DANIEL MORGAN BOONE was probably the first American who settled in what is now Missouri. He is said to have come
in 1792 from his father's fort at Boonesborough on the Kentucky river to what was then Upper Louisiana, of which
the town of St. Louis was the capital. His father about this time was being turned adrift in his old age by the
Kentucky land that he had opened to settlement, and, heartsick and penniless, his lands taken from him for want
of sufficient title, he had located at Point Pleasant, in the valley of the Kanawha, in Virginia (now West Virginia),
where in 1774 had been fought the great Battle of the Point, in which Colonel Charles Lewis and many another Virginian
bit the dust.
From Upper Louisiana (Missouri) the younger Boone wrote his father, singing the praises of the western country,
its alluvial soil rich beyond and in the east, its hospitable climate, and game so plentiful as to furnish a variety
of meats for a king's table, deer, buffalo, bear, turkey, prairie chickens, quail, etc., in profusion. Fascinated
by his son's descriptions, the elder Boone decided to migrate to the Upper Louisiana region, his resolution so
to do being strengthened by letter he received from Zenon Trudeau, then lieutenant-governor of Louisiana, inviting
him to make his home in the Spanish territory and offering him, as an inducement, a grant of a large tract of land,
1000 arpents, equivalent to about 833 acres.
Finally Boone gathered up his scant possessions, which he placed upon the backs of three pack-horses, and started
on the long journey westward to the home of the son who had preceded him. Some authorities say this was in the
spring of 1795; others say it was 1797; still others date the migration in 1799. The best evidence is that of the
Reverend Thomas S. Hinds, quoted in Collins' Kentucky history, who related that he "saw him (Boone) in October,
1797, on pack horses, take up his journey for Missouri, then Upper Louisiana."
Evidently, Daniel Morgan Boone journeyed from present Missouri to the Kanawha valley to assist his parents on their
western migration. There are accounts of the two sons, Daniel Morgan and Nathan, starting the trip with their mother
in a boat (called a pirogue), while Colonel Boone, with his three pack-horses, took the stock by land, assisted
by a young man named George Buchanan and Daniel Morgan Boone's Negro, Sam. On this trip, at Limestone (now Maysville,
Kentucky), Nathan Boone got his marriage license and returned (75 miles) to Little Sandy, and was there married
to Miss Olive, a daughter of Peter Van Bibber and a cousin of Susan Van Bibber (daughter of Major Isaac), who married
Thomas Hickerson, brother of Ezekiel Hickerson, early Newburg settler and grandfather of Mrs. Hulda (Hickerson)
McQuitty of Pittsfield.
Nathan Boone and his bride, immediately after their marriage, set out on horseback for Upper Louisiana, that part
that is now St. Charles county, Missouri, arriving there after many adventures and locating near the pioneer John
Lewis settlement. In 1820, Nathan finished a large two-story stone house in St. Charles county, which still stands,
and in this house his father, old Colonel Daniel Boone, died September 20, 1820, the year the Rosses came to Atlas.
The old Colonel's wife, who was Rebecca Bryan, had died at the height of the Indian troubles on the Missouri border
in 1813.
Daniel Boone, for some years after his arrival in what is now Missouri, shared his home, the fourth he had established
in the great American wildernesses, with his son, D. M. Boone, the latter continuing to live with his parents until
his marriage to Sarah Lewis in 1800.
Daniel Boone and his son (D. M. Boone) at one time laid off a town on the Missouri river and called it Missouriton,
in honor of the then Territory of Missouri. They built a horse mill there, which was a great thing in those early
days, and for a while the town flourished and promised well. At one time an effort was made to locate the capital
of the Territory there, but it failed, and the town soon declined. The place where it stood has since been washed
away by the river, and no trace of it now remains.
Martrom Lewis, a son of John Baptist Lewis and brother of Mrs. Daniel Morgan Boone, married Elizabeth Darby, a
native of North Carolina, and they had a son, Martrom D. Lewis, born in St. Louis county, August 17, 1836, who
has furnished some important contributions to the Lewis family history. Judge Martrom D. Lewis, in 1905, the year
of the Lewis & Clark Fair at Portland, Oregon, contributed to the Lewisiana (or Lewis-Letter), edited in Portland,
a brief account of his grandfather, John Baptist Lewis, who crossed the Mississippi river at St. Louis into the
then Spanish territory of Upper Louisiana, January 5, 1795, as related in the preceding chapter.
