The Turnbo Manuscripts
by Silas Claiborne Turnbo
1844-1925
Turnbo Home | Table of Contents | Keyword Search| Bibliography | Biography
By S. C. Turnbo
In recounting stories of the times when Lick Creek was sparsely settled, Mr. Henry Sanders tells the following. "When my father Allin Sanders came to Ozark County, Mo. in 1841 he give. Tom Jones two good horses for a government claim that Jones owned on Lick Creek 3 miles below where Gainsville is now. This was the first start he made in opening up our old home place on this stream. There were only three other families living on Lick Creek when my father located there. They were Jess Teverball, Bill Bridges and Matthew Shriver. Henry Sanders married miss Rhoda Rice daughter of Thomas Rice in 1853. Mr. Sanders says that his father was a deer hunter and he has known him to have as many as 40 dead deer in his smoke house in winter time when snow covered the ground. His main time to kill deer was when it was cold weather with plenty of snow. When he would start out to hunt deer while snow was on the ground he would have us children to follow him with horses and ropes and when he would kill a deer we woul tie a knot in the hair of the horses tail, then tie one end of a rope around the dead deers neck and fasten the other end to the horses tail above the knot and drag the deer home. The snow would prevent the hair on the deer from being rubbed off and not spoil the hide. This was our daily work as long as snow lay on the ground. I have brought many dead deer home in this way as father would kill them. When a big lot of furs, pelts and deer horns were accumulated my father would load them into an ox wagon and take them to St. Louis and exchange them for salt, coffee and other needed supplies. Mr. Sanders says that he has hauled several wagon loads of salt from Jackson Port for the old time merchant Joe W. McClury who lived at Hazlewood, Mo. He said that during wet weather and a thaw in winter time he and other freighters experienced severe hardships in passing through Big Bottom on White River above Jackson Port with loaded wagons. "I remember" said he "that we teamsters would have to use the combined strength of our oxen together to one wagon before we could pull it out of the mud. I known 12 yoke of cattle once to be hitched to a wagon that was mired down before we were able to get it out of its resting place. The first school taught on Lick Creek was in 1842 when I was 11 years old it was a 3 months subscription school and was taught by Charley Gooldy in a small log house at the lower end of my father’s old farm. I remember that I was one of the students. Among my school mates were Jake Turley’s 3 children, Jake, Mack and Polly, and 3 of Abe West’s children, Bill Elizabeth and Sarah.
Turnbo Home | Table of Contents | Keyword Search| Bibliography | Biography
