Caldwell County, Missouri History Interviews - Caldwell County, Missouri


DR. JAMES EARL IN BRECKENRIDGE TOWNSHIP 1937     Narrator:  Mrs.
Leta Earl Moore of Breckenridge

     James Earl, son of John and Mary Earl, was born in New Jersey,
Sept. 25th, 1797.      After growing to young manhood in his native
state, he became a sailor.  Soon he was threatened with tuberculosis
and took up the study of medicine.  After finishing his medical
course, he migrated west, making the journey partly by boat and partly
by ox team.      He came in with the Mormons along the Shoal Creek and
settled in the extreme eastern part of Caldwell County in 1837 where
he homesteaded 120 acres of land.  Later he bought hundreds of acres
of virgin soil in Caldwell and Livingston counties, much of which he
sold after there was a rumor that the government was contemplating
taking over much of the land of large land-owners to encourage
settlement.      On his homestead in 1858, he built the first frame
house in that part of the country.  The whole structure was built by
hand.  Doors, window frames and all other frame work were planed,
grooved and mortised by hand.  Weather boarding, doors, casings,
built-in cupboards, and clothes closets and all other inside woodwork
were made of walnut.  The frame was of oak.  Shingles were split or
rived and then planed.  The lathes were also split.  The plastering
was made of sand and lime with cow hair for fibre.      The skill with
which the workmen finished the house equalled if not surpassed factory
work of to-day.  The lumber was selected from the best timber
available and the woodwork was sandpapered and pumiced by hand.  The
structure was fifteen months in the making.      While James Earl
practiced his profession, (medicine) his hired help tilled the soil
with oxen and small walking plows and later with mule teams.  The
ground was laid off with single shovels and the corn was cultivated
with double shovels, after being planted sometimes by hand and
sometimes with hand planters.      Clothing was made from home made
materials-home spun and home woven.      James Earl was married to
Martha Dennison Anderson June 12, 1854.  Their two children were Mary
Earl who married Calvin Sergent and James Thomas Earl who married
Minerva Dye.  Mary Earl died in 1926 and James Thomas Earl, April 28,
1931.  His wife, Minerva Dye Earl, still lives on the farm homesteaded
by James Earl.  James Thomas Earl's daughter, Mrs. Leta Earl Moore
collected the above facts.


    THE GOINS FAMILY IN BRECKENRIDGE TOWNSHIP - 1863     Narrator:
Bluford Goins, 96, of Breckenridge

     Bluford Goins of Breckenridge was born 1839, hence he is now in
his 96th year.  He was born at Cumberland Gap, Tenn., while his
father's family was on the road "west" from their home in Lee County,
Virginia.  They were in a covered wagon, of course, with a company of
emigrants.  Every wagon had its spinning wheel and home made
furniture; most of them had a package of cotton seed to sow in the new
homes.  Much of the journey was over paths instead of roads and the
parents walked by the slow horses or oxen as the case might be, so
that the children might ride.  They came by easy stages and the Gap
was a rest-stage on their road to Kentucky.  In Kentucky, they lived a
few months, then to Texas County, Mo. and then on to Lexington, Mo.
From there Mr. Goin's father came overland to Caldwell County about
1863.  He invested in a farm north of Breckenridge and lived there on
the farm till 1883.  During the 60's and 70's, he often cut wood and
hauled it to Breckenridge for $1.00 a cord.      During the Civil War,
he served in Co. H. of the First Mo. Cavalry volunteers under Col.
Whitman, Lieut. Col. Chandler and Gen. Steele.  The family still has
his Cavalry sword.  It is the old-fashioned long type with basket
hilt.  Her served 2 years, 7 months and 19 days.      One a year, he
with his son, makes a trip to Gallatin, Daviess County, to pay his
subscription to the Gallatin North Missourian to which he has
subscribed seventy years:  he was a subscriber when it started in
1864.      Interviewed  December 1933.


    THE TERRILL FAMILY OF BRECKENRIDGE     Narrators:  Mrs. Sarah
Haggerty, 70, and Mrs. H.D. Eldredge of Hamilton

     These Hamilton women were well acquainted with Mrs. Mary Terrill
and her children since Mrs. Sarah Haggerty taught for years in
Breckenridge.      Mr. and Mrs. Jerome B. Terrill and children came to
Missouri in wagons in very early days.  She was only sixteen when she
was married.  They came to the Breckenridge country when the place was
a mere settlement without a name, except the Grand River country.
She brought with her as a part of her dower her slaves who lived with
her many years.  He brought among other things, his library, a very
fine one for those days.      Before locating at Breckenridge, they
went to Westport Landing when it was only a steam boat landing, then
decided to come up to Caldwell County where a kinsman was located.  He
bought land and it was on some of this land that the town of
Breckenridge was laid out in 1856.  He was one of the Breckenridge
town company.  He named the town after his friend, Col. Breckenridge
of Kentucky.      From their home, before the town started, they could
see one vast expanse of prairie.  The only trees in their vision were
those along streams and a cluster of poplars on a Foley farm north
west of Breckenridge.      They built a log house which is yet
standing, as far as I know.  I recall her saying that one of the
happiest days in her life was when finally she had a level puncheon
floor so she could rock a cradle.      Groceries and other necessities
of life were brought from Hannibal but there were few trips taken.
Mr. Terrill was killed within a mile of his home by falling from a
railway train Nov. 1864.  That left her to struggle on with several
small children.  Her latchstring always hung outside, as a gathering
place for the young people.  Camping parties to Trosper Lake and Grand
River frequently had her as a chaperon.      Uncle Bob, one of the
Terrill slaves, was for years a well known character in Breckenridge.
The elder Terrills are buried in the Terrill private graveyard one
half mile east of Breckenridge.      Interviewed  August 25, 1934.

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

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


    THE TROSPERS OF BRECKENRIDGE     Narrator:  Wm. B. Trosper, 75, of
Breckenridge, Missouri

    Home Work     Kerosene and Whiskey     Navigating Grand River

     Mr. Trosper was born July 14, 1859 on a farm a mile north of
Breckenridge.  His parents were Robert B. Trosper and Mary Rice Comer.
He was one of a family of eight children.  His parents came into
Caldwell County from Knox County Kentucky arriving June 29 1837 in a
wagon.  His grandfather Nick Trosper settled north of the present
Excelsior Springs Missouri 1826.  Originally they had come from
Brunswick County North Carolina, moving to Kentucky on horse back.
His grandmother's maiden name was Rachel Brank.  Family tradition says
that her father was killed in the Revolutionary War by General
Tarleton.      Mr. Trosper was born in a log house, two rooms below
and one up.  He first attended the public school in Breckenridge and
later a private school here.  His first and last public speech was
given by him, when he was four years old, in a log school in the west
part of town next door to the broom factory.  Sally Napier was the
teacher (She was the ardent Southern supporter who at the beginning of
the Civil War at a public meeting urged the men to drive off the
Unionists.)      They used ox-teams to break up the ground for farming
and then laid off the corn rows with single shovel plows drawn by
horses.      His Mother did her own carding, spinning, weaving and
dyeing for their clothes.  They grew their own cotton and kept sheep.
They lived near the river and took their sheep there to wash them
before clipping the wool.  She dyed the wood with walnut and white oak
bark.      He lived in the day when kerosene cost 75 cents a gallon.
His older brother Nick worked in Ollie McWilliams store in
Breckenridge and while they sold kerosene at 75 cents a gallon they
sold whiskey at 35 cents a gallon.  At one country school attended by
his brother Nick, the teacher brought a gallon jug of whiskey for the
last day and treated patrons and pupils with it.      After the family
moved a mile further north, then they were living in Daviess County
where many of the Trospers now live.  At that time, Grand River was
navigable part of the year.  During the winter they built a large flat
and all co-operated in loading it in the spring with dried fruit, furs
and anything they could sell.  When the river rose to flood, they
floated it down to St. Louis.  When they came back, they could only
bring the raft to Brunswick and then travel overland to Breckenridge.
They brought back flour, coffee, brown sugar and like necessities
which they could not raise.      Interviewed  November 1933.


    THE McCUBBIN FAMILY AS PIONEERS NEAR BRECKENRIDGE     Narrator:
M.R. McCubbin of Breckenridge, Missouri

    Crossing the Plains to California     Making Brick at Breckenridge
    Susannah, the Weaver

     The following will give some of the historical facts concerning
the earlier part of Barnett Monroe McCubbin and his wife Susannah who
lived as pioneers in Caldwell County.      Barnett M. McCubbin was
born in Hancock County Illinois January 8 1836 his father Pleasant
McCubbin was the son of James McCubbin of North Carolina and later of
Kentucky.  James was a soldier in the war of the Revolution and served
under Washington at Valley Forge.  His wife was Polly Cook of Virginia
and tradition has it that she was the one chosen for the partner in
the grand promenade at the close of the revolutionary war when
Washington with many of the patriots was celebrating the close of the
Revolution and the surrender of the English.  Pleasant was a veteran
of the Black Hawk war and moved with his family to Missouri near what
is Warsaw now and the head of the Lake of the Ozarks, in September of
1836.  Barnett was only about eight months old at this time.  It was
here that he grew up to about seventeen years and in the spring of
1853 crossed the plains to California with the ox trains of Howsers
and Hood.  They started the first part of April and reached Hang Town
California on the thirteenth day of October, being on the road over
six months.  He served with the train as driver part of the time and
as the hunter for supplies of wild game much of the time.  He was
captured by the Indians on one occasion and was rescued by the rear
guard of the train who had remained longer than usual to allow the
stock to feed on the grass as much as possible.  He remained in
California about three and a half years and returned home by way of
the isthmus of Panama by steamer and crossed the isthmus on the make
shift railroad that was there at that time, stopping at Havana Cuba,
from there to New Orleans, St. Louis and to Jefferson City and by
stage to his old   home at Warsaw, Missouri.      He came to Caldwell
County soon after and began his trade, that of brick making which he
learned while in California.  The first brick building in Breckenridge
on the corner where Ollie McWilliams first run a store was built then,
he putting up the brick work from brick made and hauled from a place
two miles south and about a quarter mile west of the Finley corner.
Many of the early brick buildings were build by him as contractor.
In religion he was a Baptist, and politically he was always for all
progressive matters that would be for the betterment of the common
people.  While much ridicule was offered to these things they have in
many instances been enacted into law and many other things more
radical are being put into being today.  He died in Breckenridge
Missouri April 12 1929.      Susannah G. his wife was born in Miller
County, Missouri November 30 1836 near Versailes, and later while yet
a young woman moved to a homestead about five miles southwest of what
is now Breckenridge.  They got their mail either at Kingston or Utica
Post Office as there was none other nearer.  Most of the country was
new and there was hardly a fence to be seen only where the new homes
were being carved out.  Stock roamed at will over the vast expanse of
prairie, where the wild blue stem-grass grew in great abundance.  At
that time there was wild deer, bear and much wild game of all sorts,
so that the new settler was well supplied with meat, and also there
was wild fruit and grapes in profusion.      While it was hard work to
clear the ground of brush and timber so there could be plowing done,
these other natural resources helped wonderfully.  In these times
there was much home work about the house that had to be done and
included in this was the art of carding and spinning cotton and wool
and the preparing of flax to be woven into cloth for the clothing.
Susannah was very expert at this work and was in great demand about
the country to do weaving for the neighbors, for it was not so many
that could do this kind of work with any degree of quality.  In later
years this was not needed as the time came when the calicoes and other
cloths were beginning to be manufactured.  She was a very industrious
woman and mother, rearing eight children, beside taking care of many
other relatives and acquaintances.  She was a very earnest Christian
and was a Baptist.  In the early days there were no church buildings
and such services were held at the homes for regular meetings and in
warm weather there were camp meetings held in groves where they would
build a temporary arbor for shelter.  The seats were such as they
could readily construct from boards and logs.  These places were not
only centers for religious purposes but social life as well.  It is
hard to realize that only a generation or two ago this region was so
sparsely settled that homes were several miles apart.  There were no
roads or fences but only paths and driveways that went most any
direction way to where they desired to go.      Interviewed  January
1934.


