MORMON FRONTIER FOUNDATION Edited by Messrs S

MISSOURl MORMON FRONTIER Number 34 Jackson coun Missouri Ma t 2004 IN THAT COUNTRY AN ESSAY by H. D. Spidle DEDICATION -In special consideration for the memory of preceding generations of my Missouri family who, had they the facts available to me, may have reached a different view of the story than that which I believe they held. Note: All rights reserved [by the author] for this copyrighted material [including Inap page]. FORWARD their time to be rational, tolerant citizens. So by extension, I think it possible that early Momonism J# 77!cz/ CowHtry began as an idea for the insert of a inculcated into the psyche of frontier Missouri a few paragraphs into an autobiographical sketch meant social/cultural schism so deep that a lingering hostile only to be read by close family. However, in the writing remembrance would simply survive generations. it became much expanded and now seems more suited Nonetheless, across those generations and certainly as standalone narrative. I am not Mormon but an within my family, innocence of historical fact about the interest in this A4:or77go# sJory springs from a time and story seems to have been pervasive. And it is probably instructive (albeit anecdotal) that my siblings find place of earliest memory and tales passed down from my Caldwell County, grandparents. The four of them were themselves in somewhat supportive surprise on reading born in the early 1870's and all lived long enough that I a draft of the manuscript. So perhaps some good may knew them well. On my matemal side the family had come of its wider dissemination. migrated to that part of Missouri shortly after the trouble As for the process, I had begun assembling notes for of the late 1830's. And it is then that they were likely the autobiographical effort, when a visit last summer to well indoctrinated by non-Mormon neighbors (and that place of first remembering brought into focus a desire to reflect on that which led to this essay. Then perhaps others as well) with a singular, uncontested view of the story. Because thereafter, the drama as too, I was encouraged by the amount of information family oral history would take on a life of its own. readily available from that remarkable storehouse of Thus in commencing this work my journey was not infomation, the internet. Especially helpful was an only for the discovery of fact but to understand as well easily directed access to works still in print which deal the vehemence of my people toward all things Mormon. with the history and/or the lives of those involved in the And for the first undertaking I was well rewarded, less drama. Thus for facts and flavor, about the story, about so for the second. It would be easy of course to dismiss the actors and about Mormonism, I'm much indebted to this frustration as having confirmed a detemined the well researched and carefully drafted pertinent secondhand bigotry on the part of my ancestors and their works of whters Stephen C. Lesueur, Roger D. Launius, Armand L Mauss and Terryl L Givens. Also peers. But there must be more to it than that. It is a recollection that my known predecessors seemed for of good use was the Historical Atlas Of Mormonism e2 Number34 Ma t 2004 MISSOURI MORMON FRONTIER FOUNDATION edited by Messrs S. Kent Brown, Donald Q. Cannon and intent, the responsibility is entirely mine. And at any Richard H. Jackson. And finally, a little monograph on rate a caveat is in order. I am by training an engineer, the history of Caldwell County by Dr. Bertha Ellis not a historian, so what the reader will encounter is a Booth (whom my mother would have known from structure built on a generous foundation of the Caldwell's Kidder Institute) was most illuminating. I scholarship of others, albeit painted with a personal was led to thatjewel by Mr. Michael Riggs, a gentleman brush... and in the colors of my choosing. intent on saving an historic log cabin of the period. H. D. Spidle So those fine sources delivered the stuff of my Smith County, Texas interpretation; but should that interpretation fail, either April, 2004 on matters of historical accuracy, judgment or desired IN THAT COUNTR:I ... It is as though fior more than a hundred and fiifly years silence and denial had conspired to perpetuate as valid, only that remembered as negative toward Caldwell 's Founding Mormons . When you look at a roadmap of Missouri, it is in the back rattler, indecisive as to where to follow the upper part of the state that US 36 Highway is shown as moming sun. In the dry season, from late summer and a ribbon stretching from the western border at Saint well into autumn, the steep-banked