Randolph County, Missouri - Chapter 22: Miscellaneous, 1920

Chapter 22: Miscellaneous

The "razorback" like the pioneer was no pampered child of fortune. He was likewise of the pioneer type, in that he was somewhat long of limb, gaunt, muscular, active, strong and swift of foot, when occasion required. He was further of the pioneer type in that he was active, courageous and self-reliant, and frequently it was a case of "root hog or die" with both man and hog.

For the purpose of rooting the "razorback" was well equipped. His shoulders, neck and head were large and muscular and his nose was long, terminating with a rooting attachment that needed no repair. This nose, however, was not equipped with a coulter and the tough prairie sod was too tough of a proposition for him as well as for the pioneer settler, hence they both went to the woods together where they could make an honest living the year around by the industrious use of hand and snout.

The woods at that time had other inhabitants, bears, panthers, wild cats, and wolves in great numbers, but the razorback went forth fearlessly at hunger's call or just because he wanted to, that is, the full-growns did, and unless restrained, the younger ones followed. The "razorback" was armed for defense. From his lower jaw projecting upward and outward were strong, sharp, curved tusks, several inches in length, and set into the upper jaw were shorter upturned tusks that co-ordinated with the larger ones below. In battle the "razorback" fought by lowering his head and striking upward. These upper thrusts driven by the powerful next muscles were capable of inflecting long, deep, ragged wounds, sometimes dangerous or deadly.

The "razorbacks" in the woods usually herded together. When a member of the herd by prolonged squealing gave the signal of distress the grown ups of the herd, with bristles erect rushed to the rescue, and whether the trouble maker be man or animal the only safe way was up a tree or rapid flight.

The "razorback," though homely and bristly, was invaluable to the early settler. He could take care of himself. He was able and willing to make his own living in the woods ten months in the year, if need be, and was therefore a cheap boarder. The "razorback" was seldom converted into bacon before he was eighteen months or two years old. Running at large, he grew more slowly, his keep was trifling and he usually survived until the fall of his second year. Having grown fat on acorns and nuts the settler would round up his herd, separate and confine in a closed pen all those that he designed to butcher, feed them corn for a few weeks until assured that the meat and lard would be firm and of the best, then a day was set and the hog killing was held. Usually the near neighbors assisted and frequently a score or more hogs were butchered and cut up in a single day.

Then the meat was salted down, the lard rendered out, and in early days before the advent of the sausage grinder, sausage was made by beating the meat into a pulp on a block with hammers.

Aside from the labor of feeding the hogs at times, and that incident to butchering and curing the meat, the cost of bacon to the farmer was trivial compared to the cost of today, nor does the packing house bacon of this period of time compare in excellence with the delicious country cured hams, smoked with hickory wood and carved out of these mature hogs.

But the "razorback," indispensable to the early settlers, could not endure. He had his day in north Missouri, and his decline. As the trees in the wooded districts fell year by year under the blows of the woodsman's ax, the noise of their falhng beat the "razorback's" "last tattoo." With the going of the woods went the razorback, with improved methods of farming came improved breeds of hogs, cattle, sheep and horses. The "razorback" had served and served well - his purpose and his mission Tvas ended.

In the Ozarks he survived until the Civil War. The late Proctor Knott, for many years a Kentucky congressman, while a young man spent some years in the Ozarks and while there was elected to the Missouri legislature shortly before the Civil War. While so serving he made a speech in the house, boosting the Ozarks and their many resources, their climate, fishing, streams, fruit trees, fertile valleys, and their endless forests of oak that covered the hills and bore fruit and almost covered the ground with acorns in the fall of the year. Among other assets he introduced the "razorback" as a prime asset in that timbered region. After describing him and his characteristics of courage, industry, and his ability to provide for and defend himself against all comers without human aid, he wound up by saying "that the 'razorback' could readily root potatoes out of the third row through a crack in the fence."

It seems from the following incident that the "razorback" may yet survive in some of the timbered regions farther south. A Pennsylvania breeder of fine hogs had a pen of assorted sizes on exhibition at the Richmond, Virginia, Exposition, held a half score years ago. A North Carolina farmer came along, stopped, leaned on the fence of the pen and leisurely scanned its inmates. They were show hogs, short legged and fat. Some were lying down and others were waddling around in the pen. The owner came around hoping to sell and said, "What do you think of them?"

