Early Settler Recounts West Plains Before Howell Was a County

For several decades I've been in the habit of noting and attempting to preserve the earliest accounts of settlement in our county. I recently ran across a short letter written to the West Plains Journal in February 1899 by James A. King. Entitled "From an Old Settler," the writer recalled, "My father came to the place where now stands the City of West Plains on the first day of January 1852. We camped there on the crest where the College now stands, for two days, and then moved three miles north of town."

Writing in 1899, King referred to the West Plains College occupying what had been an empty field in 1852. The Christa Hogan was built there after the college. Today, if you drive down East Main to the point where the street ends, the Kings camped on the place where today's Ozark Action building stands. One can only imagine camping with a family of children on a windswept hill in the Ozarks on New Year's Day.

James A. King continues in typical Ozarkian fashion, referring to a location by who previously lived there by writing, "In the spring we moved back near the college on what was then called the Don Griffeth place, now called the Lasater place. I was a lad, nine years old, on the 14th of May of that year. I could get on our horse and see every house in the valley down to the Carson place. There were not more than a half dozen houses in the valley at that time."

Though not mentioned in his letter, King confirms other early accounts of West Plains that state that one could see a great distance from any hilltop. Other reports say trees were scarce in most of the county at the time, and the land was covered with big and little bluestem grass. William Monks also wrote of the appearance of the land in Howell County in the early 1850s, saying, "The vegetation was luxuriant, the broomsedge and bluestem growing as high as a man's head - and he upon an ordinary horse.  The tablelands, which were thought at that time to be worthless, had very little timber growing on them but were not prairie. There were what were known as post oak runners and other brush growing on the tablelands, but the grass turf was very heavy, and in the spring of the year, the grass would soon cover the sprouts, and the stranger would have taken all of the tablelands, except where it was interspersed with groves, to have been prairie." In referring to tablelands, Monks described the flat plateaus on top of a hill, often dry land that was not desired for farming if creek or river valleys were available. As settlers continued to come, even the tablelands were purchased or homesteaded. By the 1870s, the bluestem was starting to disappear under the plow.

The half dozen houses the Kings saw in West Plains in 1852 had grown to around fifty buildings counted in the 1860 census. Thus, they had arrived at the beginning of the settlement, described as an idyllic period of progress and cooperation among the first settlers. King next writes, "I lived in this county until the war broke out, and I have lived in Howell and Oregon counties since 1852. There were nine in father's family when we came to this county, but they are all gone; some have died, some have moved away."

The 1860 census records of Howell Township show James, recorded by his middle name of Alfred, age sixteen, living in his parents' home, Wilsey P. King, age forty; and mother Eliza, age forty-three. An older brother William, age eighteen, and Robert, age twelve, and two sisters, Matilda, age eleven, and Mary, age fourteen, made up the rest of the family. The family had been traveling. The two oldest boys, William and James, were born in Alabama, while Robert and Mary were born in Illinois and Matilda in Tennessee. Wilsey King is shown in the census as being a mechanic.

When Howell County was formed in 1857, James' father W.P. (Wilsey) King was well enough established to be appointed to the first grand jury of the county. Daniel Shipman of Hutton Valley remembered, "I went to West Plains as one of the first grand jurors that ever met in Howell County. We had a good, old-fashioned time. The Judge (Albert Jackson) named by (Richard G.) Smith presided in an old log-house east, and I think, a little north of your present courthouse. .We met out in a shady place and formed a circle." The proceedings, comprised of setting up the court and establishing a schedule, proceeded until a "drunken fellow came staggering along and fell in the midst of the circle, using profane and vulgar language. So we adjourned to the schoolhouse part of the court. The Judge looked wise and fined the fellow one dollar, and we were satisfied and went back to our own shade." 

Wilsey King was also appointed to a Grand Jury held during the second term of the Circuit Court in October 1857. In this session, two civil cases were heard; thus, civil law and due process were instituted in Howell County. King would be used again and again in the future as a juror on criminal and civil cases, indicating his complete acceptance and involvement in the pioneer community.

