Caldwell County, Missouri History Interviews - Caldwell County, Missouri
 

THE CHAPMAN FAMILY OF FAIRVIEW TOWNSHIP     Narrator:  W.W.
Chapman of Braymer

     Judge J.N. Chapman was born 1846 in Ontario, Canada, the son of
Benjamin and Mary (Pepper) Chapman.  Benjamin and his wife were both
natives of Ireland and had come to America as the land of promise for
struggling Irishman.  From Canada, as a temporary stopping place, they
went to Wisconsin where lands were being opened up for settlement
rapidly about 1846-47.      He came to Caldwell County in 1869, where
the Waldo family also from Wisconsin had preceded him by a year.  He
settled in Fairview Township and began working as a "hired hand" for
$16.75 a month, which meant food, room and washing.  Later, by close
economy, he laid up enough to purchase half-interest in a farm (Waldo)
which had been bought for $13.00 an acre.  In 1919, he sold the farm
for $125.00 an acre.  During his farm-experience, he passed through
all the changes of method of getting a crop which other old-timers
have described.  When he quit farming in Fairview Township  in 1907,
he had the latest farm implements on the market, and was known as a
wealthy man.      Mr. Chapman was married 1872 to Louisa Waldo (whose
paper describes the Waldo life in Fairview township).      Mr. Chapman
got his title Judge from serving for eight years as presiding judge of
the county court (the only man in the county who served that long).
He spent the last years of his life in his home in Breckenridge.
Interviewed 1933.


    THE CHESHIRES, EARLY PIONEERS IN CALDWELL COUNTY     Narrator:
J.R. Cheshire, 88, of Hamilton

     James Riley Cheshire was born Jan. 3rd, 1847 in Jefferson County,
East Tennessee.  He came with his family to Caldwell County on the
17th day of Oct. 1857, locating in the Cottonwood District, one and
one-half miles northwest of what is now Polo.  He started to school
there in that district.      After living there three or four years,
the family moved about ten miles east.  They rented a farm on
Crabapple Creek owned by Wm. Baker.  Most of Mr. Baker's boys had gone
to Ray County to join the Rebel forces, for these were Civil War days,
and Mr. Baker had moved from his farm to an adjoining farm belonging
to his son-in-law.  So, the Cheshires moved to the Baker place which
had a big log house.      Mr. Cheshire, although only 14 years old,
can remember very vividly the tragedies occurring in their
neighborhood.  He saw one of the Baker boys and Mr. Ritchie, a
brother-in-law, soon after they had been shot by the Union soldiers.
This happened just a half mile from his home.  These men were moved to
the Cheshire home and prepared for burial.  Just as the men were being
placed in their coffins for burial, the militia came but they did not
molest the bodies.  The Cheshires, taking no part in the war, but
living in that particular section, were suspected and their house was
searched several times for fire arms and Rebel soldiers.  Mr. Cheshire
saw the old man Baker (owner of their home) marched into the timber
and heard the three shots which were fired into him.  Soon as the
militia had ridden on, he and his sister, five years old, ran to the
old man and spent several hours guarding him, (for in those days the
hogs had free range, there were no fences) until word could be sent to
the coffin maker and they could get help to move him.  It took a half
day to make a coffin and it was not started until after the death
occurred.  The hatred against the Bakers was so great that the
Kingston militia decided to burn all their property, so the Cheshires
were ordered to remove their goods from the house, and it was set on
fire.  Having only one wagon and team, Mr. Cheshire's father borrowed
a yoke of oxen and wagon from a neighbor and moved the family back to
Cottonwood.  Because an older man would be suspected of carrying news
into the Baker boy's community, Mr. Cheshire, then 15, was sent to
return the wagon and oxen.  He had no trouble making the trip over to
the old home but on the return trip, as he walked up on the top of a
hill, he was spied by a troop of soldiers.  They rode up to him and
although he explained to them why he was there, they did not believe
him and cursed him.  About that time, a young man who belonged to the
Knoxville militia rode up and knowing him, befriended him.  Mr.
Cheshire says those were hair-raising experiences.      When Mr.
Cheshire was seventeen, some officers came to their farm and demanded,
at the point of a gun, that he enlist in the Union Army.  This he
refused to do and told them to go on and shoot him but when they found
they could not scare him they went their way.      A neighbor, moving
to Nebraska, asked Mr. Cheshire to drive his cattle through, so he
did.  He worked at a saw-mill in Nebraska until spring, then started
home.  The trip from Omaha to St. Joseph, costing $8.00, was made by
boat on the Missouri River, then from St. Joseph to Hamilton on the
Hannibal and St. Joseph railroad and from Hamilton he took the "Green
Stage," a stage coach operated by Judge Green of Gallatin.  Mr.
Cheshire said the roads were heavy with mud and the stage was so
loaded that the men had to ride on top with the grips.  It was
necessary for them to get off and walk up each hill.  He walked at
least half the way to Kingston.  The price of the ticket from Hamilton
to Kingston was $1.00.      Mr. Cheshire farmed in the summer and did
carpenter work in the winter.  He helped to build the first buildings
in Polo, working on the first business house there.  He built several
homes and barns.  He had a little money, a team and some implements,
so he rented a farm.  He married Harriet Ann Hill in 1876.  She was
the daughter of Rev. W.R. Hill, an early pioneer Baptist minister, who
helped in organizing the Missouri Baptist General Association on Aug.
27, 1834.  Soon, Mr. Cheshire bought a 40 acre tract and built a small
house.  They moved into the house on Dec. 11th and during the night
there was a twelve inch snow.  He had no barn yet and it was a
difficult task to get enough corn from the field to feed his stock.
It was customary to turn all the sheep in the country out on range in
the spring.  Each owner using his own brand on the ear of his sheep.
By fall, there would often be one thousand sheep to be brought in.
The owners would set a date to meet and pick out their own sheep.
Often times there would be a lot of sheep unclaimed and these would
continue to graze until cold weather.  When the sheep got cold, they
would hunt shelter and the farmers would take them in, reporting that
he had so many strays.  It has been known that some greedy farmers
would go to the farmers reporting stray sheep and claim them when he
knew they were not his.      Mr. Cheshire sold his improved 40 acres
and bought 160 acres, partly improved.  As soon as he was able, he
bought 80 acres more.  All this time, he was continuing his carpenter
trade.  With a partner, he was making coffins.  He was the first
person in the county to make a "flat top coffin."  It made a big hit
with the people and this style was used afterward instead of the
rounded tops formerly used.  These coffins were of hard wood, nicely
finished and varnished and lines.  They sold for about $5.00 or $6.00.
     Mr. Cheshire lived on his farm until he retired and moved, with
his wife and two daughters, to Hamilton about twenty-three years ago.
Kingston was the county seat when he first moved to the county, and it
was the largest town in the county.      The first plows that Mr.
Cheshire used were single shovel plows drawn by one horse.  He bought
his first double shovel plow in 1871 against his father's wishes.  He
traded a cow for his first cultivator.      Mr. Cheshire's mother made
all the clothes from sheep's wool and cotton grown on their farm.  She
made a suit for him which was a beauty and wore for many years.  The
last pair of boots that he bought were made by Henry Murphy of Polo.
These boots were high heeled and were decorated around the top.  They
cost $8.00 and Mr. Cheshire wore them several years for Sunday before
taking them for every day use.      Sammie Mathews, a fast friend of
the Cheshire family, owned the first carriage in the county.  The
Mathews were very wealthy and dressed their negro slaves better than
most white people could afford to dress.  Every Sunday they could be
found at the Presbyterian Church at Mirabile, Mr. Mathews, his family
and all the slaves.  Mr. Mathews built a brick hotel at Cameron in
1864 (now the "Cameron Hotel") and the Cheshires visited them at the
hotel many times.      Mr. Cheshire has a walnut press which he made
sixty-seven years ago.  He bought the tree from a negro, cut it,
hauled it to a mill and made the press, taking great pains to finish
it well.  He has lived through five droughts, 1864, 74, 81, 1901 and
1934.  The 1934 drought being the worst he has ever known.  Though he
has traveled much, he has never voted outside the county.


    FARM LIFE IN THE FIFTIES IN DAVIS TOWNSHIP     Narrator:  Andrew
F. McCray, 91, Cowgill, Missouri

    Subscription School      Threshing Wheat        Marketing Farm
Products

     Mr. McCray was born 1843 in Calloway County Missouri.  When he
was five years old his parents Wm. McCray and Nancy Carroll McCray
came into Caldwell County.  Wm. McCray had been up here first to look
around.  He came on a Missouri River Boat as far as Camden and walked
over from there to the farm he wanted to look at.  He finally traded
for it.  It was an eighty and lay five miles west of the present site
of Braymer in Davis township.  His father was a blacksmith and was a
bit asset to the new country, the nearest shop being eight miles away.
     The first school that Andrew Frank McCray attended was a
subscription school (supported by money paid by the parents so much
per child and not by taxes).  There was not yet any school tax or any
organization of districts in that part of the county.  He was nine
years old when it opened the spring 1852; it was three miles from his
father's house but the walk was nothing.  The school house was made of
sawn logs and was quite large since it cared for children from a large
territory.  It was called Black Oak School.      His father raised
wheat and corn.  Wheat was a hard crop to raise those days, because
the severe winters often froze it out.  It was threshed by hand and a
flail on a prepared floor on the ground or might be tramped on a
prepared ground floor by horses in the age-old fashion.      Prior to
the Building of the Hannibal and St. Joseph railroad through the
northern tier of townships in the County 1857 everything had to be
freighted to or from Lexington by teams of horses, mules or oxen.
Lexington traders sent the stuff east and west.  A neighbor woman used
to sell chickens in Richmond at $1.25 a dozen.  The little surplus -
if any - prior to the completion of the railroad was consumed at home
by neighborhood shortage or by new settlers who had come in between
crops.  Since there was no market nearer than Lexington; farmers had
little inducement to raise large crops - just something above their
year's necessities.  Of course after the railroad went through,
farmers could ship their produce easily at Hamilton.      While Wm.
McCray began his life in Caldwell County with eighty acres, he finally
acquired a thousand and twenty acres which shows the size of some of
the early farms when land was very cheap.      Interviewed  January
1934.


    LIFE IN DAVIS TOWNSHIP BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR     Narrator:  Mrs.
Mary J. Eichler, 93, of Braymer, Missouri

     Mrs. Eichler is a daughter of Conrad Oster a pioneer settler of
Caldwell county.  She was born in the little town of Mirabile January
27 1841.  When she was three years old, her parents moved three miles
west of the present site of Braymer.  There she grew up amid the
simple pioneer conditions of the forties and fifties.      Her father
Conrad Oster (b. 1815) was the son of George L. Oster (an 1812
soldier) who came out with his family into this county 1839 and
located in what is now Mirabile township.  In fact, the Oster family
unloaded their big wagon on the very site of the present Mirabile.
From there Conrad Oster as said above moved to Davis Township where
the Oster name became well known.      While at Mirabile Mr. Oster
helped build the first store building erected there for Wm. E. Marquam
(pronounced Markum and sometimes spelled that way).      Those were
the days of wild turkeys, deer, ox-teams, and cumbersome lumber
wagons, when neighbors were few and far between and highly valued.
Trips to town meant barter, not spending money.  The expression "I
finished my trading." meant exactly that.  In her youth, Kingston and
Mirabile were the only towns in the county.  Occasionly the men folks
went to Lexington on business.      In 1864 Mary Jane married Henry
Eichler a native born German who had served in the United States
Regular Army and had been stationed in the western plains.  He bought
a ranch in Wyoming.  Apparently he was in our county to buy cattle for
his ranch when he married her.  He and his young wife started to drive
the cattle back to the ranch and got there after many troubles.
To begin their story, it took them two days to come with their ox team
from Davis township to Kingston.  They rested a night then started out
again.  Almost immediately an axle broke and that made a delay.  They
took ten days to get to St. Joseph (already people were saying "St.
Jo").  Then came the hard slow journey in a wagon-train over the
plains to Fort Laramie.  The wagon-train was not attacked by Indians
but their ranch home was destroyed later.  Such losses made the
Eichlers long for Caldwell County.  They had lost their first born
babe there also.  In 1866 Mr. Eichler bought one hundred twenty acres
in Davis Township and later his estate was five hundred sixty acres.
Interviewed  1933.


    EARLY DAYS AT BLACK OAK     Narrator:  Mrs. Kelley Brown of Far
West

     Mrs. Kelley Brown is a grand daughter of John T. Davis who came
from Illinois into Caldwell County just after the Black Hawk War where
he served with the Illinois troops.  He and his wife Margaret Moore
were married when she was sixteen years old.  When she was twenty-two
they came into the county in the summer 1840 and built near Black Oak
Grove as it used to be called.  There were no windows or doors hung in
the cabin.  They hung a wide cloth at the door and window openings.
He needed windows and some tools for his work, so he left her alone
and went back over the long pioneer trail to Illinois to get them.  He
was gone about three weeks and she used to build fires at night by the
cabin door to frighten away the panthers who frequented those woods.
The cry of the panther was something to scare you even at a distance,
and especially terrible at your own door.      The Davis brothers were
the first settlers in what is now Davis Township after the Mormons
left.  John T. Davis' place was a little south west of the present
Black Oak village.  Davis Township was named after this family.  His
father Dennis Davis (1791-1879) a Black Hawk soldier came into the
county with his sons.  He and most of the Davis family are buried in
the Black Oak Cemetery, which is quite early in date.      Interview
taken  July 1934.