"No," replied the North Carolinian slowly, "they would be of no account to me, stranger. No hog is worth a d - ^m in the country where I live that can't outrun a nigger."

From The Autobiography Of Liberty Noble

Liberty Noble was born in Casey County on November 10, 1809. He was the third son of Mark Noble and Rachel, his wife. In June, 1817, Mark Noble and his family, consisting of a wife, seven sons and three daughters, moved from Kentucky to Howard County, Missouri, and four years later, on March 8, 1821, moved to Randolph County. The following is an excript from his autobiography: menced nearly exactly where the court house now stands. The contract was let to the lowest bidder and my father secured the contract. We also burnt the lime for Randolph's first court house. Two weeks were spent in building a lime kiln. We found two trees on the hillside some thirty feet apart and hauled our logs and piled them upon each other against the two trees until we had a large pile; then we hauled rocks and stacking them on the long heap set fire to the logs. When the logs had burned away the rocks being burnt were left in a heap something similar to the form in which they were placed. Then we slacked this burnt rock and had our lime.

Lumber was sawed by hand in those days and I have helped to saw thousands of feet with the old hand lip saw. I have had the privilege of sawing lumber with Missouri's Ex-Governor Jackson. We found two trees somewhat like we did in commencing a lime kiln. These trees must have forks some six or eight feet from the ground. In these forks we placed a pole called a ridge pole. On the ridge pole we put two other poles with one end of each on the hill side. Then we hewed our logs square, rolled them on the poles, lined them on top and on the bottom the entire length, and with one sawyer on top and the other on the ground sawed out our lumber. We stuck one end of the logs as far over one of the poles as we could not to overbalance and then ripped all the logs at that end; then slipped them endways past the pole and sawed again to the other pole and so on through the log. We could saw about two hundred feet in a day by this method.

In the fall of the year of 1832, I with four friends went on a bee hunt. It was the month of September and we went to the Chariton river, eight or ten miles northwest of where Kirksville now stands. We camped over night and spent the next day in locating bee trees. We were gone twenty-three days and brought home 309 gallons of strained honey, one tub and two buckets full of honey in the comb and a good quantity of beeswax.

When my father first moved to Missouri hogs were very scarce and he paid one dollar for a very small pig. I remember our hogs used to run outside, and during the summer when we were busy in our crops and harvesting, we would not see our hogs for sometimes three months at a time and they would become rather wild, so we would have to hunt their beds and drive them home.

The houses in which we lived were built of logs hewn out by our own broadaxes, and chinked with sticks, rocks and mud. They were almost always built with a chimney in the west side so the heat as we thought would be on the coldest side of the house. The chimney was built according to the number of children in the family, a small family built a small chimney and sometimes a chimney occupied nearly all the west end of the house. Then a log was split and legs put into it to make a bench for each side of the fireplace, and a long bench made for in front of it. Some, though not all, of the bedsteads were one-legged ones. A post placed from one corner of the room and poles reached from the post to the walls and plank put on these formed the platform on which our straw beds were placed and after awhile some people became rich enough to afford geese and they had feather beds.

We had to go twenty or twenty-five miles to mill and then furnish our team to grind our grain. The mills were old fashioned sweep-mills and ground the corn somewhat similar to the way molasses cane is mashed now. There were two mills in Howard County, one was run by Colonel Snoddy and the other by Paddy Woods.

Our grain was cut with a reap hook and very slow work it -{vas. We caught a bunch of grain by the top with the left hand and cut it with a reap hook in our right hand, and when we had thus cut across a field we hung the reap hook on our shoulder and bound the grain we had cut as we came back.

