Holt County, Missouri - Chapter 7: The State Capital - Some First Things in Missouri, 1917

THE STATE CAPITAL - SOME FIRST THINGS IN MISSOURI - LEWIS AND CLARK - NEW MADRID EARTHQUAKE - DANIEL BOONE - CHOLERA - IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT - GASCONADE BRIDGE DISASTER - RAILROAD BONDS AND STATE AID - IOWA BOUNDARY LINE - "IMPERIAL MISSOURI."

The first seat of government of the State of Missouri was at St. Louis. In 1821 the capital was changed to St. Charles, but this was not satisfactory, for immigration was pushing to the broad prairies of the west. By a revision of the constitution it was provided that the capital be located on the Missouri River, within forty miles of the mouth of the Osage. A commission was appointed and after examining many localities, they decided upon the spot where Jefferson City now stands. The town was named after Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States. The capitol was located upon four sections of land donated by the United States government. It was large enough to meet the needs of the state at the time, and stood unil 1837, when it was destroyed by fire. The legislature met in the new state building in 1826. The oldest portion of the second capitol was erected after the destruction of the original building. This structure was destroyed by fire February 5, 1911. A new state capitol costing $3,500,000 is now built.

The following are some of the first things that occurred in Missouri: The first marriage took place April 20, 1766, at St. Louis. The first baptism was performed in May, 1776, at St. Louis. The first house of worship (Catholic) was erected in 1775 at St. Louis. The first ferry was established in 1805 on the Mississippi River at St. Louis. The first newspaper was established in 1808. This was the Missouri Gazette, and the St. Louis Republic represents the perpetuation of this pioneer in journalism. The first postoffice was established at St. Louis in 1804, with Rufus Easton as postmaster. The first Protestant church (Baptist) was erected at Ste. Genevieve in 1806. The first bank was established at St. Louis in 1814. It was called the Bank of St. Louis. The first college was built at St. Louis in 1814. The first market house was opened at St. Louis in 1811. The first steamboat on the Upper Mississippi River was the General Pike, which landed at St. Louis in 1817. The first steamboat that came up the Missouri River was the Independence, which touched at Franklin in 1819. The first court house was erected at St. Louis in 1823. The first line of telegraph reached St. Louis December 20, 1847.

Lewis and Clark, the explorers, began their ascent of the Missouri River in May of 1804. Captain Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were accompanied by forty-three men and a servant. The party stopped off frequently and explored the surrounding country, collected information concerning the Indians, the soil, the tributaries to the rivers, etc.

The earthquake that destroyed New Madrid occurred after midnight of December 16, 1811. By this terrific convulsion vast tracts of land were plunged into the Mississippi River, large lakes were made in an instant, trees split in the middle, great fissures were formed where the earth had burst, and hundreds of them remained for years afterward. After the earthquake the country about New Madrid exhibited a melancholy aspect. Congress enacted laws permitting the earthquake sufferers to locate the same amount of lands in other parts of the territory, but owing to their ignorance of the ways of the world many of them were cheated out of their claims by unscrupulous speculators.

Daniel Boone, the famous pioneer, came to Missouri in 1794 and settled forty-five miles north of St. Louis in what is now Warren County. He spent most of his latter days with his son, Major Nathan Boone, in St. Charles County. He died September 26, 1820, aged eighty-eight years. In 1845 both his body and that of his wife were disinterred and taken to Frankfort, Ky. Boone had two sons, Nathan and Daniel M., who, like their father, were noted for their courage and enterprise. They were among the first to manufacture salt, building furnaces at what was afterward called Boone's Lick, in what is now Howard County. Wonderful salt springs existed there, and the Boones brought kettles in which the water was evaporated and the salt retained. The country about Boone's Lick was settled rapidly when the fame of the salt spring and the beauty of the locality became known.

Asiatic cholera appeared at St. Louis in 1832, and, for a time the death rate averaged thirty-two per day. W'hen it finally disappeared a reckoning showed that one out of every twelve of the population had fallen a victim. In the spring of 1849 it appeared again, and between April and August, 4,060 persons died. In 1850 and 1851, and again in 1867, there was cholera at various points along the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. St. Joseph had but little of it, while Weston and other points farther down suffered more severely. Those who were crossing the plains and Indians along the trails fell victims in large numbers.

of Missouri until 1843. The enforcement of this worked great hardships and created much dissatisfaction. There were but few things that the sheriff could not sell for debt, and if there was not enough to satisfy the avaricious creditor, he could have the unfortunate debtor cast into prison. The act abolishing the law was written by Governor Reynolds. It contained but six words: "Imprisonment for debt is hereby abolished." Yet

On November 1, 1855, there occurred the first railroad wreck in the history of Missouri. The completion of the Missouri Pacific railroad from St. Louis to Jefferson City was being celebrated and an excursion train of nine cars crowded with notables was speeding to the capital. The bridge spanning the Gasconade River was not completed and a temporary scaffolding had been erected. A furious storm was raging while the train was crossing this bridge, and, amid the fiercest lightning and thunder, the timbers of the temporary structure parted and several cars went down. Forty-three lives were lost and many persons were injured.

