Boone's Lick was a salt spring in the Missouri River hills of Howard County, and for years its name covered the whole western country. Two books tell how the first families came: Levens and Drake's 1876 A History of Cooper County, Missouri and the 1883 History of Howard and Cooper Counties. They name the salt makers, the Cooper and Cole families, the men in the forts, the settlers killed in the war years, and the people of Franklin, the town the river took.
Written from 2 old histories, all free to read on the Internet Archive: History of Howard and Cooper Counties, Missouri (1883); A History of Cooper County, Missouri (1876). Everything below comes from those books, and where they give an opinion, we say so.
The salt lick and the first visitors
Levens and Drake say the western part of the territory was long called the Boone's Lick Country, after a lick about eight miles northwest of New Franklin. Daniel Boone found several large salt springs there and hunted the game they drew. Whether he lived there is where the books part. Levens and Drake rely on Samuel Cole, of the first family in Cooper County, who said Boone never lived farther west than St. Charles County. The 1883 history, citing John M. Peck, says Boone built a cabin and camped one winter near the lick, but that he ever made salt, "we are disposed to doubt."
Both books say Boone's sons Nathan and Daniel made salt at the lick in 1807 and shipped it to St. Louis to sell; the 1883 book adds that they got it to the river in hollow logs. Peck credits the name to Maj. Nathan Boone, who made salt there in 1806 and 1807 with the Morrisons of St. Charles. South of the river, William Christie and John G. Heath made salt in what is now Blackwater Township in 1808. Heath came back every summer and was known as the "big salt maker."
Surveyors had come earlier. Ira P. Nash, a deputy United States surveyor, came up the river with Stephen Hancock and Stephen Jackson in February 1804 and found a trading post near the later Old Franklin kept by a man named Prewitt.
The first families and their forts
Col. Benjamin Cooper came first, in the spring of 1808, with his wife and five sons, and built a cabin in the river bottom about two miles southwest of the lick. Governor Merriwether Lewis ordered him back below the Gasconade, so he waited on Loutre Island until 1810. Levens and Drake say he returned on February 20, 1810. The 1883 book lists the men who came with him by former home: from Madison County, Kentucky, Benjamin, Francis, William, Daniel, John, Joseph and Stephen Cooper, Capt. Sarshall Cooper, Braxton Cooper Sr. and Jr., Robert Cooper, James and Albert Hancock and William Berry; from Estill County, Amos and Otho Ashcraft; from Tennessee, John and Henry Ferrell, John Berry, Robert Erwin, Robert Brown and Joseph Wolfskill among others; James Kile of Virginia, Gray Bynum of South Carolina, Stephen Jackson of Georgia and Peter Popineau of Ste. Genevieve.
Two families crossed to the south bank in a "perogue," swimming their horses behind. Hannah Cole settled on the bluff in what is now East Boonville and Stephen Cole a mile and a half east. Levens and Drake name all seventeen: Hannah Cole and her children Jennie, Mattie, Dikie, Nellie, James, Holburt, Stephen, William and Samuel, and Stephen and Phoebe Cole with James, Rhoda, Mark, Nellie and Polly. Their neighbors on that side were Sauk and Fox people, and Samuel Cole said he often hunted with their chiefs and found them generally kind and obliging. Before the war Joseph Jolly, Joseph Yarnell, Gilliard Rupe, Muke Box, Delany Bolin, William, John and James Savage, and Walter and David Burress joined them, part of a wave the 1883 book places in 1811 and 1812.
The 1883 book names three main forts in Howard County: Fort Cooper about two miles southwest of Boone's Lick, Fort Kincaid about a mile north of the later Boonville railroad bridge, and Fort Hempstead a mile and a half north of Kincaid. Peck counted five, adding Head's fort on the Moniteau and Cole's fort south of the river. Levens and Drake write "Kincaid Fort, or Fort Hempstead" as if one place. Stephen Cole built Cole's fort, the first in Cooper County, in 1812.
The men formed a company under Capt. Sarshall Cooper, with William McMahon and John Monroe as lieutenants: 112 men able to bear arms, standing for 500 to 600 people. The county's first horse mill went up at Fort Kincaid in 1815.
“She was joyfully met by the inhabitants of Franklin, and saluted by the firing of cannon, which was returned by the Independence.”
