The Precolonial/Prehistoric Era
De Soto in Missouri
Prior to the colonization and settlement of North America by Europeans, the eastern seaboard west to the Appalachian Mountains was claimed by England, the broad central portion of the continent from the Appalachians to the Rocky Mountains by France, and Mexico, Florida, and California by Spain. The continent had been occupied by Native Americans for 20,000 years; the whole of it was claimed by “discovery” by Europeans beginning around 1500 A.D. The “taking” used other tools including disease, demise, death and erroneous dealing. Missouri is a great example of this taking. It became illegal for a Native American to be in the state in 1839, much less own any land.
English, French, and Spanish Origins
(1763) The end of the French and Indian War in 1763 led to a reordering of ownership and control over the central portion of the continent, France withdrawing and giving the land west of Mississippi River to Spain. French lands from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Appalachian Mountains east to the Mississippi River became England’s – spoils of war. The Mississippi River valley continued to be home to many French settlers, trappers, and traders under the new Spanish/English administrations. Both Spain and France being Catholic and with little immigration by Spanish citizens or direct Spanish government influences, little changed for the French residents’ abilities and opportunities to pursue their primary commercial activity – rich trade with the regions many Native American tribes, even though the lands on the eastern side had become owned by the English, known as “Indian Country.”
St. Louis Emerges as a Regional Center of Commerce
(1763) St. Louis was established in 1763 by Pierre Laclede and Auguste Choteau, they having travelled upstream on the Mississippi River from their homes in New Orleans. St. Louis, strategically located on the west bank of the Mississippi River at the mouth of the Missouri River, further opened trading opportunities for the French in the valley. St. Louis quickly became the epicenter of the trans-Mississippi fur trade. Expensive, highly-sought-after peltries were shipped north in the winter to preserve their value. Lesser valued furs were shipped south to markets in New Orleans.
The Founding of Cape Girardeau
(1763) Prior to 1763, several smaller trading posts had been established on the west bank, including at today’s Cape Girardeau. Jean Baptiste de Girardot, a French officer at Kaskaskia in the Illinois Country of New France, founded a trading post at a promontory rock overlooking the Mississippi River on the west side in 1733. The 20 or more Native American tribes living in the area, having been forced west by white settlement, along with the increasing number of Mississippi River travelers, quickly made this little bit of civilization a popular stopping point for trade.
Cape Girardeau: (Opens in Google Maps) Decimal Degrees 37.2970869, -89.5518889 or in Degrees, Minutes, Seconds 37°16’56″N 89°32’32″W
No American Immigrants Allowed
(1790) Spanish authorities initially rejected American immigration into Louisiana. Non-Catholics were expressly not allowed. By 1790 Americans began aggressively entering Spanish Louisiana in search of rich farm land. Late arriving slave-owning Tennessee and Kentucky Scotch-Irish farmers originally from Virginia and North and South Carolina had found good, affordable land unavailable, but plentiful across the Mississippi in Missouri. In the Northwest Territory – Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana – slavery was not allowed. Missouri was the best option by far. Spanish authorities quickly discovered the rampant anti-British zeal the Americans carried, which could help mitigate Spanish paranoia over British interests in the Southwestern mining region. By 1795 the Spanish had relaxed their resistance to American immigration and began encouraging American farmers and their families to come to Missouri, enticing them with liberal land granting practices.
George Rogers Clark
(1788) He had developed a reputation for honesty and influence among the Native Americans in that district, being recognized by the Spanish authorities as a trusted regional leader. In 1793 he was commissioned by the Spanish Governor General to facilitate trade and improve relations with the Native Americans at the Cape, being named Commandant of the new Cape Girardeau District and building a military post there. 30 miles south of the Cape, in 1788, Col. George Morgan negotiated his way into a Spanish land grant of two million acres, he thought!
Control of the Trade Routes
(1819) The opening of the Missouri River for trapping, trading and travel unfortunately brought the English issue into sharper focus for Americans because the English had long-established trading relationships with the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara at the great bend of the Missouri River, reached by the English from Hudson Bay via the Assiniboine River route.
Insert map
That trade continued to be a source of contention into the American era, ultimately leading to the Maj. Stephen Long “Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1819-1820.” His expedition was supposed to stop that trade, but the expedition got redirected to the southwest to locate the Red River, the proposed U. S. international boundary with Spain. Long’s overland travels led to the naming of “Long’s Peak” in the Rocky Mountains and the “Ozark” Mountains in Missouri. He did not reach the Red River.