    THE OLD MIRABILE TAVERN     Narrator:  Mrs. Ella Clark of
Mirabile, Missouri

     Sometime between 1850-1855 (people assign various dates) Isaac
Stout built a brick tavern at the new village of Mirabile.  Mirabile
then was not very old; it had its beginning in 1849 when Wm. E.
Marquam of Indiana moved a log store and a stock of goods from Far
West (then almost abandoned) to Mirabile.  This new trading point was
called "Marquam's Store" for some time till Marquam himself named it
Mirabile.  The new town lay on the old pioneer road which ran through
Caldwell County to Lexington and Richmond and the stage coaches
carried men who were looking around for new homes and needed a place
to sleep and eat while on the way.  Some travelers too were still on
the way to California so the Mirabile tavern was a good idea.  The
tavern those days not only gave lodging and meals but sold whiskey in
the front room - the tap room.  The building stands on what is now
South Main; and in those days of the fifties, John Burroughs brick
store was east of it.      The tavern was well built with iron
supporting rods inside and outside; its general shape was and is like
that of the well known Arrow Rock tavern.  It has needed little repair
or change in the eighty years since it was built and is now used as a
residence.      A history of its activities is of interest.  During
the Civil War, the old tavern was a center of Union loyalty.  Union
drums in Caldwell county were first beaten at Mirabile probably right
in front of this building, for the Home Guards were organized here
under E.S. Johnson and stationed here till ordered south.      It has
been used for a hotel, residence and cheese factory.  In the spring of
1883, Mamie Vanderpool and Anna Klepper used one room for a millinery
shop.  In the fall of 1884, Isaac Sackman opened its doors again as a
hotel which continued till the fall of 1890.  In 1895 H.K. Hartpence
bought it and he and his wife Kate ran it till his death 1930.  She
now uses it as a residence.      In the horse and buggy days thirty to
thirty five years ago people would drive in buggies and spring wagons
for miles to trade with John L. Clark at Mirabile and then eat at the
Mirabile Hotel because the meals were so good for the price.  Mrs.
Hartpence is an excellent cook especially pastry.  People from
Hamilton would engage Sunday dinners.


    THE SMITH FAMILY IN PLUM CREEK DISTRICT     Narrator:  Joseph
Smith, 84, of Hamilton, Missouri

               Smith Farm                         Plum Creek School
Plum Creek Churches                Boyhood Games

     Mr. Smith was born 1850 in Seneca County Ohio, son of John Smith
and Angeline Groves.  They came to Caldwell County 1857 seeking a
cheap home.  John Smith enlisted in the Union Army and he is buried at
Lone Jack, Battlefield, Missouri where he fell.  His wife is buried at
Carrollton.      John Smith bought three hundred acres of land at $12
an acre, north west of Mirabile, lying over against the Clinton County
line.  Joseph's brother is now on part of that land and the rest is in
the hands of strangers.      Mr. Smith attended Plum Creek district
school located then on the present site of Plum Creek cemetery.  The
present school is a quarter mile farther up the road.  The school
(old) had puncheon logs arranged across the room, thus differing from
the usual pioneer type where the puncheon logs were around the sides
of the room.  No backs were made to the seats and the youngsters had
to sit up or be scolded.  He used the blue spelling book, which one
had to know by heart in that district before going into the first
reader.  They had five to six months school tax-supported.  His wife
added that in her district often there were winter subscription
schools if the taxes were too scanty to pay a teacher; or there might
be six months school paid by taxes and two months paid by the
subscription of so much per pupil and paid by parents sending
children.      At Plum Creek School two churches held services, turn
about on Sundays; the Christian and the Latter Day Saints or Mormons
as they were commonly called.  Every body went to church regardless of
the doctrine preached, in true pioneer style.  The Mormons were left
over from the Mormon expulsion of 1838 and were not Brighamites, i.e.
did not believe in polygamy.  Some of these Mormon Settlers at Plum
Creek were very interesting.  Old George Strope (1812 War Veteran) was
a Mormon preacher but could not read.  Mr. Smith has seen him holding
up a spelling book and expounding the Bible from it.  The Bozarths
(often pronounced Bozer) were also earnest saints.  Bill Bozarth used
to preach at Far West in the Mormon Church.  Sarah Bozarth married a
Sackman and Miss Carmelia Sackman married Bill Clevenger, but the
Mormon faith did not get beyond the Bozarth name.  The Whitmers of
course were Saints, since the original Whitmer in the county was a
witness to the finding of the gold plates and that meant that Mrs.
Chris Kerr (a Whitmer) was a Saint although she married outside.
He recalled his boyhood games.  They were games for the timber boy.
They played "deer."  That meant that one boy was the deer and others
"hounds" and they chased with much baying.  Then the boys used to
climb trees and run races in jumping from branch to branch.  Then
there was town ball played with a twine ball, much like baseball but
took less players.  Mr. Smith married Mahala Jones, daughter of Billy
Jones of Kingston township.      Interviewed  July 1934.


    THE KEMPERS WERE PIONEERS.     Narrator:  Claud S. Kemper of
Cameron, Missouri

     A family tree faultlessly executed shows the arrival of John
Kemper Colonist in America in 1714 and John Henry my great, great
great grandfather arrived in the Old Dominion in 1730.      My father
John Quincy Adams Kemper was born in Garrard County Kentucky January 3
1826.  He was the son of Thornton B. Kemper of Fauquier County
Virginia.  J.Q.A. came to Missouri in 1850 by boat from Lexington
Kentucky to Lexington Missouri.  On leaving the boat at Lexington
Missouri he sought a way to get to Mirabile.  A freight hauler told
him he could ride on the wagon "down hill."  He accepted and made his
way from the Missouri River to Mirabile riding down hill and walking
up.      In 1851 he married Adalaide Smith the daughter of Lieutenant
Governor Smith.  "Governor Smith" as he was called came to Missouri
from Columbiana County Ohio to Missouri in 1832 on a tour of
inspection, finally moving to the State in 1844.  He bought a farm
lying partly in Rockford and Mirabile Townships.  He had brought a
large bunch of sheep from Ohio to this farm and was known as the
"Sheep Raiser Smith" in that part of the county.  Gov. Smith was State
Representative from Caldwell County in 1853 and also in 1862 and 1864.
Was Lieutenant Governor of Missouri 1864-1868 and United States
Marshall 1869-1877.      My Mother and Father located on a farm in the
Plainview neighborhood in Clinton County just over the Caldwell County
line a mile or so.  They were the parents of eleven children, three
girls and eight boys.  My Mother died in 1874, leaving a house full of
children.  The oldest daughter married R.D. Paxton the year following
mothers death, so it became sister Betty's (Elizabeth) duty to raise
the big bunch of boys.  She was very young for such an undertaking but
she stayed at home and took good care of us until we all had homes of
our own.  She also cared for father till his death.      My father
enlisted as a Union soldier in the Home Guards at Mirabile; being in
only a few months.  The older children can recall the fears and
horrors of the war.      Father was an excellent carpenter in his day.
He did a great deal of building in and around Mirabile, records show
that he built one of the oldest churches in the county at Mirabile.
The children all attended country school at Plainview and went to
church at the Brookyn church between our home and Lathrop.  This old
church has just recently been torn down.      Interview  August 1934.


    CAPTAIN EDWARD D. JOHNSON OF MIRABILE AND KINGSTON     Narrator:
Mrs. Miriam Johnson McAfee of Hamilton, Missouri

    Civil War Troubles     Home Made Clothes and Winter Food
Corded Beds and New Organ

     Mrs. McAfee's father was Captain Edward D. Johnson.  He was one
of the three wealthiest men in this vicinity at one time; the other
two were J.D. Cox of Kingston and Sol Mercer of Clinton County.  He
was also prominent in the Civil War history of the county.  His father
was born in Ireland.  Edward D. moved from Ohio to Iowa and in 1854 he
bought a farm half way between Kingston and Mirabile where he was a
stockman.  His first farm was directly across from the old Eli Penney
(later Orr) farm.  He later bought the James place.      In 1864 he
enlisted in the Mexican War.  In the Civil War, he was made Captain
and raised one of the first companies for the Federal service in
Northern Missouri.  He was the especial object of the hatred of the
Confederate Thraillkill because two Southern soldiers were killed on
his farm.  Mrs. McAfee says that on two occasions the Thraillkill men
visited the Johnson home to kill him.  At the second visit he was
gone; and Mrs. Johnson and the children hid the valuables in the
orchard; put three or four dresses on each child and hid upstairs till
the men went on.  The first visit Captain Johnson had been called home
to see a sick child.  A Penney slave (Penneys lived across the road)
heard that Thraillkill was coming to get him, so he went across the
road to warn him.  The Captain ran out leaped on his horse jumped the
horse and rider fence and escaped.  His wife took his guns out and
pushed corn shucks over them.  When Thraillkill came, Martha Seeley, a
Mormon neighbor read his title clear for coming into a house of
sickness, so Thraillkill went away without his man.      Her girlhood
memories go back to home spun dresses made by her Mother, plain colors
for every day, checked ones for best.  The checked goods were made of
yarn colored in two shades, black walnut made light brown and blue
madder made blue.  These two colors were used on the loom.      The
girls wore shaker straw bonnets with pink and blue gingham tails to
school.  Then there were the slat sunbonnets worn continuously out
doors to preserve a fair skin. Tan was no sign of beauty then.
There were some interesting peculiarities about the home.  The front
and back doors were secured at night by an iron bolt laid across hooks
at the side.  There were two beds to a room under each bed was pushed
a trundle bed which the long bed covers hid.  Captain Johnson used to
crawl under a bed in the summer to sleep to avoid flies, for screen
doors did not exist.  The beds were all four poster, corded with rope
laced back and forth on hooks.  Beds had to be recorded about every
two weeks by the husband, otherwise they might let the head down too
low or let the two sleepers slide down in the middle.      Captain
Johnson was good to his women folks.  His wife was the first woman in
her district to have a sewing machine and a large cook stove and his
daughter Miriam (Mrs. McAfee) was the first one to have an organ.  It
was a two stop organ and cost $200 and had a name which she had
forgotten but which meant "I have found It."  The people came for
miles to see it; it was then early in the seventies.  The only musical
instrument anything like it in the district was a Melodeon owned by
the Lankford family who used to load it in the spring wagon and take
it to the Methodist church every Sunday.      The Johnson pantry and
smoke house were always full.  Seven or eight hogs were killed every
winter and one steer.  They smoked the pork and dryed the surplus
beef.  In the kitchen were the flour barrel, the sugar barrel and the
salt cask.  Captain Johnson took his own wheat to Crawfords Mill at
Mirabile and waited for his own grist.  The night before corn was to
be sent to be made into corn meal, the children shelled off the corn
and then made great houses out of the cobs.  The Johnson family moved
to Kingston when Mrs. McAfee was fifteen.      Interviewed  February
1934.