Martrom Lewis read law in St. Louis under his elder brother, Augustine Warner (usually contracted to August W.)
Lewis. He was public administrator, city treasurer and recorder of deeds for the city of St. Louis. In 1862, Judge
Martrom D. Lewis married Miss Susan Tippett, only daughter of Judge Peregrine Tippett of St. Louis county, and
they had six children, four of whom died in 1869 within a period of eight days. A fifth child, a daughter, died
in 1887. Mrs. Lewis died March 9, 1897. Judge Lewis also has been dead many years.
Rufus A. Lewis, one of the grandsons of John Baptist Lewis and Elizabeth Harvie, born in Gratiot, St. Louis county,
in 1849 joined the gold rush to California and there engaged in placer mining for two years. Returning to Missouri,
he entered an 80-acre farm at Crescent, St. Louis county, where was born Philander P. Lewis, who located at Eureka,
Missouri. Philander P. Lewis's mother (wife of Rufus A.) was Martha J. Bowles.
John Lewis, son of the first John on the Missouri river and a veteran of Howard's Rangers in the 1812 War, sojourned
in the territory that is now Pike county, Missouri, at the time of the erection of that county and in 1819 sat
on the first grand jury summoned in that county, which is directly across the Mississippi river from Pike county,
Illinois.
Elizabeth Lewis, daughter of John Baptist and only sister of Sarah Lewis Boone, married John Rogers and they had
a son, Lewis Rogers, who was clerk of the circuit court in Pike county (Mo.), 1835-39. His father, John Rogers,
Sr., was a member of the Paynesville (Mo.) Mounted in the 1812 War.
These Lewises of the early Missouri border were closely associated and possibly intermarried with the pioneering
Venables and Brysons, who came out to Missouri Territory in a very early day. John Lewis and John Venable are both
recorded as sitting on the first grand jury called in Pike county (Mo.) In 1819. John Venable and John Bryson started
with their families and two nephews of Bryson from York district, South Carolina, in the spring of 1816, and arriving
in Missouri Territory, settled on Buffalo Creek, in present Pike county, Missouri. Missouri Territory then included
the modern states of Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, western Minnesota, Indian Territory (Oklahoma), Dakota, Nebraska,
and most of Kansas, Colorado and Wyoming.
John Venable married Mary E. Bryson, a sister of John Bryson, who was the father of Isaac Newton Bryson, Sr., the
pioneer Louisiana (Mo.) merchant and father of Isaac Newton Bryson II, editor and owner since 1887 of a Louisiana
newspaper (now the Louisiana Press-Journal), who died November 7, 1938, in his 85th year, leaving a nine-year-old
grandson (son of Lynn Bryson, deceased), who also carries the name of Isaac Newton, a family name common to both
the Bryson and Lewis lines.
John Venable and Mary E. Bryson had a son, Richard Venable, who had a son John, the latter being the father of
Jack Venable and grandfather of Edmonds Venable of Pittsfield, the latter being a great great grandson of the pioneering
John Venable on the Missouri border of 1816.
Long before the arrival of these Missouri pioneers came other Lewises, following their trail-marking kinsman, John
Baptist Lewis and his family. Next Lewis to arrive on the Missouri border was Samuel Hardin Lewis, a younger brother
of John Baptist, bearing the name of that Samuel Lewis who fled from France to North Ireland to escape religious
persecution, and who went later from Ireland to Portugal, where all trace of him was lost; bearing, too, the name
of that other Samuel, brother of Irish John, who was killed in the attack of the Irish landlord's party upon the
home of Lewis, in North Ireland, about the year 1728, the story of which has been related.
With Samuel Hardin Lewis came also the family of Joseph Barnett who, with his son, Joseph Barnett, Jr., and the
latter's family located in what is now Pleasant Hill township in Pike county, Illinois, in 1832. At the same time,
and as part of a great migration of families from Virginia and Kentucky directed by Daniel Boone, came the early
Longs and Zumwalts, and numerous others whose stories are interwoven with the history of Pike county, Illinois.
In Joseph Barnett's family was the girl, Mary, who became Samuel Hardin Lewis's bride, in a border wedding near
the change of the centuries. At this time came also Samuel Galloway and his family, descendants of Galloways who
hobnobbed with the Washingtons, Warners, Fieldings and Lewises, in the gay festivities at old Warner Hall, Virginia
seat of the early American Lewises.
