But, my biggest thanks goes out to Jerry Ponder. Were it not for the controversy surrounding his lack of documentation for his "biggest", if not best story, I would not have found myself compelled to take on this project of defending "family lore". It is my contention that family lore is only unreliable to the extent that it cannot be documented. Family lore without documentation is defensible only as secondary source material. I am not convinced that we as a community should be shy about using family lore, we should only expend more effort in the documentation. I am not defending Jerry Ponder, because what appears to have happened in his work is indefensible. However, what has been beneficial is the increase in the amount of discussion pertaining to his geographical area of interest. I spoke at length with a very prominent university professor of civil war history last night, the professor advised me to not "throw out the baby with the bath water" Mr. Ponder did some very beneficial work for the civil war community with some of the research he compiled and published. Until this work is also discredited I will feel a deep graditude for the things he did accomplish. I have the terrible habit myself of building theory around the slightest iota of fact. However, I also have no problem with my theory being proven false when new or more complete data is uncovered.
I started this quest with a little bit of a chip on my shoulder. Oral family history is a tradition in my family that goes back several generations. When I was a preteen I could recite my father's pedegree five generations. My mother's six. Fourth cousins were close kin. A year ago I was happily going about the task of tracing the migration of the various Shawnee and Delaware "clans", neither group was really a cohesive tribe by the middle of the 18th century, and documenting my family members relationship with them and with the various traders and hunters who came to the west of the Mississippi River twenty to thirty years prior to the Anglo take over of the Bellvue Valley area near Ironton and Potosi. And, by the way, Sam Hilderbrand's ancestor would be a member of this early group, the best I can determine there was a Hilderbrand on Big River by 1740. The failed Morgan Colony at New Madrid added a few more people to the area prior to Moses Austin starting the mining boom which also directly led to the Reed party and several others who got to the St. Gen/Cape area prior to the 1805 purchase. Among this group would be those families who established the Virginia Settlement just to the west of Patterson MO.
Some of the earliest of the anglo settlers were "converted" Hessians soldiers (take my word for it or look it up Hessian does't necessarily mean German) who were captured, took parole, and joined militias, several of this group were found to have taken native and mixed blood wives following the end of their participation in the struggle between the colonies and Great Britin. It appears that this group had a tendency to move farther west faster than did some whose families who were on this side of the Atlantic prior to the start of the revolution. Go figure, huh.
This earlist settlement was funded to a large extent by the deer hide trade, the indian slave trade, horse trading and the government anunities that were being paid to some of the tribes, or as in the case of my family making "shine" and peach brandy. The treaties with the "tribes" included provision for government paid millers of grain, sawmillers, gunsmiths, blacksmiths and teamsters. The 1817 native american "census" identified somewhat over 9,000 native americans living north of the Arkansas River and south of the Missouri. This number was made up of several different tribes with the largest being the various bands of Cherokee and the Apple Creek and Anderson Village Shawnee and Delaware. This later group including some other minor tribes that had originated north of the Ohio River.
The paternal ancestry of these early south-eastern Ozark families was not hard to trace, however, the maternal side frequently did not have a recorded "maiden name". This wave of migration can be said to have ended by 1835 when the federal government appropriated approximately $35,000 for the final removal of the various bands of "tribal" indians out of Missouri. The Logan family of Wayne and Reynolds county is a prime example of a family migrating with these groups. The Logans can be associated with Don Louis Larimore and his Shawnee and Delaware who the Spanish recruited after Don Louis was burned out of his trading post in the Ohio River country. Their Spanish land grants were substantial, most were confirmed by the American government. James Logan was apparantly very sucessful both economically and politically, yet when the Delaware and Shawnee moved to the James River area south of Springfield, so did Logan. Where he settled was later named Logan County, Arkansas. This put him in a prime location to benefit not only from living close to the Delaware but, he was right in the middle of the Cherokee.
Not all of the early settlers moved though. And a large group of land hungry former Tennessee and Kentucky militia members were piled up in southern Washington County and what is now Iron County waiting for the government to move out the indians so that they could move into the "improvemnts" being vacated by those going west. This group was firmly in place by 1840.
The next wave of settlement really took off around 1845 and especially for the counties south of Washington County and Madison County and west of Wayne County. And this wave filled up the limited valley land, that had springs for drinking water, for the entire region. In the Reynolds County, MO area the large majority of these people came from the Campbell/Scott County area of Tennessee. This was third and fourth generation Scot/Irish frontiersmen who wanted little more than to be left alone to live their lives free from outside interferences. They knew there was only two reasons to grow a little corn and they didn't think either usage should be taxed.
Most of those families who were part of the various migrations into the eastern Ozarks are still represented in the population. Many of the families had relatives move on into Oklahoma and Texas both before and after the civil war.
What I learned, about these people, in my studies of the earlier time period is, who they were and where they came from. I know a little bit about several of the larger families represented on the 1830, 1840, 1850 and 1860 censuses in a six county region. Enough anyway, to recognize many of their names and in some cases what other families were in their related "clan". It was a sigificant help to me that my own family, in the 1820's to 1830's decided that the various sons should settle on watersheds as widely separated as the Huzzah, Big River, Black River, Logan Creek and Current River, and they had cousins who went to the Eleven Point.
I have benefited greatly by reading the archives on this and other civil war message boards over the last 12 months and wish to extend my thanks to everyone. I am not a civil war historian, and I am not a writer, but I see a story that needs to be told. It has become obvious to me that there is a great deal of under utilized documentation waiting for someone to dig into it who understands the family relationships of those unknown participants in the war in southeast Missouri.
A year ago last November my wife and I started traveling to the area of the eastern Ozarks visiting the local historical societies in the area that includes Wayne, Reynolds, Ripley, Shannon, Carter, Oregon, Crawford and Washington Counties. This next year we have decided to include St. Francis and Madison. We are collecting the local county "history" books and trying to catalog and document the civil war family "lore" that is seemingly always included. I didn't know what to expect when I started this project. I had never been into the "OR" and I barely knew what the Provost Marshal records were. I have had help from some very knowledgeable civil war historians and our success to this point has astonished us. What is even more amazing is the spiderweb of family relationships that are woven throughout this history and the geographical area it encompasses. We would be most grateful for any unpublished civil war or reconstruction period family lore anyone wishes to pass on to us, as long as the location is within our geographical comfort zone.
Jim and Barbara Morris