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Historical 3R,evieT*r The State Historical Society of Missouri COLUMBIA, MISSOURI THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MISSOURI The State Historical Society of Missouri, heretofore organized under the laws of this State, shall be the trustee of this State—Laws of Missouri, 1899, R.S. of Mo., 1959, Chapter 183. OFFICERS 1968-71 T. BALLARD WATTERS, Marshfield, President L. E. MEADOR, Springfield, First Vice President LEWIS E. ATHERTON, Columbia, Second Vice President RUSSELL V. DYE, Liberty, Third Vice President JACK STAPLETON, SR., Stanberry, Fourth Vice President JOHN A. WINKLER, Hannibal, Fifth Vice President REV. JOHN F. BANNON, S.J., St. Louis, Sixth Vice President ALBERT M. PRICE, Columbia, Treasurer TRUSTEES Permanent Trustees, Former Presidents of the Society E. L. DALE, Carthage LEO J. ROZIER, Perryville RUSH H. LIMBAUGH, Cape Girardeau E. E. SWAIN, Kirksville GEORGE A. ROZIER, Jefferson City ROY D. WILLIAMS, Boonville Term Expires at Annual Meeting, 1969 GEORGE MCCUE, St. Louis RONALD L. SOMERVILLE, Chillicothe L. E. MEADOR, Springfield JACK STAPLETON, SR., Stanberry JOSEPH H. MOORE, Charleston HENRY C. THOMPSON, Bonne Terre W. WALLACE SMITH, Independence ROBERT M. WHITE, Mexico Term Expires at Annual Meeting, 1970 WILLIAM AULL, III, Lexington GEORGE FULLER GREEN, Kansas City WILLIAM R. DENSLOW, Trenton GEORGE H. SCRUTON, Sedalia ELMER ELLIS, Columbia JAMES TODD, Moberly ALFRED O. FUERBRINGER, St. Louis T. BALLARD WAITERS, Marshfield Term Expires at Annual Meeting, 1971 LEWIS E. ATHERTON, Columbia R. I. COLBORN, Paris ROBERT A. BOWLING, Montgomery City RICHARD B. FOWLER, Kansas City FRANK P. BRIGGS, Macon VICTOR A. GIERKE, Louisiana HENRY A. BUNDSCHU, Independence ROBERT NAGEL JONES, St. Louis EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE The twenty-nine Trustees, the President and the Secretary of the Society, the Governor, Secretary of State, State Treasurer, and President of the Univer sity of Missouri constitute the Executive Committee. FINANCE COMMITTEE Four members of the Executive Committee appointed by the President, who by virtue of his office constitutes the fifth member, compose the Finance Committee. ELMER ELLIS, Columbia, Chairman WILLIAM R. DENSLOW, Trenton LEO J. ROZIER, Perryville GEORGE A. ROZIER, Jefferson City T. BALLARD WAITERS, Marshfield CONTENTS SPREAD OF SETTLEMENT IN HOWARD COUNTY, MISSOURI, 1810-1859. By Walter A. Schroeder 1 JOHN HENTON CARTER, ALIAS "COMMODORE ROLLINGPIN." By John T. Flanagan.38 THE 1918 KANSAS CITY INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC By C. Kevin McShane 55 BERNARR MACFADDEN. By William H. Taft 71 VIEWS FROM THE PAST: MISSOURI MILLS 90 HISTORICAL NOTES AND COMMENTS News in Brief 93 Local Historical Societies 95 Honors and Tributes 106 Gifts 108 Missouri History in Newspapers 113 Missouri History in Magazines 118 Erratum 120 In Memoriam 121 BOOK REVIEWS 122 BOOK NOTES 128 RAILWAYS ON CITY STREETS 133 EMILY NEWELL BLAIR Inside Back Cover THE COVER: Thomas Hart Benton, Missouri's most famous contemporary artist, painted this original watercolor for an edition of Mark Twain's, Life on the Mississippi. This watercolor and other works by Benton, used to illustrate Twain's Mississippi River classics, are now on display in the Society's Art Gallery. MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW Published Quarterly by THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MISSOURI COLUMBIA, MISSOURI RICHARD S. BROWNLEE EDITOR DOROTHY CALDWELL ASSOCIATE EDITOR JAMES W. GOODRICH ASSOCIATE EDITOR The MISSOURI HISTORICAL REVIEW is owned by the State Historical Society of Missouri and is published quarterly at 201 South Eighth Street, Columbia, Missouri 65201. Send communi cations, business and editorial correspondence and change of address to The State Historical Society of Missouri, corner of Hitt and Lowry Streets, Columbia, Missouri 65201. Second class postage is paid at Columbia, Missouri. The REVIEW is sent free to all members of The State Historical VOLUME LXIII Society of Missouri. Membership dues in the Society are $2.00 a year or $40 for an individual life membership. The Society assumes NUMBER 1 no responsibility for statements made by contributors to the magazine. OCTOBER 1968 >J#% mm Stevens, Centennial Hist, of Mo., I Pioneer Life in Missouri, 1820 Spread of Settlement in Howard County, Missouri 1810-1859 BY WALTER A. SCHROEDER* "The Boonslick country for many years, in the early settlement of Missouri, was the point of attraction for emigrants; and it was deemed headquarters, to which the traveler, with an indefinite * Walter A. Schroeder is an instructor in the Department of Geography, University of Missouri, Columbia. He received his B.A. in geography from the University in 1956, and his M.A., in the same field from the University of Chi cago in 1958. He will receive his Ph.D. degree in geography from the University of Chicago in March, 1969. EDITOR'S NOTE.—The figures, i.e. maps, graph and tables, referred to by the author appear, consecutively numbered, at the end of the article. 