I never went to but three schools in my life and only went about half the time then for I had to stay at home and work. Schools were taught in the spring and summer just when the most work was done. I went to one school in 1819 in Howard County to Joseph Persinger and in 1823 in Randolph County to John Dysart, a brother of Rev. James Dysart of the Cumberland Presbyterian church. The next year, 1824, I went to Nic Dysart, also a brother of the preacher. Our schoolhouses had only dirt floors and they would get pretty dusty sometimes. At our writing desk a log was cut out so as to give us light and we stood and wrote with a split log for a desk and used ink made from indigo and oak berries and a goose quill for a pen. The benches were made of split logs with wooden pegs for the legs and were generally made of cottonwood or lime so as to be soft so they would not have to be cushioned. Our feet dangled between the bench and floor and as we had no lazy backs to the benches we did not have to have our coats patched in the back.

The plows we used were single shovels made by a blacksmith and the bar-shear plow, which had a wooden mouldboard, as did the Gary plow which came into use a few years later. These plows were about ten inches wide and if a man broke two acres a day he had done something extra. Our harness were all homemade; the collars were made of linn bark and shucks. The hames were made by ourselves and had a hole bored through them into which the rope tug was run and with some bark and a knot fastened. The rope tugs were made by twisting tow and flax together. A notch was cut in the end of a singletree, and we made a loop in the tug and slipped it over the end. Very often we had no backhands to the harness, but occasionally some would make them out of bark and shucks. Old Mr. McClain, whose son lived in McClainsville, said he could not raise a crop without hickorj' bark. It was used for as many things as string is now.

Our hoes were made by a blacksmith and were very heavy, sometimes having enough iron in one for two or three hoes like we use now. Our axes were also home-made, and in fact nearly everything then was very different from what it is now.

The girls in those days worked hard enough to raise corns on their hands, wore home-made dresses and sunbonnets, and besides the house work also helped in the field and hoed in the garden, and had to content themselves with such flowers as the morning glory, hollyhock, sunflower and pumpkin blossoms."

Indian Scare Of 1829

It was customary in the early days for every male over eighteen years of age to have a good trusty rifle and plenty of ammunition. Shotguns were unknown, also revolvers. These hardy men most generally took their firearms with them wherever they went, not for the purpose though, be it remembered, to shoot one another, as is often done nowadays, but to defend themselves against the wild, untutored redman, who then had their wigwams so close to their borders, and occasionally made unexpected raids into the white settlements to take vengeance upon the innocent and peaceful citizen, for some outrage often committed upon the poor Indian by some of the few bad white men, that then had their homes somewhere in these western wilds.

Most of the cruelty and butchery committed by the savages, in those days, no doubt, were occasioned by the fact that bad white men, either instigated them, or had committed great outrages upon the Indians when they had the advantage of them. And, they being savages, and perhaps knowing no better, would take vengeance upon the first pale-face man, woman or child that happened in their pathway. But it is true, no doubt, also, that these red men of the forest took great delight in shedding blood, and gloried in taking the scalp of the white man; and for even a fancied wrong conjured up by the brain of some would-be chieftain, they would raise the war-whoop and sally forth, seeking whom they might devour. Hence, when in the year 1829, these first settlers of Randolph County, together with others that had then made Randolph County their future home, heard from a messenger, fresh from the scene of the conflict, his fiery charger foaming, being driven by the whip and spur to his utmost speed, that the Indians on the northern borders had raised the war club and were marching rapidly to the settlements, murdering indiscriminately men, women and children that were then scattered along in isolated settlements from the Iowa line down to what is now the boundary line of Randolph County.

The news was carried from cabin to cabin by swift and trusty messengers. It was appalling, it is true, and no doubt carried great consternation to some. But action was quickly taken and preparation made to send the women and children down to the big settlement in Howard County, under charge of the old and feeble men, not able to do military duty, where they knew they would be well protected and cared for cheerfully. A. company of about seventy men, comprising nearly all the ablebodied adult men in the county was organized. Robert Scounce, a highly respected citizen who many years afterwards died in the county, was elected captain, and marched at once to meet the enemy. In the meantime a regiment was organized in Howard County, under command of Colonel, later General John B. Clark, an honored citizen of Howard County.

The Indians were driven without much trouble north of the state boundary. Before the expiration of these troubles, two other companies, under command of Captain Abraham Goodring, who was also in the war of 1812, and a highly respected citizen of the county, and Captain Robert Boucher, of Randolph County. This small war was one of the incidents, it was said, leading to the famous Black Hawk war.