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WEDNESDAY, September 1, 2010 ~ Vol. 14 No. 31

Monroe City, MO  

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90 Years Ago, local soldier killed
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90 Years Ago
Feb. 8, 1919

Madison Payne of Warren, 92,
had walked the entire distance from
the Atlantic to the Pacifi c coasts.
As a young man Mr. Payne walked
from his old home in Virginia to
Missouri where he settled and had
since lived, with the exception of a
short period when he walked from
this state to California in the days
of the gold rush “forty-niners.” He
was months on the road each trip.
J.W. Settle & Sons bought the
interest of their partner, Cecil
Dawson, in their blacksmith shop
in this city.

The American Red Cross advised
Irving P. Hickman that his
son, Lee H. Hickman, died on Oct.
12, 1918, from bronchial pneumonia
at a base hospital near Brest,
France. The body was buried in the
new American cemetery at Lambezellec.

80 Years Ago
Feb. 8, 1929
Edgar McCann Post No. 263,
American Legion, elected the following
offi cers: Rev. E.L. Knight,
commander; Miss Lottie Montgomery,
fi rst commander; Orville
Wilson, second vice commander;
Harold J. Hagan, adjutant; A.J.
Dierks, fi nance offi cer; Roy Yates,
historian; Fr. F.J. McEvoy, chaplain,
and Walter Rohr, sergeant-atarms.
Jordan Melson and Francis Umstattd
returned from Texas where
they had been working for several
months.

January 1929 was reported the
coldest January in 10 years. The
lowest temperature was three degrees
below zero on January 13 and
below zero readings were recorded
on three days during the month.
Mrs. Lena Brown was elected
district delegate to the Rebekah
State Assembly to be held in
Springfi eld.
70 Years Ago
Feb. 9, 1939
A total valuation of $13,180,599
on Monroe County property for
1939 tax charges, exclusive of
public utility valuations, was reported
in the assessment lists submitted
to the Monroe County court
by Assessor John M. Wilson. The
valuation represented a $26,941
decrease from the list reported for
1938 tax bills.
Mr. and Mrs. R.E. Redman south
of town celebrated their 56th wedding
anniversary on Feb. 7. They
were married Feb. 7, 1863, in the
home of her parents, Mr. and Mrs.
M.I. Ely in the Rock Lick community
south of town. Among the
guests at the wedding who were
still living were Mrs. Charles L.
Elzea and Mrs. S.E. Orr, sisters of
Mrs. Redman.
A son was born Feb. 4 to Mr.
and Mrs. Ira Davis. Mr. and Mrs.
Walter A. Swearengen of Jefferson
City, formerly of Monroe City,
were parents of a son born in February.
60 Years Ago
Feb. 10, 1949
The Joanna Dam and Reservoir
project on Salt River in Ralls
County south of Monroe City was
still a unit in general comprehensive
plan for fl ood control in the
Upper Mississippi River basin, but
no funds had been appropriated
for its construction by Congress,
nor were any funds requested for
the project in President Truman’s
budget for the fi scal year 1950 as
presented to Congress on Jan. 10,
1949.
The Court of Honor and Roundup
for Boy Scout Troops 132 and
133 was held and the following
scouts received awards: Billy
Joe Foster, Life and Eagle Scout
award; Kenneth Crandall, Ronald
Browning, Richard Ellis, Richard
Painter, Frederic Joe Simmons,
Earl Massey, Jr., J.L. Burditt, J.D.
Gosney, Joe Hampton, Kenneth
Hedges, Lyle Heigl, Raymond Hill,
James McClintic, David Morrison,
Tommy Rolens, Donald Lugena,
Ralph Harris, John Swink, Bill and
Kenneth Runyon, Don Henderson,
Danny Mudd, Ralph and Paul
Buckman and Gene Hays. Scoutmasters
honored were Stanley
Clark, Robert Baker, Hugo Rolens,
Dee West, J. Leslie Pike, James
Spalding and Charles Crandall.
50 Years Ago
Feb. 6, 1959
Cabrina Smith, daughter of Mr.
and Mrs. John A. Smith of Indian
Creek, ranked in the top 10 Missourians
being considered for the
Betty Crocker award.
Three of the eight trophies in the
Shelbina Tournament were captured
by Monroe City teams. The
Monroe City girls were champions,
Monroe City boys placed third and
Holy Rosary girls took fourth.
Paul E. Jones of Monroe City
took over Jan. 17 as owner of the
Wayne Feed and Grinding Co. in
Shelbina from J.R. Carter. He had
served as manager and salesman
for 18 months.

