Early History Springfield, Greene County, Missouri >From "History of Greene County, Missouri," St. Louis: Western Historical Company, 1883. ********************************************************************** Prior to the year 1830 the land on which the busy city of Springfield now stands had for occupants, the Kickapoo, Delaware, and the Osage Indians, who sang their songs and danced and hunted over its surface with none to molest or make them afraid. Anterior to the red Indians, sometime in the remote past, so long ago that no man's memory for cen- turies hath run back to the exact time, that mysterious race of beings, the Mound Builders, were here, and, departing, left behind them their flint arrow and lance heads, their stone axes and pottery, to tell of their presence. About the year 1810, or possibly not until after the close of the War of 1812, a band of Kickapoo Indians built a village on what is now the fourth ward, or southwestern portion of the city. In its prime this village contained about 100 "wick-a-ups" or huts, compo- sed of bent poles covered with bark, grass or skins, and a population of perhaps 500 souls. The Kickapoo town was abandoned by its inhabit- ants about 1828. Northward were the enemies of the Kickapoo, the Osage and to the south or southwest were the Delawares, friends of everyman, whether his skin was red, white, or copper colored. The Delaware town stood about ten miles southwest of Springfield, founded about the year 1800, or at the time when the tribe, once great and powerful, came west of the Mississippi. Some of the houses in the Delaware town were quite respectable structures, being built of logs, chunked and daubed, with good clapboard roofs and puncheon floors, and some of them with two and three rooms. The chief, old John Anderson, had a very comfortable home. The traders also were respectably domiciled. Seven miles south of Springfield, at the Patterson spring, on the James, was another Indian town, in which dwelt a small branch of the Delawares, called the Muncies who had come from Central Indiana. The chief of the Muncies was Swan- nick, a lazy, fat fellow, who was a son of old John Anderson, a sort of crown prince as it were. Swannick was a "good Indian," who was born tired and was harmless enough. He wanted badly to have a white wife, and frequently tried to buy one from the few settlers here then. The Muncies went away with the Delawares, in October, 1831. There were marrying and giving in marriage between the whites and Indians in those days. Old John Marshall, who owned the famous mill at the mouth of Findley, had an old fat squaw for a wife. Marshall did not leave with the Delawares, but went the following spring, in 1832. Other white men had squaw wives, as has been narrated. J. P. Pool, the blacksmith of the Delawares, employed by the Government, was a half-breed, who had a very pretty white woman for a wife. About the middle of February, 1830 Wm. Fulbright, John Fulbright, and A. J. Burnett, from Tenn., settled near the Fulbright spring, and put up some cabins, built of small oak poles. Previously in the fall of 1829, John P. Campbell and his broth- er Madison, Tennesseeans also, had "claimed" the land occupied by the Fulbrights, but cutting their names on some trees in the vicinity of the spring. Returning to Tennessee, J. P. Campbell and his brother-in- law, Joseph Miller, set out for Missouri in the month of February following, and on the evening of March 4th, encamped near the "natural well," a little north of the former residence of R. J. McElhany. Mr. Burnett having completed a cabin on the same site, and Mr. Campbell claiming priority of ownership, evidenced by his initials on an ash tree near the "well," Mr. Burnett was compelled to remove and readily gave way and removed five miles to the eastward. Messrs. Campbell and Miller, with their families, in all seven persons, took possession of the vacated cabin, 12 x 15 feet in size, while their slaves, six in number, dwelt for a time in a stout comfortable tent, which had been used for sleeping quarters en route from Tennessee. The cabin built by Mr. Burnett, the first habitation for white men on the town site of Springfield, stood on the hill, south of the "natural well," near where the public school building now is, on Jefferson street. At once all hands set to work, the axes rang out in the surrounding wood, and soon a good sized field had been cleared and fenced where the principal por- tion of the town is now, it being the intention of Campbell and his compeers, not to found a city, but to open first class farms. The site of the town was covered by a magnificent growth of red oak trees, mak- ing a fine grove, and furnishing most valuable timber. It is the test- imony of old settlers that nothing like this grove was then to be found hereabouts, or now to be seen in all the county. Among those who sett- led on and adjoining the present site in 1830 were Thomas Finney, Samuel Weaver, and Joseph Miller. In the next year came Daniel R. Miller, Joseph Rountree, Sidney S. Ingram, Samuel Painter, and Junius T. Camp- bell. The latter opened a little store near where the public school building is now. His stock, a small and by no means a varied one, was hauled from Boonville. Mr. Campbell had a partner, one James Feland, an old Santa Fe trader. In 1831 the Delaware Indians were notified to again "move on" farther toward the setting sun, and with their departure in October, came