LINN

Stands among the brightest jewels that form the municipal divisions of this great State, and while prospecting parties in 1S31 decided to make it their homes, the first settler is not recorded until 1S32. At that time Linn county was a part of Chariton county, which is among the oldest counties in the State, having been organized in 1820. It was still, in some respects, the home of the red men, who for years after occupied it as a hunting ground. Game was abundant, the bear, the elk, and even the buffalo roamed its hills

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and valleys, and the deer, wild turkeys, squirrels, etc., were found plentifully in the woodland.  The red man possessed a magnificent country, but destiny had decided that it should become the home of the pale-faces.
     Nature had indeed been lavish of her gifts.  The tribes of Sacs, Foxes, Pottawattamies, and Musquakies who inhabited this magnificent country, were loth to leave it, and it is no wonder that many, very many, of these warriors were more willing to join their departed braves in the happy hunting-grounds of the “Great Spirit,” than to give to the pale-faces the lands of their fathers.  But manifest destiny knew no obstacle.  The Saxon and Gallic races had decreed that this should be their home and that of their posterity.  They came as the leaves of the forest in number; they pressed forward, and the gallant, heroic, and vengeful struggle of the Indian for his home is written in letters of blood, in burning cabins and wide-spread desolation, but all gave way before the irresistible march of civilization.  The cabins of the hardy pioneer took the place of the wigwams of the savage; the war-whoop and the war-dance gave way to the sound of the woodman’s axe; the stealthy tread of the Indian hunter, to the sturdy walk of the pioneer; and civilization and Christianity walked arm in arm to the glorious future of to-day.  Let us drop a silent tear to the memory of the red man.  He had a beautiful home and was despoiled of it; he had the hunting-ground of his father, it became his burial place.  We can rejoice in the glory of our country, but the fate of the original possessors of the soil is a dark and bloody chapter in the record which gives the history of the onward march of civilization.
     It had been some years before the settlement of Linn county that the battle for supremacy had been fought between the red man and the pale-faces, and won by the latter, and at this date it was occupied only by roving bands of Indian hunters who were on friendly terms with the whites.  And so the wide expanse of rolling prairie, the wooded hills and bluffs and the rich bottom lands became the property and the homes of the pale-faces, and the wild rugged grandeur of this desert waste soon began to look for a place among the municipal divisions of the State.

THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION.

     This country at that time assumed the character of the great unknown West.  Restless spirits had indeed been over its trackless prairies and verdant woodlands, and it was these men, who, on returning to their eastern homes, told wonderful stories of a marvelously beautiful country which lay near the "setting sun."  Where to-day is the center of a great nation, fifty years ago was described as the "far west."  The restless spirits who traveled were soon followed by the hardy and vigorous pioneer, the men who lead the way, and mark the ground that civilization, Christianity, and progress shall tread.

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EARLY SETTLERS.

     We speak in high terms of the gallantry and bravery of the soldiers, who, in the Revolution of 1776, fought for liberty and independence, and their names are proudly borne on the pages of history.  They merited, as they have received, the plaudits of succeeding generations, but shall not that army of heroes known as the “old pioneers” have their names, as well, emblazoned upon the pages of their country’s history; shall not they, who, through privations, sufferings, and sometimes death, made the wilderness blossom like the rose, have their meed of praise?  They have followed the path of peace with a diligence that craved no rest until the broad light of the noonday sun shines upon a land secure as the abode of a people cultured, refined, and progressive.  This has been the work of the old pioneer; and those of that gallant army of peace who are yet among the living should be honored among the greatest of the land, for their strong hearts, willing hands, and their labor, privations and sufferings, have given a grand and rich heritage to the generation of to-day.
     It is from these “old settlers” that very much of the early history of Linn county has been gathered.  Months have been given to collecting the facts and reminiscences which are found in the pages of this work, but to secure them has been a work of incessant toil.  One great trouble has been that the memory of the old pioneers has not always been of the best, and a confusion of dates, and facts to verify incidents of the past, has been one of great trouble.  History is valuable only as it deals in facts, and these should be more or less substantiated by dates.  These are all important and are required if this shall prove, what it is intended to be, a book of reference from which people and historians of future generations will date their work.  This is why, in the compilation of this history, months have been given to the task.  Many of the old settlers have already crossed the river of time and now belong to the mysterious beyond; others have removed to far distant lands, so that the source of information is small, and time, trouble, and greater research is necessary to make it complete.  The “old pioneers,” however, of Linn county, have contributed much to make this book a success, and they have done it willingly and cheerfully, and it has been a pleasure to the compilers of this history to listen to the stories of those early years, graphically told.  In these records of the past, when the light of civilization first dawned upon this section of our country, the writer has found much that brought to mind bright incidents of early years, and how the dim and distant future was ever before him in rainbow hues

