Uncle Dave Valentine used to fend off questions about his age. “When I was born, I was too young to remember,” he’d say. Then his eyes would twinkle and he’d add, “everything since then is just hearsay.” There’s wisdom in that last statement. That’s why I’ve bought, at auction, two sets of Encyclopedia Britannica, 20 fat books for only $3.50. I use them when I want information that’s closer to the source than “hearsay.” Current history books often omit interesting facts and the colorful language of the past.

When it’s Midwestern frontier history I seek, I get a “been there” feeling from Edwin W. Stephens’ “History of Boone County,” published in the plat book of 1876. I like reading it in the language of his day. “A HISTORY of Boone County,” he writes, “properly involves a brief history of Central Missouri better known as “Boonslick Country,” anterior to its formation into counties and reclamation from the Indians.”

His misses his facts a bit, saying that “Daniel Boone migrated from Kentucky in 1~806.” The rain-soaked volume of Britannica, the set that cost me 50 cents, also misses the date, saying Boone came in 1795. Later information places his arrival about halfway between these two dates. But I’m not quibbling about dates; it’s Stephens report of everyday life and his colorful way of stating things that interests me. ~Three brothers, Benjamin, Braxton and Sarshall Cooper, had raised a corn crop in an area north of the Missouri River across from present day Boonville. They were “compelled by Indians to return to Loutre Island,” near Hermann. The next year they returned with about 150 others, “embracing men, women and children, and thus effected the first permanent white settlement of the Boonslick Country.” They cleared land, built log homes, put in crops and, “save now and then a theft, or perhaps an isolated murder,” had little trouble with the American Indians for about two years.

During the War of 1812, the British were bribing the American Indians to harass the settlers. “The savages became bold and dangerous and the settlers betook themselves” to self-defense by erecting four forts. Three north of the river were named Cooper, Hemstead, or McClain, and Kincaid; the fourth, Cole, was near where Boonville now stands. Two smaller forts, later, were Arnold, near today’s New Franklin, and Head’s, near Rocheport close to the place where the old Booneslick trail crossed Moniteau creek. Stephens says, “From this,” Head’s “fort came many of the first settlers of Boone County, and many of our present citizens are descendants of its inmates.”

For the next three years the settlers’ condition was “one of great peril and was frequently nigh unto absolute destruction.” They had to depend on what they had raised, yet, “By vigilance, heroism and energy they succeeded in raising bread for their families, and during the whole war lost not over twenty of their number at the hands of the savages.” Finally, after appealing to Gov. William Clark, 500 U.S. Gov’t. troops under the command of Gen. Henry T. Dodge, came to their rescue. “With the full party of settlers able to bear arms, under Capt. Sarshall Cooper, (they) ascended the Missouri river, captured a tribe of Miami Indians and thus ended the war.”

The forts were abandoned, the inmates rejoiced at being released from their long imprisonment and they “set themselves to work with redoubled energy, clearing the forests and developing the country.” This was all before Missouri was formed into a territory (1812), before our county was named Boone (1820) and that was before Missouri was admitted as a state (1821). More on another Tuesday!