder Land Company, as he came there 1860.
Nathaniel Thayer of Boston negotiated a provisional land grant of over six
hundred acres from the above company.  But the Civil War and the consequent
depression deferred action.  In 1868, the matter was again taken up.  By
1869, the building was started and the outside completed but no money was
left for the inside.  In 1870, the people were determined to start their
College, building or no building.  There was a vacant store on Front Street.
They rented this room and installed Mr. Van Collen, a German from Iowa, a
capable teacher, as head.  That year they had about thirty pupils.  He lived
north of town.  The next year, the newly elected President Dr. S.D. Cochran
of Grinnell Iowa came on.  He and Van Collen did not get along well and the
latter left for Iowa where he became well known as an Educator.

It was while the College was on Front Street that Frank Shaw first became a
pupil.  The Shaw family lived above that store and they coaxed Frank to be
janitor for his tuition.  He also went to the new building "Thayer College"
as it was called from the early friend Nathaniel Thayer.  The course of
study was largely preparatory, although the school was called a College.
Most of the pupils were resident pupils; a few out of town boys stayed in
the upper floor of the College building.  Latin and Greek were stressed, but
few were advanced enough to take these subjects.

Some of Frank Shaw's schoolmates were H. Huson, Joe Townsend, Leslie Allen
(son of Edmund Allen, the agent for the Land Co. who had an office on the
site of the old Kidder Bank), James Temple, Minnie Lacy, Cassius M. Hoyt.
There were two graduates of old Thayer - one was Carrie L. Smith (Mrs. Utter)
and the other was Levi Chubbuck who died August 1934.

The School lasted four years under Dr. Cochran and then the doors were
closed under foreclosure and the building on the hill was given to bats and
birds.  It was reopened in 1884 as Kidder Insitiute under Principal G.S.
Ramsey.

Interviewed  August 1, 1934.


EARLY DAYS AT KIDDER INSTITUTE
Narrator:  Wm. Bristow of Daviess County

Mr. Bristow was one of the pupils who attended Kidder Institute when
Professor G.E. Ramsey came in the early eighties to revive it after it had
been closed for several years.  There were around 120 in attendance.  Some
of those enrolled were Grant McCrary, Tyua Catron, Lettie Martin, Emma
Brown, Chas. Burris, Mary and Della McCrea and Byron Evans.  While there he
and three other boys (Grant McCrary, Byron Evans, John and Ames Hubbard)
rented a room and batched which reduced expenses to a very low point.  This
was a very common thing to do and many a boy used to joke about baking his bread
before he came to school.  As a matter of fact, most of the food was brought
from home already cooked on Monday afternoon; Monday being a holiday.

These days the majority of K.I. students took the common branches with extra
hard training in Arithmetic, History and Grammar to prepare to teach.  When
he got this work he took the teachers examination under Professor Brown the
County School Commissioner at Winston.

He was then 22 years old and begun teaching at Swisher School (Daviess
County) at $35 a month.  He taught then at Sell, then back to Swisher and
then the Wooderson, making twenty years in all.  He quit teaching once and
then they had trouble with some of the big boys at one of these schools they
came for Bill to straighten them out.  He did so in a short while.

Out at Wooderson he taught the Sears children among whom was Jesse who is
now a professor at Leland Stanford University and won a Ph. D. degree at
Wisconsin.

Interview  August 1934.


BARWICK CHAPEL AND THE PLUMBS
Narrator:  Mrs. A.D. Crockett

Mrs. Alice Plum Crockett the second oldest child of William and Anna Maria
(Knoch) Plumb was born on a farm in the Barwick community in Kidder Township.

Mrs. Plumb was born in Pennsylvania and Mr. Plumb was born in Preston County
now West Virginia March 14 1921.

In 1840 Wm. Plumb left Virginia and settled in southern Ohio where he lived
until 1844 then settling in Caldwell County, Missouri.  In 1846 he went to
Mexico with the United States Forces to repress a revolt.  In 1847 he
entered the employ of the Government as express carrier in New Mexico also
having charge of grazing camps of Government stock for two years.  In 1850
he went to California during the "Gold Rush" and was on the road thirty two
days.  He returned to Missouri in 1853 and homesteaded his farm which still
belongs to the family.  At the outbreak of the Civil War 1861 he raised a
company of Union Troops of which he was Captain and for meritorious conduct
was made Major.  Mr. Plumb's grandfather Wm. Plumb was also Captain in a
company in the Revolutionary War.  Major Plumb and Captain Turner were in
the army and were the very closest of friends as long as they lived.  They
lived in the same community.

Mr. and Mrs. Plumb were the parents of ten children.  These children were
all born and reared in the same house on the same farm which was unusual for
those times.  The Childrens names are Adelia, Alice (the Narrator), Clara
and Belle (twins), Arthur, Rose, Harry, Harve and Addie.  The four older
girls attended a "Select School" in Cameron.  A Mrs. Tiernan and Miss Bell
had this school in their own homes.  Mrs. Tiernan would have from thirty to
forty pupils and Miss Bell would have fifteen or twenty.  These schools were
considered "the Place" for the children of such parents as the Plumbs.  The
younger children attended the Kidder Institute.

Alice married Andy Crockett, a staunch Democrat in the County.  Mr. and Mrs.
Crockett are the parents of three children, Clara, a very beautiful girl
died as a young lady, Foster, a son lives on a farm near Kingston and
another son in Oklahoma.

Mrs. Crockett relates a very funny incident:  Her father Wm. Plumb was a
very strong Republican and her husband a strong Democrat were arguing
politics one day and they got pretty loud.  The Mother begun to fret lest
they would really become angry so insisted they quit.  The father says, "Oh
Andy knows something and reads, I like to talk to him, and besides he knows
enough not to get mad."

Mrs. Crockett recalls the organization of the Barwick Chapel.  The Barwick
Chapel church was organized sixty years ago, after a ten weeks  meeting held
in the school house near the Chapel now called Barwick School house, not the
same building but the same location.  Brother Charles Phillips was our
pastor.  He lived at Kidder but preached at Mirabile and our School house.
The Meeting was held in the winter.  There was sleighing for eight weeks out
of ten weeks.  Many came from Kidder, Mirabile, Hamilton also from Cameron.
We had only a small membership before that Meeting, twenty five or thirty.
We had a Membership of a hundred or over at the close of the Meeting.
Brother Phillips did all the preaching only helped by a young man, who led
the singing.  It was an old fashioned meeting with shouting and much praying.
All converts testified at their conversion.  The church was named for our
Presiding Elder, as they were called then, District Superintendent now,
Brother Barwick.  After a few years, Kidder and Barwick had the same Pastor
and so continued for many years.  They had a fine working church for many
years and a great many able pastors.  Some of them were:  Brother Bobee.  I
went into the church during his preaching, the year before we built the
church.  I was only ten when I joined the church, with an older sister and
four other little girls.  I remember two McCrea girls one of them still
lives in the neighborhood, Mrs. Beryl Spurlock.

Brother Caughlin, Jones, and Harrison were especially fine men.  Brother
Jones is one of the Ministers that helped conduct my fathers funeral.  Our
home was always the home for the Minister but father especially always
insisted most on paying the pastors salary.  He said that must be paid just
the same as your grocery bill.  When other failed to pay he paid for them.
I know of only three or four of the old members left, a Mrs. Jerry Bell,
she was also a McCrea.  They still have preaching twice a month and have a
much smaller membership but still some very active members.  A good Aid and
has been a power for good in the neighborhood.  The last time I was there,
was at my sisters funeral Mrs. J.E. Petree.  She was also married at Barwick,
and as I now remember as the only church wedding.

Interviewed  August 1934.


THE McKEE FAMILY IN LOVELY RIDGE IN THE SEVENTIES
Narrator:  Mrs. Alice McKee Shaw, 75, of Kidder

On Dec. 13th, 1872, the Addison McKee family came to Caldwell County.  After
service in the Civil War, Mr. McKee, then living in Indiana, resolved to
come west.  For seven years, he tried Macon County, Mo., but somehow it was
not what he wanted.  He heard of the good bargains in fine farms in Caldwell
County and finally bought what was known for years as the McKee farm in
Lovely Ridge district, west of Hamilton.  Mrs. Shaw recalls how the family
hated to leave Indiana to come to Missouri, even the child playmates pitying
them, for in the sixties in Indiana and other states near by Missouri was
regarded as very wild, very wolly and full of Indians and rattlesnakes.

When Mr. McKee came here, he found few farms with fences, poor roads and no
bridges.  People in Caldwell County in the seventies preferred not to use
the laid-off roads, as they could drive across the open prairie and save
time and horse-strength.  Mr. McKee, like other farmers round here, had his
cattle on the range and the McKee boys had the daily job of rounding them up
in the afternoon.  The hunt was over when the last cow was turned homeward.
The old McKee farm now belongs to the narrator, Mrs. Chas. Shaw.

Mrs. Shaw attended school at the second Lovely Ridge school (the one which
burned down).  It was her father, Addison McKee, who suggested the pretty
name "Lovely Ridge."  Some of her teachers there were Herbert Huson who had
attended Thayer College, Sam Bay (who married a Bray girl and came from
Vinton County, Ohio) and Hettie Martin (first wife of Dr. Tensley Brown).

The McKee family always traded at Kidder with the Beaumont store and with
Pat (P.S.) Kenney who had the largest store building ever put up in Kidder,
a three story affair with the store on the first floor.  This burned several
years ago.  Mr. Kenney had a store at Breckenridge before coming to Kidder
in 1858.  At one time, he owned probably 10,000 acres of land around Kidder,
but bad luck and law suits lost much of it for him.  It was due to Pat
Kenney's activity that at one time Kidder was about the most promising town
in the county.  (See also Adam Ream paper).

After Mrs. Shaw married Chas. Shaw as his second wife, she moved to Kidder
and became interested in the Kidder Congregational Church.  This church was
first held in Thayer College and lastly in the present church building which
stands almost in front of the Shaw home and has been unused for several
years, since the congregation federated with the Methodists in Kidder.

Interviewed  July 1934.


MRS. HELEN L. BOOTH'S YOUNGER DAYS IN OHIO AND CALDWELL COUNTY
Narrator:  Mrs. Helen L. Booth, 80, of Hamilton, Missouri

Mrs. Booth was born July 30 1854 in McArthur Ohio, the child of Ellis B.
Pugh and Cassandra Selfridge.  Pugh, a birth right Quaker, was a cabinet
maker and wagon maker and had passed through the three steps of apprentice,
journeyman and master workman in his trade.  He opened a shop in Moorfield
Ohio and later in McArthur.  His name was on most of the wagons and buggies
used in Vinton County from 1850-1880.  As a cabinet maker, he made chests,
bureaus, beds, tables and chairs in a period when little furniture was
brought on to sell in the small town store.  He also made small articles
like paddles, potato mashers, rolling pins, apple butter stirrers.  She
still has left some of these articles which he made over sixty years ago to
help his children begin their kitchen outfits.

Her Mother was an early milliner in McArthur and knew all the tricks of the
millinery trade when one must reshape straws on blocks, sew braid, bleach
straws, make wire and buckram frames, cover them with satin or velvet and
sew on flowers and plumes to nod exactly right.  She always kept one or two
apprentices who helped with the house work to pay for their "tuition" in
learning the trade.  There was usually at the back door a pile of plaster-
paris hat blocks; for new blocks must be bought every summer and the old
shapes discarded.

The bleaching of hats demanded special knowledge.  A wooden box was built
waist high with a pole across the top under the lid.  From this hung the
hats to be cleaned.  At the bottom was a dish of brimstone, mixed in exactly
right proportion with acids.  These recipes were part of the instruction and
were handed on to the apprentice.  The mixture was lighted and the bleaching
began.  The time depended on the condition of the hat.  When the peep-
windows were opened, the white vapor almost suffocated one.  Most women made
their straws last two years with a bleaching the second year.  So this was
an important part of the business.

Mrs. Booth was her mother's trimmer and began by getting 5 cents a hat,
which was not so bad then for a fifteen year old girl.

