CHAPTER IV.
pg. 10

Industry and Business Leave the Confines of the Home

     In 1820, Mrs. Nancy Willard, a widow whose husband had died in Cape Girardeau, brought her four children, Elijah, Willis, Anna and William to Jonesboro to live.  She was the mother of two of our earliest business men and the mother of the woman for whom the city of Anna is named.
     Elijah was old enough to go to work in one of the new stores which had been established and within a few years was able to buy the store from his employer.  He and Sam Reed were given a liquor license in1826.  Later he was associated with his brother, Willis, in the store.
     Nimrod Ferguson, Willard, Winsted Davie and Charles Rixleben were the earliest merchants establishing themselves in Jonesboro.  They bought produce form the farmers and took it to a New Orleans where they traded their wares for sugar, coffee and other necessities which were brought back to Jonesboro and sold to the people.  This type of trading stimulated the residents to produce more salable materials in order to exchange them for comforts of life.  Dry goods came from Philadelphia.
      Elijah Willard seems to have been the leader in this type of trading because Willard's Landing, where the bulk of the local trading was done, was named for him.
     The Willard's erected a group of store buildings and accumulated much farming land.  More will be said of them later.
     Road building still continued with names of new men appearing on the court records with each change of administration.  About 1821 compensation was given to the commissioners, sometimes as much as ten dollars per year, so they no longer served gratis.  Two or three more mill seats were condemned and roads built past them.  Several churches were erected during the 1820 decade and roads laid out to run past them.
     People no longer lived independently of each other but depended on what they sold to pay for what necessities of life they bought.  It is not strange that this change took place since over two hundred new households were set up to increase the population and business of the community as well as the increase made by immigration.
     The following marriages were recorded between 1820 and 1830:

    By 1824 a tanyard, a "hatter's shop," a "medical shop" and a jewelry shop had been established in Jonesboro.  Taxes were collected on the stock in trade of the above and also on horses, cows, sheep, hops, grist and saw mills, watches, clocks, ferries, wagons, town lots, distilleries and pleasure conveyances.
     Following Francis Parker, David Coleman and Robert Hargrave in the commissioners court were Robert Hargrave and Jessie Echols, in 1822.  Sam Hunsaker and Jessie Echols, in 1825, Sam Hunsaker, Jessie Echols and George Brown, in 1824, Sam Hunsaker, George Brown and B. W. Brooks, in 1825, George Brown, Jessie Echols and john Price.
     Arthur Field, served as clerk of both the county and circuit courts at a salary of $30,000 per years for each office in 1821 and 1822.  Winsted Davie became clerk Mar. 5, 1823 and held that office for several years.  He had first served the county as compiler of the poll books.  George Hunsaker served as sheriff in 1820 for the salary of $50.50 which also paid him for the stationery he used.  In 1821 and 1822 he was paid seven and one-half percent of $1174.57, the revenue collected by the county for both years.  Charles Dunn, who served as probate judge at that time, was paid fifty dollars per year.
     The county commissioners regulated the rates a ferry could charge for its services as follows:  a wagon and team, $3.00; a wheeled carriage with one or two horses, $1.50; a man and horse, 75c; each footman, 25c; each head of live cattle, 20c; a lead horse, 25c; a head of hogs or ship, 10c; a pack horse, 50c.
     Sept. 4, 1820, the commissioner's court authorized Charles Dunn, the probate judge, to select a seal for the county to use.  He chose one which looks very much like our present fifty-sent piece with the American eagle with wings spread in flight and around the edge of the seal was written "County Commissioner's Court of Union County."  This seal is found on all legal documents until the seal which is now used was adopted several years later.
     The town of Jonesboro was incorporated by the state legislature along with Covington, America, Kaskaskia and Vienna in 1820.