War comes, 1810 to 1812
Both books tell the war from the settlers' side, in the hard language of their day. Levens and Drake say the Sauks took the British side in the War of 1812; the 1883 book names the war parties as mostly Sacs and Foxes, Kickapoos and Pottawatomies. Peck dates the first deaths to July 1810, when a Pottawatomie party took horses from the Loutre settlement and William T. Cole and two others were killed in the fight that followed.
Levens and Drake name Jonathan Todd and Thomas Smith as the first settlers killed in the Boone's Lick country, early in 1812, while going downriver to pick out land; the 1883 book says they lived at Fort Hempstead and were hunting a stray horse. Scouts James Cole and James Davis, cut off, held out at Johnson's trading post on the Moniteau, then pulled up a floor plank at midnight, found a canoe and got home with the warning.
Then, Levens and Drake say, about four hundred warriors came before Cole's fort. A wounded man named Smith handed his gun to his companion Savage and told him to save himself; Savage got in though shot at some twenty-five times. Samuel Cole begged his mother to let him fire, and she refused. Next day the settlers seized a French boat carrying twenty-five kegs of powder up the river and used it to move every family and their stock across to Kincaid's fort.
Adam Woods was badly wounded that summer in a fight near Monroe's farm. In July 1812 a man named Campbell was shot while tying flax with Adam McCord. The books say the killers were Quapa Indians dressed as Sauks and Foxes. Col. Benjamin Cooper and Gen. Dodge led about five hundred men after them and 180 surrendered. Cooper wanted them hanged; Dodge took them to St. Louis instead.
The long watch, 1813 to 1815
In the spring of 1813 the south-side families went home and planted. Braxton Cooper Jr. was killed that September near New Franklin. Joseph Still was killed on the Chariton in October 1813; the books call the circumstances unknown, but Stephen Cooper wrote that Stills was riding with him when about three hundred warriors surrounded them. William McLane was killed near Fayette that October.
Capt. Sarshall Cooper was shot through a hole picked between his cabin logs as he sat by the fire with his youngest child on his lap. Both books date it April 14, 1814; his son Stephen wrote that it came after word of peace in 1815. Another son, Joseph, wrote in January 1874 of a boat the settlers had taken from its crew: "I think one of this party killed my father."
On December 14, 1814, Samuel McMahan of what is now Lamine Township was killed near Boonville. He was buried under the Linn tree at the old fair grounds. A man named Joe, enslaved by Samuel Brown of Howard County, was also killed. The Boonville families then built a fort at Hannah Cole's in about a week, and Levens and Drake call McMahan's death virtually the end of the war there. Peck counted ten killed, naming some the others leave out: Wm. Gregg, John Smith and James Busby. He also tells of a town of four hundred at Miami, "friendly and peaceable" people whom Dodge escorted back to the Wabash country.
In 1813 John Savage taught Cooper County's first school on Lilly's Branch, with fifteen children of the families near Hannah Cole's fort.
“Judge Barton, I fine you one dollar for contempt of my court, for smoking in its presence.”
Franklin, its land office and the first steamboat
Howard County was organized on January 23, 1816, and its first court met at Hannah Cole's fort that July 8. Judge David Barton fined Maj. Stephen Cole a dollar for contempt. That afternoon Cole, a justice of the peace, held court on a log and told the judge, "Judge Barton, I fine you one dollar for contempt of my court, for smoking in its presence."
Franklin was laid off across from Boonville in 1816. The 1883 book says it took 100 acres bought for $200; Levens and Drake say fifty acres were donated. The commissioners were Benjamin Estill, David Jones, David Kincaid, William Head and Stephen Cole; the 1883 book dates their choice June 16, 1817, and Levens and Drake June 16, 1816. Amos Barnes built the first house, of rough logs by the river, and Hannah Cole ran the ferry.
The land office opened in 1818 with Gen. Thomas A. Smith as receiver and Charles Carroll as register, and the land sales were held on November 18, 1818. Peck found a village of seventy families. Nathaniel Patten and Benjamin Holliday started the Missouri Intelligencer there on April 23, 1819, the first paper west of St. Louis. On May 28, 1819, the Independence, Capt. John Nelson, became the first steamboat to try the Missouri, and "She was joyfully met by the inhabitants of Franklin." The Western Engineer followed on July 13.