Louis Lorimier
(1787) Sixty tears later a French-Canadian named Louis Lorimier, a past British Indian agent arrived in the region. By 1787 he was present at the Cape along with other French-Canadian refugees and bands of Shawnee and Delaware under his leadership, all having escaped from the Ohio Country.
Tension Between the Spanish & English
(1820) That trade paradigm between the Indians and the French, which did not include the taking of land for farming, had been considered mutually beneficial, facilitating general peace across the region for the previous 5 decades. Over the next 3 decades, frequent irritation created by an incipient but persistent British presence and influence from their Great Lakes region spreading down the Mississippi Valley and incoming Americans created increasing conflict. Spain’s interest was limited to the maintenance of a buffer zone between the British and Spain’s perceived rich mineral wealth in the Southwest, and in achieving that at a minimal cost. England’s interest was to limit the American colonies to the seaboard to more easily control the flow of raw products toward English manufacturers and limit their expenses, knowing that Indian Country was too large to govern from across an ocean.
Study this 1800 map snippet his location and the cultural diversity of the region.
Insert Lorimire snippet from Clark map
Regional Conflicts
His support of British and Indian raids against American interests and settlement across the Old Northwest Territory had been met with opposition from American forces under George Rogers Clark and others. Escape and settlement on the west bank – of the Mississippi – were possible because the prior Indian occupants had fallen victim to White Man’s diseases of measles and smallpox. Lorimier was eventually given official Spanish permission for that new Indian occupation and his leadership.
The Americans Stream into Spanish Controlled Lands
The build-up of the horde of Americans pouring over the Appalachian Mountains had convinced the Spanish that they were soon to be over-run by land-hungry Americans. In an effort to avoid that loss of control of their buffer zone, the Spanish agreed to allow 500 American families under Morgan to settle on the agriculturally rich uplands in “New Madrid,” named by Morgan to endear the Spanish authorities to his efforts.
The Rich Agricultural Land in the St. Francis Watershed
(1811) The caveat to settlement was allegiance to Spain. Morgan was set to sell farmland to his fellow immigrants until the agreement was disallowed by Spain. The floodgates had already opened to settlement – the American farmers moved onto the New Madrid soil. Some of the very best agricultural land in Missouri, in the St. Francis watershed, was settled and farmed by these 500 families, but not under the Land Laws of the time or the rectilinear public land survey, as the lands yet to be surveyed.
The New Madrid Earthquake
Disaster came to the region on December 16, 1811.
The 1811–1812 New Madrid earthquakes were a series of intense intraplate earthquakes beginning with an initial earthquake of moment magnitude 7.2–8.2 on December 16, 1811, followed by a moment magnitude 7.4 aftershock on the same day. Two additional earthquakes of similar magnitude followed in January and February 1812. They remain the most powerful earthquakes to hit the contiguous United States east of the Rocky Mountains in recorded history.[10][11][12] The earthquakes, as well as the seismic zone of their occurrence, were named for the Mississippi River town of New Madrid, then part of the Louisiana Territory and now within the U.S. state of Missouri.
The epicenters of the earthquakes were located in an area that at the time was at the distant western edge of the American frontier, only sparsely settled by European settlers. Contemporary accounts have led seismologists to estimate that these stable continental region earthquakes were felt strongly throughout much of the central and eastern United States, across an area of roughly 50,000 square miles (130,000 km2), and moderately across nearly 1 million sq mi (3 million km2). The 1906 San Francisco earthquake, by comparison, was felt moderately over roughly 6,200 sq mi (16,000 km2). The New Madrid earthquakes were interpreted variously by American Indian tribes, but one consensus was universally accepted: the powerful earthquake had to have meant something. For many tribes in Tecumseh’s pan-Indian alliance, it meant that Tecumseh and his brother the Prophet must be supported.[13] Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1811%E2%80%931812_New_Madrid_earthquakes
Link: The USGS New Madrid Seismic Zone
The Earthquake Relief Act of 1815
(1815) The New Madrid earthquake destroyed the region. The federal government, in response to the disaster, passed the New Madrid Relief Act on February 17, 1815, allowing affected landowners to receive land grant certificates for 160 to 640 acres, good for any unclaimed government land in the Missouri Territory, even before the public land survey had been done. The New Madrid Relief Act was the first disaster relief act in the United States.
Before 1818 only registered pre-emptions, Spanish land grant certificates, and mineral lands exceptions could stand ahead of New Madrid certificate claims. The certificates were negotiable for trade or sale – three-quarters of them ended up in the hands of land speculators in St. Louis.
