Biographical Sketch of Joseph Rountree, Greene County, Missouri,
Campbell Township

>From "History of Greene County, Missouri," St. Louis: Western
Historical Company, 1883.

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Joseph Rountree was the son of Thomas and Eva (Sturgess) Rountree, and
was born in Orange County, North Carolina, in April, 1872.  He was the
youngest of a large family, and received a good education for that 
early day, being very proficient in mathematics, and a good scribe.  He
taught school for many years in North Carolina, Tennessee and Missouri.
He moved to Maury county, Tenn., in 1819, where he lived for about ten
years, and then with several friends came to Missouri, and traveled
about for nearly a year, looking for suitable lands upon which to 
locate.  They finally selected Greene county as their future homes, and
in 1830 Mr. Rountree brought his family and located three miles south 
of Springfield, upon the afterward famous Wilson's Creek.  He owned 
several hundred acres of choice lands in different parts of the county.
He and another gentleman went to Boonville, Cooper county, and got a 
lot of fruit trees and set them out, and grew the first orchards in the
Southwest.  He next built a large store house and stocked it with gen-
eral merchandise in 1833, and sold goods for three years.  He then sold
the building to some parties at Springfield who moved it to where the
court house now stands.  It was used for many years as a land office.
Mr. Rountree taught school in the old log school house, three miles
southwest of Springfield for two sessions, and it was probably the 
first school house built in this part of the State.  Mr. Rountree was
married in Caswell county, North Carolina, in 1806, to Miss Nancy Nic-
hols, by whom he had ten children, six boys and four girls, two of whom
died in infancy.  Those wo lived to be grown or nearly so, where Junius
M., living in Greene county, aged seventy-three; Zenas M., Lucius A.,
Louisa A., wife of Dr. Slavens, of Dallas county, Mo.; Caroline, who
died when quite young; Judge M. J., Almus L. of California, who has 
been sheriff of Santa Cruz county for many years; Allen J., who died in
his twenty-second year; and Almarinda C., the late wife of Wm. Massey,
of Springfield.  Mr. Rountree died upon the 26th of December, 1874, at
his home on Wilson's Creek, near Springfield.

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