Caldwell County, Missouri History Interviews - Caldwell County, Missouri


FREDERICK GRAER - EARLY HAMILTON BLACKSMITH     Narrator:  Lillie
Graer of Hamilton, Missouri

    The Trip From Kentucky     Blacksmithing     Indians

     Miss Graer is the daughter of Frederick Graer who was born in
Germany, came to the United States at the age of fourteen to escape
military service and lived with a man in Virginia who was a well to do
farmer with a blacksmithing and wagon making shop on his place.  To
him, young Graer apprenticed himself to learn the trade.      However
he became a teacher being a student by nature and he taught in
Kentucky.  As a relic of those school teaching days the Graer girls
have a note book nearly eighty years old which he wrote in methodical
hand writing for his pupils as a guide in holding the pen correctly
before the copy book.      Then he married Miss Denny of Kentucky and
after three little girls came he decided to quite teaching and follow
Horace Greeley's idea of "go west, young man."      In 1868 after
seeing Iowa and Kansas he came to Hamilton.  On his way here he and
his family came by way of river as far as St. Louis; and on the boat
his wife for the first time saw white people serving meals.  It seemed
terrible to her, and the sign of a "poor trash" country.  When the
family came to Hamilton they boarded in the home of Captain Morton
till they got a home.      Then Graer bought what is known now as the
Switzer farm but could make no money, not being a real farmer.  Then
he went to his trade of a blacksmith.  First he worked in Kidder, then
he bought a shop on Mill Street in Hamilton where he later built a
splendid brick blacksmith and wagon shop and many 1870-80 wagons had
his name on them.      He bought a house of John Courter, a carpenter
here in the late sixties and early seventies and this became with
additions the present Graer home.  Apparently the blacksmithing and
wagon making trade was a very lucrative one in the seventies and
eighties for he died a fairly rich man for this town.  Their early
neighbors were Putnams, Tuttles, Nashes and O'Neils.      When the
family first came here the Indians were still roaming through the
country.  Miss Lillie recalls that when they boarded with Mrs. Morton
the Indians came to the house and Mrs. Graer in fright got her
children in a corner and stood in front of them with a shawl out
spread.  The Indians came to towns to trade their Indian wares for
white man's things.  After that Indian visit Mrs. Graer was still more
disgusted over the new country and pled with her husband to go back to
Kentucky; but he had already invested his money in the farm and could
not leave it.  Then he said that if he could sell his farm he would go
to Kansas City where there was a call for blacksmiths, but she
objected to that since that would bring them still closer to more
Indians in Kansas.  It really was hard for her to get used to life in
Hamilton where white women did manual work done by the blacks in
Kentucky, but she soon got accustomed to the life and liked it.
Interviewed  February 1934.


    THE PICKELLS AND JORDAN FAMILIES IN HAMILTON IN SEVENTIES AND
EIGHTIES     Narrator:  Mrs. Hattie Jordan, 79, of Hamilton, Missouri

    Jordan the Piano and Organ Man     The Old Phoenix Hotel

     Mrs. Jordan is the widow of William Jordan, a Hamilton Merchant
over fifty years ago and the daughter of George Pickell and Rebecca
Miller of Lancaster County Pennsylvania.  Her father was a brother of
Wm. Pickell and her mother was a sister of Mary Miller his wife.  Thus
Mrs. Jordan is a double cousin of Wm. Pickell aged 88 of Hamilton.
Her father lived one half mile from Bart in Lancaster County
Pennsylvania and after his death the Mother and children moved to
Lancaster City.  In 1872 the family came to Hamilton.  Her brother
George was already here on a farm near Nettleton.  Three brothers out
of five lived here - George, who later quit farming and became town
marshall; Wm., a produce dealer; and Ben, who was in a music store
with her husband.      Her mother rented the last house on Bird Street
north side now owned by George Bretz and later bought the little house
east of Seth Young's house.  Mrs. Jordon lived there till her
marriage.  After she became the wife of Mr. Jordan, they lived in with
Aunty Smith (who used to be a well known Bible teacher here) in the
house still known at the Aunty Smith house.  There her daughter Mrs.
Maud Turner was born.      Mrs. Jordan was a Davy Ferguson pupil, in
the old north brick school.  Some of her class mates were:  Addie
(Martin) George, Wilda Rohrbough, Genoa and Mattie Claypool (Aunts of
Mrs. Mollie Wines).      Her husband Wm. Jordan was a lawyer by study,
passing the Ohio Examinations 1878.  But because of his health he came
to Hamilton in 1880 and began to sell pianos and organs.  He and she
used to ride around the country and leave an organ in a home on trial
for a week or so in hopes of a sale.  He had his own brand of organs,
The Jordan Organ.  Mr. Jordan owned the old Phoenix Hotel on Main
Street and had his show rooms there for a while.  This building was
the only three-story building ever erected in Hamilton.  It was once
the Kelso building.  In the late seventies Mr. Jordan rented the whole
building to the Harvey family who kept a Dry Goods Store on the ground
floor had their living rooms on the second floor and their sleeping
rooms on the third floor.  Later the Harveys built a brick directly
across the street and lived above the store.  This was about where the
Lindley building is.      The Jordans owned quite a frontage on north
Main in the eighties, from the present McMasters through the site of
the Missouri Store.  After her husbands death, Mrs. Jordan sold the
old buildings to Finis Martin who tore it down and built two houses in
town out of the lumber.      Interviewed  April 1934.


    THE GEE FAMILY IN HAMILTON IN THE SEVENTIES     Narrator:  Mrs.
Chas. Anderson of Hamilton, Missouri

    The Gee Homes     Congregational Church History     The Tuthill
Family

     Mrs. Anderson is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Tuthill
and the grand daughter of Israel Gee and Deborah Covert.  Mr. and Mrs.
Gee came west 1868 on account of the health of his son.  Their former
home was Cincinnatus New York.  The family first stayed at the old
Hamilton House till he found a lot for sale.  They used to tell how
the negro servants at this Hotel came into the dining room to see how
the Yankees ate (for Yankees were still a strange set to Missourians).
Mr. Gee bought a lot on south Broadway and built the house on it,
where now Mr. and Mrs. Chas. Anderson live.  So great was the boom
here and the scarcity of homes that for a while three families lived
in that house (then much smaller).  There was the family of Mrs. Julia
Holmes (his daughter) the Gee family and the R.D. Dwight family
consisting of Mr. Dwight the first Mrs. Dwight and their son Kenny.
In 1868 Mr. Gee planted the hard maples in front of the home which
still are there.  He also owned the Gee (now Cahill) farm north west
of town, where he intended to live but his wife died soon after they
came here, so he turned the farm over to his son Henry Gee - a teacher
- farmer of the eighties and nineties.      It was fitting that this
dignified New Yorker be elected to the board of trustees in the
village of Hamilton 1870 before the place was really a town.  He was
Chairman of the Board, equivalent to the later title of Mayor.  He
served several times as Justice of the Peace and his decisions were
never reversed in a higher court.      He loved music, played a flute
(still in the Gee family) and for twenty years led a choir of sixty
voices back in New York by this flute.  He was a smooth shaven man in
an era of beards and mustaches.      At the time of the arrival of the
Gee family in Hamilton, the Congregationalists were trying to organize
a church.  The Gees were of that faith in New York and helped in the
new move.  Ten out of thirteen Charter members were Gees or related to
them in some way.  Meetings were held in a room called the Chapel in
the Rev. Wilmot house, standing on Kingston street south of the park.
This room was built with Missionary funds and Mr. Wilmot was termed a
Missionary much to the dismay of some people who did not think
Hamiltonians were Missionary material.  Moreover some people used to
say that during the week this "Chapel" was the Wilmot kitchen and so
they said they attended church in the Wilmot kitchen.      Mr. Gee's
daughter Mrs. Theodore Tuthill and her husband came here 1868 stayed a
year then went back.  They returned 1879 to spend their lives here.
Mrs. Tuthill was quite a musician and in 1868 was one of the early
music teachers, having as her piano pupils Mrs. James Collins (then
Miss Goodman).  Mrs. Tuthill was among the first here to possess a
square piano.      Mrs. and Mrs. Gee and son are buried in the old
(Rohrbough) cemetery on the west end of town.      Interviewed
February 1934.


    A.G. HOWARD - AN EARLY DRUGGIST IN HAMILTON, MISSOURI
Narrator:  Alma Howard of Hamilton, Missouri

    Why the Howards Came     Early Drug Store Ways     Men's Stylish
Clothes

     Mr. Howard came to Caldwell County 1868 from Wisconsin.  He
served in the Union Army.  While there he caught pneumonia and had an
abscess on the lung.  He always declared that he owned his life to a
nurse who applied a boiled onion poultice to his chest.  That bad lung
gave him his pension.  At the close of the War, he got a bounty of
$1000 and wanted to invest it in land.  He lived in Wisconsin and
heard of the good land bargains in north west Missouri, following the
opening of the Hannibal and St. Joseph railroad.  So he and his fellow
townsmen C.C. Greene (brother-in-law) Jackson Edminister and Wm.
Everts all came down to look the country over.  They went in together
and bought a big tract south of Hamilton, Mr. Howard's being the
Gillett farm.  Mr. Howard stayed on his land a year and then sold it
out at a good profit.  Then he bought a house and lot in Hamilton of
S.H. Swartz who owned two lots extending from Broadway to Kingston
street.  While Swartz was building a new house on the south end which
he kept, he and his family lived on the second floor of the house they
had sold to Howards who lived on the first floor.  Houses were scarce
here because Hamilton was having a boom.  There was much doubling up
in houses.  Howard bought a half interest in the drug store of Dr.
Ressigeau on Broadway, west side, south of the tracks, which was quite
a business section then.  Opposite was the Broadway Hotel - afterwards
the Harvey House and O.O. Brown (always called Double O. Brown) the
Dry Goods Merchant.      In a year Mr. Howard bought out the whole
Drug Store.  He had previously gained from Dr. Ressigeau sufficient
knowledge to fill prescriptions.  John Harrah worked for Howard,
practically for nothing to learn the trade and prescription work,
doing the sweeping etc. in return.  At that time there was no law
requiring an examination in pharmacy.  When that law came on Mr.
Howard was almost ready to retire.  He sold much patent medicine; and
later sold jewelry and musical instruments.  (He himself was a
fiddler.)  He carried cigars, paints and oils.  In fact at first he
sold about all the paints and oils used here.  In his windows stood
two very large red and green bottles which were typical signs for a
Drug Store.  In 1882 he moved to Main Street and these big bottles
were carefully carried there.      Mr. Howard was a dressy man.  He
wore white "boiled" shirts with stiff cuffs and bosoms that took much
skill and time to iron.  They were polished with the heel of an iron
to shine like glass.  No town then ever wore limp colored shirts or
soft collars.  They were for farmers who fed hogs.  He had a high silk
hat for every day wear and he kept handy a fine brush to make the nap
flat and shiny.  Up town he would flick his silk handkerchief over it
every time he took it off.      The old Howard house was replaced some
years ago with a modern one.  The old store building he once owned on
Broadway and his second on Main have both burnt down.      Interviewed
February 6, 1934.