Indian Settlements
(1810) This map does assign contemporaneous locations for many interesting and remarkable places and peoples; for example, note the “Cherokees” on the near-east side of the St. Francis River in the reach of the lowland/swamp. The Cherokees were displaced to the White River region by the earthquake; there was no government aid for them like the early American farmers received: in fact, the Cherokees quickly discovered they were unwelcome in their new home as the Osage considered the White River region their home. This image is a tiny Missouri snippet of the map that attempts to capture Clark’s potential route to the Pacific Ocean.
https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/2012144?child_oid=1053073
Insert snippet image of Clarks map
The Local Economy Collapses
Many land certificates had been purchased for pennies on the dollar with bank-borrowed money. With many of those banks eventually failing. Passing through multiple purchasers, the dollar costs of the certificates increased rapidly as they changed hands beyond the original holder. Only 20 of the original 500 certificate holders used them to secure their new farms. The rest were the certificates and associated erroneous land deeds which became the currency of the fraud perpetuated on regional farmers and bankers by land speculators trying to make the most out of poorly planned and administered government largesse on the frontier of settlement in the Missouri Territory. The often- overlapping tangled trail of land transactions secondary to the certificates took until the 1850’s to resolve. It was a dress rehearsal for the soon-to-come land speculation and economic disaster facing Cape Girardeau County and others to the north of New Madrid County.
Book Recommendation: Jefferson’s “Louisiana Purchase”
French Ownership Without French Administration
(1803) France took back ownership of Louisiana in 1800, but never took back its administration. Spanish authorities continued their liberal land grant policy until the 1803 transfer to the United States. Dr. Walter Schroeder, in his book “Opening the Ozarks – A Historical Geography of Missouri’s Ste. Genevieve District, 1760 – 1830,” sums up Missouri immigrant challenges: “Thus, the Spanish administration in Upper Louisiana ended without leaving much of an imprint on its settlement.
The area of the Louisiana Purchase – Source Wikipedia
(1803) The American ownership of Louisiana through Jefferson’s “Louisiana Purchase” in 1803, was followed by a rush to settlement and perceived abundant, fertile, cheap farm land by Americans. After the Land Laws of the 1780’s, the sale of land from the public domain by the U.S. government had always been proceeded by the surveying of the land. The first land sales didn’t occur until 1818, frustrating the eager immigrant farmers. Much of the best land had names on it already – from Spanish land grants.
Spanish Bureaucracy
(1789) The goal of defense brought forts and soldiers, but their role in local settlement was inconsequential. Few Spanish actually settled and stayed. Spanish policy was successful by impeding American settlement until 1795, but after then Americans forced Spain to let them enter with their own settlement practices. The Spanish chiefly left a settlement legacy of perplexing laws that poorly addressed the settlement needs of Upper Louisiana and led to years of confusion in the land-confirmation process.”
The Blossoming of Cape Girardeau
(1797) In Louisiana under Lorimer’s leadership and intelligent government, the area at the Cape thrived. His service to the Spanish authorities was recognized with a land grant of 8000 arpents in 1797. He chose the future site of Cape Girardeau as a portion of his grant. He had received Spanish land grants for an additional 30,000 arpents by 1803, the beginning of American ownership of “Louisiana.” The city of Cape Girardeau was platted in 1806; it was incorporated as a town in 1808.
A Monumental Land Title Defect
(1808) A plat of the proposed town was presented to the Court of Common Pleas on July 23, 1808, the petition being signed by Louis Lorimier. His son-in-law, D. F. Steinback, was elected as one of 5 town trustees on August 13, 1808. Steinback operated one of the first general stores in Cape Girardeau. Clearly there was a strong French influence in the town, but that didn’t penetrate to the upland beyond. The town grew very slowly; Lorimier had refused to sell town lots. Probably a good thing, as his land grant at the Cape was never approved by the American commissioners.
The Economic Panic of 1819
(1819) No short description of the Panic of 1819 can provide even a modicum of appreciation for the havoc the speculative land purchasing had caused. The perception of ever-increasing land values supported by a financial system with no controls and not based in government-backed currency or gold led within a very few years to bank failures, high interest rates, mortgage notes being called, and bankruptcies – complete financial ruin across the region. The dreams for many, of settlement and competency as yeoman farmers and of mercantilist trading as successful businessmen, were dashed as quickly as they had risen.
Foreclosures Were Rampant
Bank notes were called – due and payable. Land values crashed. Survival was based in re-shuffling assets toward the ones that were affordable, and giving up or giving back those that were out of reach by debt that could not be serviced. Bankruptcy by the borrower, or giving back some of your just-purchased farm to the government so you could keep what little you could now afford, were the options.
