HENRY ONSTOT CHAPTER XXXVIII Page 351 Our present subject was a Kentuckian by birth, having been born in Gerrard county in 1805. He moved to Sugar Grove in 1825 and can well be called a "Sucker" by adoption. A large number of settlers came to Sugar Grove and Salt Creek about that time. Ben Davis lived on the creek and the place was called Davis' Ferry. David Onstot settled on the Smoot farm, where he built a mill and ground corn for the settlers. He lived there until after the deep snow and then moved to Taney county, Mo., because he said this country was getting to thickly settled for him, although there were not five houses within as many miles. William Sampson was another brother-in-law who lived and died in the same community, and who had a family of eight boys and two girls, who are now all dead but two boys. When Henry Onstot first settled in Sugar Grove, near where Greenview now stands, there was a band of Indians camped on Salt Creek about four miles north, who often came to the Grove for milk or something to eat. Sometimes when the men were off at work the Indians would become saucy and the women finally became so frightened that they would not stay at home alone. One day the men, to the number of about twenty, with their maple stock rifles, went down to the Creek and gave the Indians their orders and they behaved themselves after that. Henry Onstot moved to Old Salem in 1831 and was identified with that historic village until that town was moved to Petersburg in 1840. The deep snow is what all the old settlers date back to. It commenced snowing in December and snowed until February, the snow averaging six feet deep. A man could catch a deer any place as they would mire down and get so poor that many of them perished from hunger. Onstot kept a hotel and afterward run a cooper shop. In the winter time he would go to Beardstown, which was then a great pork market, and oversee the shop there. It was thirty-five miles distant but was only a good days walk for Mr. Onstot. In 1840 he moved his house down to Petersburg. It was only a log house but it was weather boarded and looked like a frame house. I saw it a few weeks ago and it looked as if it might be good for fifty years move. Onstot was a whig in politics and a Cumberland Presbyterian in religion. In looking over some of his old papers a few months ago I found a church letter which was given him by Elihu Bone, on Rock Creek church, in October, 1842, when a church was being organized in Petersburg. Thinking it might be prized as a relic I took it to the old Salem Chautauqua and showed it to Rev. Archer, pastor of the Presbyterian church. "I want that," said Archer, "I will have it framed and hung in my church." He did have it framed and hung it in the Cumberland tent at the Chautauqua grounds, where hundred of people read it. It was only a little scrap of paper but it was the foundation of the Petersburg Presbyterian church. Mr. Onstot moved to Mason county in 1846 and lived in and around Havana for twenty-two years and was widely known. His shop was always full of children and many of the middle-aged people of Havana remember the cooper shop and the kind old man who always had a pleasant word for them. In 1868 Mother Onstot died and then he came and made his home with me in Forest City. I had a good home and with a noble wife and loving children we made the last ten years of his life as comfortable as possible, and when the end came we tenderly took his remains to Havana and laid them beside those of his wife and two children, one son and one daughter. He had not an enemy in the world but made friends wherever he went. The old settlers often speak of Henry Onstot. In all questions that came before him he would ask, is it right? And when that point was settled no power could move him from it. I recollect once an old Baptist deacon wanted him to make some whisky barrels but he would not do it. He thought the whole liquor traffic a sin against God and humanity and never by thought, word or deed sanctioned it. He and Dr. Allen organized the first Sunday School in Old Salem and in 1840 they organized one in Petersburg. In 1847 he and Mrs. Hancock organized the first one in Havana.

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