BETWEEN 1820 AND 1830.

     This portion of Chariton county was principally given up to the hunter and trapper between the above named years.  Hunting parties of Indians

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from the Iowa tribes, and whites, hunted through all this territory and trapped along Locust Creek and Chariton River.  Game was plenty enough to satisfy the most persevering hunter, and fish were found sporting in all the streams.  Wild honey was abundant, and many venturesome spirits tread the forests wild ere the red man had ceased to be jealous of the palefaces.  Through the whole decade between the above named years Linn county was a hunting ground.  Now and then the beauty of the country and the richness of the soil attracted the white hunter’s attention, and it was not long before the stories he told began to bear their fruits.  Parties gathered together to go on a prospecting tour and see if it was all truth that the eloquent hunter had spoken of the country.  They came, they saw, and they were convinced, and this was the first starting that settled the country from Chariton River on the east to the valley of the west fork of the Grand River, and had the celebrated “Platte Purchase” not been added to Missouri bounds until several years later, this country would have had double its population at this time.  But the year 1831 is at hand, and the vanguard of civilization rested upon the soil of Linn county.

EARLY SETTLEMENT.

     From the year 1820 to the year 1830 this portion of the State of Missouri was known to the people of Missouri - those of Howard and Chariton counties especially - as the "Locust Creek Country."  The timbered region along Locust Creek, Yellow Creek, and Parsons' Creek was full of game and the hunters living in the river counties esteemed this country a paradise.
     Among the Howard county hunters who visited the "Locust Creek Country" were James Pendleton and Joseph Newton, who lived near Fayette, and who came here at first with their brother hunters solely to hunt.  But they were greatly pleased with the country, and at last determined to locate.  Accordingly, in the fall of 1831, they came to section fourteen, township fifty-eight, range twenty-one, where now is the southwest corner of Locust Creek township, and located a claim.  Together they built a cabin and fenced five or six acres of ground that fall.  Then they went back to Howard county and returned the next spring with their families.  Pendleton and Newton were not only the first white settlers in Locust Creek township, but the first in Linn County.
     The next white family to come to the township was that of Mr. Bowver.  Mr. B. and his brother Jesse were also among the Howard county hunters who had visited the Locust Creek hunting-grounds and become enamored of the locality.  William and Jesse Bowyer came to Linn county about the first of January, 1832.  They made their first camp on section two, about a mile and a half west of Linneus, where they found a good spring.  They at first intended making this encampment but a temporary one, meaning