Land Speculation & Economic Collapse
(1820) The Federal government’s response probably made a bad situation worse. The Land Law of 1820 reduced by nearly ½ the official government minimum price per acre at the time when land prices had been inflated far above the government’s previous minimum by the speculative land market. The government reset interest rates higher and required payments on new land purchases to be made in specie or currency of the United States, a nearly unavailable commodity in a frontier barter economy.
French Units of Measure
(1806) The calculated survey totaled 231 arpents and 25 perches. A “perch” is 16 ½ feet; one square perch is 1/160 of an acre. An arpen is equal to 0.85 acres. In English measure the survey of her claim on February 3, 1806, totaled 196.5 acres. The Spanish Surveyor General for the Territory of Louisiana, Antoine Soulard, reviewed and recorded the survey on February 13, 1806 for 197 arpents and 108 perches. This is an image of that recording.
A Bureaucratic Morass
Most of that land was sitting idle, unworked and unimproved and yet, unavailable. That land was doing what it was granted to do – eventually make the owner rich when it was sold. The Federal Government would not allow the land defined by grants to be sold until the claim had been confirmed through multiple layers of investigation and proofing of the grant’s paperwork and survey by United States Commissioners for ascertaining and adjusting the Titles and Claims to Lands in the Territory of Louisiana.
The Earliest “American” Missourians
(1819) The first Missourians that helped the first detachment of Cherokees to cross the Mississippi River and provide food and ground to camp on were people who had waited for settlement to stabilize. They had waited to find their unique niche in the promising new and exciting land called Missouri. They had let their opportunity come to them, not try to take it before its time. As you will see, those who came early to claim their piece of Missouri lost it in an irrational frenzy of land speculation and easy credit. Several of them were involved in both the New Madrid claims and the Panic of 1819.
The Cannon Detachment
See: Journal of Lt. B.B. Cannon
Cannon’s Arrival at Moccasin Springs in Missouri
The first fully land-based route of the removal of the Cherokees from their homelands in the southeastern United States following the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 entered the trans-Mississippi West here in Cape Girardeau County. It was the “Gateway to the West” for these immigrants, but far from the optimistic pursuits envisioned by other American emigrants. Prior Cherokee detachments had used steamboats on inland rivers; low water conditions leading to those rivers becoming no longer navigable had led to many deaths among the Cherokees. The government-managed removal changed the removal plan from steamboat to overland travel in an attempt to save lives.
Lt. B.B. Cannon led the first detachment of 365 Cherokees, made up of those who voluntarily removed, from the Cherokee Agency near Charleston, Tennessee in October 14, 1837. The route the Cannon Detachment walked became known as the “Northern Route.” Eleven more detachments of approximately 1000 Cherokees each followed Cannon’s route. The Treaty of New Echota, the removal treaty, had been signed on December 29, 1835; the Cherokees in the Cannon’s detachment supported the removal treaty. They represented a very small fraction of the then 17,000 Cherokee Nation. The detachment crossed into Illinois at Golconda on November 6, 1837. We now join the detachment via Cannon’s Journal and invoices:
Lt. B.B. Cannon Leads the First Cherokee Relocation
(1837) The Cannon Detachment “arrived at the Mississippi river, 10 o’c. A.M., Commenced ferrying, at 11 o’c A.M., directed the party to move a short distance as they crossed the river, and encamp, Issued corn & fodder…..” The detachment had arrived at Willard’s Landing on the Illinois side of the river at mid-morning on the 12th of November, 1837. Cannon paid William Willard for “ferrying of a detachment of Cherokees across the Mississippi River – as per enclosed contract.” Their first Missouri soil was felt at Moccasin Springs, now Missouri’s “Trail of Tears State Park.”
Journal Entry for November 13, 1837
(1837) On Nov. 13th, 1837, Cannon’s journal entry was: “Continued ferrying from 7 o’c. until 10 o’c A.M., when the wind arose and checked our progress, 3 o’c P.M., resumed and made our trip, suspended at 5 o’c. P.M., issued corn & fodder, corn meal & bacon, buried another of Duck’s children to day.” And on Nov. 14th, Cannon wrote, “Crossed the residue of the Party, Marched at 10 o’c. A.M., halted and encamped at Mr. William’s, Issued corn & fodder, sickness prevailing, 5 miles to day.”