    THE JOHN ORR FAMILY IN MIRABILE TOWNSHIP.     Narrator:  Mrs.
Sallie Morris, 70, of Hamilton, Missouri

              Prairie Fires                         Trading in Town
Stock and Fences                      Banks and Money
Pleasant Valley School

     Mrs. Morris was born in Millersburg Holmes County Ohio in 1864.
Her father John Orr was born in Armstrong County Pennsylvania and John
was twelve when his people moved to Ohio.  He did not serve during the
Civil War but bought horses for the Government.  He was married to
Sarah Haley first and Prudence Criswell the second time and had twelve
children.  This large family containing several sons probably led him
to come west at the close of the war where he could get plenty of land
cheap.  First he came prospecting and then he went back after his
family.  He bought two hundred and twenty acres with a large house
from John Dodge for twenty five dollars ($25) an acre.  It lay half
way between Mirabile and Kingston.  This land before Dodge held it had
belonged to one of the Penney family, a slave holder, but when slaves
were freed he had to sell his incompleted house to come out even.
Orr's father came out soon too but the grandmother Orr stayed in Ohio
four years longer and came out with the Elliotts of Millersburg Ohio
who located at Mirabile.  The new Ohio settlers would stay at the Orr
home till they got a home.  The Orr home was big with many big rooms.
It took thirty yards of rag carpet to cover a floor.      When they
first came out, prairie fires were common, set on fire often to burn
the grass roots.  In despair over homesickness for Ohio, one of the
Orr boys said "he wished the prairie fires would burn up the whole
State of Missouri."  Wild turkeys were seen in the Orr district even
as late as the eighties, but she recalled no other wild animals except
the snakes.      The Orr family traded at stores in Kingston and
Mirabile.  George Treat was their Mirabile merchant.  The trip took a
half day.  Once or twice a year they took a whole days trading trip to
Hamilton or Cameron in the lumber wagon; and took the family lunch and
often the family dog too who guarded the wagon while they did their
trading.      There were laid out roads to Hamilton and Cameron
running past the Orr house, but the people often made their own paths
through the unfenced prairies, whether on foot, horse or wagon.  There
was much fording of streams, because there were few bridges.  Mrs.
Morris has seen most of the bridges that now stand in the Kingston,
Mirabile and Hamilton region erected in her own life time.      The
stock, being branded had free range in the sixties and seventies and
the stock law was passed requiring the owner to care for his own stock
it required the farmer to build fences much to the farmers objection.
Many of these fences were horse and rider (stake and rider) made of
tree branches, with a big waste of land resulting from the shape.
In the days of the seventies Mr. Orr was a man of unusual means in his
neighborhood.  His was a pioneer home without home made furniture and
home privations.  There was lots of land and considerable money.  He
did not use a Bank until 1879 when the Hamilton Savings Bank elected
George Lamson as Cashier.  People did not use checks then and needed
money handy.  When he got money he handed it to his wife to care for.
She hid it wherever her fancy led.  One day Sally (Mrs. Morris) was
hunting in a scrap bag and found a roll of bills.  Robbers would never
look there.      The Orrs lived in the Pleasant Valley School district
near Mirabile.  The district school was first held in a log building
in the yard of Mrs. George Walters (great grandmother of Mrs. Louisa
Kennedy).  Then the present school building was built one half mile
north of the Walters log cabin.  This school was the first one
attended by Mrs. Morris and Miss Rachel Houghton (sister-in-law of
Mrs. Morris) was the first teacher in that school.  Mrs. Morris' first
teacher was Mrs. Clark Edgecomb and her second Mr. Clark Edgecomb.
They had blackboards, chalk, Spencerian Copy books but no maps.  They
used slates with "spit" to erase them.  The middle aisle had the
stove.  On each side was a row of single seats and a row of double
seats built into the walls.      At seventeen she put on long dresses
and put up her hair.  The roach comb was the fashion then with teeth
at both ends to push back the hair from the forehead.  She went to
lots of play parties where guessing games were used.  Boys went
courting about once in two weeks.  Dances might be held in the big
kitchens.      Interviewed  March 1934.


    THE MORRIS FAMILY IN MIRABILE TOWNSHIP IN THE SIXTIES
Narrator:  Robert M. Morris, 74, of Hamilton, Missouri

    Mormon Community     Early Schools     Coffee

    Mr. Morris is the son of Henderson C. Morris and Nancy Kerr.  This
couple came from Kentucky to Caldwell County 1858.He eventually had
two hundred and sixty acres and became a rich man.  During the Civil
War, although a Southern sympathizer by wise action he escaped the
injury to life and property which came to many of his friends.  He was
right in the midst of the Kingston-Mirabile Federal center.  He lived
near Captain Johnson's home where occurred the killing of the two
Southern soldiers buried in the Morris cemetery.      The Henderson
Morris farm was on Goose Creek and the old Mormon road between
Lexington and Far West ran through his front yard, through the fields
and Goose Creek.  This same road ran between the Morris farm and the
Peddicord farm and today is yet to be traced in some places by a hard
depression.      Near this locality was the old Fugitt Mill of the
early day, one half mile east down the creek from Stoners Bridge,
north of Kerr.  By the sixties, this old Mill existed only as a memory
to the old timers and the name meant a fine fishing place to the
youngsters like Robert Morris.      This was an old Mormon community
and a few of the old Mormons still lived there who did not go with the
exodus of 1838.  Mrs. Bidwell, an Ohio Mormon, lived in an old cabin
as a squatter on the Billy Jones farm, even in the seventies.  She
declared that she would never die, being a godbead, but she did die in
the county poor farm.  Another Mormon was Mrs. Sealy, and a third Mrs.
Christopher Kerr (Sallie Whitmer, Aunt-in-law of Bob Morris).  She
called herself a member of the church of Jesus Christ and not a
Mormon.  She was a daughter of the witness Whitmer who saw the Mormon
Revelation to Smith and she kept the gold plates for many years.  They
were exhibited at the dedication of the Kingston Mormon church.  She
had a son by her first husband Ticky Johnson.  This Nathan Johnson
lives on the old Whitmer place at Far West.      Another early Mormon
character of that part was James (Jim) Richey now of Lamoni Iowa who
was known those days as a wonderful trapper and hunter.  (See the
Richey papers).  Still another Mormon was old Mrs. Smith (one of the
original Smith family) grandmother of Jim Richey.  In fact it was his
Mother's religion which he took.  His father was not a Mormon.
The Morris family went to Mill at the Spivey mill near Kingston in the
sixties and seventies and some went to the Crawford mill at Mirabile.
The farmer carried a two bushel sack of corn and the miller took a
peck for toll.  He would either sell this or feed it to his hogs.
One of Mr. Henderson's sons is the narrator Robert M. Morris.  He
married a neighbor girl Sallie Orr.  He first went to school to Mrs.
Charlie Stevenson - step-daughter of Wm. Goodman of Hamilton.  This
school was not tax supported but kept up by contributions of the
patrons and held in an old building of Mr. Morris' aunt.  The teacher
stayed with Billy Jones, a relative.  His next school was in a log
cabin which was said by some to be a "nigger shanty" in the yard of
Mrs. George Walters (great grandmother of Gene Morris and Louisa
Kennedy of Hamilton).  This was taught by a man Johnson Boyd, who gave
a great treat at Christmas.  It was apples; apples were scarce then,
for there were few orchards.  His third school was the Pleasant
Valley.      There were no section roads in the early sixties and
people rode and drove as they wished across the prairie to Mirabile
and Kingston.      Mr. Morris well recalls the green coffee ear.
Farmers would bring home a huge package of green coffee for a dollar.
The Women parched it in ovens and the children ground it in mills
every morning.  Coffee was cheap and people used it three times a day.
No coffee in bags was sold till about 1880, when the Arbuckle Coffee
came, costing two pounds for twenty five cents.  He never saw a paper
sack of any kind till about 1880.      Interviewed  April 1934.

THE HARPOLDS, PIONEERS IN MIRABILE TOWNSHIP 1845     Narrator:
Mrs. Catherine Rogers, 90, Cowgill, Missouri

     Mrs. Rogers is the oldest child of Absolam Harpold of Mirabile
township; at the age of one year or eighty nine years ago she came
into the county with her parents Absolom Harpold and wife (whose
maiden name was Rhodes) both of Virginia.  They came on the river as
far as Brunswick, Missouri.  Then he engaged sleeping quarters for
wife and child in a blacksmith shop and came afoot to Kingston.  He
bought land on Goose Creek in Mirabile township got a wagon and went
back to Brunswick after his wife and child.      Time went on in
frontier fashion.  Mrs. Harpold's way of passing "wash day" is of
interest.  In the morning she started down to Goose Creek with her
bundle of clothes; she also had a mess of dry beans.  While the beans
were cooking in one pot, the clothes were boiling over another fire.
Dinner was eaten on the spot.  The clothes were hung on the bushes,
and while they were drying, they picked wild berries, plums or grapes;
going back home with a fine day's work done.      They manufactured
their clothes on their own farm beginning with the sheep's wool and
ending with sewing the goods by hand.  They dyed with various types of
bark, gentian, pike berries which gave red color.  Poke berries were
also used for ink.  They made their own yeast out of flour, corn meal,
yeast and potatoes.      Her father Absolam Harpold (1821-1864) was
one of the victims of the Civil War excitement in Caldwell County.  He
had served a three year enlistment in the Southern Army and was
returning home.  As he got off the train at Hamilton to go to his home
west of Kingston a personal enemy saw him and reported it.  One
Penniston killed his horse in riding to Kingston to report it to the
Home Guards.  When Harpold got out to his home, he surmised the state
of affairs and rode to Kidder to take the train west and get away from
trouble.  A report was sent to Cameron, the militia entered the train
and took him off--hanging him with very little delay.      Interviewed
August 16, 1934.


