ROOTS IN LEWIS COUNTY

A paper presented at Canton, Missouri's Round Table Club, November 10, 1994 by Michael Flanagan

I have been studying genealogy recently. Family has been a blessing for me. I inherited a good one. Somehow, it seems whenever my mother starts talking about people in Marion County, Missouri; every third word out of her mouth is "cousin". When it isn't "cousin" it is "aunt" or "uncle" instead. I swear she is related to everyone in the neighborhood of Bethel Baptist Church north of Palmyra. Through her brother, Horace Hansbrough, in collaboration with other Hansbroughs, the origins of that very unusual name have been traced to a single immigrant from England to Virginia in 1638.

My Father's family has its roots in Lewis County. They go back to the very earliest of the settlers who came to Lewis County, Missouri from Kentucky in the late 1820's and early 1830's. And before that, from Virginia to Kentucky in the 1780's and 1790's. The earliest immigration date we have found is 1617. And we have yet to find anyone on either side of my family tree who immigrated to America as late as the Nineteenth or Twentieth Centuries. There are some lines that we haven't gotten a good handle on yet, but every line that leads to this Michael Flanagan comes from the British Isles to America in the Seventeenth or Eighteenth Century.

My father has learned, after years of frustration, that headstrong children do not take well to being pushed. Over the years, he has adopted the strategy of simply becoming absorbed and enthusiastic about a subject or a project. Then he stoically accepts that his enthusiasm may or may not infect his children. His strategy has had its successes and it has had its failures. Quite some years ago, he gave me an old Bible. He knew that I would appreciate it as an old book, if for no other reason. I was also given to understand that it was a family heirloom. My father had inherited it from his Aunt Lin Roberts. Inside this Bible were several inscriptions. It says: "Anne Allen's Bible" on its first page in a handwriting that was well practiced at using a quill. On the next page, it says: "Nathaniel Richardson Bible given to him by his mother Anne Richardson, April 2nd, 1770----Nathaniel Richardson Born November 24th 1766." On a flyleaf near the back cover, it says, in a different hand: "Mary A. Reddish book given to her by her father N. Richardson, 1844." I don't think I'm going to write anything in that little Bible, but it was given to me by my father about 1980. And I do cherish it. This paper revolves around this little Bible and the people who have handed it down, generation after generation, to me. Nathaniel Richardson was my Great-Great-Great-Grandfather.

We are very fortunate when we find the papers of a literate ancestor. So many times, the genealogies simply record birth date, marriage date, death date, names of spouses and children, places of birth and death and maybe some movements in between. And not much else! Maybe there will be enough to distinguish this particular David Hall from that particular David Hall and maybe not. Seldom do we have an opportunity to glimpse the personality of one of our ancestors. Only occasionally do we find an ancestor who left distinct tracks in the sands of his times. Judge Richardson is one of those. In addition to the Bible that we have already mentioned, there is a little book by Harry Middleton Hyatt called A Pioneer's Estate. What Mr. Hyatt has done is to collect the papers of Judge Richardson that related to settling the estate of a man named Charles Hall. Charles Hall was a son-in-law of Judge Richardson's, and he was my Great-Great-Grandfather. Harry Middleton Hyatt claims that he has written a book about Judge Richardson, but I have yet to find the librarian who can locate a copy. In a couple of other books, Mr. Hyatt has paraphrased portions of the diary of Judge Richardson. I also have a copy of Judge Richardson's Will. Additionally, Judge Richardson received some mention in the Kentucky Gazette, and is mentioned in the tax and census records that are a staple of genealogical research. His family is also mentioned in the book Forks of Elkhorn Church, a genealogical study of a church near Frankfort, Kentucky. Judge Richardson comes with a treasure trove of his tracks through time.

