F 472 I .U2 B6 Copy 1 HANI>BOOK SOUTHEAST MISSOURI WITH DETAILED DESOHIPTION OF Washington County. . M PUBLISHED ^ND ISSUED UNOEf( THE AUTHORITY AND WITH THE INDOFISEMENT OF THE MlSSOUIjl IMMIGRATION^ SOCIETY. .jk.^XD:EZ^&s C, S, GREELEY, President U. M, & S, Co, and W, L, & I^, Co, eiiO N. SECOND STREET, ST. LOUIS, MO. P1-EA8E MAD AM) HA^D TO THAT KEIGHBUK WHO WISHES TO EMIOHATK. ST. LOUIS: TIMES I'KINTINti HOUSE, , l.SS-2. Class _::£A_TJ^ Book \ /\/^^(? /h^ bast=south: MISSOURI. THE COUNTIES IMMEDIATELY ADJOINING AND CONTIGUOUS TO THE GREAT RIVER AND THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS. THEIR RESOURCES— ADVANTAGES — SOILS — CLI- MATE— PRODUCTS— MINERAL DEPOSITS —WATER POWERS, ETC. Bv N. W. BLISS. PUBLISHED BY UmOfi MINING AND SMELTING COMPANYy Old Mines. Waskinqton County, Mo., AND WASHINGTON LAND AND MINING COMPANY, Kingston Furnace, Washington CouNTr, MO. ST. LOUIS ADDRESS : C. S. GREELEY, Preaident U. M. & S. Co.-and W. L. & M. Co., 620 N. SECOND STREET, ST. LOTIIS, MO. ISSUED UNDER THE AUTHORITY AND WITH THE INDORSEMENT OF THE MISSOURI IMMIGRATION SOCIETY. ST. LOUIS: TIMPIS PRINTING HOUSE, FIFTH AND CHESTNUT STUEETS^ 1882 -^J Trauafer THE CENTER OF THE CONTINENT WHERE IT IS, WHAT IT IS, AND WHY YOU SHOULD GO THERE. A DESCRIPTION OF A REGION WITHIN FIFTY MILES OF THE GREAT CITY OF ST. LOUIS, YET OFFERING THE ADVANTAGES OF A NEW COUNTRY. Good farming lands, rich mineral deposits, forests of wood, abundance of water, in a healthy country, close to one of the great primary markets of the world, with low rates of taxation, no debt, schools, churches, roads, and public improvements already paid for, and yet land selling at from $5 to $25 per acre. A great mystery ! THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED I Why emigration has been going to sterile lands ; to prairie lands without fencing or fuel ; to dry and thirsty lands "where no water is," and where one crop out of three is a failure ; to land distant from market and difficult to culti- vate and impossible to irrigate. lPemis|c.OjL jf Rail Road o/HornecsV. W W ,,. ^„ t, ,j MISSOURI. Lying just across the Mississippi River from the great and well-settled State of Illinois, and co-terminous with its southern half, as also with the narrow western end of Kentucky, is the great State of Missouri. In area, the eighth State in the Union, and larger than any State east of or bordering upon the great river (ex- cepting Minnesota), she figures in round numbers 65,350 square miles, or 41,824,000 acres. With an extreme length from north to south of 282 miles, by a breadth of 348 miles, bounded by Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Arkansas, the State lies in the very heart of the country, the geographical center of the United States. Situated between the parallels of latitude 36 ° 30' , and 40"^ 30' north, it occupies the most salubrious and health- ful portion of the Temperate Zone,. subject neither to the blizzards of the Northwest, nor the northers of the Southwest. Lying, as it does, midway between the snowy regions of British America and the semi-tropical region of the Gulf, and centrally between the Alleghany and Rocky Moun- tain's, it is the Central State in WASHINGTON COUNTY. THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI, Of which Governor Johnson was not guilty of exaggera- tion when he said before the Immifrration Convention of Missouri: "We look in vain over the globe's expanse for any other tract of such immensity, having similar physical features. The Mississippi, the Missouri, the Red, the Arkansas, the Ohio, and the Illinois, having 12,000 miles of navigable waters, furnish a series of main arteries of commerce unequaled elsewhere, while no valley of the earth presents so uniform and harmonious a network of ever-supplying tributaries, which, coursing in every direc- tion, pour their waters into a channel that bosoms a river unrivaled in natural magnitude and extent, flowing onward for thousands of miles, and sweeping directly out into ocean waters.'" POPULATION. This great valley is capable of sustaining a population of greater density than any other equal extent of the earth's surface ; and yet, it now has barely an average of twenty to the square mile, while England, with its primogeniture and hereditary land system and consequent accumulation of vast estates in individual hands, has more than 400 to the same space. This great region, therefore, is scarcely occupied, much less subdued, and its fertile soil, its healthful climate, its abundant water, and its inexhaustible mines (both of ores and of the fuel tor their reduction and manufacture into finished forms) is destined to furnish happy and com- fortable homes to thousands and tens of thousands of immigrants yet to come. SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. AN EMPIRE. It has resulted from a variety of causes that this great State — an empire in extent — has been neglected and left •comparatively unoccupied, while the States bounding Mis- souri (with the exception of Arkansas), have received streams and even floods of immigrants, and long been well settled up, their lands reduced to cultivation, and improvements made which have largely advanced the selling prices, not only of the lands thus improved, but also naturally of all the remaining unoccupied lands held •on speculation. The chief cause of this neglect of Missouri as a home for immigrants, and with it all minor causes for preferring other and less advantageous locations, were wiped out as with a sponge by the war and consequent legislation and change of feelings and views of public policy. IMMIGRATION CONVENTION. An overwhelming evidence of this was given in April, 1880, in the assembling at St. Louis of. a grand Immigra- tion Convention of the State, solely for the purpose of setting forth the advantages of this Central Slate as a location for those seeking homes, and to give a cordial invitation