Richard Bono, electronics technician
third class, was serving
aboard the submarine tender USS
Bushnell operating out of Key
West, Fla. Thomas Edward Hampton
had reported to the USS Valcour,
a seaplane tender.
Over 200 Monroe County farmers
attended the annual Soils and
Crops conference with Orphy Yager,
chairman.

Warren G. See, president of the
Joanna Dam Association, and John
F. Spalding, Monroe City attorney,
represented the Joanna Dam at the
Mississippi Valley association held
in St. Louis.

Charles Friant and Russell B.
Smith, airplane pilots, aided in the
search for a burglar who had broken
in to and robbed the home of
Merritt Griffen in Hannibal.
Miss Carol DenHart of Liberty,
Mo. and John Robey of Hunnewell
were married Jan. 31.

40 Years Ago
February 6, 1969

Orville E. (Gene) Finnigan was
commissioned Second Lieutenant
in the Signal Corps of the Unites
States Army Reserve Jan. 19. He
is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Orville
Finnigan of Hunnewell.
Gary R. Carman, Elmer A. Dill,
Billie C. Walker, John V. Spalding
and Bobby G. Stuckey left Jan. 29
for induction into the armed forces.
Mr. and Mrs. Preston E. Hymers
celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary
Feb. 4.
Births: a son, Randy Wayne,
Feb. 2, to Mr. and Mrs. Clem
James; a daughter, Lori Lee, Feb.
5 to Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Edward
Taft of Joliet, Ill.; a daughter,
Rita Mae, Jan. 22 to Mr. and
Mrs. Arthur Dinwiddie of Joy, Ill.;
a son, Donald Dale, Jan. 29 to Mr.
and Mrs. Raymond Bemis of Ewing;
a daughter, Dalissa Lee, Jan.
29 to Mr. and Mrs. Dale McEwen
of Lentner; a son, Shane Michael,
Feb. 3 to State Trooper and Mrs.
Norman Kaden of Bowling Green.

30 Years Ago
February 9, 1979

Neither rain nor sleet nor snow
kept the mailmen making their
rounds during the snow fall in
Monroe City as Juett Kendrick and
Rick Foster and other city carriers
who braved the elements.
Cub Scout Pack 132, Dens 1 and
3 celebrated their 49th birthday of
Cub Scouts. Those celebrating included
Bradley Mehrtens, Ricky
Hays, Billy Keller, Todd Wolfe,
Mike Smith, Larry Greeves, Roger
Pennewell, Mike Miles, Jimmy
Schmedding, Darren Yager, Scott
Adam, and Tony Garcia. Den
Mothers were Sonja Greeves and
Donna Hays.

Births: a son, Anthony Wayne
to Spc. 4 and Mrs. Wayne Harrison
of Fort Campbell, Ky. on Jan. 23.
Mrs. Harrison is the former Becky
Tyree.

A two-headed pig was born on
the Hays Brothers farm in the Indian
Creek community. The piglet,
a male, had 11 normal brothers
and sisters and only lived for three
hours.

20 Years Ago
February 9, 1989

Monroe City R-I basketball
homecoming candidates included
Jackie Morris, Stacey Shively, Amy
Hays, Tracy Abney, Dawn Hays,
Regina Gottman, Sharryl Bode,
and Teresa Jackson for queen.
Neal Minor, Donny Williams, Darren
Elliott, Tommy Jackson, Chad
Holliday, Luke Reynolds, Mickey
Mayes, and Clay Talton, king candidates.
Mr. and Mrs. Bob Moyers were
to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary
on Feb. 12.
Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Kendrick
were to celebrate their 50th wedding
anniversary Feb. 19.

10 Years Ago
Feb. 9, 1999

Taken from the fi les of The Lake
Gazette
A task force appointed by Governor
Mel Carnahan explained the
911 options to the commissioners.
Births: Eric Matthew, an adopted
son to Mr. and Mrs. Larry
Hays of Tustin, Calif. born Nov.
2; a son, Kevin Robert, Jan. 24
to Bobbie and James Espinosa; a
daughter, Gabriella Grace, Feb. 3
to Corwyn Len and Linda Holland
of Sedalia.
One-hundred-one-year-old
Charley Byrd was the featured
story in The Gazette. He attended
a one-room schoolhouse where he
learned how to live to be 100. He
was married to his wife of 45 years
before she died of cancer.
Nic Forest, son of Sibyl Forest,
signed a letter of intent to play
football for Northwest Missouri
State University at Maryville.
  1852 090204 2/4/2009 his

 
 
Thomas Jefferson series by Nancy Stone
Click Photo to Enlarge   
 

Third in a series

Thomas Jefferson was elected
Governor of Virginia in 1779; the
British invaded the state twice during
his watch and he was never
again elected to public offi ce in his
home state. When he left offi ce in
1781, there may well have been a
sigh of relief from the wealthy Virginia
plantation owners.

