The Empire of Howard County, Founding Columbia, and Boone’s First Courthouse
On January 13, 1816 the Missouri Territory General Assembly passed a law creating Howard County. Larger than Switzerland in area, it included all of the land that is now Columbia and even parts of the future state of Iowa. It was still five years before the Missouri Territory would gain statehood in 1821, but in the 1810s, pioneers from Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee settled en masse over an area of Mid-Missouri they called the Boonslick. The area was named after a salty natural spring that was used, beginning in 1805, by the sons of Kentuckian-Missourian frontiersman Daniel Boone to manufacture salt, a vital resource on the frontier. A lick or salt lick is a naturally salty mineral deposit that animals, especially deer and other mammals, would visit to obtain the necessary nutrient. Boone’s Lick, as the spring in today’s western Howard County became known, gave its name to a wide swath of land on both sides of the Missouri River in Mid-Missouri. The eastern border of the Missouri Territory, near the Mississippi River, had been colonized by the French in the 1740s, and included their comparatively populous city of St. Louis. It wasn’t until after the Louisiana Purchase of 1804 that Anglo-Americans and enslaved African-Americans would begin creating permanent settlements farther west along the Missouri River. These farms in the Boonslick were for some time the Westernmost in the recently founded United States. Settlement didn’t begin in earnest until after the 1812 war, during which isolated groups of settlers were forced to built small forts to protect themselves from attack by Native Americans allied with the British. After the war, immigration was particularly strong, especially the period of 1816-1819. The Franklin Missouri Intelligencer issue of November 19, 1819 described the scene:
Immense numbers of wagons, carriages, carts, etc. with families, have for some time past been daily arriving. During the month of October it is stated that no less than 271 wagons, four-wheeled carriages and 55 two-wheeled carriages and carts passed near St. Charles, bound principally for Boon’s Lick.
The route these pioneers took was the Boone’s Lick Road, from St. Charles to Franklin. It was originally a Native American trace, but as travel increased it became a trail then a road. Franklin, Missouri was the unofficial capitol and sprang up nearly overnight in 1816. The town was located in the Missouri River bottoms just north of today’s Boonville, Missouri. With such an increase in population it became necessary to organize a territorial county to govern the new citizens. So on January 13, 1816, the Missouri Territory General Assembly organized Howard County out of an area formerly part of St. Louis County and St. Charles County. At 674 square miles, territorial Howard County was larger than the state of Massachusetts and from it would be created thirty of Missouri’s counties and at least five of Iowa’s. This is why even in 2023, Howard is nicknamed “The Mother of Counties”.
Eastern Part of Missouri Territory in 1812
From mogenweb.org
Eastern Part of Missouri Territory in 1816
From mogenweb.org
A map showing the percentage of enslaved people in 1860, at the outbreak of the Civil War, note the isolation of Mid-Missouri from the rest of the slave-owning South
From the Library of Congress
In October 1820 the Missouri Territory General Assembly met in St. Louis where it received a petition from the residents of Howard County to form a new county. The petitions were received favorably and the new county was created, Boone. It was named after Daniel Boone who had died less than a month before in Femme Osage Creek, Missouri. It was appropriate that a county in the Boonslick Country should bear the Boone name. On January 1, 1821 the County of Boone became real, before Missouri became a state later that year. The act described Boone County’s boundaries:
“Beginning at the southeast corner of and running with the eastwardly line of Howard County, to where It intersects the line between townships fifty and fifty-one, thence eastwardly to the dividing ridge between the waters of the Cedar Creek and Salt River to the Montgomery line; thence southwardly with said line to where it strikes said Cedar Creek; thence down said creek in the middle of the main channel thereof, to where the range line between eleven and twelve crosses the creek the second time; thence with said line to the middle of the channel of the Missouri River: thence up the Missouri River In the middle of the main channel thereof to the place of beginning.”
This new county would need a county seat of government. The territorial legislature appointed five men: John Gray, Jefferson Fulcher, Absalom Hicks, Lawerence Bass, and David Jackson to select the site and establish a county seat. There were several competing towns, but one had been cleverly located near the center of the new county, Smithton. The Smithton Company, which founded it, bought the land from the U.S. government at a sale in Franklin in 1818. Prominent among the companies members was Richard Gentry. The town began with one small log cabin in a clearing in the old growth forest, located very near today’s intersection of Walnut and Garth. It only existed for about two years and never grew beyond a few log cabins clustered around one another in the wilderness.
