THE RAPE OF
HOWELL AND HAMBURG, MISSOURI
(An American Tragedy)
by
Donald
K. Muschany
COPYRIGHT © 1978 BY DONALD K. MUSCHANY. ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED.
[Letter 9]
April
20, 1977
Hi Norm:
Before I get on to great-grandfather
Muschany, I want to tell you a funny tale passed on by Uncle Karl.
In about 1922, Karl bought a Model-T Ford
and really felt his oats. One day he piled my mother and a friend into the
“black demon,” and took them for a spin on those fine Howell roads. He got
stuck in a freshly plowed field while trying to turn around. The irate farmer,
more out of soil conservation (his own) than out of pity, got a team and tried
to extricate the interlopers, but to no avail. And then the rain came. Karl
left his charges under a spreading chestnut tree and took off for a phone. He
called my dad, asking for a ride in the store’s Model-T truck. Dad told him,
“Kid, you got yourself in; now let’s see you get out.” Karl then played his
ace. ‘‘Well, if you don’t want Nell to get pneumonia in the middle of the
preserving season, you’d better rescue us.” An irate older brother, Dad, picked
them up but didn’t say a word the rest of the day, for which they were all
glad, especially Karl. I have an idea that Karl, being the “baby,” has a lot
more tales than he will tell . . . I’m going to keep prodding him. He has told
me a lot of stories regarding the demise of Howell which I will tell when I
reach that point in my correspondence.
He also told me about a bit of chicanery
regarding Boonslick Road, and how it ceased to be Highway 40. You’ll be
interested.
Inasmuch as you and I represent the two poles,
not north or south, but life and death, I feel that you and I have a special
interest in the start of Howell. With apologies to Thomas Payne, those “were
the times that tried men’s souls.”
Just before Francis Howell, the Welshman,
reached Cumberland Gap with his family, he passed the site where Indians had
killed some of Daniel Boone’s party, including his oldest son, James.
Howell said to his daughter, Nancy, “For
twenty-five years I’ve been waiting to see that . . . Kentucky, at last! . . .
But what that Wilderness Road has cost in lives! The ‘Dark and Bloody Ground!’
[1] is right.” This reads like the start of a J. Fenimore Cooper novel, except
that this is real and I understand Cooper’s stuff was written in upstate New
York and in Paris. (I’m turning into a critic, even an iconoclast, yet.)
Howell was moving his brood from North
Carolina to St. Louis via Boonesborough and the Overland Trail, which Daniel
Boone made into history. St. Louis, at the time, was a small French village
whose inhabitants were fur traders. The Spanish Lt. Governor offered Howell
forty acres in what is now the heart of the city if he would settle and teach
the French to farm. He had his own aim, however, and settled in the Bonhomme
Bottoms near the east side of the Missouri River, Staying there until the
floods convinced him that he didn’t want bottom land, regardless of its loam
and silt. He and his family then moved westward to the Dardenne Township where
he got a grant of 640 acres.
Here he built his fort, not as large as
Boonesborough, but ample for the settlers involved. He then build a grist mill
from which he not only ground corn, but made gunpowder during the War of 1812.
I have the feeling that these early folks did what they had to do when they had
to do it. Amazing people, and our country was based on just such ability and
courage. No one needed classes in motivation; survival was the order of the
day.
I want to go on record, however, that I am
not selling us later folks short—No Way! We have a built-in survival mechanism
and we must cope with a more learned and expanded populace. They, the pioneers,
combated the forces of nature, flora, and fauna, but we deal with man’s baser
emotions in today’s market. There were always bad guys and good guys; the black
hats vs the white hats, and greed was the prime mover, but the wilderness
offered escape. Urbanity is stifling man, as Faulkner predicted.
When is the last time you saw a blacksmith
shop, except at fine fox-hunt clubs? Where are plowshares sharpened? At Ace
Hardware? Horse shoes are bought at sporting goods stores along with the pegs
for the game which used to be played with real horses’ old shoes.
The blacksmith shop in Howell is well
remembered. The forge, the anvil, the hammer, the sound rings out as if it were
today. Horse shoeing was an art and the blacksmith was always proud of his
finished product. Some blacksmiths of Howell were Henry Stratman, Thomas Love,
William Zeyen, Mayburn Snyder, Herb Yahn, and Alfred Henderson. All good craftsmen.
You’ll notice I do digress to
philosophise—poetic license. But back to Francis Howell.
The land around the fort was cleared and
more put into cultivation each season. Also, the fur market was good for the
young boys, and the Howells were not about to move again. Francis Howell’s
vision of the future was right on the mark. For in that section of St. Charles
County known as “Crow’s Nest,” Indian for “high point,” his descendants to the
fifth and sixth generation lived, and it took World War II to terminate that
relationship, plus an act of Congress. These people converted the wilderness in
the manner it was ordained to be, into homes and churches and schools. There
was no stifling effect here, just pure nourishment of God’s creatures.
The bodies of Francis and Susannah lie on
a hillside not far from the fort. It is here that our grandfather, James Urban,
and grandmother, Margaret, and our aunt, Ethel, are buried. The cemetery is
called the Frances Howell Cemetery and rightfully it should be.
Next time, we’ll talk about other early
Howellites.
Your
obedient servant,
[signed:
Don K.]
[1] Boone called it
that.
