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CHAPTER XXIV.
SHAWNEE TOWNSHIP.
BOUNDARY -- PHYSICAL FEATURES -- OLD SETTLERS -- EARLY TIMES -- EARLY MANNERS -- FIRST TORNADO -- EARLY WINTERS -- FIRST SCHOOL -- PREACHERS -- FIRST ORCHARD -- WHEAT CROP.
BOUNDARY.
Beginning at the northeast corner of section 1, township 29, range 41; thence west six miles; thence south six miles; thence east six miles; thence north six miles to the place of beginning.
PHYSICAL FEATURES.
The prairies are rolling; the soil is good and well adapted to farming and stock raising.
The streams are the Elk Fork, the Fishing Branch, Mingo Creek and Little Deer Creek, which penetrate the township in various directions. Among the mounds found in Shawnee the most conspicuous is Round Mound which embraces about 160 acres in section 28.
OLD SETTLERS.
Elisha Evans, a native of Virginia, married Mary Ann Estes, of Kentucky. Dates of births and marriages unknown. Emigrated to Saline County, Missouri, thence to Lafayette County, where their son John was born, September 30, 1820. Western Missouri being then all new, they went through all the usual experience of pioneers before coming to what is now Bates County. John remembers that when a lad of ten or eleven, he came with an older brother to Grand River, on a hunting and trapping expedition. Selecting a camp near where the bridge south of Austin now is, they proceeded to start a fire, but before it was fairly blazing, bees made their appearance and a short search resulted in finding a swarm with a great supply of honey in the fallen tree, against which the fire was built. They were without bread and the honey furnished a desirable addition to their bill of fare, which otherwise would have consisted of meat only. Some Osage Indians that came to their camp, ate of the honey until their girth was thereby greatly increased. The hunters caught coon and otter in their traps, and with the deer skins made a load for their horses in about two weeks. There were elk on Peter's Creek, but they got none.
About 1828 or 1829, a hunter named Roupe, from Lexington, who had sometime indulged in the scalping of red men as a pastime, came to northern Bates to hunt, and when one day sitting on the top of Round Mound, all at once saw seven Indians approaching him from as many different directions. Remembering his misdeeds, he concluded that his hour had come. But they probably did not know his history, for after making him prisoner, they relieved him of his gun, equipments and clothing, and turned him loose. He left them with a free good will, somewhat poorer, but rejoicing over his lucky escape.
Mr. Evans, during the fall of 1835, saw from the top of "Round Mound," in Shawnee Township, one of the most pleasing sights ever presented to the eye of a hunter -- he saw, on the prairie below him, fifty wild deer in one herd. He carried, in those days, a flint-lock rifle, the ball of which weighed half an ounce. With this gun he killed deer at a distance of 196 paces, and often, too, when they were bounding away with lightning speed. Mr. Evans, with his family, emigrated to what is now Bates, (then included in Jackson County), in 1832 or 1833 and took up a claim in what is now section 11, in Shawnee Township. Their neighbors were few and far between. James Steward had a claim on the present site of Johnstown, which he sold in 1834, to John Pyle. James Morris and a man named Bradley lived in a cabin on the bank of Deepwater creek, near the Henry County line, on land now belonging to the Peter Gutridge farm. They put in a small crop, but owing to sickness they returned to Jackson County. There was a family near Root branch, name not remembered. Lindsey T. Burke lived where Blackwell now lives, near Altona. Burke built a cabin but did not move his family until the spring of 1833. Losing two of his children he also returned to Jackson County. The next year two or three families by the name of Cox (William and Thomas) settled in section 2, and made one crop but soon left. A great number of the very first settlers of the county were of a reckless, roving disposition that never staid long in any one place, and never accomplished much anywhere.
William Porter, from Tennessee, came about the year 1836 and purchased the claim, which was taken and improved by the Cox brothers. Porter moved from Cass County to Bates. He finally went to Jackson County, Missouri.
William Charles immigrated from the southeastern part of Missouri n 1837 and settled on Elk Fork Creek. He removed to Cass County and died there, before the war of 1861.
Among others who came early was a German, direct from his native country in Europe. His name was John Weschusen. He settled on the headwaters of Elk Fork Creek, but removed to Henry County in 1841 and died.
The above named were the first settlers in Shawnee Township. They suffered many privations and hardships, which were incident to the life of the pioneer, but above and beyond these they were greatly troubled and oftentimes sorely afflicted with malarial diseases, which seemed to be especially prevalent in Shawnee Township at that early day.
The nearest town was Independence. There were three little cabins at Pleasant Hill (old town), in one of which a man named Wright was selling goods. They had no mail, so there was no trouble in getting to the post office. They opened out a farm, and lived on what they raised and on wild game; dressed themselves with the production of their spinning wheels and hand looms, and the furs and skins obtained by hunting; saved their farm from prairie fires by plowing two belts around it and burning off the grass between the belt, re-plowing and re-burning every fall.
Mr. Evans and his second son, Ellis, went to Henry County on a hunting trip and killed two bears. Ellis killed one of them with his bowie knife, the dogs having caught it in a thicket of brush. The creek near which this occurred took its name, "Bear Creek," from this incident.
There were no schools for ten years. John Evans went a short term to a school at Pleasant Hill, and then to one near Lone Jack.