    THE ROGERS AND McDONALD FAMILIES IN EARLY CALDWELL COUNTY
Narrator:  Elwood Rogers, 68, of Hamilton, Missouri

     The interview with Mr. Rogers is quite important because he is a
great grandson of Jeremiah McDonald who made the first land entry in
Caldwell County in the present Rockford Township 1832.  Moreover Mr.
Rogers is a son of George F. Rogers who in the period 1860-85 was
widely known as a Mason and a well-to-do sporting gentleman of the
community north of town.      Jeremiah McDonald never lived in
Caldwell County, but lived at the foot of the Devil's Backbone in Ray
County and died there after the Civil War.  He was a well known
character, especially for his frugality, living poorly in spite of his
large land holdings.  In 1839 Randolph his son entered a quarter
section in this county.  Part of the present Rogers farm north of
Hamilton is land entered by him.  He had two daughters, one Lockie
married George Rogers and the other, Eliza, married Haman Hemry of
North of Hamilton.  When George Rogers came to this vicinity, he lived
in a log cabin which is still standing in part on the Rogers farm.
Elwood, the son of George lived for awhile in his youth near
Lisbonville a village less than one hundred yards south of the
Caldwell County line, with his grandfather Randolph McDonald who lived
near the south line of Rockford township in the county.  The common
name for Lisbonville then was "Chicken bristle" or "the Bristle."
This little hamlet became a dead town when the Milwaukee railroad went
through the south part of the county and the post office moved from
Lisbonville to Elmira.      Elwood's uncle by marriage was Haman Hemry
who was the son of Abraham Hemry - an early settler (1856) in this
county and quite a queer fellow.  Abraham loaned money and had many
notes on people in Daviess, Caldwell and Ray Counties.  He used to
ride around collecting interest, his notes stuffed in saddle bags.  If
a man could not pay interest, Hemry would stay at his house and board
it out.  Haman's brother Issac was mysteriously murdered near Kidder
1885 - a murder never solved.      But the most interesting of all
Elwood Roger's kin was his father George F. Rogers a son of George
Rogers a pioneer of Daviess County.  Swarthy, tall and erect, he
affected a wide-rimmed black hat of the southern type, Prince Albert
coat, heavy watch chain and flowing ties.  He was a ladies man by
instinct and manner.  He was self educated to such a degree that he
became Deputy Grand State Lecturer for the Masonic Lodge.  A farmer by
blood and living but he hired most of the work done.      He was an
old fiddler and loved to play for dances.  When he died he left his
fiddle to Bob Bryant.  He wanted it to go to a good fiddler and his
son did not play.  In his youth he used to ride clear from Rockford
Township twelve miles up to Daviess county to dances.  It was at a
dance he met his future wife from Rockford township.  In this
connection, it may be said that girls too rode long distances to
attend dances, spending the night, while young men went home after the
dances.      The following story shows George Rogers, the hot-tempered
fire eater.  He had a little trouble with a fellow named Harrah who
worked for him on the farm, and fired him.  Harrah came back and
"agged" him into a quarrel.  Finally he invited Rogers to bring out
his shooting irons.  Rogers replied with a motion of his fists that
they were the only shooting irons he needed.  Finally he got his
revolver and they shot it out.  It ended in the wounding of Harrah.
Rogers rode to town after a doctor and paid the bill and gave himself
up but no action was ever taken.  Afterwards, the two men being Mason
made up their quarrel.      Interviewed  1933.  (See also the story of
George Rogers by S.R. Guffey.)


    THE DEATH OF E.G. WALLACE     Narrator:  E. Green Wallace, 85,
Kingston, Missouri

     Mr. Wallace was born in 1840, his parents being Abathal Wallace
and Adaline O. Stanford of Tennessee and later Livingston and Ray
Counties Missouri.      Mr. Wallace was for many years a farmer in New
York township owning the earlier Jim Filson farm.  In his youth he had
an adventure which is known to all of his friends.  He tells it thus:
During the Civil War he tried to get through the lines and reach his
brothers in the Confederate army.  He with other were captured by
militia and were lined up to be shot since they were considered
guerillas.  At the crack of the guns Mr. Wallace received no shot but
he fell and feigned death.  To make sure of killing the men, the
militia leader shot each of the victims through the head; but in Mr.
Wallace's case the bullet passed through his hat, cut off a lock of
hair and went on without harm.  Thus he twice escaped death but he was
reported as dead by the militia.  After nightfall he crawled away to
bushes and escaped.      Soon after this occurrence he realized that
the safety of his parents' home was well as their lives were
endangered because of the son's enlistment in the Southern Army.  He
talked it over with his father.  His father was about to move to Ray
County (as he did afterwards) to avoid trouble.  He advised Green to
enlist in the Union Army cause as a member of the militia for his own
safety.      He gave him a swift riding horse and said "I hope you
know how to use it."  So whenever Mr. Wallace was in action as a Union
militiaman, some how the unmanageable horse always turned and ran
away, carrying young Green with it.      Mr. Wallace married Mary A.
Kesterson 1865.  The Wm. Kesterson family was also of the Southern
side.  They had been "burnt out" by the Caldwell County Militia in the
Crab Apple trouble of 1862.  Not long after the family moved to
Nebraska to get out of further trouble with the militia.
Interview taken 1932 a few months before the death of E.G. Wallace,
August 1932.


    THE KILLING OF HUMPHREY WELDON     Narrator:  Dr. Libby Woolsey of
Hamilton, Missouri

     When Dr. Woolsey was quite a small boy, the horror of the Civil
War in Caldwell County was about him.  Many men who expressed Southern
sentiments were slain for it.  Dr. Woolsey's brother had enlisted in
the Southern Army and the family lived mid a bunch of Southern
sympathizers near Breckenridge.  His Uncle by marriage on his father's
side was Humphrey Weldon who was known as a "rebel" sympathizer.  He
lived a little this side of Lick Fork Church.      June 8 1864 some
Confederate prisoners had escaped from St. Joseph and it was reported
they were making for southern friends at the Weldon Settlement near
Breckenridge.  Two militia forces sent out to get them June 9 mistook
each other for the enemy and attacked each other.      That night a
militia force supposed by the family to be Captain Noblett's men went
to the Weldon home and called Humphrey out.  They asked him who was
harboring the fugitives?  He said, "That if he knew who was harboring
them, he would not tell."  They straight way dragged him off and shot
him full of holes.  After firing the barn, they departed.  The Weldon
family hearing the shots, guessed his fate and went out and found his
body.  He was buried in Lick Fork Cemetery.      Interviewed  July
1934.


    THE KILLING OF JOHN C. MYERS     Narrator:  J.W. (Billy) Myers of
Cowgill, Missouri

     Mr. Myers is a grandson of John C. Myers and a son of Sam Myers.
This is a story which he says has come down concerning the death of
John C. Myers.      John C. Myers, his wife Leah Brinnell Myers and
their young family came by wagon from Pennsylvania to the Mirabile
community in 1841.  There they lived the very simple life of pioneers.
Mr. Myers was a Democrat and was sheriff of Caldwell County 1856-60.
He was re-elected for two more years.  However, the Civil War was in
the air and being a firm believer in Secession he refused to take the
oath of fidelity to the Federal Government.      This act was widely
known.  Moreover he was prominent in the Secessionist activities.  He
once rode at top speed June 10 1861 to warn the Secessionists who were
gathering in Woodson Ardinger's store (their headquarters) at Kingston
that the Federal Troops were marching from Hamilton to Kingston.
He went South and entered service.  In the fall 1862 he came back.
The fedual order was that all Ex-Confederate soldiers should surrender
to the Federal authorities in the county.  He told his family that he
feared to do this lest the Unionists kill him under some excuse; and
he preferred to take chances in avoiding capture.      On November 4th
1862 he went to the home of an old friend in Rockford Township, where
he lived before he went to Kingston as sheriff.  This man was Henry
Whitenack.  He urged Myers to surrender but Myers would not.  Some
enemy must have seen him for after nightfall the ever wakeful militia
came to the house and called Myers out.  They began firing and then he
ran - falling mortally wounded.  The family had a surmise about the
identity of the members of the force.  (See a variation in this story
in the Caldwell-Livingston History.)  Mr. Myers is buried in the Hines
Graveyard, which was probably open to "Rebels."      Interview taken
August 1934.


    THE HANGING OF JIMMY SILKWOOD     Narrator:  Mrs. Kelley Brown of
Far West

     Mrs. Brown was reared in Davis Township and often heard her
father tell the Jimmy Silkwood story, which is another one of the
tales showing the rough treatment given the War prisoners on both
sides in the county during the Civil War.      John T. Davis of Black
Oak her grandfather, was hauling supplies for Col. Mulligan at
Lexington and the Thraillkill (Confederate) raiders came into the
Black Oak Grove vicinity.  Knowing John T. Davis' work they started
out to "get" him and stop the supplies.  Davis hid out.  Jimmy
Silkwood who was working for Davis was caught and questioned.  While
he knew where Davis was, he refused to tell.  They threatened to hang
him yet he would not tell.  They tied him hand and foot and hanged him
to a tree and left him.  They had thrown the rope over a limb and tied
the end around the trunk.  He struggled, the knot slipped and he
dropped to the ground.  He wormed his way down to the Davis house and
Grandma Davis cut the rope loose.  To his death, Jimmy had a knot on
the side of his neck and carried his head on one side as a result of
being hanged.  He is buried in Black Oak cemetery, his grave being
marked with a field stone.      Interviewed  July 1934.


    BRISTOW - CASEY FIGHT     Narrator:  Wm. Bristow of Hamilton,
Missouri

     Wm. Bristow farmer is a nephew of Judge Wm. Bristow who was a
participant in the killing at Hamilton of John Casey and son John in
1864.      He tells the story thus:  Judge Bristow was sitting in a
Hamilton Store (The story told by others say it was the Kemper store
located on the present picture show site).  The elder Casey came in
pretty drunk.  He began to swear at the Northern Army and the Federal
supporters, swinging his arms wildly.  Finally they got over Bristow's
head.  He held a knife.  Bristow first thought he just was talking
generally but finally he said "Do you happen to mean me?"  Casey
replied, "Yes, if you want to take it that way."  There upon, the
Judge knocked the elder Casey down.  Casey arose and went into another
store (other Narrators say it was the Buster Saloon and Grocery across
the street and across the tracks).      A little later, young Casey
came in the first Store and pulled out his revolver, saying to Bristow
that he would get anyone who struck his father.  Both men  got on
their feet in a quarrel.  The Store had two doors on east and west.
The Old Casey entered now by the east with his knife.  "I reckon he'd
have cut Uncle's head off if it hadn't have been for his silk
handkerchief around his neck, " Mr. Bristow said.  At the same time
both the Judge and Young Casey shot.  Casey's shot went wild.
Bristow's shot killed Casey.  Then Judge turned around to settle the
Elder Casey and saw him lying on the ground - shot seriously by some
bystander - he never knew exactly who it was.  Old Casey died the next
day.      Years after - a story goes that a stranger introduced
himself to Judge Bristow with the remark that he saved Bristow's life
on the above occasion.      After the double death in the Casey
family, the Caseys moved nearer Gallatin.  Judge Bristow's work often
took him to Gallatin but he always feared to go, for a Bristow-Casey
feud arose out of the killing.  For a long time the Bristows carried
guns when in the Casey neighborhood; but the ill feeling gradually
disappeared and no further harm came of it.      This version  varies
somewhat from the version p. 194 in History of Caldwell-Livingston
Counties 1886.      Interviewed  July 1934.


    KILLING OF SOUTHERN SYMPATHIZER IN CALDWELL COUNTY     Narrator:
Mrs. Mahala (Jones) Smith, Hamilton, Missouri

     Mrs. Smith belonged to the Billy Jones family near Kingston.
Southern sympathizers; but they were very careful of what they did and
said for several of their friends were killed because of their
attitude.      Mrs. Smith was thirteen when in 1864 Richard Lancaster
and Stump Breckenridge, two southern soldiers were killed, right in
her own neighborhood.  These Thraillkill men were killed by the Home
Guard, hut no one knows exactly by whom.  At the time Captain Edward
Johnson seemed to be blamed somewhat because the men were shot on his
farm but he always disclaimed the shooting.      They were shot one
evening and the next morning about 8 o'clock Captain Johnson who was
the big military man there ordered out the Southern neighbors to bury
"their men" in the near by Morris cemetery.  Among the men called out
were Mrs. Smith's father Billy Jones and Chris Kerr.  She saw the
burial.  They were not allowed to make coffins but were forced to dig
shallow graves and pitch the men in, covering their faces with their
hats.  The graves were so shallow that for days the files gathered
there.  While the work went on Captain Johnson stood reared back, gun
in belt.      She also recalled the killing of Absolam Harpold of that
vicinity.  He had come home from the Southern army.  The militia were
determined to get him.  He got wind of it and took a train at Kidder
for the west.  Some personal foe of his reported this and the militia
rode to Cameron and took him off the train.  They hanged him there at
once in an old mill.  She recalls the day he was brought home in a
wagon.  They buried him in their own Harpold cemetery and it is only a
few years ago that they removed him to the Kingston cemetery.      She
also was a friend of the McBeath family another Southern family which
lost a member in this drive of the county militia on southern
sympathizers.  Robert McBeath was shot to death having been taken away
from home because he would not turn over the gun, according to county
orders.      Interviewed  July 1934.


    HE VOTED FOR LINCOLN - CIVIL WAR STORIES     Narrator:  William
Shephard, 87, of Hamilton, Missouri

     Wm. Shepard was born 1847 in Williams County Ohio.  His parents
were Alfred Shepard and Jane Peddicord.  They moved from Ohio to Iowa
and from there to Grundy County, whence Wm. moved to Caldwell County
where he has lived nearly fifty years.      He served three years in
the Union Army and he cast his first presidential vote for Abraham
Lincoln at the latters second term.  He said he voted for him because
his family already were Republicans.  He told some Civil War stories
of his own expense.  He said the common soldiers carried a musket, two
navy revolvers in his belt, a belt with shot and shell and a knap sack
on his back.  This contained emergency food and a canteen which held a
gallon of water.  The knap sack was on a strap around his neck and a
soldier could easily move it and get a drink while on a march.  It was
his duty to fill the canteen when near water.      Among other
Missouri engagements he was in the battle of Independence (Westport).
After this battle the soldiers looted the town.  He and his comrade
went into a saloon and drove out the bartender.  One of them had a
dime.  He stood outside the bar and the second went behind the bar and
gave him a drink and took the pay.  That gave him the dime and he now
played the customer on the outside of the bar and paid the dime to his
friend now behind the bar.  This buying drinks with one dime went till
both had all the whiskey they wanted, and every drop had been paid for
somehow.      In his part of the country, bush whackers on both sides
were common, boldly enloving homes to take food, taking farm supplies
and even breaking up dances and parties.  Women would hide their
victuals and men would drive their horses and wagons into cornfields
to hide them.  Soldiers of both sides visited his wife's people in
Saline and Cooper counties, one army after another took stuff away,
giving orders for payment which often were worthless.      Interviewed
June 21, 1934.