She was a small girl during the Civil War and recalls the horror of seeing
soldiers brought home dead.  She, when ten years old, sang a popular war
song "Good bye Mother, You will never press me to your heart again" at the
funeral of a sixteen year old boy killed in battle.  Even at that time she
had a very unusual soprano voice.  She recalls the dread of Morgan's raiders
who came very near McArthur.  The women buried their silver and jewelry and
baked up pies, cakes and ham but Morgan did not come.

Those were the days when dignified society ladies met in teas and chewed
snuff out of beautiful snuff boxes just as today women smoke cigarettes.
Mrs. Booth saw it but was too young to rub snuff.

Her childhood games were much like those of her daughters some years later:
Blackman, hide and seek, drop the handkerchief, hopscotch, button, button
(for an out door game) Needles eye when a string of players ran under a
couple with hands clasped high; "Needles eye that doth supply the thread
that runs so smoothly; many a fair one we shall pass before we catch Miss
Julia.  At the end of the last word, the arms suddenly came down on "Miss
Julia" and she had to stand in the mushpot (the center of the ring).  Then
there was "King William."  One stood in the middle and a circle of players
leaped around and sang -
King William was King George's son
And from the royal race he sprung
Upon his breast he wore a star
Pointing the way to his Kingdom's far"
and the last word, King Wm. in the mush pot suddenly pointed out her
successor and the game went on.

At eighteen she married Dan Booth and they soon left Vinton County to come
to a farm west of Hamilton in the Lovely Ridge district in Caldwell County.
Her people pitied her because she was coming to poor old Missouri.

She stayed at the Broadway Hotel (Later Harry House) kept by the Van
Volkenburg family on site of present Davis Motor Company.  The next day they
went out to the new farm which had been bought from Altman, it is now the
Gregory farm.  There she went through many new experiences for a town
girl - like taking care of milk (but her husband never had her go out after
the cattle as many neighbor women did) raising chickens and making butter to
sell.  She sold it to the hucksters and to the Goodman Hotel in town.  She
learned to cook harvest dinners for thirty to thirty five men without the
aid of a girl, things which scared her to death when her motherly neighbor
Mrs. Jack Edminister told her about them as necessary duties of a farm wife.

Her worst experiences out there were - grasshoppers which came to the farm
when Mr. Booth was on a cattle buying trip to Nebraska; the hog cholera
which killed every hog for miles, the James Boys who lived not far away and
rode by the farm once or twice.  When word came of their approach her
husband would turn his horses loose from the barn.  The worst scare came one
night when a terrible wind storm was upon them.  They dragged the furniture
against the doors to keep out a current which might lift up the house from
the ground.  That night they both determined to sell out and go back to Ohio.
This same wind was a cyclone north of town.

One of the things they had on the farm is still in the family - a hutch
table. In those days, the kitchen also served as a dining room.  A bench was
built against the kitchen wall to serve as seats at the table.  The average
family then had six chairs and a family was quite unusual if that did not
have to move chairs from one room to another.

When the Booths left the farm 1881 after seven years to come to Hamilton to
live they came in such a snow drift that they drove a sled through the
fields, over a few fences, since it was shorter and equally easy on the
horses.

Interviewed  April 1934.


TO LOVELY RIDGE IN A COVERED WAGON
Narrator:  Mrs. Hattie Bennett Smith, 74, Hamilton, Missouri

Mrs. Smith is the eldest child of Thos. Bennett born 1834 and wife Betsey
Gibson Bennett.  They were both born in England but met first in America.
Thos. Bennett was a poor man and came into Caldwell County 1871 to get a
farm cheap.  His brother-in-law Fred Gibson had moved here and told him
about the county.  At that time, the Bennett family was composed of man,
wife and three children, the eldest boy being nine years old.  They came
here in two covered wagons which held all they had.  Bennett drove one wagon,
the little boy Jim, the other.  They had no extra horses so had to make
frequent rests by the road side.

They bought two miles west and one-half mile north of Hamilton in Lovely
Ridge district.  It was a two room house with a lean-to.  They were so poor
that they had no carpets at all which meant much scrubbing.  The girls and
boys "worked out" for the neighbors.  The children set out hedge plants
around the farm by the road and in a dry spell carried buckets and buckets
of water to save them.

The Lovely Ridge community had frequent revivals in the school house.  After
the service the host would treat the crowd to cider or apples, and people
would try to beat each other in pealing an apple without breaking the
pealing.  The Bennetts were Methodists; other Methodists there were the five
families of the Jones tribe, the Bray family, Altmans and perhaps others.

Going to church in town became quite common in the late 70's; when the big
Bennett family would fill the lumber wagon with chairs (probably all the
chairs they had).  If the horses gave a lurch at a whip or a passing train
etc., the chairs were apt to land the youngsters backward.  There was a
baptizing hole to the north where converts of all denominations from that
part were immersed; in fact immersion was much more general those days than
now; and a "baptism" drew big crowds as a mild diversion on Sunday
afternoons.

Interview taken  April 1934.


FARMING IN LOVELY RIDGE  LOVELY RIDGE NEIGHBORS
Narrator:  C.C. Alden, 78, of Kidder, Missouri

Mr. Alden is the son of George L. Alden and Marietta Bump and is a lineal
descendant of John and Priscilla Alden.  When he was three years old, his
parents came west to settle in Missouri.  His father, as he says, was of a
roving disposition and tried several homes before he settled down.  They
were two years in Illinois before they came in the early Sixties to this
county.  At one time they owned the Lenhart place over the line in Daviess
County but they did not run the old mill there.  They lived for a while on
the McKee farm in the Lovely Ridge district, but the lack of fruit trees did
not please them.  In the early seventy's Mr. George Alden was in the produce
business with Andrew Nash in Hamilton, located on south Broadway, an early
business street, about where the Cope shop stands.  They employed hucksters
who went in wagons through the country and picked up eggs, butter and
poultry.  He finally settled down on land bought from Henry Clark, father
of Elmer E.

The son C.C. Alden worked as a hired hand four years for Clark getting $186
cash yearly besides room, board and washing.  When he asked for $200, Clark
refused; and C.C. struck out for himself, got married and began paying for a
home on time.

Farming, even as late as 1800 was harder work than today.  Much of the land
was full of stumps which had to be encountered in plowing.  The farm
processes took more time because they were done by hand not machinery.  A
trip to town for necessities meant a day not a few hours.  They had crops
burned out (although never as bad as in 1934) they had crops ruined by
grasshoppers 1875; they lost all their hogs by cholera about the same time -
when soap companies sent wagons through the county to pick up dead hogs;
they had to experiment to find the best crop for their new soil.  They had
their small, poorly built homes damaged by the hard winds.

Some of the neighbors whom Mr. Alden recalls in the Lovely Ridge district
are:  D.W. Rosencrary, the first teacher in the second school, who lived
first house south of its site; Addison McKee who suggested the name Lovely
Ridge and lived near the Shaws and Baldwins to the west of the Henry Clark
farm and east of George Alden; the Esteb family lived in the brick house,
but earlier lived one-quarter mile south of the brick.  Jake Esteb, a son
built on the present Ora Hosman place.  The Forbes family lived on the Jim
McBride place; the Allen place was the present Hogkinson home near the
county line.  Dan Booth owned the Gregory farm and across the road was
Jackson Edminster.  Wm. Bray lived west of Edminsters, George Brown south of
Edminsters, Thos. Bennett west of Browns.  The Jones families Wm., Jones,
Will Henry, John and Joe were all clustered east of Booth farm by the
railroad.  The C.C. Alden farm is yet owned by the Alden family.

Interview taken  August 2, 1934.


THE MARTINS AT LOVELY RIDGE
Narrators:  Mrs. Carrie Royer and Lottie Martin

Farm Conditions
School matters

George B. Martin and his wife Lydia Duncan Martin (the first born in
Illinois, the latter in Ohio) came to the Lovely Ridge Community three to
five miles west of Hamilton in 1877.  They had been poor people in Illinois
and could not buy a farm but hearing that land was much cheaper in western
Missouri; they came out and bought an eighty (80) acre tract.  The family
stayed at the Van Volkenburg Hotel (Broadway Hotel) located where the
present Davis Motor Co. is, until Mr. Martin bought a place.

The Martin Post Office was Kidder and they rode there once a week to get
their mail.  Often one man would get mail for all his neighbors along
the way, so they could get it more often.

The farm conditions were back of those in Illinois but that was to be
expected of cheaper land.  There were many unfenced lands till the 80's when
the stock law required people to restrain their stock - a law rather
unpopular at first, because it cost money to fence.  Up to that law, Miss
Lottie used to get on her pony and go after the cattle late in the afternoon.
They might be a mile away feeding on the open prairie.  Miss Carrie the
elder sister was the housekeeper.  If by chance Mrs.  Martin went, she would
go on foot because she hated horse back riding.  In the days before 1880,
one could go across the prairies from Martins house for miles without
meeting a fence.

The Martin girls went to school at Lovely Ridge School.  They attended when
the second one was burnt 1878 by the carelessness of Mr. McAtee the teacher.
He was followed by Hettie Martin (Brown) who walked out from Hamilton every
week end.  She was followed by her sister Addie Martin who boarded with Dan
Jones.  Boys and girls went to school till they finished their books and
then maybe came back to review.  They learned the State Capitals in a song.
There was a tardy roll on fools cap paper on the wall to be viewed by
visitors.  Corporal punishment was frequent especially by the above McAtee.
School was often started by a song:
"O where have you been tardy boy, tardy boy
O where have you been all the morning?
O to school I have been and they would not let me in
And so I have lost all the morning."
The roll of Lovely Ridge pupils of their day include many familiar names:
Carrie and Lottie Martin, Lizzie Booth, Anna and Belle Rogers, Simon,
Jake and Chas. Hendricks, Ida Lane (Rauber), Kate Esteb, and always some of
the large Bennett family.

Interview taken  March 1934.


CRAWFORD MIRABILE MILL - THE LOVELY RIDGE SCHOOL
Narrator:  Mrs. Emma Eckelberry Alden, 71, of Kidder, Missouri

Mrs. Alden is the daughter of Valentine Eckelberry and Mary Jane Cornelius.
This couple came from Muskingam County Ohio sixty eight (68) years ago (1866)
attracted by the talk of Missouri land in this community.  They went to the
Mirabile community and rented there for thirteen (13) years.  In 1879 they
came up into the Lovely Ridge neighborhood and bought their farm there.

In her Mirabile youth, she recalls three doctors, Dr. Oakley Brown who came
to Mirabile Township about the time her father did and Dr. Klepper, both of
whom had their offices at home.  Then there was Dr. Wm. Crawford who besides
being a doctor there since before the Civil War was a store keeper and a
miller.  He bought the mill and the store from the pioneer Marquam.  The
Eckelberrys always carried their grist to Crawford, no matter where they
lived and paid one-sixth of the grist for toll.  He also ran a carding mill,
where folks could have wool carded if they did not use home-cards; he had a
saw mill where much of the lumber in that part was prepared.  He was the man
who kept a lantern swinging in front of his mill to guide prospective night
customers to his various business enterprises.  This mill stood for 100
years, being razed 1933.

Mrs. Alden began her education in the Mirabile one-room school and finished
it over in Lovely Ridge.  She knew all about the school house history there.
There was for the few earlier settlers a small building located near the
Esteb farm hence called the Esteb School.  She of course did not go to this
but her husband C.C. Alden did.  Then a larger one was needed when the land
became more settled.  Some one bought the house and moved it to Kidder where
it now serves as a good little home - first door west of the Kidder Public
School.  The new school was built a mile east of the old site.  It was burnt
one night 1878 when Mr. McAtee the teacher piled hot ashes in ash barrel too
near its front.  The third was built on the same site and faced east instead
of south.  It is still used.

Interview taken  August 3, 1934.