and assurance of hearty welcome to all such as should hereafter choose this State for their permanent residence. On the floor of that convention met delegates from the entire one hundred and fourteen counties of the State, with a single exception, and from that lone county a report was sent in later giving its local advantages and WASHINGTCJN COUNTS' description, showing a desire to exist there, as in all other parts of the State, to welcome new comers. In no other State has there been such a universal ex- pression of a desire for and good will towards immigrants. Among the more recent causes of the attraction of im- migrants to other and less favored States than Missouri are the following : LAND GRANTS. The large grants of public lands made to railroad com- panies, which, while it doubled the price of the alternate sections, thereby recouping the Government the amount of the grant, and brought them more rapidly into market by reason of the new facilities of transportation furnished by the building of the roads, at the same time enabled the companies themselves to sell the lands thus granted them at still higher prices, on time, at a fair rate of interest. This made every railroad company thus favored both an immigration society and a land agency, and well have they fulfilled the duties and responsibinties of both positions. They have advertised their lands without stint and regard- less of expense, giving glowing and detailed descriptions^ with illustrations, showing the condition of settlers, farms^ houses, villages, etc., at various periods of time, during the settling up of their (mostly) [)rairie regions; offering free passes from local offices, to go and examine lands, and long time for payment. And as a very large proportion of domestic emigration, as well as all foreign immigrants now "go West" by rail instead of by wagon ^ as was the case when Illinois and the States east and north of her were being settled, it has resulted naturally that immigration has clung to east and west railroad SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. routes, and followed such lines of road, looking for cheap and unoccupied lands, until their pioneers have reached the slopes of the Rocky Mountains, far removed both from a market and base of supplies, and engaged (many of them) in trying experiments upon drouthy and even alkaline plains, perhaps to turn back later eastward both disgusted and "busted." And how fares it with those who remain ? At vast dis- tances from any great primary market, without competing lines of railroads, they find, when it is too late, that in buying limited and through tickets to the remote points where the lands of the railroad companies are situated, with no " stop-over " privileges to examine intermediate districts, they have been PENNY WISE AND POUND FOOLISH. For in saving a few cents or dollars in the purchase of their tickets, they have mortgaged themselves to the extent of large freights on long hauls over the railroad whose officials so generously (?) gave them a " short pass " to examine lands, on all they have to export or import for the term of their natural lives, and perhaps of their children after them. But the mortgage upon the settler sometimes defeats its own ends, as is at present the case with Nebraska barley, the freight rates being prohibitory, deprives the railroad of its carrying trade, and the farmer of his market. Result ; he must grind and feed his barley, if he has any stock to feed it to, and burn his corn for fuel, because the freight out deducts too much from its value to permit its shipment, while the freight on coal in, adds too much to its cost to 10 WASHINGTON COUNTY. allow him to purchase it. How difiereut the state of things with the settler in East-South Missouri, close to St. Louis, one of the Great Primary Grain Markets of the world. He is practically at the market, and his freights hence to Liverpool by river and ocean, are to-day a shade less than the all-rail freights to New York, in our own country, so that in relation to the foreign market, the settler here is practically at New York City, on his way to the world's markets. MORAL. In seeking a home for your life and that of your family Go slowly ! Go freely ! And look out for special induce- ments. IMMIGRATION. This great railroad rush for the " Far West" succeeded in point of time those other causes for the neglect of Missouri as a home for immigrants that were wiped out by the war. It is only since the great State Immigration Convention of April, 1880, that a steady and reliable stream of immi- grants has poured into the State, and these coming by rail, have gone largely into Northern, Northwestern, and Southwestern Missouri, into prairie regions — and here a word about prairie regions and settlements : They are undoubtedly regions "fair to look upon," lying, as they do, ready for the plow, and entirely open for all im- provements, including tree culture. CAPITALISTS. But they are regions adapted to the capitalist rather than to the man of moderate means. To one who has the means SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 11 to buy and break and fence, to build and stock and wait, deriving meanwhile no income from his new purchase, but on the contrary, losing for the time being the interest on iiis investment, and have added to that the positive expenditure of taxes and all the assessments for roads, bridges, schools, etc., of a new country, and one costly to build in and only possible to build in for cash, and not only without income, but with everything of fencing, fuel or building material to buy, and that from a distance, for cash, with railroad freights and hauling from depot added ; to such a one a prairie settlement may not be an impossi- bility, but even advantageous. But for the immigrant of moderate means the con- dition of the settler in a timbered region has many advantages over one in the prairie. He