    THE "HANGING" OF GEORGE ROGERS     Narrator:  S.R. Guffey of New
York Township

     George Rogers was in business in Gallatin during the Civil War.
Some brought the accusation that he was buying horses from the Home
Guards and selling them back to the United States Government.  A
company of Militia was sent to Gallatin to arrest him and bring him
back to Hamilton for trial, because Gallatin sentiment was in his
favor.      After they got about three miles from Hamilton close to
the place he afterwards owned, they saw a cloud of dust up Gallatin
way.  Fearing lest Rogers be taken from them, they decided to hang him
right there on the spot.  Accordingly they strung him up on a cotton
wood tree on the east side of the road (this tree stood until about
eight years ago) and then rode toward Hamilton.      The cloud of dust
developed into a detachment of State Cavalry sent from Gallatin to be
assured that Rogers got safely to Hamilton, knowing the disposition of
his captors.      The cavalry to which Mr. S.R. Guffey belonged cut
him down and brought him alive to Hamilton where they confined him in
a box car used as a guard house.  Mr. Guffey said that Mr. Rogers was
told the name of his accuser who afterwards was put in the car with
him.  It was necessary to carry out the accuser in about fifteen
minutes.  The trial next day freed Rogers of the charge.      Mr.
Rogers never told this story to his children; but when asked by the
interviewer, he admitted it was true.      The story was verified by
the victim, by one of the band who hanged him and by one of the men
who cut him down.


    THE MORMON TEMPLE AT FAR WEST     Narrator:  Mr. and Mrs. Robert
Morris  Hamilton, Missouri

     In 1884 and 1885 Mr. and Mrs. Robert Morris began their married
life in a little home just south of the old Mormon Temple excavation
at Far West.      Their farm of fifty acres was apparently part of the
once populous Mormon capital city Far West, for Mr. Morris found
several rock foundations on his farm.      The excavation was deeper
fifty years ago than now and the rocks were larger for Mrs. Morris
recalls how sight seers would come over to their home to borrow an ax
or hammer to knock off a piece of rock as a souvenir.  Visitors both
Mormons and Gentiles were frequent, some getting off the train at
Cameron and driving over to see the excavation and cornerstone of the
Mormon Temple which was never finished.  The gaps in the rocks then
probably were just as they were left when the Gentiles drove the
Mormons away 1838 after the battle of Far West.      The temple lot
belonged then to John Whitmer one of the original witnesses of the
Mormon revelation.  (Since then it has passed into the possession of
the Latter Day Saints of the Utah Church)  Just east of the temple lot
was Jacob Whitmer's home and father east was the home of his father
John Whitmer.  All these were still adherents of the Latter Day Saints
faith.  Not far off was Mrs. Chris Kerr a daughter who possessed the
historic golden plates which Joseph Smith dug up.  The Morrises knew
the location of the old Mormon cemetery but no stones were left 1885.
They knew nothing of the story that those monuments had been taken to
form the foundation of some house in that community--the inscriptions
being turned in.      Interview taken  August 5, 1934.


    LIVING BY HAUN'S MILL     Narrator:  Mrs. Zelma Filson, Hamilton,
Mo.

     Mrs. Filson is the widow of Thomas Filson and the step-daughter
of John Owens who came west in the late sixties in the influx of New
York families into what is now New York township and Fairview
township.      Mr. Owens needed a woodlot, having no timber on his
place.  So by chance he bought a woody place which contained a site
important in early Caldwell County history - Haun's Mill in Fairview
Township.  After he had purchased it, he heard its history from the
older settlers.  Jacob Haun was a Mormon settler and started a mill
along Shoal Creek.  Oct 30 1838, the Gentile Militia fell upon the
Mormon settlers gathered at the mill and blacksmith shop and they
killed eighteen.  For lack of time to dig graves, the Mormons
survivors placed their dead in an old well and covered them up.  Among
the Mormon dead was a Revolutionary Soldier Thomas McBride.  Mrs.
Filson said in her day the Well was marked by a round sunken place.
She lived there about twelve years and said there was nothing to
report that vegetation grew more densely over the grave because of the
bodies there.  She said that there was no way now of finding the spot
accurately since it had been turned into corn and plowed level.
However, in the summer of 1933 two elderly Saints from Salt Lake City
told the Interviewer that it could be determined accurately by the
depression and by bits of iron scattered from the old blacksmith shop.
     Mrs. Filson says that in her day the Saints had already begun to
make pilgrimages to the spot as a Scared place and they still do.  The
old Haun's Mill stones are set up in Breckenridge.  The Haun's Mill
site is on the farm of J.M. Hill.      Interview taken  July 1934.


    HISTORIC MORMON SITES     Narrator:  Wm. Stinson, 73, Hamilton,
Missouri

     Fifty years ago Mr. Stinson used to be very familiar with the
historic Haun's Mill site in Fairview township, for his fathers home
north west of the present city of Braymer gave him a riding range over
the county where the ill-fated mill once stood.  He said that Shoal
Creek where he played was about a town block's distance from the mill
site.  Old timers told him there had been a store, a blacksmith shop
and a few houses there once.  About thirty feet from the shop was
supposed to be the well into which the eighteen (18) dead Mormons were
buried by their people after the Gentile attack in the Mormon War.
This attack was made on this place 1838.  All these things were still
matters of talk as the boys swam in the Shoal swimming hole nearly
sixty years ago.      The well then was covered with split timbers and
crossed with others.  It was in a wood lot and the pile of wood was
pointed out to him as the spot of the well.  There seemed to be no
doubt of the site then.      He used to hear that the first burials in
the White Cemetery (an old graveyard) were made by the Mormons down in
that section near the Mill.  He also had the idea that they had graves
in a graveyard (perhaps without stones) on the Mud Creek in Davis
Township.  The Mormon ford was south and a little west of the Mill.
Fifty years ago in that section people still nursed hatred for the
Mormons and when they wished to threaten a person they would say:
"I'll send you where the other Mormons are buried."      Interviewed
July 1934.


    DR. WILLIAM EARL McLELLAN (McCLELLEN) EARLY MORMON IN CALDWELL
COUNTY     Narrator:  Mrs. Nellie Scott, Kansas City, Missouri

     From the church records at Independence Missouri I found the
following:  "In 1831, Wm. E. McLellan heard the gospel preached by the
elders of the church (then at Kirkland Ohio) on their way to Missouri
and followed them as soon as he could arrange his business."  Some of
his business may have been getting married for he married my mother's
sister, Emeline Miller, the April of the next year.  The year
following Dr. McLellan and his wife made a wagon trip to Illinois and
then to Independence, but stayed there only a few months, for Gentile
antagonism was growing very strong there to rid that country of this
new sect.  In July 1833 the citizens of Jackson County adopted a
resolution to expel the Mormons.  The Saints committee (of which
McLellan was one) agreed to urge their elders to leave by January 1st
1834 and to urge the others to leave by spring.  While many Mormons
refused to agree to this Dr. and Mrs. McLellan left.  They went

probably to Ohio and later returned to Missouri; this time to Clay
County where many of the Saints had fled.  On July 3, 1834 McLellan
was elected to the High Council of the Church in Clay County.  He was
also made Traveling Council or Apostle.  By this time he had advanced
so far in the church that he was in a position capable of receiving
revelations.  At one time he had a revelation suggesting a plural wife
but Aunt Emeline showed him the revelation was not divine.  They were
in Kirkland Ohio now and stayed there till Joseph Smith and his
followers were driven out.  This time they went to Far West, Caldwell
County having been set apart by the legislature as a home for the
Mormons.      Accordingly the county seat was established at Far West
and a log school house was erected in which court was held.  The
McLellans came to Far West in 1837.  By this time, Uncle William began
to have doubts and questions about some of those working with Joseph
Smith.  At all events, he was tried for Apostacy and expelled from the
church May 11 1838 at Far West.  Ever after, he was called a
Dissenter, altho he never entirely severed his connection, in spirit
at least, with the followers of the "Great Prophet, Joseph Smith."
Uncle William left Far West before his trial.  He lived awhile in
Davenport Iowa where he practised medicine (he was in part an old
fashioned herb doctor) but in 1845 he and my Aunt went back to
Kirkland Ohio trying to re-organize the Church on the earlier plans.
Somewhere about this time, he returned to Far West trying to
reassemble the Saints who had stayed in Caldwell County when the
general Exodus of Mormons occurred after the fall of Far West 1838.
Eventually after many years of being on the move, the McLellans
returned to Independence where they lived the remainder of his life
and where he is buried.  He had six children and none embraced their
father's faith.


    RAG CARPETS     Narrator:  Kate Crawford, 66, of Hamilton,
Missouri

     Rag carpets are now almost out of style, but there was a time
when they were in every woman's plan of living in these parts.  You
either had rag carpets or bare floors.  As time went on rag carpets
served for bed rooms and perhaps one could afford in ingrain for the
front room or maybe trade two rag carpets for an ingrain at the store.
     Miss Crawford was reared in the Dort home and they used rag
carpets entirely up till about 1890 when they got in ingrain from the
old Tilley store with Asa Thompson as salesman.      Sewing carpet
rags was a regular spare time occupation for the women of the
seventies and to some degress in the eighties.  Women prided
themselves on even rags and on getting a yard of carpet out of a pound
of rags.  The coarser the rags the thicker the carpet and fewer yards
in weaving.      Many women were content with hit and miss (mixed
colors) sewed but for front rooms it was nice to have the carpet woven
in stripes.  This meant they would dye bunches of rags different
colors.  They could buy dye powder or use bark, or polk berries.  Some
used chamber dye to make copper; indigo made blue.  You could make
shaded rags by the tie and dye method.  When the rags were balled,
there was the cost of the carpey warp and the weaving to be paid for.
Among the old carpet weavers in this community some are yet well
remembered.  Aunt Lizzy Butts (colored, Mother of Jim Butts) had a
loom and wove in the seventies.  When she began, she had a hard time
with turns so Mrs. Van Note a white neighbor taught her how to do it.
Later Mrs. Horseback wove many carpets and had people on the waiting
list.  Later came Mrs. Ogburn in the north end of town, and still
later Mrs. John Banks who still plies the old trade in weaving rag
rugs.  Looms might be erected in the front room or even in a clean
barn.  The old carpet weavers not only helped support the family but
contributed their part to the community comfort.      The Interviewer
was amused at a story told by another old timer.  A new rag carpet had
just been put down in a parlor in the early eighties and a neighbor
had come in to admire it.  The daughter of the house objected to a rag
carpet in their parlor.  The neighbor said "You must not be proud or
you can't marry my son." (They did go together)  The young woman
straightway said "Well I don't want to marry him any way" and she did
not.      Interviewed  January 1934.


    EPIDEMICS IN CALDWELL COUNTY     Narrator:  Emma Brown of Hamilton
and Others

     Miss Brown is the daughter of George Brown and Jane Wilkinson who
lived in Vinton County Ohio till in 1873 they joined the Ohio
immigration to Caldwell County.  They bought a farm in the Lovely
Ridge District west of Hamilton.  There were several Vinton County
folks there:  Dan Booth, Ike Dunkle, Sam Bay, Hi Smith, Block
Doddridge, and Henry Clark (father of Mrs. Elwood Rogers).  When
George Brown died 1880, the family moved to Hamilton into the home on
South Broadway where Miss Brown still lives.  She is a sister of the
late Dr. Tinsley Brown who began his practice here 1876, hence she has
been interested in watching and hearing about various epidemics which
have gone through this community.      One of the earliest epidemics
of which the oldest old timers mentioned by hearing is the typhoid
epidemic of 1835.  It broke out in the southern part of Daviess County
just over the line, among the McCrary family who had come there about
1830 from North Carolina.  In 1835 about seven or eight of the McCrary
family died of what was later found to be typhoid fever; but before
the Doctor gave it a name, the neighbors called it "McCrary fever"
because of the large number of sick in that family.  Grandfather
McCrary (then the head of the clan) died of it and his burial started
the McCrary Cemetery.      There were several severe epidemics in the
earlier years of Caldwell County which took a heavy toll of children's
lives; the older cemeteries show a large proportion of children's
deaths often belonging to certain years.  There was a Small Pox
epidemic in the 1840's reported by the Jones family in which their
grandmother died.  In 1856-57 there occurred a hard Scarlet Fever
epidemic.  In the summer of 1856 the family of Allen Tobban in Davis
Township was visited by it and five children died from July 28 to
August 6th.  The little graves in White Cemetery tells the story.  Mr.
Andrew McCray (92) says that Dr. J.B. Gant of Knoxville was the
doctor.  Mr. and Mrs. McCray (Andrew's parents) as neighbors helped
care for the children; being careful not to take it home to their own.
By January 1857 it had spread up to Hamilton and two of A.G. Davis'
children at Hamilton died of it.  All had it.      In 1872 came a
diphtheria epidemic; there are many 1872 tombstones of children.  In
1873 came another Small Pox Epidemic.  This run of Small Pox is
reported to have started by some negroes who dug up Small Pox clothes
which had been buried.  People yet living here lost children the R.D.
Dwight and son, Kenny had it and received resulting pocked faces.
Little Ora Hare, son of T.H. Hare died of it and was buried in the old
cemetery.  The old story is that he was privately buried at night to
prevent spread of the disease.  A dog from a Small Pox home carried
the germ to him.  In the Fall of 1873, black or virulent measles
struck Hamilton and Dan Booth who had come from Ohio on a prospecting
trip almost died of them.      In 1874 there was a bad run of typhoid
fever in the late summer.  The people those days explained typhoid as
due either to the poison that came from newly turned virgin soil or to
the dry prairie grass.  Irwin Brown aged twenty two brother of Dr. T.
Brown died of typhoid 1874 and three members of the Watson family at
Nettleton.  In 1875 Sarah Low and Leon Low were among the victims.  In
1875 again Scarlet Fever came and Dr. Stoller's own child was among
the many victims.      In 1879 Diphtheria came and whole families were
taken off.  The Pittman children buried in Highland cemetery are well
known examples.  Parents hung bags of asafetida around children's
necks to ward off the disease.      In 1883 came Measles again,
starting mildly but it acquired such virulence that even grown up
people died of it.  There must have been a Small Pox scare 1881 for
middle aged people now can recall being vaccinated then as children
and also the agony when it "took."      There was an epidemic of
Chicken pox about the same time that caused serious illness but no
deaths as far as the narrator recalls.  In April 1884 there was a
epidemic of Seven Years Itch here in town which caused the schools to
close without final examinations.  This was not as serious as it was
embarrassing to the very respectable people who had it.
July 1934.

