Monroe County, Missouri
By Thomas V. Bodine, Pans

A Modern Bourbon County

It was Motley who demonstrated that all real history is of necessity a "story," and it can be said without any resultant charge of provincialism that the history of Monroe county is peculiarly so. The history of the establishment of Anglo-Saxon-Celtic civilization in the valley west of the great river teems with romance, but in no instance is the romance in question more real, more virile or more alluring than in connection with the settlement and development of Monroe County.

Monroe County was settled by the Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee strain, which had a genius for war, politics and story making, and no county in the state has so preserved its racial solidarity or more effectually kept to its traditions. Most of its people came from half a dozen counties in Kentucky, Clark, Boyle, Madison, Jassamine, Woodford and Mercer and their descendants for the large part occupy today the fat prairies and the fine woodland farms their grandsires subjugated, repelling unconsciously alien intermixture, and emigrating, as in the case of Texas and Oklahoma, only to return. They have, of course, been modernized, all the towns and the country as well-being abreast of twentieth century civilization, but the Brahmin instinct persists despite. A Kentucky or Virginia pedigree is still the highest social guarantee, the best that earth affords, though others are not despised. It is one of the typical Bourbon counties imbued with an essentially modem spirit.

The Coming of Settlement

Monroe County was cut off from what was then Ralls County in 1831 and Hancock S. Jackson, of Randolph, Stephen Glascock, of Ralls, and Joseph Holliday, of Pike, who afterwards moved to the county, where he died, were appointed commissioners to select the county seat. The new county was named for President James Monroe, which indicates clearly the political complexion of its settlers, which, with a Whig victory occasionally in the forties, has ever since been maintained.

As early as 1817 parties came into what was then Pike County and laid out tracts of land near Middle Grove, but no permanent settlements were made in what is now Monroe County until 1820, when Ezra Fox, Andrew and Daniel Wittenberg and others located three miles east of what is now Middle Grove and began that historic community.

About the same time a settlement was formed by Joseph and Alexander Smith and others between the North and Middle forks of Salt River close to Florida, being known as the Smith settlement.

The McGees south of Paris.
Others by Daniel Urbin east of Madison.
Robert Greening and Samuel Nesbit at Florida.
Near old Clinton by Robert Martin and Caleb Woods.

As early as 1820, Benjamin Young settled on South Fork near Santa Fe and remained there until 1828, only-eight families residing in this, one of the richest sections of Missouri, when the county was organized. A colony of Virginians joined these, extending along the river from Lick Creek in Ralls past Florida, and as elsewhere in the county the names found there today are much the same as those of the first settlers. The Kentuckians invariably settled in the timber, near springs or along water courses, leaving the prairie wild.

Paris was laid out in 1831, and was named by Mrs. Cephas Fox of the Middle Grove settlement, wife of the famous pioneer merchant and philanthropist by that name, for her native town, Paris, Kentucky. Trading places were few for ten years.

The first blacksmith shop in the county was opened on the Louisiana road south of Paris by Charles Eales and the first store was opened up by Major Penn, afterwards county clerk and enshrined in tradition by reason of his connection with the Clemens family, at Florida.

The town of Florida was laid out in the winter of 1831, by Robert Donaldson, John Witt, Dr. Kennan, Joseph Grigsby, W. N. Penn and Hugh Hickman, and here three years after transpired an event of historical importance to the whole nation and by far the biggest event in the history of Monroe County, the birth of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known to the literary world as Mark Twain, of whom more hereafter.

The first mill in the county was built by Benjamin Bradley two miles northeast of Florida and along with the Hickman mill at the same place, both operated by water power, became famous throughout this section of Missouri, people coming forty miles with grain.

The first road laid out in the county was "the old London trace," and ran from Middle Grove to New London, being surveyed by J. C. Fox and others on order from the county court of Ralls County. The houses were all of log and seldom had glass.

Politics, Farming and Fighting

The history of the county centers around its agricultural development and its military and political activities. As early as 1832, on the outbreak of the Black Hawk war, Major Thomas W. Conyers, a Monroe Countians, commanded two companies, one under Captain Jamison from Callaway and the other under Captain David H. Hickman of Boone, which occupied Fort Pike for thirty days. The strain was built for war and when the war with Mexico came on sent a company under Captain Giddings to Santa Fe, the command marching every foot of the way. This company afterwards elected T. H. McKamey captain and saw valiant service, not, however being in the march to Mexico. It returned home following the war and the trenches for the big barbecue given across the river from Paris in its honor are still partly preserved.