watercourse can Joseph on the Missouri River, to Mark Twain's wither to an infimity hardly worth its name. Indeed in Hannibal on the great Mississippi, about 200 miles to many places it can then be crossed without so much as the east. And some 50 miles from St. Joe, the outlined wetting one's boots. And there in that lazy-sun time of rectangle of Caldwell County hangs on that road like a year, all is quiet except for the tired rasp of cicadae, the dish towel on a clothesline. So let us zoom in there. plaintive query of the whippoorwill and the full-throttle As recently as a generation or two ago the passerby croak of bullfrogs complaining at the lack of mud in would have noted a patchwork landscape of well defined which to play. Visiting the stream in that timid state can family farms, each of 80, 120 or perhaps 160 acres. And mislead a person (even those who know better) into typical of the genre would be a well kept century-old, thinking its purpose entirely innocuous. two-story house accompanied by outbuildings, a grove Because there is another Shoal Creek. .that of angry, of trees and the ubiquitous windmill. But the small raging demon which during periods of heavy rain, family farm as economic unit has nearly disappeared, so invites into its many tributary arms the watershed of nowadays the traveler will experience mostly an perhaps 100,000 acres, and then has its way with pretty expanse of undexpopulated and unfenced tilled prairie much anything it wants. In those times the flood plains punctuated by small towns which, now long past their becomejust that. And Shoal Creek in flood is something prime, struggle to survive. Such then is creative to behold. It is known to wreak havoc with crops and destruction worked by transforming time. However, one other property a like; but in receding, its anger spent, unchanging and distinguishing feature of the county is leaves in its wake a benevolent calling card of thick rich that of Shoal Creek which, commencing in Clinton life giving silt. I think it has always been so. County just to the west bisects Caldwell on its way to In Caldwell's 36 square mile Fairview Township, delivering its contents into south-bound Grand River in which is about midway in the north/south direction but contiguous Livingston County to the east. toward the eastern border of the county, there is a place Point to point, from beginning to end, it's a distance on the north side of this creek called Haun's Mill...and of no more than 50 miles, but Shoal Creek is much now just a marker really for what was there a long time longer than that. On close inspection, its topology ago. I was born very near there in the mid 1930's, as appears to have been laid out by a confused diamond- was my mother before me (1900) and her MISSOURI MORMON FRONTIEF{ FOUNDATION Number 34 t 2004 Pa To Bichmond and Liberty Mormon Settlement in Frontier Missouri,1831-1839 e4 Number34 Ma t 2004 MISSOURI MORMON FRONTIER FOUNDATION parents before her (1870 and 1874). Indeed, my bright 28 year old Liberty (Clay County Seat), Missouri grandmother was from a family (Guffey) which has lawyer and legislator by the name of Alexander William owned land thereabouts since the 1840's. We lived within Doniphan (later of Mexican War fame), who drafted the a mile of the mill site with no intervening neighbors, so separation papers and coaxed consideration and approval that locale is a place of some note in the collective through the state legislature. The idea was to solve a memory of my people. And certainly, for me as a child, growing problem by setting aside an entire county as safe an awakening sense of the outside world relied as much haven (feome/cz#cJ was Doniphan ' s tern) for the increasing on the ever present influence of Shoal Creek in our lives numbers of an emigrating religious sect who were in the as did for example, the rhythm of the seasons or the habit of finding themselves unwelcome wherever they coming and going of extended family. Thus, reviewing its went. Will Doniphan and fellow attorneys (who were also history for but little more than the past century would be senior commanders in Missouri's volunteer militia) had worth a tale, even if told to none but my grandchildren. represented the group in earlier disputes; so he knew them But, as with a difference in character between the dry and well and hoped that an unwritten understanding for their wet seasons, there is another history of Shoal Creek; one encouragement to migrate exclusively into newly much older and darker...one that whispers of a sad and established Caldwell might leave them in peace.

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