His mother's Bible says that he was born in 1766. The book Forks of Elkhorn Church says 1768. Somehow, I'm inclined to believe his mother. It seems like she should know. The same book says that he is "recorded as born in Goochland County, Virginia." His father was named Turner Richardson, Jr, and he was born May 1, 1739 in Fluvanna County, Virginia. About his father, we know only his name; Turner Richardson. We don't know when his father was born, where he was born, who he married, when he died, not even the barest of genealogical facts. All we have is that he was the father of ten children in Fluvanna County, Virginia between 1732 and 1750. Turner Richardson, Jr. was the third of those ten children. He was 33 years old when he married Anne Allen. We know more about her than we know about Turner, Jr.'s mother, We know her name and the date of her death. We also have a sample of her handwriting in this very, very old little Bible that she once called her own. She and Turner Richardson, Jr. had six children. She gave the Bible to their second born son, Nathaniel, when he was only four years old. Nathaniel went on to graduate from a Richmond, Virginia University where he studied law. Soon after being admitted to the bar he moved with his parents, his two younger brothers and two sisters; from Virginia through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. Their older brother stayed behind in Virginia. According to the book Forks of Elkhorn Church, they moved from Fluvanna County, Virginia to Kentucky in 1787, and settled near Haydon's Station. Now, I haven't been able to find out where Haydon's Station, Kentucky might be, yet. It doesn't seem to be a modern name, but I should look for it first in Franklin County, somewhere near Frankfort. Nathaniel would have been about 21 years old.

Kentucky in 1787 was "the wild frontier"! Recall, if you will, the famous story about Daniel Boone's daughter and two companions who were kidnaped by the Indians. Remember that they so slowed their captors that Daniel Boone and a band of pursuing settlers were able to catch them before they made good their escape across the Ohio River. That incident happened in 1776. John Bakeless, in his biography of Daniel Boone calls 1782, "The year of Blood!" Though troubles with the Indians subsided considerably after the British stopped supplying them with weapons in 1782, it was 1795 before settlers in Kentucky could begin to let down their guard. There is no doubt that Kentucky was "the wilderness" when Nathaniel Richardson came to it in 1787.

My researches persuade me that Nathaniel Richardson was a source of thoughtfulness and introspection. Well able to cope with the ruggedness of the frontier, he was an educated man who inherited some means and who managed his family and affairs soberly and responsibly. He actively practiced law for only a short time before giving it up and devoting his attention to farming. He was a man of some stature in Franklin County, Kentucky. Tax records show that in 1795, he claimed 4 adult males, probably himself, his father and two brothers. He paid taxes on 500 acres of land, 14 slaves, five horses and 34 cattle. These are the holdings of a prosperous man.

In 1791, he married Ann Read. She is one of these persons that we have all the genealogical information for, but haven't a clue about what she might have been like. Someone has done a tremendous amount of research that traces her lineage back to the earliest days of American Colonization. We have names and dates and we can trace every detail of her lineage, but only the person who did the research gained any insight into the personalities of her ancestors. There are scores of military titles amongst these names. Her father was Captain Hankerson Read. He died in 1812, but it is an open question as to whether he was in that war or not. Among the others who bear military titles are Colonel Francis Slaughter and his father Colonel Robert Slaughter, there was Major Augustine Smith and his father Colonel Laurence Smith. But my favorite name of all those that I have yet encountered in all of my family is the name of Lieutenant Colonel Cadwallader Jones. I love that name for its eclectic English classyness. And he was named after his Grandfather, Cadwallader Jones of Somerset, England (who died about 1650). One of the concerns of the person who prepared Ann Read's family tree was to establish a connection with some of the founders of our country. But the best that she could find was a distant cousin connection to James Madison. Far behind were two "by-marriage" connections to relatives of George Washington. All of this is well and good, but it really tells us precious little about who Ann Read was. What was she like?

Well, to begin with, she was 15 years old when she married Nathaniel Richardson. He was 24. They began immediately the production of a large family. There is only one small tidbit about her that I can find that is fun to notice. When she had her first daughter, she named her Mary Ann. Perhaps the "Mary" was for her own mother and the "Ann" was for her husband's mother or perhaps the Ann was for herself. But that daughter died as an infant. When she bore her second daughter, her sixth child, she used that same name over again. Whatever that tells us about who Ann Read might have been, it is one of the very few details that injects a little life into the flood of details that we know about her. She died in 1809. She was 34. She left behind nine living children. Her daughter, my Great-Great-Grandmother Mary Ann Richardson, was only nine years old.

One of the inscriptions in this little Bible says, "Anna Richardson departed this life on the 10th of Nov. 1794 at 11 O'clock in the evening. Lord she was thine, and not my own. Thou havt not done me wrong. I thank thee for the precious loan afforded me so long." It is signed T. Richardson, her husband. Here is an example of what I believe is the most important part of genealogical research. A distant grandfather of mine has spoken through two centuries of time, and his words have touched me. He remarried, and survived until 1802. His son was appointed a Judge later in the same year. Nathaniel Richardson was 36 when he was appointed to the bench in Franklin County, Kentucky. He also served several terms as the Sheriff of Franklin County, Kentucky. But he gave most of his attention to farming. And he has been known as Judge Richardson ever since.