THE STREETERS IN DODGE DISTRICT
Narrator:  Mrs. Josie Borden, 70, of Hamilton, Missouri

Cox Family
Half Way House
Stage Coach and Women's Styles of the 70's

Mrs. Borden is a daughter of Judson Streeter, the eldest son of Horace
Streeter who came into Caldwell County 1855.  Her mother was Maria Frances
Cox daughter of Daniel L. Cox who lived this side of Kingston.  He had three
children, Mrs. Streeter, Fred who was struck by lightning and John Cox who
drove a stage coach from Lexington to Gallatin.  Judson Streeter lived on a
farm west of the "Half Way House" and later on a farm east of the "Half Way
House."  During his service in the Civil War his family lived with Grandpa
Horace Streeter, Grandpa Daniel L. Cox and with Betty Dodge at Kingston.

The "Half Way House" (half way between Kingston and Hamilton) has always
been a familiar landmark to travelers along the road.  Mrs. Borden did not
know the first owners; but she knew that in the late sixties it was owned by
Sam Lane whose wife on her death bed gave her baby to Mrs. Mary Edminster to
raise.  The baby now is Mrs. Ida Lane Rauber of Hamilton, Missouri.  Lane
sold it to Mr. Ford (see Sigman papers) who tore down the log house and
erected a good frame house.

Mrs. Borden recalls seeing her Uncle John Cox driving the stage coach past
her home.  The coach was high with steps at the back, railing at the top to
hold baggage and aisles at the sides.  The driver sat outside the front of
the coach with a long whip to drive the four horses.

The old stage road ran from John Whitt's house north; and at the south west
corner of the present Borden ten acres (then owned by Fred Gibson), it went
diagonally to join the south end of Main Street.  In later days Billy Dodge
drove a hack daily from Kingston to Hamilton and later moved to Hamilton and
started his hack out from that town to Kingston with mail and passengers.

She recalls some of the long ago styles in clothes.  Hoop skirts were very
fashionable and Mrs. Borden wore them.  She was fond of riding horse back so
she slipped a hoop over the saddle horn and the hoop skirt gave her no
trouble.  Every woman wore a chemise (often pronounced shimmy) for every day;
drawers extending below the knee were made of brown muslin in summer and
canton flannel in the winter.  Three or four starched white skirts were not
at all uncommon.  She recalled that J.F. Colby's wife and Mrs. Van Slyke
both wore white pantelettes showing under their dresses and she wondered if
all Adventists (to which church both ladies belonged) had to wear them.

She attended school at the Dodge (Independence) School then on the present
site of the Ollie Dunlap home.  Some of her teachers were Hannah Ford
(Schartzer), Mary Kingsbury's father, Willis Allee and Louisa Leavitt.

Interviewed  July 31, 1934.


EARLY HAMILTON SCHOOLS
Narrator:  Mrs. Mamie Eldredge, 75, of Hamilton

In the early seventies and late sixties, schools here in Hamilton were held
in a little brown frame school house of two rooms on the lots where now
stands the Methodist parsonage.  In later years, a part of it was moved to
the site of the present South Side School and became known as the "Little
Brown School", even after it was painted white.  In its first location, the
teachers were Miss Sarah (Dot) Morrow, lower teacher, and Mrs. Place, the
other room.

Other grades in the school were in the Whitely Building (or the old Windmill)
opposite what is now the City Park, directly east and across Highway 10.
After going a while to the first mentioned school, I went to the Whitely or
Windmill building, with the following teachers - Mr. Chadeon, Henry Gee, and
Miss Clara Van Slyke (afterwards Mrs. Daley, mother of Dr. Lyle Daley).

Later on for a short time school was held in a two story frame building on
the east side of South Main about where the barber shop and shoe shop now
stand.  The upper rooms were two - the front one was a school room, the back
was where the Hamilton paper was printed.  Leander Theodore Hill was the
teacher.

Then came the occupying of the new brick school building on the north side
with Prof. D.M. Ferguson as principal, and Miss Fouk as assistant.  She
taught one month and married; then came Miss Ella Griffin who was the
assistant for several years.  Prof. Ferguson taught nine consecutive years
1873-82 and his age was about 41 when he left.  He left here to go to
Gallatin where he received $720.00 a year.

The upper floor of this grand building was one large room with a recitation
and entrance at the north end.  The lower floor had two rooms with two
entrance halls at each end.  These housed the intermediate and primary
departments.  C.S. Shellabarger was the intermediate and Miss Anna Smith
primary teacher.

Classes were divided in the upper room into A,B,C,D,E Classes.  The E class
sat upstairs but recited downstairs.  School duties were carried on by
system.  The 1-2-3 signals meant, rise, go to the recitation seats, be
seated, and the dismissal from class was by the same signal.  Classes were
seated in the room according to merit in scholarship; those having highest
grades had the back seats.

Monitors were appointed for different duties:  Water monitors passed the
water around at stated intervals; pen and pencil monitors and copy book
monitors distributed these articles before a writing lesson and collected
them giving them to Prof. Ferguson.

Prof. Ferguson was so anxious to help his pupils learn that he offered a
Latin class.  Several boys and girls wanted the course; so he not being able
to get it in the program, taught it after supper.  Many a night we went over
to the north side to get our Latin lessons, till some of us finished the
first book and the Latin reader.

(That was the last chance that Hamilton High School pupils had at Latin till
Prof. Gentry came 1891 as superintendent - Interviewer's note.)

Interview  October 1933.



THE FORD FAMILY IN THE DODGE DISTRICT IN THE SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES
Narrator:  Mrs. Margaret Sigman, 84, of Hamilton, Missouri

Plowing with Cattle
Dodge School
Play Parties
Hamilton Mill

Mrs. Sigman's parents were David Ford and Nancy McIntosh formerly of
Scotland, who lived in Canada.  The Ford family came to Missouri in 1868
because the Tait family of Canada had come here and praised Caldwell County
highly.  When Mr. Ford came, he bought the property mid-way between Kingston
and Hamilton on the Stage road, later to be generally known as the Half Way
House.  The family were terribly blue for awhile, for this country was so
different from Canada.  Here was nothing but work to break up the prairie
grass; some of their farms had been cultivated but not much.

Mrs. Sigman recalls in 1870 seeing old William McCoy who then owned a ten
acre tract on the Kingston road about one half mile south of Hamilton (now
Booth land) break up the soil with five yoke of oxen hitched to a plow.
This Wm. McCoy in 1870 moved to town to two lots (present Hawks Garage site)
and on the east end built a two-story frame with a grocery store on the
first story.  This store stayed for three generations in the McCoy family -
Wm., Clark and Roy.

Mrs. Sigman attended Dodge (Independence) School, where long benches were

placed around the walls and low writing desks fastened to the walls.  D.G.
McDonald (later a merchant at Hamilton and still later a conductor on the
Hamilton-Kingston Railroad), Celia Tattershall, Wm. Church (who married a
Lunn) were some of her teachers.  They had to cross Tom Creek everyday to
get to school.  They crossed on the trunk of a fallen tree without any
railings.  One day, they went across when Tom Creek was up level with the
log, but they went bravely on.

     They attended church and Sunday School at Dodge School and also at the
Joe Williams school near Kingston.  Walking a few miles meant nothing to
them.  They often walked to Hamilton to trade or mail a letter or get mail.
Perhaps they might catch a ride with a passerby.  Wm. Curp, a near by
teacher was also a music teacher and held singing school in the winter at
night in the school house which helped their social life.

Mrs. Sigman spoke of "play parties" as a type of amusement.  This expression
came also from three other old people as a term for social evenings which
seemed to have been devoted to singing and skipping games or a form of
disguised dancing allowable to strict church members.  (Even an old Darky
used the expression "play party."  Saying "the negroes used to jig
individually or in a set at play parties."  Interviewer's note.)

Mrs. Sigman was married 1875 to John Sigman (b. 1825 in Ohio) a Mill Wright
who came to Hamilton 1868 and built the Hamilton flour-mill which he sold to
Austin and he to Henry Clark and he to his son Frank Clark.  It was under
the Clarks that the mill explosion occurred, killing Alex Crow, a farmer in
the mill yard.  The mill was burnt 1878 rebuilt and finally abandoned as a
mill.  It now 1934 serves as an ice plant.


THE STREETER FAMILY IN DODGE DISTRICT IN 1855
Narrator:  Geo. W. Streeter, 81, of Hamilton

Mr. Streeter is the son of Horace B. Streeter and Cornelia R. Gillett and
grandson of Josiah Streeter and Ruby Stebbins of New York and Massachusetts
respectively.  Horace Streeter was born in Cayuga County, New York and came
to Caldwell County as a prospective settler in 1855.  He made the first trip
prospecting.  He came as far as Palmyra in the train (that was the end of
the railroad) and "hitchhiked" the rest of the way to Caldwell County where
his old neighbors, the Dodges, had already settled.  He bought land from the
government for $2.50 an acre near the Dodge farm and across Tom Creek; his
land being the present Silas Dodge farm; and went back after his family.
They came in 1857 by train and by water up to Camden and then by wagon to
their new home.  At this time, George W. was four years old and has but a
dim memory of the trip out here.

He recalls his first experience at school.  On his first day, the teacher
was angry with him because he did not know his letters, for at that time it
was customary for parents to teach the A,B,C's to their children before they
started to school.  The teacher sent him home and his parents kept him there
until he was in the Second Reader.  That was an old log school, then a
better one was a frame which stood on the site of the Tom Creek Coal Mine.
It was formerly called the Dodge, but now the Independence district.  The
present site is changed.  In those days of the early sixties, children from
Hamilton used to come out and go to school there at Dodge because there was
no school in town.  He recalls some of these children-the Formsby children,
the Richardson children, (not the Squire Richardson family).  This must have
been about the time that A.G. Davis had a governess come to teach his
children.  The town was very small.  Two early teachers at Dodge School were
Jap Carter and Henry Gee.  Seats were placed all around the sides of the
room with a writing desk against the wall.  If the children wanted to write,
they turned toward the wall.

Walking wasn't much of a chore those days.  Children not only walked to
school but to Hamilton to trade or to Kingston to Sunday School which was
between three or four miles.  Nobody had buggies out there; few had farm
wagons.  The Streeters had an ox-cart about 8 feet by 3 1/2 feet used with
oxen for farm labor.  Sometimes a farmer owned three pair of oxen,
especially if young ones were being broken in.  They used a heavy ox yoke
which was held by a bow-key to a log and a ring to the plough.  If this
slipped, the oxen became loose.  Mr. Streeter told of his near escape from
death in an ox-cart.  It was during the Civil War when one day the yoke-key
loosened and the oxen almost threw him into the creek.

There was a covered bridge one hundred feet long which once stood over Shoal
this side of Kingston where the road then ran.  In fact, the later bridge of
the 90's used the same buttresses and stone work that belonged to the old
covered bridge.  It was about twelve feet high above the floor.  George B.
often took grist to mill over at the Spivey Mill at Kingston and passed over
this bridge.  He carried a full bag on each side of the horse to balance the
load.

He recalled Bennett Whitely avaricious elder of the Hamilton Baptist Church
in the late 60's, the old Baptist Chapel, east of the park, the Whiteside
store which stood by it and later became a barn.  He knew old Wm. McCoy when
he was not old, and when he ran a little farm on Kingston road into Hamilton.
He knew the Paxton boys, the Kempers, father and son, Geo. Lamson, the depot
agent and banker.  He said Geo. Lamson was the next to the best banker ever
in the county.  Dan Booth was the best.  He recalled that picturesque
character of the early days, Sam Hill, who lived out his way for a while.

An old graveyard was on the Dodge farm.  It now lies behind the Diem house
in a pasture.  There were several graves there in his youth.  A Union
soldier was buried there without a stone; his own little brother lies there
without a stone.  Possibly some transients lie there.  Some say that started
as a Morman burying ground.  Mr. Streeter said that might be so, for the
Mormons once lived on the Dodge farm and a Mormon log cabin was still there
in his youth.  Mrs. Nellie Snider, a daughter of Dwight Dodge, said that
they always spoke of one part of their land as the Mormon field because it
belonged to the mormons in the Mormon period.

