(Editor’s note: This is part four detailing the arrival of the first sawmill on the Big Piney River).
In 1833, Baldridge purchased 53 acres in a U.S. government cash-entry sale. It was a narrow strip of land along Big Piney River where the Boiling Springs river access is located today. He had probably been operating a sawmill at that location since the 1820s. Many of the mill owners had filed pre-exemption claims that allowed them a legal right to the land before any surveys had been completed in the territories.
A Lumber Raft Stolen
In March of 1818, the same man who had taken Harle’s horse, James Burnam, was walking down the banks of the Piney River with Armstrong Kennedy and John Richey.
They happened upon a raft of 8,000 feet of Pattie’s pine plank that was tied up along the riverbank. No one was around. The rafters may have left to go hunting in the woods.
Burnam and his cohorts decided it was finders-keepers. They untied the raft and floated it down the river. They took it all the way to St. Charles and sold it at the dock for $320.
Trouble over the Mill
In the spring of 1818, Sylvester Pattie had big plans to cultivate the rich Piney River bottomland that he had recently cleared. He was going to plant at least 40 acres of corn. When it was harvested in the fall, the corn would be ground at the gristmill that he had constructed at the spring. The corn meal would be used at the mill settlement and some would be traded to hunters and lumbermen in the wilderness. The remainder of the corn would be transported to St. Louis on top of a lumber raft and sold.
Also that year the price of pine plank jumped again from $6 per 100 board feet to $8 per 100 or $80 per 1,000. It was a hot topic of conversation in St. Louis and many were saying that the mill owners were going to be rich. Sylvester Pattie’s enemies were definitely jealous and were plotting ways to get back at him and get rich in the process.
There was no mail delivery to the sawmills on Piney River. Before the corn could be planted in April of 1818, they were surprised to see a rider coming to the mill settlement. He was a special deputy of the Territorial Court, delivering a summons for William Harle and Sylvester Pattie to appear. The deputy had ridden all the way down from the St. Louis area to special deliver the summons. They were to answer a lawsuit by William Thompson, the man whom they ran off at gunpoint from the big spring on Big Piney in the fall of 1815.
Pattie and Harle made a quick trip to a trial being held at the home of a justice of the peace. It was as if everything had been planned by Thompson to make it as inconvenient as possible for Pattie and Harle. He chose the most distant location that the circuit court met. It was in a township that was a full 80 miles further than any other court. Pattie would later state that it was Thompson’s “…intention to prevent [me] from having an opportunity of making any defense against his said false and wicked claim.”
Thompson probably had serious intentions of building a sawmill on Piney. It was a business he knew well. He had worked as a head-sawyer as early as 1809, sawing on shares at a sawmill owned by Jacob Coontz. It was a water-powered sawmill on Dardenne Creek near St. Charles. For his labor, he received every sixth plank that he sawed. Thompson had an agreement that he would saw 420,000 board feet in one year. It seemed an incredible amount but Thompson reached the goal. Coontz then raised Thompson’s pay to give him every fourth plank.
Pattie and Harle tried to handle business back at the mill and attend court, too. They were forced to make four different trips that same summer until testimony was finally given by all the witnesses.
William Thompson claimed that he had full legal rights to the Piney River property where Pattie had erected his sawmill. He stated that he had filed a preemption claim on the land which was a legal land title in United States Territories.
Thompson testified about being forced away from the property at gunpoint. He described Pattie’s large group of people and pack train as being a military operation that invaded the Big Piney River valley. He named the men in the group, including Sylvester Pattie, William Harle, Captain Henry Height and Louis Tayon. He pointed out that all these men had military experience in the War of 1812 and many of them had served as officers.
When the decision was handed down, Pattie and Harle were stunned. The judge ordered that the sawmill property be immediately handed over to William Thompson.
Pattie and Harle returned to the Piney River, but this time it was to move their families. Everything they had worked so hard for was abandoned to Thompson.
More Trouble over the Horse
It had been more than two years since the trouble over William Harle’s lost horse and he believed the manner had long been settled. However, as soon as James Burnam had sold the stolen lumber raft he went to St. Charles and filed a lawsuit. On April 20, 1818, Burnam’s lawyer went before the court claiming that William Harle had trespassed on his client and stole his horse. He declared the bay mare to “…be the proper goods and chattels of the plaintiff and of right that appertains to him.” Burnam was suing for the amount of $90, a large amount of money for a horse in the early 19th century.
James Burnam and William Thompson were probably associates and had it in for Harle and Pattie. With the filing of their lawsuits only days apart it appeared that they were acting in collusion.
