Callaway County, Missouri

This area was historically occupied by the Osage and other Native American peoples, some of whom migrated from east of the Ohio River Valley. Others emerged as cultures in this area, following thousands of years of settlement by indigenous peoples.

The early European-American settlement of Callaway County was largely by migrants from the Upper South states of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, with an influx of German immigrants starting in the 1830s,[6] as was the case with other counties along the Missouri River. Some of them brought Black enslaved persons and enslavement practices with them, and quickly started cultivating hemp and tobacco, the same crops as were grown in Middle Tennessee and Kentucky. Given their culture and traditions, this area became known as Little Dixie.[7] By 1860, enslaved people made up at least 25 percent of the county's population,[8] higher than in most parts of the state.

On October 27, 1860, a Black woman known as "Slave Teney" was lynched by whites near Fulton after she confessed to killing the daughter of her owner.[9][10]

Some pioneer families from Callaway and Lewis County, Missouri, moved to the West and became influential early settlers of the nascent state of California. Callaway families helped settle areas of California near the Oregon border, as they entered the state via the Oregon Trail, then southward toward San Francisco. Lewis County relatives helped build Sacramento and develop viticulture in the California Central Valley and areas north of San Francisco Bay. Some of these Missouri families, later key U.S./Unionist advocates and military personnel during the U.S. Civil War, held early local and statewide political offices in California.[11]

The minutes of the U.S. Congressional hearing on the legitimacy of U.S. Civil-war-era elections in Callaway County include reports of substantial election meddling and voter harassment and intimidation, summarized in the 1867-68 Reports of Committees of the House of Representatives. It described the Confederate support in the county, citing prominent citizens, but the report also demonstrated that there was substantial county support for Union/U.S. government among citizens who were often intimidated into silence. Historians therefore cannot ascertain exact percentages of Union or Confederate sympathies in the county.[12]

The Battle of Moore's Mill was the only significant Civil War battle that took place in Callaway County. One historian said it was known as "Kingdom of Callaway". A truce with U.S./Union forces during the war effectively allowed Confederate advocates to continue to operate under surveillance, in proximity to the Missouri government offices in Jefferson City. There may have been more than twice as many Confederate as U.S./Union troops in Callaway. A so-called "Confederate government of Missouri" set up offices in southwest Missouri near the Arkansas border, while a line almost straight south along the Arkansas-Oklahoma border connected it to a known Texas-affiliate (and possibly controlling) office set up across from the southwest corner of Arkansas in Marshall, Texas.[13][14]

According to "A Short History of Callaway County" by Ovid Bell, the publisher of the (county seat) Fulton Daily Sun Gazette, "Fulton was occupied during the greater part of the war by Union soldiers and militia, and Southern (i.e. Confederate) sympathizers were in constant fear of imprisonment and death." U.S. forces loyal to the Union were raised by Captains William T Snell, Henry Thomas, and JJP Johnson. They were reinforced by troops under General John B. Henderson from the town of Louisiana in Pike County, Missouri.[15]

After the late-1860s Reconstruction era, an element of white residents in the state and county worked to restore white supremacy. Violence against Black people reached a peak around the turn of the 20th century, when whites lynched a total of four African Americans in the county.[16] The victims included Ham Peterson in May 1884, killed because his brother spoke disrespectfully to whites; an unnamed African-American man killed by a mob in October 1884, after being accused of raping a young girl; and Emmett Divens, lynched August 15, 1895.[9][17]

Other settlers in the Missouri River valley included German immigrants from the mid-19th century following the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states; they established a strong wine industry in the area and built towns with German-influenced architecture, concentrated substantially in counties south of Callaway and across the Missouri River, celebrated annually in the Maifest events in the Gasconade county seat, Hermann. Missouri was the second-largest wine-producing state nationally until Prohibition. Since the 1960s, numerous vineyards and wineries have been established again in the river valley, including Summit Lake Winery in Holts Summit. One definition of the Missouri Rhineland can be found in a Chicago Tribune article of September 2018.[18]

Callaway has remained largely agricultural, economically, with its rich farmlands, yet borders Missouri's capital city and Lincoln University (Missouri) in Cole County, to the south, and the main University of Missouri campus in Columbia, 40 miles or less from the most populous areas of the county. Callaway County has for years hosted William Woods University and Westminster College in the county seat, Fulton, while Osage county, to the south, hosts the State Technical College of Missouri in Linn.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 847 square miles (2,190 km²), of which 835 square miles (2,160 km²) is land and 13 square miles (34 km²) (1.5%) is water.[19]