With the piping days of peace an adventurous spirit, which was a distinguishing mark of the race, led the younger men by scores in caravans across plains and deserts to the California gold fields. Some perished on the way in battle with Indians, others returned empty-handed, and yet others remained and became rich, the names of Glenn, Biggs and others becoming a part of the history of the golden state. Perhaps Monroe County is famous for nothing so much as the men of note it has furnished the states to the southwest and west and also to the northwest, governors, congressmen, judges and business men. Hugh Glenn, owner of the Willows wheat ranch in Tulare County, California, and at one time grain king of the world, was from Monroe County, as was also his slayer, Hurem Miller, the story being one which mocks manufactured romance but not within the province of historical narrative.

The Civil war followed in ten years and the inborn soldier bent of the people of this county showed itself. It sent twelve hundred men into the Confederate army to fight under Price, Cockrell and Bledsoe, and almost half as many into the Union army. It was known as "Little North Carolina," and for thirty years after the war "the brigadiers," as the old Confederate organization was known, dominated the political and business activities of the county. It elected Frank L. Pitts, hero at Franklin, state treasurer, and elevated Theodore Brace to the supreme bench. Only in the late nineties did it give way to the younger crowd and even after that was a power. In politics besides these Monroe has furnished the state two speakers of the house, T. P. Bashaw in 1880 and James II. Whitecotton in 1902, and two congressmen from the Second district, A. M. Alexander in 1886, and R. N. Bodine in 1896. Governor Shortridge of South Dakota - 1896 -was a Monroe Countians, as was Supreme Judge Reavis of Washington, Attorney-General Ford of California, and Superior Judge Eugene Bridgford of the same state. Others of minor note by the score might be named, it being the pride of the strain to "have itself elected to office wherever it goes. Politics has been its specialty since war has passed.

A Northeast Missouri Farm Scene

Besides Hugh Glenn Monroe has furnished the country another of its big business figures, Dr. W. S. Woods, of Kansas City, who, while born in Boone, began his career in Monroe, marrying Miss Bina McBride of Paris, and claims it at his home. To the banking world it has given also J. Fletcher Farrell, vice-president of the Fort Dearborn National Bank at Chicago, and vice-president of the American Bankers' Association, The county is provincial only about its horses and its people.

Railroads

The Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad was built through Monroe County in 1871, having been commenced in the year of 1869, under the name of the Hannibal & Central Missouri. The county had voted $250,000 at a special bond election held in 1868 and in 1873 held another election transferring its stock to the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Company. The debt was finally discharged in 1891, after having been once refunded.

The Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad, only four miles of which runs through Monroe County, was completed to Monroe City in 1857.

County Officers

The first circuit judge of Monroe County was Priestly H. McBride, who moved from Columbia to Paris, where he was elected judge of the second judicial district. He was appointed supreme judge in 1845 and prior to that, in 1830, had been secretary of state under appointment by Governor Miller.

The first circuit attorney was Ezra Hunt, who was born at Milford, Mass. The second was John Hurd.

The county's first representative in the legislature was Joseph Stevens. He was succeeded in turn by Major Penn and Jonathan Gore. Charles Flannigan, 1844-46 was the first Democratic representative elected from Monroe County.

The county was Whig by about two hundred until 1854, when the Know Nothings appeared. After that it was Democratic until the disfranchisement of the reconstruction period and has been Democratic ever since. T. T. Rodes, a Democrat, was elected in 1868, but was denied his seat.

Among the succession of representatives are such names as William J. Howell, Waltour Robinson, James M. Bean, Samuel Drake, Samuel Rawlings, John Parsons, William Giddings, George W. Moss and James C. Fox. The county has, almost without exception, elevated good men to the legislature. Ebenezer McBride was the first county clerk and was followed by Major Penn, who served from 1848 to 1859. Thomas Crutcher, one of the best loved men who ever lived in the county, served in the same office from 1873 to 1886 and was succeeded by James L. Wright, who served until 1898.