has no fenc- ing to buy or haul ; he makes his rails along the line of his fence, and uses his tojDS for fuel. His own land also furnishes him his building material. If he burns his wood into charcoal for furnaces, as he can do in the region of East-South Missouri, he makes the coal pay for clearing and fencing the land, and for a part of the pur- chase of the land itself. He is not required to hire an expensive team to "break" his land, as prairie is broken at a cost frequently greater than the original cost of the land itself, and then wait a season for the sod to rot, but he can put in a crop the first day that his land is cleared. It is true he will have roots and stumps to contend with for a while, but has he not large compensations in having the early use of his land, his fuel, fencing, and building material from it, and also an income from his coal or wood, or ties and timber from the first? 12 WASHINGTON COUNTY. A timbered region, therefore, is one eminently well adapted to the wants and necessities of the immigrant of moderate means^ and in that respect, as is many others hereinafter to be detailed. East-South Missouri is a region that should be a favorite one with persons of that class. LEAGUE TRACTS. Another reason (and it has been a controling one) why lands so near the great City of St. Louis and the great highway of the Mississippi River, have not been settled up and reduced to cultivation by the local population, lies in the fact that prior to the acquisition of this region by the United States the Spanish Governors made numerous grants of land to pioneers for settlement and improve- ment, in large tracts — French league square tracts — con- taining over 6,000 acres each, and covering territory something over nine square miles each in extent. These large tracts have been held by the heirs of the original grantees or by mining companies, who have purchased from such heirs, ever since in the same large tracts as originally granted, mining and farming lands together, but held wholly for the uses and purposes of mining. MINING COMPANIES. But the day has come when it is a self-evident propo- sition that the best interests of the community, and indeed of the mining companies themselves, require that these large tracts be cut up and surveyed out into suitable size for farms, and sold to those who will occupy and cultivate them, and thus add to the productive capacity and taxable wealth of the country. SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 13 That is the conclusion at which the companies issuing this pamphlet have arrived, and they propose to act upon it, and offer for sale to colonists and immigrants all their extensive and valuable landed estate, situated in the county of Washington, and State of Missouri. And the fact that these large tracts still remain unbroken in almost first hands renders this region just the place for colonies. These large tracts, lying in solid bodies, can be bought at lower figures when sold in a body than when sub-divided and sold in smaller lots, and with their varied character, their mill streams, town sites, etc., can and will furnish locations to suit every taste and trade and business to constitute a community with a varied and profitable industry. WASHINGTON COUNTY. Washington County is located in Southeast Missouri, forty miles south of St. Louis, and forty miles west of the Mississippi River (being separated from St. Louis County and the river by Jefferson County only), and is intersected by the 38th parallel of latitude. The county has a total area of 458,960 acres, of which two-thirds are tillable, one-fourth of the whole being valley or bottom lands. Of all these tillable lands it has been estimated that not over 50,000 acres are yet reduced to cultivation. The vast remainder is covered with immense forests containing a timber growth of great value, consisting of pine, oak, ash, hickory, elm, maple, sycamore, walnut, etc., suitable for building and manufacturing purposes, for fencing, fuel, coaling, etc. TOPOGRAPHICAL FEATURES. The surface of the county is hilly and broken, never rising into mountains nor spreading out in extensive plains. 14 WASHINGTON COUNTY. it presents a rolling surface, something like New England with the mountains left out, thus securing the best possible drainage and insuring consequent health and freedom from malaria. It is well watered by Big River, Mineral Fork, Fourche au Renault, Courtois, Cedar, Big and Little Indian, Brazil, Bates, Clear, Old Mines, and numerous other streams of pure crystal water, fed by everlasting springs^ which nearly everywhere over the county burst from the hill sides. WATER POWER. These water courses, fed as they are by living springs, flowing rapidly with considerable fall in so short a distance, from a region elevated i ,000 feet above the river level at St. Louis, present to the miller and manufacturer one of the best fields for investment in cheap power that can be cheaply and economically improved and utilized anywhere to be found in the West. The great economy of water powers over steam, where the cost of the original improvement or "plant" is not too great in the daily running and wear and tear and expenses, is too well-known to need mention. The water power of this county, though not great at any one point, is ample to furnish convenient and sufficient powers of from twenty to sixty horse power at very many different points. Indeed, the mill sites on the main streams need not be further apart than the distance required by the back water of the mill ponds, and yet but very few are improved and utilized. Like our forests and the land upon which they stand, they await the advent of capital and enterprise for their improvement and profiitable devel- SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 15 opment. The manufacturing establishments now in oper- ation and running by water or steam in the county are seventeen lead