Migration to Missouri


All of my family lines came to Southeast Missouri between 1818 and 1851.

The Clodfelter, Fleming, King, Lewis, McNeely, Miller, and Stevenson ancestors all emigrated to Cape Girardeau County from North Carolina. Wilhelm Regenhardt emigrated to Cape Girardeau from Brunswick Province in North Central Germany via New Orleans in 1849. Wilhelm Theuerkauf, born near Wilhelm Regenhardt, was in Cape Girardeau by 1851.

Clodfelter

In the summer of 1818 there came on horseback from Cabarrus County, North Carolina one Phillip Clodfelter (b. 1795).  He was of a family of 17 children, having nine brothers. His father gave each son two hundred dollars and a horse when they were old enough to shift for themselves.
   
After viewing the country he returned to North Carolina, married Jamima Jane Foster in Dec 1822, and the following spring came to Missouri, and settled near New Wells. 

Phillip Clodfelter was a cooper by trade.  He made buckets, churns, tubs, barrels, and pails of various kinds.
Fleming

Mitchell Fleming, born in Kent County, Delaware in 1761 and moved with his parents to Rowan County, North Carolina as a boy.

He served in the Revolutionary War. He married Agnes Kennedy in 1784.

In 1819 he and his family joined a group of colonists and moved to Cape Girardeau County, Missouri and settled near Shawneetown. They were charter members of Apple Creek Presbyterian church.
King

James King, born about 1800 in Rutherford County, Tennessee migrated to Memphis, Tennessee by 1829 ( a son, Solomon, was born in Memphis). By 1832, he and his family were in Madison County Missouri, where their next child, Samuel Marion King, was born.
Lewis

Four Lewis brothers, George, Jacob, John, and David were born in North Carolina (per Census records) in the early 1800's. We believe the name of their father was Benjamin.

We have found a Benjamin Lewis in the 1800 Moore County, North Carolina Census. He is living next to a Jacob Cagle, and they continue to live near each other in the 1800 through 1840 Censuses and they migrate to Missouri.

We next see records of them in Cocke County, Tennessee.

Their next documented location is Marion County, Tennessee.

George and Jacob were in Marion County, Tennesse in 1836, according to the county tax list, living in District 1. John Lewis is living in District 4. Another Lewis on the Tax list was Benjamin, living nearby in District 1. He could have possibly been the father of the 4 brothers. Note that John and George each named one of their sons Benjamin. No sons of the four brothers were named Nathan - the name other researchers thing is the name of the father.

Jacob, David, and John all were in Madison County, Missouri by 1844, and census records show each of them them have a child born in Missouri in that year or the year after. George was in the 1850 Census in Marion County, Tennessee, but was in Iron County, Missouri by 1851, as the next census lists his 12th child as born in Missouri in 1851.

John, David, and George acquired Land Patents from the US Government in Madison County, Missouri. David and John got the first land patents in 1853, then George in 1854. Their earliest Land Patents were in the Lower Carver Creek Valley, northwest of Annapolis.

Iron County was formed in 1857. The area around Annapolis was originally a part of Madison County.

Jacob Lewis acquired a Land Patent in Reynolds County in 1857.
McNeely

John R. McNeely, a native of North Carolina.  The latter was reared in his native State, and was married in 1826 to Mary Shufford, who was also a native of North Carolina, born in 1807. 

After their marriage they immigrated to Missouri, and settled in Cape Girardeau County in 1833.  There they entered land and improved a farm, near Leemon. Although Mr. McNeely  was a cooper by trade he managed his farm during his life, and died there about 1843. 
Miller

When John arrived in Madison County is uncertain. One story says the Miller brothers Jacob, George, and John, all born in Virginia, came down the Ohio River by boat.
John was settled in the Marble Creek community of Madison County, Missouri by 1820. He married Sarah D. Harrison around that time in Madison County.
The are around his home would become a part of Iron County in 1857. Records show him being elected County Judge just after Iron County was formed in 1857.
Stevenson

James Stevenson, a Captain during the Revolutionary War, had 6 children. James Stevenson,Junior, was born in 1781 in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, in 1781.

James Stevenson, Junior and Jane Fleming were married in 1808 in Cabarrus County in Poplar Tent Church in the Poplar Tent community. But Probably James Stevenson may have lived in Rowan before moving to Missouri in 1819; as Elizabeth, his seventh child, born in 1819, is said to have been born in Rowan County.

The War of 1812 took the English and Indians out of the territory which is now Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The Indians that were left were being pushed West onto reservations. Settlement of the Louisiana Territory was the issue of the day. Spain and France had tried to settle it for the past 100 years but were unsuccessful.

There was a trail west from the Carolina and Virginias through the Cumberland Gap, on through Tennessee and Kentucky that Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton and others had established before the Revolutionary War. It went on to cross the Ohio River close to where it joined the Mississippi, To cross the Mississippi the trail led to Moccasin Springs, where Mr. Green ran the ferry that took you across the river. The Trail of Tears State Park is there now.