The wagons for Santa Fe left from Jackson County. Two county histories follow the trade as it came up the Missouri from Old Franklin to Independence, moved west to Westport, and settled at last on the rock landing that became Kansas City. The 1881 History of Jackson County, Missouri names the merchants, traders and yearly wagon counts. W. Z. Hickman's 1920 History of Jackson County, Missouri remembers the wagon shops, the whip makers and the farm boys who wanted to be wagon-masters. This page follows both, with the names a family researcher can use.
Written from 2 old histories, all free to read on the Internet Archive: The History of Jackson County, Missouri (1881); History of Jackson County, Missouri (1920). Everything below comes from those books, and where they give an opinion, we say so.
From Old Franklin to Independence
The 1881 history says the Santa Fe trade began at Old Franklin, a small Missouri River town in Howard County, and stayed there until 1831, when it sprang up at Independence. Independence was a hundred miles farther west, near the great bend of the river, and easier to reach from Franklin by water than by land. The books differ by a year. The county chapter of the 1881 book and Hickman's 1920 history both say 1831; the Kansas City chapter of the 1881 book says Independence was the outfitting point as early as 1832.
The first trips came earlier. The 1881 book says a party fitted out around Franklin in 1812, among them men named McKnight, Beard and Chambers. At Santa Fe they were arrested as spies and held at Chihuahua for nine years. Both books credit a Franklin captain with opening the trade for good, but the spelling wobbles: the 1881 county chapter says Becknell, its Kansas City chapter says Beckwith, and Hickman writes "Captain Beckwith or Becknell." When Becknell came home with a glowing report, many others went into the business.
Colonel Cooper and a few neighbors went out with pack animals in May 1822. The 1881 county chapter says wagons came in 1824 with a company of about eighty traders. The Kansas City chapter says pack animals were mostly used in 1822 and 1823, packs and wagons mixed in 1824 and 1825, and only wagons from 1826 on. Both books say Major Riley first used oxen in 1829.
Hickman ties the trade's best known writer to Jackson County. In 1825 a family moved from Boon's Lick to a place about four and a half miles northeast of Independence. One son, Josiah Gregg, studied medicine and, in poor health in 1834, went across the plains. Hickman says he published "Commerce of the Prairies" in 1845.
Independence: merchants, landings and wagon shops
The 1881 history names the Independence merchants around the square. Col. Samuel C. Owens, one of the principal wholesale dealers in the Mexican trade, kept a general store on the southwest corner. Samuel D. Lucas did a large business on the north side. John O. Agnew, also on the north side, dealt largely in goods for the New Mexican trade. Robert Courtney was on the southeast corner, later as Courtney & Mickelborough and then Courtney & Lewis. McCoy & Lee kept a store on the south side from 1839 to 1845. Henry Speares was a merchant trader who went with the caravans all the way to New Mexico.
Getting goods off the boats was its own contest. The Kansas City chapter says Blue Mills, about six miles below Independence, soon became the favorite landing, and Hickman says an immense warehouse there held freight for the overland trip. Independence wanted Wayne City instead and paved the river front with stone, but the landing stayed at Blue Mills. Hickman gives one reason: a high bluff at Wayne City meant doubling teams to haul a fair load to the top. About 1856 or 1857, with Kansas City getting a large share of the trade, Independence built a rock road to Wayne City, with Miles W. Burford as inspector. Hickman calls it the first rock road built in Jackson County.
Independence built its own wagons. The 1881 history lists Frank Simpson, John W. Modie, Robert Weston and later Hiram Young. Hickman remembered the shops by street corner: Robert A. Stone at Short and Liberty, Weston and Strode at Liberty and Kansas, John G. McCurdy at Main and White Oak, and John Eaton at Ruby and Osage. Hiram Young, a Black man who had bought his own freedom, had his shop on North Liberty and made a great many oak yokes and bows besides wagons. A new wagon cost about $150 and weighed about 2,100 pounds. John Landis and Porter McClanahan, and also John W. Modie, made the harness, and the forge fires sometimes burned late into the night.
Every teamster carried a rawhide whip 10 to 12 feet long. Hickman says Black men in the countryside bought beef hides and plaited the whips on winter evenings to sell when the trains started in spring. Hickman learned the craft as a boy from Sam Shepherd. Farmers counted on the spring traders to buy their surplus meat, and almost all the Independence merchants were what Hickman calls "outfitters."
“…the grand caravan leaves Independence with as much joy and light-heartedness as a party going to a Fourth of July celebration…”
Out on the trail to Santa Fe
The 1881 history describes the start. Once the loads were packed and the animals in place, in the book's words, "the grand caravan leaves Independence with as much joy and light-heartedness as a party going to a Fourth of July celebration."