Both Tragedy and Relief at Huzzah Creek
(1837) This was Lt. Cannon first note about “sickness” in the detachment. The sickness and the associated deaths would continue, accelerating to a 10-day sickness camp just a few days later on Huzzah Creek. Cannon reports in his journal that on Nov. 15th, 1837,” Rested for the purpose of washing & c., Issued corn and fodder, corn meal and bacon,” as the detachment stayed encamped at Mr. Williams.
Resupplying in Sparsely Populated Missouri
(1837) Cannon paid Henry McClard for 140 pounds of bacon and 80 pounds of flour on Nov. 15, 1837. Cannon paid Charles Williams for 65 bushels of corn and 1159 bundles of fodder. All three owners were living on farms that they had purchased from the government after the Panic of 1819! The dates of their land purchases are printed with their names on the plats.
(1838) Upon leaving the Williams encampment on Nov. 16th, Cannon paid Williams $0.50/bushel for 18 bushels of corn meal and $0.09/pound for bacon “for subsistence of a detachment of Cherokees.” That same day Cannon records, “Marched at 8 o’c. A.M., left Reese, Starr and families on account of sickness in their families, also James Taylor (Reese’s son in law) and family, Taylor himself being very sick, with instructions to overtake the Party, passed thro’ Jackson, Mo., halted & encamped at widow Roberts on the road via Farmington & c., Issued corn only, no fodder to be had, 17 miles to day.”
Insert snippet image of Family maps of the Township
See the map to identify the river crossing, the trail (to become a portion of the Trail of Tears), and the landowners who helped. William Willard’s land is seen in Illinois’s Township 12-South, Range 3-West, Section 32. McClard’s own a large portion of Missouri Township 32-North, Range 14-East, Section 21 along the road from Moccasin Spring to Jackson. Charles Williams land is seen in Township 32-North, Range 14-East, Section 18, also along the road.
The Missourians
A Scotsman Arrives
(1810) There is far more to the history of the location of Jackson that perhaps better explains its growth and prominence. A Scotchman named James Mills apparently met the Spanish criteria as an American farmer, thereby receiving several land grants before 1800. In particular his wife, Levina, executed a grant stated in his will for 250 arpents by having a survey done “on the dividing ridge between the waters of Hubble Creek and Randolph Creek” as a head right in 1806 after James’ passing.
Insert Image of Recorded claim
(1810) Lavina was wise to seek certification of her claim in 1810, the first year available. As shown below her claim supported by the survey was approved by the three commissioners appointed by the president to certify those claims. Levina received Commissioner’s Certificate No. 330 on February 28, 1810. This is an image of that certificate.
Image of Certificate 330
Land is Finally For Sale!
(1815) The lands of record with Commissioners’ Certificates, beginning in 1810, were the first parcels from which land could legally be sold with fee simple deeds. New Madrid Certificates were not issued until 1815. Pre-emption laws for squatters who built improvements were not effective until 1814, and only applied to settlement before April 12, 1814. Later pre-emption rights required additional congressional action which was always questionable. The public land survey across the region was not complete enough for those sales until 1818. If you wanted a legal deed to property upon which to build a home or business, the land represented by Commissioners’ Certificate No. 330 was a solid and safe choice.
Frenetic Land Turnover Rates
(1837) Unlike the people, generally the farmers, from which Lt. Cannon interacted across the rest of Missouri in 1837, many of the people in Cape Girardeau County were not the original land owners of their property or business. Most farms and businesses had been through multiple owners as a result of the Panic and crash of the economy. The irrationally contrived cultural and economic landscape of Cape Girardeau County, Cannon’s first Missouri experience, was unique in the detachment’s travels across Missouri.
Jackson, Missouri Becomes the County Seat
(1815) Cape Girardeau County in the Missouri Territory succeeded Cape Girardeau District in 1813. The County Court of Common Pleas appointed 5 commissioners to locate the new seat of government for the county. They purchased 50 acres of land along Hubble Creek from Wm. Ashley; that land became the city of Jackson in 1815, and the seat of county government.
300 Men, Women, Children, and Possibly Slaves
(1820) By 1820 the surrounding country, having been relatively compactly settled, the population of Jackson was over 300. From the Southeast Missourian June 2, 2015, “The population consisted of a heterogeneous assemblage of people, young men predominating, gathered from almost every state in the Union….Society was in a rather chaotic state, and some of the restraint and much of the refinement of older communities were lacking, yet many of the early residents were people of intelligence, whose influence was not bound by county lines.”