    THE OLD OR ROHRBOUGH CEMETERY     Narrator:  Hon. Seth Young, 78,
of Hamilton, Missouri

     Mr. Young is one of the few business men left in Hamilton of the
seventies and his own history is interesting apart from his memories.
He was reared on a farm west of town on the Cameron road, where his
father C.H. Young moved 1869.  The young man studied law in the office
of Shanklin, Low, McDougal at Gallatin and was admitted to the bar
1876.  He located at Hamilton 1878 and began in an office on south
Main east side where Chas. Burnett's barber shop stands.  Several
years ago, he served as State Senator.  He has held the job of Notary
Public fifty six years under sixteen Govenors.      His parents and
several others in his family are buried in the Old Cemetery west of
town and his story concerns this burying ground.      The plot is
described as east half of out lot (44) forty four railroad addition to
Hamilton.  It was legally called the Prairie Cemetery as shown on the
old deed giving the plot to the City by Mr. and Mrs. Anthony
Rohrbough.  Mr. Young now has this deed.  In the sixties and seventies
every one called it the Rohrbough (or more often Robo) cemetery from
its owner.  In 1868, Alston Bowman and Vincent Bowman circulated a
paper among the citizens for the purpose of buying ground for a
graveyard.  Ben Langshore purchased the land from the Hannibal and St.
Joseph Railroad and sold the same to Anthony Rohrbough, he then called
A.G. Davis to survey the land and lay it out in lots, giving him as
pay several lots in the north west corner.  The Davis lots are now
vacant because their dead are moved to the new or Highland Cemetery.
A plat is in existence made by Mr. Rohrbough which shows very careless
register of graves, at times the plot and tombstones left are in
conflict.  In a few instances he marks a grave site - name lost - or
unknown - or sold.      The charge were high: $8 for a lot, $15 for a
double lot, $3 or $2 for a single grave, much higher than the first
prices in the new cemetery - $3 for a regular lot.  He is said to have
demanded pay before burial was made.  There were no roads inside the
cemetery, only paths between lots.  Coffins were carried by hand from
the public road.  The Hamilton people became dissatisfied and wanted a
city-owned graveyard.      After the new cemetery started 1876, Mr.
Rohrbough lost patronage because the new lots were cheaper, better
arranged and in a better site.  Thus, the old cemetery with taxes
became a load on the owner and without profit.  He tried to give it to
the City of Hamilton to hold as long as the premises should be used
for cemetery purposes.  But Hamilton would not accept the gift.
Hamilton tried to make Rohrbough take it back, the case went into
court, even to the Supreme Court of the State with the result that
they declared that Rohrbough did not have to take it back and Hamilton
did not have to take it.  Hence today it stands as No Man's Land, with
broken stones and unkept and untaxed.  The last burial was that of
T.H. Hare, photographer 1916 in the old Hare lot with his wife and
children.  On that day, cars drove to the graveside over sunken graves
and empty grave holes.      Interviewed  December 1933.    

EARLY BAPTIST CHURCH HISTORY IN HAMILTON     Narrator:  Wm. M.
Pickell, 88, of Hamilton, Missouri

     Mr. Pickell was born in Lancaster County Pennsylvania.  His
father was Wm. Pickell and his mothers maiden name Miller.  Mr.
Pickell is a cousin of Ben, George, Wm. Pickell and Mrs. Hattie Jordan
all having lived here in Hamilton about forty years ago while Wm. M.
lived on a farm near by.  Mr. Pickell is one of the few G.A.R. men
still left.  He and his wife came to this country 1868 and settled on
the farm where they stayed till the children grew up.      In 1876,
Mr. Pickell became sexton of the Hamilton Baptist church when that
body was using the old frame Presbyterian Church half time.  He and
his wife Jane joined 1878.  The Baptists had had quite a moving time
since their organization 1868 at the home of Elder Bennett Whitely.
First they met in his building - commonly called the Baptist Chapel -
east of park on the corner; the building later called the Windmill
School.  They thought they had bought it, then they and Whitely fell
out about it and they went to McAdd's Hall 1869 and used all their
ready cash to buy eleven chairs to seat it.  The Presbyterians used it
half time, and each paid $62.50 a year.      In 1872 they met for
awhile in McCoy's Hall corner of Mill and Broadway.  In 1875 they met
with the Presbyterians in the latter's church.  In 1878 they built
their church on the present site which cost them $150.  They called
their preachers Elders and their leading men Deacons, as Deacon Aaron
Edminister always so-called.  They called each other Brother and
Sister in conversation.  He recalled their early Elders were Bennett
Whitely, Elder Dalby, Elder Leavitt who stayed many years, and T.M.S.
Kenney.  He believed he was present when the last two were ordained.
Those days sextons got $50 a year for sweeping the church and caring
for the fires; Elder Leavitt got $200 a year-half time (about 1880)
and often this might be slow pay.      The Baptists were very strict
those days.  Members were excluded or the hand of fellowship was
withdrawn from several members.  Covenant meeting was held Saturday
afternoons, once a month, and such things came up.  Some charges were:
dancing, covetousness and non-walk with God.  Members voted on the
person and a majority bote was enough to "withdraw the hand."
Interviewed  January 1934.

(These statements of old Mr. Pickell were verified by reference to a
book of old minutes of the First Baptist Church of Hamilton.
Interviewer's note.)


    WILLIAM H. GWYNN - BLACKSMITH     Narrator:  Mrs. Mary Keefe, 78,
of Braymer, Missouri

    Life at Hopewell and Hamilton     Changes in Hamilton in his life

     Mrs. Keefe is the daughter of Wm. Harrison Gwynn (1824-1907) and
Martha Ramsey both of whom lived in Cadiz, Harrison County and Noble
County Ohio before coming to Caldwell County in the western rush after
the Civil War.  Mr. Gwynn was a blacksmith and wagon maker an
occupation much in demand those days.  He first established a home and
a shop near the Hopewell Baptist Church - this county; the house built
in 1867 is still standing owned by the Taylor family.  Then finding
out that many of his old friends from Ohio had located in Hamilton he
moved to Hamilton in 1868 to be near them.  These Ohio friends were:
Prof. Davy Ferguson (see his paper) Alex Crow (killed in the Clark
Mill explosion) George Wilson (father of Dr. Clyde Wilson) Edward
Green (one of the leaders in the founding of the Presbyterian Church
here) Andy Harrah and Wm. Stewart.      In 1874 he worked for Fred
Graer at the Mill Street blacksmith (see his paper) and then he put up
his own shop, east of the McBrayer livery barn on Mill street.  His
family home was for years the house south of the present Scott house.
During Mr. Gwynns life the style of wagons changed as much as clothes.
The Conastoga of his boyhood, the linchpin, the stiff tongue, and the
limber tongue wagons followed one another and he saw them all.  He
knew the ox-cart.      He had seen Hamilton's streets changed from
platforms built of boards in front of each store to the beginning of
our concrete payments.  When he came the streets were poorly lighted
at night by occasional street lamps and a man traveled around in the
afternoon with an oil can and lighted them.  They burnt themselves out
my morning.  When he died the electric lights were in town.  In those
early days, doctors like Dr. Ressigieu (who lived on south Broadway in
the present Katherine Houghton home) maintained their own street
lights.  There was a lamp before each church corner (all the churches
happened to be on  one corner).  It was a bad boy's trick those days
to throw stones at the street lamps to see the glass break.
During Mr. Gwynn's life here, the old "Ferguson" brick school on the
north side was built and he lived to see it out-moded and torn down.
The little old brown school on the south was replaced in his life by a
nice brick building.  He truly saw Hamilton grow.      Mrs. Keefe was
married 1876 to Eugene Keefe who after the Civil War settled on a farm
in Fairview township.  Their trading point was still her old home in
Hamilton for Cowgill and Braymer did not come into existence till
after the Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad went through the southern
part of the county late in the eighties.      Interviewed  April 1934.


    HAMILTON IN THE MIDDLE AND LATE SIXTIES     Narrator:  Mrs. Mary
Jane Holliday, 94, Hamilton, Missouri

    The Bowman Family     The Early Main Street     The Episcopal
Church

     Mrs. Holliday was born 1840 in Illinois.  Her maiden name was
Mary Jane Kendall and her first husband's name was Glasner, the second
Holliday.  In 1865 just after the war the Glasner family came to
Hamilton, drawn here by the fact that her mother married Vincent
Bowman and already lived here.  The Bowmans were early settlers in
this town.  Alston Bowman had a lumber yard and his brother Vincent
built many of the early houses here, the Art Lollis house, the old
Cochran-Spratt house in the north west part of town, and the house
formerly standing at the south west corner of the High School lot.
In 1865 Mrs. Glasner lived on the present Harry Lampton home and her
closest neighbors were two ex-slaves who lived in white washed
shanties across to the south east - Uncle Charley Dunn and Uncle Lewis
Butts.  The old Henry Thornton family lived near them on Mill Street.
Much of that district was empty.      When she came in 1865, most of
the business was done on the street north of the depot-now treated as
an alley.  On that street were:  Kempers, Richardson, McAdoos
(druggist) and later on there was a Jew, Lombosaky, who had a jewelry
store there and hired a clerk named Mitchell.  Mitchell had a store
there later on.  She recalled Marion Hines running a lumber yard on
the Higgins property (now the Tooley Mill site).  Some after this
time, there was a yard on the Cash corner on south Main where the
Witwers had a wagon store.  At the north end of this block Mr. Davis
had a one story frame (location of Bank today) where he had a office.
Later he rented it to Squire Holliday his relative (no relative of her
second husband).      In the early sixties Mrs. Glasner was cook for
the Western Hotel kept by the Goodman family and located at the middle
of the first block north of railroad on Main west side.  When she was
cook, Bill Kemper, Lee Cosgrove, Ben Langshore boarded there at times.
It was quite a fine hotel in its day.      Mrs. Glasner-Holliday was a
charter member of the Episcopal church which stood there on the site
of the present Mrs. Harry Sloan home.  It was sold some years ago and
now is the Catholic rectory in the south end of town.  Other early
members were Mr. and Mrs. George Reddie, Mrs. Brosius, Miss Alma
Clark, the Rook family, the Waterman family and a few others.  The
Tuttle family came in a little later.  When the monthly services were
held, outsiders who attended sometimes giggled when the rector came in
with his white robes.  The chant music too seemed queer and sometimes
aroused a grin from those not used to the service; likewise the
frequent "getting up and getting down" of the members.  Some people
then thought the Episcopal church was the Catholic church because they
both used a prayer book and there was a cross on the church.
Interviewed  June 1934.


