The History of Buchanan County, MissouriAfter months of unceasing toil, we have completed the history of Buchanan County. The result proves that we did not overestimate the importance and difficulty of the task. The importance and difficulty of the work result from the same cause, viz: The almost total lack in many instances of reliable data. This difficulty, however, has in a measure been overcome by a systematic canvass of the county, whereby we have been enabled to gather together, glean and compile into comprehensible and permanent form, what, until now, has floated about in the changing mists of tradition; the reader will readily realize how difficult has been this task, and how important that the work is done at this comparatively early date. The first settlers who acted so important a part in the history of the county, and who heretofore have been the sole custodians of much material essential for such a work as this, are rapidly disappearing from among us, and those who remain become less and less reliable as year by year the memory of early times grows indistinct. The importance of the work is enhanced by the fact, that Buchanan county is one of the chief agricultural counties of the State, and further, by the fact, that it contains in point of population the third city in the State. In order to devote that attention to the various interests of the county which its importance demanded, we supposed it would be necessary to make a book of from eight to nine hundred pages. The publication of such a book for a patronage limited to a single county was a hazardous undertaking, viewed from a business standpoint. Much solicitude was felt on this account during the first stages of the enterprise but what misgivings we may have felt, have been dispelled by the generous patronage afforded by the people of the county. We have been so far encouraged by the patronage vouchsafed, that the work has been extended to beyond what was originally intended, and instead of a book of from eight to nine hundred pages as promised in our prospectus, the book approximates eleven hundred pages. Our solicitude for the success of the enterprise in a business sense was natural, but it has not been our sole solicitude; we have likewise intensely desired to make the work reliable, full and attractive, and thereby to merit the public favor, which the people of the county have extended to us. In presenting the work to our many hundred readers, we have the satisfaction of knowing that they will appreciate merit when found, and of further believing that errors will be criticized with the understanding that book-making, like all other kinds of labor, has its peculiar vicissitudes.
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Read the Book - Free Download the Book - Free ( 71.4 MB PDF) "The Bluff formation," says Professor Swallow, "rests upon the ridges and river bluffs, and descends along their slopes to the lowest valleys, the formation capping all the bluffs of the Missouri from Fort Union to its mouth, and those of the Mississippi from Dubuque to the mouth of the Ohio. It forms the upper stratum beneath the soil of all the high lands, both timber and prairies, of all the counties north of the Osage and Missouri, and also St. Louis. and the Mississippi counties on the south. |