I'd like to tell a love story, now. But I don't know it. What I do know is that Mary Ann Richardson managed to stave off getting married until she was 20 years old. That is unusual for those times. I wonder if having four older brothers might have had something to do with it? When she did marry though, she too, as was common, found a man who was about ten years older. Charles Hall was probably born around 1790, in Madison County, Kentucky; the county in which Boonesboro was located. We don't know very much about him. The little that we do know we have learned from the tiny, slender book by Harry Middleton Hyatt titled A Pioneer's Estate. Charles Hall died in 1826. Judge Richardson administered the estate. Mr. Hyatt, who inherited all of Judge Richardson's papers, went to the trouble of collecting just the papers that relate to Charles Hall's estate and publishing them as a single book. Thank you, Mr. Hyatt. He points out that there was a great instability of currencies. He finds it interesting to notice that unsound banking practices and lack of opportunities for safe investment often deprived a widow and her children of means and left them destitute or dependant upon family, even when their financial situation had been fairly good.

Charles Hall's estate includes records that tell us that he bought and sold land frequently. And we know that he built a house in New Albany, Indiana; and that it was sold for taxes. Judge Richardson spent considerable effort trying to recover that property, but was unsuccessful. And that's about it; that's about all that is certain. The part of Mr. Hyatt's book that I found most interesting was the section called, "Miscellaneous Documents". Several of the documents transcribed there are documents that don't relate to Charles Hall directly, at all. They relate to one David Hall instead. And some of them are dated early enough that this David Hall must have been the father of Charles Hall. For instance there is a document that calls itself an indenture, dated 1792. It exchanges 827 acres of land in Madison County, Kentucky for One Hundred Pounds. This land is transferred from a man with the curious name of Green Clay to David Hall. Charles Hall shouldn't have been more than two years old at that time, and it is possible that he hadn't yet been born. Still this document was presented as one that was pertinent to his estate. Surely, this was his father.

A second indenture exchanging land eventually stirred my curiosity to do further research. This document exchanges 75 acres of land in Henry County, Kentucky "for and in consideration of the sum of thirty eight pound current money." In this document, David Hall is buying land from "Squire Boone & Jane his wife", in 1802. It finally got to me. I had to find out who this "Squire Boone" was. I found a biography of Daniel Boone in the Quincy Library that seemed to be quite well documented with an extensive bibliography and copious notes. I looked in the index, and I found "Squire Boone" with a long list of page numbers. It turned out that "Squire" was a family name and not a title. Both Daniel Boone's father and Daniel Boone's brother were named Squire Boone. I then checked the index for a David Hall. And he was listed! I turned to page 45, and found that John Bakeless, the author of the biography, was quoting "David Hall, an old pioneer." I was excited! I searched Mr. Bakeless's notes and found that his quote was from a deposition that he found in the book Fayette County Kentucky Records, Vol. 1. So I set my librarian scrounging for that book and found in it, The Deposition of David Hall, taken at Frankfort, Ky on September 1, 1810. The deposition had to do with a land dispute which hinged upon whether the salt lick on the middle fork of Big Bone Creek should be named Big Bone Lick or Mud Lick. This is what that deposition says:

"Deponent resided in state of North Carolina about forty years ago and that a man by name of John Finley came to that country and informed the deponent, Daniel Boone and several others, that he had been a prisoner among the Indians and had been on the waters of the Kentucky river where there was a great advantage or profit to be made by hunting and trapping and directed us how to find said Kentucky River, Big Bone creek and sundry other rivers and this deponent, Daniel Boone, Squire Boone, Ezekiel Smith and ten others, started to make a hunt on the aforesaid waters, and came in the last of May, which was two years or better before Boonesborough was settled. They fell in with a number of Indian canoes at the Ohio and took them up the Kentucky River to the mouth of Marble creek and left them until the next summer when we again returned to the Big Bone creek and four of us remained there about a week. I was at the Lick when it was named - we called it Big Bone Lick."

So, there it is. We have a man named David Hall who hunted with Daniel Boone. And we have good reason to believe that he might have been the father of Charles Hall, who was my Great-Great-Grandfather.

Charles Hall and Mary Ann Richardson were married in 1820. They had three sons; Nathaniel Richardson Hall, who was named after her Father; James C. Hall; and Francis Preston Hall. Then Charles Hall died after only six years of marriage! Mary Ann was 26. She had three infant sons, but she didn't languish a widow for long. In 1829, she remarried to Ransom Reddish. He, too, was a widower with a family. His children were older, two girls and a boy named John. Soon after their marriage this family made the move from Kentucky to Lewis County, Missouri.

