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Chapter 7: Some Problems of the New County |
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On a June day 1849 local government in Butler County started under the leadership of John Stevenson, Solomon Kittrell and Jonathan Sandlin, the first judges of the County Court. June is usually an almost perfect month in Butler County, but that was about the only really pleasant thing to encourage these officials on this opening day of Court.
Problems beset them on every hand. The population was small, about 1500 people; men, women and children, about two persons per square mile, and this slender population, true to the American pioneer tradition was scattered over the county, each family on its own farm. There was not a collection of houses any place in the county which could be termed were little more than trails through the wilderness. There were a few grist mills but not a saw mill. The treasury of the County was absolutely empty and would remain so until some taxes were paid. County revenue for 1849 was $156.02 from property taxes and $8.54 in taxes on merchants licenses, total of $164.56. The county did not own a county seat site; hence could not build a court house or found a county seat town.
There was not a printing press in the county, and it was to be twenty years before one was hauled in by ox team from Cape Girardeau and a newspaper started. Twenty-three years would go by before a railroad would be built through the county and thirty-seven years before a bank was organized. Before there was a bank, the financial report of the county treasurer was in the fashion: amount collected, amount expended and balance "in hand." And that was exactly what the treasurer meant. The balance was "in his hand" for the Court to see and count. Education was limited to subscription schools and as could be given in the home. A system of public schools was started about 1874.
The economic life of the county was stern and hard. Of course the soil of the newly cleared lands produced enough food for everyone, and this was richly supplemented by nature with a wide variety of game and fish; but the settlers had very little money to buy things to ease the burden of the backbreaking labor necessary to provide food, clothing and shelter for the family. Surplus farm products were almost worthless as there was no way to get them to market. In the forests were millions of board feet of the finest hardwood timber in the world, by moneywise, it was almost worthless and would remain so until adequate transportation could be developed. Actually it was to be about the year 1880, more than thirty years after the founding of the county, before well financed companies came in to harvest the timber. Tremendous potential wealth was locked in the soil of the swamp and overflow lands, but it was to be almost seventy-five years before drainage and flood control programs were developed enough to permit the profitable cultivation of there rich lands.
The pioneer settler was subjected to the chronic aches and pains of malaria fever. It was most prevalent in the swamp and overflow lands and along the streams, but no part of Butler County was entirely free from its ravages. In the year 1834 a traveler, G.W. Featherstonhaugh, came through what is now Butler County. Fortunately for us he published a book about his experiences. In early November, he visited Fredericktown and then continued to the south. We quote his comments on malaria fever in our area; "From this mountain at the foot of which fragments of galena have been found, we descended three miles to Greenville, a collection of four or five wooden cabins, where the inhabitants die by inches of chills and fevers. It is a most distressing thing to arrive at here settlements on the water-courses at this season; the poor people, feeble, emaciated, beginning to recover from the malaria of the county: to many of the persons whom I saw, life seemed to be a burthen."*
The late Dr. J. Lee Harwell in his delightful little book, "Them Harwells," relates the following incident: "My Grandfather, Edwin S. Harwell-had been in Missouri about a year when he got one of our Missouri chills. Not being familiar with them, he decided to take exercise to get warm. The say he ran about a mile, or until he got up a sweat, then went to bed and never got up." (Edwin S. Harwell settled in Butler County in 1859.)
It was to be well into the twentieth century before the scourge of malaria was removed from Butler County.
Though the citizens of the new county faced many problems, they had one trait which would cope with any problem. They had unlimited courage. With courage and bare hands they went to work to found a county seat town, build a court house, build bridges, cut roads through the wilderness, plan for a railroad, promote navigation of Black River, promote drainage and flood control and meet and solve many other problems, even to surviving civil war. The story of the work of such men as Soloman Kittrell, John Eudaley, James S. Ferguson, James W. Morrow, William Vandover, Nathaniel W. Hendrickson, Phillip L. Varner, John N. Yarber and many others, is an epic of public spirited self-sacrifice. For their long hours of work and often of great physical hardship in public duties, they received very little reward in money; but they left the heritage of solid foundation for the thriving Butler County today.
*Journey Through the Slave States, by G.W. Featherstonhaugh published in London, England, in 1844.
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