    THE CRAWFORD FAMILY AT KINGSTON IN 1867 AND HAMILTON IN 1875
Narrator:  Mrs. Joseph Crawford, 91, Hamilton, Missouri

     Mrs. Joseph Crawford born 1843 now lives in Hamilton but she came
into Caldwell County as a Kingston resident.  She was born in
Washington County Virginia, was of a Southern family and knew all the
troubles of the Southern people after the war was over.  Her husband
came from Tennessee.  After the war conditions were so hard in the
south, that her husband, who did not have much, decided to come west.
They came up the Mississippi river from Tennessee on a boat and it
took them four days and four nights to get to Illinois, where
Crawford's brother had already settled.  They had with them very
little baggage - for they had sold their old Conastoga wagon and some
furniture before starting.  In Illinois, they ran up against Bill
Schwartz who came from Caldwell County and told them how much better
bargains in homes they could get in Missouri.  He said if they were
not satisfied with Caldwell County he would pay their way back to
Illinois.  He brought them on to Kingston where Crawford began his
trade of shoe maker to which he had been apprenticed as a boy.  It was
a trade which meant good money those days.  Often he made $7 a day in
making (not mending) boots and shoes.      They bought their land from
Dr. Lemuel Dunn father of the late Dwight (Pete) Dunn of Hamilton.  On
this he built a two room shack and they lived there till his death
1872 aged 27, he lies in the old part of the Kingston Cemetery.
During the stay in Kingston, he held the highest office in the Masonic
lodge and most of his friends were Masons.  At that time Hugh Chain
and family kept the frame hotel (afterwards Cadman House).  Dr. Dunn,
Dr. Neff and Dr. Smith were the doctors.  She recalled old man Turner
and the older Spivey, Henry Botoff and a druggist Gudgell.  Most of
the people there were Northerners and so Crawford used to say to his
wife "We are in a Yankee settlement.  We have to lay low," especially
so when the war had been over only three or four years.      After her
husband's death Mrs. Crawford and two children Kate and Lula in 1875
moved to Hamilton to get something to do.  They were very poor.  For a
while she sewed for a living and took her pay largely in vegetables,
milk, meat, needing just enough money to pay rent.  At that time she
lived on the site of the Methodist parsonage.  Finally she began
taking care of Mrs. Dort who was an invalid, and stayed in the Dort
home as house keeper forty years.  There she still lives.  Her
daughter Kate now owns that very home and Ben Dort, who formerly owned
it, died a few years ago at the County Farm.      During 1875, there
was a scarlet fever epidemic here.  Her daughter Kate had a severe
illness; and when she recovered she began peeling off.  The doctor had
not known what the illness was but finally decided it was scarlet
fever.  She was the second one to have it in the 1875 epidemic.  It
grew worse and killed several children.  She had caught it from
visiting another little girl who was sick.  You see there were no
scarlet fever signs those days and no quarantine.  So it was no wonder
they had bad epidemics.  At that time, the doctors in town were Dr.
Stoller who had his office at his home south of the present Methodist
parsonage.  Dr. Tuttle in Claypool Hotel, Dr. Brown just starting out
as a young physician.  Dr. Ressigeau in present Katherine Houghton
home.  The dentists were Dr. Simrock above Nash Produce store and Dr.
Stevens over Wilson and O'Neil.  He made a set of uppers for Mrs.
Crawford which she has used ever since (56 years) without a bit of
repair.      The Rohrboughs were leaders then in town government and
business.  At that time Anthony and his son George owned the brick
block of two rooms now the Bram Store and ran a grocery and dry goods
store.  They said (so Mrs. Crawford reports) that they were going to
stay here till they made $100,000 and then go.  She says they made it
and then sold out 1879 and went to the city and lost it.  She said
they died in modest means.                    Interviewed  January
1934.


    THE RICHEY FAMILY OF RICHEY MILL AT SALEM 1833     Narrator:  J.L.
Richey, 85, of Lamoni, Iowa

     The Richey family is connected with the very early history of
Caldwell County, back of the Mormon days.  J.L. Richey, now of Lamoni,
Iowa but once a resident of the county near Kingston, was so
interested in our project that he gave us an interview in a letter.
"I was born one mile south of Kingston Feb. 12, 1849.  The Richeys
came there in 1833 and Samuel Richey, my grandfather, had the leading
part in founding the town of Salem.  There were three of the Richey
ancestors in the Revolutionary War but a fire destroyed the records.
My grandfather Richey had a large family as men did those days and all
worked hard in his mill, which was a pull-around type.  The burrs of
this mill are in McClelland cemetery.  My Aunt Mary married Dan Baker.
My father, Robt. Richey, married a Smith.  They came in with the
Mormons and I followed my mother's religion.  The Richey's were
Presbyterians.  My mother's sister Martha Smith Seeley was the first
white child born in Caldwell County.  When most of the Mormons left
the country after the Mormon troubles, ten families stayed in the
western part of the county.  The Seeley family, my mother's family and
the Snider family were some.  About 1862, the Richey family moved to
Iowa to avoid further trouble with Federal militia.  My uncles had
already been killed.  It was no wonder we moved.  Some of the early
Richeys are buried in the old Salem graveyard."      Mr. Richey was
well known in his youth here as a trapper and hunter and still wears
his hair shoulder length.  Within recent years, he built a boat and
rowed it down from Iowa to near Hamilton.      Interviewed  February
1934.


    ELDER R.C. HILL IN KINGSTON TOWNSHIP 1854 AND HAMILTON 1968
Narrator:  (Doc) Fielding Wilhite Hill, 82, of Hamilton, Missouri

     Mr. Hill is a son of Rev. Robert Chapman Hill and Mary J. Hume
who came from Virginia to Warren County, Mo. in 1834, then to
Knoxville, Ray County, then to Caldwell County in 1854 before the
Civil War.  F.W. (Fielding Wilhite was the name of a favorite Baptist
preacher) was born in Warren County.  In Caldwell County, they lived
on a farm about three quarters of a mile from Kingston, the present
Tantlinger farm.  They were there when the Civil War came.  They
bought part of this farm from John C. Myers who was killed during the
war.      The Hill family were southern sympathizers and two boys,
Robt. Livingston and Thos. S. enlisted in the Southern Army.  The
militia stationed at Kingston continually plundered the Hill place and
wore out their horses.  The three youngest boys, (F.W. was nine) did
the ploughing to keep the farm going.  Finally after seeing friends
killed in the militia activity and in order to get out before they
lost everything to the militia, they moved to Kentucky in 1863.  In
1869, they returned to Caldwell County and bought a 4 acre plot and
built a house on it, west of Hamilton.  (This place now belongs to
Joseph Smith and while on the outskirts of Hamilton, is in
town-limits.)  The old minutes of the Hamilton Baptist church show
that Brother R.C. Hill united by letter with the new church May 1,
1869 and left Nov. 1869.  Mr. R.C. Hill traded his place in 1869 to
Clark Martin for a farm near the present Cowgill where the family
continued to reside.  F.W. Hill also established his own family on a
farm in the Cowgill neighborhood.  He married Mary Eliza Tydings of
Monroe County, Mo., whose people were from Maryland.  Her father was
Edward Tydings and her mother, Amanda Lane.      He told of school
life at Kingston in the 50's.  It was a one-room school close to the
present Smith brick home.  Fellows often went to school till
twenty-five years old.  His first teacher there was named Quinn.  He
studied Ray's arithmetic and Webster Blue back Speller.  They used
home made copy books of fool's cap paper.  The teacher made a copy at
the top of the page to follow.  The seats were made of sawed logs with
peg-legs, were without backs and could be moved.  A big desk stood at
the side of the room where pupils went when they wished to write.  A
blackboard was at one end.      His father, Elder Robt. C. Hill, was a
missionary Baptist preacher even before he left Virginia.  He
organized the Cottage Grove Baptist Church near the southern line of
the county in the early 70's.  This church was first organized in the
schoolhouse; then when it was strong enough, the church building was
erected.  Later, this early church was moved to Cowgill where it is
now used for a town hall.  In those days, a would-be Baptist preacher
often studied at home and then was publicly examined by the church
officers and generally ordained in his home church.      Rev. Robert
C. Hill, his wife, and some of the other Hills are buried in the
Cottage Grove cemetery, originally in the yard of the old Cottage
Grove church.      Interviewed  June 1934.


    THE McCLELLAND KIN IN CALDWELL COUNTY     Narrator:  Joseph
Dennison McClelland, 72, of Hamilton

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


    BILLY JONES FAMILY OF KINGSTON TOWNSHIP     Narrator:  Mrs. Mary
Mahala Smith, 83, of Hamilton

    Wm. Jones Family Very Early           Funeral Customs     Jones
and Far West Graveyard

     Mrs. Smith is the wife of Joseph Smith, retired farmer, and the
daughter of Wm. Jones and Martha Bailey, who was born in Kentucky but
came west to Buchanan County to live with Aunt Sallie Stout.      Wm.
Jones was a brother of Mrs. Caroline Peddicord of Hamilton ("Aunt
Tomony" to Mrs. Smith), also a brother of Mrs. "Dilly" Goodman (mother
of Bert Goodman and Mrs. James Collins).  Another sister was Mrs.
Rannels and a brother was "Cap" Albert Jones of Callaway Co.  The old
Jones family had two homes - one mile south of Kingston, on the Polo
road (before the Civil War) and five miles west of Kingston, a farm of
160 acres where "Cap's" widow now lives.      The Jones family came
very early into the county from Kentucky, in a wagon.  The Grandfather
Jones was dead but Grandmother Jones came along and died in a bad
epidemic of small pox before 1850.      To show how long the Jones
family have been here, Mrs. Smith says that when her father Billy
Jones used to go to the Mormon town, Far West (now utterly gone) to
take dancing lessons, he used to be scared out of his wits by screams
of panthers and howling of wolves.  She herself can recall seeing
several buildings at Far West, stores and dwellings in the middle
fifties.  Her father taught his children the dance steps he had
learned in that dancing class - the reel and French Four (quadrille)
and others.      Billy and Martha Jones' children were Minerva Marino
Pollard of Kingston, John married Elizabeth McBeath (cousin of Bob
Morris), Millard Fillmore married a Haywood out of the county, Mahala
married Joseph Smith, Jeff Davis married a Taylor of Cameron, Lilly
and Annie died unmarried, Fronia married a Wyckoff, and two infants
died.  It is not strange that the Jones clan can "claim relation" to
much of Caldwell County.      The Jones graveyard is about in the
middle of the first Jones farm.  Once enclosed by a fence in
timberland, it is now a cow pasture.  Following the custom of the
times, they put up no permanent grave marker and now the graves are
lost.  The dead there are Grandma Mahala Jones, died about 1850,
Peggy, sister of above; two small children of Wm. and Martha Jones,
________ Clark, the first husband of Aunt Dilly Goodman; Willie Jones,
son of Wm. Jones and his first wife, a McClelland; a colored slave boy
of the Jones family.  Near by at the Far West Methodist Church is
another private graveyard, that of the Hill where J.T. Hill and family
are buried.  Mr. Hill gave the site to the Methodists for a church
because his dead were there.  The church is now unused except by bats.
     Mrs. Smith recalls some of the grave-customs of her day.  The
neighbors built the coffin; it was their sign of sympathy instead of
modern flowers.  A grave was dug the depth of the coffin.  At the
burial the coffin was set in this hole and the lid or boards laid on
top, on a level with the ground; then the ground was heaped high.
Often burials were made without a word being said over the body.  This
memorial service might occur a week, a month or a year after burial or
not at all.      Interviewed  July 1934.