furnaces, two slag furnaces, two iron fur- naces, one zinc furnace, ten saw mills, three planing mills, one barytes mill, twelve flouring mills, two corn mills, two tanneries, three carding machines, two broom facto- ries, and one cheese factory, and yet not a fiftieth part of our mill sites are occupied. Of the various kinds of business -for which this re";ion furnishes at once raw material in unusual cheapness and abundance, and easily and cheaply improved water power for 'its manufacture, but a very small percentage is yet pursued. SOILS. The soils of the cou-nty are varied : those of the valleys and bottoms being a rich black loam — alluvial — enriched by the annual washings from the higher lands as well as by the sediment deposited by annual overflows, and are very fertile and productive. The soils of the uplands generally are a clay loam, created from and based upon the universal limestone of this region, and are unexcelled for wheat, oats, grass, tobacco, fruits, grapes, etc. ORES. The mineral lands are not only valuab e for their ores, but also valuable for timber and pasture, and while most of the untillable lands of the county seem to be especially occupied by productive mines, paying mines are also frequently found in the midst of cultivated fields, and as in the lead region of Galena and the coal region of St. Clair County, Illinois, two crops are raised, one from the surface and one from beneath, on the same land. ; 16 WASHINGTON COUNTY. BLUE GRASS. It has been truly said that the country which has a limestone soil, has blue grass, and the land that has blue grass has the basis of all agricultural p'rosperity. This is eminently true of this county. On the tops of the hills and in the depths of the valleys — everywhere — the rock formation is the lower magnesian limestone, furnishing rock for foundations and for building, as well as for lime with which to lay up the walls in the greatest abundance, and at a cost scarcely greater than picking up and hauling. The resulting soil and the climate (being on the same parallel as the far-famed blue grass region of Kentucky), make this region also the natural home of this sweet and nutritious grass. It is onlv necessary to take oft' the shade and keep off" the stock for a while, to have it spring up spontaneously, as has occurred in very many instances in this county. The writer of this cut oft' the underbrush on a piece of partially cleared land, run a harrow over it, and sowed one piece in blue grass and one in orchard grass. A good catch and growth was the result, and although the ground has never been plowed, the grass has survived the extraordinary drouth of 1881, and furnishes to-da}"^ a fine winter pasture, having been inclosed a year ago with cultivated fields, and so not pastured during the summer. OTHER VALUABLE GRASSES. But among the grasses adapted to luxurious growth in this region, even the invaluable blue grass is entitled to no especial pre-eminence. Other varieties are fully its equals, and, in some respects, its superiors. Orchard SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 17 grass has longer and more numerous roots, forms a heavier sod, grows faster after being grazed, and gives a more continuous pasture, besides being capable like many- other grasses of being cut for hay, especially when sown with red clover, as it blooms at the same time with that valuable forage and soil renewing plant. Timothy, Red Top, Hungarian, Millet and other tame grasses, do well here and yield good crops. ALFALFA. Alfalfa also has been thoroughly tried here, and, upon some of the lands now offered for sale and has proved the most valuable forage plant known to the writer — having been cut four times a year for hay, and for soiling pur- poses, could have been cut every three weeks, from the middle of April to the middle of November, being ex- ceedingly palatable and nutritious to cattle, horses, sheep, mules and hogs, and with milch cows, improving the qual- ity of the milk while increasing the quantity ; it excels all other forage plants in usefulness. Of it Mr. WycofF says : " For milch-cows it is superior to other hay — it excites the secretions;" and Mr. C. F. Reed, speaking officially as President of the State Board •of Agriculture, of California, says of Alfalfa : " That cut when it is in bloom, it makes hay of good quality for stock of all kinds, but especially milch-cows ; that according to the testimony of good dairymen, cows taken from the native grasses and pastured on it, will increase in product of milk, butter, and cheese, sixty to seventy per cent. Most careful and accurate tests made by dairymen in Cali- fornia, show that feeding milch-cows upon Alfalfa, increases 18 WASHINGTON COUNTY. the quantity and improves the quahty of the milk, at the same time, and almost equally, a result quite different from the usual one, where quantity is increased only at the ex- pense of quality." ' Mr. E. W. Hilgard, in his Report on the Agriculture and soils of California, says: "Undoubt- edly the most valuable result of the search after forage crops adapted to the California climate, is the introduction of the culture of Alfalfa, a plant able to withstand a drouth ,so protracted as to kill out even more resistant plants than Red Clover." It was to avoid being subject to drouth, in the matter of having an abundance or deficiency of forage, that Alfalfa, better known to Europeans by the name of French Lucern, was obtained and sown here in east-south Missouri. HAY WITHOUT RAIN. And here as in Cahfornia it has proved itself a prime forage plant, full of saccharine matter, and one whose roots go so deep as to render it independent of drouth. In 1879, when complaints come from all over the country, that the timothy meadows would not pay to cut, four full crops of this bright and succulent grass were harvested. Fed to mules when freshly cut in the early Spring — first week in May — as if