William Seth McKee: "Years of Corn"
The
"Years of Corn" article by Eddie Miller in his "As You Were"
series (paper & date not on a copy shared with me) gives us some real fine
background on William Seth's settlement in Missouri and most particularly on the
McKee homestead on the "Swishum".
The following extracts heavily from it with a few italicized notes when
further research provides additional insights or needs for clarification:
"Years
and Years of Corn at Victoria --
This is the story of a Jefferson County cornfield.
"A cornfield? You've seen one, you've seen them all, you might say.
Not so -- this one is different, a remarkable cornfield, even a historic
one for two reasons.
It was planted EACH and EVERY year in corn for better than a hundred and
twenty-five years, some say even longer than that, starting from 1823.
There remains an article which says it was planted first in 1802 but this
is not supported by records. In all
that time the field raised good corn, without rest and without fertilizer and
without "Ag School" knowhowhow. Not
only that, it was planted over that long span of years by one early Jefferson
County pioneer family, first by the original settler who came into the area in
1823 and the generations of the same family that followed him
-- some four generations of them.
THE EARLIER SETTLERS of our county found the land along the river and
creek bottoms much to their liking, once it was cleared of its virgin timber.
It was fertile land, not black gumbo like the Illinois country, but still
very good for corn, for flax and a little patch of tobacco, especially for those
who came here from Kentucky, Tennessee and the Carolinas. Wheat wasn't grown by the early pioneers -- that came much
later.
So the low, bottom lands were settled first, along the Meramec, the
Plattin, the Joachim (then called Swashum), Big River (William
Seth's brother Michael settled near Big River ten or fifteen miles SW of
Victoria) and others, the very earliest probably Saline and Romline creeks
at the county's northern border.
In our county, where the topograph consists of one hill and valley after
another, if one had any acreage at all, you were bound to have a hill or two
thrown in for good measure with the bottom land.
As they said of the hilly land "Hit ain't worth the standin' up to
look at it -- the hills are just fur purty."
That they certainly were, and are -- beautiful!!
ONE OF THESE earlier Jefferson County settlers was WILLIAM S. McKEE, who
was known by the name of SETH .......
The next paragraph correctly picks
up that Seth's forebears were Scots who had emigrated to America before
the Revolution.. He wasn't aware of Adam McKee's Revolutionary service but
mentioned "it is recorded that his house was robbed and burned by
British Tories, which gives a hint which side of the fencehe was on".
I have not confirmed Adam's house having been burned but have no reason
to question it.
.....William
S. McKee was born in South Carolina in 1791.
By the very early 1800s as did quite a few of the eastern seaboard people
(SC uplands vs "seaboard" but no
big deal) he had gone to the western frontier, which at that time meant the
Mississippi River. In 1811 we find him in our area, which at a later date would
become Jefferson County.
Documentary evidence places William
Seth as still in Abbeville Co, SC in 1812 so this information and some following
about his 1811 marriage to Mary McKay being in Missouri is overridden by what
the "researching cousins" uncovered.
As nearly as can be determined the migration from SC to MO would have
been ca.1816/1817 (based upon alleged birthplaces given to census takers by
McKee & McKay descendents) as discussed in the first Missouri segment.
Picking up a little further down in the article:
In 1817 the McKees moved to a tract of land on the Gasconade River. (The
1819 tax list for Gasconade Township of Franklin County confirms that William S.
McKee was taxed there) but
it was such a vast wilderness, filled with the dangers of wild beasts and Indian
marauders, that their solitary existence was foreboding.
Besides the nearest neighbor was some twenty miles away.
His wife, Mary, whose folks were local settlers, no doubt was
instrumental in getting William Seth McKee to return to our area (which
squares pretty well with the Goodspeed biographical sketch,family tradition and
documentation) He found a spot much to his liking on Joachim Creek, just a
bit north by east of where Thomas Bevis had a tract of land and was starting a
little settlement which was to become the future village of Victoria, Missouri.
McKee purchased a large tract of land along the creek from a Frenchman
who had acquired a land grant from the Spanish Government in St Louis before it
became United States territory. The
Frenchman evidently hadn't shown any interest or made any effort to improve the
land but Seth McKee would soon see to that.
THE TIME was 1823 and the history of our cornfield begins the spring of
that year. Seth set about clearing
a patch of ground that spring in the creek bottom land.
As he behan the removal of the huge trees he built his family a log house
on the rise of the hill just above one of those everlasting Ozark springs of
clear, pure water for which our area was famous.
One wonders at the tremendous courage it must have taken to make a home
out of a wilderness but somehow these early settlers did it.
They felled the trees and split them up with just an axe and a wedge,
pulled them off to the side with oxen teams by means of heavy chains.
Implementing the whole procedure was a lot of loud yelling and the
cracking of a bull whip,
Seth McKee had lots of help for he had a large family of sons and
daughters in assorted sizes, 10 of them all told
(although his two oldest sons died during those first five years
on the Joachim) Large families seemed to be the secret of success for
pioneer families.
GRADUALLY, the first portion of the corn field was cleared of its trees,
the sycamores, elms, cottonwoods, oak, walnut, osage orange and just plain old
brush. So it was that 148 years ago
come this spring (which places the article as prepared in 1970/71) a McKee