WM. McCLELLAND FAMILY IN CLADWELL COUNTY 1845     Narrator:  Mrs.
Hattie Hooker, 86, of Hamilton, Missouri

    Old Salem Town

     Mrs. Hooker is the widow of Sam Hooker, grandson of David and
Jane (Spurgeon) Snider orginial Mormon settlers in Caldwell County who
did not join in the generation migration to Illinois after the Mormon
wars.  (David b. 1795 and Jane b. 1804 - lie in unmarked graves in the
old Duston graveyard.)      Mrs. Hooker is the grand daughter of Wm.
and Elizabeth McClelland.  He died 1854 and she died 1884, both are
buried in the old McClelland, which used to be considered McClelland
ground; but after the graveyard was started in was ascertained that
the first surveying was in error and it belonged to another.  The
McClelland family came here from Virginia probably about 1845 or
earlier.  The family themselves have been in the county so long that
they have lost the exact date.  They settled just east of Kingston on
what was known later as the Jess Butts farm.  They were not far from
the Sam Richey farm on the site of Salem, hence we find Aramintha
Richey becoming the wife of a son of Wm. McClelland.  This couple were
the parents of Hattie Hooker and Jo McClelland of Hamilton.  Wm.
McClelland built a fine house - a log house of three ground rooms and
two above.  The kitchen was lower than the main part and formed an L.
There were three chimneys to the house and it was a famous landmark
along the road in the forties and fifties as the house with three
chimneys.  On this account too Wm. McClelland got the name of being
very rich.      Because her grand mother was Mother Richey of the old
Mill Mrs. Hooker was over to old Salem a great deal.  The old road
from Salem to Kingston ran by Grandma Richey's home which was on the
site of the old town.  As a small girl, she used to ride the sweep on
the old mill horse at the Mother Richey horse mill.  Grandpa Richey
was dead by then.  In fact, she still has a scar from falling off the
sweep while the horse went around.      She recalled the terrible news
that her Uncle Alex Richey had been shot in the Civil War by the
Militia.  Her story of the killing is some what different from that
found in the Caldwell-Livingston History.  The Richeys sympathized
with the South but they were trying to get on good terms with the
Northern militia for the sake of their homes and lives.  Mary Richey,
a sister of Alex and a daughter of Mother Richey had married Dan Baker
of the Crab Apple Southern sympathizers.  The Richey men and the Baker
men had been to Kingston one day to swear not to harbour any bush
whackers; and the next day they were to start to Richmond to swear
allegiance to the Union; but hearing soldiers coming, they "laid out."
Their motives were mistaken and they were captured and killed as bush
whackers.  Alex was buried in the Knoxville cemetery.      Interviewed
April 1934.


    HUGH CHAIN, AN EARLY KINGSTON CARPENTER     Narrator:  Miss Sarah
Chain, 81, of Hamilton, Missouri

     Miss Chain was born in Ohio but came to Kingston as a child when
her father Hugh Chain brought his family there 1859, shortly after the
Hannibal and St. Joseph railroad had started up new towns and a
building boom in Caldwell County.      Hugh Chain was a carpenter and
had a good trade.  He would often be gone from Kingston for weeks on
jobs, at times as far as Hannibal to build houses.  An old freight
bill for lumber dated July 2 1860 involves his name.  J.A. Brown owner
of the lumber yard at Hamilton consigned the lumber to A.G. Davis, the
freight agent at Hamilton--the nearest freight station for Paxton and
Chain.  Its freight cost was $39.60 for one car of 2,000,000 pounds, a
charge which is less than the present freight rates from Hannibal.
Chain was building for Paxton of Mirabile, father of the well known
Paxton brothers of Hamilton.      During the Civil War, Chain had a
narrow escape from death.  He with Aaron Pfost and other Kingston and
Mirabile men were captured by the Thraillkill (Confederate) force, and
were in danger of being killed, but were released when Pfost showed he
was a Mason and threatened the Thraillkill force with Masonic enmity
if any was killed.      When Miss Chain was a little girl, the Indians
occasionally used to roam in small bands through Kingston scaring the
children to death, but only wanting food.      Miss Chain taught
school in the county for over thirty years beginning in the 70's.  In
those days, you got a certificate by going up for examination on
appointed days.  There were three grades lasting one, two and three
years.  Later in the 80's the summer Teachers Normal was held for four
weeks ending with examination.  Stephen Rogers of Kingston was County
School Commissioner 1874-83.      The Chain family ran the Kingston
House (later Cadman) at Kingston for several years and in 1881 Mr.
Chain built the Chain House at Hamilton (now the Snyder Hotel).  After
Mr. Chain's death 1884 the three Chain sisters ran the Hotel.
Interviewed  February 1934.

CALDWELL COUNTY POOR FARM     Narrator:  Mrs. Ada Dunn of
Hamilton, Missouri

     Mrs. Dunn is daughter of Sherman Minor Bassett and Elinor Fort.
The Bassetts came to Caldwell County in the late seventies from
Coshocton county Ohio and at their arrival at Kingston they landed in
the "poor farm" as they like to say.  At any rate, they stayed for
some weeks with Eldert Fort and wife who for several years managed the
county poor farm.  Mr. Bassett's new farm which he bought "sight
unseen" through Mr. Fort is the present Seth Hootman farm near
Mirabile.  Mrs. Dunn was about thirteen when she came west to Missouri
and expected to see a very wild and wooly country - despite the nice
things the Forts had written back.  Missouri had a bad reputation in
the East.      Having lived in the Poor Farm, Mrs. Dunn knew something
of its history.  A family by the name of Nixon owned the place which
is now the poor farm.  He died and the administrator of the estate,
Mr. Orr sold it to the County 1873.  At first there was a small house
on the place which is the back of the present large building.  They
had a custom those days of keeping mildly insane cases there as well
as the aged poor.  The above Mr. Orr's daughter said that hardly had
the Poor Farm started when they had two hard cases - Billy Blood who
was crazy and Ann McCollum who was so afflicted that she could not sit
in a chair and she sat hutched up on the floor.  Both these old folks
are buried in the graveyard that is on the farm for the old folks who
have no friends to claim their bodies.      Interviewed  July 1934.


    F.D. CLARKSON FAMILY AT KINGSTON IN EARLY SEVENTIES     Narrator:
Mrs. Clara Brosnihan, 82, of Hamilton, Missouri

    A Wagon Train of the Sixties     Clarkson and Farabee Families
Frozen Mince Pies     Early years at Polo

     Clara Clarkson was born in Knightstown Indiana July 1852 and came
with her parents T.D. and Hannah Clarkson from Indiana to Missouri
1869.  The Jacob Allee family, T.D. Fort family and T.D. Clarkson
family all started to Missouri with some six or seven covered wagons.
They had a safe journey and before reaching Missouri they were in
company with sixteen or seventeen wagons, not all stopping in Caldwell
County.  They all stopped on Saturday afternoon, baked, bathed and did
their washing with no Sunday travel.  She thinks their trip took over
a month.      The Clarksons had once been prosperous but T.D. signed a
note for a relative and lost money, so in order to be miles away from
his mistake he decided on a new country.  He came with a sick wife and
six children and settled at Kingston.  Clara (a sister of Nathan
Clarkson once a Hamilton Post Master) helped in every way for the
comfort of the family.  Her mother died a year after they cam to
Kingston.  Her father edited a Kingston paper for a time and she
worked in the printing office.  She says that work really was her
schooling; sitting on a high stool in a print shop.      She became
the wife of Oliver Farabee in Polo 1872.  They had a Hotel, Livery
Barn and a General Store in Polo, in fact they were about ALL Polo for
several years until the Milwaukee Railroad came through there.  Mr.
Farabee died 1886, when the first ground was just broken for the
railroad.  After that, she and the girls worked hard to keep going;
later they moved to Kansas City and she married Mr. Brosnihan.
She tells several interesting tales of the pioneer years when she was
Clara Clarkson.  She used to ride from the Fort farm to near Bonanza
behind an ox-team.  She used to go horse back to attend spelling
schools and singing schools and to attend dances in a sleigh - if
possible.  When mince pie time came they always baked a lot of pies,
eight or ten, in the big oven the same day.  Then came the problem of
storing them till all were eaten.  Some people wrapped them up in
paper and kept them in a bin out doors.  The Clarksons wrapped them
and put them in the frozen rain-barrel where the pies also froze.
Before a meal, they were re-heated in the oven.  They were delicious.
The early home makers make their own bread, butchered, made soap,
dried fruits and vegetables, rendered lard, knitted sewed carpet rags,
and were always ready to help in sickness at the next neighbors.
Interviewed  May 1934.


    FARM LIFE IN KINGSTON TOWNSHIP IN THE SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES
Narrator:  Mrs. Margaret Kendall Burkett of Hamilton, Missouri

     Railroad Land                    Neighbors               Trading
Cotton      Roads and Vehicles               Schools
Kendall Chapel

     Mrs. Burkett was born 1862 in Davidson County North Carolina one
hundred miles west of Raleigh.  Her parents were John Kendall and
Elizabeth Trice; the Kendalls by tradition being early colonists in
North Carolina.      Her father stood for the Union in the Civil War;
and after the war things became unpleasant for him.  One of the
daughters and her husband had already gone to Indiana.  Hence John
Kendall took his family there while he came to Missouri to prospect.
He had been here several times looking around.  Finally in 1867 with
two sons he came to Caldwell County and bought land of the railroad in
the northern part of Kingston township, this land being in the family
to this day, and now farmed by Mrs. Burkett's son-in-law Leonard
Snyder.  Mr. Kendall built the first home, a four room house which
later was greatly enlarged.  The land was to be paid for in ten years
and it took much savings on the part of the family to pay it off.
In February 1868 after he came Mrs. Kendall and the daughters Maggie
and Martha came out.  Mr. Kendall died three years later and the
burden became greater.      In those times, there was the well
travelled "State road" from Hamilton to Kingston.  In coming from
Hamilton, the Burketts used this road as far as the present George
Burkett house (a little south of the half way house) then cut across
the field.  At first they rode in a lumber wagon or horse back.
Finally Mrs. Kendall bought a two seated spring wagon from Columbus
Ohio which was about the best looking rig in the country.      One
half mile to the south was the farm of Jacob Allee (half brother to
Taylor Allee of Hamilton) who had come into the county two years
before.  Between the Kendalls and the town of Hamilton at first there
were only two houses as she recalled - the "old red house" on the
Whitt farm and the old Dodge house.  In the fall of 1868 the country
began filling up rapidly.      She got most of her schooling at the
West Prairie (Williams) school with Mr. Shelley as teacher.  Her first
term was with Wm. Curp (also a singing master) who taught the Dillon
school.  That district had no school house so Mr. Curp rented his
downstairs to the district for a school room.  Mrs. Burkett then a
little girl learning her letters would be taken to his home Monday
morning and they would come after her Friday evening.  Later she
attended a summer subscription (select) school at Kingston taught by
her brother-in-law Mr. Dayhoff.      When they traded at Hamilton they
bought goods to the amount of their butter and eggs and chickens and
no more.  That was real trading.  Her father got his first cows by
buying a wagon load of apples cheap at Lexington taking them up to
Iowa and buying two cows with the money.      Mrs. Kendall had brought
cotton seed form North Carolina which she planted on her farm.  They
carded the cotton and wool and made bats for comforts and spun thread
for cotton and wool stockings, borrowing a spinning wheel from Mrs.
Jacob Allee.      Kendall Chapel was built on land given by Mrs.
Kendall; the congregation was a result of a revival in 1887 by a
preacher named Bitner.  He held services in the West Prairie
schoolhouse.      Interviewed  July 1934.