GOING TO TOWN BEFORE AUTOMOBILES CAME     Narrator:  John Bennett,
66, of Hamilton, Missouri

     In the days before Farmers possessed automobiles, going to town
was quite an event.  Such trips were usually on Saturday so the
children could go too.  The old farm wagon was the usual vehicle,
although some people had a two-seated spring wagon which seated six if
needed.  Mr. Bennett's folks began with a lumber wagon and finally the
father bought the spring wagon.  In a wagon,  the parents sat on the
seat, the children might sit on a board laid across the wagon or on an
additional wagon seat or in the wagon bed itself which was filled with
straw covered over with old quilts.  Mr. Bennett's mother hardly ever
went to town on account of the numerous youngsters, so one of the
older girls sat up with the father Thomas Bennett.      When the
family went to town, they took their lunch and ate in the shade of
some big tree, feeding the horses at the same time.  The water was
carried in one of their own buckets from some public well in Hamilton.
Their father disliked to have his horses drink out of the trough by
public wells lest they catch some disease.  There used to be a public
well and trough just south to the Orville Parker grocery store and
another was located south of the old Houston, Spratt and Menefee Bank
(which has recently been restored to its old usefulness in the 1934
drought).      Some town folks did not like to have country folks eat
under their front trees because it called flies, but some country
people have recalled that there were some town people who even brought
out fresh water to them and would invite the country women into the
house till time to go.      If the men went by themselves they were
apt to buy crackers and cheese and eat in the store, sitting on a
cracker barrel.  Or they might drop into a restaurant for a bite.  At
Fourth of July celebrations and the old Hamilton Fair, the family went
as a whole, excepting Mrs. Bennett.  They started to the fair early so
the father could see the stock in the morning.  At noon they laid
their dinner out on the ground on a table cloth and were always proud
of the dinner prepared by Mrs. Bennett and the Bennett girls.  Such
dinners were a matter of family pride.      Interviewed  August 15,
1934.


    OLD WELLS AND SPRINGS IN HAMILTON AND VICINITY     Narrators:
Mrs. Gertie Cavanaugh, Joe Davis, and Guy Thompson

     The 1934 drought has brought back many abandoned wells and
springs and caused much discussion among older folks on the subject.
Guy Thompson says that his father Asa Thompson came to Hamilton 1867.
He was a cabinet maker (furniture maker) but there was little demand
for his work.  He knew something of well digging so he and a partner
bought a hand-bore with a board fastened at the top.  By the two
pushing at the ends of the board, they bored a well.  One of Asa
Thompson's well was on the premises of the present J.M. Hill home,
then occupied by the shack of Carr Taylor, a negro here in the
seventies.  Mr. Thompson made a good living out of wells for a few
years for the new homes established here in the 1868 boom.
Another well digger of the late sixties was Martin Christiansen,
father of Mrs. Cavanaugh.  He came here as a farmer and used the well
digging to help out his earnings.  Two well known wells were dug by
him and his brother John.  One was on Mill street south of Parker's
grocery, now covered by the pavement.  This had a chained tin cup and
a horse trough on two or three sides.  Many people in this section got
their water at this public well, till they sank a cistern or well.  It
was good water.  Another Martin Christiansen well was the old one just
south of the old Houston-Spratt and Menefee Bank (present C.A. Martin
stand).  This well served thousands of people for a refreshing drink
and thousands of weary horses too at the horse trough.  During the
drought of 1934 it has been restored to usefulness and shows a steady
stream of water even when subjected to a heavy drain.      An old well
dating to the seventies now closed up, stood on the partnership line
between the Moore home (Houghton Funeral Home) and the George
Rohrbough home (Mrs. Mary Kautz house) on Broadway.      The old McCoy
well dug about 1870 by Wm. McCoy when he started his general store on
South Broadway was closed up when the Hawks garage was built on that
site.  The old McCoy cistern by the McCoy home on same lot is still in
usable shape and stands in the garage about half way back.
Another very old well still going strong was the old A.G. Davis well
dug for the Davis family use when they left the Davis hotel and moved
about 1859 to a house across the street on the present site of
Citizens Trust Company.  This well 80 feet deep was put in good shape
several years ago when Eb Galpin built the brick building now occupied
by the George McPherson Produce store.  It stands inside by the south
wall.      Another old well still much in use is the one built by O.O.
Brown in the early seventies by his two store buildings on south
Broadway.  Its water is so excellent that today you may see people
taking a walk to get a drink there.  It was long known as the Stoller
well and now the place is Souders property.      An old well recently
was brought to light on the Will Gay farm near Mirabile.  This well
may well be nearly 100 years old.  It is on the old Lexington trail,
and probably many a Caldwell county pioneer of the thirties and
forties drank there.  It is going strong.      Abner Frazier of the
New York township recently dug out an old spring for the sake of his
neighbors.  The exact location of the well had been forgotten but he
had heard his father say that grand father Frazier used it, and
knowing its general location it was re-discovered and flows very
strongly today.      Another old spring which has come back in 1934 is
Ponce de Leon.  In the early eighties, this was a well known spring at
Bonanza, then in a boom.  Picnics were held there for the water was
held to be medicinal (Bonanza just missed being a real town because of
quarrels among the leading men).  Then Ponce de Leon ceased to flow
for Shoal Creek changed its course and hid the spring.  In 1934,

owing to dry weather, the creek went down and the spring appeared
again and is giving a fine volume of water.


    THE 1874 DROUGHT IN CALDWELL COUNTY     Narrator:  John T. Lane of
Braymer, Missouri

     John T. Lane who has lived in this community for over sixty years
remembers the 1874 drought here he says "It is the next to the worst
time I ever saw in this section.  The worst was the drought year of
1874.  In that year, it stopped raining in April and didn't rain again
till October.  All vegetation was dead, and it became a very serious
problem to get the necessities of life.  There was no way to get
commodities into the county.  Railroads had not been built down here,
trucks had not been heard of and the only shipping method was the team
and wagon.  People in that day, thru necessity, had to raise or make
nearly everything used."      "During the fall of 1874, there was no
old corn left in the county and no way of getting it.  People did not
have the money to buy with.  There was not even any seed corn.  My
father happened to have a little ready cash, so he sent a team and
wagon to Iowa to buy a load of seed.  The trip required nearly three
weeks.  But the next year was different.  That 1875 year saw a bumper
crop of all kinds in this section.  One farmer who was a heavy feeder
had volunteer corn came up in an old feed lot that made sixty bushels
to the acre and was never cultivated.


    EARLY SCHOOLING BOTH IN CALDWELL AND RAY COUNTIES     Narrator:
Mrs. Lena Baker, 67, of Hamilton, Missouri

     Mrs. Lena Baker, daughter of James and Ella (Wyatt) Lukey was
born in Clay County, Missouri near the town of Smithville.      James
Lukey came from England when he was eighteen years old with his
parents, who settled near Smithville.  The Mother (Ella Wyatt) was
born in Illinois.  She came to Smithville to visit a sister and while
there the Civil War broke out so she decided to remain with the sister
rather than try to go home during such a turmoil.  While there she
fell in love with Mr. Lukey and they were married 1862.      Soon
after this they moved to Lisbonville, a small town in Ray County just
a few hundred yards from the Caldwell County line, and bought the Mill
from Isom Allen.  This Mill was located on Crooked River and was
considered a very unhealthy place to live.  The people who had lived
there were troubled with "Agur" or "The Chills" as was called
sometimes.  Mr. Lukey bought a farm of eighty acres a short distance
from the Mill but on higher ground, so as to get away from the "agur."
He paid $12 an acre for this tract of land.  He rode back and forth to
the Mill each day but this soon became tiresome so he sold out farm
and all and moved to Lawson.  He worked in lumber yards for several
years and finally moved to Plattsburg in Clinton County and it was
here he retired.  Both Mr. and Mrs. Lukey are buried in the Plattsburg
Cemetery.      Mrs. Baker attended several schools when she was a
child.  The country schools would have school for two or three months
according to the money they had.  She would go to one school for their
term, to another for a few months or their term and then on to
another.  They studied what they wanted to and as long as they wanted
to.  She recalls studying long division at one school and then
changing to another school and decided she did not like division and
could not learn it so wouldn't try it any more cause she hated it any
way.  She went one term to Prairie Ridge to Tip Jones, an old time
teacher.  Mr. Lonin Cooper was a pupil there at the same time.
Dr. Jimmie James was the old time Doctor at Lisbonville.  He married
Eliza Cates.      The Lukeys attended church at "Slip Up" church in
Ray county.      As Mrs. Baker became older she decided to teach
school.  While visiting in Lawson with a sister, she decided to "get
up" a Subscription School or Select School, which she did.  Miss
Lillie Smith (Mrs. Ben Kemper of Denver Colorado) and Mrs. Baker had
their school.  They received $1.50 a month per pupil.  At the end of
this term they had a basket dinner and of course had their pictures
taken.  Mrs. Baker has in her possession a picture of this event,
which is very interesting both for styles and photography.      Mrs.
Baker married W.P. Baker of Ray County.  They have lived in Hamilton
most of their married life.  Mr. Baker worked in Dr. Tiffin's Drug
Store for several years and after Doctor's death started a Drug Store
for himself.  Mr. Baker died in 1933 and is buried in the Hamilton
Cemetery.  Mrs. Baker lives with her only son John who now has the
Drug Store.      Interviewed  August 1934.


    HE VOTED FOR LINCOLN     Narrator:  Philip J. Burger, 91, of
Hamilton

     Mr. Burger was born 1843 on the Rhine, Germany, the son of John
C. and Mary Frances (Issler) Burger, who were married 1829.  In order
to have more freedom, they came to the United States.  The father was
a cutler by profession and of course, located in a big city to
practice his trade.  The home was in Philadelphia and little Phil was
sent to a German Lutheran school where he recited in German.  In 1854,
the father decided to go to Iowa and the children were of course sent
to school but alas! it was an English school and little Phil knew no
English so he had to go back in the first reader and learn his a-b-c's
with little fellows while he was twelve years old.  Soon however, he
overcame this obstacle and went where he really belonged.      When
the war came, he enlisted in the 26th Iowa Cavalry.  He had no
hesitation; to him, the country was his country and secession was
wrong.  Many of the fellows were not so eager "to fight for niggers"
which was the felling common at the beginning of the war.      He
tells with great earnestness of the evening dress parade in which the
adjutant read the offer to the Southern States to keep their slaves if
they would withdraw from secession.  Then three months later, again
there was a dress parade and again the adjutant read orders to the
company.  The South had rejected the offer made by the U.S.
Government.  Now the Adjutant asked all who were ready to preforce the
war with shot and shell to step five paces forward.  Every man moved
forward.  From that time on, it was a deeper spirit that moved the
soldiers; they were fighting for a union.      I asked him why he
voted for Lincoln.  It was Lincoln's second term and Phil Burger's
first vote for a president.  He said because in the conduct of the
war, he (Lincoln) had shown that he was a great leader.  Mr. Burger
had no past politics to settle the matter for him.  He saw Lincoln at
a public demonstration about 1862.  He said he was homely, but no one
saw that because he looked grand.      When Mr. Burger decided to
leave Iowa and come to Breckenridge, Mo., to farm in 1878, his Iowa
friends joked him about going down among the Rebels but he told them
that the war was over, there now were no Johnny Rebs.      Interviewed
June 1934.


    A PUBLIC HANGING     Narrator:  Elwood Rogers, 67, of Hamilton,
Missouri

     In these days when hangings are conducted with as much privacy as
possible within walls, the description of a public hanging in 1886 at
Gallatin as given by Mr. Rogers, is of interest.      The criminal to
be hanged was Jump.  He and another fellow Smith had killed in a
drunken quarrel the foreman of the construction work on the railroad.
They had used a Pitman rod of a threshing machine and had disposed of
the dead man in a well out by the old Grand River College.  The body
was found and the crime laid on Jump and Smith, who denied the charge.
One of the two wore a hat which when removed by Mr. Davis father of
the druggist Davis of Gallatin showed the railroad bills in the sweat
band.  They were both condemned to hang, and at the last minute Smith
was reprieved (but later hanged).      A double scaffold was built on
a flat ground by the railroad tracks.  Two hills rose on two sides.
Mr. Rogers rose early to start to Gallatin for the event.  As he got
to Honey Creek, he came on campers who had slept there all night on
their way to Gallatin.  Hamilton sent a big delegation; in fact it was
a dead town that day.  People went from Lexington and even Carrollton.
When he got to Gallatin, Mr. Rogers saw the hills about the scaffold
crowded with people. Box cars at the tracks held people on their tops.
The scaffold itself was built very high, so one could not miss the
sight.  Every where were refreshment stands set up and drinking water
sold at five cent a glass.      Presently the train pulled in from
Maysville where they had kept Jump in jail (The Gallatin jail was
burnt, if Mr. Rogers recalls correctly).  Jump, handcuffed, was
removed from the train, hustled into a buggy and taken to the
scaffold.  He sang "IS MY NAME WRITTEN THERE?" and "WASHED IN THE
BLOOD OF THE LAMB," then the black cap was adjusted and he swang into
eternity.  After it was over, people bought bits of the hangman's
rope.  Some men took their sons there as a lesson never to drink and
commit murder.  It is also interesting to note that the Pitman rod
with which the murder was committed was used as a lever to spring the
trap for the execution of the murderers.  Likewise, it is of interest
that the old well in which the murdered man was thrown was covered
with logs and was never used from that time till now.      Interviewed
August 16, 1934.