His radical
ideas about land ownership did not
then fi t in their plans to expand the
nation…and their own holdings.
After independence was declared
July 4, 1776, Jefferson returned
to the Virginia legislature and introduced
a bill to give 75 acres to
any Virginian who did not already
have land and to offer a “headright”
grant of 50 acres to every landless
immigrant who arrived in the state
from overseas.

He proposed that
land should be laid off in a grid of
squares, each six miles wide and six
miles long, with land in the center
set aside for free English schools.

Even though his constituents recognized
the importance of his role in
the formation of a new democratic
government for the fl edgling country,
they did not necessarily adopt
his belief that a network of small
farms, privately owned by yeoman
farmers, would guarantee the future
health of democracy.

The “movers and shakers” of
Virginia had grown up with the
idea that the privileged class accumulated
wealth in the form of
land. The future President was born
into that elite group of citizens
who helped shape the future of the
country. His great-grandfather, William
Randolph, had immigrated to
Virginia sometime between 1669
and 1673. It is estimated that at
his death in 1711 he owned 20,000
acres of land. Peter Jefferson, father
of Thomas, was a planter and the
surveyor for Albemarle County. In
1749, Peter Jefferson, along with
Joshua Fry, Thomas Walker, Edmund
Pendleton and others, established
the Loyal Land Company,

and were granted 800,000 acres in
present-day Virginia, West Virginia
and Kentucky.
The Treaty of Paris ended the
war of the Revolution in 1783. The
Congress of Confederation was the
ruling body of the United States of
America from March 1, 1781 to
March 1, 1789. Their primary mission
was to write a Constitution of
the United States that would be ratifi
ed by all 13 Colonies.

One stumbling
block to ratifi cation was the
overlapping and confl icting claims
to over 260,000 square miles of
land in the Northwest Territory
that Great Britain had acquired in
the 1763 Treaty of Paris. The territory
included all of the land west of
Pennsylvania and northwest of the
Ohio River. It covered all the modern
states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as
the northeastern part of Minnesota.
White settlers had already begun to
move west of the colonial boundaries
and native tribes inhabited the
land.


The states of Massachusetts,
Connecticut, New York and Virginia
all had a vested interest in the territory,
as did land speculators who
had been lining up to make a profi t
since the French lost their claim.
Other states with no land claims,
particularly Maryland, argued that
if the claims of the landed states
were recognized it would draw
wealth and population away from
the northern colonies, which were
developing a more industrialized
society rather than one based on agriculture.
Jefferson carried his passion for
dividing the land into small easily
identifi able parcels—thus empowering
the yeoman farmer—back to
the Continental Congress in 1784.
He proposed that the states should
relinquish their particular claims
to all the territory west of the Appalachians,
and the area should
be divided into new states of the
Union.

Jefferson proposed creating
17 roughly rectangular states from
the territory, and even suggested
names for the new states, including
Chersonesus, Sylvania, Assenisipia,
Metropotamia, Polypotamia,
Pelisipia, Saratoga, Washington,
Michigania and Illinoia. Congress
shipped Jefferson out of the country
and out of the discussion in 1785
when he was appointed to a fouryear
stay as Foreign Ambassador to
France.

The Congress of the Confederation
was sorely in need of funds to
pay for the recent war and because
the Constitution had not yet been
fully ratifi ed, they did not as yet
have the authority to tax the citizens.
Agreements were reached
with the landed states to turn their
claims in the Northwest Territory
over to the government with the
exception of the Virginia Military
District and the Connecticut Western
Reserve.

Although the proposal was not
adopted as Jefferson had mapped
his design for new states, it established
the example that would become
the basis for the government
to sell the land, raise funds, pay the
war debt and honor the promise of
land to those who had served as soldiers
in the Revolution. The restrictions
written into the act, however,
still negated Jefferson’s dream of
affordable land for the small farmer.
The Land Ordinance of 1785
provided that public domain lands
northwest of the Ohio River were
to be surveyed into 36-square-mile
townships and sold at no less than
$1 per acre in tracts no smaller than
640 acres. This was hardly affordable
for the yeoman farmer, but an
attractive offer to developers.

The Ordinance also reserved Section
16 of each township for the maintenance
of schools. Jefferson must
have beamed at that provision when
word reached him in France.
The Ordinance further established
that the legal sale and settlement
of the public land could not
occur until the land had been surveyed
and the survey accepted by
the Federal Government. It also set
aside lands for Continental Army
bounties, a provision that was
changed in 1796.