    THE JACOB WONSETTLER FAMILY AS PIONEERS NEAR KINGSTON
Narrator:  Mrs. Sarah Wonsettler, 86, Kidder, Missouri

     Mrs. Wonsettler is the widow of Jacob Wonsettler who came into
Caldwell County in the early sixties.  She is the daughter of Wm. A.
Morrow, a pioneer in Daviess County 1854 coming when she was six years
old.  (For those pioneer days, see paper of Mrs. Aurora Williams,
another Morrow daughter.)      At the age of twenty she married Mr.
Wonsettler and came to Caldwell County where they rented of John D.
Cox three miles east from Kingston and stayed there five years.  On
the place was a heavy body of hard maple timber, about one hundred
trees located south west of the creek bottom.  They had a sugar camp
every year while there.  She still recalls the whole process.  You
make spiles of elm out of which you could pinch the pith, fitted them
into the sugar trees and caught the drip in troughs below.  The
troughs were occasionally emptied into pails.      Then you fixed up
an out door brick furnace with a chimney at one end and on it you
placed a twenty five gallon kettle with the drip from the maple trees.
You skimmed it occasionally and got syrup.  If you wanted sugar, you
boiled it more and stirred it till it grained.  They had square pans
about five inches across and sold the maple sugar cakes in stores for
10 cents a piece.      Mrs. Wonsettler recalls how she used to make
with her own hands absolutely every inch of her clothes, back in
Daviess County.  Her father kept sheep for wool.  There was no big
older son, so she did boy's work in shearing and washing the wool.
Then it was sent usually over to Watkins woolen factory in Clay County
to be carded although at times she did it at home on small cards.
Then she spun it, wove it and sewed it up.  And when the dress had
belonged to one or perhaps two members of the family and was out worn,
she would tear it up for carpet rags.  Thus she said she could trace
material from a sheep's back to a carpet - all work done on the home
place by her own hands.      She told of early dress styles.  One mode
of trimming was cording.  You used candlewick or twine and sewed it
into the seam, of course by hand.  Her mother would hold up a length
of calico or home spun, from the neck to the waistline of the person
to be fitted.  This person would hold the cloth in position while Mrs.
Morrow cut out the arm-holes and neck line.  That was the way they
made waist patterns for many years.  The skirts were full made of
straight breadths and hung to the ground.  Hand sewing was an art then
and no rough seams were allowable.      Interviewed August 1934.

EXCITEMENT AT THE COUNTY SEAT CALDWELL COUNTY     Narrator:  Mrs.
Fannie McLaughlin of Hamilton, Missouri

    "Stealing the County Seat"          The Hamilton-Kingston Railroad

     Mrs. McLaughlin was born in Columbiana County Ohio.  She came to
Caldwell County with her parents David Cannon and Mary Drake 1869 in
the boom days after the Civil War when the Hannibal and St. Joseph
railroad were advertising the county through which its tracks passed.
Mr. Cannon was a farmer and bought near Kingston.  His son John Cannon
was a druggist in the eighties at Kingston.      Soon after she came
to Kingston she heard the story of how Hamilton had tried to steal the
Court House from Kingston.  The project was active in 1867 and it was
still much discussed with some rancor remaining against Hamilton
leaders who had backed the scheme.  They had planned to take a tier of
townships from Daviess County and that would put Hamilton in a central
place in Caldwell County.  Being a railroad town - which Kingston was
not - would make it a better County Seat.  Kingston, knowing its life
depended on keeping that honor fought against the plan and it was
defeated in the Legislature but it left an ugly feeling between the
towns for years.  It has been stated on good authority that Hamilton
was so sure of the plan that rock was hauled for a courthouse
foundation on land owned by A.G. Davis, one of the sponsors.  (In Fact
Miss Minnie Ogden whose father bought that site, stated that their
foundation was made largely from rocks already on the lot for the
above purpose - Interviewer's note.)      However in late years the
two towns joined together in a project for their mutual good - i.e.
getting a railroad for Kingston, which has always been a dream down
there.  In 1890 the Haines, Hamilton and Kingston railway was
completed and Kingston had a big day.  Haines was a capitalist from
away some where who soon got out of the deal.  The railroad than
became known as the H. and K.  It soon was a joke in this territory.
The road bed was poorly built, the engine was old and always to be
repaired.  It might stop in the middle of a cornfield or even on top
of a forty foot trestle and the passengers would have to walk.  D.G.
McDonald conductor and Tom Livick fireman were the crew.  Finally it
went into bankruptcy in 1902.  To-day nothing is left of the H. and K.
but the old right of way cuts.      Interviewed  February 1934.


    THE KERN FAMILY OF KINGSTON TOWNSHIP     Narrator:  Mrs. Martha
Ellen Baker, 78, Hamilton, Missouri

    Home Made Clothing                    Ox-team Rides

     Mrs. Baker is the widow of Edgar Baker who came into Caldwell
County with his parents 1869.  She is the daughter of Margaret Ann
Zachary who married first Daniel Z. Cox (1817-1851) who is buried in
the Brown Cemetery and who is the grandfather of Mrs. Josie Borden of
Hamilton, second F.J. Kern, who was the father of Mrs. Baker.  Her
parents were both early settlers.      As a girl, Mrs. Baker lived
north and east of Kingston.  Mrs. Kern, her mother carded all the
family wool on a pair of cards.  She spun all the yarn, and wove all
the cloth for every article of clothing except boots, shoes and hats.
She insisted on her children wearing woolen hosiery all year around.
She and her girls knitted diligently to keep up a supply.  She striped
the dyed yard with bright colors for stockings.  She knitted mittens
and even gloves which were not clumsy.  Mrs. Baker says she can't
recall seeing her sit down with idle hands.      For colors, she used
white oak bark, which being boiled with the yarn or cloth gave a
golden brown color.  The red and yellow dyes had to be bought at the
general store or drug store.      She also wove carpet for herself and
customers.  The carpet loom was rarely empty.  Sometimes the rags
would be assorted for striped carpets, sometimes mixed for hit and
miss.  Sewing rags was a fine way to put in a winter evening, with a
dish of apples near by.      Mrs. Baker's brother Charles Kern often
drove the ox-team (Tom an Jerry) to Kingston in the sixties.  Both
Mrs. Baker and Mrs. Josie Borden her niece had ridden behind them.
The oxen wore a yoke instead of collar and the driver used no lines
but directed them by his long ox whip and by gee (right) haw (left).
These orders were plain to them and they went along nicely.  Usually
they were allowed to go their own way - a brisk rolling walk.  If
pushed they went into a dog trot.      Interviewed  July 1934.


    THE JAMES HOUGHTON FAMILY AS PIONEERS IN NEW YORK TWP.
Narrator:  Katherine Houghton of Hamilton

    Houghton History                    Early Hardships
An Accident at Otter Creek          New York Families in N.Y. Twp.
New York Cemetery

     James Houghton and his wife were among the New Yorkers who helped
start the so-called New York settlement in Caldwell County in the
60's.  Mrs. Houghton was Amy Jane Hall who was born in Jefferson
County, N.Y. in a community called New Connecticut because the
settlers were from that state.  Her parents were Caleb G. Hall and
Catherine Lewis.  They were prosperous and progressive people as shown
by the fact that in 1875 they had a furnace and carriage and other
niceties of life.      Mrs. Amy went to rural school, then to Antwerp
Academy and then taught school and "boarded round."      In 1875, she
was married to James Houghton, once also of Jefferson County, but then
of Caldwell County, Mo.  He, in 1865, had started out from home with a
youthful comrade to see the country.  They went through this section
on a train and it pleased him.  He got a job as a brakeman on the
Hannibal and St. Joseph railroad and "fell for" the rolling farm lands
through which his train ran.  Finally he quit railroading in the fall
of 1865 and bought a farm in the present N.Y. township, where his
family lived for several decades and which is now in the possession of
his daughter, Katherine.  His farm like others at the time, was not
fenced, so he split rails in 1867-8 and fenced it.  His father, Otis
Houghton, brought his family out in 1867 and set up a home near by.
When  James Houghton's bride came out in 1875, she naturally found a
contrast to her New York home.  Here were few fenced fields, roads
were laid but little used since it saved miles to cut across the
prairie; no bridges but people forded the creeks; no buggies but
people used lumber wagons or as New Yorkers said "double wagons."
She had been here just a week when she had an alarming experience.
Mr. and Mrs. Houghton and his family (Otis Houghton) had gone to town
to buy dishes, kitchen utensils, sugar and flour to fix up James' new
home.  It was in the spring and snow was melting.  They forded the
Otter Creek easily in the morning but in the evening they met with
much trouble.  They were in a "double wagon" and the force of the
water dragged the horses and Mr. Houghton holding the lines, also the
wheels and the wagon frame away from the wagon bed in which were left
Mr. Houghton, the elder, Mrs. Houghton and their purchases.  The wagon
bed drifted on till they came to the log of a tree.  There they caught
hold, but the force of the water carried away the wagon bed and their
stuff and left them hanging to the log.  Finally, Mr. James Houghton
got to shore with the team, caught the wagon bed, rescued them and
their only loss was sugar and flour.      After James Houghton came to
this county, other families from Jefferson County, N.Y. came, too.
First, there were the three Austin brothers, Jake, Bill and Oliver;
Jake bought a section and sold some to his brothers.  Other Jefferson
County settlers were the Searls, Salisbury, Thwing, Enos Boutwell
families as well as the Owens, Doyle, Wolcott, Few, Combs families
from other N.Y. counties.      Mail was a scarcity.  Four families had
an arrangement whereby each took a turn at bringing out the mail from
Hamilton for the four families.  This was usually once a week but in
the winter in bad roads and weather it was at longer intervals; and at
times Miss Houghton says, there was a gunny sack of mail sent out.
The community in 1875 started its own cemetery, New York Cemetery, in
which the first burial was Mrs. Lucy Houghton buried Feb. 23rd.  It is
now endowed with $1200.00 for perpetual care.  The original plot was
one acre donated by A. Wolcott.  This has lately been increased.  The
community also a soon built its own church.      This New York
township was originally settled by what the New Yorkers called
Missourians but the New York settlers soon became the dominant
population and the community is generally known as New York
settlement.      Interviewed  June 1934.