ELECTING A PRESIDENT IN THE LATE SEVENTIES AND EARLY EIGHTIES
Narrator:  Mrs. Mabel Gwynn McBrayer, Hamilton, Missouri

     The business of electing a President was a more exciting matter
in former times than now.  First the Civil War was near enough to
color all politics.  The Republicans were Black Republicans to the
Democrats and the Democrats were rebels to the Republicans; and even
the children felt the hatred at Election times and yelled ugly words
at one another.      Again preparing for election day was quite a show
in itself here at Hamilton.  There were numerous torch light parades
in "rallies"; each party gave a rally at night and on that occasion
there would be a long procession of torches, horse back riders, floats
and four sided transparencies showing slogans.  Always there was a
fair young lady as goddess of liberty with forty eight girls as States
and Territories.  Bands played and people yelled.  Along the line of
march, the homes of the opposing partisans were black as night but the
homes of the party giving the rally would be bright with candles and
Chinese lanterns.  Every curtain in the house had to be taken down and
the windows filled with boards on which rested candles.  The yards
were strung with clothes line, trunk ropes and Chinese lanterns.  Some
of the family went on Main street but some always stayed at home to
watch the candles.  Of course it cost money but it was worth it, and
the Chinese lanterns were used year after year for church lawn
socials.      Then if your party won in the election you had a still
bigger time at the ratification which was held just as soon as the
returns had clearly shown what side really won.  That was sometimes
not known for days, for they did not have the quick counting then to
get returns.      On Election day, there was a rough crowd in town and
the men did not like for their women folks to go by the polls; it just
did not look nice.  Men drank and became noisy.      At one Rally at
Hamilton - the Cleveland-Thurman - every one in the parade wore red
bandanas on their head, around their necks etc., because old Allen
Thurman, the Vice President candidate was supposed to use one.  When
Ben Harrison ran for President the Republicans had an old log cabin in
the procession (echoing his grandfather's slogan) while the Democrats
ridiculed him by having a small man wear a hat much too big, "Trying
to wear Grandpa's hat".  When Cleveland was defeated for re-election
the Republicans had a float with E.H. Daley, who resembled Cleveland
rowing a boat "going up Salt River".


    AN EX-SLAVE SPEAKS     Narrator:  Doc (James) McGill, 74, of
Hamilton, Missouri

     Jim McGill was born in slavery and was five years old when he was
freed.  He is the son of Mary Martin McGill and George McGill.  Mary
was owned by Jack Martin, six miles north west of Richmond, Missouri,
who ran a grist mill.  George was owned by Mr. McGill also of
Richmond, Missouri.  The couple were married by a colored preacher and
had five boys and give girls who were the property of Martin, since he
owned the mother.  These were his only slaves.  McGill also had but
one slave family.  Martin sold one of Mary's girls to a Richmond man
named Hamilton for about $1000.  She afterwards came to the town of
Hamilton with her son Green Thompson who is a respectable colored
hostler etc. here.      The colored family lived in a log cabin and
were well treated.  Mr. Martin told them whenever they needed flour or
corn meal to go to the sacks and get what they wanted.  Mary spun and
wove for her mistress as well as for her own children.  Her girls
worked in the mill, in the fields, cut wood like men.      Doc McGill
recalls the day they were freed.  The Richmond negroes visited back
and forth and laughed loudly for they thought they would not have to
work any more.      Then the negro father went down to Camden on the
river and rented a cheap farm and set his boys to work; harder than
they had worked before.  The river kept coming up on his crop every
year; and although he had bought the land he was glad to sell it and
come back to Caldwell County about fifty years ago.      Jim worked
for over twenty years as a handy man to Dr. Tiffin which gave him his
nick name "Doc."  He never had a chance to go to school a day for
there was no colored school near Camden.  He can not read nor write
but can count money and laundry pieces in his job as laundry man.  He
recalls several of the old ex-slaves of the Hamilton vicinity.  There
was Tony Huggins who could read.  He was a preacher.  He owned his own
farm east of town and had a rock quarry where he employed other
darkies.  He as well as Uncle Charley Dunn both peddled hominy and
horse radish.  Uncle Charley gave a yearly possum and sweet potato
dinner at which the aristocratic white folks paid fifty cents a plate.
No trash were invited.      Jim McGill sang a song which he learned
years ago.  He sang slowly with many a twirl and rest in his voice.
"The day is past and gone, the evening shades appear    May we all
remember well, the night of death draws near."      I wonder how old
the song and the tune were.      Interview taken  June 1934.


    BEFORE THE DAYS OF BANK CHECKS     Narrator:  Wm. Stinson, 73, of
Hamilton, Missouri

     Mr. Stinson was born in Illinois 1861 and came with his parents
into Caldwell County in 1872.  His parents were John J. Stinson and
Mary Madden Stinson.  They bought forty acres of land for eight
hundred dollars from the Hannibal and St. Joe Railroad.  The land lay
two miles west and one and one-quarter mile north of present site of
Braymer, Missouri.  They were too late for the bargain prices of
Missouri land.  For instance the Turpin estate near by had six hundred
and forty acres in one place alone while much of it was timber but
some very rich soil bought from the government at twelve and one-half
cents an acre.  Joe Mayes bought some of that estate when it was
settled in 1882.      Mr. Stinson, as well as several others older
people interviewed, recalls the days when few or no checks were used
even in big money deals.  One case illustrates:  On one occasion some
men in the Black Oak country were sending twenty five thousand dollars
to Chas. Schultz of Chillicothe for cattle.  They did not dare carry
it for the transaction was known and the road led through the Marshall
Mill country between high crags and woods.  It was not uncommon for
robbers hearing of cattlemen's deals to lay and wait for the money on
the route.  So the cattlemen rode on ahead empty handed while two
miles behind rode young Stinson - an unpretentious fellow with twenty
five thousand dollars on his person in notes.  He had a swift horse
and at the least suspicion was to ride to Breckenridge.  The money got
through safely.  A neighbor sent his fifteen year old boy to the
Hamilton bank for two thousand dollars to be paid to him for cattle
for the same reason.  A woman carried two thousand dollars in her bag
from Hamilton to Ohio for she did not know about checks.
Interview taken  July 1934.


    BURIAL CUSTOM IN THE 70'S     Narrator:  Irvin Harper, 73,
Hamilton, Missouri

     Mr. Harper's father J.W. Harper kept a furniture store in
Hamilton about 1870 and took on the undertaking duties that went with
it.  He had to make the coffins.  He measured the body then cut
varnished black walnut boards which he kept in stock for the required
length and width.  The box was narrow at the feet and was lined with a
figured muslin made for that purpose.  There was no padding but a row
of fringe hung around the edge.  The lid might be hinged or simply
laid on.  It took about a day to make a coffin.  There were many home
made coffins, especially in the country.      The undertaker did not
have the laying out of the body.  He did no embalming.  The family and
friends renewed the clothes, moistened with soda and water on the face
and hands to prevent discoloration or "mortification settin' in" as
the expression was.  This explains the necessity of "setting up" with
the corpse and on which occasion refreshments were laid out for the
friends.      In the late 60's and early 70's there was a frequent
custom of burying the dead on one's premises.  The Harper children who
died then were buried in the front yard of their home because the
family were not in sympathy with the Rohrbough Cemetery management.
When the new (Highland) cemetery started Mr. J.W. Harper moved his
children there.  Most front yard graves were abandoned about the same
time.  George Putnam's son was buried in a field back of the present
Dawson home (the old Putnam place) but was moved to the old cemetery
when the field was sold 1875.  The first Mrs. Wm. McCoy was buried in
the McCoy yard on the Kingston road, then removed to the old and later
to the new cemetery.  These few examples illustrate the custom.
When the new cemetery was planned the Railroad Company would not sell
them land for the purpose lest it spoil the sale of lots out there.
J.W. Harper bought the land from the Railroad and then sold it to the
town at the purchase price.      Of course there was a simple hearse
those days but often it could not be used since the roads out there
were so bad that it took a lumber wagon to carry the coffin.
Interview taken  July 1934.

MADDUX FAMILY IN LIVINGSTON COUNTY - 1857     Narrator:  M.W.
Maddux, 73, of Breckenridge

     Mr. Maddux was born 1861 in Mooresville, Livingston County,
Missouri.  His parents were Thos. B. and Abigail Reynolds Maddux.  The
father was born in Kentucky, the mother in Tennessee.  Both were
brought when about two years old to Missouri.  The fathers parents
went to Ft. Peinich, Howard County, the mother's to Livingston County.
S.W. Reynolds was in Mooresville township in 1835 and Henry in 1836.
Thomas' mother was left a widow when he was two years old, for his
father was shot down by an Indian arrow when he was returning to Ft.
Reinich after giving a woman medical aid.  So the widow took Thomas
back to Livingston Co., near Mooresville where she died at the age of
ninety-six.  Thomas and wife settled on eighty-three acres of land in
Section 31, Twp 38, Range 25 in 1857 which M.W. Maddux of Breckenridge
still owns.      Thomas was murdered by bushwhackers Nov. 28th, 1865
on his way home from Breckenridge where he had gone for a doctor.  He
left a widow and five children, the youngest having been born the
night of his murder.      His widow continued to live on the farm,
renting out some land and raising cows, sheep, hogs and saddle horses
to support her young brood.  She carded her own wool, spun it, wove
it, and cut and fit it into clothes.  She made yards and yards of
linsey and jeans.  She died in 1880.      M.W. Maddux, the narrator,
started to school at the Watson District to Eliza A. Davis of Daviess
County, who was the first teacher in that district.  Later this
district, which at first covered several miles, was divided into
three.      He was married in 1885 to Lizzie Lutz.  For six years,
they lived in the hewed log house his father had built for his family.
On Jan. 20, 1895, a violent windstorm turned this house over with two
and half revolutions but the family, who were in it, were not
seriously hurt.  Mrs. Maddux was the daughter of Benj. F. and Rebecca
Lutz who moved from Pennsylvania to Daviess County in 1872.  The
Maddux family have ten children, five boys and five girls.
Interviewed  June 1934.


        THE JACKSON FAMILY IN RAY COUNTY IN THE SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES
Narrator:  Mrs. Malvina Leabo, 71, of Hamilton, Missouri

    Civil War Troubles          Country Churches

     Mrs. Leabo is one of sixteen children born to Jacob Jackson and
Martha Ford, being born at Knoxville Ray County Missouri 1863 on a
farm one mile from town.  Jacob Jackson and wife made the trip to
Knoxville from Nashville, Tennessee in a big wagon, in the middle
fifties, to make a better living.  They rented awhile as they looked
around for a bargain in land.  Then War came Jacob enlisted in the
Southern Army and left Mrs. Jackson with the oldest boy six years old
to care for the corn.  She plowed and taught the six year old boy to
run the plow too.  It was all they could do.  The child would cry as
he looked at his bad furrow.  While living near Knoxville, they had a
neighbor John Forson who used oxen to pull wood to town.      In the
early seventies her father bought one hundred eighty acres of land in
Ray County near Taitsville very near the south line of Caldwell
County.  Here her old neighbors were:  John File, Norton Switzer (kin
to the Hamilton Switzers) Cleveland Kelsey (Uncle of her husband Sam
Leabo).  Dr. Gant of Knoxville was their Doctor and after his death
Dr. Wilkerson.  Mrs. Leabo's parents and brother lie in the Pleasant
Hill Cemetery, connected with a Methodist church (formerly) on the Ray
County side.  The Baptists in the seventies had a church nearby at
Cottage Grove and near it is the Cottage Grove Cemetery, both in
Caldwell County.      Every church in that community used immersion
for baptism those days and Mrs. Leabo (then Miss Jackson) was immersed
in Greenwood Creek, commonly used as a baptizing hole.  It was near
Greenwood School.  In the seventies country churches had no organs
unless some member would loan their organ into a wagon and haul it to
the church.  They ordinarily had six months tax school and three
months extra for those who were able to pay the subscription.  There
was too much work at home for any girl to go to school long those
days.      The feminine labor of the farm in Ray County of the sixties
and seventies was told by Mrs. Leabo.  Mrs. Jackson raised enough
cotton to stuff comforts for the big family.  The children gathered
cotton in the bolls (hulls) and picked out the seed.  The Mother
flattened it out in pads about elbow length to use in quilts and
comforts.      Then there was the wool work.  On the first day of May
sheep were shorn.  The family picked out the burrs.  The wool was
carded on carding machines into rolls one yard long and spun into yarn
and wound on broaches.  Each girl (they had three of working age)
would spin enough for three yards of cloth every day.  That was the
old rule for their labor to supply the constant family use.  Then they
reeled it off in hanks of yarn.  Then it was woven into cloth on the
family loom.  They made blankets, wool cloth an linsey cloth for the
small children.      They knit wool socks and stockings and mittens
for every one in the family.  They colored the hose with diamond dyes
making a dull red.  They often sold knit stockings and mittens for
cash or traded them for "boughten" things.      Living at Taitsville
their trading place was Hamilton.  Often Mrs. Jackson would get up
before sun up to get a good start for Hamilton and not get back till
nine o'clock in the evening after all the chores were done.  They
might use the spring wagon or a lumber wagon if many were to go, using
chairs or boards for extra seats.  They took along dinner for man and
beast.      They always went to Fourth of July Celebrations.  You
could not keep her father at home on that day.  It might be at Black
Oak, Polo, Richmond or Hamilton.  They got mail about once a week
usually arranging to visit their Post Office (Taitsville) when their
weekly paper, Richmond Conservator was out.      At the age of twenty
Mrs. Leabo became the wife of Samuel Leabo whose father was Isaac
Leabo of Ray County and Tennessee.  At the time of her marriage to
Samuel Leabo, he could span her waist - a highly desirable waist line
for a young lady of that day.      Interviewed  July 1934.


    THE BORDEN FAMILY IN CALDWELL AND DAVIESS COUNTIES     Narrator:
George Borden, 76, of Hamilton

    Railroad Land     Farmer's Troubles in Early Days     Early Roads

     Frank Borden, father of George, came into Caldwell County in 1869
and bought forty acres of railroad land, two miles south of Hamilton.
When the Hannibal and St. Joseph railroad went through the country,
the railroad had been given every other section ten miles north and
south of the tracks by the government in return for their risk.  Then
they sold or rented this land to new settlers.  The Bordens sold this
land and rented 160 acres south of town; later they moved to the south
part of Daviess County where they bought land again.      They had all
sorts of bad luck common to the earlier settlers, chinch bugs,
droughts (never any as bad as the present one of 1934), army worms,
hog colera, grasshoppers in 1875; in fact, many a settler those days
became discouraged and sold out at a cost below what he had paid, and
went some other place hoping for better luck.  That accounted for the
large number of mover-wagons in the late 70's and early 80's, many
headed east.      Those days in the 60's and early 70's, few roads
were laid out in these parts.  If one avoided creeks, he could ride
over open prairie-land from the Borden home south of Hamilton to Dawn,
near Chillicothe.  Mr. Borden traced the old road that led from the
old Borden home to the very small town of Hamilton.  It came
"cat-a-corner" from John Gibson's farm across the prairie and through
the corner known as the Wilmot house, south of the Park.  Rev. Wilmot
did not live there then but on his farm further south -- the present
farm known as the Walter Whitt place.  The Wilmot 80 there was the
last prairie land to be fenced in between Hamilton and Kingston.  He
did it about 1880.      Mr. Borden has been boring wells around
Hamilton for over fifty years.  He is a practiced "water-witch" and
believes thoroughly in the value of "water-witchin'" in locating water
by the time tried means of a new-growth fork from a peach tree.
He recalled when the park was planted with trees.  It was given as a
gift to the town by the railroad as long as it should be used as a
park.  That was in 1856.  But little attempt to plant it with trees
was made till about 1870.  Then James Mapes, who died here a few years
ago, brought in trees from the woods and planted them.
Interviewed August 21, 1934.

