CHAPTER IX
In previous chapters we have traced the history and settlement of Henry County prior to the year 1840. We have seen how the early settlers came to the northeastern part of the county and from there down into what is now Clinton township.
In Clinton township, which was then partly in Grand River and partly in Springfield township, James Sears and his son Frank, John Nave, William Owen and P. J. Bison, from North Carolina, had come from 1830 to 1840. A man named Johnson had conducted his school as early as the year 1833. As was the custom with the school teachers of that day, he went about from house to house and in that way met all the people of the community as well as the children.
It may be that the present relative inefficiency of the country school comes from the fact that the teacher does not go about from house to house, but remains in the district where she is teaching only between Monday morning and Friday evening and sees no one except the children whom she meets at school and the one family at whose home she stays at night.
A Presbyterian named Addison Young was the first preacher in this section of the county. As early as 1831 he preached in the various residences of the early settlers. The Methodists were represented by Abraham Mellice and the Baptists by Thomas Keeny. Prior to 1835, however, there was neither church nor schoolhouse in Grand River township, all the preaching being done and all the school being taught in the residences of the settlers. The first child born in Clinton township was Ermie, a daughter of John Nave, who was born in 1837. Doctor Hobb was the first doctor who resided within the limits of the present township of Clinton.
As was stated above, the first settlers in the county were found in the northeastern part. Here in addition to those mentioned before, came and located in what is now Windsor township Thomas Anderson, who was the first blacksmith in Henry County and who settled near the present town of Windsor. Within the next few years came James Woodward, the Goodins, I. N. Hughes, Colby Stephenson and others who have helped to make the history and the every-day life of the northeastern most township of Henry County. From Kentucky and Tennessee came the Taylors, the Palmers and the Williamsons, all of whom were found in Henry County at the time of the 1840 census.
For these people, Boonville on the Missouri River was post office and trading post, where they took everything which they could gather from their pioneer's life to exchange for the necessary merchandise. Colby Stephenson, one of the first justices of the peace for Tebo township, opened up the first school in this part of Henry County. This was in the fall of 1833 in an old deserted cabin on Tebo Creek, which was some two and a half miles south of the present township of Windsor. Abraham Mellice, referred to above as preacher in what is now Clinton township, an old-time Methodist circuit rider, preached in Windsor township as early as 1832.
While many persons went to Boonville for their mail and to trade, there was a post office at Muddy Mills, a few miles beyond the present site of Sedalia in Pettis County. The doctor who came to this part of the county prior to 1835 was a Doctor Sappington of Saline County; however, in 1835, Doctor Thurston and Doctor Hogan both settled near Calhoun.
Doctor Hogan remained but a short time and left Doctor Thurston as the sole practitioner in the northeastern part of the county. In 1835 appeared the first school house, supplanting the old deserted cabin on Tebo Creek. In this school house during the winter of '35 and '36, was taught a three months' term of school. The teacher, Thomas Irason, conducted a subscription school for which the tuition charged was one dollar per child per month. Some thirty children attended this school; among them were Jim-Tom Barker, Elizabeth Ann Barker, afterwards Mrs. Covington; R. L. Avery, P. G. Avery, Robert Pleasant, Fennel Wade, John Wiley and Robert and Alexander Brummett, who lived about a half mile north of the county line.
Again, as was the case of the old-time teachers, Mr. Irason boarded around and got acquainted with all of the people in the neighborhood.
Hall and Fletcher's store on Tebo Creek was established early in 1835, the same year that Field's store was started in the Goff settlement, and supplied the people of the northeastern part of the township. In the same year a horse mill was started in this section of the county. In 1839, R. F. Taylor, who afterwards founded the city of Windsor, located on section 5.
The year 1835 also witnessed the first settlement on Deepwater Creek by a man named Morris. He was later followed by Mr. Shelton, by the Greggs in 1837 and by William McCown and William Tyree in the year 1839. In 1840 John Schmedding, who lived with Henry Walbert and his sister Elizabeth, married Elizabeth Walbert, the ceremony being performed by the Reverend Asa Jones. This was the first wedding in the southeastern quarter of Henry County, then called Grand River township. This house was in the present boundary of Deepwater township, which was formed in the year 1840. Deepwater township was organized in July, 1840, and its boundaries were defined by the following order of the County Court:
"Ordered that an additional township be taken off of Grand River township to be called Deepwater as follows: Beginning at the county line of Van Buren County (now Cass) on the divide between Grand River and Deepwater, thence down said divide in a northeasterly direction to the range line between 25 and 26 (in August following it was changed to range line between 26 and 27), thence south to the county line, thence west to the southwest comer of Rives County, thence to the beginning."