A Travel Log Entry
Maj. Stephen Long, on his return trip from the Rocky Mountains in 1820 traveling to his steamboat at Cape Girardeau, described the town of Jackson as, “one of the largest towns in Missouri” and there were “more than fifty houses, which though built of logs, seem to aspire to a degree of importance unknown to the simple dwellings of the scattered and solitary settlers, assuming an appearance of consequence and superiority similar to that we immediately distinguished in the appearance and manners of the people.”
Jackson, Missouri in 1826
(1826) Carl Sauer, in his 1920 classic “The Geography of the Ozark Highland of Missouri,” writes that “…Jackson, which was located more centrally with reference to the fertile Hagerstown and loess soils….Even in pioneer days Jackson derived an unusual affluence from its tributary territory. It contained houses of brick and handsome, both unusual in a western town. In 1826 the Jackson community was said to be the most compact settlement in the state.”
The Platted Town of Jackson
(1815) Ezekial Able was an important person in early Cape Girardeau District and then county. He was a contractor and builder, having built the jail in Cape Girardeau. But mostly he was a land speculator like most all the rest of the male inhabitants of the region. Apparently, he bought the land represented by Certificate No. 330. He gifted that land to his daughter Mary, who was married to William Ashley, famous early Missouri journalist, naturalist, fur trader, politician – Missouri’s first Lt. Governor, Brig. General in the War of 1812, and explorer. Starting in 1815, lots were for sale by the commissioners in the platted town of Jackson. See the image below.
Insert Jackson town plat here
Not a Frenchman Among Them
So why was the new county seat not located in Cape Girardeau, being the older of the two towns? There are several examples across the Mississippi River region in Missouri where the local community’s citizens rejected the French influence, preferring – no demanding – American control in government and various aspects of general society. The last names of those 5 commissioners selecting the site of the seat of government of Cape Girardeau County to be Jackson were Davis, Sheppard, Dunn, Byrd, and Shell – not a Frenchman among them!
An Early Land Sales Deed
Jackson became the commercial center of Cape Girardeau County even though it was not on the river. The deed for the sale of the fifty acres for the new seat of government for Cape Girardeau County is presented here in cursive and Word document format. The Word document format is left justified to match the first word in each line of the original cursive deed to help those who might want to try to decipher the cursive original. Spelling, punctuation, and grammar of the original document is repeated in the Word document for continuity between the two. Enjoy!
Image of cursive Ashley to Commissioners’ deed followed by typed rendition
(1830) The late 1830’s era GLO of Township 31-North, Range 12-East yields insight about how tightly packed settlement was around Jackson, evidentiary of the fertile soil and draw of commercialism. It also draws in the town of Jackson still lying north of Wm. Ashley’s property, as described in the deed.
Image of T31N-R12E surrounding Jackson
Steamboats Bring Prosperity to Cape Girardeau
(1900) Not until the era of the steamboat did Cape Girardeau begin to grow. A further explanation here is valuable, as our current image of Cape Girardeau is so very different. Sauer helps with that with this 1911 quotation: “…Cape Girardeau, possessing rail and water facilities, and serving as a gateway between Ozark Highland and Mississippi lowlands, has kept far ahead of the other cities. Its recent rapid increase, more than 75 per cent in the decade 1900-1910, is due principally to extensive reclamation of fertile farmland by drainage in southeast Missouri, for which it is the chief entrepot. The southeastern lowlands may be likened to a funnel with the apex pointing north.
Prosperity: Jackson vs. Cape Girardeau
(1822) At this apex Cape Girardeau lies, and through it flows a large part of the trade of this section…Jackson continue(s) to be a good trading center(s), principally because (it) is surrounded by (a) fertile farming district(s), and because of (its) early start and accumulated prosperity.” This is an image of the Great Swamp that existed in southeast Missouri after the New Madrid Earthquake in 1811. This image is from a Carey and Lea map of Missouri published in 1822.
Insert image of Cape north of Great Swamp
William Clark, of Lewis and Clark Fame
(1804) This next image is from a map drawn for William Clark, who aggressively collected maps of the trans-Mississippi west in preparation for the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804. This is one of a few maps that attempts to render an image of the St. Francis River valley before the earthquake, albeit with minimal detail. There was a swamp and lowland associated with the course of the river, more prominent lower down in what became Arkansas, but poorly defined.
The Brevard Mercantile of Jackson
(1837) Cannon purchased more corn meal from A. H. Brevard as the detachment passed through Jackson. He bought 9 ½ bushels “for subsistence of a detachment of Cherokees” for $0.76/bushels. Albert Hamilton Brevard and his brother-in-law, John W. Gayle, owned a mercantile in Jackson. Corn meal was a perishable value-added product that could be priced higher at a retail business than at the farm, hence the $0.26/bushel difference. Selling fodder from a mercantile apparently did not make economic sense, the low market price per unit making it unprofitable to handle, so Cannon notes, “no fodder available.”