The northern part of the county is relatively flat and devoid of large tracts of forests. The southern border of the county is the Missouri River, and the area is heavily forested over large hills and valleys. Cedar Creek makes up the bulk of the county's western border. Jefferson City lies across the Missouri River from the southwestern corner of the county.[20][21]

As of the census[28] of 2000, there were 40,766 people, 14,416 households, and 10,336 families residing in the county. The population density was 49 people per square mile (19/km²). There were 16,167 housing units at an average density of 19 per square mile (7/km²). The racial makeup of the county was self-identified as 91.79% White, 5.66% Black or African American, 0.52% Native American, 0.52% Asian, 0.01% Pacific Islander, 0.30% from other races, and 1.21% from two or more races. Approximately 0.92% of the population identified as Hispanic or Latino of any race. 29.9% identified as of German ancestry, 22.0% s American, 9.1% as Irish (including Scots-Irish) and 9.1% as English ancestry.

There were 14,416 households, out of which 35.80% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 57.10% were married couples living together, 10.40% had a female householder with no husband present, and 28.30% were non-families. 23.00% of all households were made up of individuals, and 8.80% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.56 and the average family size was 3.00.

In the county, the population was spread out, with 25.40% under the age of 18, 11.10% from 18 to 24, 31.00% from 25 to 44, 21.50% from 45 to 64, and 11.00% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 107.60 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 108.90 males.

The median income for a household in the county was $39,110, and the median income for a family was $44,474. Males had a median income of $29,574 versus $22,317 for females. The per capita income for the county was $17,005. About 6.00% of families and 8.50% of the population were below the poverty line, including 10.30% of those under age 18 and 8.30% of those age 65 or over.

• National Register of Historic Places listings in Callaway County, Missouri

• Bell, Ovid. "A Short History of Callaway County" (Fulton, MO: Ovid Bell Press, 1875).
• Bryan, William Smith. "A History of Pioneer Families in Missouri" (St Louis, MO: Bryan, Brand & Co, 1876).
• Kingdom of Callaway Historical Society. A History of Callaway County Missouri (Fulton, MO: Kingdom of Callaway Historical Society, 1983).
• Kingdom of Callaway Historical Society. Combined Atlases of Callaway County Missouri 1876-1897-1919, Indexed. (Mount Vernon, IN: Windmill Publications, Inc, 1994).
• Mather, Otis. "Six Generations of LaRues and Allied Families". (Hodgenville & Louisville, KY: C T Dearing Printing Co, 1921).
• Missouri State Library. "History of Callaway County." (St Louis, MO: National Historical Company, 1884).
• Saeger, Andrew M. "The Kingdom Of Callaway: Callaway County, Missouri during the Civil War." (MA thesis, Northwest Missouri State University, 2013). bibliography pp 75–81 online
• Smith, Harriet E. "Autobiography of Mark Twain" (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010).
• Williams, Walter, ed. "A History of Northeast Missouri" (Chicago, IL: Lewis Publishing Company, 1913).

• Callaway County official website
• Callaway County Clerk website
• Kingdom of Callaway Historical Society
• Callaway Chamber of Commerce
• Digitized 1930 Plat Book of Callaway County from University of Missouri Division of Special Collections, Archives, and Rare Books
• Callaway County in 1930 (w townships boundaries) A 1930 map of Callaway County, including township boundaries.
• Callaway County in 1919 (w township boundaries) A 1919 map of Callaway County, including township boundaries.
• Callaway County in 1897 (w township boundaries) (page 7)
• Callaway County in 1876 (w township boundaries) (page2) (Note that in 1850, the US Census referred to numbered districts in the county rather than the townships which were created around the time of Missouri statehood and described, in text, in the Missouri State Library's "History of Callaway County", listed above in the bibliography section.)
• Map of Slave-holder percentages in US southeastern states, per 1860 census, published by a University of Central Florida scholar, showing Callaway County not among the more slave-populated counties among the southeastern US states in general, or even of Missouri. Note that other maps on the same topic show substantially different indicators. All data should be checked for sources, and compared to census records, with attention to the difference between the number of slaves in a county and the percentage of slave population in a county.
• Map Showing Distribution of Slave Population, per 1860 census. A second similar map published in 1861 shows substantially different indicators, especially in Missouri. Census data for 1860 may need to be reviewed to see which of the two maps is more accurate. Note that percentage of slave population is not the same as percentage of slave-owning population.