There were quite a number of related families that migrated from Kentucky to Missouri about that same time. I think that the first was probably Mary Ann's oldest brother, James Allen Richardson, who moved first from Kentucky to Illinois and then on to Lewis County. Eventually, all but one or two of Judge Richardson's children lived in Lewis County at one point or another in their lives. And there was one other fellow who came from Kentucky to Lewis County that we should pay attention to; a fellow by the name of Silas Reddish.

I don't have any genealogical information about Silas Reddish. He might have been Mary Ann's brother-in-law or maybe her father-in-law, I'm not sure. I feel sure that he was a relative of Ransom Reddish. What we know is that he made an entry for land in Lewis County, Mo. in March of 1830. And that he is credited as being the first settler in what was first known as Deer Ridge Township. The name was later changed to Reddish Township to honor him. We also know that someone made an entry for land in the name of Nathaniel Richardson in October of 1830, but that Judge Richardson was still In Kentucky at that time.

Lewis County had begun to be settled by John Bozarth in 1819. Settlers trickled in throughout the 1820's. And in 1829, a fairly large group of immigrants came to Lewis County, more in that one year than in the previous five. Still, most of the settlement was in the bottoms, near the bluff. It was with the immigrants who came in 1830 that the push to the interior of the county came. Both the land entry for Silas Reddish and for Nathaniel Richardson were for land in "The Indian Town", an area West and South of where Monticello is today. Ransom Reddish and his bride brought their double family to Lewis County in 1830 and settled for the remainder of their lives.

What might it have been like to be a nine year old boy, moving with a new father and his three older children across the Mississippi River and into the wilderness frontier? What was it like to move away from Grandfather Richardson who had done his best to make everything turn out all right after his real father had died? Nathaniel Richardson Hall had two little brothers. His mother's slave, Lydia, probably helped to care for them in one way or another. The risk of Indian trouble was actually quite small, but anxiety about Indian trouble was quite large. Especially around 1832, when the Black Hawk Wars opened the possibility even wider.

Ransom Reddish and Silas Reddish were part of a group of settlers who built a Kentucky style Block House during the summer of 1832, on the land of a man named Martin Nall. They used strong heavy logs to erect a structure two stories tall. The lower story was eighteen feet square, the upper was twenty-two feet square. The second story overhang permitted settlers to patrol the outer wall against fire by shooting down through holes in the projecting floor. Though it may have been used as a refuge once or twice when an Indian alarm was spread, it was never the site of a skirmish. For that matter, I haven't found any evidence that there ever was a skirmish between Indians and settlers in Lewis County.

In 1833, the first term of the Lewis County Court was held at the home of the county's first settler, John Bozarth. The judges and the sheriff had been appointed by the governor, Daniel Dunklin. But only two of the judges showed up. The third, Alexander Morrow, made his appearance the following day and promptly resigned his appointment. James A. Richardson, Mary Ann's oldest brother, was appointed to take his place. It wasn't until late in the second term of the court on July 22, 1833, that James A. Richardson actually appeared and there was, for the first time ever in Lewis County, a full court.

One of the early actions of that court was to designate Canton as the temporary seat of county government, until a permanent seat could be established. It was James A. Richardson who was charged with selecting a site for the new County Seat. Working with Silas Reddish, the site of present day Monticello was selected, surveyed, platted and named. Though Monticello is often thought of as being named for the home of Thomas Jefferson, I would like to direct your attention to the fact that Monticello is an Italian word that means "Little Mountain", and that term does indeed describe the location of our Monticello. It was in June of 1834, that the county court was first convened in Monticello. The courthouse was a small log structure. The contractor had not yet been paid, and the court was forced to borrow $100 to pay him. And so it is that my ancestors were responsible for the establishment of the smallest and least successful, town that is a county seat in all of the United States. One of the early Hotels in Monticello was called the Pemberton House. The proprietors were William and Eliza Pemberton. Eliza Pemberton was one of Mary Ann's sisters. And her brother, William Penn Richardson, was one of Monticello's first merchants. Judge Richardson was a charter member of the Masonic Lodge in Monticello. And Mary Ann, herself, was among the founders of Monticello's Christian Church.

