Free Will Baptist Church of Pennytown

The subject of this sketch, one of Saline's most distingushed men, was born in Wayne county, Kentucky, on the 12th day of July, 1807, and died in Saline county, Missouri, April 21st, 1866, being nearly fifty-nine years of age. He was a son of Wm. Bruce, a native of King George county, Virginia, and Sarah Bruce, his wife, whose maiden name was Vandever, and who was a native of Buncomb county. North Carolina. His father saw the army of Washington in its march to the final victory of the revolution at Yorktown. Both his parents lived to a green old age, the father being in his ninety-second, and the mother in her eighty-sixth year of age. The subject of this sketch was the sixth of a family of nine children, all of whom are now dead, except Mrs. Lavina Strother, mother of Hon. John P. Strother, late of Kentucky, but now of Marshall, and at present circuit judge of this circuit. In the year after his birth, his parents moved to Henry county, Kentucky, where they spent the remainder of their lives, dying in 1862, and where Aaron F. Bruce was reared. He was always industrious and energetic, even in boyhood. At that early day, school privileges were not abundant, and when a grammar schoiDl was started in his boyhood, in the neighborhood, his father told him and his brother they could attend. The brother attended, but Aaron told his father that if he would pay him the money that he intended to pay the teacher for his tuition, he would study his grammar at his plow-handle. This was done, and he carried his book with him into the field and cultivated his mind while he cultivated the corn. This serves

Passage source: History of Saline County, Missouri, Carefully Written and Compiled from the Most Authentic Official and Private Sources ... with a Condensed History of Missouri; the State Constitution; a Military Record of Its Volunteers in Either Army of the Great Civil War ... Biographical Sketches of Prominent Men .., published 1881.

On the outbreak of the late civil war he was a large slave-owner, and perhaps the largest hemp-grower in Saline county, his annual crop being from 300 to 400 acres. His sympathies were naturally with the south, and his wealth made him a prey to the avaricious. One day^ as he was returning home from Marshall, a murderous detachment of militia lay in ambush intending to kill him, as one of them afterward confessed, but were prevented by the fact that he was in company with a Union man. Busin:;ss was paralyzed by war, and, not content to risk his life and do nothing- at home, he left his beautiful home on Pilot Knob, four miles northwest of Marshall, and going to Nebraska City, embarked in a lucrative enterprise on a large scale, that of freighting for the government and transporting supplies across the plains to Colorado, whose silver and gold mines were then attracting a large emigration. In this business he employed many men and twelve heavy vv^agons and one hundred and twenty head of work cattle.

Passage source: History of Saline County, Missouri, Carefully Written and Compiled from the Most Authentic Official and Private Sources ... with a Condensed History of Missouri; the State Constitution; a Military Record of Its Volunteers in Either Army of the Great Civil War ... Biographical Sketches of Prominent Men .., published 1881.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Salt Fork Township - 1,926 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.