Moving to Missouri

The writing project, a history of my grandparents' families, is finally complete - almost. It's in the hands of a researcher cousin who is comparing her notes. It was a challenging project, but I did manage to knit together a number of extended families. The approach is a little different from accepted NEHGS standards since it has a bit different intent. Some passages will follow, sans notes and family tables.

From Chapter 2: Ohio to Missouri
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In 1830, Missouri had less than 150,000 people over all its territory. Settlement was the fever of the period. Within ten years that number more than doubled to 380,000, and the state gained a million additional people by 1860.

The 1830s were marked by an economic panic, Irish riots in Boston, settlement of Chicago, and the removal of the Cherokee nation from Georgia to Oklahoma. In 1837, real estate prices and the price of farm produce collapsed, ruining many farmers. A wheat crop failed, cotton prices and land speculation collapsed. The recession lasted seven years to the mid-1840s. It was a time when people were willing to break with the known and seek opportunities in the expanding settlement of the west.
In 1837 the Platte Purchase secured the lands on the east side of the Missouri River north of Westport, giving the state its westward point, and including the territory of Weston. On 4 May 1840 Jeremiah Woods was among the 72 voters advancing a petition to establish Weston Township in Platte Co.  Shortly thereafter, two other towns in the Platte Purchase also established. St. Joseph incorporated in 1843 and Maryville in 1845.

The first people to settle in what would soon become Weston were two young soldiers from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 1837. Rowing up the Missouri River in a canoe, they found a natural bay at the foot of what would later become Weston's Main Street. The bay appeared to be appropriate for a steamboat landing or ferry, and the soldiers purchased land there. One of the two soldiers, Joseph Moore, built the first cabin. In time, Weston became a thriving river port until a flood changed the course of the river in the 1860s.
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Jeremiah and Virginia were moving with eight children, ages 1 to 15. It is quite likely that the Woods family traveled entirely by water, perhaps with others, and perhaps in more than one trip. The costs of such travel for the family are unknown here, but steamboats were the closest thing to intercity mass transportation at the time and they opened up distant commerce. Wagon travel was limited to twenty miles or less a day, and carriages to thirty, while steamboats covered fifty winding river miles a day with enormous loads and relative comfort.

Yellowstone Steamboat in 1819.

Robert Fulton's New Orleans sailed from Pittsburgh to New Orleans in 1811 on the Ohio River. Thereafter, steamboats developed rapidly, plying the inland waterways as the intercity and distance trucks, trains and buses of their era. Commercial steamboat operation on the Missouri River began before the 1820s. A listing of Missouri River steamboats shows several boats going upriver from St. Louis as far as North Dakota and the Yellowstone River in Montana as early as 1838.  In Nebraska they followed the Platte River perhaps to Grand Island.

Listings show that from 1836 to 1838, the steamboat Rhine ran from St. Louis to Weston and Iatan, a week-long trip each way.  There were early settlements of some years at Weston, and sufficient trade and produce traffic to put in at landings there. These dates coincide with the years leading to Weston's charter, and it is likely if not certain that Woods traveled on the Rhine. Other towns may have had service as needed. Landings such as Iatan were similar to named rural rail sidings today, where produce and livestock can be taken on in season. Little was needed for a steamboat landing except sufficient water depth, a gangway to dry land, and transportation away. Weston lost its river port when the river moved in the 1858 flood.
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Whether 2. Jeremiah Woods moved his family by land or river, it was seven hundred land miles to Weston, Missouri, from southwest Ohio. They likely took little with them, but necessary family goods. With three teenaged sons, the move could be managed if they took only what they thought they would require.

It was common to move accompanied by a few extended family members, who also may have arrived sooner or later, but no other Woods or Soward families have been found yet in Platte Co. at the time they arrived. In fact, sources indicate that Jeremiah was the first permanent resident in town. There may have been another Ohio family, not yet identified, who migrated with them. What is certain here is that the Woods family was in Ohio in 1837 for the birth of Louisa. In 1840 they were in Platte County when Jeremiah signed the petition for the incorporation of Weston.

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Arthur Dirks

14 August 2015