Daviess COunty, Missouri Genealogy Trails

Daviess County, Missouri Genealogy Trails

History

Daviess County was organized from a part of Ray, by legislative act approved December 29, 1836, and was named in honor of Colonel Joseph H. Daviess, of Kentucky, who fell in the Battle of Tippecanoe, in 1811. In 1837 the commissioners appointed to locate a permanent seat of justice selected the land now a part of the site of Gallatin, which was laid out in town lots and named in honor of Albert Gallatin, the noted Swiss financier, who was Secretary of the Treasury of the United States from 1801 to 1813. The first circuit court was held in July, 1837, at the cabin of E. B. Creekmore, at present site of Gallatin, Judge Austin A. King presiding; J. B. Turner, clerk, and William Bourman, sheriff.
A county in the northwestern part of the State, bounded on the north by Harrison, east by Grundy and Livingston, south by Caldwell, and west by DeKalb and Gentry Counties.
The French fur traders were the first white men to visit the territory now Daviess County. They ascended the Grand River, and for many years after 1815 made annual trips for the purpose of acquiring the peltries of the Indians. There was no permanent settlement made in the country, which was included in the limits of Ray County, until 1831, when a number of families from other sections of Missouri, mostly native of Kentucky and Tennessee, settled in the central, the northeastern and the southeastern parts of the county.
The Stokes, Stone, Duval, Pemiston and Creekmore families settled in the central part; the Netherton and Aubrey families in the northeast, and the Splawns, Taylors, Smiths, Traspers, W[M]oods, McDows, Weldons, and McHaneys in the southeastern portion.

The following few years a large number of other families ale homes for themselves in the Grand River basin, and in 1836 several hundred Mormon families greatly increased the population. The Mormons built numerous cabins in different parts of the county and laid out a town on the eastern bluffs of Grand River, about three miles above the present site of Gallatin, which they called Diamond. It soon became a deserted town, and little now remains to designate its one time activity; even no trace of the grave of "Old Father Adam" is in evidence.

The following named persons enlisted in the Spanish-American War:
Major Charles Morton, Paul E. Gillihan, Bert Conover, Charles Owens, George Townsend, Halleck Buzard, Claude Foley and Edward Perkins, all of whom are now in the Philippine Islands, William Redmon and W. L. Rucker having returned from Manila.

Survivors of the Civil War living in the county are:
Major S. P. Cox, Lieutenant Benton Miller, Captain E. West, Captain N. B. Brown, of Gallatin, and Colonel W. S. Brown, of Jameston.

[Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri Edited by Howard L. Conard, Vol. II, 1901 pages 234 - 236 - C. Horton -2009]