(Mrs. Komora Thornhill says she too knows that for a fact.  Mapes also
planted all the trees in the present Thornhill-Cheshire yard where he
once lived in the Baptist Church yard.)  Interviewer's note.


    COVERED WAGON TRIP TO DAVIESS COUNTY - CHEROKEE STRIP
Narrator:  Mrs. Aurora Williams, 72, of Kidder, Missouri

     Mrs. Williams is a daughter of Wm. A. Morrow and Mary F. Huttram
who came in a covered wagon eighty years ago from Kentucky to Daviess
County.  They had two horses to the wagon and a riding horse hitched
behind.  It took six weeks to come, for there were really no roads,
mainly trails through the prairies.  They stopped off in Indiana to
see some kin, fearing that they would never get back to see them
again, nor did they.  At first while "looking around" they rented.
Finally they bought land on Grand River north of Lick Fork, from
Thornton Talbot.  Mr. and Mrs. Morrow and a daughter are buried in old
Lick Fork cemetery which is still in use, though many of the old
stones are down.      Mr. Morrow died 1872 and the family lived in
Daviess County till 1885 when Mrs. Morrow and those children who were
still at home moved close to Cowgill, four miles north west of the
town.  They lived in the first house south of the Excelsior School
house (there are two Excelsior Schools in Caldwell County, this is the
south one).  This school district was named by Mary McCoy of Hamilton
who was the first teacher in the new school house.      Before Mrs.
Williams married she learned the dress making trade in the dress
making and millinery shop of Mrs. Cosgrove and Martha Glasener, on
south Main street in Hamilton in the late eighties.  She then married
and became a participant in the opening of the Cherokee Strip 1894.
Her husband already owned land which touched the roped line.  The
cowboys and soldiers lived with them.  On account of benefits
received, the soldiers offered to let Mr. Williams go into the strip
the night before as a "sooner" but he wanted to be fair.  He got a
good claim but there was no way of making any money there.  They
stayed on the claim as long as they had any money, then sold out and
came back to Missouri.  Her Mother pioneered in Missouri and she
pioneered in Oklahoma.      Interviewed  August 2, 1934.


    THE McCLELLAND FAMILY IN DAVIESS CO. 1859 AND CALDWELL COUNTY 1863
    Narrator:  Andrew McClelland, 84, of Long Beach California

     Mr. McClelland is the son of James McClelland who in 1835 came
from Smith County Va. to Grundy County Missouri; but there was no
chance for the childrens education there, so in 1859 he moved to
Daviess County where Andrew attended the Singleton School north of
Hamilton.  (It was in the Singleton School at a church session that
John Singleton announced in Andrew's hearing that Lincoln was shot).
Andrew recalls many incidents of his boyhood in Daviess County.
He used to go horseback to the Lenhart Mill with his father.  They put
one of their own horses to the sweep and ground the meal.  (Customers
customerly used their own horses.)  The old millstone at the Hamilton
Library grounds is the grist stone from the Jeremiah Lenhart Mill,
which has come from an older mill - the Hardin Stone Mill.  The two
stones at mills always were different color:  one red one gray.
Lenhart was a preacher, miller, farmer, and wheel wright.      He also
recalls the log rollings.  People would cut good walnut logs half a
foot in diameter to clear off the land.  At night they would roll them
together in a big bonfire and have a good time.  Sunday Schools came
into his experience in the late 50's in Grundy County.  They used
testaments.  Sunday School was held in homes or the School House.
There the Baptists, Campbellites, and Methodists were strong, but any
preacher was welcome.  Everyone turned out to hear any kind of a
sermon because they were treats.      He attended school first in
Grundy County when he had puncheon seats and desks (split logs) around
the room resting on logs.      At Singleton School in Daviess County
he had split log seats.  When he came to Hamilton 1863 to live.  Wm.
Goodman's  sister was teaching the first public school on the site of
John Morton's tin shop.  Then he went on in school here in Hamilton;
his last teacher was Prof. Helm in 1867-8.      James McClelland
having moved his family to Hamilton opened a harness shop in 1863 in
the second floor of Davy Buster's saloon-grocery on the Broadway right
of way.  James had been in the Union Army although he was over the age
limit.  Two of his sons had already been in the war and spent some
time at home as paroled prisoners.  During the war Young Andrew 13 or
14 years old spent much of his time at the Union Camp at Hamilton
placed about where the City Park now stands.  It usually had about 200
men.  He longed to enlist as a drummer boy but he was the oldest boy
at home.  He, his mother, and sisters tended to the crops.  When the
McClelland first came here the father bought a house on the southwest
corner of what is now the North School Building.  There Andrew planted
four trees which still stand.  A few years later, the father bought
the present Emma Doll place (Mrs. Alice Doll her mother-in-law was a
sister of Andrew).  Andrew with the help of Henry and William Atherton
built the house.  Andrew was a carpenter at 18.  He worked in a bunch
of John Courter plaster, Lee Cosgrove painter, Andrew lather, Martin
Bros. (Clark and Sam) carpenters.  This bunch built the first
Methodist Church.      In the old McClelland house (Doll home) the
sills resting on stone foundations are made of oak spleced together
with wood pegs.  He carried 9 saplings at once on his back from
Marrowbone to plant in the yard in April 1869.  One still stands.
In 1869 he decided to teach school.  First he went to Mr. Bostaff,
County Superintendent of Schools at Gallatin.  Bostaph asked him
questions for forty minutes and gave him a second grade certificate.
Then he visited the trustees of different schools and finally got a
school.  He slept in a kitchen of a home where he boarded.  Next year
he got a better job and a better room.  He drew from $35 to 150 for ?
months a year and paid $6 for board, and room and washing provided he
chopped the wood for his own fire.  In the summer of 1869 he taught a
summer school here at Hamilton of 3 months at 35 dollars a month.  The
winter term had been 5 months with another teacher.  Dot Morrow had
the primary, Mr. Mc. the intermediate, and both were in the building
east of the M.E. Church.  Prof. Leander Theodore Hill was the head of
the school.  Some of Mr. McClelland's pupils were the Richardson
children, Mrs. Allee (Miss Whitt), Lottie Reed.  Little attention was
paid to courses; Algebra, Geography, History, Grammer, were some of
the higher branches.      In 1863 there were few stores in Hamilton
and most of these were north of the depot.  There was the John
Burroughs general store in the present picture show corner with Judge
Richardson as clerk and postmaster, then a space kept by Chine Manuel,
then a gunsmith Goodwin, and the McAdoo drugstore.      Claypool Hotel
stood north of the present Martin Grocery.      The Davy Buster Saloon
on Broadway on the right of way; above which was James McClelland
harness maker.  The lumber yard in 1863 was where it is now on the
north side.  Main street had not begun to be a business street and
farm houses were standing where town streets now run.      In 1863 the
church condition in Hamilton was very poor.  Some early services had
been held at the depot without an instrument and few attended.  Some
groups were holding ocassional meetings in homes or the schoolhouse as
the Methodists.  He recalled a debate here between a Campbellite
preacher (hand) and an Adventist over a Bible verse.  People became
greatly excited when talking over religious questions.
Interviewed  June 1934.


    THE MANN FAMILY IN DAVIESS COUNTY     Narrator:  David Mann, 79,
of Hamilton, Missouri

    Journey in Ox-Wagon          Home Made Furniture
Linch-pin Wagons             The First Home     Game In the Fifties
and Sixties.

     Mr. Mann's parents were Milton Mann and Julia Leech married 1851
in Kentucky whence they came later 1853 to Daviess County by a small
ox-team.  They were six weeks on the trip.  The wagon was a linch-pin
wagon; the wheel had no iron around it but had a spindle which made
the wheel revolve and they locked it fast by a key.  If the key
loosened, the wheel came off.  He said that Milton Mann his "pap"
always declared that all they had on arrival in Daviess County was a
"little feather bed, a rifle gun, a $45 debt and nary a cent in his
pocket."  But they did have more.  There were two spring seats in the
wagon - a part of one they now possess; there was a hickory home made
chair, bought by Pap for his Wedding outfit, which was one hundred
years old and yet strong (the interviewer sat in it 1934).  It had a
split bottom or rather hickory bar bottom.  The chair was made without
nails or glue.  The rungs were seasoned.  The forms with the holes
were green.  The latter dried and held the rungs in forever.  The
spinning wheels were absolutely necessary for their existence.  The
Mother did all the weaving and sewing for a big family, the boys
filling the spindles for the loom.      They went to mill at Groves's
Mill.  Once a week (Sunday morning) they had white flour biscuits as a
treat.  Even later than 1865 they saw deer.  When they moved to
Harrison township (still Daviess County) near Breckenridge in Caldwell
County early one morning they ran down three wet young turkeys and ate
the three for breakfast.      Milton Mann was in Daviess County two or
three years when he saw his first blue grass since he had left
Kentucky.  It was a small patch and he thought "It won't live long
here" for everywhere else was prairie grass.      He entered timber
land from the Government at $1.25 an acre for forty acres.  He chose
timber because he had no plough heavy enough to cut the prairie sod.
In former timber land they used a jumping shovel plow made by a local
blacksmith, which jumped over a stump and went on.      His first home
there was a log cabin, in November 1855 built by him and his neighbors
- no floor and a rag being at the window instead of glass.  They built
the stick and clay chimney too rapidly, since winter was on them, and
it fell down part way but they used it that way all winter.      At
their first farm, David often walked to Gallatin (nine miles away) to
do the trading since it was quicker to walk and carry groceries than
to use the ox-team.      While living there, he was in school when the
pupils heard very plainly the big guns at the Battle of Lexington in
Civil War.  The pupils were so upset that the teacher dismissed school
for the day.      At the second home near Breckenridge Mr. Mann
recalls an early church at Lick Fork made of logs with clapboard roof
in bad repair and parts of the wall fallen in.  His parents are buried
in the Lick Fork graveyard; also his grandmother Rhoda Mann
(1809-1878).      The Mann family traces from Maryland to Virginia and
from Virginia to Daviess County Missouri and then to Hamilton.  He
says that they are not related to the other Mann families in Daviess
County or to Jesse Mann who made the first settlement in Caldwell
County.      Interviewed  July 1934.


    IN DAVIESS COUNTY IN THE SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES     Narrator:  Mrs.
James Brookshier, 80, Hamilton, Missouri

    Horse Back Riding          Primitive Baptists     Barter

     Mrs. James Brookshier was born Ursula Drake 1854 in New York
State.  The Drakes came to Daviess County when she was fourteen.  The
father had died in New York and the mother yielded to the desires of
the sons to come west.  Of course there were no fences and few roads
then; you could ride for miles across the prairie.  She and her sister
went horse back to Kidder one day 1869 and passed a building just
being erected.  The workmen told her it was going to be a College.
(It was the present Thayer Hall.)  On that whole trip to Kidder they
did not use a single road.      Girls rode on side saddles with long
black calico (domestic) skirts, which they took off at their
destination and tied to the side saddle.  The horse was hitched to a
hitching post, which were very common.  A few girls could not mount a
horse from the ground.  But most wanted a stump or a block which also
were common sights.  Once in a long while out in the country, a girl
would mount from a man's hand - he boosting her up in the saddle.  But
most men refused to do it.      Mrs. Brookshier was twice immersed.
She joined first the Christian, then the Methodist the church of her
first man, and lastly the Primitive or Hard Shell Baptist, when she
was again immersed, since they did not accept other sects baptism.
This church was the church of her second man, James Brookshier, whose
people always had been of this faith.      To this day, she is
faithful to this sect.  One Church was and is near Polo and another is
at Richmond.  In Polo, once a year is held the "June Meeting" a sort
of a camp meeting.  The Primitive Baptists have certain peculiarities.
They use no musical instruments in the church house.  They allow no
eating in the church.  They do not take up collections or have
sociables to raise money for the preacher.  He supports himself
although they pay his traveling expenses.      This Primitive Baptist
Church was an early one in Caldwell County.  The Penney family, who
were here in the Fifties belonged to it and Rev. Eli Penney farmer and
preacher near Mirabile was a leading light.  His son James was also a
farmer and preacher without pay for preaching.  J.C. Penney, the Chain
Store man is a son of James.  He sometimes attends these "June
Meetings" at Polo in honor to the memory of his father and
grandfather, although he does not belong to the sect.      When Mrs.
Brookshier was a young woman she knitted two pairs of double-knit
mittens and took them to a Hamilton store taking in return two calico
dresses, the calico being twelve and one-half cents a yard.  Barter
was common at the stores then.  When a farm wagon drove up before the
board platforms in front of stores the wife usually carried in farm
made commodities to trade for muslin, calico, thread, sugar and
coffee.  Butter was graded in price by the name of the woman who
churned it.  One woman could get twenty five cents another only
fifteen cents a pound, for the trade knew their butter makers.
Interviewed  January 1934.