Interviewed  July 15, 1934.


MRS. FRANCES CLARKSON AND THE DODGE FAMILY OF THE DODGE DISTRICT
Narrator:  Mrs. James Kautz, Hamilton, Missouri

Mrs. Kautz is the daughter of Nathan Clarkson and Frances Nevada Dodge 1853
to 1920.  Mrs. Clarkson the daughter of Silas Dodge and Mary Ann Hull was
born 3 miles south of Hamilton where her father settled in 1846 and the farm
remained in the Dodge family for more than 70 years.  He cut the walnut
shingles for the first [house] that was built in Hamilton.  Silas Dodge was
the son of Dwight Dodge and Susan Monroe, also pioneers.  Dwight Dodge came
into the country in 1844 and settled near Mirabile.  He was not only a
farmer but a Christian Minister.  Thus the Dodge family was among the very
early settlers in the county and the community school for many years was
called the Dodge School.  The Silas Dodge home is mentioned by old timers
as a landmark between Hamilton and Kingston.

On her mothers side Mrs. Clarkson was descended from the Alvord families
which made her related to Mrs. George Walters, a very early settler.  The
Walters family came to the Mirabile Kingston neighborhood in 1836 and are
buried in the old section of the Kingston Graveyard.

As a girl, Mrs. Clarkson attended the District School on her fathers farm
and enjoyed the few social opportunities of those early times: district
school literary societies and dances.  Fourth of July was a day always to be
observed in the big wagon, one spring seat, the rest chairs.  She said they
always had a wagon full by the time they left Kingston.  But there always
had to be room in the wagon for the wonderful picnic dinner which was a part
of the Fourth.

Like most young people of her time, she went places horseback.  One day she
and her brother, Dwight, were going through Kingston when her horse being
scared acted up and broke the saddle girth, letting her fall to the ground
in sight of the whole town, much to her embarrassment but to her brothers
amusement.

She married Nathan Clarkson Feb. 20, 1874 and had four children three now
living - Mary C. Kautz, C.D. of Kansas City, and Egbert of Nettleton,
Missouri.

The companion of her youth died in 1906 and in 1911 she married Jackson
Edminster.


SAMUEL HILL  PIONEER IN CALDWELL COUNTY IN 1833
Narrators:  Mrs. Mamie Eldredge, Fielding Hill, George Streeter and Others

In building up the life and traditions of this well known character in the
pioneer life of Caldwell County, it has been necessary to talk with many
people, both his descendents and outsiders, to get the meager information
given.  Everyone of the older outsiders quoted have seen him and knew his
peculiarities well.  The younger people quoted heard about him in their
childhood.

Samuel Hill came from Tennessee into Caldwell County as early as 1833 for
then he entered a quarter section of land in present Kingston township from
the government.  He entered other tracts of land from time to time and
became very land rich.  In 1859, he owned 40 acres southeast of the new town
of Hamilton, which he and his son, Greenberry, had entered.  This was
divided into town lots and sold as Hillsborough, being later included in
Hamilton as Hill's addition.  The present Eldredge home (old Dr. Tuttle
property) is in Hill's addition.  Much trouble came from these deeds; for
Greenberry Hill someway entered the land in his own name and Sam Hill sold
the lots in his own name, so Greenberry's name had to be given the property
owners.

While Sam Hill was well off, at least in land, reports say that his way of
living was frugal.  F.W. Hill recalls him when he lived between Hamilton and
Kingston and says he lived in a hovel of two rooms.  They had so many
children that he drove pegs into the log-walls and put boards on the pegs to
sleep his little children.  His few comforts seemed to satisfy him.  At that
time he was living with his second wife, who claimed to be part indian.
They parted and they divided the farm straight up and down.  It is said by
George Streeter that she took the girls and he the boys.  That farm was the
present Bob Minger farm (part of the old Gibson farm).  This second wife
used to tell the informant about eating raw bear meat which swelled up
inside her after being eaten.  His children as this informant recalls were
as follows; John (married a Ross and lived near Polo), Lucy, Greenberry
(child of first marriage), Dave, Bill, Harriett, Gim (Probably Gilbert), and
Peter.  Some served in the Civil War.

Another informant says that he always understood that Sam Hill could not
read or write.  He married a third wife, a very young girl and he, by this
time was in the late sixties.  By this time, he was living in Gomer township
on the present Foley farm.  One old lady now past ninety says she saw his
children there being rocked in the top of a trunk as a cradle.  That house,
too, was more or less of a shack.

About 1870, he had a very serious sickness, and Dr. King and Dr. Tuttle
(father of Mrs. Eldredge who recalls him as grey, old, and decrepit with
rheumatism).  All his sons and daughters by now had families of their own
and were greatly upset when he married the third wife, for his mind seemed
to be somewhat affected.  In connection with his illness, Mrs. Eldredge
tells a story of the first lemons in Hamilton.  The doctors had ordered them
from Kansas City for Mr. Hill, and kept them uptown in an office, taking
them out to Sam Hill as needed.  But it got around that there were some
lemons in town and about half of them were stolen; for lots of people did
not know what a lemon tasted like.  Surely Hamilton in 1870 was thirty miles
from a lemon!  (A saying used in those days.)

One of Sam Hill's peculiarities according to F.W. Hill was wearing an old
tall silk hat, no matter what his other clothes were.  He was a vigorous
walker and people could recognize him down the road at a distance by his hat.

His name used to be the cause of many jokes for in this community the words
"Sam Hill" were used as a common saying to express something extreme without
reference to him.  Therefore, when Mrs. Lottie Anderson (as a girl) was told
that old Sam Hill lay buried on the other side of the hedge, she thought it
was only a joke referring to the old saying.  A man recently told of his
father, a contemporary of Sam Hill, meeting him as a stranger.  The first
told his name and asked the second his name.  The second said "I'm Sam Hill",
whereupon the first, taken back by the answer said, "Well, I'm sure glad to
meet you for I have always heard of you."  Hill said "How?" and the other
man said, "People are always saying that it is as hot as Sam Hill or as cold
as Sam Hill and, at least, I know who Sam Hill is."

At Sam Hills death, he asked to be buried under a certain tree by the hedge
on his place.  Even today, people speak of attending that burial probably in
1870.  Another says that in her girlhood, in going to Locust Grove school,
the grave was pointed out to her, and people told her about the peculiar old
man.  James Murrell moved into the neighborhood in the 70's and used to have
the mound pointed out to him.

Mr. Taylor Allee recalls that Sam Hill was a good hearted man but a hard
drinker, as pioneers often were; and that when half-full, he was ready to
fight all comers but few people took him up.

William Hemry tells another story showing the families queer ways.  He is
reported to have buried money.  He had a son also who is said to have done
the same.  At any rate, one day when William Hemry was working at the
Blacksten place, a daughter of the son came out and dug around a spot in the
orchard in the Greenberry Hill farm, saying that she was hunting two pots of
gold which her father had buried there for her and a sister.  Mr. Hemry saw
the torn-up-places where she had dug but everyone said that she found
nothing.  No marker has ever been put up at the grave of the old pioneer Sam
Hill, as far as the interviewer has been able to ascertain.


HAMILTON'S FIRST BUILDING
Narrator:  Joseph Davis, 77, of Hamilton and Others

Mr. Davis is the first white child born in Hamilton, having been born June
13, 1856 in the first house erected in Hamilton.  This was the old Davis
Hotel or Lone Star Hotel, built by his father Capt. Albert G. Davis in the
summer 1855.  It was a two-story frame on lot 2 block 21 east side of Davis
(Main).  It had a frontage of 22 feet, and the lot is the north half of the
Chet Martin store site.

For some months it was the only house between Richmond and Gallatin, and was
a landmark to travelers along the pioneer road.  It was intended as a
residence for the Davis family but became a hotel by necessity to
accommodate transients who came by stage or horse to look around and stay
all night.  The pine timber cost $70 per thousand feet, shipped from St.
Louis up the Missouri river to Camden, Ray county and from there by ox teams
to Hamilton.

It was finished by October 1855, and probably gave meals to those attending
the first sale of lots.  His family did not come up from Mirabile till April
1856.  His three youngest children were born there and two children died
there.  The building cost $1000 when finished.  The only town well was on
the premises.

In 1858 Davis sold it on time to Joseph Elliott and he to Jacob Brosius and
he to Perry Claypool, whose hotel Claypool House became well known.  While
the Claypools were there Dr. Tuttle had a suite of rooms for a doctor's
office on the second floor.  A.G. Davis seems to be the owner again by
January 1876 for in his rent books, he speaks of $3 a month rent from Mrs.
Mattie White and $2.50 rent from Dr. G.W. Tuttle for rooms there.

In 1875 E.H. Bishop had his drug laboratory in the building.  By 1878 the
Grange (Farmers Store) was there under M.S. Kellogg until 1879.  Then A.J.
Rhodus had it a few months as a general dry goods store, Dr. King being the
owner.

George Rogers was the next owner.  In the eighties Rogers and Wyatt had a
real estate office above and a gallon store on the north room.  In May 1887,
it caught fire while occupied in the south room by Rush McKenzie baker - the
fire being put [out] with some damage.  In October 1891 it was burnt so
badly that it was torn down.

Then Mr. Roger sold the lot (22 feet) to C.A. Martin for $1300, when the
Martin brick was built.  With the passing of time changes became so rapid in
the building that Mr. Davis can not recall all who used the building for a
place of business.


THE HAMILTON TOWN COMPANY
Narrator:  Mrs. Anna Brosius Korn of El Reno, Oklahoma

Mrs. Korn is the grand daughter of Captain Albert Gallatin Davis the founder
of Hamilton and lived in his home till she was married, hence hers is
reliable information of the town company who first owned the town.

She says the plan began with her grandfather then a resident of Mirabile and
he talked it over with E.M. Samuels of Liberty to start a town along the
right of way of the projected line of the Hannibal and St. Joseph railroad,
then only surveyed.  Accordingly the town company was formed.  Mr. Samuels
was President.  A.G. Davis trustee, G. Bird, John Berry, Michael Arthur, S.
McGaughey, S. Ritchie of Liberty, John Ardinger, Ephriam Ewing of Richmond,
A.G. Davis and John Burrows of Mirabile, Chas. J. Hughes of Kingston, Thos.
T. Frame of Gallatin and Jeff Thompson of St. Joseph.

Most all these men had streets named for them.  The present Main Street (not
meant to be Main) was named for Mr. Davis because his house was already on
it.  The Main street at the start north of the depot was named for S.
McGaughey but he eventually gained little, for the name is rarely used and
the street is unimportant.  John Ardinger's street is commonly called
Broadway and John Berry's street usually Mill; while Chas. Hughes got a bad
deal, for the north end of his street is treated like a back alley and the
south end is called Kingston avenue.

Some of these men who invested their money in the land of the town company
never saw the town.  Some came here for the lot sale.  Some lived here.
John Ardinger started a restaurant here in 1858 but in the Civil War we
find him at Kingston with a store which was the gathering place of Southern
Sympathizers.  His daughter married Tilton Davis, a nephew of A.G.  He is
also related by marriage someway to the Menefee family.  The Ardingers were
fine people.

John Burrows was an early post master here in the Davis store.  He also
managed the Store about 1859-60 (so active was he that some people in their
interview call it the Burrows Store).  Ephriam Ewing lived here 1858-60
although his occupation is not known.  His family kept a maid Julia
Larrimore who became the wife of Dr. Clayton Tiffin here.

Jeff Thompson of St. Joseph was such a close friend of Mr. Davis that he
called him Albert and wrote often to him.  Mrs. Korn has some of these old
letters.  One dated 1857 speaks of the Scarlet Fever epidemic which had
taken off two of the Davis children.  Another dated 1857 speaks of the
Kansas-Missouri trouble over slavery.  He was Mayor of St. Joseph in 1859
when the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad was completed and he helped start
the Pony Express.  When the war broke out he became an able leader in the
Southern Army.  Mr. Davis looked on him as one of the biggest men in western
Missouri.