    THE PROUGH FAMILY IN HAMILTON     Narrator:  John Prough, 71, of
Hamilton, Missouri

    Early Prough Life in Hamilton     Baptist Church Leaders     Meat
Markets and Ice Men

     John Prough was born 1857 in Stark County Ohio.  He was the son
of Jacob Prough and Mary Wachler.  Jacob was from a Pennsylvania Dutch
settlement, and the family had been in America a long time, yet they
spoke little English.  The Wachlers were in an Ohio German settlement
and they also spoke German.  Hence the Prough family here usually
spoke German at home and the elder Prough had a decided German tongue.
     Jacob Prough came to Daviess County 1870 and brought what is not
the Alden place.  He became angered when the section line road was not
run by his farm, so he sold it and went to Indiana.  In 1876 he came
to Caldwell County locating at Hamilton.  He bought the present
Blevins home in the west end of town for his home and slaughter yard,
and set up a butcher shop on south Main.  His store was a two-story
frame where the John Bennett produce store now stands.  The Prough
family afterwards lived above the store.  Most of the frames then on
Main Street were one story with a "false front" extending to a height
of two stories.  To the north of Prough's meat market was Seth Young's
law office, on the south was Grigsby's Hardware, Jewelry and Fence
store.      Later, Jacob Prough moved his shop to Dr. King's
building-north Main, the present site of the Missouri Store.  A third
site was in Tom Hare's building east of (present) Chet Martin grocery.
Butcher shops those days used a Stevens ice box to keep meat fresh.
They having the quarters on hooks for a day or so to get rid of the
animal heat and save the ice.  Then they were stored in the ice box
for four days to ripen before selling.      Ice was put up in winter
from ponds and packed in ice houses in saw dust.  A warm winter was
dreaded by ice men who often were butchers.  Ice was very cheap and
delivered by being thrown (brown with sawdust) in the front yard.
John Prough worked for his father and also for Lievan another butcher.
He was paid $20 to $25 a month.  He recalled when Mrs. Lievan hanged
herself in the barn of the Lievan home.  They were then living on the
farm just north of John Prough's present home.      John Prough became
a Baptist and was immersed in Marrowbone.  Another baptizing place
much used then was Nettleton.  Baptist leaders of the late seventies
at Hamilton were:  Deacon Edminster and son Jack, Goddards, Clarksons,
R.F. Whitman, of course the Penny family, E. Lawrence, Mrs. Van Note,
Griffin and Kingsbury.      Interviewed  June 1934.


    WM. WAGENSELLER  HAMILTON BUILDER IN LATE SIXTIES     Narrator:
Mrs. Wm. Wagenseller, 91, of Hamilton, Missouri

    Their Neighbors     The McCoys     Indians     Fires

     Mrs. Wagenseller (born Eliza Garner of Illinois) lives by herself
in her own home built by her husband Wm. Wagenseller sixty years ago
on Kingston Street, in the extreme south end of Hamilton.  In spite of
her years, she is yet a careful house keeper and quilt piecer.
She and her husband came here in 1867 in the building boom.  He had
gone to Keytesville Missouri from his Crawford County Illinois home to
claim a piece of land given him by his father, but it was so heavy
with back taxes that he let it go.  There he heard of the building
boom in this county and he came to Hamilton hoping there would be need
of his work - plastering and carpentering.  Mrs. Wagenseller soon
followed.  They stayed at the Claypool Hotel (formerly the Davis
House) on the east side of Main Street second block north of railroad
till they found a vacant house to rent - "a shack" north of the
Presbyterian church.  Then Mr. Wagenseller bought the land on the
Kingston road (now street) where he built what is known to old timers
as the Murray House now replaced by bungelows.  The Wagenseller family
lived on the first floor and rented the second floor to another
family.  Such was the demand for houses.  Then he sold this and bought
a lot to the south where he built the present Wagenseller home.
In their part of town, the neighbors were Rev. and Mrs. Wilmot and her
mother Mrs. Perkins - first house south of park (still standing);
Whitely, the grocer in a store on the south corner opposite the park
where a wind mill also stood later; the Schwartz house east of the
Wilmot (still standing); the Sproue family farther down south on the
road (Sproue committed suicide and was buried at the extreme south end
of the Old Cemetery because self murderers were not entitled to a
place among other dead); on the south end of Broadway were the Witwers
(Mr. Witwer and sons had a wagon yard on the south east corner of
South Main now commonly called the Cash corner); and by them lived the
Healey family (Mr. Healey was Mr. Wagenseller's partner).  Quite a
distance down Kingston road was Wm. McCoy's ten acre place (now Booth
property) where McCoy farmed and lived with his first wife and his
large family - Mel, Mary, Lucy, Roxie, Ollie, Harmon and possibly
more.  He lost his first wife here.  Afterwards he moved into town
married the widow Farabee and built a grocery store facing on South
Broadway, his home being on the same lot; above his store were rooms
used for lodge and church purposes, later used as a home by the McCoy
girls.      She recalled the Indian visits to the town in the late
sixties.  They would come up from the south road leaving their ponies
outside of town.  If a neighbor saw them coming, she would run and
tell their neighbors.  All would quickly prepare cooked food for that
was what the Indians wanted.  One woman had her own meal on the table
when she ran to inform her neighbor about the Indians.  When she came
back her food was all gone.  They walked into the homes without
knocking.      Those were the days of bad fires for no fire company
existed.  When the cry of "Fire" was heard repeated on the streets it
was the custom for a man to pick up a bucket and go to help with the
bucket-line or bucket-brigade by which water was passed from the well
to the fire.  The first fire engine was bought early in the eighties.
The hook and ladder company existed some earlier.  The "hook" tore
down buildings or walls to prevent a spread of fire.      After Mr.
Wagenseller was too old to build, he became township collector.  He
was a strong G.A.R. man and a member of the school board for many
years.  His daughter Mollie (by his first wife) clerked in the O.O.
Brown store on Broadway, Nellie gave music lessons, and Jessie (Mrs.
Smith) was a school teacher of the nineties.  His son George became a
business man in the South.      Interviewed  February 1934.


    EARLY BUTCHER SHOP IN HAMILTON     Narrator:  Bert Goodman, 67,
Hamilton, Missouri

     Mr. Goodman is the son of old Wm. Goodman who kept the Western
Hotel on the west side of North Main during the sixties.  Having spent
his life in Hamilton he has known almost every Merchant in town during
that time.      You used to enter a meat market or meat shop or
butcher shop, as many said, to see on either side whole steers or hogs
hanging on stout hooks.  They were dressed and aging to eat.  Men
would go in and pick out the cut of meat they wanted from the large
stock (no telephoning for meat sight unseen those days).  There were
no groceries sold in meat shops.      Usually two men worked in a
shop, so busy at times that several customers were waiting.  Meat was
cheap and many had it three times a day.  Ten cents bought sufficient
round steak for an average family, fifteen cents paid for porter
house.      Butchers bought their own cattle and slaughtered them in
their own slaughter-houses at the edge of town.  These places were
very unpleasant to smell.      Some early butchers were:  Claypool and
Rymal, Claypool was a familiar name in the early years here.  He ran
the Claypool Hotel (the old Davis House) and was a good butcher.  His
partner was George Rymal - a Canadian by birth who came to Kingston
1861 as a carpenter and married Miss McClelland (Joe McClelland's
aunt).  The Civil War drove him to Canada.  After the war they
returned to Caldwell County.  He became a farmer, a butcher, a
carpenter, by turns in Hamilton.  In the eighties he was a partner in
a meat shop with James Collins who married Bert Goodman's sister.
Collin's meat shop was on the site of the present First Bank and Trust
Company in the old Manning brick.  His father, Michael Collins lived
in the sixties on the old "Prouty" farm just east of town.
Another partner of Collins was C.C. Greene who came to Hamilton first
in 1868 with his brother-in-law A.G. Howard and bought a farm south of
town but he soon went into the meat business about where the McLean
Hotel stands.  His partner then was Sain who later was also a partner
of Collins.  Jacob Prough and sons John and Dory had a meat shop where
Bennett's Produce store stands and later went on the north side.
Lievan had two or three shops till after a fire in the eighties when
he quit.  Mallory and sons were here in the early eighties in the old
Oasis shop, first door east of the Hamilton House.  John Minger, who
kept a grocery and a restaurant, seems to have been the first grocer
to try to sell meats.  He tried it awhile about 1879 but it was not a
success.      Interviewed  January 1933.


    GEORGE LAMSON - EARLY STATION AGENT AND BANKER AT HAMILTON
Narrator:  Mrs. Hattie Lamson, 90, Hamilton, Missouri

    Hamilton Savings Bank     Mr. Lamson's Funeral

Mr. Lamson was born in New Hampshire 1839 and moved to Illinois as a
youth.  In 1863 he came to Brookfield, Missouri as a railroad depot
employee.  In 1864 he came to the little town of Hamilton as depot
agent.  He held this place till asked to be cashier of the Hamilton
Savings Bank May 1878 and was there till his death December 1878.
This Bank had been organized about two years before under Ed House of
Cameron, Missouri but it was almost failing when Lamson took it.  In
the short time he was there, he raised the bank stock above par.
People who had been hiding their cash around the house now put it in
"George Lamson's Bank," because of their knowledge of him at the
depot.  They had also voted for him as County Judge in 1870 and knew
that he was square.      In 1865 in Fairbury Illinois he was married
to Hattie Henderson.  He wouldn't accept any of her father's money to
promote his business.  At different times he was partner in the lumber
business and the elevator.  He must have owned over a dozen pieces of
property in Hamilton, then selling at a profit, and he was what people
called wealthy those days.      Mrs. Lamson possesses his colored
picture taken in 1878 which shows black hair and eyes, red cheeks,
full face, and under-chin whiskers in the fashion of the day.  He
loved gayety, dances, card parties and was of a convivial disposition.
His wife was reared by a strict Scotch Presbyterian father; but
finally she also grew to believe that dances were not always of the
Devil.      When Mr. Lamson died in 1878, his funeral service was held
in Rohrbough's Hall (later Andersons) Hundreds were turned away.  The
religious services were by Revs. W.H. Welton, P.B. West and F.J.
Leavitt (all of the town's preachers).  The Masonic ritual was used.
The town paper of that date said the funeral procession was over
one-half mile long with one hundred Masons and fifty in Knights
Templar regalia.  It was headed by Pryor's Silver Cornet Band of
sixteen pieces from St. Joseph Missouri and the paper stated it was
the grandest event of its kind ever witnessed in Hamilton.      At his
death, Crosby Johnson a lawyer and stockholder, took his place as
Cashier of the Bank and Mrs. Hattie Lamson the widow became the first
woman to serve as a bank director in the county.  She was Secretary of
the board and earned two dollars per meeting for the work.  Finally
the directors meeting was changed from afternoon till night and she
dreading the walk home late at night, resigned.  John Rohrbough took
her place.      When Mr. Lamson was dying, he appointed Wm. Wilmot a
leading Mason here to take especial care of his widow.  (That was a
Masonic duty in those days.)  But she soon was able to get along
without Mr. Wilmot's financial advice.      When Mr. and Mrs. Lamson
first came to Hamilton as a young couple 1866 they boarded at the
Hamilton House, then kept by the Mitchell family.  It was directlyof the depot and stood on a hill with a long flight of steps
down to the tracks.  Afterwards Mr. and Mrs. Lamson had rooms above
the Kemper store (later the Anderson Corner) on Main Street where
Harry Lamson was born 1867, Dr. King was the doctor.      Then they
bought the house at the south end of Broadway long known as the Lamson
house - now the home of Mrs. Lottie Anderson.      Interviewed
January 1934.

