EAST TENNESSEE PIONEERS WHO SETTLED IN MILLER COUNTY...

(Printed in THE MILLER COUNTY AUTOGRAM-SENTINEL in the column, 'WINDOW TO THE PAST', June 30, 2011)

​​Note: I was asked to write this story for the "East Tennessee Roots" magazine several years ago. (Peggy Smith Hake)  

An early day settler of Central Missouri, Robinson Garnett Smith, wrote a letter back to some of his kinfolk in southeast Kentucky & Tennessee (Cumberland Gap area) and gave this enthusiatic report----- "Crops look promising and I do say I never saw such corn in my life. The stalks are so large that when we come to gathering it, we have to take ladders to climb up the stalk..I am in a 'promised land' where you have no need to work the land; it is so rich you may plant a crowbar at night and it will sprout ten penny nails by morning" I think he was exaggerating somewhat but seemed to be really impressed with Missouri!!

The pioneering spirit of our ancestors drove them onward to a new land. "Something hidden behind the ranges" was the beckoning call that kept them ever on the move westward. It was said that every man was a modern-day Moses because he hoped to see the "Promised Land" in his own lifetime.

Perhaps that was the spirit that brought so many East Tennessee families into central Missouri in the 1830s and on through the 1860s......

Land was cheap in Missouri's early days...some as cheap as 50 cents an acre...so it took only a small amount of cash to start farming. Settlers from East Tennessee, the Carolinas, and Kentucky came to Mid-Missouri in the late 1830s and into the Civil War times. The usual pattern was for these pioneers to build a home, usually near a stream or spring, and then some enterprisng person would construct a mill for grinding grain....then more settlers would be influenced to come into the area......thus a settlement was begun.

I have been to East Tennessee and researched some of my ancestral families who once resided in the counties of Grainger, Claiborne, McMinn, Meigs, Roane, and Union. The land there is so beautiful and, for the life of me, I can not imagine why my ancestors wanted to leave the gorgeous mountains and green valleys of the Cumberland Gap region or the rolling hills and ridges of the Clinch mountains.

Missouri was a long, tiresome trip in those days, traveling by covered wagon over mountains, through valleys, crossing treacherous rivers. They brought only the necessary items and left behind their homes, lands, friends, and family. Once arriving at their destinations, after weeks of traveling, the cycle began all over...building a new home, clearing the land, planting crops, building new schools and churches.

My Missouri homeland is beautiful also. Miller County is divided by the mighty Osage river with smaller tributaries reaching across the land. To the south is the land of the Big Richwoods, the terrain rugged and beautiful. To the north is the rolling prairies of Saline and Franklin townships where the rich soil produced wonderful crops. In my Big Tavern Creek valley, south of the Osage river, the land looks very much like the Clinch valley of Tennessee. When my ancestors migrated to Miller County in the late 1830s and 40s the land looked much the same as today, so I am sure they were reminded of their green valleys and cedar-clad hills of Tennessee and Kentucky.

My ancestral families from East Tennessee included Wyrick, Rook, Jones, Monroe, Colvin, Coker, Cheek, Phipps, all of Grainger/Union counties; Jenkins, Freeman, Norvell, Newton of Claiborne County; Shelton, Lawson, Burks, Roberds, Green, McNabb of McMinn County; Rowden, Renfrow, Elsey, Crain, of Roane/Meigs counties. Some of these names were not my direct ancestral families, but allied families into whom my ancestors married over the years they lived in East Tennessee.

There were other familiar names I found as I researched in the various courthouse records including: Benjamin Shields, Jesse Poor, Wyatt Stubblefield, Jehu Carnes, John Wigington, Charles Martin, Jonathan Hale, William R Wright and his wife Lucy Moon, Larkin and Martha (Melton) Shelton, Sterling and Charlotte (Gregory) Shelton, Thomas and Elizabeth (Wright) Shelton....all these people came to Miller and Maries Counties.

Missouri did not hold on to all these pioneers who ventured from Tennesee. The 'gold rush' of 1848 and the Donation Land Act of 1850 sent them on westward. Some went to the gold fields of California while others formed wagon trains in the mass movements to Oregon Territory. Had not the vast waters of the Pacific Ocean been in the way, I think they would have continued re-settling and homesteading new land until they reached the eastern coast of China ! !

The following surnames were enumerated in Miller County's 1850 census who were natives of East Tennessee-----
ALLEN, ARMSTRONG, ABBOTT, BURRIS, BURKS, BILLS, BOND, BRADFORD, BRASIER, BERRY, BILYEU, BOWLIN, BREEDEN, BEARD, BARR, BALL, BEAL, COLVIN, COKER, CARLTON, CAULK, BARNHART, BRANDON, BRANHAM, CAPPS, BIRDSONG, CASTLEMAN, BLIZE, CROSS, CRAIG, COGBURN, CLARK, COMPTON, DAVIS, DENNY, DENTON, DUNCAN, DICKERSON, DYER, DONALDSON, DIXON, ETTER, FULKERSON, FANCHER, FREEMAN, GRADY, GREEN, GOSS, GLENN, GOTT, HOWELL, HAWKINS, HOSKINS, HOOK, HENDERSON, JENKINS, JOHNSTON, KIRKENDOLL, KILLMER, WILSON, LONG, HIX, LYNCH, MCDOWELL, MULKEY, MANNING, MCCOMB, NEWTON, ONEAL, POWELL, POPEJOY, PHILLIPS, PITTMAN, PEMBERTON, ROARK. RUSSELL, ROWDEN, RENFROW, RECORD, RICHARDSON, ROBERTS, SMITH, STUBBLEFIELD, STARLING, SULLINS, STEPHENS, SHOEMAKER, SCOTT, SORTER, TURNER, TAYLOR, TRAMMELL, THORNSBERRY, VANN, VERNON, VANDERPOOL, VAN HOOSER, VAUGHAN, WYRICK, WILKES, WILSON, WISEMAN, WORKMAN, WITT, WILLIAMS, WINFREY, WEST.