It was however selected by the Boone County commissioners as the county seat. When it soon became clear that well digging was difficult due to a tough layer of bedrock, the entire town picked up and moved their cabins across Flat Branch Creek, where there were several natural springs. So the first people and buildings in Smithton were also the first people and buildings in Columbia. The Smithton Company announced the change in the Missouri Intelligencer abbreviated below:
The trustees of this town inform those interested, that the permanent seat of justice of Boon County has been located upon the lands belonging to the company, lately called the “Smithton Company,” at which place a town, upon the same plan as the initial one, has been laid out, and is called Columbia…The town of Columbia is located upon a fine site, and in a neighborhood of the best ands in the state. which is improving with great rapidity by respectable and wealthy citizens, and offers every inducement to mechanics of every kind to settle immediately, as it is expected the county buildings will be contracted for in a few months.
By order of the Trustees
May 21, 1821
At first official business and court cases were held in the open air; in the winter homes (log cabins) were volunteered. Tradition has long held that the first courts were held under an arbor of Sugar Trees. This is confirmed on page 62 of the Bench and Bar of Boone County by North Todd Gentry, who writing in 1916 states:
“The first term of the Boone circuit court was held at Smithton on April 2, 1821, and, there being no court house and no building large enough where court could be held, Judge David Todd, the newly appointed judge of the first judicial circuit, convened court under the spreading boughs of a surgar tree.* This tree still stands, as a monument to the bench and bar of that early time. Boone county has had three court houses, the court house of 1824, the court house of 1847 and the court house of 1909, and all three stood on the same public square in Columbia. Circuit court has also been held at Richard Gentry's tavern (which was the first house erected in Smithton), and at the old Todd house in Columbia. It is a matter of regret that there is no picture in existence of the court house of 1824.
*This tree is now standing on ground owned by Edward Farley: and Mr. Farley says that General Odon Guitar told him that is the tree where circuit court was first held. And R. B. Price says that David M. Hickman and Jefferson Garth pointed out the same tree to him, A picture of that tree may seen herein.”
As depicted between pages 20-21 in the Bench and Bar of Boone County
From the private collection of Matthew Fetterly
It is unknown to the author of this blog if the tree still stands today. It still stood in 1916 and he searched in 2016 without result. If it does, it is near the intersection of Walnut and Garth, perhaps by the water tower or near the houses and yards on the west side of Garth. A tree did not long suit the ideal of civilization and progress. On May 1, 1824 the Boone County Commissioners placed an advertisement, reproduced below, in a newspaper searching for a contractor to construct Boone County’s first courthouse building. It was constructed at Walnut and Eighth at the site of the present courthouse and was a two story brick building with a cupola-like structure on top. This building would stand only twenty years and was replaced by the second courthouse in the 1840s. The columns of the second courthouse, were aligned with Academic Hall by William Jewell, and remain at the North end of the Avenue of the Columns today.
Advertisement for the construction of the First Courthouse
As seen in the Encyclopedia of Missouri Courthouses by Marian M. Ohman in the private collection of Matthew Fetterly
Inspired in part, by the preservation of trees that were used in lieu of buildings, our group, CoMo Preservation, hopes to help homeowners, landlords, and institutions prevent the destruction of historic architecture. Original period styles might be replicated, but will forever lack the social history of authentic structures. The preservation of historic buildings is necessary for Columbia’s residents, students, and visitors to achieve a sense of place and, it follows, for our city’s continued economic success. If you want to join us in our mission, signup on our mailing list for news and updates.
Sources
Stephens, E. W. (1875) "History of Boone County." An Illustrated Historical Atlas of Boone County, Missouri. Philadelphia: Edwards Brothers
Switzler, William F. (1882). History of Boone County. St. Louis, Missouri: Western Historical Company. OCLC 2881554.
Gentry, North Todd (1916). The Bench and Bar of Boone County: Including the History of Judges, Lawyers, and Courts, and an Account of Noted Cases, Slavery Litigation, Lawyers in War Times, Public Addresses, Political Notes, Etc. E.W. Stephens Publishing Company. OCLC 205808.
Ohman, Marian M. (1981). Encyclopedia of Missouri Courthouses. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press. University of Missouri Columbia Extension.
Havig, Alan R. (1984). From southern village to Midwestern city : an illustrated history of Columbia. Woodland Hills, California: Windsor Publications. ISBN 9780897811385.
Crighton, John C. (1987). A History of Columbia and Boone County. Columbia, Missouri: Computer Color-Graphics. OCLC 16960014.
Boone's Lick Road History. boonslickroad.org. Boone’s Lick Road Association. Accessed January 13, 2023.
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