THE REED FAMILY, HAMILTON MERCHANTS IN 1869     Narrator:  Mrs.
Lottie Reed Daniels of Texas

    Hamilton Stores     Mrs. Goldberg and the Masons     Fourth of
July     Music Teachers

     Mrs. Daniels (better known to the earlier Hamilton people as
Lottie Reed and Mrs. Herbert Low) is the daughter of Myron Reed.  He
and his brother Henry came to Hamilton 1869 and opened up a dry goods
store in about the third building south from the present Bram site on
Main Street.  The family lived in various places in town - one site
being above the store.  At that time, Dr. Tuttle's family lived in the
house north of the present Bram site and Mammie Tuttle (Eldridge) and
Lottie Reed (Daniels) were playmates in the alley between the homes.
That block in which her father's store stood was the first block north
of the railroad-east side.  The buildings were frame.  At the north
end was the Kemper-Paxton Store, then Reed's and then Bob William's
Drug Store.  Goldberg, the Jew had a General Store near by.  A
ludicrous story is told about Mrs. Goldberg.  The family lived behind
the store and the upper floor was rented to the Masonic lodge.  Mrs.
Goldberg had an intense desire to peep at the Masons.  She got a
ladder and fixed it against the trap door (which were common in the
two-story store buildings at that time).  She lifted the trap and got
her curiosity satisfied, but some how the ladder slipped and she fell
down with a crash.  Dr. Tuttle had to set her arm.  The family left
town soon fearing the threats of the Masons.  Another early lodge hall
was above McCoy's Store on Broadway and the mill.  The frame building
was built about 1870 and was torn down not twenty years ago.      The
Kempers who kept the store on Main street built a house on a hill in
the west end of town - where now lives James Kautz.  Some of the
younger Paxtons boarded there and went to school.  Mrs. Kemper was a
Paxton.      The Fourth of July celebrations of the Seventies were
held near the present Peddicord home (Dudley Addition).  One year they
had a real barbecue and a bower or arbor built of branches for the
singers and speakers.  They lighted candle wick balls soaked in
kerosene and threw them into the air.  Another Fourth thirteen girls
for the thirteen colonies marched ahead followed at a distance by the
other "States" and still further back by the territories.      Music
teachers were in demand, none being especially highly trained.  Mrs.
Niles (Mother of Clarence Green's mother) Dr. Ressigien's daughter,
Mrs. T. Tuthill, Mrs. Whitman (wife of the Postmaster) Mrs. Ben
Pickell (Kate Johnson) were some of the music teachers of the
seventies.  Dr. and Mrs. Stevens were vocal and instrumental teachers.
He was a dentist above the Wilson-ONeil frame store which stood on the
Penney Store site.  Transient singing teachers could always get up a
good singing school.  Few girls went off to school and those who did
were usually sent to convents.  Mrs. Daniels went to Davy Ferguson
here and then to a convent.  Correct reading for the nice young girl
in the Seventies was Peterson Magazine, Godey's Lady's Book, Frank
Leslie and another not so correct but very alluring - New York Ledger
which made Saturday a day to look forward to.      Mr. Myron Reed was
the nephew of Myron Walling a farmer north of town who came into the
County 1866 from New York.  He had two daughters Emma and Ida, the
latter being the school teacher.      Interviewed  August 1, 1934.


    STRATHER M. MITCHELL, HAMILTON, MISSOURI     Narrator:  Mrs. Ida
Culp of Hamilton, Missouri

    Carpenter in the 60's and 70's

     Strather Marion Mitchell (b. 1839 d. 1883) came to Hamilton 1868
from Daviess County.  He was nineteen years old when he married Miss
Terrill aged sixteen of near Gallatin.  They began farming at once on
a rented place, neither of them knowing how to do their work well.  He
ploughed and she spun and wove.  In 1866, he bought a small place near
Grand river but the water rose and buried their crops and hopes.  That
ended their farming.      Being a carpenter, he came to Hamilton in
the building boom of 1868 to earn some money.  At first most of the
houses were small being all that the new settlers could afford.  Two
of the houses he built are still standing - the Tillman Reed home
(with whom Mitchell worked) and the house of George McGill (colored).
The first home of the Mitchells in Hamilton was on the rock road on
the north leading from Gallatin.      Wages were low.  He thought he
was doing fine if he got $1.50 a day.  Yet when he brought home a sack
of flour it cost him $3, coffee was very high then, Calico was narrow
and poor in quality cost fifty to sixty cents a yard.  A calico dress
then was prized more than a silk now.  The quilts of the time point to
the high price of calico.  They were small and the calico pieces were
few and far between.  The farmer got three cents a dozen for his eggs,
seven cents a pound for middlings at Gallatin.  Mrs. Mitchell often
put six eggs in a batch of corn bread and twelve to fifteen in a cake.
     Mr. Mitchell and his wife kept the Hamilton House (opposite the
depot) about 1866 and George Lamson and his bride stayed there till
they rented rooms over Kemper's store.  Mr. Lamson was the railroad
agent at that time.  (See the Lamson paper).  Mr. Mitchell later went
to Excelsior Springs and built and ran the first hotel there.  He and
two of his children are buried in the old Hamilton Cemetery.
Interviewed  February 25, 1934.


    JUDGE JUNIUS ALONZO HOLLIDAY - EARLY HAMILTON LAWYER
Narrators:  H.D. Elderidge and Others

     Judge Holliday was an early settler in Hamilton and for over
sixty years he was a well, known character here.  Information about
him has been gained from various sources.  His third cousin - Mrs.
Anna Korn of El Reno Oklahoma says, "he was the son of Ben Holliday
who founded the Missouri Intelligence and Boone's Lick Advertiser at
Old Franklin, the first county newspaper in America outside of St.
Louis.  Ben was the father also of Caroline Holliday an early College
teacher at St. Charles and Prickett Institute; and of Mrs. Fannie
McClanihan of Columbia.  This Ben was a first cousin of Ben Holliday
of National fame."      The early Lawyer of Hamilton, J.A. Holliday
came here because his cousin A.G. Davis had founded the town and the
town needed a lawyer.  He stayed on till his death about twenty two
years ago.  In the earlier years, his office was at the north east
corner of south Main, a frame, two room building, owned by Squire A.G.
Davis (site of present First Bank and Trust Co.).  It was  one of the
few buildings on that side, south of the tracks.  His office was in
the front room, his sleeping room in the back.  He ate at different
hotels up town.      He never married.  Miss Minnie Ogden said, "he
had two unmarried sisters else where whose support rested on him."
The children in town looked on him as a sympathetic friend and were
not afraid to ask him for a nickel for candy.      His contemporaries
as lawyers were (Doc) B.M. Dilley, Seth Young and Chappell, some
younger than he.  His buddies were a gunsmith who had a shop on the
street north of the depot, named Goodwin or Goodin; and a carpenter
called "Old Mitch" whose shop was on the site of the Colored Baptist
Church.      He had no particular ambition to make a lot of money, yet
he always had money to loan when a fellow would show good security.
When his relation here died or moved away, he seemed to like to be
left alone.  As the years went on, he was more disinclined to take
practice.  He had an excellent law education.  He was a member of the
Legislature of Missouri which framed the Constitution of 1875; was
Clerk of the Senate and was J.P. in Hamilton for years.  He loved to
sit and read - a splendid scholar.      In disposition he had a quick
temperament.  Larry Lampton says, "that one day while Holliday sat in
his office back of the table, a fellow called him a liar.  Squire
Holliday quickly jumped the table, not waiting to go around, and
knocked him down.  He was tall and spare in build, and very stately in
carriage.  He was one of the last men shawl-wearers.  Others of his
time were Wm. Wilmot and R.B. Houston the Banker.     After his death,
young lawyers form all over the state came to bid on his excellent
library. 

SOME NEWSPAPER HISTORY IN HAMILTON     Narrator:  Eugene A.
Martin, 81, Editor of Pattonsburg Call

     Mr. Martin's father M. Clark Martin lived in the last house on
the street running west between the James Kautz house and Hudson
house.  It was then out of town.  Martin took it in a trade with Rev.
Robert C. Hill for a farm near Cowgill 1869.  Mr. E.A. Martin was
reared in Hamilton and had his first training as a newspaper man here.
He tells newspaper facts as he recalls them after a long life here and
in Pattonsburg.      In 1867 or 68 Gabe Paxton and J.M. Gallemore
established the Hamilton Investigator.  It was located north of the
railroad on Main Street.  Paxton sold his interest to Bennett Whitely
and he moved the plant to the "Baptist Chapel" so called, on the
present Kingston Street east of the Park; this being the property of
Whitely which was later used as a feedmill by M.M. Shellabarger and
also was a High School.  Early 1870 Whitely sold his interest to M.A.
Low, and the name was changed to Hamilton News, while the plant was
moved to a back room in the middle of the block on the east side of
south Main where Low ran it for years.  Later, he ran it with the help
of (Doc) B.M. Dilley a rising young lawyer as local editor.  Then M.A.
Low's brother Eugene ran it till it was sold to J.E. Hitt and John
Marens.  In the later seventies Hitt and Gus Chapman began a second
paper, the Hamilton Graphic, but Chapman sold out to John Marens and
the Hitt-Marens firm bought the News from Eugene Low and News-Graphic
was born.  The Marens ran it alone till late in the nineties in the
building on west side of South Main, the old Graphic office.      In
1878 W.A. Morton (brother of John and Marcus) established a third
paper the Hamiltonian, upstairs above the Post Office site then, east
side of South Main.  He afterwards moved it to the new Morton Building
west side of North Main (Citizens Trust Company site) who sold it to
Wilbur Clark.  Clark brought it back to the south side - the present
Clark Building and sold out later to Roy McCoy who sold it to another
party.  Finally a few years ago, it became combined with the
News-Graphic which thus meant three papers.  But the present one,
Hamilton paper really means four papers, for the word Advocate in its
title.  About 1890 James Barnhill started a Populist or farmers
movement paper calling it Farmer's Advocate.  He sold it to Al Filson.
It ran in the basement of the present Post Office building.  Filson
bought the News-Graphic of Marens and combined his papers in the
News-Graphic site.  He sold it to Prof. Holman and Cliff Ridings who
eventually became sole owner and now has run it thirty four years.

(Interviewer's note - It seems odd that in the gradual fusion of these
four newspapers the paper should be generally known by the name of the
weakest one - the Advocate.)