green-soiling them, they would neglect their corn or ground feed for it, as they would later for the new-dried hay. Fed from the mow during winter, mixed with other forage, the shoats in the yard show their appre- ciation of the food best adapted to their use, by carefully selecting out the Alfalfa hay, and eating it with relish, while all other kinds of stock equally show their preference for it. SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 19 RANGE. At present there exists ample range in this region for many herds of both cattle and sheep. The pineries that have been cut off are left to grow up again in young pine, and furnish the very best range for sheep, and bid fair to remain an open range for many years yet. STOCK GROWING. The stock-growing capacity of this region has been equally overlooked and unappreciated. While not ex- tensive enough for the business conducted on the scale adopted on the great plains, nor large enough to accom- modate a great multitude of stock men, yet for a moder- ate number of medium-sized herds, there begins, between the Meramec and Mississippi rivers, and within a day's horseback ride of the city of St. Louis, a range for stock unsurpassed at least for quality ; a region well-watered, well- timbjered and shaded, and clothed with nutritious grasses, where cattle can be herded, and pastured, and driven gradually southward to winter in the canebrakes of the Arkansas, and in Spring to return upon the growing grass, until they are within a day or two's drive of their market, — a far shorter drive than the Texans have to Kansas, and thence East ; or, if it is wished to keep the stock on the range, the pineries and saw-mills will supply cheap and abundant material for shelter, while the crops raised in the valleys can be cheaply bought for feeding during the win- ter. The close vicinity to a great city and ample means of transportation not only enables the stock man to pur- chase his supplies cheaply and get them quickly, but also furnishes him a ready market for his calves and early 20 WASHINGTON COUNTY. lambs as well as for his cattle, sheep and wool, when ready for market. FOR SHEEP RAISING, The green hills of Vermont can not surpass this region. There is absolutely no foot-rot or other sheep disease, and the mildness of the climate renders the necessary feeding and shelter much less, and the growth of wool greater. In a country so well-drained^ so little subject to storms, with no two seasons for long periods together, continuously wet or dry, watered by living springs, it should be, and ■will be, the shepherd's paradise. Putting his sheep on the range during the Summer, the shepherd having a blue and orchard grass pasture, fenced and not depastured during the Summer, will have a winter pasture ample to take his sheep through the winter in this mild climate, with feeding on hay or fodder only when snow covers the ground. Grain-feeding will, of course, increase the weight of the wool, and the size, and the vigor of the lambs, as well as give increased vitality and strength to the flock, but it can be optional here, and ac- i;ordinor to the means and views of the flock-master. Judging by the effect of Alfalfa, when fed to cattle, mules, and hogs, it would seem that if fed to sheep, it would entirely obviate the necessity or usefulness of feed- ing them grain at all. The impending boom in the sheep business, can not fail to occupy a section so thoroughly adapted to its successful prosecution, as is Southeast Mis- souri. DAIRYING. It follows, as a matter of course, that a country natur- ally undulating, and consequently well drained, well watered by living springs and crystal streams, having the I SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. ^I native soil and climate of blue grass, and producing the most nutritious wild grasses, while adapted to the profitable production of all the tame grasses and other forage plants, including the Lupines and Lucerns, can not fail to be especiall}'^ adapted to successful dairying, and it has proved to be so in the few cases yet tried, the gilt-edged butter being all contracted for &t St. Louis at prices rang- ing from 40 to 50 cents per pound. Snow rarely covers the ground for one continuous week, so that cows are not obliged to be confined in stables, but can have daily exer- cise in the open air and fields, while at a short distance St. Louis at once furnishes an ample market for the pro- duct, and its great flour mills an abundant supply of bran and shipstuffs for feeding, and its oil mills linseed meal or oil cake, for fattening purposes. MINERALS AND MINING. Nor are the minerals and mines of East-South Missouri amoncr the least of her advantages as a home for immi- grants — on the contrary, take them and their effect, all in all, they may well be said to be among the greatest. To those who have seen the west settle up, it is well- known that a settler in a prairie regio^ must come pre- pared, in addition to all the expenditures hereinbefore mentioned, to live a 3^ear or two, buying all he needs, and this formerly furnished those already established their most profitable market for their crops, and it was known as the " Immigrant Market." When that market closed, then exportations began, and the farmer had to take off" from the value of the crop, the cost of the haul to the depot, the freight to the distant market, the commissions 22 WASHINGTON COUNTY. for selling as well as dray age, storage, insurance, etc. At the same time, he had to compete with those living much nearer the same market. In this mining region, however, it has been the rule, ever since the acquisition of the coun- try, to import food to supply a deficiency of that grown here, for consumption by miners, and those engaged in industries connected with ores and their reduction, so that the farmer in this region has generally obtained for his farm produce, St. Louis prices, not with