In 1787 the sale of the fi rst public
lands was directed by Congress as
soon as four of “The Seven Ranges”
(not mountains, but geographic
divisions) in the Northwest Territory
had been surveyed. At irregular,
but well-advertised periods, at
the offi ce of the Board of Treasury
in New York City, lands indicated
on plats were offered for sale to the
highest bidders over the minimum
price of $1 per acre. The fi rst patent
was issued to John Martin on March
4, 1788 for 640 acres in what is now
Belmont County, Ohio.
Previous surveys had been conducted
privately by investors to
establish their claims; while their
maps included charts of the terrain,
the boundaries had been established
by the English system of metes and
bounds. Many of the overlapping
claims became a nightmare for
Congress and kept lawyers, surveyors
and politicians busy for more
than half a century.

General George Washington had
been one of those who surveyed the
colonial lands. As a youth he discovered
his father’s surveying instruments
and learned the valuable
skill at the hands of relatives. His
fi rst experience was in 1748 when
he accompanied George William
Fairfax on a month long expedition
in the Blue Ridge Mountains to
survey some land for Lord Thomas
Fairfax, proprietor for the entire
Northern Neck of Virginia between
the Potomac and Rappahannock
Rivers. The General’s oldest halfbrother,
Lawrence Washington, was
married to Anne Fairfax, daughter
of Lord Fairfax.

Between then and his death in
1799, George Washington completed
over 200 surveys. Maps were
so important to him that during the
Revolutionary War, as Commander-
in-Chief, he appointed Robert
Erskine as the offi cial geographer
of the Continental Army. Surveyors
were well paid and owning land was
essential to being part of the ruling
class in Colonial America.

At his
death Washington owned more than
65,000 acres in Virginia and six
other states. Much of his land was
in the Northwest Territory. His probate
was fi nally settled in 1851 after
clear title to his lands was fi nally
established and they were sold.
The Constitution of the United
States of America not fully ratifi ed
until 1790, but when 11 of the 13
Colonies had accepted the Constitution,
Congress put the new government
to work. George Washington
was elected the fi rst President
of the United States of America by
the unanimous vote of the electorate
to the Continental Congress. He
was sworn in April 30, 1789. John
Adams of Massachusetts, one of
11 candidates for the offi ce, was
elected Vice President and had been
sworn in on April 21.

Despite treaties that had been
signed between England, France,
the newly formed United States and
the native inhabitants, ownership
of the land in the Northwest Territory
was a source of confl ict for the
settlers. I can almost see the General
composing his fi rst dispatch to
Thomas Jefferson. It might have
read, “Tom….I should have thought
of it myself, after all that land I surveyed,
but this crazy scheme to divide
the land into nice neat squares
and sell it to individuals rather than
folks who had experience managing
the land was your idea. Get the
fi rst ship home. I need you as my
Secretary of State.”
Jefferson assumed that offi ce
on September 26, 1789 but did not
continue during Washington’s second
term of offi ce. In his long and
illustrious career during the birth
of the nation, he did make contacts
that proved useful when, during
his fi rst term as the third President
of the United States, the purchase
of Louisiana from France in 1803
more than doubled the size of the
United States.

Next week is the story of measuring
the land and how Jefferson’s
dream of affordable land for the
yeoman farmer fi nally came true.
  1853 090204 2/4/2009 his

 
 
Found
Click Photo to Enlarge   
 

A box of very usable items
was lost out on Rt. W a couple
of weeks ago. To claim
items, please call the Lake
Gazette at 573-735-3300
  1878 090204 2/4/2009 not

 
 
Notice of public hearing
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NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING

The Board of Aldermen will conduct a public hearing at 5:45 p.m., Thursday, February 19, 2009, at
City Hall in Monroe City, Missouri. The purpose of the public hearing is to receive input from the public
on whether a special use permit should be granted for the following nonconforming use on residential
property owned by Clear view Tower Company located at 816 Stoddard Street:
Increase the height of the communication tower on said property from 120’ above ground level (AGL)
to 157’ AGL.

The legal description for said property is .42@ SE ¼ SW @ ¼ in Marion County, Monroe City, Missouri.
A complete legal description is available at City Hall.

According to the ordinances of the City of Monroe City, any interested person may attend and comment
at this public hearing. After the adjournment of this hearing, the Board of Aldermen will decide whether
or not to pass a special use permit for this nonconforming use.
Please run add on January 30, 2009 & February 6, 2009
  1879 090204 2/4/2009 not

 
 
Notice of public hearing
Click Photo to Enlarge   
 

The City of Monroe City will hold a public hearing at 8:30 a.m. at the City
Hall on February 11, 2009 to discuss the past performance by the City
in carrying out a Community Development Block Grant.

This project
was funded in part with Community Development Block Grant funds
(2005-PF-023). All interested citizens and groups are urged to attend.
  1880 090204 2/4/2009 not

 
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