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to make a thorough exploration of the country before locating permanently, but the existence of the spring and other circumstances influenced them to choose their first camping place as the spot where they would build a cabin and establish a home.  Accordingly they set to work and erected a very substantial and comfortable camp, into which was placed the family of Wm. Bowyer, consisting of his wife, Martha, her two little children, a young slave girl, named Ann, and a brother of Mrs. B., named Louis Tyre.  The family of Jesse Bowyer had been left in Howard county, and he had come with his brother to assist him generally, and especially in taking care of his stock.  The two brothers then started for Howard county to bring on the family of Jesse Bowyer.  Soon after their departure a heavy fall of snow which was on the ground began to melt, and soon Locust Creek, and all other streams of any considerable size, were much swollen, and as there were no bridges nor ferries in these parts at that day, they became impassable, and the men were not able to return to their camp on the little branch in section two for about four weeks.  Meanwhile Mrs. Martha Bowyer was holding the fort with her two little children, her sixteen year old brother, Louis Tyre, and the faithful black girl, against storm and tempest and the wild beasts of the forest.  The Indians frequently came about Mrs. Bowyers camp, but offered her no harm.
     On one occasion a party of Iowa Indians came to Mrs. Bowyer’s camp and were attracted by the presence of the girl, Ann, who was a sprightly young negress, black as ebony.  The Indians made a great ado over her, and wanted to carry her away with them.  The poor girl was greatly terrified by their friendly, but noisy, demonstrations, and would fain have run away and hidden if she could have done so.  The Indians, seeing the perturbed state of mind she was in, teased and tormented Ann until her mistress, whom she had implored to protect her from the savages, interfered and made the Indians go away and let her alone.
     There was an old Indian town on the forty-acre mound, a few miles southwest of Linneus, and from here the Indians came, every day or two, to Bowyer’s camp, and other settlers whose habitations were near by.
     Upon the return of William and Jesse Bowyer with the family of the latter, they at once set about constructing cabins for themselves.  Two of these, built of round logs, were finished and occupied about the 1st of March, 1832, and the brothers immediately began the work of clearing away the timber and opening up farms.  The first year their main efforts were directed toward preparing the land for farming, and securing permanent homes for themselves and their posterity.
     Sometime in 1832 Silas and Peter Fore came to section twenty-nine, township fifty-nine, range twenty, about two miles northeast of Linneus.  The act of tire legislature organizing Linn county directed that the courts should be held at the house of Silas Fore.  North of Linneus, two miles,

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Judge James A. Clark settled, and north of him was Thomas Russell.  Near Russell was his son-in-law, John J. Flood, and Dr. Nathaniel Dryden.  David Curtis came in 1832, and was a single man.  John Yount came from Cole county, Missouri, and settled on section eleven, township fifty-eight, range twenty-one.  Feb. 24, 1833, and up to that time the above were about the only settlers in the county.
     One of the incidents of the early time was in the family of Mr. James Pendleton.  William D. Pendleton was then a sturdy little fellow, and the Indians took a great fancy to him.  One day they brought to his cabin a girl papoose and wanted to swap it with Mrs. Pendleton for William.  This was declined, and then a bundle of deer-skins was offered to boot, and when this very generous proposition was also rejected they offered any amount of honey and wild turkeys for a trade, and would make the young Pendleton a great warrior and chief, but a mother’s love overcame this last seductive offer of wealth to herself and a grand future for her son, when the Indians gave it up and William was left to grow up simply a “pale-face” instead of a great Indian warrior and chieftain.  Still, no one has heard William murmur at his fate

BLACK HAWK WAR.

     Trouble had been for some time brewing among the Indians in Iowa and Illinois, and that vengeful brave and indomitable chief, Black Hawk, had been trying to arouse his braves to make one more effort to drive the palefaces from their country.  He at last succeeded and his pathway and that of his warriors was soon marked with the blood of their victims.  The scalping-knife had commenced its bloody work, and in the glare of burning cabins and the shrieks of innocent women and children, a tale of horror was told too fearful to be described.  The alarm spread and all exposed settlements were at once abandoned.  Women and children were sent to a place of safety, and the men soon after followed, after making what efforts they could to save their little property.  The settlers of Linn county mostly left, temporarily, for a place of safety.  This country, however, was not troubled, and the defeat of Black Hawk and his capture ended the last struggle of the Indians, in this quarter, to drive the pale-faces from the land.  After the war had ceased, the peaceful Indians, who, during the war, had became impudent, if not aggressive, once more became tractable, and bands of Iowas and Pottawattamies, on hunting excursions, roamed the country at will.
     The true history of the war showed that there was not the least cause for alarm then.  The western Iowa Indians were peaceable, and so were the Indians who roamed the woodlands or prairies of the Grand River and Chariton River valleys in search of game.
     It was on the 14th day of May, 1832, that the bloody engagement was