hauling, freight, drayage, storage, and commissions deducted, but often with all these added to the St. Louis prices, and the profits of the middle-man added as well. That is the case at the present moment. Corn being worth 60 to 70 cents at St. Louis, and $1.00 to $1.10 here. Nor is it in this indirect way alone that the mines here are of advantage to the settler and farmer. They furnish him a market for his wood, in charcoal for smelting or steam producing ; they afford him a large amount of hauling and labor. His plowing, planting, and cultivating is generally done in three months, his harvesting and threshing in less than two months more, taking less than half the year, and in exclusively farmii% regions the farmer and laborer is comparatively idle or unprotitably engaged in doing *' chores" the other half of the year. Here it is easily practicable to make this half year ver}^ profitable by the active use of teams and hands. But the final and great advantage is: that if crops fail by reason of drouth, to which all sections of the country were subject last year, then the privileges of mining and the industries con- nected therewith are invaluable. And so they are proving SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 23 this present winter, all here being busily engaged with no suffering or complaint or increase of pauperism after one of the severest drouths and consequent loss of crops known since the settlement of the Mississippi Valley. In prairie regions last fall it was proposed, and the county courts were petitioned to undertake public works that before were unthought of, and for which there was no pressing necessity, on the plea that the counties would have to support the laboring class anyway, and might as well get some labor out of them in return. Nor is it doubtful that new-comers unused to mines and mining, would take thereto and to their profit also, if such a necessity as the present arose. It is well known that no population on the face of the globe (not absolutely no- madic) emigrates with such readiness as American popu- lations ; nor is there any people who s<> readily take up new industries, and adapt themselves to new conditions. This has been fully illustrated in the development of the mines of California, Nevada, Colorado,, etc. Probably not one person in one thousand of all those who have swelled the tide flowing to the mining regions, ever saw a mine, and many not even a mineral before going to Eldo- rado, yet their success has been such as to give them a de- served place beside experts. In this region, where it is the rule instead of the exception for persons of limited means to farm during the summer and mine during the winter, the convenience of living in a mining region is often still further taken advantage of by one miner continuing to mine during the summer while the partner works the land they rent or own, aad out of his earnings paying the current expenses of both, so that 24 WASHINGTON COUNTY. when the crop is gathered they divide it between them free from drawbacks of any store bills whatever. It is no- small privilege and advantage. The lead mines here were discovered and opened in 1720 by Philip Francis Renault, of France, and have been continuously worked since. For more than fifty years past the average production of pig lead in this one county has averaged 3,000,000 pounds per annum, show- ing by its uniform rate of production that mining here is as steady and reliable an industry as any other that is pursued. Nor is lead ore (Galena) the only mineral to be had here by digging in the earth. Its gangue or vein matter is also valuable, being in some places BARYTES, of which over twelve million pounds have been shipped in a single year from a portion only of this county, and which by reason of its abundance and the ease with which ■it is obtained, furnishes to its miners even a more steadily remunerative employment than mining for lead ore itself. It also furnishes a very large amount of hauling, and employs many men in its mining, manufacture, and trans- portation. It should all be ground in this county by water power, and sent to the market in packages (also made here), and thus sent forward with all the added value of manufacture, the farmers of the vicinity furnishing the supplies for the men thus engaged. Here is a very profitable and advantageous industry, for which the raw material is abundant and inexhaustible, and the market for the product constantly extending that awaits capital and enterprise, and the utilization of our SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 25. reliable water powers for its development into a perma- nent industry. Iron ores also exist in various parts of the county, and when we consider how scarce the localities are becoming- where it is even possible to make charcoal iron, by reason of the rapid reduction of the world's timber supply, it will be seen that Washington County with its superabundant forests, furnishes to the charcoal iron maker a first-class location for that industry, even if he has to ship in his richer ores for reduction. Zinc ores, carbonates and sulphurets also exist, and are profitably mined and exported. Ball clay, pipe clay, and other fire and pottery clays are found in the county in connection with the mines, and are lying idle, awaiting the workman's hand. The population of the county is about 13,000, an in- crease of ten per cent only since 1870; children number 5,500; school fund is $35,684.00, number of schools 68, 5 being for colored people exclusively. Rate of taxation for school purposes, 5 mills, or 50 cents on the $100. The public schools are open from 4 to 10 months of the year, and are under the supervision of a county superin- tendent. Teachers are paid from $35 to $75 per month. Bellevue Collegiate Institute is situated at Caledonia, in the county, and is well attended by pupils of both sexes, both resident and from abroad. St. Louis, with