    PROFESSOR DAVID M. FERGUSON     Narrator:  A group of his Pupils

     Prof. Ferguson has left an indelible mark on the lives of the
elderly people in Hamilton.  It is fitting that they tell about him
and his work.      He came here from Ohio 1873 to be the first
principal of the new Brick School on the north side.  The schools
before that event had been in bad shape, some rooms here, some there,
little supervision and no grading.  Pupils took what they wanted and
where they wanted to.  All that has been described elsewhere.
When Prof. Davy Ferguson came, he and his wife first lived in the old
Kirkendall house (after Marion Hines) then he moved into the present
Seth Young House to be near the school.  He stayed there.  His wife
was his second one and she was quite charming in looks and ways.
Joe Davis recalls the zest that pupils had in entering the new brick
for the first time; it was a High School, a term new to them.  There
were other changes awaiting them under the new Professor.  He took
each one and examined them, putting them where they belonged, so that
the term Hamilton Graded Schools, which he started meant something.
Then those fitted to be in High School, he assigned to four classes
A.B.C.D. (corresponding to Senior, Junior, Sophomore, and Freshman).
As time went on, the best students won the back seats.  Under Prof.
Ferguson the High School Assistant was Miss Founts who resigned in a
month and Miss Griffin came and stayed several years, finally becoming
the second wife of Marion Hines.  On the first floor were Ed Rix
intermediate and Dot Morrow primary.      The school board did not
have the money to buy a bell for the school; hence Prof. Davy had
school entertainments and raised money to buy a bell, an organ and
chandeliers, so that it could be used at night.  One of these plays
was "The Last Loaf."      The brick had one big room on the second
floor and a recitation room at the north end.  Afterwards many changes
were made but the first way is the way it is recalled by Ferguson
pupils.  He stayed in Hamilton from 1873-1882, leaving to go to
Gallatin, but somehow he found it handy to come to Hamilton often for
a few years.  He was about forty two when he left.      He never had a
regular graduating class, but he had several who finished the course
and they were recognized later as Alumni.  One of his A classes which
finished the course numbered about twenty including Ida Walling, Mel
McCoy, Herbert Low, Will Moffit, Abby Perkins, Nolie Elliott, Mollie
Partin Reed, Mamie Tuttle, Minnie Perkins, etc.      He had a fine way
of talking to the pupils.  They recall how he talked at the deaths of
Leila Aikens, Flora Blaker and a Penney boy killed by the train.  His
favorite Bible selection was the 23rd Psalm.      He taught spelling
from his own book on orthography which went through two editions, a
copy of which is in the library.  The pupils spelled by syllable - as
it incompatibility I-n in c-o-m-com incom; p-a-t pat incompat -i-
incompati; b-i-l bil incompatibil; -i- incompatibili;
t-y-incompatibility.  You never got lost in your spelling that way.
His title was a new one - Principal of the Graded Schools and it
stayed that way till 1891 when D.T. Gentry became Superintendent.
He was severe in his order and exacting in Scholarship yet his pupils
would do anything for him.  Perhaps that is why today in the Hamilton
Public Library there is the Ferguson Memorial library collection for
his memory.      At recess he played with the pupils, turning the rope
or running, but the minute the bell rang, he was all business.  He
wore carpet slippers to get around noiselessly and slip up on the
idle.  One morning he saw some youngsters loitering two blocks away
from school.  He ran towards them and somehow they never played on the
way to school after.      The High School pupils often had sociables
in the building at night.  One of his favorite games was Hurly Burly.
Every one was instructed to make a noise of some animal.  In the midst
of the noise he yelled "Hurly Burly" which meant to run for a chair;
since there was always one less chair than players, it was quite
exciting.      Professor Ferguson or Uncle Davy as his old pupils
called him after he grew older, was not a handsome man; yet his fine
dark eyes made him quite a distinguished look.  He wore a chin beard,
as the fashion of time demanded.  The reader of this paper can walk
over to the Ferguson corner of the library and see an enlargement of
the picture which he had taken here as a teacher.  He gave small cuts
of it on calling cards to several of his pupils.      It is difficult
for us who worked under him to tell the extent of his influence in
moulding the lives of men and women who became leaders in Hamilton
life and progress.  To him we were always his boys and girls; to us
always he was the perfect teacher and gentleman.

DAN BOOTH VETERAN HAMILTON BANKER 1881-1924     Narrator:  Bertha
Ellis Booth of Hamilton, Missouri

     My father Dan Booth was born May 25, 1840 on a farm near
Radcliff, Vinton County Ohio.  He was of pioneer stock.  His parents
John Booth (1804-1892) and Elizabeth Radcliff (1805-1862) came as
pioneers to Ohio from Harrison County (West) Virginia and their
parents before them had moved "west."      John Booth was a leader in
his community.  He besides being a farmer was what frontiersmen called
a mechanic; he was an expert with the broad-ax, which work consisted
in squaring the logs for a log house and required special genius.  In
house-raising, his job was to notch the logs and fit them at the
corners.  The old Booth log house which he made is still standing,
made without nails - when nails were necessary he made them.  He made
his own ox-shoes.  He also rived shingles.  Once he took a contract
from the county court to build a bridge over Raccoon Creek and he
searched all over the county to find two suitable oak logs.  There the
forty foot sleepers of that bridge stand today-made of these two feet
square logs squared with his own broad ax-a monument to his work.
There is a later covered bridge on it which he did not build, but the
sleepers are his.  His house was always open to travelers.  The word
seemed to be "Go to Johnny Booth's he'll put you and your horse up."
The charge was nothing.  The pack peddlers always stopped there and
Grandmother Booth bought from them her wonderful store of linens.  He
had six boys and as each came to man's estate he told them to ride to
town and have a broadcloth suit made by a tailer, as a mark of
respectability, I presume.  The neighborhood afforded little
schooling, yet the six sons somehow succeeded in picking up a fair
amount of knowledge.  I have heard Father say that he never went to
school more than six months; but he had a practical knowledge of
arithmetic that guided me through my common mathematics.  He was
careful of his grammar and noted other people's talk.  His attitude
toward education was almost worshipful and he gave his children all
the education they wanted.      One of my father's earliest jobs back
in Vinton County was to contract char-coal for iron furnaces.  For the
work he used oxen.  His first ox came to him by good luck.  A cattle
driver in passing the Booth place had abandoned one ox that got mired.
Father somehow got it out of the mud hole and it was his.  This work
as a contractor made him known over the county and helped elect him as
Democratic Sheriff.  He was already making money as a cattle drover.
I have heard him tell of buying and driving cattle from Vinton County
to Baltimore.      Then he married my Mother Helen L. Pugh and decided
to come west.  It was in 1873 that he selected his farm three miles
west of Hamilton in Lovely Ridge district.  He bought it of Altman who
had bought it from the railroad.  Mr. Altman had planted acres in wine
rhubarb and other unprofitable crops and was ready to quit.
Father, there indulged his old love of raising cattle often going as
far as Hastings Nebraska to buy cattle.  In these days his cattle like
others were on the open prairie or "outdoors" as they called the
unfenced land.  He was a good horse swapper, being able to see
possibilities in run down horses which he would buy low and feed up
for a good sale.  I have heard Mother say that he would never ride
these wretched looking speimen home but would send his cow-men Fred
Jones or Will Wells after them.  While on the farm, the Democrats of
the county ran him for Sheriff and he barely lost the election by
sticking loyally to an Ohio friend now living neighbor to him - who
was his political supporter but whose habits were under sensure.
For further details of his life on the farm, see the paper which my
Mother gave of her life in Lovely Ridge.      By this time, Father's
ability as a financier was beginning to be noted.  When a vacancy
occurred in the youthful Savings Bank he was offered the place of
cashier.  He sold the farm at a good profit to Mr. Pierce and moved to
town.  About the only vacant house in town then was a small  cottage
in the west end, now enlarged into the Charley Johnson house-south of
the tracks.  There were few houses over there at that time.  Then we
moved to the first house west of the old A.G. Davis house; and then
Father bought two lots of Wm. McCoy on Broadway and built our present
home 1882.  Broadway was as well settled up then as it is now.  At
that time we always owned a cow, and every evening the whole family
would march out over our back lot with Dad and go off to his cow
pasture back of Webb Conrad's house and drive the cow home for the
night.  These days too, we always entertained the Episcopal Ministers
who came to preach in the little church over by Mr. Reddie's home.
Mother and Father belonged to a clique of friends - the Cowgill, Tom
George and Booth families.  No Christmas Thanksgiving or New Years
went by without a big dinner for the three families.      All this
time the Savings Bank was paying good dividends.  In the early days,
it was located somewhere near the site of the McPherson Produce Store
but it was later moved to about the site of the Parrish building near
the Penny Store.  There it was burned down and rebuilt about 1884.
His salary most of that time was $1800 but he had to pay $600 of it to
his assistant Finis A. Martin.  Harry Lamson was another clerk.  The
ordinary bank these days was handled by two men, for the checks and
drafts were less.  The other bank in town was the older Spratt,
Houston and Menefee.      Father was also a "silent partner" in two
Dry Goods Stores-Cash Cowgill and Company (Penny Store Building" and
McDonald, George and Company (Cash Building).  The company also had a
store at Vibbard.      In 1898, he resigned from the Savings Bank and
became President of the First National Bank which was then in a weak
condition.  The shares soon rose in value and dividends were paid.  It
was to this bank that he devoted the rest of his life.  He kept going
down to the bank till within four weeks of his death.  He was 84 years
of age when he died June 14, 1924.      He loved Hamilton and gave his
money freely to its projects-the Tom Creek Mine, the Fair Association,
Church Buildings, the Library Building.  Although not a church member,
I am told that at one time he paid on the salaries of every preacher
in town.  It seems to me, however, that his best work for Hamilton lay
in his advice and help given to young men who came to him for advice.
Interviewed  August 22, 1934.


    COWGILL HISTORY IN CALDWELL COUNTY     Narrator:  Mrs. Effie
Cowgill Spratt of St. Joseph, Missouri

     James Cowgill, son of William Cowgill was born April 2 1848 on a
farm in Henry County near the town of New Castle Indiana, where he
grew to manhood and where he married Pamelia Ellen Myers, September 22
1867.      Pamelia Ellen Myers, the daughter of John C. and Leah
Brendle Myers was born on a farm near the town of Kingston and not far
from Mirabile, Missouri on March 20, 1849.      During the Civil War
or what the Southerners prefer to call the "war of the States," John
C. Myers was sheriff of Caldwell County.  He was a Southern
sympathizer.  War feeling was keen and intense in that locality.  It
was often worth a man's life to express an opinion on either side.
There were many untimely deaths not accounted for in open battle, but
by the "bushwhacking" method.      One evening in November 1862
following an election, John C. Myers was called to the door of his
home, and in the presence of his family was shot to death from the
dark of the night.  Some twelve or fifteen men in this locality at
different times met similar deaths.  A number of these deaths are
accounted for at pages 216 and following in the Caldwell-Livingston
County History published 1886.      The wife of John C. Myers was so
disturbed over the cold blooded murder of her husband, and not knowing
where or when the killing would end, she gathered her family together
and left the community.  She took refuge in New Castle Indiana.  There
it was that Ellen, her youngest daughter met and married James
Cowgill.      After the war was over, in 1868, the Myers family
returned to reside in Caldwell County, and James and Ellen Cowgill
came along with them.  This is the story of how lives came together
who were so forcible to impress themselves upon the development of
their community and who were to broaden out and become statewide
influences for good and progress.      James Cowgill came from an
ancestral family of farmers and livestock raisers.  In his new
Missouri location he at once rented a small farm and set up an
individual home, in which to reside and rear his family.      From his
first forty acres he broadened and widened and extended his efforts
until at one time down in the southern part of Caldwell County he
owned and operated a farm of over 1500 acres of land.  At the time of
his death he owned and operated, clear of incumbrance, a cattle ranch
at Garden City Kansas, containing over 20,000 acres of land, upon
which were over 1200 head of cattle.      Nor did James Cowgill
confine his efforts alone to farming, and stock raising.  In the
middle 80's he branched out into the Dry Goods and general
merchandising business.  His first venture was on South Main Street at
Hamilton in a partnership with D.G. McDonald and Co.  Then later he
formed another partnership with Robert S. Cash and started still
another store on North Main Street.  These two institutions for many
years were the model stores of up-to-date progress.  They were
successful financially.  They were a credit to the town.  They
attracted trade for many miles away.  New buildings were erected to
house the stores.  It was this kind of enterprises that eventually
changed Hamilton's entire building front of Main Street, and developed
a beautiful little city out of a theretofore country side town.
In 1888 after the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad built
through the southern part of Caldwell County, leading into Kansas
City, James Cowgill, to a great extent, gradually concentrated his
efforts to that section of the county.  The railroad passed through a
portion of one of his farms.  A town by the name of Cowgill was
established there.  He erected an elaborate brick hotel building.  He
built and established a bank.  He constructed an outstanding residence
and