    OLD STYLE WAGONS AND OLD CEMETERIES NEAR HAMILTON ON THE NORTH
Narrator:  Frank Stewart, 78, of Hamilton, Missouri

     Frank Stewart, a retired farmer lived as a youth three miles
north of Hamilton near the Daviess County line.  He knows much about
the old graveyards and burial places in that vicinity and also is
acquainted with old style wagons.      He recalled seeing a few
Conastoga wagons pass the farm in the sixties when he was young, but
he knew the old style type without knowing the name.  He said they
were boat shaped, high back and front.  But the wagon used here in the
sixties and early seventies was the stiff tongued wagon, the rear end
of the tongue absolutely immoveable without the several joints between
the tongue and the wagon that mark the present limber tongued wagon.
The front of the tongue was very loosely attached to the horse.  The
horse wore no yoke and the tongue was attached to the chest girth by
chains nearly a yard long, yoke-chains.  If the front wheels of a
wagon went in a rut, up flew the tongue and hit the horse in the nose.
     Mr. Stewart said that men used to drink whiskey heavily before
going into the woods and deep weeds for "whiskey killed the poison of
a snake bite."      There were many private burial places near his
fathers home.  On the farm known as the Harve Bainter place or old
Lewis farm north of town, two slaves were buried north of the house at
a gateway to a pasture.  You still had to drive over the mounds in
1865 to get into the pasture.  On the old Charley Morton farm the site
of several unmarked graves is known.  Once they were said to have been
fenced in, but the fence fell down and now people farm over them.
Charley Morton moved his dead from there.  On the old James place
stands a lone slab stating the name of a girl and giving her age as
eighteen; it is very old.  In the Sell graveyard over in Daviess
County near Marrowbone Creek Bridge are said to be forty eight graves
and fifteen years ago but one stone was left.  The Whitt graveyard in
Daviess county toward Honey Creek received many early Hamilton dead.
It existed in the sixties.      The Singleton graveyard four miles
north on the Gallatin road lies in the timber.  The stones which are
left lie flat among the trees.  Hamilton people were often taken there
in the time between the founding of the town and the start of our
first cemetery (Rohrbough) in 1868.  When that cemetery was started,
some of these bodies were moved to Hamilton, as the Penney boy,
originally there but now in the Highland Cemetery (two removals); the
Thornton child (Jamie's Uncle who died 1866) was first buried in
Singleton.  Singleton graveyard started in the early sixties and was
on the Singleton farm, later the Prouty farm.  The Singleton family
used to be well known here.  A Richardson girls married a Singleton
and one of their sons Otis Singleton was for years a Government
printer in Washington D.C.      McCrary cemetery was started almost
one hundred years ago, when the original McCrary died of typhoid fever
ninety nine (99) years ago and a burial plot was begun on the McCrary
family land.  It now lies in the timber in South Daviess County near
the county line.  Hamilton People continued to bury there even after
our town cemeteries started, because their people lay there.


    LIFE IN INDIAN RESERVATION     Mrs. Ellen (Johnson) Primm, 65, New
York Township

     Mrs. Ellen Primm daughter of William and Susan (McKean) Johnson
was born in Williamsburg Kentucky.  She attended the schools in the
Cumberland Mountains.  Most of her teachers were men as the big boys
went to school until twenty or twenty two years old and were rather
difficult, at times, to manage.  There were no High School close so
the eighth grade was as far as they went in their education.      At
the age of fifteen Mrs. Primm (the baby of the family) ran away from
home and married Henry Floyd a neighbor boy.  They lived in Kentucky
three years and then moved to Dunbar Oklahoma then an Indian
Reservation.  Mr. Floyd bought and sold stock while Mrs. Floyd "run" a
store and the Post Office.  Mrs. Floyd says the Indians would travel
twenty to thirty wagons at a time going by there to Texas and would
stop at her store for provisions.  She could not understand them so
they would go to the shelves and get what they wanted but always paid
her.  She was frightened at first but soon become accustomed to their
habits.      The Floyds lived there for about seven years then one day
decided to leave.  They started out with their babies (three) in a
covered wagon and traveled twenty eight days.      They finally
settled in Cherokee Nation another Reservation.  The Comanche, a full
blooded tribe lived across the river from this tribe.  Mrs. Floyd
recalls one day seeing an Old Indian Squaw from this tribe come to the
Floyd's spring and dipping up a pan of water to wash her hand, she
washed and washed then finally turned up the pan and drank it.  These
Indians were dirty and "way behind times."  Henry butchered and sold
meat to them as they had no idea of how to butcher a beef.  She says
the little papooses would come to the butchering block and grab
entrails and eat them right down.      The Floyds had folks living in
Caldwell County so decided to come to Missouri.  They settled in New
York township and farmed until Henry died 1905.  Mrs. Floyd married
Ceph Primm 1913.  The Floyds had eight children living around near by,
but have scattered since.  Mr. Primm died 1934 and is buried in the
old Cox Graveyard.      Mrs. Primm is a little, stooped woman which
she says is caused from hard work and so many trials and tribulations.
     Interviewed  August 1934.


    HOME STEADING IN KANSAS     Narrator:  Albert Bolen, 73, of
Hamiton, Missouri

     Mr. Bolen was born in 1861 in Vinton County, Ohio, ten miles
north.  In 1885 he and his wife left Ohio for Kansas to grow up with
the country; as so many have said.  There was a whole train-coach of
Ohio emigrants on that trip.      Mr. Bolen went to Kansas in the boom
years of the 80's when covered wagons went through Missouri towns with
big signs "Kansas or Bust."  A year or two afterwards, the same wagons
might return with the sign "Kansas and We Busted."  Perhaps one half
of the homesteaders did not stay to prove up their claims, for lack of
moisture and bugs spoiled the corn crops which most of them planted.
On getting to Kansas, at first Mr. Bolen rented; then desiring a home
of his own, he and his wife took up a homestead in Stephens County
which was not yet organized.  Everything was very new.  Prairie grass
was everywhere - as were the bones of buffalo, which men collected and
sent off to factories for fertilizer.  Not a tree could be seen.  Not
a bird was seen or heard of that first year.  They had hundreds of
jack rabbits, coyotes, rattlesnakes, wild horses and some antelopes as
late as 1886.      They were far from any stream, hence the
homesteaders dug wells.  Mr. Bolen's well was one hundred fifty feet
deep and it took seventeen days to dig it with spade and shovel.  He
paid twenty-five cents a foot for the work.  One Joe Vinton, also of
Vinton County, Ohio, who was a regular ground-mole when it came to
digging deep wells, did the work.      Their fuel was "buffalo chips"
with which the ground was covered.  Mrs. Bolen also said she had baked
bread in a sheet iron stove with dry weeds as fuel.     The terms of
getting a homestead was to stay five years; then the farmer got one
hundred sixty acres.  Of course there was the tree-claim which some
people used to get their land.  They had to plant ten acres of trees
and get their quarter section (160 acres).  Mr. Bolen was not able to
raise enough on his place to keep his family, so he became a freighter
and hauled lumber and goods from the railroad station at Hartlin.  He
hauled lumber for his own home near Woodsdale forty miles.  Although
he had a wood house, many people had sod houses.  Buffalo sod was cut
into strips twenty-eight inches long, fourteen inches broad and four
inches thick.  They were laid to gether in brick fashion and stuck of
their own power.  they were cool in summer and hot in winter.      Mr.
Bolen came to Caldwell County thirty-eight years ago and bought land
in the Mill Creek district - the farm now owned by John Potts.
Interviewed  July 1934.


    KENTUCKY LIFE IN THE SEVENTIES     Narrator:  Ed Vaughn, 72, of
Hamilton, Missouri

    1.  Horseback Riding          2.  Civil War                    3.
Droughts                  4.  Centennial Year     5.  Driving Oxen
with a Limber Tongue

     Mr. Vaughn was born in Estell Co., Kentucky on a farm and stayed
there until he was 22 years old.  He followed his sister, Mrs. Robert
Cash, to Caldwell Co., Mo., and worked the Kenney farm near Kidder
which belonged then to Mr. Cash.      The Vaughn family in Kentucky
had been slave owners before the Civil War.  Their community during
the war was about 50-50 in sentiment.  Even their own family was
divided.  The father followed the Union because he thought secession
was wrong, while one of the sons fought for the south.  The Vaughn
home was not molested because the father was a strong Mason.
Every boy and girl of well-to-do parents were given a horse and saddle
at an early age, and that provided them a way to go places.  When a
young couple went out to-gether, each provided their own way
generally.      There was a terrible drought in 1880 for one hundred
five days.  Mr. Vaughn's father raised just enough feed to get through
the winter.  In the spring, he paid a dollar a bushel for seed-corn
and feed.      He recalls vividly riding to town to attend the big
Fourth of July celebration in 1876 when the nation celebrated the
centennial of its birth.  There were fire crackers, fire works,
cannons, lots of whiskey and a half-drunk orator.  He said he could
still picture some of the fashionable clothes he saw on that occasion.
     One of his interesting experiences in Kentucky was driving steers
over the hilly land.  He said that it was not at all uncommon to use
two yoke wagon and from that up to eight yoke could be hitched
together.  A chain on each side ran from one yoke to the one back and
this last chain was hitched to a limber tongued ox-wagon.  There were
no lines but the driver used a buckskin whip by which he controlled
the steers.  Oxen, if uncontrolled, had a tendency to make for streams
of water.  Steers were broken to driving at two years and were
splendidly fitted for the heavy loads on Kentucky hauls.  Every steer
knew his name and obeyed at once.  "Whoa-haw-Buck" meant for the steer
called Buck to turn to the left.  About one-fourth of the hauling was
done in the 70's and 80's by oxen.  The stiff tongued wagon, used for
horses, which in Missouri has given way to the limber tongue is still
the favorite type in hilly Kentucky.


    THE McQUEENS -- PIONEERS IN IOWA     Narrator:  Chas. McQueen, 78,
of Hamilton, Mo.

    1.  Going West in 49          2.  Early Schools
3.  Early Styles              4.  Early Sewing Machines

     Mr. McQueen's father, John McQueen (1817-1893) was born in
Scotland.  He brought his mother and two sisters to America to improve
their circumstances.  They lived one year in New York then moved to
Galena, Illinois.  In 1849, he joined a wagon train for the gold
fields of California.  There were one hundred ten men, forty wagons
and six yoke of oxen to each wagon.  Not knowing what was ahead, they
filled their wagons with materials ill fitted for their expedition.
They were the first wagon-train to cross the plains and found going
very hard.  There were no bridges and they swam the cattle through the
water and cut down trees to make pontoon bridges.  They passed through
St. Joseph and went on the Great American Desert (as Kansas was then
called).  They ran out of water.  Men and animals suffered, and died.
As the oxen died, they began throwing stuff out of the wagons to
lighten the load and went on.  When they got to their destination they
had been out one year and had three oxen and the front wheels of one
wagon.  They stopped at Feather River close to Sacramento City and all
found gold in small amounts.  They lived in a log cabin four years and
three months.      Mr. McQueen returned by way of Cape Horn in a
sailing vessel, back to New York and then to Galena and home.  He then
bought land in the Iowa Prairie at $1.25 per acre.  Later he bought
one and one-half sections in Cherokee County, Iowa, one hundred eighty
miles west of his former home, which the McQueen family still hold.
Mr. Chas. McQueen told much of his boyhood days in Iowa.  They had
begging Indians who were different from the wild Indians which his
father had met on the western plains who shot people with arrows.
They had no roads, no bridges in the 60's and 70's.  At school, he
learned the 3 R's; the McGuffey reader ended one's education.
Examinations were unknown.  Teachers boarded round on the patrons--one
week at a home.  School lasted four months a year and that in the
coldest months.  Seats and desks were built around the wall, and the
pupils faced the wall; turning around to face the teacher to recite.
The teacher was very fortunate if she taught in a boxed-up school, for
most of them were log-schools.      Men's and boy's clothes were
somewhat different from now.  Boys wore boots with copper toes if they
wanted to be stylist.  For boys of 5-16 years, there were "jimmies" or
vests of coarse cloth held by a buckle in front (called by Ohio
frontiers-men "wampus").  Boots of genuine leather cost only $3.00 and
they came up to the knee.  They had bootjacks to pull off  boots and
the straps pulled them on.  Hog grease kept the leather soft, also
kept out the water.  No male person wore a necktie; why do it when a
long beard would hide it?  However the gold front collar button often
had a fancy set for show.      Enemies of stock were coyotes and
wolves.  There were regular hunts to destroy them.  The blizzards in
Iowa were terrible.  People got lost and their bodies might lie for
weeks before found.      The old dinner horn (some animal horn) hung
at the back door and it was the duty of the women folks to blow it a
half hour before meals.  A gourd from their own garden always hung at
the well.  There was no white sugar, all was dark brown.  Candy was
rare except for a Christmas treat, and Christmas brought simple gifts
those days of the sixties up in Iowa.      Mr. McQueen never saw a
kerosene lamp till he was ten.  They used candles and grease lamps.
The coal-oil was dark colored.  The new lamp his father bought had a
sign on it "Never move after you light it."  The body of the lamp was
bronze, so you stuck a straw in to see how much oil was there.

     All sewing was done by hand till his father bought a sewing
machine "Little Giant" about 18 inches long.  It was screwed on to any
table you had.  The children turned the knob on the wheel while the
mother directed the garment under the needle.  There was no belt on
the machine.