The above families came to Missouri (then Upper Louisiana) in the closing years of the 18th century. They came
at the instance of Daniel Boone, being among the 100 Virginia and Kentucky families planted in the Spanish territory
by Boone, for which service in the settlement of the country he received a grant of 10,000 arpents of land (equivalent
of nearly 8,500 acres) from the Spanish authorities.
It appears from the territorial annals that the promise of Zenon Trudeau, the lieutenant-governor of Upper Louisiana,
to Boone was faithfully fulfilled. On January 24, 1798, Boone received, as promised, a concession of 1,000 arpents
of land lying in the Femme Osage district, taking its name from Femme Osage Creek, so named for an Osage Indian
woman who was swept to her death when she attempted to ford the creek on her pony during a freshet. The Indians,
a hunting party camped beside the creek, buried the woman upon the creek's bank, and called the creek Femme Osage,
meaning the creek of the Osage woman.
Colonel W. F. Cody in his story of the west (1888) says that "he (Boone) afterward made an agreement with
the Spanish authorities to bring one hundred families from Kentucky and Virginia to Upper Louisiana, for which
he was to receive 10,000 arpents of land. The agreement was fulfilled on both sides; but in order to confirm his
title to this grant it was necessary to obtain the signature of the direct representative of the crown, who resided
in New Orleans. Colonel Boone neglected this requirement, and his title was therefore declared invalid when the
country came into possession of the United States by Jefferson's purchase."
Boone's title to the first grant of 1,000 arpents was also declared void, but was subsequently confirmed by special
act of Congress. Both the American and Spanish governments, as a condition precedent to the confirmation of land
titles, required actual settlements but in 1800 Boone received the appointment of commandant or syndic of Femme
Osage district, and was informed by Don Charles de Lassus, who had succeeded Don Zenon Trudeau as lieutenant- governor,
that as his duties as commandant would require a considerable portion of his time, the Spanish government would
confirm his title without requiring actual settlement. Relying upon this promise, Boone neglected to have the proper
entries made upon the records, and when Upper Louisiana was transferred to the United States there was nothing
to support his claim to title.
He later petitioned Congress for confirmation of his title, which request was granted some years after.
A number of families now resident in Pike county, Illinois, were first planted here in the west by and under this
arrangement between Boone and the Spanish authorities in Upper Louisiana. Most of these families continued to abide
in the localities of their first settlements for many years, but in the latter 1820s and the early 1830s, numerous
of them began to seek new locations, some going farther west to Montgomery and Callaway counties in Missouri, others
turning back east, re-crossing the Mississippi river and establishing themselves on the Illinois side of the river,
in Pike county.
Among the early families associated with the pioneer Lewises on the Missouri
border and which later became established in Ike county, Illinois, was that
of Colonel David K. Bailey. The Baileys came up from Kentucky in very early
times. In Kentucky they were associated with the Noyes family, which followed
the pioneering Baileys to the Missouri border, arriving at the harbor of St.
Charles on May 28, 1817, after a thrilling voyage of 45 days in a $12.50 skiff,
down the Kentucky river to the Ohio, down the Ohio to the Mississippi, then
up the Mississippi to the St. Charles and up the St. Charles to the town of
that name. The head of this adventuring family was Michael J. Noyes who in 1842
founded in the pioneer town of Pittsfield the first newspaper in Pike county,
Illinois, the beginning of the present Pike County Republican. Noyes, upon his
arrival at St. Charles, started teaching a subscription school and among his
pupils were two of the children of Samuel Hardin Lewis, namely, Ursula and Chedister,
and two of the children of another Samuel Lewis (cousin of Samuel H.), namely,
Avis and Samuel Lewis, Jr. This latter Samuel Lewis family arrived in St. Charles
county in 1816.
Colonel G. W. K. Bailey, who organized the noted Pike county (Ill.) regiment,
the 99th Volunteer Infantry, in the time of the Civil War, belonged to this
Bailey family which settled the early Lewises on the Missouri border. Colonel
Bailey, in Pike county, in 1847, married Mursena Galloway, a daughter of James
Galloway and Ursula Lewis, and a granddaughter of Samuel Hardin Lewis.
Along with the first Lewises and Boones came another noted family out of
Virginia and Kentucky, the family of Zumwalt, several of whose members, several
of whose members later settled in Pike county, Illinois, where they have many
descendants now living. The Zumwalts were so intimately associated with the
pioneer Lewises, and were in themselves so important in the early history of
this western country, on both sides of the Mississippi, that the ensuing chapter
will be devoted to them and their thrilling experiences alongside the families
of Lewis and Boone in the winning of the west.