The elder King witnessed conflict in that court as Republican Judge Albert Jackson was forced out of his seat as Circuit Judge and replaced by Democratic and secession sympathetic attorney James H. Mcbride. As the clouds of war gathered, the majority of Howell County citizens allied with the southern cause. 

It appears James King was able to sit out the first part of the Civil War because of his age. His obituary mentioned a time for education between the early 1850s and 1860s by stating, "The first school Mr. King attended was a log building where the suburban home of G. L. Sesson now stands (1922), and the teacher was paid by the parents of the pupils." 

When James reached the age of nineteen, he joined the Confederate 4th Missouri Cavalry at Batesville, Arkansas, on January 31, 1863, under General Marmaduke and Colonel John Q. Burbridge. He was captured at Corinth, Mississippi, less than a month later and sent to Gratiot Street Prison in St. Louis, where he was exchanged for a Union prisoner. Following his release, James was placed on the front lines during the Price Raid in the fall of 1864. He was wounded and captured at the Battle of Mine Creek and sent to Leavenworth, Kansas, to a prison hospital. After recovery, he was transferred to a prisoner of war camp at Camp Morton, Indianapolis, Indiana, for exchange and moved to Point Lookout, Maryland. He arrived in March 1865, awaiting a prisoner trade. The war ended a month later, and James was released to find his way home on his own.

James is not shown as an early landholder of Howell County, but his father Wilsey used military land warrants to obtain two tracts of land in 1860 in what would later be known as the Carson community about two miles southeast of West Plains. These land warrants were issued to military veterans for service in wars between the Revolutionary and Mexican Wars. It appears Wilsey purchased the warrants from a veteran's widow and obtained the land just before the Civil War. On this land James A. King also farmed.

Following the Civil, War James moved to Oregon County with his father for a few years. Howell County was not receptive to former Confederate soldiers returning from the war, while Oregon County was. There he married Mourning Baty in 1867 and had two children. His first wife died in 1872, and James married Sarah Jane Pool in Howell County in 1873. This union resulted in seven more children. Following Sarah's death in 1896, James married the last time in 1903. He was wed to widow Permealy Moore in 1903.

In the 1890s, James Alfred King is mentioned in West Plains newspapers as living in his home about nine miles east of West Plains on Elk Creek, which came to be known as the Cull community. He is referred to in these papers as Alfred or Alf. On the other hand, he signed a notice to range poachers in 1891 as J.A., and James A. is how he signed the letter to the editor that we are considering.

James concluded his letter to the Journal by writing, "When Howell county was organized and West Plains laid off, Uncle Billy Campbell put up the first store in West Plains. He had as large a store when the war broke out as any man in town. There were four or five other stores at that time."

James' occupation was listed in census records as a farmer. In October 1913, James A. King of Cull was awarded a Confederate pension of $10 per month by the state of Missouri. Former Confederates were unable to draw a federal pension like Union soldiers immediately after the war. Most Confederates never saw a pension, but James was able to draw one for almost a decade, though these pensions issued by Missouri were substantially less than the Union pensions. James died in the home of his son Charles on April 5, 1922, at the age of seventy-eight and is buried in the Chapin Cemetery, four miles southeast of West Plains. 

James' father, Wilsey King, becoming unable to take care of himself, left Howell County in 1900 to live with a daughter in Bonanza, Oregon. He died there in 1904 and was buried in the Odd Fellows Cemetery in Bonanza. He was 84 years old. Obituaries for Wilsey mention Confederate service during the Civil War, but I found no official records. Very few men could remain in the county through the war and either joined the army of one side or the other or rode in partisan bands. 

James King ended his letter with an offer to the Journal Gazette, "If you give this space, I will write more soon." I haven't found any additional letters, and that is sad because these accounts are so rare.