Beginning at the northeast corner of the township, at section 1, township 39, range 33; thence west six and a quarter miles to the Kansas State line; thence south seven miles to section 6, township 38, range 33; thence east six and a quarter miles to section 31, township 39, range 32; thence north six miles to the place of beginning. The township contains about forty-two sections of land, taking in the country bordering on the Marais des Cygnes.

About one-seventh of the township is timber, the remainder being prairie. The upland prairie is rolling. The land on the Marais des Cygnes is generally low and flat, much of which is covered by native forests. The soil on the streams is black and productive -- in fact the entire township is considered excellent for agricultural purposes. Limestone is found on the prairie and some sandstone in the timber. The township is fairly watered. The Marais des Cygnes, with its tributaries, form the entire northern boundary line. Walnut Creek enters the southwest corner of the township, flows northeast through the same and empties into the Marais des Cygnes. There are other smaller streams, affluents of the two mentioned, which run water for several months during the year.

One of the earliest settlers of Walnut Township was Hon. John McHenry who had the honor of being the first representative in the general assembly from Bates County. He was a native of Wayne County, Kentucky, where he was born in 1797. He emigrated to Missouri in April 1840 and was elected to the legislature in 1842. His opponents in the race were Frederick Chotou and a man by the name of Douglas, both of whom were Whigs. McHenry was a Democrat. The race was an exciting one. Douglas received a very small proportion of the votes cast and was scarcely known in the race. McHenry and Chotou were the main candidates. The people were not looking so much at their political complexion as they were to the man and his ability to faithfully represent them.

Both were about equally popular with the people. Chotou was elected, he having received the votes of a number of Frenchmen (he being of that nationality) who were not naturalized. Chotou, however, being a fair minded man, consented to run the race over with McHenry rather than McHenry should contest the election by law. The parties this time made a thorough canvass and did their utmost to bring out the full vote of the county. The election was exceedingly closely contested but upon the counting of the votes (voted viva voce then) it was ascertained that McHenry was the successful candidate by a few votes, McHenry was again a candidate in 1849 at the election which was held for the purpose of electing men to form a new state constitution. He was again successful and started soon after to Jefferson City, the capital of the state. Having arrived there he was taken sick with malarial fever and died. Mr. McHenry was a plain farmer, but a man of good judgment and an enterprising citizen, one who was ever ready and willing to do all he could for the interests of the county where he lived.

Following Mr. McHenry, but coming a year later, was James McHenry, his son, who was also a native of Wayne County, Kentucky, arriving in Walnut Township November 15, 1841, and locating on Walnut Creek. He still resides in Bates County. Martha Guyger, a daughter of John McHenry, now resides in Texas.

James Goodrich, a nephew of the elder McHenry, emigrated west at the same time, coming from the same county in Kentucky, and settling in Bates County, in the same neighborhood. He left Bates in 1844, and finally went to California.

William Cooper moved from Pettis County, Missouri, and settled in Walnut Township, Bates County, in 1840. After the breaking out of the civil war, in 1861, he joined the southern army. Having been discharged on account of ill health, he was returning home, but was taken sick near the Osage River, where he died.

One of the earliest pioneers of Bates County was Lewis Gilliland, who came prior to 1840, and opened a farm on Walnut Creek, where he remained until 1850, when he, with others, started to California, but died on the road. Some of his children are now living in the county.

Mark West was another early settler in Walnut Township. He died in 1851. His son, Gentry, and his daughter, Mary Ann Thomas, now reside on and near the old homestead. West was from East Tennessee.

Thomas Woodfin was a resident of North Carolina. His son, John, married Hannah Hagatt in Tennessee, and in 1836 they all moved to Johnson County, Missouri. The old man did nothing but hunt and hoe his tobacco patch, and in their hunting excursions he and his sons were so pleased with what is now Walnut Township, Bates County, that they took claims there and did a little work on them, but did not move there until the fall of 1839 and spring of 1840. Shelton, on the McHenry land, and Gilliland, on the branch named for him, were the only settlers that came before them. Cooper, McCall and Hedges came soon afterwards, but were not permanent settlers. Old Mr. Woodfin died in 1845 or 1846. His wife lived to the age of eighty-seven, and died in 1854. All the Woodfins, except John's family, moved to Oregon. John raised six boys, of whom only two are living, Albert H., of Pleasant Gap, and Jason S., of Walnut. He had two daughters. Martha Jane is Mrs. James Jennings, of Walnut, and Mary E. is Mrs. William Miller, of New Home. When the civil war came up the Woodfins opposed secession, but when the issue was finally made up they favored the South. They lost all their stock in 1861, and Mr. John Woodfin went to Johnson County and staid a year, leaving the family at home. On returning to visit them, his house was surrounded one very cold night by Jayhawkers, who called to him to come out. This he refused to do, and although completely hemmed in, he managed to escape. As he rushed through a narrow gate into the barn yard they fired a volley after him and peppered the gate posts with Sharp rifle balls, but missed him. That night's exposure brought on a severe cold, which led to a fever, of which he soon afterwards died.