another influx of white settlers to Springfield and the neighborhood round about. Many of the old Kickapoo wigwams were still standing in what is now the southwest part of the city in 1830, although they had been abandoned some time. Being composed of bark, and poles and brush for the most part, they were highly inflammable, and the boys of that day, old men, bent and gray now, John H. Miller, Lawson Fulbright, and others, had rare sport in burning them in the spring of 1830, after night fall, when the fire would show to the best advantage and on Sundays, too. Nor did the young vandals stop their devastation until the last old ragged wigwam was reduced to ashes. Springfield was not regularly laid off into a town until 1835; but by that time perhaps fifteen or twenty cabins had gone up on and near the town site and were occupied. The locality was a favorite one by reason of the numerous springs therein abounding, which furnished plenty of pure, wholesome water. John P. Campbell built no less than thirteen cabins in one year his daughter states, vacating one after another in order to let some new comer have an abiding place. The location became known far and wide throughout Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas, for where even two or three cabins were gathered together in this quarter at that day, the locality was remarkable. There seemed to be an instinctive belief among the primitive visitors to Southwestern Missouri that some day there would be a twon at "Fulbright's and Campbell's springs," and hence people were attracted hither, all sorts of people, good people for the most part, but all sorts of people. The first settlers of Southwestern Missouri generally were men of high character, bold, honest, and indus- trious, who had come to the new country to make comfortable homes for themselves and their posterity after them forever. Some of them re- mained to see the grand old red oak forests about Springfield leveled, and a city builded whereon they had grown, and to see moreover wild prairie and timbered glade subdued by the plow and made to bud and blossom and bring forth abundantly. Three years after the Fulbright's and Campbell's had come to the "springs" which bore their names, Greene county was organized, as a county, then embracing all Southwest Missouri. On the first Monday in February, 1833, the voters of "Ozark township, Crawford county, Mo." met at the "usual place of holding elections," then the house of John P. Campbell and elected Jeremiah N. Sloan, James Dollison and Samuel Martin judges of the county court, and John D. Shannon sheriff. The county court designated the house of John P. Camp- bell as the place of holding the county and circuit courts for the county of Greene, and this was the first movement toward locating the county seat of the county permanently on the town site of Springfield. It is said that at first the county judges were in favor of fixing the county seat somewhere near where Mt. Vernon now is, so as to bring it nearer to what was then the geographical center of the county; but that Mr. Campbell, whom they appointed county clerk, entertained their honors so sumptuously and treated them generally so hospitably that they readily acceded to his suggestion to locate the capital of the new county at "Campbell's spring." Springfield was laid off into lots, with streets, alleys and a public square in the year of 1835, by John P. Campbell. The original town plat comprised 50 acres, lying on both sides of "Jordan" and this tract was donated by Mr. Campbell to the county for county seat purposes. The plan of the town was that adopted in the laying off of Columbia, Tenn., Mr. Campbell's birthplace. The town took its name from the circumstance of there being a spring under the hill, on the creek, while on top of the hill, where the principal portion of the town lay, there was a field. This version of the origin of the name is disputed by the editor of the Springfield Express, Mr. J. G. Newbill, who, in the issue of the paper, November 11, 1881, says: "It has been stated that this city got its name from the fact of a spring and field being near by just west of town. But such is not a correct version. When the authorized persons met and adopted the title of the "Future Great" of the Southwest, several of the earliest settlers had handed in their favorite names, among whom was Kindred Rose, who presented the winning name, "Springfield" in honor of his former home town, Spring- field, Robertson county, Tennessee. Mr. Rose still lives on his old homestead, 3 1/2 miles southwest of the city, where he has continuously resided for nearly fifty years. At this time the business men of the place were D. D. Berry, Henry Fulbright and Cannefax & Ingram, dealers in dry goods and groceries; James Carter and John W. Ball, blacksmiths, and S. S. Ingram, cabinet maker. John Pl. Campbell kept a hotel, if it be proper to call a dwelling house, where everybody was entertained free, a hotel. From the amount of tax paid by the merchants in 1835 it is estimated that in that year they sold about $8,300 worth of goods. These goods had been bought of wholesale dealers at Boonville and Old Franklin, up on the Missouri. ==================================================================== USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, data may be used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. 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