Miscellaneous

There has been but one legal execution in Monroe County and but one lynching. The execution was that of Thomas Blue, a Negro, who was hanged June 21, 1867, for the murder of Wm. Vandeventer and wife, an aged couple living near Florida. The execution occurred beneath a huge elm tree near the bridge on North Main Street at Paris, and was witnessed by thousands of people. It was afterwards discovered that Blue was the tool used by two white men, the object being robbery, and for forty years it was impossible to convict a man of capital offense in Monroe County. So lax did the courts and juries become that in June, 1905, a mob, which nobody considered at all dangerous, broke into the old rock jail at Paris, took out Abraham Witherup and hanged him from the bridge fifty yards north of where Blue had been hung forty years before. Witherup had murdered a young man named Grow, with whom he had been cropping on a rented farm near old Clinton, and in order to hide his crime had placed the body in a sack and thrown it into North Fork River four miles away, hauling it there after night. A special jury was summoned, but no indictments were found.

In 1831 the county court of Monroe ordered roads to be laid off from Paris to Columbia, from Paris to the Fayette road and from Paris to Florida. The first license for the sale of liquor was also issued by this court and the county tax rate was fixed at seventy-five cents. Edward M. Holden was granted a license to conduct a ferry over Salt River at Paris near where the Palmyra Bridge now spans that historic stream. The old covered wagon bridge near the woolen factory, still used, was built in 1834. The court at its second session appropriated $500 to "clear out'' Salt river before the forks, presumably to gratify Florida navigator.

The first murder case tried in the county was against Burgess Oglesby, John J. Callison, et al, charged with killing Robert Donaldson. They were defended by Austin King and were acquitted.

James H. Smith and Rosey Ann McKeammy were the first couple to be married in the new county. The date was May 12, 1831, and Elder Alfred Wright officiated.

The first court house was built in 1831 and was of brick, fifty feet square and two stories high. It burned in 1866 and a new structure of brick was erected in 1867 at a cost of $45,000. This was torn down and a modern stone structure, one of the finest in the West, built in 1912 at a cost of $100,000. Three years prior to this the county spent $25,000 erecting a modern infirmary to care for the weak and helpless.

The Paris fair association was first organized in 1838 and the first fair held on a lot adjacent to the home of J. C. Fox. Among those who exhibited stock and who are still living is Uncle John Curtright, one of the biggest land owners in the county. He still has the silver cup, which, as a boy, he won on his fine horse.

In 1860 Monroe County had a population of 11,772 white people and 3,063 slaves. In 1910 it had a population of 18,304. In 1848 it had 6,691 white people and 1,826 slaves. The population of Paris was 502.

As early as 1845, Samuel & Haines, Hannibal packers, who handled most of the stock from this county,, began to ship Monroe County beef abroad and even at that time the county had taken front rank among Missouri fine stock counties. The credit was given to men like Pleasant McCann, breeder and importer of shorthorn cattle, and to others among those early farmers whose names have already been given as being associated with the development of the county's livestock interests. In 1876 David McKamey fed and shipped one hundred head of shorthorn cattle for export use that averaged over 2,200 pounds in Chicago, and they were the heaviest cattle, so far as known, at least in such numbers, ever placed on the market in this country. He fed them for three years and they were known as the Centennial drove.

In 1868 Jefferson Bridgford, then owning a fine pack of hounds found the track of a lynx near his home south of Paris and though it was twenty-four hours old, followed the trail to the Missouri river opposite Jefferson City, ninety miles away, and captured the lynx, the longest chase in the history of the state.

County Townships

Paris and Jackson Townships | Monroe Township | Union and Marion Townships | South Fork Township | Woodlawn and Clay Townships | Washington Township | Jefferson Township

Civil War Period

In the Empire of Agriculture

The development of its stock and agricultural interests from the days when only a timbered farm was visible here and there contains moat of romance. The Kentuckians and Virginians, next to corn, naturally took to hemp, but there is not a stalk of it raised in the county today, the only reminder that it was ever a staple here being in the wreck of an old hemp-breaker encountered now and then in the outhouse on some farm long in possession of a single line. The crop, along with tobacco, which supplanted it in the late sixties and early seventies, exhausted the soil in the less fertile portions, constant coming added to the min, and it was years before the people knew what was the matter. All the waste and impoverished land, however, has been built up again by scientific methods, no county being more progressive in its agriculture, and it is now one of the richest stock and grass counties in the state. Blue grass and corn are its staples and its big farmers are mostly ''grass men" and feeders. They feed on the land and reap a double profit. But little grain is shipped, the act being considered treason. Contemporaneously it has developed into the greatest fine stock county in the state, especially in horses, mules and sheep. The Kentuckians who came to Monroe County had the race failing for fine horses and with the development of the saddle type, the Denmark strain, began to breed for it, buying the pick of Kentucky stallions as early as 1870. Today, with the Hook Woods training barns at Paris, the biggest institution of its kind in the country, as evidence of the fact, Monroe is the greatest fine horse county in the middle west. The story of the development of this great industry also reads like romance.