The organizing happened at Council Grove, about one hundred and fifty miles out, where parties waited for each other and appointed officers. A whole caravan might carry $200,000 to $300,000 in goods, with over a hundred wagons and two hundred men fit for service. When the captain called "catch up!" each teamster answered "All's set." The book reckons the whole distance at 750 or 800 miles.
The road had its stories. In the summer of 1826 a Mr. Broadus shot himself in the arm pulling his rifle muzzle first from a wagon. Later, at his own wish, companions took the arm off with a handsaw, a butcher's knife and a hot iron bolt, and in a few weeks he was well. On the Cimarron, two young men named McNees and Monroe were shot while straggling from their caravan. The 1881 history says some traders then fired on another party of Indians without asking whether they had any part in it, killing all but one, and it lays a great share of the blame for later hostility on the traders. The Kansas City chapter counts only three government escorts, in 1829, 1834 and 1843.
Hickman quotes Alexander Majors on a full train: 25 or 26 large wagons, twelve oxen to each. Hickman says one of the great desires of farm boys was to become a wagon-master. Trains liked to gather where Raytown now stands. Absolem Wray put up a blacksmith shop there to be near the freighters, and after a Doctor Smith came the place got the name Raytown. Jesse Barnes, who came from Kentucky in 1839, built his house about two and a half miles southwest of Raytown on the old trail.
Westport takes the outfitting trade
Independence had been the center of the trade for some ten or fifteen years, the 1881 history says, when traders looked for an outfitting point with pasture farther west. Westport lay twelve miles west of Independence, took its name from that position, and sat beside the unoccupied Shawnee lands where the caravans' animals could feed. The county chapter says the bulk of the trade stayed at Independence "till about the years 1838-40" before it moved. The Kansas City chapter tells it from the traders' side: Mexican traders herded their teams near Westport while their goods came up to Blue Mills, and old Indian traders Bent and St. Vrain were landing goods at Chouteau's warehouse as early as 1834, saving an eighteen mile haul over wooded roads. J. C. McCoy laid out Westport in 1833.
The Westport chapter names the traders. In 1848 the Indian traders were Simpson and Hunter, E. D. Price, Boone and Hamilton, S. C. Roby, C. Chouteau & Co., W. G. & G. W. Ewing, and the American Fur Company. That year F. H. Aubry rode horseback from Santa Fe to Independence in five days and twenty-two hours, and he ran a winter freight line out of Westport known as Aubry's express.
Also in 1848 the Santa Fe trade at Westport began with great vigor, and Boone & Bernard were the only firm in it at first. The first large stock, owned by Messowey and Webb of Santa Fe, was loaded at Westport Landing: sixty-three wagon loads, freighted by John F. McCauley of Independence. In 1849 Jose Chaves became the first Mexican merchant to outfit at Westport. He came in with 103,000 Mexican silver dollars and deposited them with the firm. His brother had been murdered on the plains about five years before.
The California emigration came in 1849. The book estimates 40,000 people crossed the plains that year, about 20,000 of them outfitting at Westport. In 1853 Charles E. Kearney joined W. R. Bernard in place of A. G. Boone, and Kearney & Bernard outfitted six hundred wagons that year. As J. & W. R. Bernard the firm outfitted 1,407 wagons in 1856, then 1,560 in 1857, 1,902 in 1858 and 2,242 in 1859. In 1858 Westport shops made 240 new wagons, two thousand ox yokes and $25,000 worth of harness, and the town passed two thousand people. The trade fell off by a fourth in the spring of 1861 and stopped that fall. The 1881 writer calls Westport a faded suburb of Kansas City.
“One of the great desires of the farmer boys of those days was to get to be a wagon-master on the plains.”
How Westport Landing became Kansas City
The 1881 Kansas City chapter says the town grew out of a landing. Traders at Westport saw that a landing four miles away beat one eighteen miles away at Blue Mills, and the best spot was a natural rock landing at the foot of Grand avenue, on the estate of Gabriel Prudhomme. A ferry already ran there. Peter Roy started it and sold to James H. McGee, who sold to Rev. Isaac McCoy, who ran it until 1843 and then sold it to his son, John C. McCoy.
The Prudhomme land was sold on November 14, 1838, for $4,220, to a company that laid out a town it called Kansas. The members were Wm. L. Sublett, Moses G. Wilson, John C. McCoy, Wm. Gillis, Fry P. McGee, Abraham Fonda, Wm. M. Chick, Oliver Caldwell, Geo. W. Tate, Jacob Ragan, Wm. Collins, James Smart, Samuel C. Owens and Russell Hicks. Owens and Hicks lived in Independence and were taken in to soothe that town's jealousy. The company built a log warehouse kept by W. B. Evans, but legal trouble held the town still for eight years. Independence and Westport called it "Westport Landing" in derision. Cohn & Block offered the first stock of general merchandise in 1839.
