John Wilson was an early settler in Miller County and was born in Virginia in 1755. Some accounts say he was born in Ireland. Anxious to hunt in the virgin forests of the unknown western lands, he left Virginia and moved to Hopkins County, Kentucky where he was living in 1809. Later he ventured into the St. Louis area where he lived for awhile and then he traveled the old Indian trails westward to the Gasconade River country of central Missouri in the early 19th century.

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By the autumn of 1810, he was in the Big Richwoods of southern Miller County. He seemed to like the area and before the winter's first snowfall, he was situated in a cave near the mouth of the Barren Fork of the Big Tavern Creek. Here he lived among the friendly Osage Indians who were good neighbors to John, his wife (Nellie Ray), and their three sons--- Willis, Alexander and William. There were other children who died in infancy.

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During their first winter in the Big Richwoods, the Wilsons were comfortable in their primitive cave home and received help from the Osage tribes who brought them maize/corn, beans, pumpkins and apples which they had harvested from their plentiful orchards. According to "Goodspeed's History" written in 1889, Wilson Cave was 250 feet long, 60 feet wide, and 20 feet high at the mouth, which opened 30 feet above the Barren Fork creek.

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John Wilson and his family lived in their cave for two years and he finally built a log cabin as a permanent home for his wife and sons.

 

After making a trip back to Kentucky to visit relatives and to get a supply of salt for his Missouri home, he heard about General Andrew Jackson fighting the British in New Orleans, so he prepared to make a long trip to Louisiana to fight in that famous battle. He traveled down the Barren Fork to the Big Tavern creek, continued on down the Osage River eventually getting to the main rivers that carried him to the South.

 

He lived to be over 100 years old when he died in August 1856 at the age of 101 years. He gave instructions to his friends that his eventual death was not to be a time of mourning but was to be celebrated. He wanted everyone to meet together, sing and dance to the music of the fiddlers, and have a rousing, jolly, good time.

 

He left instructions that his grave would be inside his old cave home and his corpse was to be placed in a wooden coffin; packed in salt; and he instructed them to place seven demijohns of peach brandy beside his coffin and then the opening to the cave was to be sealed and walled up. At the end of seven years, he wanted his tomb opened, the demijohns removed, and everyone was to feast and toast his memory and just have a whooping good time...

 

He was buried in the fashion he requested down to the minutest detail, but at the end of the seven years, the Civil War was in full swing, and John Wilson was forgotten. His friends had scattered, and the tomb had been opened by vandals and the peach brandy had been stolen and consumed!

 

Daniel Cummings and Silas Capps were named as Executors of the estate of John Wilson after his death. In the May 1859 term of the Miller County Court, 320 acres of his land was ordered to be sold on the steps of the courthouse. Notice had been given of the proposed sale of his land holdings by the usual manner of posting hand bills in ten public places in the county and also notices were run for four weeks consecutively in the Jefferson City newspaper called "The Jefferson Examiner".

 

On a Monday morning, the first day of August 1859, part of his land (160 acres) was sold to William C. Brumley, an old friend and neighbor. In November 1859, an additional 160 acres was sold to Sayles and Sarah Brown. He may have owned other land in the county, but these 320 acres were the ones sold after his death.

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John Wilson, a great pioneer homesteader and folk hero, left this world in a robust fashion and his legend remains with us to be passed on as each new generation is born.

 

Wilson Cave is still there today near the Barren Fork of the Big Tavern creek, a few miles north of Iberia, and has been visited and investigated in years past by archeologists and persons interested in local history.