removed his family there.  He gave land for a school and established
and assisted in building a Methodist and a Baptist Church.      He was
elected as a Democrat to be Presiding Judge of the Caldwell County
Court in 1882.  He was elected and served in the Missouri State
Legislature in 1890.  He was elected in 1892 to membership in the
Missouri State Railroad and Ware House Commission for a term of six
years.  This office required his residence in Kansas City, so it was
that in 1892 he and his family removed from Caldwell County.  While
living in Kansas City he was nominated and elected Missouri State
treasurer and he served four years.  He served two terms or four years
as Treasurer of Kansas City.  He was serving his second term as Mayor
of Kansas City, when early one morning in the Mayor's office in March
1922, without warning, he was stricken with a stroke of apploplexy,
and died without gaining consciousness.  His funeral was one of the
most largely attended of any ever held in Kansas City.  Dr. Burris
Jenkins conducted his services.  Prominent men from the wide
extremities of the State were in attendance.  Throngs of people for
hours filed past his bier to bid a last farewell to a strong and
forceful man, who had so commendably implanted himself in the hearts
of those with whom he came in contact.      The children of James and
Ellen Cowgill were:  Effie Leah married William E. Spratt, Mae,
married Duncan M. Tait, Cora Frances married George A. McWilliams, a
girl baby who died in infancy, and James Cowgill, married Abbie
Winters.      As an indication of the buoyancy of spirit, and of the
always optimistic disposition of James Cowgill, which crowned his
efforts all through life, it is related that when he first began
farming, he borrowed enough money to purchase a team.  Nobody could
farm without horses.      In those days there were great broad acres
of prairie land which laid "outdoors."  There were no fences anywhere
except around cultivated fields.  The farmers turned their stock out
to graze the commons.  They would in the evening gather their cows and
such stock as they needed and then turn them out again the next day.
One evening Judge Cowgill caught up one of his mortgaged horses,
bridled and saddled him, and rode out to drive up their cow.  The cow
was not easily detached from the herd.  She didn't want to leave to go
home to be alone for the night in a dry lot.  She broke back and as
the horse was spurred up quickly into a run to head her off, they came
unexpectedly upon a deep ditch.  The horse strained to clear it but
fell back with his head under his body, with its neck broken, and
died.  The rider was thrown clear and uninjured.  The first thoughts
were those of distress for having lost a mortgaged horse.  He
pondered, "How now will I ever make my crops with which to pay my
debts on these horses?"  Distress gripped him all over.  He was in
convulsions of fear and excitement.  All at once he seemed to "come
to," all of a sudden he became aware of the really good luck which had
befallen him.  It was the horse's neck that was broken and not his
own.      He managed to get the saddle and bridle off the horse and
trudged off for home on foot, no horse and no cow.  As he approached
his house his wife saw him from afar with his saddle over his
shoulders and she rushed out to meet him in wonderment at what had
happened.  After relating the story, he said, "Well it is a good thing
it was the horse's neck that was broken, for if it had been my neck it
most probably would have been harder debt for you to pay alone with
both horses, than for both of us with one horse."      No body ever
heard James Cowgill lamentingly relate a hard luck story.
Interviewed  August 1934.

UNCLE CHARLEY DUNN - EX-SLAVE OF HAMILTON     Narrators:  Mrs.
H.D. Eldredge and Mrs. Sarah Haggerty of Hamilton

     Charles Dunn, colored, Uncle Charley as he was known in Hamilton
for many years, was brought from Virginia with a lot of other slaves
when a boy of three or five years away from his own kin and came to
Ray County, Missouri.  He was bought by a family by the name of
Thompson.  As he grew old enough, his duties was to care for and act
as playmate for the Thompson children.  In later years, he did other
work until he reached manhood.  His master not needing his work,
allowed him to work for others and he had his wages to do with as he
pleased.  Saving his wages, he in time was able to buy the freedom of
his slave wife, Aunt Harriett Dunn, as she was known to Hamilton
people.  After his freedom, he came to Caldwell County, and lived on a
farm in the Duston District; later they moved to Hamilton where they
lived a useful upright life.  Uncle Charley, dying in Hamilton at the
age (as he said) of over ninety years.      Joe Thompson of
Breckenridge was his master's son and used to invite Uncle Charley up
every year.  Thompson, the Kansas City photographer, was some kin to
his master and used to come and see Uncle Charley bringing money and
other gifts to the old family servitor.      Uncle Charley lived in a
house east of the Tuttle-Eldredge home, which is now used for a
storehouse.


     THE WEAVER AND BOWEN FAMILIES IN GOMER TOWNSHIP     Narrator:
Mrs. Euphema Weaver Bowen, 80

     Miss Weaver, the daughter of Samuel Weaver came into Caldwell
County 1872 with her parents, at the age of twenty one.  They settled
three miles east of Nettleton.  In 1875 she married S.L. Bowen and
they improved some land next to the Weaver farm, hence she has spent
most of her life in one community.  She had four sons and three
daughters all of whom lived on a farm.  The Bowens gradually fenced
their land from the prairie land on all sides, put down wells, planted
orchards, and laid the foundation for good farms.      She knit all
the mittens and hose used on her own farm, made underwear, dresses,
shirts and pants, in fact had a complete clothing factory.  She dried
fruit - the old fashioned way of drying of peaches and apples was to
split them, seed them and spread them out on tablecloths on a low roof
till they were sun dried.  Then they were tied up in flour sacks,
against flies and worms.  There was little canning done and mostly in
tin cans with sealing wax on tops.  They dried peas, sweet corn cut
off the cob, navy beans and lima beans; gallons of cucumbers and green
tomato pickles and the kitchen was bright with dried peppers.  Soft
soap was made at home and supplied all their need for general
purposes.  Candles were made and molded at home in molds of twelve or
twenty four holes.  A quilt was always ready to work on.  Every wife
had a hop vine for yeast and bread.  You can see that no woman these
days had time to spend foolishly in attending teas and card parties.
The old Bowen farm is now owned by Edbert Clarkson who married the
youngest Bowen daughter.  Mr. Bowen died several years ago and Mrs.
Bowen lives with Egbert.  The Weavers and Bowens bury in the Weaver
Cemetery near Nettleton.      Interviewed  July 1934.


    MRS. ELIZA BROWN OF VAN NOTE DISTRICT     Narrators:  The Sturgis
"Boys"

     Eliza Dixon was born in Alabama 1841.  Her people decided to move
west and came in a flat boat 1849 over the very rapids where Muscle
Shoals are located.  They were in a band of emigrants, some headed for
California gold fields, some for nearer points.  The Dixons stayed in
Illinois then moved to cheaper lands in Kansas and lived near where
Emporia is now.  There she saw the last ceremonial war dance of the
tribe of Indians who had come from near Neosho, Missouri.  With Kansas
Civil War troubles the Dixons moved back to Illinois where Miss Eliza
married her first husband - Sturgis.  In 1870 the Sturgis family came
to Caldwell County where kin-folks had already preceded them.  They
settled on a farm east of Hamilton in the Van Note district beyond the
school where they lived over forty years.  On the death of Mr. Sturgis
she married a Brown and was usually called Mrs. Sturgis Brown to
differentiate her from the numerous other Browns out there.  She was
connected by marriage or blood with several prominent families of this
community; the Van Notes, Browns and Odgens.      When the Sturgis
family came into the county, roads were in a poor state.  Because
farms were unfenced people drove into the prairies to get around a
ditch and forded streams for there were no bridges.  Sometimes the
beaten wagon road would look like this Lumber wagons were the usual
conveyance.  Mr. Judd, Mr. Ira Houghton and another man several miles
to the south east were the only ones owning buggies between Hamilton
and Lincoln township.  Later, spring wagons came to be common.
The Van Note school building was built 1871 and Mrs. Brown's two
oldest sons Charles and John began their schooling that day.  The
first teacher was "old Man" (Geo.) Moffit, father of Will and Andy
Moffit - the cabinet makers in Hamilton during the 80's and 90's.
John received a large reward of merit composed of several coupons
which was a high honor.  Another teacher was Anna Watson (Kaufman) of
Nettleton.  Of all those early neighbors of 1870 only two women are
left:  Mrs. Elizabeth Dawson and Mrs. Sarah Gurley.  Mrs. Brown
herself died a few years ago.      Interview taken  March 1934.


    THE HARPSTER FAMILY OF GOMER TOWNSHIP  CALDWELL AND DAVIESS
COUNTIES     Narrator:  Mrs. James I. Murrell, 69, of Hamilton,
Missouri

    Van Note School and Head Marks     Davies County Creeks

     Mrs. Murrell was born in Ohio, the daughter of Amos and Loveta
Harpster and grand daughter of Jacob Harpster all of Ohio.  They came
to Missouri for a better chance to earn a living.  Twenty one of the
Harpsters unloaded at one time at Nettleton 1871 from a Hannibal and
St. Joseph train.  At first they rented land of the railroad company.
That first rented farm now belongs to Willard Lankford.  The railroad
land agent was George Lamson the depot agent at Hamilton and later a
popular banker.  Another renter of the railroad land near Nettleton
was George Pickell later City Marshall of Hamilton.  This land became
part of the Wm. Mapes land and part of the Schartzer farm.  About 1876
Jacob Harpster owned his own farm of one hundred sixteen acres in
Gomer township, south of the railroad.  He was neighbors on the east
to J.B. Sturgis on the south to Wm. Markwitz.  His land lay south of
Wm. Paxton and he was near the farm of J.C. Penney Sr.      Amos
Harpster came to Hamilton in the seventies.  He and George Rymal ran a
butcher shop in about 1874 on Broadway near where O.O. Brown's store
stood.  Later he ran a restaurant near or in the same place.  Then he
moved to Daviess County and bought land between Dog Creek and
Marrowbone.  His father Jacob owned the place north of Kidder College
where now Jim Hainsworth owns.  The Harpster family is now identified
with Daviess County in the Kidder vicinity.      Mrs. Murrell went to
school in the Van Note district east of Hamilton and learned her
a-b-c's from Anna Watson (Kaufman).  She had as school mates all the
Sturgis boys, Maud Dawson, Nettie Judd, the Van Note children.  She
spoke of the old head mark (head of line in spelling) a small card was
given and ten of these were exchanged for a big reward of merit card
to be kept forever.  To get a head mark, one had to be head at the end
of a class period.  Next day he went foot.  The next person in the
line advanced to head but must stay there to the end of the period.
Some children never got a head mark.  They just could not spell.
When Mrs. Murrell's father moved up near Dog and Marrowbone creeks,
she asked the old timers why these creeks had these names.  They said
that the creeks were named by early hunters passing through the
unsettled country one hundred years ago.  Marrowbone was named thus;
the hunters had killed many fat deer drinking in the creek.  The
marrow out of the venison bone is supposed to be a great dainty.  They
all ate heartily and then spent the night in agony with old fashioned
"belly ache."  They named the stream from that event.  A night or two
later, all the camp dogs who like-wise had eaten their full of the
venison began to show the effects also and so the stream by which the
dogs were sick was called Dog Creek.  A near by stream was called
Panther because a panther was seen there once.  Honey creek, also in
that general country, was named because a bee tree was there.  Thus
the early hunters gave the names to these "cricks" which they thought
were fitting.  Mrs. Murrell said that every one used to say "crick" in
those parts, that the pronunciation "creek" marked a person as putting
on airs or affected.      Interviewed  July 1934.