But of course as Mrs. Korn says, the biggest man in the Hamilton Town
Company was her grandfather A.G. Davis who built the first home (called the
Lone Star Hotel or Davis House), who surveyed the town lots, built the first
store (present moving picture site) was the first post master, the first
station agent, the first freight agent and before he had a depot to hold his
freight would hire a man to watch it till the owner came.  He named the town.

Mr. Davis was a loyal Mason and in his Masonic regalia as shown in a picture
he was impressive.  He did not join a church till in his last years, then
convinced that Masonry did not equal church membership he was taken into the
Methodist church - a very impressive sight.  At his death in 1908 he was
accorded every honor possible by the citizens of Hamilton.

Interviewed  January 1934.


HAMILTON BUSINESS MEN BEFORE 1860
Narrator:  Mrs. Anna Brosius Korn of El Reno, Oklahoma

Mrs. Korn (grand daughter of A.G. Davis, founder of Hamilton) has the old
record of the town, kept in a painstaking way by her grandfather.  She says:
The Lone Star Hotel was the first business house in town, built 1855 and
operated April 1856 by A.G. Davis and wife.  He then built a house or office
for Henry Holmes a brick maker at the site of present Iron Clad Implement
House.  Bricks were needed for the foundations and chimneys of the homes to
be.

Then the first store was built by Mr. Davis on the present picture show
corner which continued to be the leading store for several years under
different names.  As clerks, he had John Burrows (Burroughs) of the town
company, Dr. McClintock (his brother-in-law), Wm. P. Steele (nephew-in-law),
James Kemper and Judge Otis Richardson.  In 1874-5 account books of Mr.
Davis show he was using the old building for a grain store room, renting it
at 2 cents a bushel per month to Frank Clark.  In the eighties it was a
barrel hoop factory and later the Davis family removed it to the Joe Davis
farm north of town where it is still doing good service as a barn.  During
1858-60 Mr. Davis was station and freight agent at the depot.

A blacksmith shop owned by Mr. Davis and operated by Presley Thomas was put
up in 1857 but no one recalls the site; this too was an essential factor in
the new town life where farmers could supply their needs.  Joseph Elliott
came as a second blacksmith in 1859 and P. Claypool the third in 1860.  The
Claypool shop was probably located in present site of Leslie Clark shop.
John Ardinger of Richmond kept a restaurant probably on a short street north
of the depot 1857-61, then went to Kingston.  Lumber was also necessary for
the quick growth of the new town and Samuel Badwin started the first lumber
yard in 1858 where the present lumber yard is located.  Before long he sold
it to Mrs. Julia Davis and she to J.A. Brown.

In 1858 David Buster had a saloon in the site of the Methodist parsonage and
soon transferred it to the right of way on Broadway where it was known as
Saloon-grocery, a common thing those days.  Uncle Davy is suppose to have
used his home (site of Davis Motor Co.) for a hotel in those days before
1860.  Rufus B. Mitchell came as a carpenter in 1859.

Dr. Thomas K. Kavanaugh was the doctor and his office was probably in the
Davis store where he served as Post Master a few months. The young attorneys
Junius A. Holliday, and Marcus A. Low came about 1860.

The old Davis Hotel by 1859 had passed into the hands of P. Claypool and the
purchase of thirty one sacks of flour in three months from the Davis Store
shows he was feeding his boarders well.

There may have been other business men in Hamilton before 1860 but neither
records nor memory brings them to Mrs. Korn's mind.

Interviewed  December 1933.


HISTORY OF THE POST OFFICE AT HAMILTON, MO
Narrators:  Mrs. Maude Harlow of Hamilton and Mrs. Anna Korn of El Rene, Ok.

Mrs. Maud Harlow, who has been a milliner here at Hamilton for over 35 years,
and who has lived here ever since her birth, was for some years before her
marriage to Frederick Harlow, a clerk under two different postmasters in the
local post office.  With the help of data furnished by Mrs. Korn who has the
records of her grandfather A.G. Davis, founder of the town of Hamilton.  Mrs.
Harlow has given the following account of the past of the postoffice here.

Previous to the establishment of the Post Office at Hamilton, the nearest
postoffice was found in Daviess county, named Orion with John C. Lantford as
first postmaster, appointed April 1st 1856 and Samuel Balding as second
appointed November 5, 1857.

By the efforts of A.G. Davis founder of the town of Hamilton, the postoffice
was removed to Hamilton Jan. 12, 1858 and established in the Davis store,
west of the depot, near the site of the present Courter theater.  Mr. Davis
was appointed postmaster but finding he had too many duties, he had the
office transferred to Wm. P. Steele (his nephew in law) who served till May
1858, when he was succeeded by Dr. John H. McClintock (brother in law of
Davis) who served till De. 29, 1858 when he became manager of the Davis
branch store at Kingston.  He was succeeded by Thos. K. Kavanaugh who served
till Aug. 16, 1859 when he was succeeded by John H. Burrows (manager of the
Davis Store) who served till June 28, 1861.  He was followed by John H.
Booher who served till Aug. 15, 1861.  He was succeeded by Wm. E. Jones who
served till Nov. 16, 1861.

He was followed by Otis B. Richardson who served till March 31, 1875.  He
was followed by Rollin G. Whitman who was succeeded by W.A. Morton with his
niece Miss Maud Morton as assistant.  He relinquishes the office to a
Democrat, John Marens who kept Miss Morton as assistant.  Marens gave way to
a Republican Nathan Clarkson who had Miss Lilla Martin as assistant.  Then
John Marens again served with Mrs. Maud Morton Harlow.  He was succeeded by
E.E. Low.  On the latters death Mrs. E.E. Low became postmistress.  W.J.
Clark was the next incumbent, followed by the Democrat Dr. Tinsley Brown,
who in turn was succeeded by Harley Shively, the present Republican
incumbent.  These statistics have been verified by Mrs. F. Korn through the
Post Office department at Washington D.C.

The early appointees of Hamilton postoffice held office but a short time
until Mr. Richardson who moved the postoffice to his own store building
north of the depot.  In the four following years, the postoffice was located
on the site of the present store of Ollie Howard.  With the building of the
Morton Block (corner north of Penny store) Postmaster W.A. Morton moved the
office to that site.  Later under John Marens it was moved to its present
sit where for many years it occupied only the rear of the building, the
front being the postoffice bookstore or other small business.

From the ledger kept in the Davis store 1859 is to be found charge accounts
for stamps by Wm. P. Steele.

In the earlier years, before city delivery of mail was started, waiting for
the mail to be distributed was an exciting feature of the day, and the
postoffice was crowded at such periods.


JAMES M. KEMPER  HAMILTON MERCHANT IN THE SIXTIES
Narrator:  W.T. Kemper, 68, of Kansas City and Others

Wm. T. Kemper, the Kansas City banker, is a son of James Madison Kemper, a
pioneer of Hamilton and Sallie Paxton both natives of Kentucky.  James M.
Kemper came to Hamilton at the age of seventeen in 1858 to be a clerk in the
A.G. Davis store - the first store here - located at the site of the Courter
Theater facing south.  He was a clerk under John Burrows of Mirabile, who
managed the Davis Store.  When he came, people called him Jimmy and for
years he was thus known.  When about twenty one he and Wm. Stone started a
General Store in the Davis Building for themselves and it was in this store
that the Casey-Bristow killing began.

Later the firm was made up of John Ballinger, S.P. Cox, and J.M. Kemper,
still down by the railroad.  An old ad in the 1864 Kingston Newspaper said
they had a good supply of flour, salt, dry goods, groceries and took produce.
They had a salt yard just north of their store building.

In 1865, Kemper and Paxton built a two-story frame on Main Street on the
spot where the Bram Store now stands.  James Whitt lately of Daviess County
was the head clerk and above the store lived the young George Lamson and
wife and baby Harry, who was then depot agent.

This store was popular and a money maker as all the early old timers recall
it.  It burnt sometime about 1870 and Kemper sold the site to Anthony
Rohrbough and son-in-law Moore who built on the site the brick block which
still stands.

When James Kemper decided to leave town a farewell dinner was given in his
honor and B.M. Daley a prominent young lawyer sang a funny song with a
refrain, "Jimmy Don't Go."  Where upon every one present was supposed to
weep in fun and ended by weeping in earnest.

During the rest of his life Mr. J.M. Kemper's heart was always in Hamilton.
Here in this county he had met and lost the bride of his youth Sallie Paxton
and they are both buried in the Kemper-Paxton lot in the Highland Cemetery.
While living here he owned the big white house on the hill in the west end
of town, now the James Kautz home.

He left here to enter a Mercantile business in St. Joseph where he stayed
forty years.  His first wife having died, he married again.  He died in
California 1928.

He was related to the Kemper family which have lived for years in the
Mirabile neighborhood.  He was also related by inter-marriage with the
Paxtons of Mirabile and with the A.G. Davis family and the Penney family of
Hamilton.


A DAUGHTER OF A HAMILTON PIONEER
Narrator:  Mrs. Clara Prentice of Hamilton, Missouri

Mrs. Prentice was in Hamilton in the years of its very early history, coming
here from Daviess County with her parents Mr. and Mrs. Otis Richardson in
1859.  Mr. Richardson had served as a soldier in the war with the Florida
Indians in the New Jersey Dragoons, enlisting from Maryland his home.  The
story is told that a shyster lawyer volunteered to get him a pension with a
commission as pay for this service.  He could find no Government record of
it so he found another Richardson name who served in the Mexican War and put
that in the application, but of course Mr. Richardson refused to sign it.
Mr. Richardson built the home for his family, now the property of James
Deems, which is one of the oldest houses in town.  A few years ago when the
house was remodeled, it was found that it had been made with wooden pegs not
nails.

He was appointed Post master here November 1861 and held the office till
March 31, 1875.  Many of the old timers tell of him in that office.  At
first he gave out the mail at his home, then at the Kemper Store, then he
built a shack at the east end of the Kemper store where he also sold
groceries and candy.

He had a big family of boys and girls come to maturity - some were Alice
(Singleton), Clara (Prentice), Minnie (Price), who was born 1860 after the
family moved here, Mrs. Hemry and George the baby.  One son was killed while
serving as a special guard at the lumber yard by a mistake.  Mr. Richardson
became Justice of the Peace and some yet call him Squire Richardson.  He was
quite determined in his speech and actions and rarely stopped on his way, to
talk.  He carried a cane by habit and put it down on the side walk every
three steps.  People on his way home always knew he was coming.

Clara Richardson went to school here in town to a school located on a lot
just south of her fathers home, then she went to the school on the Methodist
church parsonage site.  There she was a pupil at the subscription school
kept by Andrew McClelland in the early seventies.  She was also a Davy
Ferguson girl in the big north brick.

She married Gideon Prentice who had come here as a timer for the Morton
Bros. and finally branched out into a business for himself.  His first
location as a Hardware man was in the block north of the Penney Store; then
he moved to a brick on the south east corner of Main and Mill where he was
burned out.

Mrs. Prentice was probably the most successful "canvasser" that the town
ever had.  She sold corsets, toilet articles, spice etc. and made it a
regular business.  Her ice cream for Congregational lawn socials was an
institution  in the town and the same was true of her cakes and pies.

Her youth was passed in primitive ways.  She used to tell of letting butter
and milk down on ropes into the well to keep them cool in summer time--
sometimes the rope broke and then the food was lost.  Those earliest days
few people had even heard of kerosene lamps, and she told of making tallow
for candles and stringing the candle molds with candle wicks.  She told
about going out to the creeks and getting reeds and rushes which when dried
scoured milk pans.  There was a favorite practice of soaking quince seeds in
water and wetting the hair with it before doing it up in curl papers; and a
butter milk face-wash was good for the complexion.  (Real butter milk it was,
too.)

Her stories of the Civil War days came from her own experience.  One night,
a band of Union Soldiers on the way from the Battle of Lexington stopped at
the Richardson home and demanded food.  Word had already been passed of
their coming this way, so the Richardsons had cooked a lot of food from
their store.  For an hour they shoved out victuals through the front window
of their home to the soldiers out side.