The county is equally as famous for its mules and in the persons of B. F. Vaughn, Stone & Son and James Warren, has the most extensive feeders and developers in the state. This ascendancy is due to the work of the Agricultural College of the University of Missouri, which numbers many graduates in Monroe, and to that more historic institution, the Paris fair, established in 1838, and which has devoted over half a century to developing the stock and agricultural interests of the county. As far back as 1859, David Major, a prominent planter and slave owner, was awarded a gold headed cane for the best essay on agriculture, and the association has ever since emphasized the farm and its stock, having little to do with racing. Each year sees thousands of people gather on its beautiful grounds with nothing more to attract them than friendly contests of neighbors in grain, poultry and stock shows, Monroe leading the state in poultry also. However, this is immaterial as history.

On the Church Rolls

The religious evolution of the county, in its intimate phases, carries an absorbing interest. The Kentuckians were originally Old School Baptists or Presbyterians, occasionally Methodists, but early fell under the spell of the Campbell movement which swept the central valley states in the early years of the last century. Barton Stone, "Raccoon John" Smith and other great pioneer preachers of the Disciples movement came to Missouri in the thirties, swaying the thought and intelligence here as they did in Kentucky, and Alexander Campbell himself was twice a visitor at Paris, the last time in 1848. As a result the county is preponderantly of this faith in its religious ideals, or rather was, the Disciples predominating.

The Old School Baptists, once the most powerful and numerous sect in the county, have gradually vanished, and only three or four of their church edifices, some of these, like Berea in South Pork, having no congregation remain. They furnished the county with some of its most militant and heroic figures, such men as Wm. Priest, Elder Sutton and Epaphroditus Smith, known in person and tradition, but save for Cedar Bluff, Stoutsville, Berea and Old Baptist, there remains not a vestige of them.

Every other denomination has grown and in a measure kept pace, but the faith of the pioneer is evidently no more. Monroe has one Catholic community, Indian Creek.

County Towns

Duncan's Bridge | Florida | Granville | Holliday | Jonesburg | Madison | Middle Grove
Monroe City | Old Clinton | Paris | Santa Fe | Stoutsville | Strother | Woodlawn

By Way of Reminiscence

Green V. Caldwell, of Ralls County, was the first storekeeper in Jackson Township, establishing a trading point two miles south of where Paris now stands in 1831, probably where the county infirmary is located. Paris was laid out the same year and for many years thereafter had Florida as an ambitious county seat rival. The fight began with the organization of the county and did not end until the late forties, when, to lay the rivalry. Major Howell and Dr. Flannigan, members of the legislature, the county having double representation in those days, hit upon the trick of having a row of rich sections cut off the north and south ends of the county, making it impracticable to divide it further east and west, as proposed by Florida, with Paris the seat of one county and Florida of the other.

As a result Monroe County was ravished of some of its richest territory and both men forever forfeited their political standing. Howell was among the most brilliant Missouri lawyers of that day and the consequences were serious as regarded him, spoiling a career which would have no doubt been useful and distinguished. The geographical effects of the rape may be seen by looking at the map and noting the cut-off into Shelby in the northwestern part of the county. Even in those days Monroe Countians were true Bourbons and those cut off into Shelby never forgave the authors of the enforced separation, it requiring a new generation to obliterate traces of the feeling engendered. For forty years it remained a miniature Alsace-Lorraine, the inhabitants persisting in calling themselves Monroe Countians and their political interests centering in Monroe County elections.

In those days Salt River was thought to be a navigable stream and Florida was looked upon as the headwaters of navigation, an important advantage considering that there were no railroads. Among the county seat boomers at Florida was John Marshall Clemens, the visionary and impractical father of Mark Twain, who moved to Hannibal before the fight was settled.

The land on which Paris is located was deeded to the county seat commissioners by Hightower I. Hackney and wife, James R. Abbernathey and wife and J. C. Fox and wife. The first sale of town lots occurred September 12, 13, and 14, 1831, and a letter to the St. Louis Republican at the time stated that the results were gratifying. The first two lots were bought by Marshall Kelly for $301 and are occupied by the Glenn hotel, Paris' historic hostelry, built in the fifties.