The court appointed another man to ride all the way to Pattie’s sawmill and deliver the summons. The summons was given to Polly Pattie as her husband was already gone to answer William Thompson’s lawsuit over the mill.
The case was not settled until February 1819. The judge ruled that the horse was the property of Harle and James Burnam had “used poor judgment in acquiring the horse on open range.” Burnam was ordered to pay Harle $17.77 for damages.
Trouble from the Slave Purchase
Pattie had another problem with the law going back a few years previous. William Hancock Jr., of St. Charles, had declared a $100 bill that Pattie had paid him for the slave purchase in 1815 was counterfeit. It was a Nashville, Tenn., bank note that had originated from a third party for a sale of Tennessee cotton in 1811.
Pattie’s trial was a big deal with the court calling several witnesses including, Thomas Hart Benton, Archibald McDonald, Nathaniel Simonds and Mackey Wherry.
Pattie testified that he and several others “had passed the note around in St. Charles before transferring it to Hancock.” He also said that it was a “different note than the one he had in Kentucky,” and that he “had marked the original note.”
The mark that he described was not present on the $100 note in evidence. However, the court then hired St. Louis attorney Edward Bates to communicate with the Nashville bank to determine if the note was genuine.
Cashiers of the Nashville bank examined the note and reported that it was counterfeit. In August 1818, the St. Charles court ruled that Sylvester Pattie must pay William Hancock Jr. $100 plus 6 percent interest and pay all court costs.
Henry Schoolcraft
In 1818, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, an ethnologist famous for his narratives of the America Indian tribes, decided to head west on a journey of the interior of the Ozarks. He hoped that by exploring this unknown territory that he could perhaps make a profit from writing a journal of his travels. In that day the wilderness began west of Mine a Barton, which is present day Potosi. His plan was to head across the wilderness in a southwestern direction.
A Mr. Levy Pettybone accompanied Schoolcraft on his journey. They were fearful of getting lost, so 14 miles out of Potosi they stopped at a hunter’s cabin and asked for directions for traveling down the “Indian Trace” as Schoolcraft called it. The hunter wasn’t home, but the hunter’s wife was full of directions. Not only did she know the directions of the trace and what stream they would cross, but she knew what game that might expect to find, and even which tribes of Indian were out hunting and where they were. She proceeded to tell them that they were not properly equipped for the journey and didn’t have the right kind of guns.
Schoolcraft later said that he was, “…astonished to hear a woman direct us in manners which we had before thought the peculiar and exclusive province of men.”
The woman went on to say that it was very dangerous to travel into the area they were going to because the Osage Indians never failed to rob and plunder anyone they came across. She said that her husband wanted to go hunting in that area, but was afraid to go alone. Later, when the husband returned home, he gladly offered to guide the two men down the trace.
After a few days down the trail they met up a hunter who agreed to kill some deer and obtain meat for Schoolcraft and his companion. However, the hunter began to pursue the deer and he became hopelessly lost in the wilderness of what is now Texas County.
The hunter wandered for a few days and traveled downstream when he came to the Big Piney River. Then he was completely bewildered as he came upon Pattie’s sawmill settlement, not knowing that any form of civilization like that existed in the wilderness. The man spent the night with the Pattie family. Sylvester then gave the man directions to get back home.
Fighting Back
After a whole year of doing little more than traveling back-and-forth to court, Pattie and Harle decided it was time to fight back. It was time to get the best lawyers in the territory. First, they filed suit against James Burnam and his cohorts, Armstrong Kennedy and John Richey, for stealing the raft of 8,000 board feet of pine lumber valued at $320. After the court met several times, the judge ruled in Pattie and Harle’s favor in July 1919. They were awarded the $320 plus costs.
Pattie and Harle also appealed the case against William Thompson to recover the sawmill property at Slabtown on the Big Piney River. They hired Mathias McGirk who would later be one of the first justices on Missouri’s Supreme Court, and John G. Heath, who would soon be a state representative.
In the lawsuit, Pattie and Harle stated that “… William Thompson did falsely maliciously and without any right or probable cause whatever commence an action of forcible retainer before two justices of the peace for said county against said plaintiff for a certain …tract of land in said County lying on the Gasconade River on the Piney Fork of said river about three miles below the McDonald Mill and whereas a sawmill has lately been erected by said William Harle and others and the said Thompson did … by other false and fraudulent means did procure a judgment… [for] the saw mill therein against said Harle & Pattie…”