During the war many stores were held up at night for money by bushwhackers
on both sides.  Every afternoon Alice Richardson used to carry the Post
Office money in a box out to Judge Wm. Bristow north of town.  No thief ever
guessed that the girl on horse back was carrying money.  She was just a
school girl with books.  The family never knew whether she was safe till
they saw her horse over the hill the next morning.  Most of the country to
the north of their house was empty and their view was unhindered.

Interviewed  1933.


HAMILTON IN 1860 AND LATER
Narrator:  Wm. Hemry, 84, of Hamilton

Mr. Hemry was eight years old when his father, Israel, moved form Carroll
County, Ohio, to Caldwell County in 1859.  Both Wm. and his father were born
in Carroll County.  The Hemry family came to Ohio from Pennsylvania.  Israel
located on land two miles south and half-mile west of Hamilton.  The son,
Will, began to make his living by working in the Harper and Goodman livery
barn which faced the alley running north and south back of the depot.  He
recalled the custom of keeping a goat in the livery barn, the idea being
that the odor was good for horses.  The goat from the barn of Bill and Bob
Paxton was taken over to the new brick schoolhouse and Prof. Ferguson had
quite a time in driving it out.  The Paxton stable stood on the present post
office site and a little north.  The Green stage line horse barn was where
Mrs. Caroline Thornton lives.

When Mr. Hemry first recalls Hamilton in 1860, Kemper and Stone ran a
general store on the present movie picture corner.  Later O.B. Richardson
(whose daughter became the wife of Will Hemry) put up a shack to the east
of the Kemper store and used it for a post office.  Most of the business in
1860 was on the short street back of the depot.  Next in line was Dr. James
McAdoo - office and drug store - who had the first soda water for sale.  It
was made by a suction pump.  (Some time later John Minger made soda pop from
an acid pressure tank.)  North of the Kemper store and facing west was a
salt lot, the salt being shipped in barrels from Michigan and Virginia.

He recalls as a boy the very early Buster House located at the corner of
Mill and Broadway back from the street and facing south, which took in
travelers.  This same Dave Buster kept a saloon-grocery on the right of way
south of the tracks on Broadway.  He says that Buster was a good man despite
his saloon.  He also said that the Buster House was later moved northeast on
the same block and formed a part of the Hamilton House built by Dudley.
However, Dudley's son declares this is an error.

He recalls when the Morton brothers, John and "Cap" returned from the war
and started up (1865) in hardware and tin (north end of the lumber company
lot); the people said they were way out of town.

The Covington family came here from Gallatin and started a restaurant on the
west side of North Main.  Phil Covington would never sell the last of any
kind of candy from his candy jars.  He recalled the only three-story
building ever on Main - the Kelso block.  (Mr. Kelso was the father of Mrs.
W.J. Ervin.)  The fellows called this building the Buzzard's Roost.  Later
this became the Phoenix Hotel.  It stood where the Mo. Dry Goods Store now
stands.

The old Cochran brick bank (later Spratt-Houston) stood in 1868 on the
present C.A. Martin corner.  To the north of it was the Claypool Hotel.
There was also a Claypool blacksmith shop on the site of the Leslie Clark
Shop.  To the south across the street was the frame Kemper store which was
soon to burn down and be replaced by the Rohrbough brick.  Rohrbough earlier
was in a frame store on the present Penney site.

The earliest church building was the Methodists.  There was held a Union
Sunday School with Sam Martin (C.A.'s father) a Presbyterian, as
superintendent.  The first church on the site of the Presbyterian Church had
a peculiar history.  Col. Pace (a South Methodist preacher and lawyer here)
had begged the money for the church-house.  But they would not hire him to
preach.  So he charged them for this services in collecting the money and
took the building on the debt which somehow their church laws allowed.
Then he sold it to the Presbyterians, and he became a Presbyterian.  Before
the Methodists had a church, they met in the public schoolhouse which stood
on the site of the present Methodist parsonage.  He also recalled the talk
about Rev. Wm. Wilmot, who was sent here as a Congregational missionary.
The report was that he raised money to build a church and then he put some
money of his own with it and built a home on Kingston Street with a chapel
on the south for religious purposes.  There was some trouble about it and
the Congregational people left and met in a hall uptown, while the Wilmots
left the Congregational Church forever.  That house still stands south of
the park.

The Christians (or Campbellites as they were wrongly but commonly called)
met first at the home of James Whitt, then at the Schoolhouse on Kingston
street, then in a McCoy's Hall about 1876, then in their first church home,
(a small building northeast of the north school which has been changed into
a dwelling) and lastly into their present church which was the first of a
series of fine churches built about thirty-five or forty years ago.  There
seemed to be a contest as to which church should put up the nicest building.
To that era belonged the brick Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregational
Church-buildings.

He recalls how the Baptists drifted around from one meeting place to another
till they finally bought and built.  For years, the Baptist church, while
not the nicest, was the biggest church where union meetings were apt to be
held because of its size.

Mr. Hemry was a witness to the Casey-Bristow fight in Civil War days in the
Kemper store and the Buster saloon.  He was also a witness to the Brosius-
Davis shooting on north Main about 1870, when Jim Brosius (who was a son-in-
law of Squire A.G. Davis and separated from his wife) and Squire Davis shot
at each other, with wounds on each side.  This shooting occurred near the
site of the Penney store, he says; the Davis family at the time lived in a
house on the next corner now occupied by the north bank building.  The older
Brosius (father of the above) was at that time proprietor of the Hamilton
House, south of the depot.  Mr. Hemry was sworn in as a deputy to help keep
peace between the two sides that night after the shooting.

Interviewed  April 15, 1934.


TAYLOR ALLEE IN HAMILTON IN 1865
Narrator:  Taylor Allee, 85, of Hamilton, Missouri

Mr. Allee's parents were Isaac Reed Allee (1812 War soldier) buried at
Kingston and Mary Ann Parks Allee buried in Highland Cemetery Hamilton.  He
was born in Henry County Indiana.  In 1865 Taylor Allee, his sister and half
brother came to Caldwell County, the father and mother came 1866.  The
children had come because a near relative Sarah Smith and her husband
Philander Smith had located in the county.  Their father's farm was a half
of the later Waterman farm three miles west of Hamilton, the other half was
the P. Smith farm.  Later Allee sold to W.H. Henry, a relative, and bought
in Daviess County.  Isaac Allee was an herb doctor and doctored many people
here and in Indiana.  In Indiana he had his own herb garden and always
compounded his own medicine.  The Taylor Allee family still have some of his
old bills in which his charges are shown as 12 1/2 cents for medicine, 16
2/3 cents for a visit.

Taylor Allee with five other Allees enlisted in the Union army from their
county in Indiana.  He declared he was 18 but really was 15.  He was a big
boy five feet seven inches weighed 143 pounds, and got by with it.  They
examined him by giving him two big thumps on the chest and having him jump
over a box.  His job was to hunt down bush whackers.

He well recalls Hamilton of the 1865 day - which was the time he first saw
the town.  Then, Kidder was a better town than Hamilton.  There were not
five hundred people here.  He came fresh from the war - age 16.

He as all the other older citizens begins the description of early Hamilton
by going to the corner now occupied by the Picture Show north west of the
depot.  This in 1865 was occupied by the Brosius Brothers (George and Jim)
in a general store and Otis B. Richardson had his Post Office in the store.

Then came a space and then Charley Manuel Saloon, then a space and Aiken Dry
Goods and Saloon then a space and a Drug Store which might be Jas. A. McAdoo
or he might have come a little later.

On the south east corner of this little street in 1865 was a vacant lot but
it was soon to have the Dry Goods Store of Bye and Gibson.  Due south of the
depot on a high bank was the Hamilton House with Uncle Jake Brosius (father
of George and Jim) as landlord.  On north Main just north of Bye and Wilson
was the Van Buren grocery.  It was a few years later that Phil Covington
opened a restaurant in a poor building located where Hopson is now (and
about the same time John Minger had one across the street).  About the time
of Mr. Allee's coming, the Goodmans had built a hotel south of Covington and
Sain had a saloon in the back room.  It was in the brick now owned by
Whitman and erected as a part of the Goodman block.

On the east side of Davis (Main) was the Kemper-Paxton store (a frame on the
Bram site) first building in 1865, then came a space and the livery stable
of Thurston Green brother of Harvey who ran the stage coach line which
originally ran from Richmond to Gallatin with Hamilton as a middle point.
As the railroads developed to the north it was shortened from Richmond to
Hamilton.

In the middle sixties Dr. Nunn was the only doctor.  Before 1870 Bennett
Whitely built a mill due east of what is now the park on the south west
corner of the block.  This was afterwards used for church and school.  He
was an ordained Baptist Elder, a merchant and Editor in his time.  There was
the Goodman lumber yard on Broadway on present Ralph White home.

Before 1870, on Mill street about the site of Parker's grocery, Austin Dodge
had a blacksmith shop.  His wife soon opened up a millinery shop on the
corner of Mill and Broadway.  At his death, she married R.D. Dwight and the
shop became known as Mrs. Dwight's Millinery Shop.

After Mr. Allee's father bought the Daviess County farm Taylor went there
and worked ten years, so he knew little of Hamilton in the seventies.  It
was about 1870 that the elevator by the right of way on Main was put up, Guy
and Naugle ran it, Love and Lamson, Love and Eugene Low, were some of the
early men there.

When he came back to Hamilton after living in Daviess County he worked for
Schaffer-Tanner in the hard lumber business, site of Alec Warden's home
south of the tracks on Broadway.  Then he worked seven years for Lamson and
Love in the elevator.  Then he began clerking for Emmet White who bought
out Deaerick on north Main.

Mr. Allee played on the first baseball team in Hamilton about 1870.
Dr. King was captain, another player was Roy Bowman (Alston Bowman's son).
They played in Dudley's pasture.  There were some differences in the old
game.  The pitch was underhand pitch, not a throw.  The pitcher had to give
the batter whatever kind of a ball he asked for, as a knee ball, a waist
ball.
     Interviewed  June 1934.


THE HARRAH FAMILY OF HAMILTON IN THE SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES
Narrator:  Mrs. Mollie Logan, 75, of Denver, Colorado

    The Old Harrah Home on Mills Street     Lady Clerks - McCoy's
Store     Harry Logan's Band

Mrs. Logan is the widow of Harry Logan well known blacksmith in
Hamilton over fifty years ago.  Even better known was he as leader of
the Hamilton Comet Band when the band wore bright green and white
uniforms.  Logan was an all round natural musician, also giving violin
lessons.  He also played leading parts when the band put on Home
Talent plays in Anderson's Opera House back in the eighties.

Mrs. Logan is the daughter of Andy W. Harrah who was here before the
Civil War closed.  He was a horse buyer, having headquarters later
with the Paxton Livery barn.  Mr. Harrah and family once lived in the
house later occupied by Wm. McCoy facing on west Mill.  At that time,
before 1870 it was the only house on that block, the rest was open
commons.  There was a much used road (of course not legal) cut
diagonally across the block from the Kingston road (or street now) to
get to Mill at present Hawk's corner.  Mrs. Logan said that often a
high spirited horse driven by a high spirited driver would go over
this path and come within an ace of hitting the east corner of their
home.

Mrs. Logan soon was to see Wm. McCoy move into that house and build a
frame store on the north east corner.  She soon saw the young George
Rohrbough family build what is now the Mrs. Mary Kautz home, and his
brother-in-law Moore build on the south east corner next door (the
house later was moved on the east side of the street and belongs to
Earnest Snape).  About 1882 she recalls that Dan Booth who had
recently been made Cashier of the Savings Bank bought the remaining
open lot south of the McCoy's store and built a home.

Mrs. Logan's grandmother Harrah lived for some time in what is now the
Jordan home on north Broadway.  Her aunt was Mrs. Hattie Alexander,
later Mrs. Billy Dodge.  Her brothers were John and Andy Harrah, names
familiar to the social young set of the eighties.