1833 was also the year in which Judge Nathaniel Richardson moved his household from Kentucky to Lewis County. The old Judge had already buried two wives, and was now married to the third. Number one, Ann Read, who bore all of his children, had died in 1809. In 1811, he married number two; Susannah Dupee in Shelby County, Kentucky. By 1821, she was gone and he married Fanny Bullard, wife number three, also in Shelby County Kentucky. She was his wife when they migrated from Kentucky to Missouri. To get ahead of myself a little bit, he remarried yet a fourth time in Lewis County to Eliza Wills, a widow; and in his will, he asked to be buried in the garden between his two wives.

Harry Middleton Hyatt, that most prolific of researchers into this family, says that Judge Nathaniel Richardson kept a diary, and that he had it in his possession. How I would love to have a transcription of that diary. What I have instead is a paraphrased version of only a very short period from that diary. It is the period that covers his overland journey from Frankfort, Kentucky to Monticello, Missouri in the Autumn of 1833. I found the excruciatingly slow speed of the journey to be remarkable, it took 38 days. Only 3 days out, they bought more oxen and made repairs already to the carriage he called "The Dearborn". The substance that they used to grease the wagons, they called "tar". At about halfway, the harness began to wear out and new reins and a horse collar were bought. In Indiana, they left one wagon, stuck in the mud. When they came to the beginnings of the prairie, they bought 12 rails to keep for prying the wagons out of mud holes. While there were woods, trees could be cut on site. On the prairie, there were no more trees. Then there came a time when they began to fear that they would run out of silver money. No other money would be accepted along the trail from people who were only passing through. One night, two horses broke loose. After losing all of the next day searching for them, someone returned the horses that night and the Judge paid a $5 reward. Somewhere near the Indiana and Illinois border, Scipio, a slave, turned over his wagon. They had to spend that night on the prairie. When they crossed the Mississippi River at Quincy, the charge was $17.79 for the crossing. Mr. Hyatt thinks that at such a charge, crossing the river must have been quite a laborious affair.

What could this old Pioneer have been thinking? He was 67 years old! Born in Virginia, he had moved into the wilderness of Kentucky as a young adult, married, raised a large family, and generally succeeded in life. What sort of reason would compel him to start over again in the wilderness of the far west, yet a second time? Old Daniel Boone had moved to Missouri thirty years earlier saying that Kentucky was getting too crowded. I wonder how he and Judge Richardson might fare in the crowded world that we face every day? Or did he move simply to be close to his family in his old age? Perhaps that diary that Mr. Hyatt had would help us to make a guess? At the least, we would have more information to base our guess upon.

Mary Ann had one child by Ransom Reddish, a girl who died as an infant. And then Ransom Reddish died, too. In 1837, Nathaniel Hall and his two brothers became fatherless, yet again. I imagine that with their grandfather near at hand, their lives were not seriously interrupted. Ransom Reddish's own son, John, took over the family farm. He was 22 years old, but hadn't been offered the schooling that the sons of Charles Hall had. Their Grandfather Richardson had seen to it that they received what he called a "fair education".

In 1840, when he was nineteen, Nathaniel Hall bought 400 acres of land at two dollars an acre. Among the first settlers, wooded land had been preferred over the prairie grassland. With the primitive plows available to the earliest settlers, the prairie sod broke the plows rather than the plows breaking the sod. The earliest settlers would rather clear stumps than to try to plow the prairie. Young Nathaniel Hall had progressive ideas. By 1840, plows that would cut the prairie sod had been developed. His 400 acres were prairie land. Flat and broad, his homestead includes the land that was the Prairie View Rest Home when I was growing up, and included the present day Lewis County Fairgrounds. I just betcha that his grandfather helped him to make the original purchase.

The old Judge died in 1852. He had outlived four wives. He had raised nine children. He had pioneered both in Kentucky and Missouri. He had lived 86 years. He had acheived prosperity through hard work. Surely, his was the outline of a rich life, a full life, a complete life.

I want to quote a portion of his will to you. As politically incorrect as this passage is, it is a fact of history that he did hold slaves. Judge Richardson gave one specific slave to each of his children. The remaining slaves were to be evaluated quickly and divided up among his children, "so as to make them as nearly equal as possible, and this division I wish made without waiting for the collection of the money due from the sale of my estate, that the poor creatures may not be held in suspense any longer than may be necessary. My great affection for my children bears me off or I would emancipate everyone of them. I hope my children will act feelingly toward the poor creatures . . ." Certainly a quaint request to our ears. He was the personification of an Aristotelian Aristocrat.