    THE DAWSON FAMILY IN THE SEVENTIES IN VAN NOTE DISTRICT
Narrator:  Mrs. Elizabeth Dawson, 90, Hamilton, Missouri

     Mr. and Mrs. O. Dawson came west in 1870 "to grow up with the
country."  They came from Oil City Pennsylvania, where the first oil
well was put down by man-power used on boards.  When the oil came up
they did not know what to do with it, and experimented.  The first oil
lamp was burned in O. Dawson's father's home.  It was not refined oil
and was really dangerous.      Mr. Dawson had just inherited $3000
from his father and he wanted to buy a home with it.  He invested it
in the present Dawson farm of eighty acres at $45 an acre.  One and
one half mile east of Hamilton and the money which was left went for a
wagon and horses.  The house on his land was a two room shack, really
one, for the back room was a lean-to.  The front room was so small
that in getting out of bed one's feet almost went into the kitchen
oven.  In that room, they cooked, ate, and slept.  The lean-to was
filled with corn which the previous owner had "thrown in" with the
land as a bargain.  There were two windows to keep clean.      Next
fall the Dorr Judd family came out.  Mrs. Judd was a sister of Mrs.
Dawson and also had a $3000 inheritance.  They happened to be lucky
enough to buy the adjoining eighty acres for $25 an acre from a
home-sick settler.  So they had more money left after the farm was
bought.  They made a better house to begin with.      Soon Jim and
Jeff Van Note bought eighty acres on the same side of the road.  All
were young couples beginning life and bore hardships easily.  The Van
Note district began with excellent people.  Mrs. Sturgis (afterwards
Mrs. Brown commonly called Mrs. Sturgis Brown lived on the opposite
side of the road to the east).  These were the near neighbors.      A
well known character of the seventies who used to frequent these farms
was Mrs. Lee or "Old Mrs. Lee" as she was often called.  She was a
demented woman who even before Mrs. Dawson came 1870 was known as a
tramp and beggar.  At first she dragged her three young boys with her,
but as they grew older they were ashamed of her and refused to go.
Some where to the north she had a daughter who wished to care for her
but Mrs. Lee preferred to tramp and beg.  She was seen in these parts
as late as 1883 still as subject of fear to children.      This was
her appearance:  an old frowsy gray haired woman, calico bonnet,
calico apron, worn dress; she carried a stick in one hand and carried
her worldly possessions (a sack of clothes) on another stick on her
back.  She went from house to house begging food and shelter; she also
begged from stores.  They would give her short lengths of calico to
get rid of her.  She sometimes worked a few hours for farm women to
get them to sew for her.  She picked gooseberries for Mrs. Dawson who
made a sunbonnet in return.      But she never stayed long in a place.
After a nights rest in a barn or in a kitchen, off she went early to
the road, a crazy harmless soul.  Occasionally she would ask for soap
to wash her dirty clothes.  At one time the Caldwell County
authorities put her in the County Poor Farm as a poor and insane
person but she walked out the back door to freedom.  If refused a bed,
she always quoted Scripture "The foxes have holes, the birds have
nests, but the Son of God hath no place to lay his head."
Interviewed  January 1934.


    THE GURLEY FAMILY IN EXCELSIOR DISTRICT     Narrator:  Mrs. Sarah
Gurley, 89, of Hamilton, Missouri

     Sarah E. Raymer of Ontario New York was born 1845, the daughter
of Henry Raymer and Phoebe Mead.  She married George C. Gurley January
1868 and in the same year the young couple came to Caldwell County.
He had met George Putnam of this county in the east and Putnam had
urged him to come out here.  When they came they spent the first day
and night at the old Hamilton House south of the depot.  The landlord
then was Mr. Brosius and his son was merchant here.      Mr. Gurley
bought eighty acres of the railroad at $12 an acre from George Lamson,
agent for the railroad.  While he was fixing up a home, Mrs. Gurley
lived in the home of George Putnam, who at that time lived just
outside Hamilton on the north which afterwards was the Lindley home.
George Putnam was an early character about Hamilton, a stockman and
farmer and later in charge of the scales at the stock yards.  His
worst fault was drunkenness.  He later lived on a farm east of town
near the Penney place and later in town in the present Dawson home.
His first wife was a sister of Myron Walling's wife.  He died over
forty years ago.  The entire family lie in the old cemetery.      Some
of the outstanding events in the many years spent by Mrs. Gurley on
the old farm were the terrible winds; one night in 1876 their two room
house blew over; fear of Indians who yet traveled the roads in small
groups, Mrs. Gurley gathered switches and hung them over the front
door, the idea being that the Indians in fear of switches would stay
away; the James boys, who never came their way; great rattle snakes,
which appeared even in the door yards; the wild deer used to graze in
their neighborhood the first year or so.  One morning as they awoke
early, there was quite a herd in the yard, but Mr. Gurley would not
shoot them lest they belong to some distant neighbor.      Their
neighbors those first two years were rather distant - the nearest was
John Haigh, whose wife was a very eccentric and energetic woman,
walking four miles to Hamilton to wash for Mrs. T.D. George and then
walking back in the evening.  Other neighbors were the Markwitz family
and Chas. Rook.      They traveled much on horse or in lumber wagons.
Finally Mr. Gurley and Billy Mapes (brother of Mrs. Etta Naylor) built
a spring buggy, seating two people, which was quite a fine job.  Often
as they forded streams the water came to the wagon hubs, but the
stream was so narrow that there was little danger.      The Gurley
boys went to school first in a building on the Clampitt place, then
over to Van Note 1873 then to their own new school house in the
Excelsior district. Mr. Gurley shipped fine driving horses back east
besides farming and he had just returned from such a trip when he
died, over forty years ago.  The Gurley farm has never changed hands.
Chas. Gurley, a son has it now.      Interviewed  July 1934.


    THE MURRELLS IN GOMER TOWNSHIP IN THE SEVENTIES     Narrator:
James I. Murrell, 76, of Hamilton, Missouri

            The Murrell Farm                      Locust Grove School
Easy Credit                           The O'Neil Home
Country Schools

     Mr. Murrell, now a retired farmer was born in Ripley County south
east Missouri of southern parentage.  His father was Benjamin Murrell
and his mother Mary Everett Galpin, who with a daughter is buried in
McCrary cemetery in Daviess County.  The father was a southern soldier
(as Mr. Murrell says "it was all the way we knew") and died in a
Little Rock Hospital.  The Mother had four children to support and
they were lucky if they had corn bread to eat.      In 1874, James I.
his Mother and the other children came to Caldwell County where he
worked on two farms east of Hamilton - on one he worked for J.C.
Penney Sr. (father of the Penney Store man) on the other for the
Paxton Brothers, farmers of Mirabile township and liverymen of
Hamilton.  Then fifty two years ago he bought a farm without a cent in
hand, eighty acres at $30 an acre from Judge McMillan and paid off the
mortgage.  Credit was easy then for every borrower paid his debts.  To
be sold out was a disgrace.  Later he bought forty more acres at
$87.50 which shows how land values increased.      Those days farmers
did not need to use fertilizer, corn grew easily for the soil was
almost virgin.  At first in his farming he used a walking plow.  It
was in 1874 that he first shucked corn.  Before that time in Ripley
County, they had pulled corn and stalk off together.      His farm was
near the Locust Grove School four miles north east of Hamilton.  An
early teacher there was Eva Glasener of Hamilton who got $20 a month,
did her own janitor work and walked out each day from home, a good
four miles. Another teacher was Jim Wilson of Kidder.  They had big
country schools then forty two to fifty.  Nowadays the same school has
seven to twelve.  Families were large and the big boys and girls kept
on going even after they had finished their books, sometimes till they
were twenty, especially in the winter when there was little farm work.
There were two terms; winter ordinarily four possibly five months;
summer - three months.  Pupils were ranked by the reader they used.
The remark "He is in the third reader" really showed his class.  Each
country school was a law to itself.  No rules existed to make it work
like some other school.  Consequently the country pupils were in hard
luck when they came to town school.      Mr. and Mrs. Murrell gave up
farming a few years ago and bought a home east of the Federated
Church.  This house originally smaller than now is one of Hamiltons
old homes.  They bought it of Mrs. H.B. O'Neil whose husband was in
the Dry Goods firm of O'Neil and Wilson in the seventies, located at
the Penney Store site.  The O'Neils bought their home of Wm. Partin
and wife who inherited it from Mrs. Partin's father, Rev. Eli Penney,
who gave them the home for taking care of himself and wife in their
old age.      Interviewed  July 1934.


    THE WATSON FAMILY IN GOMER TOWNSHIP 1870     Narrator:  Mrs. Ida
Watson Hargrove, 68, Hamilton, Missouri

Mrs. Hargrove is the daughter of Thos. Jefferson Watson (1827-1909)
and Abbie Frances Cole both of whom lived much of their lives in Rhode
Island where the Watson name went back to the colonial days.  Thos. J.
Watson moved to Illinois in the sixties and to Caldwell County 1870
when Mrs. Hargrove was three years old.  He bought a section of land
near Nettleton at $12 an acre and afterwards considered he had paid
too much since land near by had sold at $3 an acre and "Old Man"
(Fred) Pawsey had bought timber land for 25 cents an acre, but of
course that was earlier.      When the Watson family landed at the
Nettleton depot (then called Gomer) there was a tiny depot, a store
kept by McIntyre and a house where the Camp family lived.  This family
had three children, a daughter who became Mrs. Grimes (Mother of Joe
Grimes of Hamilton) Mrs. Sloan (mother of Tessie and Cassie) and a son
Wright.      She recalls the ugly prairie grass, the prairie chickens,
but also the beautiful prairie flowers new to her; no bridges, no
roads, not a house between them and Shoal Creek.      At first, the
two elder boys went to school at Mr. Pleasant school some distance
away, but soon a school was built at Nettleton and she started her
schooling there.  Her sister Anna Watson Kaufman went back to Illinois
to school and then on her return taught in the adjoining Van Note
School.  One of Mrs. Hargrove's teachers was Sam Scott father of Mrs.
John Finch.      She has a vivid memory of grasshopper year 1875.
They had been hearing of the plague else where and two of the boys had
ridden to see the sights some twenty miles away.  They brought some in
a bottle as a souvenir.  The very next morning the grasshoppers came
to the Watson farm, like a heavy cloud, landing on fences, porches and
corn.  The children drove them from the corn by beating the stalks,
but some of them fell on the throats of a big brood of young turkeys
and killed them all.  The next day they suddenly rose and flew east.
The Watson family lost three members of typhoid fever within a few
weeks one summer in the seventies.  It was said to be due to the dry
prairie grass.  Whole families used to die of typhoid those days.
Funerals held in the school house and the services were often held a
week or more likely a month after the death, especially if the disease
was catching.  The burial ordinarily occurred the next day after death
because they could not keep a corpse much longer and because it took
the neighbor men about a day to build a coffin.      One of the
brothers was photographed after he died because he had never had a
grown up picture taken.  T.H. Hare, the Hamilton Photographer came out
and fixed the body in a semi-sitting pose.  Mr. Hare then had his
gallery east of the present Martin grocery.  She recalled having
cabinet and tin types taken there.  Her father used to tell of
traveling photographers who went thru this country taking pictures
right on the farms, so you would not have to go to town.      The
Watson family was well fixed, yet the children never had much money to
spend.  On Fourth of July they were given fifteen cents 15 cents (or a
quarter when older).  Five cents of this in Mrs. Hargrove's case, had
to go for a ride on the merry go round, five cents for peanuts, and
five for taffy candy, or later when ice cream came out, a dime went
for that.  Surprise boxes were always alluring but the old folks
always advised them not to buy for they had musty old candy or popcorn
in them, even if they did contain a ring.      Interviewed  June 1934.