She recalled others of that crowd.  There were the Brown girls,
daughters of Double O. Brown, a Broadway Merchant, Pem Vorhees, a
clerk in the Anderson store married one of them.  He was the perfect
beau here in the late seventies and early eighties.

Lady clerks were rather rare those days.  Of course, the women members
of the merchants family might sometimes wait on customers with
propriety.  Miss Rhene Harvey worked in the Harvey and Rosenthal
store, Mrs. Franke always sold goods in the Franke (Jew) Store.  Mrs.
Farabee helped her husband Harve Farabee in the P.O. Bookstore.  Mrs.
Brown and the girls helped O.O. Brown but few women outsiders worked
out in stores.  You hunted up the lady clerk, as they said, when you
wanted to guy garters, stockings, a corset or underwear.  Trying on
shoes in a store was horrible because the man-clerk had to see your
ankles; so most women took a bunch of shoes home to try them on.
There was always a problem too of setting the shoe buttons over one
way or the other.

As to Logan's band; in those days nothing was thought of the fact that
after a certain number of pieces were played on the streets most of
the band probably marched into a saloon to "wet their whistles" with
some kind of a drink.  Playing in the band then was a man's business;
no women or children were in the picture.

Interviewed  October 1933.


HAMILTON MERCHANTS IN 1868-69 Narrator:  Irving Harper, 72, of
Hamilton, Missouri

Irving Harper was born 1861 in Illinois, the son of Joseph W. Harper
and Frances Allen.  His father came to Hamilton prospecting in
December 1867 and arranged to buy a livery stable.  In April 1868, the
whole family came.  They stayed at the Western Hotel (George M.
Goodman owner) until Mr. Harper built a home.  He had bought land to
the west of town, a mile out.  Property which is still in the family
belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Frank Hooker (Minnie Harper).

Mr. Harper went into the livery business with Wm. Goodman of the
Hotel.  The barn was back of the Hotel and faced on the alley (now
running back of the McLean Hotel).  Livery barns did a rushing
business and they kept fifteen to twenty horses for hire and two or
three drivers and hostlers.  His rival in business was Weldon who had
his barn on Main, occupying the space from the present Baker Drug
store to the Post office.  The Weldon barn was the stage stop for
state coaches from Lexington to Gallatin, a thing which had already
stopped before Mr. Harper came.  In the early seventies Weldon sold to
the Paxton Brothers who kept it till the 1875 fire.  The Paxtons later
had a site two blocks up north and still later on the present Tiffin
Building site.  Henry Thornton opened up his livery barn about 1870 on
the site of the Mrs. Carrie Thornton homes.

There were many gaps then in the various business sections of
Hamilton.  The Goodman block embracing the Western Hotel and a grocery
stood where the Whitman building is now.  Right north of it was Phil
Covington's restaurant, a mere shack and on its north was another
Shack - the first location for John Minger's restaurant, but he soon
moved into a similar shack on the east side right opposite.  At the
north end of the block was the Rohrbough store.  That finished that
block in 1868.  On the opposite block to the east - was the Kemper
store, the Ervin Drug Store, Reed's Dry Goods, William Drug Store,
Goldberg the Jew (not long), Minger, Weldon's livery.  North of this
block was the "Brick Bank" which Cochran had just sold to J.F. Spratt
his son-in-law who soon took in R.B. Houston as partner.

On the block opposite stood McAdoo Drug Store, the Harper Furniture
and Higgins lumber yard; across to the north was Reddie Lumber yard
and further north the Morton Brothers in Hardware and Tin shop.

South of the track, Main Street was beginning also to build up.  At
the north east corner (site of First Bank) was the office of Squire
A.D. Davis, facing north.  Then came a long space; at the south east
corner was the Witwer Wagon yard.  On the opposite side by the tracks
was an elevator owned by George Lamson and Charlie Goodnow.  Then came
a grocery store lately owned by Spratt who sold it I.J.C. Guy.  There
were several frames along there which changed hands so often that they
defied remembrance but in one of them on the upper story Professor
Hill had a school, and above another the Congregational people had
church after they had left the Wilmot home until the old brown church
was built.

Broadway was quite a business section too.  Mrs. Dodge (later Mrs.
Dwight) had a Millinery shop (on site of Hawks Filling Station) in her
home while her husband Austin Dodge had a blacksmith shop about where
the Parker grocery stands, just across from the home.  Goodman and
Lamson had a lumber yard on the present site of Ralph White house
which Chandler ran for them.  Further north on Broadway a little west
of the present library was a Shack where O.O. Brown began his store
and home.  He was soon to build two good store rooms to the south, one
of which the brick stands yet belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Lee Souders.
At the library corner was the small Millinery Shop of the Clark
Sisters.  North of the tracks on Broadway was the old corner store in
1869 belonging to one of the Brosius boys.  Going on north to the
corner opposite the present Deems home was a small frame - the old
Green Stage office, used for different uses.

Back of the depot to the north, was the original Main Street, already
in 1869 losing its prestige.  Next to the Brosius corner store to the
east was the little Richardson store and Post Office and several of
the earlier buildings to the east.  Here was Manuel's Saloon.  Another
Saloon was on the Broadway right of way belonging to Dave Buster.

Directly south of the depot and standing on a high ridge on the
present location of the library was the Hamilton House with an
extensive front porch and a long flight of steps leading to the depot.

Even on Kingston Street, there was business.  Bennett Whitely had a
little general store on the south east corner opposite the park in the
building often called the Baptist Chapel those days.  This building
was soon to have a windmill attachment for the Shellbarger mill and
also to house some of the grades of the Hamilton School.  It ended its
existence as a barn.

Interviewed  July 1934.


HAMILTON BUSINESS MEN IN THE 70'S Narrator:  C.A. Martin of Hamilton

Mr. Martin came here as a boy in the late 60's with his father, Sam
Martin, and has seen almost every business change in Hamilton.  He
told me about the business men between 1870-80.

He began on Kingston street east of the park.  There was the
Shellbarger Mill.  North of it was Ben Whitely's grocery store.
(Hamilton stores had a bad time at first deciding to stay on Main.)

On Broadway, on Ralph White's present home, was the Goodnow-Lamson
(conducted by W.H. Chandler), and later the W.F. Colby lumber-yards.
Up a block was Wm. McCoy's grocery store, opposite him was Mrs. Dodge
(later Dwight) in a millinery store.  Her first husband Austin Dodge
had a blacksmith where O. Parker is now.  North of McCoy's was a block
of frame buildings, Nash Produce, A.G. Howard Drugs, Geo. Hastings
grocery.  On the east side at the north end was the millinery shop of
Alma and Lou Clark; then the brick and frame store of O.O. Brown and
the Broadway Hotel, kept for some years by L.D. Van Volkenberg and
later by Mrs. Harry.  Some place in that street was a shoe shop
(McCammon) and a tailor shop.

Just south of the right of way on Broadway was the old Buster saloon,
occupied sometimes by a Jew jeweler, sometimes by a family; the place
was going back.  On the site of the present Alec Warden home was a
hard wood lumber yard run by _________ Schaeffer.  Going on north, on
the corner south of the Presbyterian church was Henry Thornton's
livery barn.  On the opposite side, was a blacksmith shop, the
calaboose, (jail) another old building and the old Davis store
building used by him in the 70's for storing grain, later a hoop
factory.  Along the old street back of the depot, formerly Main, few
races were left of the old activity.  There was in the early 70's a
saloon, kept for awhile by Dort, and a restaurant by Hoagland, and
some minor business done there.

On the side street running east from Main was the Hare Photograph
Gallery (S.E. of present Martin Grocery), a blacksmith shop
(Claypool?) and on the opposite side was the Logan blacksmith shop.

Now for Main Street.

Far to the north end of Main Street on the west side was John Morton's
hardware store in the middle of the block where the lumber yard
stands.  South of him was the Reddie lumber yard.  Across the street
south was the Higgins lumber yard, a furniture store belonging to
Harper who sold to another who sold to Hiram Tilley; Dr. Jas. McAdoo
Drugs; Patterson's hardware store, then a space at the end occupied by
A.G. Davis home.

On the opposite block, in the late 70's was the Stone-Menefee
warehouse for wagons and implements.  South of them was a home built
by __________ and later the Higgins home.  The Red Front drug store -
B.P. Doddridge, later R.W. Napier.  The New York store and Harvey Dry
Goods in the big Kelso building.  The old Grange store and later the
Rhodus store; then Houston-Spratt bank.  The first block on the north
of the railroad west side had several changes and some stores may be
omitted.  In the J.C. Penney store site was a dry goods store
belonging successively to Rohrbough, Davis and Brosius, Davis and
Gunby, and O'Neil and Wilson.  Above the store, was De Stevens,
Dentist.  Along that side at various times were Claypool and Rymal,
meats; L.M. Love, music store; Harry Dickinson, Tailor; C.B. Franke,
Dry Goods; Wm. Goodman, hotel; grocery and saloon; C.C. Greene, meat
market; (and Greene and Sain) Frank Van Buren, grocery at the south
east corner of the block.

On the opposite side at the north end were (not all at one time) the
new brick of Rohrbough and Moore, south of it was the Reed Store,
Ervin Drug Store, Jacob Goldberg, Dry goods; Bob Williams, drug store,
Minger Restaurant, Simon Bernheimer, General store; the Paxton livery
barn at the south corner.  South of the tracks on the west side was
the office of Squire Holliday.  There was a gap.  John Marens had his
News Graphic on the row.  Later, a building from up town was moved
down for an office of Penney and Dildine, the south corner was empty
for a while but later J.W. Fowler had a shed grocery there.  Set back
in the lot was Witwer wagon yard.

On the east side opposite was the elevator-Lamson-Love, Love-Low, etc.
just south of the tracks.  To the south ran Griffing wagon shop, a
saloon kept by Tanner awhile, law offices of B.M. Dilley, W.W. Chapel,
Seth Young, Eugene Lowe, etc.  Hamiltonian office, R.H. Benedict,
grocer; Harve Farabee, post office followed by bookstore, C.A. Greene.
White's grocery.  To the south was the Daley and then Harper, then
Colby lumber yard and McBrayer livery barn.

All has now been told in an imperfect way perhaps, except the street
with the Hamilton House south of the depot.  The Brosius men kept it
up to a high standard, but after they left it began to lose out.  East
of it was a grocery called the "Oasis" in slang probably with
something to drink there.  The next was Hugh Buford (colored) barber.

Of course Frank Clark's flour mill ran east of town. Interviewed
February 1932.


THE OGDEN FAMILY AT HAMILTON IN THE 70'S Narrator:  Minnie Ogden, 75,
of Hamilton, Missouri

The Ogden Property Trees and Dances

Robert Ogden, father of the narrator, lived in Ontario County, N.Y.
He decided to make a western trip in 1871 to prospect.  He went to
Illinois and Michigan where he had relatives and then to Hamilton,
Mo., where his relatives Dr. Robt. Brown and Mrs. Geo. Barlow lived.
He was delighted as he watched Brown plough all day long and not hit a
stone (plenty of stones in N.Y.) and here was plenty of grass for
cattle on the open prairie.  He straightway hunted up a town house for
sale.  He bought the property of R.B. Houston, banker, for $3,000.00.
There were six lots and a two story house.  This stayed Ogden property
till Dec. 1910 when Miss Ogden sold it.  The Parr and Whitman homes
now stand on the land.  This half block was originally part of the
A.G. Davis holdings.  She says that he once had a great pile of rocks
there intending to build a store; and in 1867 when the agitation arose
to move the courthouse from Kingston to Hamilton a foundation for the
courthouse was actually built there.  She recalls that when her father
built an addition to his home, he used the rocks of the so-called
courthouse foundation.

