History of South Callaway, Missouri, originally published in the Mokane Herald-Post in 1903, detailed stories of hundreds of Callaway County pioneers includes genealogy tracing three or four generations. Family histories are brought to life by by a 73 year-old native Callawegian who grew up with the new county and knew everyone for miles around. A partial list of the families included: Allen, Bagby, Baker, Bartley, Bennett, Benson, Billingsly, Blackburn, Brite, Brooks, Brown, Bryan, Caldwell, Chappell, Cleveland, Coats, Coblenz, Coats, Collier, Conger, Daugherty, Davis, Dickinson, Dollar, Doyal, Duncan, Dunlap, Elley, Ewens, Ewing, Ferguson, Ferree, Gathright, Gibbs, Gilling, Glover, Grant, Gray, Griffin, Hansard, Harlan, Harris, Henderson, Herring, Hinton, Holman, Hopkins, Hord, Hornbuckle, Humphrey, Jackson, Jones, Kemp, Kouns, Lock, Longley, Lynes, Martin, Mason, McCall, McGary, Michael, Moore, Mosley, Nance, Nash, Neal, Nichols, Nicholson, Nickell, Oliver, Payne, Pemberton, Pierce, Putnam, Ramsey, Ratekin, Robiou, Rogers, Rose, Roy, Sanders, Scott, Smart, Smith, Stephens, Stone, Straw, Strickland, Tarelton, Tarleton, Taylor, Tennyson, Thomas, Turner, Wadley, Waggoner, Walker, Weaver, Whanger, Wheeler, Whyte, Wilkerson, Williams, Wrenn, Wright, Wylie, Young, Yount, Zumalt. Details of the founding and first settlers of Callaway County Missouri towns and villages include Cote Sans Dessien, Portland, Barkersville, Steedman, Tebbetts, Mokane, Smith's Landing, St. Aubert, and others. Descriptions of pioneer life include land clearing, flax and cotton growing, harvesting, and step-by-step cleaning and preparing for spinning and weaving into cloth. Stories of the abundant wildlife include hunting and trapping and touch on the disappearance of animals already experienced in the early 1900's. Other chapters cover the first one-room school houses, the founding of early churches, brush-arbor revivals, feuds between neighbors and family members, elections, politics, and cider making, log cabin building, shingle making, sawmills, steam mills, the Callaway Mining Company, land sales, trades and tranfers, road building, bridge building, corn shuckings, steam boats, keel boats, flat boats, river trade, Indians, and more.
About the Author: William Nash Moorewas born in the pioneer settlement of Cote Sans Dessein, one of the earliest trading posts west of the Mississippi, March 21, 1831; died Saturday, February 15, 1913. He was the eldest son of John Bowen Moore who came to Callaway County, Missouri from Kentucky in 1820. His mother was a daughter of William Nash, a Virginian who came to Missouri and settled at Old Franklin about 1803, afterward moving to the little river village of Barkersville in Callaway County. His grandfathers on both sides were soldiers in the Revolution and others of his ancestors served in the war of 1812. Born in the days of scattering settlements and virgin forests, he witnessed the progress of civilization with quickening heartbeat and appreciative eye. Possessed with a fervent desire for knowledge, a large capacity for learning and a very attentive memory, he acquired, under almost insurmountable obstacles, an education that was far more practical and in many ways vastly superior to that possessed by many university graduates of the present day. He was a natural historian, as he could recall names, dates and circumstances that had escaped most other people. His ability in this direction led to his engagement by the editor of the Mokane Herald-Post in 1904-05, to write a history of South Callaway, which was published in weekly installments during those years.