Volume 6, Number 2 - Winter 1977
Autobiography of Thomas Randolph Welch
Written near Golden City, Missouri February 22, 1957
I was born October 6th, 1875 near Galatia, Illinois. My mother, Angeline Whitlock was born March 8th, 1844 and died November 21st, 1894. My father, Thomas Harris Welch was born September 10th, 1845 and died in 1900. The Whitlocks were a large family that lived near Mt. Vernon, Illinois, and the Welch family were residents of the community about Galatia, Rolla and Harrisburg in that state.
According to tradition, each of the families were of Scotch-Irish descent. Little is known of my grandfather, John Welch, except that he was a gunsmith and was married to Mildred Barksdale, who was probably born in Scotland, her father being a minister from that country to the United States and, I believe, lived in South Carolina. John Welch died in 1847 when my father was two years old, he being the youngest of four children. Mildred Welch married after that a man named Isom Strickland, who with his two sons died just after the Civil War from cholera, about 36 hours apart. The family moved then from their home in Tennessee to Illinois.
My father and mother were married May 21, 1871, to which union seven children were born, I being the third and the oldest boy. In the year 1880 our family moved in a covered wagon drawn by a team of mules to Kansas where we lived only a short time near a small town named Sedan. We moved from there to Springfield and out on a farm near Bois D’Arc for a short time and then back to Springfield, where we stayed about two
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years and where I received my first schooling under a teacher named Hattie Marston. While living in Springfield my father and a man named Marston freighted from Springfield to Harrison and other places in Arkansas and I believe it took nearly two weeks to make that trip. That was a general practice in those days. Sometimes long wagon trains would make the trip together. I remember hearing father say there was only one house between the Dutch Store at what is now Highlandville to the ferry at what was later Kimberling Bridge. The early settlers at that time lived along the rivers mostly where they could farm the valleys and let the livestock run on the free outside range.
While living on a farm near Bois D’Arc, I think it was in 1881, they called it the "Old Man Miller Place", a tornado passed through that section right over our house. The barn was blown to pieces and the house would have gone also except for a large old tree in the yard that blew across the house and held it down - a very narrow escape for the family. I think kind providence had something to do with that.
My parents had sold their little 40 acre farm near Galatia, Ill, where they had engaged in raising tobacco, as I remember, and started West to get a prairie farm. At that time the soil was all there was on much of the land that could be obtained at a low price -- no buildings, fences or water which would have been necessary to establish a home, and it was decided to homestead a rough 120 acres in the wood’s mostly, but it afforded plenty of timber for log buildings, fencing and firewood, with plenty of spring water for which the Ozark hills are famous.
My earliest recollections are about the incidents on the way from Illinois to Kansas. After we left St. Louis there were very few, if any, bridges across the rivers, and crossing those streams was always a terror to us children. We came through Marshfield and saw the wreckage left by the cyclone there, probably not long before we passed through.
In the year 1882, I think it was, we moved to a farm at the mouth of Bull Creek near what is now Rockaway Beach. I think I thinned corn and hoed some cotton in the fields just in front of that famous resort on Lake Taneycomo. We should have prospered on the rented farm in Taney County, except for the malaria which infested that section then. The neighbors, good old-fashioned folk that they were, came to see us and told us in their peculiar drawl to which we were unfamiliar, that, and I quote: "You’ll chill," and chill we certainly did! I can remember when we were all sick in bed at once and I believe that the lives of my parents were shortened because of our stay there, as my mother died at the age of 51 and my father at the age of 55. The neighbors seemed to have been immune to the malaria there. They told us various remedies for the disease. We laughed at one old
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man who came to see us, telling his experience. When he moved down there he related how he chilled all the time and he went to the stillhouse and got a jug of whiskey and got "P-l-u-m-b d-r-u-n-k -- never had another chill." However we never tried that remedy. I think our funds must have been exhausted when we landed in Taney County, as my mother had a small subscription school in our home. She had been a teacher in Illinois before she was married. My father managed to get a teacher’s certificate and taught the school one term in the district. I believe they called it "Cedar Glade". It was a log house with split log benches used for seats. The main text book, as I remember, was the Old Bluebacked Speller. I remember on the first day of school some of the children said they had been as far as "Baker" or "Amity" and some said they had been to the "Pictures". The neighbors seemed to us a quaint kind of folks, but my parents said they never had so good neighbors anywhere. We moved from Taney County to a farm near Ponce de Leon where we had better health. My mother acquired ulcers on her ankles which were never cured, and she suffered horribly because of that. My father was never strong again and passed away in the year 1900, six years after my mother had passed away, and they now lie just east of the western edge of the Poncy Cemetery, at the Christian-Stone County line.