Among the purchasers was Eben W. McBride, father of Mrs. W. S. Woods, and on of the famous pioneer citizens of the county, a man of learning, wit, and kindly heart, who having grown rich and become the head of one of the most historic homes of the state, gave up his life in a steamboat explosion on the lower Mississippi in the late sixties. He was going south with mules and his body was never recovered, though a big shaft in his honor stands in beautiful Walnut Grove cemetery at Paris today. Perhaps no couple in Monroe County were so justly famed as Mr. McBride and his wife, Julia Snell McBride, both Kentuckians.

When the court house site was being surveyed the men engaged in the work caught a spotted fawn, which leaped from the thicket, and it was taken to the home of James R. Abbernathy, afterwards the famous Whig editor of the Mercury, and raised until it grew into a large deer.

The first house in town was erected by J. C. Fox and Hightower Hackney and the first business house by Fox, standing until 1887, where the Paris opera house now stands. It was occupied by Fox & Caldwell.

Marshall Kelly kept the first tavern in a log cabin where the Glenn house now stands and Alfred Wilson, afterwards famed as a Christian preacher, along with Henry Davis, another Kentuckian, afterwards county judge and business man, was among the first blacksmiths.

Taliaferre Bostick and Jonathan Gore were saddlers and William Stephens was tailor.

Among the early citizens were the eloquent Dr. Flannigan, referred to before, Wm. K. Van Arsdale, whose name appears as among the charter members of Paris Masonic lodge, and Anderson Woods.

Just north of town on a big farm, surrounded by an accomplished family and a large number of slaves, lived that Dr. Bower, afterwards congressman, who was in the march on Detroit during the War of 1812, and who earlier was a survivor of the Indian massacre at the River Raisin. He was a Kentuckian and a graduate of the Philadelphia school of medicine and was surgeon of the first company sent from Kentucky in response to call for troops. Being captured and taken to Maiden he fell into the hands of the women of the family of a well-known English officer, one of whom he fell in love with, and was finally sold as a captive to an American citizen for $12. He lived to return to Maiden a conqueror and to return the kindness of his English lady friends.

When arraigned by General McNeil during the Civil war and compelled to give ransom he proudly related the incident of having been sold once for $12 while in his country's service, and declared he had never thought to be subjected to like humiliation again. The story procured his release from McNeil' superiors, but the old veteran never recovered from what he deemed an insult and died soon afterwards. He had lost three boys in the Confederate army and one in the war with Mexico.

Dr. Bower was captain of the Kentucky guards sent out to meet Marquis de Lafayette on his visit to Kentucky and was a gentleman, a real gentleman, of the old school, famed in the history and traditions of Monroe County.

Churches and Congregations

The Paris Christian church was among the earliest of the congregations established by the Disciples in Missouri and dates back to the thirties, first meeting in the old brick house known as the Addison Bodine place, and later - in 1848 - building a brick structure on the present site. This building was torn down and a new one erected in 1884, and this in turn demolished and supplanted by a modem $35,000 structure in 1910. Among its ministers have been Alexander Proctor, famous throughout the brotherhood, W. J. Mountjoy, J. B. Davis, the Rev. Samuel McDaniel, T. W. Pinkerton, W. N. Briney, __  __. Wright, J. R. Perkins and F. W. Allen, all distinguished men and the two latter known outside their denominational world, Perkins as a publicist and Allen as a novelist.

The Paris Baptist church was organized at the home of Eli Bozarth, four miles south of where the town now stands, in May, 1831, and the Rev. Edward Turner was its first pastor. He was followed by Anderson Woods in 1836, the name of the body first being Bethlehem church. It has had a succession of able ministers and has been a power for good in the development of community life.

Paris Methodist Episcopal church was organized in 1832, and was among the first to join the Southern Association following the division in 1844. Its first minister was the Rev. James Jameson and among its first members Thos. Miller, Thos. Noonan, Joel Maupin, Jefferson Marr, William Stevens, names known still in the history of the county.

Paris Presbyterian church was organized in 1842, and its first pastor was the Rev. W. P. Cochran. Among the charter members were Thos. Barrett, J. S. Caldwell, O. P. Gentry, Welthy Applegate, Rosella Vanarsdale and John Curry.