    A GERMAN FAMILY IN CALDWELL COUNTY     Narrator:  Mrs. Lottie
Anderson of Hamilton, Missouri

     Martin Christiansen, Mrs. Anderson's father was born in Germany
in the dyke and sea districts.  In his later years he often told of
those early days when the family at meal time ate out of one dish,
each with his own wooden spoon.  After the meal each washed his spoon
and put it up.  They did not drive to town but in the summer they
rowed and in the winter they skated and pushed before them a skating
chair with an oldery one in it.  At fifteen Martin ran away from home
to sea and served fifteen years and won the coveted iron cross.
As a sailor he came to New Orleans.  He worked up the Mississippi on a
steamboat.  In a boat trip to Ohio he met his future wife, also a
German.  He came to Missouri 1866 and bought land in Caldwell County
of the railroad.  His eighty acre place was part of the present Frank
Hooker farm.  Christiansen held it till 1880 when he sold it to Col.
J.W. Harper (Hooker's father-in-law).      When the Christiansens came
to Hamilton they boarded a few days at the Brosius Hotel (Hamilton
House) till he got ready for her to come out.  They lived in a tent
for several months till he built a house.  At that time and for years
after there were no fences.  They fed hogs and cattle (all branded) on
the open prairie.  His mark was M.C.  The mother often had to walk in
the afternoon to bring home the cows to be milked and fed.      After
Mr. Christiansen became established he sent money back to Germany to
bring on his old father and brothers and sisters because he wanted
them to have American comforts of life.  One sister came to American
later and lived but he never saw her from the day he ran away till his
death.      In 1880, having sold his farm he bought another near
Nettleton where he reared his large family.  He often longed for boats
and the sea but never saw them again.  He became naturalized in time
to vote for R. B. Haves as President.      The couple always spoke
broken English.  The Mother learned to read English as her young
children brought home their first readers.  She learned also to write
the English script with them.  At first, Mr. Christiansen being a
sailor was absolutely ignorant of farming but was eventually a good
farmer.  In those early days of the sixties he also dug many wells and
built homes for the settlers.      Interviewed  April 1934.


    CHRISTIAN SCHNEITER, SWISS SETTLER IN CALDWELL COUNTY 1867
Narrator:  Mrs. Sam Teegarden of Nettleton, Missouri

     Christian Schneiter, father of Mrs. Sam Teegarden was born in
Canton Berne Switzerland 1831.  He came to the United States 1867,
with a Swiss colony and settled in New York Township in Caldwell
County, Missouri.  The next year he sent for his wife and five
children.  He soon found out that there was good money to be made
digging wells for the settlers who were flocking into the prairie
land.  He laid money and bought at first twenty acres and finally
owned one hundred sixty acres.  With much well digging on hand, he was
gone quite a bit, leaving the farm work largely to the wife and nine
children.  Mrs. Teegarden recalls how her mother would work in the
fields day by day and then go out on the prairies after the cows in
the afternoon to milk.      Reminiscent of the 1934 drought, she
recalls the 1874 drought when the farmers instead of digging wells to
water their stock, as farmers do now, would turn them loose to find
their own water in water holes and creeks scattered over the prairies.
She could recall hearing the cows low in their great desire for water.
Her sister Mary married John Shaney; both Mrs. Shaney and Mrs.
Teegarden married farmers and settled in Gomer township.
Interviewed  August 1934.


    IN "GRAND RIVER COUNTRY"     Narrator:  Dr. Libby R. Woolsey of
Hamilton

       The Woolsey Family            At the End of the H. & St. Joseph
R.R.     Early Whiskey-Making          The Irish Settlers at
Breckendridge

The Woolsey family came very early into what is now Caldwell County.
Some of them were here in 1835 before the county was organized.  Some
left and came back later on.  Cardinal Woolsey, the father of Dr.
Libby Reynolds Woolsey, was a native of Tennessee (born 1818) of
Scotch Irish lineage.  He settled in Breckenridge, Missouri before
Mormon days.  His son, Dr. Napoleon Bonaparte Woolsey, was born there
in 1849 and Dr. Libby R., the youngest son, was born there in 1859.
Dr. Halstead of Breckenridge, who lived to be over one hundred years
old, was present at his birth.  Being a doctor runs in the Woolsey
family for centuries.      Dr. L.R. Woolsey was born on the old
Woolsey farm two miles east of Breckenridge in a house that was part
log cabin and part tent.  That farm is now owned by Dr. C.B. Woolsey
of Braymer.      His grandfather, Gilbert Woolsey, put up a
still-house one mile north of the above farm in the early days, but
when Berry Diddle made his still-house near Henkins bridge, the two
men fell out and Woolsey moved his still into fresh territory near
Hamburg, Iowa, where he and his wife are buried.  Dr. L.R.'s parents
are buried in the old Gant cemetery near Breckenridge.      Whisky
sold cheap then, twenty-five cents a gallon, for good pure stuff.
Often the distillers would sell it in this way.  They would hear of a
harvesting or a barn raising or the like.  They then would fill a
twenty gallon barrel with whiskey, put it on an axle (which might be a
round of a tree, for a fellow was might lucky those days if he had a
spoke wheel), put runners under this, hitched horses to the
contraption; and he himself sitting in the barrel, drove away to sell
the whiskey.  When the twenty gallons were gone, he went after more.
He lived near the Jerome Terrill place, went to that school, and
played with the little Terrill niggers, for the Terrills were
slaveholders.  The Terrills, who were a very proud family, thought it
was outlandish for a white boy to play with niggers, but it did not
hurt a Woolsey for they too held their heads high then.      He
recalls hearing about the first store at Breckenridge.  Sam Rial and
Billy (Daddy) Houghton put up a three room log cabin store where they
sold everything, even whiskey.  That was when Breckenridge was at the
end of the railroad.  The Hannibal and St. Joseph railroad started
from Hannibal and worked west; and there was a pause in the work for
some weeks at Breckenridge late in 1858, when Breckenridge was the
western terminus of the line.  This was a little before Dr. Libby R.
Woolsey was born and his name was given to him because Libby was the
name of the first conductor who brought a train there.  Afterwards
this Rial store was sold to Sidney McWilliams.      He recalls that
his father, Cardinal, bought this land near Breckenridge from the
government at 12 1/2 cents an acre and sold it to old man Greenwood
for 25 cents an acre and thought he was putting over a smart deal.
The lumber for his permanent home was hauled by oxen from Brunswick
and that old house is still standing and in good shape.      In the
days before Breckenridge started, all that country was known as the
Grand River country and the Post office was called Grand River Post
office which passed away with the birth of Breckenridge.  The Grand
River country attracted people from far and wide in this U.S. and even
Ireland.  He spoke of several Irish families who came to that
district.  John Scanlon came over and built a big stone house and
bossed the railroad section work for forty-five years.  Anthony White
was another, and Mr. Helm another Irishman.  Some were Catholics.
Some came here, returned to Ireland and then came back here, realizing
that the Grand River country could not be beat.      Interviewed
August 1934.


    THE ESTABROOK FAMILY IN BRECKENRIDGE TOWNSHIP 1867

     Edward Wilson Estabrook and his wife Mary E. Wagner came into
Caldwell County 1867 and settled on a farm near Breckenridge now owned
and operated by a son Wilson and a grand son Edward.  E.W. was born
1827 in Massachusetts and was a cabinet maker by trade.  First he
tried his work in Wisconsin but moved from there to Caldwell County in
the land and building boom of 1867-8.  The father died in 1885 and the
mother 1900.  The sons Elery and Wilson went to Wolf Grove school near
their home and Elery afterwards was a school director there.      The
house occupied by the Estabrook family was built 1884.  The sons by
the instruction of their carpenter father cut, sawed, and planed
native oak for the frame work and burnt rock to use in the plaster of
the house.  It is still in fine condition and shows what people can
make out of materials already on their place.      The Estabrooks now
own a stock farm of 540 acres near Breckenridge and are breeders of
Ramboulette sheep of which they usually have 600 head.  This pioneer
Estabrook family has made a name for themselves far beyond the limits
of Caldwell County.  When a family sees its fourth generation in one
community like the Estabrooks one can call it a well established
family.


    THE HALSTEAD FAMILY IN BRECKENRIDGE TOWNSHIP IN 1837     Narrator:
Mrs. Mary Halstead Alexander, 76, Hamilton, Missouri

     Mrs. Alexander is a niece of Dr. J.L. Halstead of Breckenridge
who died a few years age over 100 years old.  Her father a brother of
the doctor came one year and a half ahead of Dr. Halstead who came
1857 and brought with him the salves, building material and
implements.  The buildings were all built by slave labor under their
father's supervision on the section of land south of Breckenridge
which Dr. Halstead had entered 1855.  He also had bought 120 acres of
timber land making a total of 760 acres at a price of $2.50 an acre
for the prairie and $4.50 an acre for the timber, showing the
comparative low value in these days of prairie land.  Dr. Halstead
paid for this land in gold coin and rode alone horseback with it
through a thinly settled frontier.      For a year and a half 1855-7
Mrs. Alexander's father and his family lived in this newly built home.
They could see deer grazing on the prairies, and turkey, grouse and
prairie chickens scurried as men approached.  They depended largely on
their own place for clothing-for they had sheep.  At first they raised
cotton to give the salves something to do; but after the Missouri
river began to carry boats to Richmond, it was cheaper (especially
when you no longer had slaves) to buy it there.      When Dr. Halstead
with his family came to take charge of the farm, Mrs. Alexander's
father moved his family to Breckenridge where he helped to build many
of the early buildings there.  They moved in mid-day; that evening the
train passed by their home.  The children had never seen a train and
were unprepared for its awful appearance.  They ran shrieking into the
house.      She recalls some of the closing events of the Civil War
about Breckenridge.  She heard the shots which killed the southern
sympathizer Humphrey Weldon.  (See his paper)  Her own father was not
active as a Southerner but Dr. Halstead was one of those who helped to
raise the Confederate flag in Breckenridge and she recalls that Henry
Gist (later killed by the Union militia) was one of the Southerners
forced by the militia to dig up the stump of the Confederate
flag-pole.      She recalls too that one night her father was called
out of bed to identify a man by the name of Ireland.  He had delivered
some cattle and was caught riding at night by the militia as a
suspect.  Before he was released, men who knew him and his calling as
a cattle trader had to identify him.      She recalls hearing her
father say that when he first came to Missouri, small change money was
so scarce that he once had seen a dollar cut into quarters to make
change.  His brother Dr. Halstead told of the days about 1841 in the
Richmond country when there were 6 1/2 and 12 1/2 cent pieces, for 5
and 10 cent pieces were not coined till about that time.      The year
1858 was a memorable drought year (few can recall it and nobody seems
to be able to compare it to the 1934 drought).  No rain fell from
April to September.  Corn and all crops were an entire failure.  These
few farmers who had sold old corn sold it easily at $1 per bushel;
whereas if the corn crop had been good, they would have received 10 to
20 cents.  Families who used real coffee two or three times a week
were simply extravagant, for people usually used coffee
substitute-parched corn, dried sweet potatoes and the like for a
beverage.  Everything was very high.      Mr. and Mrs. Alexander
bought unimproved land north of Nettleton and made it into a valuable
farm and there reared a family of nine children.      Interviewed
July 1934.

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