its wealth of colleges, professional and preparatory schools, is within easy reach for the purposes of higher educa- tion. FINANCIAL. The County has no debt of any kind, and has money in the treasury. For the year 1879 °^^ County revenue ex- ^6 WASHINGTON COUNTY. ceeded our expenditure over $3,000; the state, county, road and school taxes of that year, aggregated only $1.25 on the $100; property, real and personal, is not assessed at more than half its actual cash value. RAILROADS. The St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern passes through the eastern portion of the county, having eight shipping points, at one of which were loaded and unloaded 1,231 cars of bulk freight, in 1878. The St. Louis & San Fran- cisco Road passes near the western border of the County. OTHER FACILITIES OF TRANSPORTATION. Rock roads extend from St. Louis to Hillsboro, the county seat of Jefterson County, and up the valley of Big River to po nts within ten miles of the Washington County line, and .ire largely used for hauling and driving stock direct to the city, instead of hauling to the railroad, and then paying freight and drayage at the city. This business will largely increase, and as there exists no county where the material for making good gravel roads is so abundant and convenient, the County only awaits a denser population, and consequent demand for gravel roads, to see them extended through every neighborhood. SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS. There are thirty organizations in the county ; Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Methodist. Society is good. The people are kind and hospitable. The laws are en- forced and obeyed, and violent and aggravated crimes are of rare occurrence. SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 27 For fruit growing and market gardening the County is well adapted and well situated. Peaches — in many locali- ties — are an uncertain crop here as well as elsewhere, but there are localities in this county where peaches have not failed for thirty years, not even after the hard winter of j88o-8i, and during the hot summer and drouth of 1881. MARKETS. As before remarked, St. Louis and the South afford (comparatively) distant markets, and being so near St. Louis, one of the chief of the great primary markets of the world, with a free river and cheap barge line freight- age to New Orleans, and thence through the jetties to the ocean, will always insure to the inhabitants of Southeast Missouri, low rates of freight over short lines on exports as against high rates over long lines of railroad from the great plains. There were shipped from the various railroad stations -of this county in 1879: of pig lead, 14,462,042 pounds; zinc, 51 cars ; barytes, 267 cars ; wheat, 80 cars : hogs, 40 ■cars ; cattle, 2,500 head ; horses and mules, 275 head. Of the flour made from the wheat shipped, and of the hog product, there was no doubt re-shipped into the count}^ for distribution and sale an equal amount of flour and bacon, thus wasting large sums upon transportation and middle-men for the want of capital to buy and grind the wheat and cut and pack the hogs here produced, show- ing that the home market is equal and often superior to the 5t. Louis market — a state of facts existing in but few •other Western regions — and this will continue more and more to be the case as our home industries become estab- lished, and manufactories of our raw material build up. 28 WASHINGTON COUNTY. THE PRICE OF LANDS. It is here that this section of the country has its great- est advantage of all for the immigrant. It can be asserted- without any fear of successful contradiction, as the asser- tion is based on published statistics easily accessible to all that no other section of the United States to-day offers so large a quantity of lands of so good a quality, at so low a price, within such short distance of any large city and lines of river and railroad transportation. Unimproved lands are held at from one dollar ( less than lowest government price) to five dollars per acre. Improved lands at from five to twenty-five dollars, ac- cording to location, quality of lands, buildings, improve- ments, etc. Lands in the pineiies that have been cut ofi', and are now growing up again with a thick growth of young pine can be bought at one dollar per acre, and this within fifty miles of the metropolis of the Mississippi Valley. In no other part of this country can such a sheep range be had for any such sum. East of St. Louis, in Illinois, at the same distance, upland prairie, with only the scantiest improvements, mere shells of houses of the balloon frame -'persuasion," and no fences to speak of, are held and sold at prices ranging from $40 to $100 per acre, the latter figure when near a small town, and very little fair farming land can be had there with ordinary improvements for less than $50 per acre. It is true that those prairie lands are blacker in color, and are for a time better adapted to the growth of corn than the clay loam lands of this county, but while they SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 29 have more htimus, they have less of the mineral manures, and consequently their fertility, while greater for a time in one direction, is less lasting than the mineral soils here and not as well adapted to varied farming, in raising dif- ferent crops of grass and small grain, which alone will renew and keep up fertility for a series of years. BUILDING MATERIALS. To no other people on earth is the home of such supreme importance as to the English people, and the populations which spring from them. While the love of the German broadens to include the whole of his Vaterland, and the Frenchman, in his gregarious life in villages and love of society, can scarcely be said to have a home at all in the English sense of the word. A home of his own — private and free from interference on the part of any