There was much wildlife in the Ozarks in those days. While living on White River I remember the neighbors told tales about bear, panthers, haunts, rattlesnakes, etc., and there was an abundance of fish and small game of all kind, including deer and turkeys. It was also a kind of rendezvous for outlaws, moonshiners and all kinds of bad men. Murders were common, also hangings and other mob violence. The old settlers in that part of Taney County, as I recall, were Hensleys, Keithleys, Fishers, Alms, Stewarts, Jennings, Blansits and others -- all fine people. If they were rough and unrefined, it was only on the outside. They were the "salt of the earth."
Everywhere we lived, the neighbors were very good to us. I shall never forget how Uncle Jim Clines bought a mule for my father when one of our team got crippled and could not be used. He said we could pay for the mule that fall, which we did. Uncle Jim Davis loaned us 20 bushels of corn for bread to be paid out of the next corn crop. They were friends in need and friends indeed.
In the year 1893 while living below "Poncy" father traded his mules for a claim near Spokane--120 acres, mostly in woods. There was an old fashioned log house and log barn and some cleared land fenced with rails, also a fine orchard about the house -- all kinds of fruit as I remember. It seems there were no insect pests to infest the fruit trees at that time, but they soon came. We cleared the land gradually and raised a little corn, wheat, oats, tobacco and all kinds of vegetables. I helped clear the timber off those rocky hillsides, split rails for the fencing, plowed the new ground with a bull tongue plow, part of the time with horses and partly with a yoke of steers which I had trained to take the place of an extra team. I could write a long story about those steers. I had raised the steers from calfhood. I named the "off" steer "Dan" and the roan "lead" steer "Dick". It was surprising how docile and obedient they were most of the time but they were rather temperamental at times and would run away to water if they got thirsty during the hot weather. We
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had a team of horses also with which my brother Ernest plowed, but I preferred to use the oxen. The matter of putting the yoke on them and hitching a log chain to the plow was simple. Perhaps few people know what I mean when I refer to the "lead" and "off" steer. The "off" steer was the one which worked on the right side and the "lead" steer was on the left side. I always put the yoke on the off steer first, which was very easy. I just walked up to him with the yoke and he would stop, put out his tongue and pant like a dog while I put the bow around his neck and fastened it with a wooden key. Then I took out the other bow and held up that end of the yoke and told the lead steer to come under, which he always did without any difficulty. I put a rope around the horns of the lead steer with which I could control them fairly well. They learned the commands, "get up", "gee", "haw" and "whoa" and obeyed them fairly well most of the time, but they had a habit of following my brother’s team of horses and kept up with them most of the time but if they got behind they would cut the corner to catch up and my orders to the contrary were of no force.
In the fall of 1893 I went to school at Marionville, after selling the steers, for the winter term of three months. At that time to be a student at Marionville Collegiate Institute carried with it a certain amount of prestige and enabled me to get a contract to teach a three month school term at Coon Ridge at $20.00 per month provided I received a teacher’s certificate and provided further that school funds would be sufficient to pay for the full three months term. I received a third grade certificate, which I do not think I deserved, but the money was all gone before the school term ended and I quit. I now realize that I was really too young at 17 years and inexperienced as I was, to teach school, but I do feel that I accomplished something.
One young man who had never gone to school and was 19 years of age, came to school and went along with the primary class for a time, but soon advanced to what would now be called the fifth or sixth grade. His name was Thomas Shirkey and afterwards became one of the leading well-to-do citizens of the community.
After that experience I taught school at various places during the following 15 years and attained a very good reputation as teacher in the little high schools of Oklahoma and Missouri. My dream of the glamour of being a successful teacher had come true, but like most dreams, had lost its charm, and I began to have other dreams, such as being a stenographer, banker, farmer and stock-man, realtor, insurance agent, etc., all of which was realized but ended up in disappointment and losing their charm.
My one dream that did not lose its charm has been my marriage to a very fine girl, and raising a family of two daughters and now having several grandchildren which, as I think, are also very fine.
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