Mr. Ogden supported his family mostly by the interest on his money.
He had about $10,000.00 and this he loaned at 10 percent.  Also, they
always had room in the big house for boarders, teachers preferred.
Some of their boarders were Judge Holliday, Ella Griffith, a high
school teacher, and Miss Anna Smith, a grade teacher.  A story shows
how few trees were here then and also it shows how slow the trains
were.  Miss Smith always went home to Kidder for the week-end.  From
the upper window, she could see the train leaving Breckenridge.  When
it left Nettleton, she would start for the depot, some seven blocks
away and get there in time to buy a ticket.      When the Odgens came,
trees were very rare.  The Menafee family who lived across the road
(Dr. Eads' home) had several soft maples in their yard.  Minnie and
her sister Cora were amazed at the maple pips (they did not have soft
maples in New York).  They collected some and planted them in a box.
Later, their father set them out and from that origin all the trees on
those six lots started.      There were plenty of dances then.  Among
the good dancers were George Hastings ( a grocer on Broadway in the
70's) who often led girls out on the floor; John Minger and wife who
in German style waltzed straight ahead without reversing.  Mollie
Davis Brosius, Clara Reddie, Mollie Harrah, Maude Goodman (Hosmer),
Reila Aikens were all good dancers.  Dances were held in the new brick
school before the seats were fastened in, later in Rohrbough's Hall
and Kelso's Hall.  The waltz and the square dance were favorites.
Organ and fiddles made the music.  The walls were lined with
spectators.      Interviewed  March 1934.


    THE ROHRBOUGH FAMILY IN HAMILTON - 1867     Narrators:  A Group of
Old Timers in Hamilton

     In 1867, the Rohrbough family came to Hamilton.  There was
Anthony Rohrbough, his wife, Mary, the sons, George and John, and a
daughter who was to become Mrs. L.D. Moore.  They opened a store in a
frame building on the present Penney store corner, and lived over the
store.  About 1872, they leased this building to A.G. Davis and Gunby
and built a brick building on the former Kemper store corner, which
brick still is used by the Bram store.  Here Rohrbough and Moore
(son-in-law) did a big business till they sold out to Anderson Bros.
(Wallace and Joseph) in 1879.  The hall above was used for
entertainments and was called Rohrbough's Hall or "The Opera House."
At that time, the family lived in the present Ream home, one block
east of Martin's grocery, (or in older terms, three doors east of the
brick bank).  Mr. Rohrbough was soon recognized as a good citizen, for
in 1868 he was a member of the first board of trustees.      John, one
of the sons, was an expert piano player and it was quite a treat to
have him sit down at the piano.  He was organist at the Methodist
church.  He was one of the first from here to go to the State
University.  Albert Davis (A.G. Davis' son) was another early M.U.
student.  Both boys were gazed upon with awe on their return.  The
Rohrbough family were strong Methodists and Anthony Rohrbough was
probably the largest giver that the Hamilton Methodist church has ever
had.      When George married, he and his wife resided in the house on
south Broadway now owned by Mrs. Mary Kautz and his brother-in-law,
L.D. Moore, owned the corner house south (site of Houghton Funeral
Home).  The Moore house was afterwards moved to the second lot on the
opposite side of the road by Kenney Dwight and is owned now by Ernest
Snape.  There was a partnership well on the Moore-Rohrbough started in
1868 the Prairie Cemetery (see Paper) which was more usually called
the "Robough" Cemetery or the Old Cemetery.  The older citizens almost
invariably mispronounced the family name as indicated.      Mr.
Rohrbough the elder, at one time during the later 70's tried to beat
hard times by taking corn in return for dry goods.  So many farmers
brought in corn that he built a very long shed on the north side of
the present Booth lots (then empty) to store his corn.  Corn went down
and he is reported to have lost heavily (reported by W.J. McBrayer).
In general, however, the firm prospered and possibly made $100,000.00
from their store here.  The family were of the better class of
citizens and helped Hamilton grow into a good town.


    THE SPRATTS OF CALDWELL COUNTY, MISSOURI     Narrator:  Wm.E.
Spratt of St. Joseph, Missouri

     John Fulkerson Spratt, son of William H. and Matilda Fulkerson
Spratt was born in Lexington Missouri on February 14, 1838.  He
married Martha Jane Elliott of Estill, Howard County, Missouri on July
29, 1863.  His wife died October 1st, 1869, leaving three children.
His second wife was Mary Amelia Cochran (pronounced Kaw'hern, not
Cock-ran) the daughter of A.C. Cochran of Zanesville, Ohio, whom he
married May 21, 1872.  They had two children.      Immediately after
the Civil War, the territory north of Richmond, extending all the way
up to the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad in the vicinity of Hamilton
was given considerable state-wide advertisement and publicity on
account of the fertile rich farm land.  Many acres were purchased for
speculation to be held for a rise in price.      William H. Spratt, of
Lexington Missouri was one of those to so invest.  He purchased two
half sections of land, not expecting to reside on the land, but to
sell it later as a profit.  One of the half sections was sold and
became in an early day the south one half of the George Larmor sheep
farm, situated a mile east of Hamilton on the Nettleton road.  The
other half section William H. Spratt made a present to his son, John
F. Spratt, who in 1868 moved to Hamilton.  This half section was
located one mile south of the town on the Kingston road and was in
1885 sold to J.B. Clough who extensively improved the farm by erecting
thereon many fine large stock barns and a very costly and beautiful
residence.      When John F. Spratt first came to Hamilton, he took
his family to the Goodman Hotel, on the west side of Main Street, to
live while he was constructing a residence on his farm south of town.
For a while they boarded at the Hamilton House, a large frame building
south of the railroad tracks facing the depot.  The new home was
finally completed and he moved into it in the fall of 1868.  George H.
Lamson was in the lumber business and furnished the material out of
which the house was built.      There was very little improved land
anywhere in that locality.  Colonel J.W. Harper and his family lived
on their farm west of town.  When the Spratts and the Harpers visited
they rode horseback, "cross country" from one house to the other with
no fences to bother.  Newton G. Spratt was born on this farm and the
slats across the windows which kept him as a crawling baby from
falling out of the second story windows are there today after 65 years
on the old house which was moved across the road to the east side,
south of the big barn, to make room for the new Clough home.      John
F. Spratt for a while ran a grocery store on Main Street, first door
south of the elevator, which Vic Walker operated later in the early
eighties.  During the time of the Civil War and following it, it was
more the custom than otherwise to serve whisky freely, upon all social
and friendly occasions.  It is said that at the opening of the Spratt
Store that one day there was a barrel of Whisky with tin cups handy
for all who wished to partake.      A.C. Cochran owned and operated
the bank over on North Main Street by the public pump.  Water was
free, but money cost interest.  Mr. Cochran came into that locality a
well recommended stranger, without any relatives there, from Ohio.
His family consisted of his wife and daughter, Amelia, who on May the
21st 1872, after the death of his first wife married John Spratt.  It
was soon after this that an agreement was made and the Spratt farm
south of town was traded or exchanged for the bank and Mr. Cochran
went back to Ohio to reside and it is not known that he ever again
returned to Missouri.  He later resold the farm to Mr. Spratt who held
it and operated it until he sold it to the Cloughs.      For a period
the bank was operated under the name of John F. Spratt, Banker.  Then
later as the town grew, when more capital was needed, Robert B.
Houston was

taken into partnership and the firm name was changed to "Houston and
Spratt."  For many years the bank was the strongest financial
institution in the county.      In 1892, the members of the firm
decided that they desired to quit business.  They called for all
customers to come in and get their money.  Some declined or neglected
to do it.  The bank finally made a list of all unpaid depositors, and
went across the street, carried the money and placed it in the State
Savings Bank, and notified the owners where to go and get their cash.
That method of liquidation is in striking contrast to the costly
receiverships of later days.  All of the members of that banking firm
have long since passed on to their reward, but they left a record
which would be well to emulate.      The children of John F. Spratt
were:           Jemmie Elliott, married first to Herbert H. Taylor,
who died, second                 to Edwin F. Willis, no children.
William E. Spratt married Effie Cowgill, two children.
Newton G. Spratt married in California, no children.           Mae
Cochran married Frank Poteet, one child.           Xema L. not
married.


    THE McBRAYER LIVERY BARN     Narrator:  W.J. McBrayer of Hamilton

    Excelsior Livery Barn     Large Credit System with Banks

     The McBrayer Excelsior livery barn was built 1875 by Samuel
McBrayer on Main Street, two blocks south of the depot.  Mr. McBrayer
was born in Daviess County, his ancestors having come from North
Carolina.  The barn was increased in size from time to time, the
pictures of it in 1885 showing a bigger building than the picture of
1875.  Later on, Mr. McBrayer built a big sale barn farther south on
Main.  The livery stable itself had about 30 horses for hire.  In the
sale barn, often there would be from 150 to 300 horses kept.      The
livery barn kept a corps of drivers hired to accommodate customers.
Some of these men were Sam and Jake Buster, Fred and Austin (Ott)
Farr, and Mr. Eggleston.      The livery stable of the 70's and 80's
and 90's had two uses - 1) to supply horses and buggies for pleasure
drives.  You could get for a Sunday afternoon drive a double rig, (two
horses and double covered carriages) for two dollars.  However, on
some very important occasions like picnics or campaign speeches, the
cost was higher and you had to engage a rig several days ahead.  The
other use was for commercial purposes.  It gave transportation for
drummers or traveling men to inland towns.  Drummers would get off
here at Hamilton with their four or five trunks, go to the livery man
and he would fix up the trip.  First the trunks would be put into a
lumber wagon with a driver and the drummer with another driver drove
behind.  They made Kingston, Polo, Knoxville, Taitsville, Dawn,
Russellville, and some towns which no longer exist, to sell goods to
the country store keeper.  They might be gone a week or ten days, and
if the drummer's trip went east, they would go to Chillicothe where he
and his trunks got a train and the two drivers brought the vehicles
back to Hamilton.  On such trips, the drummer paid all the expenses of
drivers and horses.  This sort of thing went on in these parts till
the Milwaukee railroad, 1886, came to some of the above towns.  The
grocery drummer never kept out a team as long as a dry goods drummer,
but he came more often.      When asked if goats were a necessary part
of a livery stable to keep away disease, Mr. McBrayer said, "Nothing
to it" but they often had a goat as a pet for Claude, the youngest
son.      Samuel McBrayer (usually called Sam) had a son, Wm.J.
(usually called Billy) the narrator of this story.  He and his father
bought the old "Excelsior" livery stable from each other several
times.  Wm.J. is a born horseman and still loves to talk about his
horse buying days.  At one time, he employed ten to fifteen men in the
local barn and had about the same number of men in Kansas and Missouri
buying up horses and mules.  Over eighty people were dependent on his
payroll.  About thirty-five years ago, mules cost $300.00, and at one
deal one of his buyers bought one hundred mules, sending in a check of
$30,000.00 on W.J.  Other buyers sent in enough checks to make his out
going checks $60,000.00 which he borrowed from three banks, showing
the strength of his credit.  These things are of interest, because
business is not done that way now.      He told how he happened to
trade with the old Savings Bank.  He had had his money in the Houston
Spratt and Menefee Bank an old private bank of fine reputation here,
but small.  He offered checks on this bank while buying horses in
Kansas.  They would deliberate and then accept them saying "Why don't
you do business with a bank on the National list?  This list does not
contain your bank but does have Hamilton Savings Bank."  He came home
and took his money over to Dan Booth, cashier of the Savings Bank.

     He recalled when be bought the old red bandwagon - a high long
wagon with a canopy top and seats running lengthwise.  It held
twenty-two people and was the popular way to go to the Hamilton
Fairgrounds.  He took it full of men to Gallatin to see the murderer,
Jump, hanged.  They used to have public hangings in the eighties.  On
that occasion, people travelled all night over the Gallatin road to
witness the death.  Sometimes people would bring home pieces of the
rope as a keepsake from hangings.      On the occasion of W.J. Bryan's
first race for the presidency, in the 16 to 1 days, he recalled that
fifty to seventy-five white horses were collected from here and
elsewhere to accommodate girls who were riding in Bryan's silver
procession.      Interviewed  March 1934.

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