The Last Mercantile on the Trail of Tears
(1837) This transaction at Jackson was nearly unique on the trail in Missouri, Cannon later buying nearly all the needed food and supplies from farmers along the roadways across far less-settled Missouri. The situation at Jackson was different because the town had been established long enough to be surrounded by a populous commercial region, apparently enough to support a mercantile. Jackson was Missouri’s third largest town at that time. The detachment passed directly through Jackson, seeing the compact settlement, business district, and court house and jail.
Brevard Family Background
(1820) Albert Brevard arrived in Missouri in the late 1820’s, after the economic disaster of 1819 and the economic dust had settled, which took years. His arrival was the result of classic familial migration – an algorithm that backfilled Missouri’s frontier settlement for the next 75 years. Albert arrived with his father and extended family, including 15 slaves. His father, Robert Brevard, Sen., was a Revolutionary War hero from North Carolina with a long list of war service.
Albert had one little sister and a brother, Robert M. Brevard. Wise in years and lucky in timing, father Robert didn’t come to Missouri until the rust of the Panic had worn off by a more rational land and banking policy, then enjoying less expensive farm land and a more stable economy. Robert Sen. Bought his farm in 1828. Far more will be said about that, but right now let’s look more closely at Albert.
Born in 1805 in North Carolina, Albert came to Missouri at age 23, still living with his parents and siblings, according to the 1830 U.S. Census. He married Juliet W. Gayle on Dec. 15, 1831 in Cape Girardeau County, Missouri. On March 17, 1835, Albert bought a surveyed lot in the town of Jackson from Rachel and Welton O’Bannon for “the sum of nine hundred dollars good and lawful money of the United States.”
See figure of deed
A Partial Lot of land
(1826) A careful reading of the contract says that Albert bought “a part of lot No. 52 on Main Street in Jackson with the appurtenances thereunto belonging with the exception of a small piece of ground in said lot owned by Johnson Ranney, and the small house which was occupied as a tailors shop which are reserved from sale.” Johnson Ranney was the most well-known lawyer in Cape Girardeau County during the early years. Charles Alexander Leusuer drew this sketch looking southwest from the northeast side of the courthouse and jail in 1826. Brevard’s mercantile is seen on the far right in the landscape, on the corner of Main and First West Street, Lot 52.
Image of Jackson Town Landscape
Documenting the Economic Turmoil
(1815) To give the reader an opportunity to fully appreciate the extreme economic turmoil across Cape Girardeau County – and all of the inhabited portions of then southeast Missouri – from 1815 until the Cherokees passed through on their Trail of Tears, the following 12 documents of the transfer between owners of Lot No. 52 in Jackson is provided here. Interpretive comments related to the individual deeds will be provided. Certainly the reader will recognize many interesting legal terms, named individuals, unfamiliar phrasing, misspellings, and apparent contradictions.
200 Years of Enduring Family Surnames
(1819) You will see that many of the surnames continue contemporarily across Cape Girardeau County. Please especially note chronologically the price paid for Lot 52, as this will better impart an understanding of the speculation in land and unrealistic prices and the effects of the Panic of 1819, with rapid land price reductions. These documents are available on microfilm at the Missouri Secretary of State’s Archive’s Research Library in Jefferson City. A left-justified Word document copy follows each contemporaneous cursive deed.
All 12 deeds and transcripts go here
The 1838 Richard Taylor Detachment
(1838) The Richard Taylor Detachment was made up of Cherokees from the region of Chattanooga. The detachment was supposed to begin its travels to the West on September 1, 1838, about one year after the Cannon Detachment. Rev. Daniel Butrick had been a steadfast spiritual support to the Cherokees in that area since 1818. The following is the foreward to the book, “Cherokee Removal – The Journal of Rev. Daniel S. Butrick, May 19, 1838 – April 1, 1839.”
It was published by the Oklahoma Chapter of the Trail of Tears Association. The “Foreward” was written by Jack D. Baker, then president of the Oklahoma Chapter, and for many years has been the president of the Trail of Tears Association. The Association is composed of the nine state chapters. This well-written Foreword provides historical background sufficient to set the stage for Rev. Butrick’s role as the Taylor Detachment enters Missouri in the fall of 1838. Enjoy!