The Drake constitution permitted counties to subscribe any sum of money to aid in building railroads, and county courts were authorized to issue bonds binding the county for the payment of these subscriptions wherever two-thirds of the qualified voters should assent thereto. These courts, in some cases, were characterless or ignorant men, and the "qualified" voters were not the people who owned property and who had to shoulder the burden. Bonds to the amount of over $15,000,000 were issued by various counties. In some instances the roads were not built, only a few miles being graded. But the bonds were marketed in New York and passed into the hands of the "innocent purchaser" as soon as possible. The county courts of Lafayette, Cass, Knox and St. Clair Counties refused to pay such bonds at maturity, but the United States court held that they were legally issued and must be paid. The people of Cass and St. Clair Counties were particularly stubborn in their opposition, and are to this day. County judges are firm upon this issue and cheerfully go to jail rather than levy taxes for the payment of these bonds.

At different times prior to the war the state had granted aid to various railroad companies by issuing bonds to the amount of $23,701,000. For this aid the companies agreed to pay interest. During and soon after the war the Missouri Pacific, the Iron Mountain, the North Missouri, and what was then the Kansas City, St. Joseph & Council Bluffs road, now the Burlington system, from St. Joseph to Weston, were sold for non-payment of interest on these bonds. The entire debt at the time of the sale was over $31,000,000, and the state realized from the various sales only about $8,000,000, thus leaving a deficit of $23,000,000, which the state had to pay, besides several millions in interest.

The contest over the boundary line between Iowa and Missouri, which was settled by the supreme court of the United States in 1845, was due to a mistake oiythe part of John Sullivan, the United States surveyor, who ran teh lines. Missouri claimed that the northern border should be a parallel of the latitude which passed through the rapids of the Des Moines River, and Iowa claimed it should be a line which passed through the rapids of the 'Missouri River, some twenty miles south. Unfriendly and revengeful feelings grew out of the dispute between the people who resided on the borders. Sullivan, the surveyor, began on a meridian one hundred miles north of Kansas City, and, instead of running due east, varied to the north, having varied four miles when he reached the Des Moines River. The United States had recognized Sullivan's survey in a number of Indian treaties, and now held that it should be forever the dividing line, and Missouri lost a strip of territory ten miles wide from the northern line.

Having briefly sketched the history of Missouri from its beginning, it will be appropriate to quote from the 1915 Report of Labor Commissioner Fitzpatrick as to the present condition of the state :

"The resources and advantages which nature has so freely scattered about in Missouri with practically half the large area south of the Missouri River still to be closely settled and developed, makes it the leading state of the Union for opportunities open to manufacturers, capitalists, farmers, dairymen, miners, horticulturists, live stock and poultry raisers and timbermen.

"With two-fifths of the state still open for development and Missouri already ranking first among all states for its annual poultry production, third in corn, seventh in wheat, first for both lead and zinc, ninth for building stone, first in manufactured plug tobacco, first in cadmiun, first for red gum cooperage, first for tripoli, first for barytes, first in corn-cob pipes, fourth in mineral paints, fifth in the manufacture of lime, seventh in clay products, seventh in portland cement, seventh in sand and gravel, and second for mules, there is no limit to the future prosperity of the commonwealth and its inhabitants.

"Among the other commodities Missouri holds high rank for in annual production are: Shoes and boots, walnut timber, watermelons, strawberries, tomatoes, big red apples, Elberta peaches, flour, feed, meal, cooperage, packing house products, malt liquor (beer), street and railway cars, small fruit, brick and tiling, canned goods, live stock, frogs, fresh water fish, nursery products, sycamore lumber, railroad ties, sand and gravel, glass, natural mineral waters, mushrooms, red gum and maple lumber, honey and beeswax, granite and other building stone, pearl buttons, printing and publishing, furs, clothing, drugs, chemicals and bakery products.

"Located between the 36th and 41st parallels of north latitude and between the 89th and 96th meridians of west longitude, Missouri is a part of the temperate zone in which the work of the world is done. Its climate conduces to health and physical strength. The Bureau of Ethnology of the federal government has pointed out that the native Missourians are stronger and taller than the native .citizens of any other state. The average mean temperature of Missouri, 54 degrees, is higher than the average mean temperature in any other state of the same latitud eastward.

"Health in Missouri is promoted by the pure air and bright sunshine and by the good water with which the state is abundantly supplied. Vital statistics taken from the federal census make plain that the claim for the health feature of Missouri is not an idle boast. The annual death rate in the United States per thousand population, is 16.3, while in Missouri the annual rate is only 12.2. To express it differently, one-third more deaths occur annually in the other states of the Union, in proportion to the population, than in Missouri. While the annual birth rate in the United States exceeds the annual death rate 11 per cent, the excess in Missouri is 13.8 per cent. Missourians are born more numerously and die less rapidly than the citizens of the other states."