    THE COX FAMILY LIFE     Narrator:  Mrs. Sarah Hannah Puckett, 68,
Hamilton, Missouri

    Missourians and Yankees            Spring Valley Teachers

     Mrs. Puckett belongs to two of the older Caldwell County
families.  Her father was John Cox and her mother Lydia Welker.  The
Coxes were some of the Virginia families who lived in what is now New
York and Fairview townships.  They did not like it very well when a
large group of "Yankees" from New York state came into the community
in the late sixties to buy land near them.  At first there was a sharp
line of difference between the two groups of settlers.  The New
Yorkers called the earlier settlers Missourians and the latter called
the later comers Yankees, both with a tone of their own superiority
(see note at end).      John Cox was a son of old Jesse Cox
(1801-1852) and Sally Cox (1794-1892) early pioneers in this county.
The old Jesse Cox place was one-quarter mile east of the Cox
Graveyard.  Jesse's boys were, Enoch who married first Jane Crist and
second a Miss Martin; Nathan who married Lucy Brown; Jeremiah (Jerry)
who married Mary Hatfield and John who had four wives:  Nancy Peabody,
Lydia Welker, Nellie Wells and Mrs. Culp (Kay Culp's Mother).  Jesse
Cox's wife (Sallie Edwards) lived to be almost one hundred years old
and almost blind but she could always tell the denominations of money,
silver or bills.  The John Cox place is now owned by James Puckett.
It was a quarter south of the Puckett land.      Mrs. Puckett went to
Spring Valley or Cox School and some of her early teachers were:  John
Boyd (afterwards Post Master at Nettleton) Charles Cline, Courtland
Van Slyke (buried many years ago in the "Old" Hamilton Cemetery)
Phoebe McFee and Mollie Stubblefield who taught about sixty years in
this county.  Mrs. Puckett attended Hamilton High School 1882 under
Prof. Guttery.      John Cox used to trade in Hamilton, coming at
first across prairie land, any which way and going around the streams
or fording them.  He used to say that he recalled when only two or
three houses stood between them and Hamilton, one was the Jacob Kautz
house.  He knew Hamilton when there was a saloon, a store and a
blacksmith shop here.  Early settlers produced most of their eats and
clothes at home and rarely came to town to buy "bought on goods."  In
the early Cox home, whatever bacon could not be used at home was
hauled to Lexington to be shipped south.      Most of the early Cox
family lie in the Cox Graveyard; Nathan lies in the Brown Cemetery;
the Pucketts lie in the Cox.      Interviewed July 1934.

Interviewers note:  The Yankee-Missourian feeling of animosity
gradually wore off in New York settlement but it continued fairly
strong today in the Kidder community.


    THE KAUTZ FAMILY IN CALDWELL COUNTY     Narrator:  Worth Kautz of
Wichita, Kansas

     The Jacob Kautz family came to Caldwell County in 1859 from
Illinois to which they had come from Indiana.  They settled in what
was known as Grand River township now New York township in the
Pleasant Ridge district.  They came in a slow ox-wagon.  The settlers
who came here in the fifties had a much harder time than those who
came in the sixties, for every year of pioneering advanced conditions
of living in a new country.  There were three sons; George, Ross and
Worth; six daughters; Laura (Dodge), Emily (Lemon), Hannah (Lambert),
Margaret (Noel), Annetta (Houghton), and Mollie (Spivey).      When
they came here they all lived in a covered wagon till the house was
finished; and since there was not yet sleeping room inside for the
boys, they slept that winter out doors in the covered wagon.  In those
days of 1859-60, the Kautz house has been mentioned by old-timers as
one of two houses to be seen for twelve miles south of Hamilton.
When the Civil War was about to break out and it became likely that
the oldest boy George would be expected to go to war, he went back to
Illinois to enlist with boys whom he had known before they moved to
Missouri.      Those first few years were hard ones.  They had to find
the right crops for the new soil and they had to subdue the soil.
They had to provide for the family needs and they had very little
money to spend.  They rarely ate store victuals for most of their food
came off the place.  They had little white bread mostly corn-bread.
Worth was the youngest son and he went with his mother on her trips to
gather berries (gooseberries, strawberries, blackberries,
elderberries); to gather herbs for medicine since doctors were costly
and far away.  He used to hunt bee trees for by the old law of the
land the finder of a bee tree had the honey, no matter where the tree.
He and his father and brothers shot or trapped wild game and kept them
for winter meat.  He told of hunting deer with Al Pemberton of the
neighborhood.      The Kautz and the Houghton family intermarried.
Annetta Kautz married Ira Houghton.  Mary Houghton married George
Kautz and Sophia Houghton married Ross Kautz.      Interviewed
November 1933.


    ANDREW BAKER - PIONEER PREACHER OF NEW YORK TOWNSHIP 1860
Narrator:  Mrs. Caroline Williamson, 84, Breckenridge, Missouri

     Mrs. Williamson is a grand daughter of Elder Andrew Baker and
Nancy Bryant.  Rev. Baker was born in Washington County Virginia 1797
and died about forty years ago.  He was an outstanding character in
the church history of Caldwell county.  His grandfather Andrew Baker
was a farmer-preacher in Virginia and was a chaplain in the
Revolutionary war.  He himself followed in his grandfather's steps and
was ordained a Baptist Elder at Versailles Indiana in which State he
and his young wife had moved as pioneers in 1828.  In 1860 he moved to
Caldwell county in what is now New York Township and acquired a farm
of 400 acres.  While a splendid farmer in reducing the unimproved
lands to fertility, he never forgot his church and the ministry.
He busied himself in arousing an interest in the Missionary Baptist
church in his community.  For some years they had held occasional
services in homes before he came on the scene.  Finally he organized
the Hopewell Church; its organization dates from November 10 1866; and
he and his wife Diana, his son Thomas and wife, his grand daughter
Caroline (later Williamson), Sarah Cox, and Elizabeth Puckett were
some of the constituent members.  He preached there till he died.  He
gave liberally to the church building erected 1867 and besides gave
$1000 to be loaned at 6% to be used in paying a preacher's salary.
This fund still is being used for this purpose.      When the Hamilton
Baptist church was being organized in May 1868 at the home of Elder
Bennett Whitely we find Elder Andrew Baker there to help in the
organization as a messenger from the "Baptist church on Shoal near the
mouth of Crab apple Creek" which was an early designation for his
church.      By his first wife, Elder Baker had ten children.  After
her death 1861 he married Diana Bateman and had two daughters Mrs.
Hattie Young and Mrs. Grace --- who was a milliner here in Hamilton in
the nineties.  Grace Baker his youngest child was much younger than
his grand daughter, Mrs. Caroline Williamson the narrator aged 84.
Rev. Baker is buried in the Hopewell Cemetery.      Interviewed
September 1933.


    EDWARDS FAMILY IN NEW YORK SETTLEMENT     Narrator:  Mrs. Ollie
Peabody, 86, Hamilton, Missouri

    The Trip From Virginia               Reasons For Moving
The Marriage Cap                     Frolics of the Edwards Family

     Mrs. Peabody was the daughter of Isaac Edwards and Nancy Moore of
Grayson County Virginia who made the trip from the hills of Carroll
County Virginia to Caldwell County in a covered wagon 1849.  They
settled in New York Township then called Grand River Township.  Mrs.
Peabody recalled much of that trip west which took six or eight weeks.
They were strict Campbellites and did not travel on the Sabbath.
Whenever they stopped Saturday night they stayed till Monday Morning.
They herded their cattle along the road and often the cattle were a
day behind the wagons.  At night the women folks slept in the wagons,
the men folks under the wagons.      There are two reasons for their
coming west.  First Mr. Edwards had several of the Edwards clan (who
largely composed the neighborhood) marry their own cousins; and he
said he was going away so his children would not have to marry their
cousins.  Again little Ollie (Mrs. Peabody) had the pthsic and needed
a change.  When they started she had to stay in the wagon, but when
she got to Caldwell county she could ride horse back.      Mrs.
Peabody was never seen without a cap to the day of her death.  She
said she put on a cap with her wedding veil and after that she was
never without it except to comb her hair or wear a hat.  It was a sign
"back there in Virginia" of a married woman.  At night she wore a
night cap.  Mrs. Rosamond Bowers her sister knew of this custom but
did not observe it.      The social events of her day were many.
Infair dinners were always given the second night after a wedding.
Her own family gave an infair for an orphan girl who had been married.
There were dances, games and the Virginia reel.  She and her sisters
used to ride horseback half a day from the Bowers home in New York
Township to attend a "play party" up at the Bowers home in Daviess
County.  They would stay all night and return the next day      Mrs.
Peabody's brothers and sisters who came to maturity were:  Celia,
Solomon, Amos, Haywood, Rosamond Bowers, Matilda Hawks and Ruth
Wonsettler.


    IN NEW YORK TOWNSHIP IN THE SIXTIES     Narrator:  Mrs. Mary
Kautz, 87, of Hamilton, Missouri

    Houghton Family     Horse Back Riding and Roads     School
Teaching in the Sixties

     Mrs. Mary Kautz is the daughter of Otis Houghton.  In the spring
after the close of the Civil War, her brother James came into Caldwell
County as a visitor and was so well impressed that he went back and
told his father that out in Missouri there was land which you could
plow all day long without striking a stone.  He came back and bought
and the father came also in 1866.  Both bought land from the railroad
in what is now called New York settlement because so many New Yorkers
settled there.  The Otis Houghton farm is the present Ben Mackey farm.
It is sometimes said that the Austin families were the first New
Yorkers to settle there but really James Houghton came earlier but
without a family.  (See Katherine Houghton paper for further data.)
When the Houghtons came there were no roads between New York township
and Hamilton.  Often, she said, she would lose her way in the many
horse paths across the prairie.  Then she dropped the reins and left
the matter to the horse, who would pick out the way, especially on
returning home.  She used to come to town with a long black riding
skirt and a satchel for her shopping.  In town she would find a horse
block and get off; let down her riding skirt and go shopping.
Mrs. Kautz was one of the early teachers in that country.  She had
already taught in New York so she easily got a school here.  Her first
school was the Radical log school, the Pleasant Ridge, then Wolf
Grove.  She "boarded round" in part of her experience.  She got $2.50
cash per week and her board from the patrons.  At Pleasant Ridge she
got a little bit more and she paid her board at the home of Jacob
Kautz whose son George she afterwards married.  Her description of
school life of that time are very interesting.  She said that
sometimes there was no uniformity in readers, arithmatics etc.; that
at the Radical school every pupil brought what ever text book they
happened to have and had to be taught out of it.  When she complained
to a director he said "she had better put up with it, for there was
prejudice in the district any way against stuck-up Yankees."  The
country down there was settled with Southerners before the New York
people came.  All three schools in which she taught had about the same
type of seats and desks.  At three sides of the room were writing
desks made of planed logs and held up by supports, underneath was a
second shelf for books.  The seats faced the wall and also were made
of planed logs - no backs.  Some short ones had "milk stool" legs,
some long ones had uprights at intervals.  When the children recited,
they had to turn around and face the teacher.      She recalled that
she took her teachers examination under Floyd McAfee' grandfather, he
being the county school commissioner.  She said it was oral and took
about half a day.  A cousin of hers came out from New York who had
been off to school.  She had a New York certificate and they let her
teach without any examination.      Aunt Mary Kautz today has a wide
reputation as a fine cook.  About thirty five years ago she baked
bread and doughnuts and redeemed a large debt.  Until very recently
she baked the chicken pies for the annual Congregational Church
Supper.  Her 87 years' vigor makes her a character in Hamilton.
Interviewed on her 87th Birthday  February 2, 1934.