On August 7, 1843, Santa Anna closed the ports of entry to northern Mexico, and not over ninety wagons crossed to Santa Fe in 1844. The 1881 writer calls it a severe blow to Independence that damaged Westport somewhat. Gregg's figures for 1843, reprinted in both books, show 230 wagons; the 1881 table gives 350 men and Hickman's copy 380. In 1844 H. M. Northrup came to Kansas City with the largest stock of goods yet offered there and started the first jobbing trade on the border.
When the trade resumed in 1845, larger than before, Bent and St. Vrain landed a cargo that the 1881 book calls the first ever to leave Kansas City in a train for Santa Fe. During the Mexican War, Independence and Westport took the largest share of the outfitting. Independence kept outfitting for years: Hickman says the last train outfitted there belonged to S. M. and I. N. Irwin in 1867, with wagons, yokes and bows by Hiram Young.
Finding a trader, freighter or outfitter in these books
The 1881 Westport township chapter is the richest for names. It lists old and prominent settlers, among them Allen McGee, who came from Kentucky in 1825 or 1826, John B. Warnall, William Bernard, and Joseph Bernard, Lewis Vogel and John Morris, who had died by then. It gives the justices of the peace for Kaw township from 1854, the mayors, clerks and marshals of Westport year by year from 1857, the postmasters, and the dated additions to the town, starting with Louis Vogle's first addition of April 1848. Its 1881 business directory names the blacksmiths A. Heppely and T. Crutchfield and the wagon shop of William Will.
For the earlier trade, the 1881 county chapter names the Independence merchants and wagon makers and prints a table of camping places and distances from Independence to Santa Fe. The Kansas City chapter reprints Gregg's yearly statistics down to 1843 and lists the 1838 town company. Hickman's 1920 book gives two lists of freighters. The early ones were Becknell or Beckwith, Dr. Gregg, Dr. Waldo, William and Silas Bent, Samuel C. Owens, St. Vrain, F. X. Aubrey, Dr. Connelly, the Armijo brothers, Samuel Magoffin, E. C. McCarty, Whiting and Otero, William H. Russell, and Oldham and Thompson. The later ones include Irwin and Jackman, Henry and Elija Chiles, George W. and A. C. Bryant, Hunter and Scruggs, Majors, Russell and Waddell, James B. Yager, Augustus and Peter Byrum, and S. S. and C. R. Barnes. Hickman also copies farm names from the government survey map near Raytown, such as the Collins, Howell's and Davenport farms.
The county in this history
Where to look next on this site for families from Jackson County.
- Jackson County: Biographies from the county histories · Research guide · Order No. 11 and the Border War: Jackson, Cass, Bates and Vernon
Finding your ancestor in Jackson County
- 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 The History of Jackson County, Missouri and History of Jackson 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
When did the Santa Fe trade move to Independence, Missouri?
The 1881 History of Jackson County says the trade began at Old Franklin in Howard County and moved to Independence in 1831, because Independence was a hundred miles farther west and easier to reach by water. Hickman's 1920 history also gives 1831. The Kansas City chapter of the 1881 book says Independence was the outfitting point as early as 1832.
Who built wagons for the Santa Fe trade in Independence?
The 1881 history names Frank Simpson, John W. Modie, Robert Weston and later Hiram Young. Hickman's 1920 history adds Robert A. Stone, Weston and Strode, John G. McCurdy and John Eaton, with the street corners of their shops. Hiram Young, who had bought his own freedom, had a shop on North Liberty and made wagons, oak yokes and bows. Hickman says Young built the outfit for the last train to leave Independence, in 1867.
How many wagons outfitted at Westport, Missouri?
The 1881 history gives counts for Kearney & Bernard and its successor J. & W. R. Bernard: six hundred wagons in 1853, 1,407 in 1856, 1,560 in 1857, 1,902 in 1858 and 2,242 in 1859. It also estimates that about 20,000 California emigrants outfitted at Westport in 1849. The Santa Fe trade there stopped in the fall of 1861.
Why was Kansas City first called Westport Landing?
The 1881 history says Independence and Westport nicknamed the new town of Kansas "Westport Landing" in derision. Because the town company's legal troubles kept it from growing for years, the name stuck. The town grew up around a natural rock landing at the foot of Grand avenue, where Santa Fe and Indian traders found it handier to land goods than at Blue Mills, eighteen miles from Westport.