Mr. Evans' oldest son, Joel, died in June 1836. The second, Ellis, left here in 1834, for Rock River County, Illinois, and was never afterward heard from. The third, Ezekiel, became a farmer in Shawnee Township. He must have taken up land and probably lived for a time on Deepwater, for there is in existence a deed dated July 28th, conveying land where Captain Newberry now lives from Ezekiel Evans to William Lutsenhiger, witnessed by Elisha Evans and Jacob Lutsenhiger, the latter being the justice of the peace who took the acknowledgement. Ezekiel went into the Confederate army, was wounded and died from the effects of it. The fourth child, a daughter, Vestino, married a Mr. McGinnis, of Vernon County. The fifth child was John. He is the only one now living. The sixth, Virilla, married Mr. Walls, and their son, Dalton, is now a prominent citizen of Hudson Township. After Mr. Walls' death, his widow married William Gilbreath, of Hudson Township, and died before the civil war.
Mrs. John Evans was a daughter of Major Glass, who settled in Summit Township about the year 1839, buying out a claim of a man named Grantham. He remained a resident of the county until 1863, and after the war, instead of returning to Bates, settled in Henry County, and afterward moved to St. Clair, dying there in 1875. Another of his daughters is Mrs. Sileta Morris, who lives west of Butler. One son lives in Pettis County.
Mr. Elisha Evans died about 1850. His widow survived him twenty-seven years, dying in 1867 The Evans' had no trouble during the Kansas border war.
When the Civil War came on, Mr. John Evans sympathized with the South, but remained at home till March 1863, when he went north and remained till the war was over, then returned home and went over again with the work of fencing, building and otherwise improving his farm, and is now a thrifty, forehanded farmer and substantial citizen. He has seen this county change from a wilderness to a thrifty, growing and rapidly improving condition, then to be blighted, desolated and entirely depopulated by the war, and then again seen it blossom as the rose; seen its great and varied interests rapidly develop, its population multiply until it is now in the front rank of the counties of the state. He is yet in the prime of life, only sixty-two years of age, and working daily on his farm.
Mr. George Sears is well known as one of the prominent and substantial citizens of Shawnee Township. He was brought to Bates County when a small child, and from him we obtained the following items:
James B. Sears was a native of Kentucky. His wife's maiden name was Jane Walker. Dates of births and marriages was lost during the war. They emigrated first to Indiana, thence to Saline County, Missouri, and in the fall of 1840 to Bates County, and took a claim in what is now section 33, of Grand River Township. They brought eleven children to this county with them, and all lived to grow up. Mr. Sears entered land at different times until he had a thousand acres, two or three hundred of which he put in cultivation. His second son, Frank, emigrated to California in 1844, and still lives there. The oldest son, John, went there in 1848 and died in the mines in 1849. Mr. Sears sold all his land, and fitted with teams, wagons, etc., proceeded to cross the plains to California, in 1849. After traveling about 400 miles he took the cholera and died. Mrs. Sears, George, Sarah, and Minerva, returned to Bates County, and settled where George now lives, in section 11, of Shawnee. George Sears and Mrs. Joe Reeder are the only ones of the eleven children that are now living in this county. George favored the South during the war, and proved his devotion by four years' service in the Confederate army. Old Mrs. Sears died in 1877. One son, Elias, died in 1876. Mary was the wife of Daniel Pregmore; she died in this county leaving eleven children. Nancy is Mrs. William Brown, of California; Sarah is Mrs. Salmon, of Henry County; Minerva is Mrs. Walton, of Vernon County, and Jane was Mrs. Joe Reed, of Henry County.
George Sears remembers that when a boy he attended the wedding of William Gilbreath and Widow Walls and the bees gathered at the dinner table in such numbers that the guests had to leave.
TORNADO.
The first tornado that swept over portions of Bates County, after its settlement by the whites, was in the month of August, 1837. Mr. Evans says that the storm occurred at night, accompanied by thunder, lightning, hail and rain, and that it was the most furious wind that he had ever heard blow. The country was then so thinly settled, that no houses were standing in the track of the storm, else they would have been swept entirely away. The storm came from the southwest and passed in a northeasterly direction, its passage being about half a mile in width. Mr. Evans attempted to go horseback to see a neighbor the next morning, but found it utterly impossible to get through the fallen timber -- the largest trees had been literally torn up by the roots and piled upon each other in every imaginable shape -- forming a broken, tangled and impenetrable mass, such as he has never seen since.
The winters between 1832 and 1840, Mr. Evans thinks, were colder and more severe than they were afterwards. The snow was not only deeper, but lay on the ground longer.
FIRST SCHOOL.
The first school was taught in the township in 1842 in a small log cabin that was located near Elk Fork Creek. What was the teacher's name and whence he came is not now known.
PREACHERS.
The first minister of the gospel to proclaim the glad tidings of salvation in the township was Dr. Amasa Jones, One of the missionaries who came with others from the east in 1821 and settled with them at Harmony Mission, in the southern part of Bates County. He was a Presbyterian. Services were held in the school house above mentioned. No church edifice has ever been erected in the township.
FIRST ORCHARD.
The first apple orchard that was set out in the township was planted by Elisha Evans on his old home place.
WHEAT CROP.
Mr. Evans raised the first wheat that was grown in the township, and possibly the first crop in the county, outside of the Harmony Mission settlement. |
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