    THE FILSONS IN NEW YORK TOWNSHIP     Narrator:  Mrs. Zelma Adams
Filson, 70, Hamilton, Missouri

    School Affairs               Shoal Creek Tricks

     Mrs. Filson is the widow of Thomas Filson of Hamilton and the
step-daughter of John Owen.  She was born in New York State and she
came west with her Mother and her step-father in the colony of New
York neighbors who settled in the present New York Township and
Fairview Township in the late sixties.  (For her remembrance of Haun's
Mill, the old Mormon site, see special paper.)  There she grew up.
In her seventeenth year, she took her first teachers examination for a
license to teach.  Steve Rogers of Kingston was the School
Commissioner.  He gave her a very severe oral examination on account
of her youthful aspect, thinking she might be poorly prepared.  She
passed and later 1883 taught in the primary department of the
"Hamilton Graded Schools" as they said those days under Professor
Guttery.  This was in the old north side brick which was torn down
about 1905.      She married Thomas Filson 1884 whose father James
Filson had come into the county from Kentucky prior to the influx of
the New York settlers.  There were two Filson brothers, Washington
(known as Wash) and James (Jim).  They settled in the forks between
the Otter and the Shoal Creeks.  Jim, being nearer Shoal, soon saw
that he had made an error when he put his log cabin in the rich bottom
land; for every time Shoal would get up it would come right into the
cabin; and they putting the chairs on the tables would go over to
Wash's house till the creek went down.  So when they built their
permanent home, they dug a cellar of only two feet then heaped up a
high foundation and built the house that.  When Shoal came up, it
filled the cellar two feet but could not get into the house.      When
Mrs. Filson and her husband were married they lived in this very
house.  She recalls one time that Shoal came up to the house and when
it receded they went out in the yard and picked up a mess of fish.
This farm was afterwards sold to E.G. Wallace who lived there many
years (and so did the Interviewer who taught down there).  Mr. Wallace
told the same "fish story" about the fish once being picked up in the
grass of the dooryard.  Since the Filsons lived there, Shoal Creek has
changed its course at least once; and in flood years ruined many a
corn crop but at other times has given bumper crops in its bottoms.
Captain Wash Filson was a member of the Caldwell County Home Guards
during the Civil War and his duties brought much trouble to him with
the Southern sympathizers of that neighborhood.  Jim was not active in
the War.  He had three sons come to maturity, Thomas, Frank and
Alfred.  Wash's children were George Leonard, Samuel and Mrs. Dave
Paullin.  With the exception of Mrs. Filson there is not a person
living today in the county by this name; so widely has the family
scattered.      Mrs. Filson's daughter married James M. Hill a
grandson of the pioneer Samuel Hill (see paper).      Interviewed June
1934.


    THE PUCKETT FAMILY IN NEW YORK TOWNSHIP IN 1859     Narrator:
James Puckett, 79, of Hamilton, Missouri

     Mr. Puckett was born 1855 in Carroll County Virginia.  With his
father Constant Puckett and the other members of the family, he came
1859 to Caldwell County to live.  Constant's brother-in-law Elisha
Edwards already lived here.  They came to Lexington Missouri by boat
and from there overland by ox team.  When ever any relation came out
to visit the Pucketts, they always drove over to Lexington after them.
     Constant Puckett first bought a forty from the Government in New
York Township, later an eighty from the railroad, six miles south of
the railroad, the land still is in the Puckett name, being owned by
James the narrator.      James' father and some of the sons were in
the Union army.  Neighbors of the Pucketts were:  Elisha Edwards, John
Cormona, John Cox, Isaac Edwards and Billy Hawks.      His first home
was a one-room log cabin later a shed kitchen built on.  The cabin had
a window at one end and a chimney at the other and a door in front.
Inside was a bed, a trundle bed to be shoved under the bed and often
beds on the floor for the children.      The church was Hopewell,
Baptist with Father or Grandpap Andrew Baker (they called him both) as
pastor; in this church Mrs. Constant Puckett was a constituent member.
     The school was Pleasant Ridge and early teachers were: Mr.
Woosebeck, Annetta Kautz who married Ira Houghton, Miss Scott (later
Clevenger).  Amusements were literary societies, debates, spelling
matches and all day work like husking corn at some farm when the women
quilted and the food "was brought in".      Mr. Puckett recalled some
of the old farming ways which he had known as a youth.  There was the
old linch pin wagon and the stiff tongued wagon which used the linch
pin wheel, the jumping shovel plow for ground with stumps (it was like
a single shovel but had a cutter in front of the shovel which made the
plow jump the stump) there was the old wood turning plow.  He recalled
how first the ground was broken with one yoke of cattle, then run over
with single shovel plow, then planted by hand from a seed
bucket--three seeds to the hill (one to rot, one to grow, one for the
birds).  The plow then went through the parallel lines, then checked
in the other way through and at each check seeds were planted.  Then
it was covered by dragging a stone the size of a pillow over the
field.  Later came the hand planter, still later the horse planter.
Changes came to in cutting wheat.  First a bunch of wheat was taken in
hand and cut with a hand sickle until enough was done for a bundle.
Then came the cradle and the binder.  Todays' machinery combine many
of these steps.  The old wheat threshing was done on a "threshing
floor" which was really hard ground swept clean, then the wheat was
spread out with heads all in the same direction and horses were driven
over it in a circle.  It was cleaned by a fan.      Few people had
buggies those days.  Billy Clampitt, and Charlie Hawks were the first
in their part.  The buggies (later spring wagons) cost $150 to $200
and that was a lot of money to spend when you already had a farm
wagon.      Interviewed  July 1934.


    THE WALDO FAMILY IN FAIRVIEW TOWNSHIP - 1868     Narrator:  Mrs.
Louisa N. Chapman, 84, of Breckenridge

     Mrs. Chapman is the daughter of Asel Waldo and Aurelia A. McNutt,
both of Lake City, Ohio.  On her father's side, she descends from Seth
Sprague who fought for his country in the Revolutionary and 1812 Wars.
In 1846, Asel Waldo took up a homestead in Marquette County,
Wisconsin, and in 1868 joined the land rush to Caldwell County,
Missouri.  His farm was near the site where the next year the new
town, Proctorville, was founded by Dan Proctor.  A "ramshackle" school
house was built in the corner of a cornfield and Mrs. Chapman, who had
had some good schooling in Wisconsin, was the second teacher there.
The Waldos kept sheep and sent their wool to Berlin and Brunswick to
be carded and made into rolls 18 inches long and as big around as
one's finger, from which the mother and the girls knit the family
stockings and mittens.  Mrs. Chapman and her mother both spun and
today she can still run an old spinning wheel.  While both knew how to
weave, they did little of their own weaving but put it out to an
expert woman who did it for the community.      At the age of 22, she
married J.N. Chapman and he first helped her father with the large
tract of land, and later bought a part of the farm.  They have three
children, Elizabeth Morse, W.W. of Braymer and Asel B. of Madison
County, Mo.      Mrs. Chapman recalls in the late 60's, still in the
Reconstruction days after the war, that her father and Mrs. Chapman
both had to take an oath of allegiance to the government before they
could vote.  Those days women sufferage was just a wild dream and any
woman who wanted to vote was a kind of a freak, and rather unladylike.
     Interviewed  1934.


    THE PROCTOR FAMILY OF FAIRVIEW TOWNSHIP 1856     Narrator:  J.M.
Proctor, 74, of Braymer, Missouri

     Daniel Proctor the founder of the village of Proctorville was a
pioneer farmer, merchant, doctor, legislator and preacher and did all
well.      Coming to this section in 1856 from Illinois with his
family and settling among strangers, the next day he attended a house
raising and announced preaching for the next Sunday.  Upon coming to
the log house nearby appointed for the service the next Sunday, he
called for a Bible and was given a large Biography a scoffer.  He took
his text and preached as if he had a Bible.  This was the first
religious service held thereabouts and was followed by service every
Sunday.  Black Oak, Shoal Creek (now Proctorville) and Ludlow were his
appointments.      In 1860 Dr. Proctor (as he was usually called) was
ordained Elder by Bishop Ames.  The war came on and most of the
preachers left.  He kept up his appointments.  At Black Oak, one
Sunday they had fear of trouble.  When Dr. Proctor arrived at the
church the members were there with their guns.  He took out his pistol
and laid it beside his Bible and preached.  The enemies came but were
careful to keep a mile away.  All around this circuit as the war went
on, more Ministers were afraid and left and some were killed.  Dr.
Proctor stayed right on for he was a fearless person, helping to build
churches, planning church work, caring for the sick for all of which
he received very little compensation.  His first purchase of land was
320 acres on which he erected a store, postoffice and saw mill which
he operated during the winter months.  His holdings increased until he
owned 200 acres much of which had cost him 50 cents per acre.  A part
of this land is still owned by his son J.M. Proctor now 74 years of
age.  He is a retired farmer living in Braymer, Missouri and it is a
fact of which he is very proud that this land has always been in name
of Proctor since it was bought from the Government and never had a
mortgage on it.  Daniel Proctor gave each of his thirteen children a
farm and kept for himself a comfortable competence.  He was a member
of the 23rd General Assembly also 39th General Assembly.      As a man
he was held in high esteem.  One of the laws introduced by him and
passed was the one compelling the Hannibal & St. Joseph railroad to
pay for stock killed by the trains, which forced that corporation to

fence in their right of ways.  Up to that time, there was no fence and
with stock ranging over the prairies, there were many cattle killed by
the trains.      Interviewed  June 1934.

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