The county seat moved to Fayette in 1823. Franklin held 1,500 to 1,700 people from 1823 to 1826. Levens and Drake say the river began eating the town in 1826; the 1883 book says the people left in the spring of 1828 when the bank caved in, and some founded New Franklin.
Boonville and the Santa Fe trade
Levens and Drake say Boonville was laid off by Asa Morgan and Charles Lucus, its plat filed August 1, 1817. Hannah Cole had settled part of the site in 1810 and sold her claim to Bird Lockhart and Henry Carroll in 1819 "for a trifle." Gilliard Roupe was the first settler in the old town limits and a Frenchman named Reubadeaux kept the first store in a cabin of poles.
Franklin was the starting point for Santa Fe. Stephen Cooper wrote that he was one of fifteen who opened the trade in 1822, and that in 1823 he led thirty men. On the Little Arkansas their horses were run off, all but six. Levens and Drake say Maj. Stephen Cole joined the trade in 1822 and was killed that year on the Rio Grande, about sixty miles southwest of Santa Fe. By May 1828 a Fayette paper expected more than 150 traders to start from the area.
Finding your family in these two books
The 1883 history lists the 1810 settlers by former home, the officers of Sarshall Cooper's company, and "all the men. and boys who were in the different forts," set in columns by fort. The scan jumbles the columns, so check a printed page before tying an ancestor to one fort. The lists include Lindsay Carson, noted as father of Kit Carson, and William Monroe "called Long Gun."
It also prints early Howard County marriage certificates, such as John Cooley and Elizabeth White, Elijah Creason and Elizabeth Lowell, and Abraham Barnes and Gracy Jones, and notes eleven were recorded in 1816. It copies Levens and Drake word for word in places, so a story told in both books is often one source.
The 1876 book is best for the south side: the Cole households child by child, the families of 1811 and 1812, every killing the authors knew of, and the fifteen pupils of John Savage's school, from the Bolin, Savage, Warden, Yarnall, Jolly, Scott and Rupe families. Much of it came from Samuel Cole himself.
The counties in this history
Where to look next on this site for families from Howard and Cooper Counties.
- Howard County: Biographies from the county histories
- Cooper County: Biographies from the county histories · Families traced in the county
Finding your ancestor in Howard and Cooper Counties
- Census records (free through 1950) list each person's occupation and town, so a work family shows up decade by decade.
- Death records: search our Missouri database by surname.
- The county histories themselves: the biographical sections of History of Howard and Cooper Counties, Missouri and A History of Cooper County, Missouri hold hundreds of family sketches.
- Newspapers on the Library of Congress's Chronicling America carried obituaries, accidents, and local news.
Tell us one grandparent's name. We'll take a free first look at the records and email you back.
Ask about my family →Frequently asked questions
Why was it called the Boone's Lick country?
The name came from a salt lick about eight miles northwest of New Franklin in Howard County, where Daniel Boone hunted. Both books say his sons Nathan and Daniel made salt there in 1807 and sold it in St. Louis. Levens and Drake (1876) doubt Boone ever lived there, and Peck credits the name to Nathan Boone's salt making.
Which forts did the Boonslick settlers build?
The 1883 history names Fort Cooper, about two miles southwest of Boone's Lick, Fort Kincaid near the later Boonville railroad bridge, and Fort Hempstead north of Kincaid. Peck adds Head's fort on the Moniteau and Cole's fort south of the river, which Stephen Cole built in 1812. A second Boonville fort went up at Hannah Cole's after Samuel McMahan was killed in December 1814.
Who was killed in the Boonslick during the war years?
The two county histories name Jonathan Todd, Thomas Smith, a man named Campbell, Braxton Cooper Jr., Joseph Still, William McLane, Capt. Sarshall Cooper, Samuel McMahan and an enslaved man named Joe. Peck's list of ten adds Wm. Gregg, John Smith and James Busby, and he says William T. Cole was killed in 1810 after a raid on the Loutre settlement.
What happened to Old Franklin?
Franklin was laid off in 1816 and became the Howard County seat, the land office town and the starting point for Santa Fe. The county seat moved to Fayette in 1823. Levens and Drake say the river began cutting into the town in 1826; the 1883 history says the people left in the spring of 1828, and some founded New Franklin.