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fought that seemingly opened the struggle with the Indians.  The forces were led by Black Hawk and Keokuk, and the battle was fought in Illinois) near Dixon’s Ferry.  Governor John Miller, fearing the State of Missouri might be raided by hostile bands, ordered Major-General Richard Gentry to raise a regiment of volunteers of one thousand men for the defense of Missouri soil.  Five companies were raised, principally from the eastern part of the State.  Two of these companies, commanded respectively by Captain John Jamison, of Callaway county, and Captain David K. Hickman, of Boone county, were mustered into service in July, 1832, for thirty days, and placed under the command of Major Thomas W. Conyers.
     This detachment, accompanied by General Gentry, arrived at Fort Pike, on the Mississippi River, on the 15th of July.  Finding that the Indians had not crossed the river into Missouri, General Gentry returned to his home, leaving Major Conyers in charge of the fort.  They remained thirty days, the time of their enlistment, and were relieved by two other companies under the command, respectively, of Captain Sinclair Kirtley, of Boone county, and Captain Patrick Ewing, of Callaway county.  Colonel Austin A. King conducted these two companies to Fort Pike, and, leaving Major Conyers still in charge, reconducted the two first companies of volunteers back to Columbia, Missouri, where they were discharged, retiring to their homes. As the soil of Missouri was not likely to be trodden by the hostile Indians, Major Conyers and his command were mustered out of service in September.  The Indians continued the contest in Illinois and Iowa until the spring of 1833, when Black Hawk was finally defeated and captured and this ended the war.
     In the spring of 1834 the settlements began to grow apace.  The Indian war having closed, the old settlers began returning to their claims.  At this time came John Holland, the founder of Linneus, familiarly called “Jack.”  His cabin was built on the present site of Linneus, and was built by John Yount and David Curtis.  Holland moved into it that spring.  William Howell and others had returned, and quite a number of new immigrants began to settle in different parts of the county.  In the spring of 1835 James F. Pendleton returned and a number of new settlers came with him.  George Cason, John Kemper and son Enoch Kemper, Luke Patrick, and Mr. Pendleton’s brother, William Pendleton.  This latter never reached his intended home, and his loss was severely felt by all his comrades - no less, it seemed, than the sorrow of his surviving brother.  In crossing Yellow Creek, near the fork, and where the bridge now stands, one of the teams was stalled and William Pendleton, spoken of as a large, stout man, took hold to help lift the wagon out of the mire, and almost instantly fell back dead on the bank of the stream.  His death was believed to have been apoplexy or heart disease.  His was the first death recorded in Linn county.  Such was the condition of the country in those early days.  The

