​Looking Back: Democracy in the 1840s

by Marcia Napier, Grain Valley Historical Society
 
Twenty-one years after the United States Congress made Missouri the 24th state (August 10, 1821), Jacob Franklin Gregg was born on March 22, 1844. Some accounts tell us he was the first baby born in the tiny village of Stony Point. Known as Frank, he was one of ten children born to Jacob and Nancy Gregg, who came to Jackson County in 1825.

They purchased land at Stony Point in 1843. Jacob Gregg held several positions in Jackson County, including sheriff, postmaster, and in 1850 he was elected to the Missouri State House of Representatives. Gregg and his neighbors and fellow landowners, Alexander Mc Alexander, Henry Haines, William Baugh, Jesse Barnard, and Robert Parker, to name a few, saw fit to build a school, a church, and establish a general store and post office, all before the Civil War. Democracy in action!

Pink Hill was placed on the map by the United States Post Office in 1854 and Charles St Clair carried the first mail overland from Matthews Landing (near Levasy).  In the same year the first school was built. George Love and Asbury Neer platted a town of 40 lots on 10 acres where present day Pink Hill and Kirby roads intersect northeast of Grain Valley. The first homesteaders in the area were Samuel Young in 1843 and Jacob Keshlear and William Holland in 1845 and Robert Graham (my maternal great, great, great grandfather) in 1849.

Many of the families in both communities came from Kentucky or Tennessee, so on August 25, 1863, when General Thomas Ewing issued Order No. 11, both villages were abandoned by the residents with loyalties to the Confederate States of America. After the War Between the States some returned and others moved to the area.  Both villages continued to thrive for a few years.  School boards were established, mayors were elected, laws were written, the villages each had a sheriff. In 1871, the Pink Hill Methodist Church was established. In 1873, James H. Cannon arrived in Jackson County.  He was a farmer and teacher at Stony Point. Later he established a mercantile there, and in 1876 he became the postmaster.
​
Both villages hoped for the railroad to come through their community, but when the Chicago and Alton Railroad was completed in 1878, the tracks were laid in a more or less straight line from Oak Grove to Blue Springs. Both towns were bypassed. Mr. Cannon moved his mercantile to the railroad and Grain Valley was established!

The Cannon Store. Grain Valley, Missouri, Circa 1878. Photo credit: Grain Valley Historical Society.