Looking Back: Democracy: Voices & Votes

by Marcia Napier, Grain Valley Historical Society
 
As the Historical Society prepares for the Smithsonian Museum on Main Street, this column will reflect how Democracy: Voices & Votes has affected Grain Valley. The column is not meant to be a history lesson; it would take someone far more intelligent than me to write that column.  Rather, over the next several months I hope to focus on how our town came to be and some stories about how the citizens of our town have helped shape our history.  So, let's start at the beginning, not the beginning of our country, but the beginning of our state.

A petition to Congress from Missouri requesting statehood was presented by the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Henry Clay on January 8, 1818. The first U.S. Land Sale in Missouri was recorded at the St. Louis District Land Office on July 13, 1818. While Missouri had a population large enough for statehood, the voices of both the US Senate and the House of Representatives debated for over two years before voting to admit Missouri on August 10, 1821.

It was all part of the Missouri Compromise admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a non-slave state so as not to upset the balance between slave and free states in the nation. Many statesmen agreed that the compromise both delayed the Civil War and sowed its seeds.

On December 15, 1826, the Missouri State Legislature authorized the "County of Jackson," named after the seventh president of the United States of America, Andrew Jackson. Land west of Buckner Tarsney was part of Osage Indian land from Treaty of 1808 and land east of Buckner Tarsney was part of Lafayette County Jackson County was purchased from the Osage Indians and carved into 9 townships.

Here are some historical facts.
1834  Sni-A-Bar Township was organized
1842  Robert St. Clair brought his wife and 6 children to a 1000-acre farm in the area which became Pink Hill in the late 1840s.  Their 12 -room home was destroyed during the Civil War.  
1844 Jacob Franklin Gregg was born at Stony Point on March 3, 1844 
1845  Benjamin and Lucinda Warren homesteaded near Tarsney Lake.
1847  William Robert Kirby went west to pan for gold.  He returned and married Susan Capelle.
1850  The Post Office opened at Stony Point and Jacob Gregg (father of Jacob Franklin Gregg) was  appointed the first postmaster.
1854  The first school house was built at Pink Hill.
July 25, 1854  A post office was established at Pink Hill.  Charles St. Clair carried the mail from Independence.
1858  Pleasant Valley Church (Baptist or Methodist) was built at Stony Point.
1860 The census establishes Jacob Gregg as living with wife Nancy and their 10 children in Stony Point.
1863 August 25, 1863: Order #11 issued by Gen. Ewing…. much of Pink Hill was burned by the Kansas   Red Hogs.
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.

Photo credit: Grain Valley Historical Society