Mrs. John Woodfin died in 1852. In 1858 Jason Woodfin married Rute L. Turner. They raised three girls. Mary is Mrs. James Sayker, of Charlotte Township; Martha E. and Lucy A. are yet unmarried. Mrs. Woodfin died February 11, 1863.

In April 1863, Mr. Woodfin went to Nebraska City and hired as a government teamster on the plains. He returned to Bates County in 1865 and went to farming where he now lives. He married Prudence Miller in November, 1866, When a girl of eighteen years she witnessed the robbery of Jerry Burnett by a party of Kansas men during the border troubles. The party being seen to go there by the neighbors, curiosity was aroused to know what they were doing, so the men of that locality went in one after another to find out. As each man came up he was made a prisoner, taken into the house, relieved of his horse and valuables and told to be quiet. A Mr. Tilson, who was anxious to know what was going; on, offered his horse to Mr. Miller to ride there to see. He did so and Tilson's horse went with the rest. Miller only had fifteen cents with him and they let him keep it. The party got away with' a fine lot of stock, taking seven or eight horses from Burnett alone. He made up a party and went to Kansas to look for the property, but did not recover any of the stolen animals. The expedition, however, furnished a pretext for further incursions from Kansas. The only property stolen at that time which was recovered was a fine horse taken from Henry Turner. He found where it was in Kansas and stole it back.

The second Mrs. Woodfin presented her husband with seven daughters in succession, and as he had three before, it made him ten girls. The eleventh child was a boy. Upon being asked if he danced when that boy was born, Jason replied: "More than that; I turned somersaults all over the farm."

The eleven children are all living, so that there will be a chance in the future for the Walnut Township bachelors to better their condition.

The subject of this sketch was born May 9, 1817, in Clinton County, Kentucky, and married there August 11, 1836, to Maria Cook.

In 1837, having procured a blind horse and an old buggy, he loaded the latter with his wife, camp equippage and provisions, and tramping along side with his gun on his shoulder, he anticipated Horace Greeley's famous advice to young men, and "came West," and took up his residence in Morgan County, Missouri.

Judge Bartlett said: I came to Bates in the spring of 1843, rented a farm on South Deepwater, of Humphrey Dickinson, then known as the Scruggs farm. I staid there one year, then removed to Walnut Township, where I have resided ever since. When I came to Walnut there were nine families besides my own -- two families of Woodfins, two of McHenrys, one of Sells, Gillilands, Andres, Pierces and a batchelor named Cooper. Of those ten families there are but three persons who were here then and who now live in this township, Jason Woodfin, my wife and myself.

Our nearest neighbors on the west were the Pottawotomies, a tribe of Indians who lived in what is now Linn County, Kansas. People might think that we must have lived in fear of those Indians, but instead of that we were glad to have them come to our cabins with a piece of calico and brown domestic, so we could trade a little corn meal or a piece of meat to get our little ones a Sunday suit, for in those days we manufactured our own clothes from raw material, wool, cotton, flax and tow, in the manufacture of which my wife was an expert hand.

In the fall of 1844, he gathered twenty-two bushels of pecans, and with an ox wagon took them to Boonville and sold them for $1.50 per bushel, in trade. One dollar bought ten pounds of coffee at retail, and from twelve to sixteen pounds of sugar. Nice dried apples were only 62 1/2 cents per bushel.

In those days he raised ninety bushels of wheat from three bushels of seed sown on three acres. He sold what he could spare for 37 1/2 cents per bushel, and had to haul it to Bell's Mill, ten miles. He made ten foot rails for 37 1/2 cents per hundred. Cradled wheat and oats for 37 1/2 cents per acre. Cows were from $6 to $8 each, and calves from $1 to $1.50. Oxen were worth from $25 to $30 per yoke, and a horse about the same as a yoke of oxen. They were often obliged to do their teaming and plowing during the night, because of the multitude of the green head flies, which were at times so bad as to cause the death of their work animals. In the absence of stables to keep their animals during the day, they would sometimes keep up a smoke to protect them from the flies. He got his grinding done at a little horse mill on the Little Osage, owned by a man named Ray. The customers hitched on their own horses or oxen, and ground out their own grists. There was no school nor school house until about 1845, when the congressional township now forming Walnut, was organized into a school district. There were about twenty or twenty-five pupils in the district. The first teacher was a man named Linsey, who got ten dollars per month. Judge Bartlett afterwards played the part of teacher for the magnificent sum of fifteen dollars per month. They went to Little Osage for their mail.