The organization at Paris followed that at Pleasant Hill, seven miles south by several years. Pleasant Hill was organized in 1825, before the county had a separate existence, and is probably the oldest as well as the most historic congregation in the county. The Rev. Thomas Durfee, a missionary, was its founder, and the Rev. Alfred Wright its first pastor. James McGee and the McKamey family were its charter members, a slave woman by the name of Marietta also being included in the number. The church is still very much alive and is one of the few original congregations to maintain a continued existence. In its yard sleep many of the famous pioneer men and women of Monroe County.

The Methodist church at Goss, Jackson Township, was organized in 1833, and was founded by Henry Marr, Samuel West, Susan Austin, John Shearman, David Ashby and others.

Salem Baptist church was organized in 1857, by the Rev. Henson Thomas, one of the most noted of the county's pioneer preachers, and among its charter members were a group of Kentuckians, hailing from Madison County, Lewis Philips, Thomas P. Moore, Samuel Willis, Richard Thomas and others.

Long Branch Baptist church was organized in 1844, by John B. Rudasill, James Botts, Edward Goodnight and others, and its first pastor was Wm. Jesse. For over twenty-five years W. B. Craig of Paris, the most famous of Monroe County Baptist preachers, ministered to it, and his labors ceased only with his death.

These congregations are singled out on account of their age and the traditions that cluster about them. It is interesting to note that the names appearing on their charter rolls continue in their present membership, illustrating as nothing else can the degree to which the county has maintained its racial solidarity.

Schools and Banks

The public schools at Paris were organized in 1867, and the Paris high school in 1873, the latter by B. P. Newland, a German scholar and a graduate of Heidelberg, still lovingly remembered. W. D. Christian has been its superintendent since 1886, a period of twenty-six years, and the school has been notable in the character of men and women it has sent out into the world.

Prior to the public schools the old-time academy for boys and seminary for girls constituted the town's educational plant, as they did in most southern communities of that day.

The Paris Female Seminary, which stood on Locust Street, the town's main residence thoroughfare, was noted in its time, and the young ladies educated there possessed all the graces and just as few of the essentials as it was necessary to get along without.

Just prior to the war S. S. Bassett, recently returned from Bethany college, opened up an academy for boys on the hill east of town, and it flourished for a season, most of its pupils casting aside book and rule to respond to the call of bugle and tap of drum.

The Paris National Bank, the town's oldest financial institution, was first organized in 1871, being preceded by the old Monroe County Savings Association, organized in 1865, the moving spirit in both being the late David H. Moss. It has continued, with one reorganization, under practically the same management until the death of Judge Moss in 1907. Associated with him all these years was W. F. Buckner, who retired in 1912. The latter's son, A. D. Buckner, a member of the executive committee of the American Bankers' Association, is now at the head of the institution.

The Paris Savings Bank was organized in 1885, and W. M. Farrell has been cashier practically all the time since, his son, J. F. Farrell of the Ft. Dearborn Bank at Chicago, being associated with him as assistant for several years.

The Oldest Newspaper

The real history of Paris and Monroe County would be incomplete without mention of its oldest and most historic institution, the Paris Mercury, possibly the oldest weekly newspaper in the state, under a continuous name. 'The Mercury was founded by Lucien J. Eastin in 1837, and without its files, preserved in a score of Monroe County households, authentic account of the stirring events entering into the county's history would be impossible. Beginning with Eastin the Mercury has had a succession of unusual men as editors, among the most notable being James B. Abbernathey, famous as a Whig lawyer in the forties, and James M. Bean, state senator following the reconstruction period. Associated with Bean was A. G. Mason, whose hospitality and geniality are still a matter of tradition, and kindly remembered Joe Burnett. The paper is at present published by Alexander & Stavely, and, valuing its historical associations, makes an effort to live up to its traditions.

No less potential is the Monroe County Appeal, though not so old, being moved to Paris from Monroe City in 1873. The Appeal is now owned and edited by B. F. Blanton and Sons and has been in the family practically since it was founded.

The history of Jackson Township is largely the history of the county and in the names that appear in its beginnings, Crutchers, Curtrights, Buckners, Gores, Vaughns, Batsells, Fields and others already mentioned is to be found the moving cause behind the county's social, political, and religious development.   

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Source: History of Northeast Missouri, edited by Walter Williams, Volume I, Lewis Publishing Company, 1913