one — is a prirne necessity to the Englishman and American. With them the legal maxim of the English common law that every man's house is his castle has a real meaning, coming home to every heart. It is, therefore, a matter of great importance to such to know beforehand what are the facilities he will find in the locality he may select for his new home, for building this castle, the house and home of himself and his children after him. We have in our widely extended country localities where "dug-outs" are fashionable, holes in the ground, earthed and sodded over, or more aristocratic still — log pens — with heavy transverse beams above, brushed, earthed, and sodded, to be succeeded later by balloon frames and lath and plaster, with a prayer on the part of the owner that the wind may not blow them away. 30 WASHINGTON COUNTY. Here in Southeast Missouri every taste and every degree of financial ability in the building of the home can be suited. If a log cabin is desired, the timber to build it and the neighbors to help raise it are free and abundant. If a frame house, our pineries and saw mills will suppl}'^ timbers and flooring, siding, laths, shingles, etc. If a brick house is wanted, the top soil in many places with a portion of the clay beneath furnishes the desired material, while the larger portion of the cost of brick, viz , the fuel to burn them, is eliminated by reason of the abund- ance and cheapness of timber. But cheaper and better than all is the material nature has furnished here in inex- haustible quantities, and in the greatest profusion. The dolohiite or Magnesian limestone of the country, of which countless loads can be picked up in the valleys and on the slopes of the hills without quarrying, which will also, with the aid of the same cheap fuel, burn into a lime of extra strength, with which to lay up and bind together ithe rock into a stone house, which for soHdity and lasting qualities will vie with the castle of old. Building of rock inside concrete boxes one can escape the expense of the skilled mason and build his home himself. COUNTRY ROADS. As for the building of houses, barn-s, sheds, outbuildings and shelter of every kind, the materials exist in east-south Missouri, in an abundance, cheapness, and convenience known to few other regions ; so for the making and keep- ing in repair of good country roads, bridges, and culverts, few regions are so lavish of the raw materials. The country itself is so rolling and well-drained, and so free from flats and swamps, that the natural roads are ex- SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 31 cellent during the greater portion of the year, while in no other part of the United States can they be made good and permanent at so low a cost as here. Ditching, turnpiking and graveling are all that is needed to make them the best and cheapest highways in existence. So well drained are the routes naturally, that the ditching, turnpiking, culvert- ing and bridging are at a minimum, while the materials for culverts and bridges is equally convenient and abundant, and millions on millions of loads of the best washed gravel fill the beds of our streams, waiting to be hauled out on the public roads. OBJECT OF THIS PAMPHLET. Nor is it the purpose of the companies issuing this pamphlet to advertise by it only their own lands. The sale of those lands, although large in quantity,' could be ac- complished with far less trouble and expense. The companies are composed of old merchants of St. Louis, who are interested in every way in the settlement and development of this region so near to and intimately connected with their city, and it is partly to supply a long felt want of a description of the advantages of this region for immigrants, that this course is taken, and this pamphlet issued, calling the attention of colonists and im- migrants to this whole region and leaving them free to come and examine and buy lands of any one that has them for sale, and will sell the best lands the cheapest. It is on that account that they call attention to the very large amount of lands for sale and the very low prices ruling as compared with all other localities and especially with por- tions of Illinois, equally near St. Louis. The companies issuing this pamphlet own and offer for sale 14,000 acres of selected lands at prices ranging from. 32 WASHINGTON COUNTY. $5 to $25 per acre, at distances from railroad depots varying from one to fifteen miles, covering every kind of location and soil — alluvial bottom and clay loam upland — improved and unimproved ; with mines opened, worked, and yet to be discovered ; with log houses or frame or brick ; with furnaces, mills, stores, blacksmith and wagon shops and village dwellings, so as to afford ample choice and selection for farming, mining, merchandizing, or manufacturing ; with improved and unimproved water powers, etc. League square trads wall be sold as a whole to those who pool their means to buy, later to be divided up and -distributed among the buyers, or the stock represented by the lands will be sold so the buyers can go right to work as a corporate body or they will be cut up and surveyed out into farms of sizes to suit customers when on the ground, giving desired proportion of bottom and upland,, cultivated land and timber, corn and wheat land, and pasture, with perfect title. CONCLUSION. While immigration has been pouring into Kansas, Texas, and other States, it has been one of the wonders of the age that Missouri, offering advantages that can not be equaled by any other part of the United States, has not received the attention her splendid opportunities merit. Improved land in Illinois, within 50 to 100 miles of St. Louis, sells at from $50 to $100 per acre, where wood and water are scarce, and where not one single induce- ment can be offered to settlers that is not equally well afforded by Missouri. p l( m LIBRfiRY OF CONGRESS >^ 014 571 438 2 f.^-.