The first post office in Walnut was established in 1846 at Marvel, J, D. Dickey being the first postmaster. Mark West, Gentry's father, was the contractor for carrying the mail. The mail route was from Harrisonville, by West Point and Marvel, to Papinville.

Religious services were held mainly by Methodist preachers at private houses and school houses. Among the first preachers were Revs. Morris and Towner. They went north and were succeeded by Clayton, Cummings, Shroder, Vernon and Green. The latter was the presiding elder of this district. People would go fifteen or twenty miles to meetings, house-raisings and social gatherings.

As Judge Bartlett was raised in a timbered country, it was nothing for him to chop and clear land, and as he had no team able to break prairie sod nor the money to hire it done, his first farming was done in the timber. His first entry of land was made under a land warrant for 160 acres, which he had bought for $160, thus saving twenty-five cents per acre of the government price. He served several years as justice of the peace and for ten years was a member of the county court, being succeeded by Judge Feeley about 1860. He took no part in the Kansas border troubles and was not disturbed.

When the civil war came up he favored the Union. He thought the South did wrong to secede and open the war without waiting to see what Lincoln's administration would do. Yet, being of southern birth and education, he could not avoid feeling some sympathy for the South. He had no hand in the war and was not personally molested, but, like all others, lost his stock and improvements by fire and robbers. In 1863 Mr. Lefker, now mayor of Butler, was carrying mail between Mound City and Butler, and Judge Bartlett was postmaster at Marvel. While at his house Lefker was captured by bushwhackers and taken to the Walnut Creek timber, where he took dinner with his captors, who robbed his mail, exchanged horses with him and let him go. He soon afterwards rode the new horse to Kansas, and it was claimed and taken from him by the man from whom it had been stolen.

When the order came to vacate the county Judge Bartlett went to Kansas, but returned in the spring of 1866, and has ever since been known as one of the most substantial and reliable men of Walnut Township.

His oldest son, William C, died in 1881, and left a wife and three children; his second child, Ellen Jane, married Rev. David Bartlett; his third child, Josephine, married J. M. McKay, and lives in New Home Township; his fourth child, Sarah Ann, is now the wife of W. M. Dryden; his fifth child, Mary S., married W. M. Parks, and lives in Cherryvale, Kansas; his sixth child, James E., married Florence Phillips and lives near his father.

The M. E. Church erected the first church in the township about 1877, and located in the southeast corner of the southwest corner of section 28.

J. L. McConnell and wife, R. Carman and wife, C. Perkins and wife, Henry Jaynes and wife, James Blangy and wife were among the organizing members. Rev. Enoch Hunt was the first minister to officiate for this church.

The Cumberland Presbyterians and Southern Methodists combined and erected a house of worship about the year 1879, and located it on section 13.

Some of the early members of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church were: R. G. West and wife, W. C. Bartlett and wife, R. H. Thomas and wife, W. P. Husk and wife, Mrs. W. L. Shelton, James McKay and wife, Mrs. James Shelton, Mrs. Jane McKay and her daughter Jane, Henderson Miller and wife. The first minister was the Rev. J. C. Littrell.

The following were some of the organizing members of the Southern Methodists: Thomas Wilson and wife, J. H. Sullins and wife, James Shelton, William Lee Shelton, Mrs. A. A. Garrison, E. Rector, and others. Rev. John Kennett was the first minister.

The Missionary Baptists and the Christian denominations have organizations, but no houses of worship.

is now located in section 2; it was originally in section 1. Jamison D. Dickey was the first postmaster, receiving the appointment in 1846. He was succeeded by Melvin Dickey, his son, then by C. Y. Garrison, then Lewis Speece, then Judge E. Bartlett, Joseph Kincaid, H. Blunt, C. M. Bainbridge and the present postmaster is Joseph Byfield. Joseph Kincaid and D. Park opened a small stock of goods at Marvel Post Office in about 1868, at James Campbell's residence.

The first store opened in the township was by a man named Jewell, in section 1, before the war of 1861. The present postmaster of Marvel Postoffice has a small stock of goods and groceries. James McDaniel also sold goods before the war at a little place called Louisville in section 5, at the mouth of Mine Creek. McDaniel started the town of Louisville and named it after Louisville, Kentucky. The town ceased to exist after the war.

is located in the southeast corner of section 16. Doolittle & Morse (John Doolittle and C. Y. Morse) were the original proprietors of the town about 1872. C. Y. Morse operates a store (general assortment). Morse was the first and is the present postmaster. Berry kept a drug store in the place about 1879. Lee Peak sold dry goods there also in 1878. The town has two blacksmiths, A. H. Loyd and John Craig. Dr. Splawn is the physician. C. Y. Morse is the postmaster and merchant. There is a good frame school house in the town. The saw mill in the township was owned by Overdear & Dickey.

Bates County Missouri MOGenWeb