Day 20 -- Big Lake, Missouri to Nebraska City, Nebraska -- 57 Miles

The goal today was research, and we spent the morning hours doing exactly that. My current research project involves trying to find out where my two times great grandfather was living in 1850 when he was recorded by the census as living in Atchison County, Missouri, which lies at the most northern and western tip of the state.

At the time my ancestor lived in Atchison County there were 1641 white free men and women, 7 black free men and women, and 30 slaves who showed up on the census document. Statistically, the breakdown of white free men and women was 887 Males, 754 females, four free black males, 3 free black females living in a total of 291 homes in this portion of the state. Whether the slaves were male or female was not recorded and I can't tell if the housing number represents slave housing or not.

The perplexing thing about this census document is that the census taker did not record any towns. And even though there seems to have been at least a half dozen "settlements" in the county, the census taker didn't feel compelled to record that information. So, even though there are 37 pages of names for 1850 in Atchison County, it's impossible to tell where exactly anyone lived. What could be worse? It's just one big conglomerate of people in 550 square miles of territory.

Why is this bad? Well, if you want to find a town cemetery where your ancestor lived, it really narrows things down if you know what town that might be. Finding the right cemetery might help you stumble upon other family members you weren't even looking for.

Anyway, so the census guy was either lazy, or maybe in 1850 there were no "real towns" as defined by the federal government. And in truth, most if not all the towns in Atchison County, Missouri didn't come into official being until after 1850. Still, the perplexing thing is that many had been around since the late 1830s. It's not like the informal villages didn't have names yet.

All this noodling I had actually done long ago from the comfort of my home easy chair. Nowadays it is not necessary to trek thousands of miles across the country to work on your genealogy. Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org brings it right to your computer screen. However, what I hoped to accomplish today by coming to Atchison County was to perhaps stumble on a local library that had composited local history for so long that there might be reference materials located there that might not be on the web just yet.

Our primary goal today was to reach Rock Port, Missouri, the county seat of Atchison County. Of course when we decided on the county seat as our destination, I immediately envisioned a prosperous, bustling little community with an old but vibrant downtown, a modern library, and great places to explore and photograph. I wasn't even deterred when Concetta read the population figure at the southern edge of town as we approached: 1266. But as we rolled into town it was immediately obvious that Rock Port was going to turn out to be just another rural, middle American town that time and economic development had forgotten.

We cruised slowly from one end of town to the other, eyeing the collapsing storefronts, the boarded up windows, and the fading exteriors. "Oh, man," I thought. "This just isn't going to work out."

But we spied the library at the north end of town so we circled the adjacent block and parked across two or three spaces next to the only modern building we had seen so far, the local bank. "The sun is out," I told Concetta. "We might as well do some walking."

After visiting the post office to mail a letter and finding that they take two hours for lunch and were not in attendance for our visit, we set our course for the library just down the block. The front was painted a sort of dismal green, and the color sort of echoed my scant hope of finding any useful information in such a woebegone setting.

But surprise, surprise! The moment we entered the door we found ourselves once again in the most welcoming environment that one could ever hope for.

I could see immediately that an older lady, who was probably the head librarian, was busily involved in conversation with another patron. But the assistant librarian, who was seated behind a computer to the rear of the front desk, spoke right up and asked if she could help me.

Then, for the next several minutes I explained my quest and what I knew of their local history. She was sympathetic with my task, but it was obvious she was not going to be able to answer my questions. "But," she said. "Darlene will know the answers."

Hearing her name, Darlene immediately ended her conversation and came over. When I had explained my research project to her she asked me to come with her, and she lead me to another room at the rear of the library that contained shelf after shelf of compiled local history. "Most of this concentrates on time periods later then 1850," she said. "But this," she dragged a huge book off a nearby shelf and laid it on the center table, "has a lot of the early stuff even though it was published in the 1880s."

"Great," I said.

Darlene went on to explain that she had taken apart the old book when it began to fall apart on its own from extended use, and put the pages in plastic sleeves so she could copy sections for genealogists without further harming the original pages. The pages then went into two giant binders. "You just go ahead and look through these binders," Darlene said, taking a second book off the shelf. "And I'll photocopy anything you want for ten cents a page."

I nodded. "Sounds great," I said, and I sat down and for a next couple of hours I just looked at all the early history of Atchison County that might be appropriate. Unfortunately, my ancestor did not show up in the index of the old book, but I really hadn't expected him to play any huge roll in local history as his stay in the area was probably short. My ancestor was a teamster, according to the census, and there were a total of nine teamsters in the county. There were also a half dozen blacksmiths, an equal number of wagon builders, several doctors, several school teachers, and a very large number of farmers.

At the end of my study time I had not found any references to teamsters or any hint to what a teamster might be doing in the county, except that by 1850 steamboats were navigating the Missouri on a regular basis and steamboats needed wood for the boilers. Somebody would have had to cut and haul wood to the pickup locations along the banks of the river where the steamers could pull in and load up. Also, since things were bustling in the 1850s, lots of building materials would have been required, farmers would have needed products freighted to bigger cities, and perhaps the big cities would have needed products delivered to rural areas.

At one point the assistant librarian walked through the genealogy room and stopped to talk to me. "You know," she said,"the first few towns were down by the Missouri River originally, but over time they were mostly all washed away by movements of the river as it changed course."

Cemeteries, too?" I asked.

She nodded. "Everything's gone now, but that's where most of the economic activity would have been centered in the earliest times.

"How far from the river are we here in Rock Port?" I asked.

"Six miles or so," the assistant said.

At that point Darlene showed up and asked how I was doing.

I told her that I had found the various stories in her 1880s book valuable for getting a feeling of the environment of Atchison County, but I found nothing that will help me in my quest for John Stephen Daley, a man who had come and gone, perhaps even in Darlene's own community, and not left a trace. I would, I told her, watch on Ebay for a copy of the Atchison County book, but in reality it was only of minimal help.

At that point the clock had traced its way around to 1:00 p.m. and Concetta and I decided to go back to the RV and have some lunch. After lunch we wandered the main street until it began to rain, then we saddled up and rolled out of town. We hadn't been successful (well, Concetta had found a new exciting reading book at the library), but we had met some extremely nice folks who made every extra effort to help us in our goals. My opinion of small-town America, though often looking a little down-at-the-heels in today's fast-paced world, continues to soar. People in small towns are just the nicest you'll ever want to meet. And if they can help you in ANY way they will rush to do so.

As you can see, we didn't drive very far today. Our driving conditions in the states of Missouri, Iowa, and Nebraska went from lovely and sunny to dark and stormy. Most incredible, we came upon a wall of brake lights on I29 ahead of us after leaving Rock Port, and found that everyone in both northbound lanes had pulled over and stopped until a severe hail storm had passed. Fortunately for us, we didn't rrive until the hail storm was over, though we did crunch over the marble-sized ice for the next mile or so.

Tomorrow? Well we're parked here at the "Victorian RV Park" in Nebraska City, Nebraska. Just down the road is a Lewis and Clark Trail center that we want to explore first thing after breakfast. After that, we're headed for the Mormon settlement of "Winter Quarters" up near Omaha. Winter Quarters was the last place in the settled United States that the Mormons lived before moving west to the Utah territory. My 3-times great grandfather was there between 1845 and 1847. So the adventure continues, and until we meet again, we wish you Happy Travels as well.