As originally organized, it will be seen that this township comprised all of the present townships of Deepwater, Walker and Bear Creek, a part of White Oak, a part of Davis, a part of Clinton and a part of Fairview. A little later the line was changed, leaving out the portions of Clinton and Fairview townships. Again, there was a little variation in an order dated the second of May, 1842.
It has been recited in an earlier chapter that in May, 1834, the Lafayette County Court had changed the name of Tebo township, which comprised all of Johnson and Henry Counties, and half of St. Clair, into the name of Springfield township. In 1835, the first County Court, which met at Henry Avery's house, changed the name back to Tebo, establishing the northeastern quarter of the township as Tebo township and the southeastern quarter as Springfield township. At Alfred Askin's house, in 1832, was held the first election.
The history of this part of the county is very much the same as the history of other newly-settled Missouri country. In 1839, however, came a group of people from North Carolina. They were called "The North Carolina Colony." They formerly came from Maryland, coming in wagons the whole distance, crossing from Kentucky into Illinois in the latter part of 1839, finally reaching the vicinity of the Sardis Baptist Church on the second day of November. Among these were the Walls, John C. Stone, Mason Fewell, William Howerton, Mrs. Sarah Lindsey and her sons; of these Richard Wall settled in Big Creek township, John C. Stone in Deepwater, William Howerton and Mason Fewell in Tebo and Mrs. Lindsey and her sons in Fields Creek. These people have left their mark upon the entire history of Henry County, coming with enough wealth to enable them to have the confidence which some of the earlier settlers did not have. They secured a large acreage of land and laid the foundations for some of the large farms and estates now existing in Henry County.
The Sardis Baptist Church was organized on the fourteenth of May, 1839. In an old log school house on Tebo Creek they held their worship.
To read the names of the charter members of this church is to name the highest type of pioneers who came to Henry County. Henry Avery, John W. Williams, John Brummett, Benjamin G. Parker, Valentine Bell, Susan Hudson and Nancy Williams were among those early pioneers who helped to found and support this probably best known of Henry County country churches. In 1839, Rev. Henry Avery and Rev. James Fewell were joint pastors. In 1856, a frame church building costing $600 and in use more than fifty years was built.
In 1835 James Nash located the present town of Calhoun. It had no growth, however, until the following year, when commissioners were appointed to find the county seat for Rives County. Mr. Nash therefore procured the services of one John S. Lingle to plat the town which he had founded and which he named in honor of South Carolina's great statesman, John C. Calhoun. To add, as it were, a finishing touch to his work, he donated two acres of ground for a public square. Of this two acres, one acre was properly set aside as a public park, the other consumed by the wide streets which surround the park and which add to the usefulness and convenience of the present square in the town of Calhoun. The question of location of the county seat might have been more serious had Calhoun been nearer the center of the county, for more than four hundred of the settlers of Henry County lived north of Grand River. As it was, when the commissioners determined upon Clinton, there was no determined effort on the part of Calhoun to take it away.
As soon as the town of Calhoun was platted, the settlers who had settled around Goff's began to move. James Fields, who had a store at Goff's, put up the first house at Calhoun. In the winter of 1836-37, John and William Goff opened up a grocery store, while James Fields and Hall and Fletcher opened up general stores in the town of Calhoun. In the following summer came the McCormick's Dry Goods Store. By the fall of 1837, Calhoun was the leading business town in Henry County.
The plat of the town covered forty acres, as laid out by Mr. Nash. The first lot sold of which there is any account was bought for eighteen dollars on the eleventh day of May, 1837. In June, James W. Fields bought two lots for which he paid $25.00. In 1837, James Fields was appointed postmaster of the first post office in the county, which had been at Goff's from 1835 to 1837 with William Goff as postmaster. He moved the post office to Calhoun the same year a post office was established at Clinton.
The first teacher was Miss Lucy McCord, who taught two or three terms of school beginning in the year 1837.