2 Missouri Historical Review idea of a new home, repaired. Here it was customary to halt, and look about for a location."1 Alphonso Wetmore's statement, pub lished in 1837, describes a region which had been rapidly settled in the two decades following the end of the War of 1812. It was the first major region of settlement up the Missouri River from St. Charles. Early immigrants were attracted to the Boonslick by the well- respected Boone family name attached to it.2 In the early years of the nineteenth century Daniel Boone's sons had opened a trail to this region well in advance of the agricultural frontier, and the sons had early utilized the salt-producing qualities of one of the coun try's saline springs.3 The reputation of a name, however, could not by itself have sustained such heavy immigration. Once settled on the land, the immigrants did find its loess soils to be as productive as reputed, even under the poor management practices that must have prevailed during the initial years of settlement. The Boonslick is the first extensive deep loess region upstream from St. Charles, and this fact may have been largely responsible for the settlement frontier jumping from St. Charles to the Boonslick with only iso lated settlements in the intervening one hundred miles along the Missouri River. Much of the Boonslick country is gently rolling, neither too precipitous to discourage agriculture nor too flat to be judged ill- drained and fever-ridden. In some places where slopes are steep they are mantled with loess so deep that annual erosion of large amounts of soil still left a mineral-rich loess for reasonably good crops of corn. The Boonslick was forested. In fact, it was the farthest west extension along the Missouri River of the continuous forest en vironment of the humid American East from which settlers were coming. (See Figure 1.) Farther upstream, past Glasgow, prairie grasses began to cover the upland spurs along the river and grow i Alphonso Wetmore, Gazetteer of the State of Missouri (St. Louis, 1837) , 78. 2 For the attraction of the Boone family name to immigrants see David D. March, The History of Missouri (New York, 1967) , I, 313-318. The salt spring called Boon's Lick is apparently in the NW 14 of Section 6, T 49 N, R 17 W, although salt seeps occur for some distance along the valley of Salt Creek. Part of this area is now a state park. The "Boonslick" is a regional name of varying geographical limits. An early definition is given in the Franklin Missouri Intelligencer, August 27, 1819, as both sides of the Missouri River from the mouth of the Osage River to the western Indian boundary. 3 Franklin Missouri Intelligencer, August 27, 1819. Settlement in Howard County, Missouri, 1810-1859 3 even in much of the wet bottomland. The prairie represented a major visual environmental change for settlers pushing westward and an environment into which they were hesitant to enter. Despite the excellent loess soils and gentle slopes which continue upvalley on both sides of the Missouri River to Kansas City and beyond, it was only in the Boonslick where these deep and productive soils were extensively combined with the familiar forest environment. The attraction of the Boonslick, therefore, sprang from several factors: the fame of the Boone family name, local salt, excellent loess soil, much gently sloping land, abundant forests with but few, narrow prairie openings, and, of course, the necessary accessibility of the Missouri River. Each immigrant family moving into the Boonslick to make a new home was forced, in the words of Wetmore, "to look about for a location," a definite parcel of land on which to build his house, graze his stock, and plant his crops. Each newcomer had his own values and desires concerning the land he wanted to purchase. He brought with him his particular skills and financial resources when moving into the Boonslick, and he may have had some relatives or friends already there near whom he would wish to purchase his land. Each land patentee could have told his own story. Today, however, one can look back in retrospect a century or more ago and begin to discern some of the more common factors which entered the decisions made when choosing land in the Boonslick. In what geographical sequence was land chosen for settlement? Was this geographical spread of settlement rational? That is, was the newcomer able to decide what was the best land to buy? To answer these questions information was gathered for Howard County,4 which has always been regarded the core of the region, regardless of where the Boonslick boundaries may be drawn. The first lands claimed from the public domain should have been the most desirable lands under the value system of the time. It follows that the last lands claimed should have been the least desirable. Figures 1-4 show patterns of distribution of the major elements of the physical environment which varied throughout this county and which might have been a factor in determining the desirability of land for purchase.