Soon after her father died, Mary Ann, now 52 and widowed twice, moved in with her son, his namesake. And not long after that, her son married for the first time. What a mystery surrounds this marriage! How on earth could these two have met? Mary Jane Christie was a native of Winchester, Frederick County, Virginia. My father thinks that once Nathaniel Hall landed in Lewis County, he probably never again, ventured very far away. I simply can't find the plausible explanation. Was she a mail-order bride? Or maybe there was some "friends-of-friends" connection or another. Perhaps my father is mistaken; perhaps Nathaniel Hall had some reason to make an excursion to Virginia, perhaps they met there. I don't know how to find out.

The depth of this mystery is not yet complete. They were married on March 1 of 1855. He was 33, she was 21. And she lived only three more months. In July of 1855, she died! I haven't yet discovered the cause of her death. Her older brother left a memoir, and he mentions her dying, but his thoughts are cryptic and poetic. No factual information can be derived from them. I haven't a clue.

Mary Jane Christie was the oldest daughter of James Christie and Elizabeth (Watson) Christie. They had eight children in all. In September of 1855, only a couple of months after her death, James Christie loaded all of his household goods into a big Virginia Freight wagon; placed the outfit in the charge of two of his sons, David, 18 and John, 16. These two boys, ". . . drove a four-horse wagon loaded with the family goods a thousand miles across unknown and sparsely settled country, joining there the other members of the family, who had taken the easier way, by Ohio and Mississippi River boats." The overland journey took two months. They arrived in Monticello, Missouri in November of 1855.

Four years later, Nathaniel Hall married again. Now he was 38. And he married Sarah Virginia Christie, the 19 year old sister of his first wife. They had ten children together. He was 64 when the youngest was born! One of those ten children was my grandmother.

As we search through history for clues about the personalities of our ancestors, we are awfully lucky when we find writings. The oldest brother of the Christie sisters left behind an extensive memoir of his life and times. Dr. Robert J. Christie completed his Medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1856. He promptly married and then followed his family to Missouri, settling in Lancaster. When the Civil War came along, he volunteered his medical services to the cause of the Confederacy. He was with General Monroe Parsons at Springfield, Missouri early in the war. He barely escaped from the shelling of Kirksville. He made his way alone from Northeastern Missouri; to Danville, Illinois; to Cairo, Illinois; across the Mississippi River by rowboat at night; and through Arkansas to Little Rock where he joined General Parsons' 10th Missouri Infantry, once again. At the close of the war, he was at Shreveport, Louisiana. His memoir is an extensive telling of the experience of growing up in Virginia, of becoming a doctor in the mid-nineteenth century, and a detailed account of the everyday life of a doctor in the Confederate Army. For insight into the way that soldiers lived their lives during the Civil War, his memoir is a sparkling gem. After the war, Dr. Christie practiced in LaGrange and Monticello before entering practice in Quincy, Illinois. Though he is only the contemporary of Samuel Clemens, the quality of his writing is quite acceptable. I recommend it to any student of the Civil War.

Among the ten children of Nathaniel and Sarah Virginia Hall was one named Eliza Pemberton Hall. She was well on her way to becoming a spinster, working as a clerk in dry goods stores, first in Lewistown, then in Shelbina and in Unionville, Missouri. While in Unionville, she met Dana C. Flanagan, a co-worker, and married him when she was 35 years of age. My Father was her only child.

Once my father had graduated from High School in Unionville, he worked in both St.Louis, Missouri and in Minneapolis, Minnesota, before he came to Monticello, Missouri to work in the Lewis County Collector's office of Mr. James Scrimsher. He and Miss Dorothy Hansbrough, a teacher in the school at Monticello, had known each other for about a year before he had earned enough money to buy himself a car. Then they began dating, went to movies, dancing, one thing and another, and they decided to marry. He got a job in Kansas City with the Consumer's Co-operative Association as an accountant. At the close of a school year, they were married at the Baptist Church across the street from Senator Harry Truman's house in Independence, Missouri. They had two sons there, and they brought them back to Lewistown, Missouri to raise them in small town America.

The emphasis in this paper has been upon my family, and upon Lewis County, Missouri. I don't pretend that this is a full and complete account of the history of Lewis County, by any means. But from the earliest beginnings of the settlement of Lewis County to the present day, relatives of mine have been here, living and loving, prospering and failing, birthing and dying. Some have spent lifetimes here. Others passed through and went on. Wherever I live, when people ask me, "Where's home?" I have to say, "Lewis County, Missouri."

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