Asa Hendrick of Brown County, Kentucky, came to the northwestern part of Henry County in the spring of 1837. His nearest neighbor, named Smith, a pioneer like Hendrick, lived in Cass County. John Scroggs and Joshua Page, the latter a minister of the Christian Church, came in the fall of 1837. In 1838 an old log school house was erected in which the above named Rev. Joshua Page taught the first school. At the home of Asa Hendrick was established the first voting precinct in the township. The first voting precinct in what is now Big Creek township was at the home of Thomas Kimsey. He was a descendant of Littleberry Kimsey, who came in 1830 at the same time Abner Martin and his two sons came. Henry Lotspiect came in 1835. William Fox, William Bidwell, John Swift and the Andersons were also among the early settlers.
It is said that the first white man who came into what is now Walker township was a man by the name of Greenup, who settled in Walker township in the year 1835. His nearest neighbor was two miles away, his next to the nearest neighbor was five miles away.
Dr. Amasa Jones, a prominent preacher, who had been connected with the Harmony Mission in Bates County for more than a dozen years, is said to have come by Greenup's place and to have offered to buy it. Jones was followed the next year by a preacher at Harmony Mission named John H. Austin.
Mr. James Gates also settled in this township. Mr. M. Gregg and Robert Gregg came to Walker township in 1839; George Cowen and Joe Harness about the same year. In 1840, Doctor Jones organized the first church in the township, two years later building of adobe brick the first church in the western part of Henry County. This was probably the first building to be used exclusively for church purposes built within the limits of the present County of Henry. Hitherto a building had served the joint purpose of school and church. This one was used solely for church purposes. John H. Austin, mentioned above, was the first justice of the peace and the first constable of the township.
The first settlement in what is now Osage township was in 1835, Alexander Bowles, Captain Royster and Whit Mulholland coming that year. In the next two years, came George Bowles, William Stewart, David White, John Johnson and Reuben Good. Other early settlers were James Smith, Montgomery Wright, Overton Parks and George Thornton. The first ferry across Grand River was kept by John T. Thornton, who settled in Osage township, a few miles below Brownington. The ferry was run at the place since known as Thornton's ferry. The second ferry was run by David White, at the crossing of Grand River near Brownington. Albert Denning and Jane McNew seem to be the earliest settlers of what is now Fairview township, they coming in 1839 and being followed by other members of the Dunning family during the next two or three years. The Tays, Guttridges, Kings, Brownings and others settled in what is now Bear Creek township early in 1838.
Earlier in this narrative mention is made of the Parks settlement in the eastern part of Henry County, now in Leesville township. Following the Parks family came Labon Rigg and others. Benjamin Putnam, Pattison Gordon, John Williams and Reuben Parks arrived in 1835.
Chesley and Thomas Jones, Joseph Potter, John Anderson, J. P. Turner, Joseph Wyparks, David Logan, William Witherspoon and Jesse Bunch were others among the settlers who came prior to the year 1838. One of the most remarkable characters in the early history of the county was Rev. Daniel Briggs, who settled in what is now Leesville township, in the year 1838 and who was afterwards the organizer of the Tebo Church. The Tebo Baptist Church was built in 1841. In addition to Daniel Briggs and his wife other original members of this church were William Butler, John Anderson, Mary Putnam, Robert Briggs and Zachariah Fewell.
As pointed out earlier in this history, the early settlers established their homes along the banks of the streams. Tebo and Barker Creeks were among the first settled. Phillip Cecil from Virginia, Bennett Harralson and Cyrus Robinson came to Henry County in 1830; William A. Gray and the Bantes in 1836.
The first election in the township was held at the house of Abraham Bante. The Trollingers and the Guyes came in 1887 and 1838, as did the Fewells and William Chandler.
The first school in this section of the county was taught by W. A. Gray in the winter of 1838 and 1839 and was like other schools of its time a subscription school.
In what is now Deer Creek township, some settlers were found as early as 1833. Howell Lewis settled in 1836; William Goff, named many times heretofore, was the first settler and the first postmaster; his sons, John and Ephraim Goff, came with him. C. C. Bernau, a county judge for a number of years, settled a few years later, as did the Wileys and John S. Lingle, the father of the Lingle brothers, long connected with Henry County affairs. It will be recalled that John S. Lingle laid out the town of Calhoun.