Sparse Documentation of the Events of the Trail of Tears
“There are few eyewitness accounts of the forced removal of the Cherokees from their homeland east of the Mississippi River. Most of these are by individuals who observed an isolated event or who came into contact with one of the removal detachments. Rev. Daniel Butrick, however, left a detailed first-hand account of the events of the removal from the round-up of the Cherokees and their time in the concentration camps to the removal journey.
Daniel Sabin Butrick’s Background
(1818) Daniel Sabin Butrick was born in Windsor, Massachusetts, August 25, 1789. He was the son of Oliver and Patience (Sabin) Butrick, and he grew up at Richmond, Ontario County, New York, where he made a profession of religion in 1803. He was educated at the Cooperstown Academy, where he was ordained at Park Street Church in Boston on September 3, 1817. Shortly thereafter he left for the Cherokee Nation.
Rev. Butrick arrived at Brainard in present Chattanooga, Tennessee, on January 4, 1818. Brainard was a mission station established by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions based in Boston. He served from 1818 until the removal of the Cherokees in 1838 at various eastern Cherokee Mission stations including Brainard, Carmel, Willstown, and Hightower. He was married at Hightower to Elizabeth Proctor, a mission teacher, on April 29, 1827. She was formerly of Hopkinton, New Hampshire, and had arrived at Hightower in February, 1823. Butrick frequently referred to her in his journal as his “beloved Elizabeth.”
He Chose to Remain with the Cherokee
Following the fraudulent Cherokee Treaty of 1835, Rev. and Mrs. Butrick remained with the Cherokees who opposed removal even though the majority of the American Board missionaries left for the Cherokee Nation West in 1836. While they could have removed in somewhat comfort, they elected to travel with the Cherokees during their forced removal. He obtained permission to travel with Richard Taylor’s detachment and in his journal left a detailed account of the day to day events of the trip.
Rev. Butrick was so opposed to removal and the injustices perpetrated on the Cherokees that he and his church members on the eve of removal passed a resolution “that they would not unite in Christian fellowship with those who made, signed or executed the New Echota Treaty, without a confession on their part.” They further vowed that while on the road they would spend the sabbath in the worship of God, as far as practicable. Rev. Butrick was uncompromising in his belief to not defile the sabbath by travel. While the detachment sometimes was forced to travel on Sunday, Butrick never did. He would either travel ahead of them before the sabbath or would catch up with the detachment after the sabbath.
Establishing Mt. Zion, Oklahoma
(1839) After their arrival in the Cherokee Nation West, Rev. and Mrs. Butrick joined the Fairfield mission station in 1839. They later established a mission station on Beatty’s Prairie in the northeastern part of the Nation and called it Mt. Zion. When he became too feeble to care for the mission station ha and Mrs. Butrick removed to Dwight Mission. He elected once again to remain with the Cherokees even though he was urged by his friends in the North to come and spend the last of his days with them.
(1847) His beloved Elizabeth died at Dwight Mission on August 3, 1847. He died there on June 8, 1851. They are buried beside each other in the Dwight Mission Cemetery. Fittingly, their inscriptions are given in Cherokee using the Sequoian syllabary and then in English.
The Rev. Butrick’s Legacy
(1817) It cannot be determined what Rev. Butrick’s spiritual legacy to the Cherokees has been but his journal and other writings regarding Cherokee antiquities are a significant historical legacy. These papers are found in the records of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions at Houghton Library, Harvard University. The journal and various letters cover the period from his travels to the Cherokee Nation in 1817 through December of 1845.”
(1839) From Rev. Butrick’s journal, Monday, Jan 28, 1839, at Bainbridge – Cape Girardeau: “Last night it commenced raining, and the storm, snow & rain continues today. That will render it very unpleasant for our dear Cherokee friends to cross the (Mississippi) river, but yet this reminds us of the gratitude we owe to God for providing us a shelter, especially as my dear wife is so unwell. Towards night Messrs, R. Brevard & Judge Obannon called on us & kindly invited us to make their houses our homes while we might be detained. This we gladly accepted, & on Tuesday went to Mr. Brevard’s & on Thursday to Juge Obannon’s, returning again to Mr. Brevard’s on Saturday morning.
In these two families we found everything we needed to refresh our bodies & comfort and revive our drooping spirits. This kind providence was very probably the means of saving the life of my dear Elizabeth, if not my own also, as I had been afflicted with the same complaint.”
Crossing the Mississippi in the 1830s
There were at least two established ferry crossings along that reach of the Mississippi River. The Cannon Detachment had taken the northern crossing. The Taylor Detachment selected the southern ferry from Hamburg Landing on the Illinois side to Bainbridge on the Missouri side.