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country was full of game and hunting was the principal recreation of the settlers.  Mr. John Yount found time to lay in his winter’s meat, and, as Mrs. Yount was also a good shot she often supplied the table with squirrels or wild turkeys which came too near the cabin for their health.
     Upon the first settlement of Locust Creek, as indeed upon the first settlement of every other portion of the county, the woods were full of game of all kinds.  Before the settlement of the townships, and while on one of his many hunting excursions from Howard county, William Bowyer killed two fine, large black bears on Locust Creek in the upper portion of the township.  The skins of these animals, when tanned with the hair left on, answered for pallets, on which rolled, and played, and sported the Boyer children, now men and matrons with children, and even grandchildren of their own.  Occasionally a bear was killed after the township was settled.  Panthers were scarce and not troublesome.
     As to wolves, the country was infested with them.  There seem to have been three varieties, the large black, the gray, and the coyote or prairie wolf.  The first two varieties made many a foray upon the settlers’ flocks and herds, and it was a difficult matter to raise sheep and pigs on account of the depredations of these marauders.  The sheep had to be penned every night and the hogs carefully looked after.  Many of the latter ran in the woods and fed upon the nuts and acorns which were so plentiful in that day and the pigs were in great danger.  Many a little porker was snapped up by the wolves and carried away.  In time, as the hogs continued to run in the woods and feed upon the “mast,” they grew wild and vicious, and often when attacked by wolves would turn and fight and drive off their assailants.
     Out on Paison’s Creek a litter of twelve wolves was found by one of the early settlers.  An old pioneer says that the old she-wolf howls twice in twelve hours - loud and long - once at daybreak and again in the dusk of evening, between sundown and dark.  After dark ail the wolves, seemingly, would howl in the Locust Creek country - would howl and prowl too.  The settlers’ dogs would frequently be chased into the door-yards and into the houses sometimes.  The howling and the yelping, the snapping and snarling of the wolves could be heard about the settlers’ cabins from dark until daylight.
     As before stated, deer were very abundant.  They could be found almost anywhere.  A settler could kill a deer almost any time - before breakfast, if he wanted to - and the juicy venison steaks of the old time were long remembered by the old settlers.  There are many yet living who remember when the Locust Creek country was a happy hunting-ground; when deer, and turkeys, and the like game could be had for the shooting, for the game was not all driven out or killed off for many years after the county was settled.

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WENT TO MILL.

     The trading of this section was done principally at Brunswick and Keytesville, and at the latter place was the nearest mill.  This going to mill was a sort of institution in those days, and a good deal of solid fun was experienced by those who made the trip, and then again there was a good deal happened which was decidedly of a vexatious order.  Still, if high water left them on the wrong side of the stream, if two or three men were together, they could manage to worry through until the water fell.  And then, perhaps, when they got across the stream with their grist, they would find parties who had started to mill and could not cross, and then they would commence to divide their grists, taking scarcely any home, knowing that they would have to again load up and make a return trip.  Many a laughable incident occurred, and these misfortunes and mishaps only served to cement the settlers into a brotherhood which allowed no one to suffer as long as there was anything to divide.  But a house-raising could beat going to mill by at least one hundred per cent of solid enjoyment.  A “raising” is what would start the settlers for ten miles around, and the rifle was their companion.  When gathered together, it did not take long to get up that cabin.  The new settler was received with open arms.  He would cut his logs, and draw them to the spot, arrange the first four logs to their places, and then announce a  raising.”  The neighbors came in from far and near and soon the cabin was up.  Right over in a small pile of brush was a jug.  It held corn in a fluid state, and while not a man would get under the influence, it was disposed of.  There wasn’t so much talk about temperance in those days as can be heard now, and there was far less drunkeness, but then those days had not the enlightenment of the present, in the shape of fanatics on all subjects.
     Thus it is shown that the pioneers of our country were noted for generosity and hospitality, and socially lived like a band of brothers who were ever ready to lend a helping hand to one another, or assist the stranger who came within their gates.  Of those early settlers who made their homes in Linn county between 1831 and 1835, but two are known to be living, Mr. John Yount, who lives on section twenty-two, township fifty-eight, range twenty, nearly five miles southeast of Linneus, who is an honored and respected citizen, and David Curtis, who removed to Livingston county and was alive and well about two years since.
     It is found that James F. Pendleton and William Howell raised the first two cabins in the township; that the Bowyers, Newtons, etc., followed closely; that John Holland first settled on the site of Linneus; that John Yount and David Curtis built his cabin, and that the old town of Linneus was the gift of “Jack” Holland and wife for a permanent county seat; that from the date of the closing of the “Black Hawk War” Linn county seemed to

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have grown and prospered equally with the surrounding country, so much so that her people were ready in the winter of 1836-37 to be cut loose from the leading-strings of Chariton county, and embark on the world’s sea as an independent municipality among the sisterhood of counties which composed the State.  On Jan. 6, 1837, the Governor approved the bill passed by the legislature, and Linn county from that day has received recognition.
 

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