    PIONEERING IN KANSAS     Narrator:  Mrs. Nellie Scott of Kansas

     This is my mothers history.  The maple sugar making and the
sleigh rides on Lake Erie are the only frolics I recall hearing her
mention.  The quilting and husking bees we so often heard of from the
older generation seem not to have entered in her life.  Possibly she
was too young to have shared in these things, possibly too busy, for
she married so young that every minute and all her strength was
consumed by her family.      Julia Clarissa Curtis, daughter of Julia
Miller and Richard Curtis was a direct descendant of Richard Warren of
the Mayflower and of Philip Delano the French Huguenot, and both
progenitors of a long line of pioneers who would settle and start the
rudiments of culture when they would move on to repeat the same in a
new region.      Mother came to Kansas 1870, the wife of Jeremiah
Stewart, a Homeopathic physician.  My Mother's mother was a pioneer
from Vermont to Portage County Ohio in 1818 in ox-drawn sleds cutting
their way through the forests.  The Miller forbears, Hosea and Isaac,
had gone from Massachusetts to settle the town or township of
Deimmerston Vermont 1770.  Isaac and his eight sons rendered patriotic
service in the Revolution.  So the love of conquering the unknown -
the spirit of pioneering - was in the blood.      Mother and father
started from Indiana to Kansas September 1, 1870 in a covered wagon
accompanied by a number of others families intent on taking up
homesteads.  My parents settled in Washington County one of the
poorest counties of north eastern Kansas.  There were all the
privations possible, blizzards, cyclones, droughts, grasshoppers, what
the drought left, the grasshoppers ate up.  The most available food
was the wild jack rabbit but it became stale as a regular diet.
Building upon the prairie, it was too rocky to cut and build a sod
house and no timber at hand for a log cabin.  The material used was a
cheap lumber and built in what is known as a box house, the boards
running up and down with battings used to cover the cracks.  I have
forgotten the size of the house which we always called the "Homestead
House" but it was not large enough to have sleeping rooms apart form
the kitchen and living room, which was one and the same, hence the
attic was utilized, access to which was gained by a ladder on the
outside.  The smaller children were tucked away in the trundle bed,
lodged when not in use under the large bed.  Four children were born
in the Homestead House.      A district school was established and in
the school house the church service was held, usually by the faithful
circuit rider who "put up" with the doctor and his family.  There were
few books to borrow among the neighbors.  My mother relied on the
Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Toledo Blade for current events and on
Godey's magazine for fashion and home articles.  Once when she was out
of something to read, she sent my eldest sister to a neighbor to ask
if she had something to read.  The neighbor offered her the Bible,
much to my sister's embarassment, for the Bible was a well known book
in our home.      In those early days, when the family was to attend a
gathering of any sort or a trip to town taken it was done in the farm
wagon.      There were few orchards and almost no berry patches
productive then.  Most of the fruit was wild plum, gooseberry and
grape.  Not much jelly was made because sugar was scarce and
expensive.  Most of the fruit was made into butter where sorghum could
be used for sweetening.      During the later years of my mother's
life, many of the hardships had disappeared and life was more
comfortable.  She died January 1 1906 and was buried two days later in
the worst snow storm I have ever seen.  No one was able to attend the
interment but the sexton and his helpers, the undertaker, the
minister, and two of her children.                        Interviewed
July 1934.


    IRISH PIONEERS IN IOWA AND OKLAHOMA     Narrator:  Mrs. Julia
Tofflemire of Breckenridge, Missouri

     Mrs. Julia Tofflemire, mother of Dr. C.D. Tofflemire of
Breckenridge, Missouri was born in Providence Rhode Island June 23
1866.  At the age of six weeks, her parents went by train to
Providence Illinois.  Provisions were high, flour being $16 a barrel.
One of her recollections of the life in Illinois was the candles her
mother made.  They always had one large candle that would burn all
night on Christmas night.  Her parents had only been over from Ireland
a year when Julia (Sheila as they called her in Irish) was born.  Her
father, Daniel Sullivan came from Kahersiveen County Cary and her
mother Catherin O'Brein came from Bantry County Cork.  The name in
Ireland was O'Sullivan, the O being a sign of the nobility but after
coming to this country they dropped the O.      When Julia was eight
years old they went in a covered wagon to Greefield Iowa and bought a
hundred sixty acre farm from James Calman of Des Moines.  They lived
on this farm for years keeping the family from 1875 until 1915.  They
lived in a tent and in a covered wagon while they hauled lumber twenty
miles from Creston, each trip taking two days.  When their house was
nearly finished a big wind storm blew away the tent and blew in the
end of the house.  The small creek came up and carried away lots of
their household furnishings.      It was the custom on the open
prairie for the community herdsmen to take cattle out and herd them
all day.  He received $1.50 a month for each cow.      They built a
sod barn of thick pieces of sod about two feed square.  For windows
they used lime barrels with open spaces between the staves.  They set
out willow and cotton wood shoots and planted maple seeds for trees
and started a young orchard.  The wolves were thick and killed their
pet dog and got after their young pigs.  For a Christmas treat they
had bakers bread, candy, tea with cubed sugar in it.      They went
thirty two miles to Stuart to exchange wheat for flour and went twenty
miles to Creston to church.  Every Saturday Julia rode horse back
across the open prairie nine miles to Greenfield and carried a bucket
of eggs to exchange for sugar, tea, and tobacco.      In the fall,
Julia started to school, making the first path across the prairie to
the String Town School House.  The main road afterwards followed this
same route.  There was no bridge so she forded the creek, the only
bridge being west several miles by the big buffalo wallows.  These big
hollows in the ground were the salt licks and wallows of the buffalo
are still to be seen there.  One day while in Greenfield, a prairie
fire started cutting her off from home.  She found a narrow place and
jumped her horse across the blaze but the horses tail was burned
getting across.      At twenty one she was married to Charles Jerome
Tofflemire.  They moved to St. Joseph Missouri to live.  He worked in
the K.C. shops as blacksmith.  The K.C. shops, now the Burlington
Round House were then the south edge of St. Joseph.  Lake Contrary was
all wild country then.  Mr. Tofflemire shot wild ducks there and she
used the feathers for baby pillows.  A grocery store near their house
was a favorite loafing place of Jesse James known as Jesse Howard.  He
was a great friend of Wilkerson, the boss blacksmith, and often came
to visit the men.  He was considered a very quiet fellow and a model
citizen.  They were very much surprised after his death to find out
who he was.  He was a familiar figure on his fine saddle horse.
After they had lived there ten years they went to Oklahoma by covered
wagon and took up a homestead.  The town of Fay now stands on this
homestead.  They built a log house for it was wild country.  Their
land lay between the two forks of the Canadian River but there were no
bridges near.  They forded the river to go to Watonga fourteen miles
away.  There were plenty of wild turkeys and prairie

chickens and deer were thick.  The deer loved to eat watermelon and
raided their patch often.      They raised a big patch of melons and
raised two crops of sweet potatoes on the same ground each year.  Also
raised lots of peanuts and the sun roasted the peanuts in the sand.
Snakes were common and came in the house too.  Mrs.

Tofflemire possessed a heavy butcher knife and she became quite expert
at throwing this knife and killing snakes on the log wall.      Some
one stole property from the Indians and they were very much excited,
threatening to take the war path.  The sound of the war drums carried
for miles and the settlers were warned to gather together.  But the
militia came and quieted them so there was no trouble.      Mr.
Tofflemire's health failed and after two and half years they went back
to Lenox Iowa.      Interviewed  October 1933.


    PIONEER OZARK CABINS IN THE SIXTIES     Narrator:  John Ferguson,
90, of Iberia, Mo.

     Mr. Ferguson came into the Ozarks after serving in the Civil War
and settled near what is now Iberia, Miller County.  The 1860-70
period was quite a pioneering period in that county.  He did as others
did after arriving at his new land--he first built a home.      The
little log cabin was usually built the next day after arrival.  With
several helpers, it was a day's job.  The logs might be split; or if
time pressed, they would be left in the round.  After the cabin was
up, that night the neighbors for miles around came to dance, which
welcomed the newcomers and helped them get acquainted.      Most of
the cabins were one-room affairs; although sometimes there was an
attic under the roof where the children climbed up a rude ladder and
slept.  Few early cabins in the Ozarks had any widows, because glass
cost too much and had to be brought too far.  To admit light and air,
the door had a sliding board at its upper part.  This could be opened
little or much.  Through it, too, the owner could peer if he heard an
intruder, or he could shoot wild game in his vicinity.  Mr. Ferguson
told of killing five wild turkeys this way one fall morning.  The
latch string literally hung on the outside of the door, by which the
door was opened.      Inside the door, over the door was the faithful
pioneer gun, resting either on a forked stick or on deer's antlers.
The walls usually whitewashed logs although occasionally a family
might cover the logs with boards.  The plank floors gradually took the
place of puncheon floors.  The housewife kept her floor white with a
cornshuck mop, and on Saturday she scrubbed it getting down on her
hands and knees.  Only the higher-ups had rag-carpets.  The corded
bedsteads in the corner were built into the house and floor, and had
great quilts which hung to the floor and hid the articles stored under
the bed.  The trundle bed was pushed there too in the daytime, for
they needed every inch of space in that one room.  A bench built into
the wall gave added seats at the table.  The two spinning wheels - one
for wool, one for flax - stood by the fire place.      The great stick
and clay fireplace served for heating and cooking, since a stove was
unheard of in those parts till 1870, and a luxury till 1875.  No one
used matches, so the fire was never allowed to go out.  If it did, one
had to borrow hot coals from a neighbor - which often meant a long
ride.  Lighting was done by candles or by a rag twisted in a dish of
lard.


    WASH DAY IN OZARK PIONEER DAYS     Narrator:  Mrs. Wm. Irwin, 78,
of Iberia, Mo.

     We lived in the 60's in a clearing which father had made when he
and mother came to Miller County in a mover-wagon.  Mother died of
malaria fever and as I was an older girl, much of the work on washday
fell on me.  It was a mighty poor housekeeper who did not wash on
Monday.  So I would crawl out of bed two hours earlier to get our big
wash done by ten o'clock.      After I put on the ground grain (which
stood us for coffee) to cook at the fireplace, I hurried down to the
branch.  There I dipped water into the great iron kettle which swung
over open fires.  Some women near us heated the wash water by throwing
into it red hot stones from a fire but our way was easier.  After the
breakfast work was done, we went back to the branch and poured the hot
water in tubs which were made of sawed off barrels.  Then the clothes
were smeared with soft soap (which we made) and put into the tub.
This soft soap was made twice a year and answered for both laundry and
toilet purposes.      After the clothes had soaked half an hour, we
stretched them on clean wide boards and vigorously beat them with a
clothes paddle or a clothes spanker as some call it.  This took the
place of the wash board which we did not have.  This was not as bad
for the clothes as it sounds, for all our things were made of a coarse
homespun which lasted a long time.  As a matter of fact, I did not
have a store calico dress till I was eighteen.      Next came the
wringing which was done by hand.  A sheet was wrung by two people
holding the sheet and twisting in opposite directions.  Our boilers
were either the big iron kettles or a regular copper boiler with a rim
but no handles.  Usually we had three boils by the well established
rules that governed a wash.  The first had the men's white shirts, our
Sunday white skirts and dresses, sheets and pillow cases.  The next
had towels and underwear, the third dish cloths, dust rags and grimmy
things, all three boils boiled in the same suds.  There was no
blueing, so we rinsed our clothes in three waters to take out the suds
and dirty water; and our clothes were very white.      We had no
clothes lines and no clothes pins.  We spread the wash on the grass or
bushes or even on the broad clean rocks.  The sun whitened them all
day long.      Our ironing day was Tuesday.  The irons were heated red
hot in the fireplace and then lifted out by tongs and cooled a little
in a pail of water.  The men's white shirts had stiffened bosoms and
often I spent a half hour on one.


    "CAVE" WILSON OF MILLER COUNTY     Narrator:  J.W. Waite, 68, of
Iberia, Mo.

     John Wilson was one of the first hunters in the Osage country of
Miller Co., Mo.  He located 1822 on Tavern Creek and furnished that
county with a tale thrilling enough to be a legend but it was really a
fact.     He was born in Ireland about 1776 and came with his whole
family into a very wild country to live.  Almost from the first the
other settlers called them Uncle Jack and Aunt Nellie because of their
hospitality.  He got the nickname Cave Wilson because he and his
family lived in a roomy cave till he had means and time to build a
house.  This cave was near Tavern Creek at the mouth of Barren Fork.
He found a cave higher up on the bluff which he chose to be his tomb.
He frequently explained to his wife and his friends how he wished to
be put away.  He made a coffin and kept it in the tomb.  When he died
in 1855, his wife followed his directions.  She had his entrails taken
out and his body filled with salt; salt was packed about his body in
the coffin.  A demijohn of the best old liquor was placed inside the
tomb.  The sepulchre was walled up and all who attended the funeral
were treated to dinner and drinks.  After seven years his friends were
to met there, open the tomb and drink from the demijohn in his memory.
     When the seven years had passed, the old timers say that the tomb
was opened but the whisky was gone, probably stolen by some wandering
Civil War soldier, for the story was widely known.      Many Miller
County people declared that they have seen the concrete which sealed
up the cave-tomb again after the demijohn disappeared.  They all
declared that Cave Wilson's body is still lying in the cave, probably
still well preserved in salt.


    THE CLAVES, GRUNDY COUNTY PIONEERS     Narrator:  Mrs. Wm.
Shepard, 84, of Hamilton, Missouri

     Mrs. Shepard, or as her husband tenderly called her "the old
woman" is a daughter of Alex Clave and Catherine Crawford both
Emigrants from Scotland before 1841.  They lived for awhile in New
Jersey where Mrs. Shepard was born.  Clave got a homestead in
Wisconsin and took up land there.  Then followed a long list of moves
in various counties of Missouri.  Finally they bought a Grundy county
farm home where Mrs. Shepard met her husband.      Mrs. Shepard is
well known over the State because she and her sister Mrs. Jeanette
Briggs of Trenton are probably the oldest living twins (84) in the
United States.  They are still quite similar and as young women it was
very difficult to tell which was which.      She described the home
work of the girls of the sixties in Grundy County.  Their father had
his own sheep.  They used the wool for clothing and filling for
comforts and quilts.  The girls carded the wood, spun it and wove it.
No wonder they wove their own wool and cotton for muslin those days
cost $1 a yard, other goods accordingly.  The Mother was clever at
cutting out garments and that was her job.  Styles of patterns were
not changed for several years.  Five years was a medium time for a
style.  The color of the wool was varied by dye.  Maple bark made
purple and the purple thread mixed with the natural tan homespun made
a beautiful stripe.      Every girl carried a starch bag around her
person made of a three inch square gathered together and filled with
starch.  It corresponded to the modern girl's powder puff, and took
the shine off the face.  The girls wore corsets and hoop skirts and
later bustles tied around the waist.  Occasionly the knot would slip
and the bustle dropped down and made the wearer feel very cheap.
Mrs. Shepard said, "that in Grundy County days, Christmas did not mean
much."  Pappy took a load of punkins to town and got toys with the
"punkin money."  There were mainly sweet sugar candy animals made in
bright colors and put up on a shelf to look at but not eaten for
months.  Most other candy was home made.  Pop corn balls were nice
treats for Christmas.      Interviewed  July 1934.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Karen Walker.
1281 NW Bus 36 Hwy, Hamilton, MO 64644

USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free genealogical
information on the Internet, data may be freely used for personal research
and by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all
copied material.

These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or
presentation by other organization or persons. Persons or organizations
desiring to use this material for profit or any form of presentation, must
obtain the written consent of the file submitter, or their legal
representative, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of
this consent.
------------------------------------------------------------------------