Tehama County

Biographies

 

JOSEPH McCOY, JR.

Joseph McCoy, Jr., born ten miles west of St. Louis, Missouri, March 24, 1823, was the fourth child of Captain Joseph and Mary Ann (Lewis) McCoy. In 1836, when a youth of thirteen years, he went with his father and the family to what is now Clark county, Missouri, where his mother died August 9, 1839. As Joseph was the only child at home, his father soon gave up housekeeping and the former "became his own guardian and tutor" and set about making his own living and taking his part in that then new country. He started in by farming some of the old McCoy homestead, which was rather a "hard row to hoe" under conditions he had to face. In the spring and early summer of 1845 he made the trip on horseback to Ohio and visited relatives of his father, thence making his way to Kentucky, where he visited relatives of his mother. From the Blue Grass state he returned home to Missouri, having completed the round trip on horseback. On December 18, 1845, he married Miss Jane McKean of Brown county, Illinois, whom he had known for several years, as the family had lived in Clark county. They at once settled down on the "old place" in a log house that his father had built in 1836. They became the parents of three children while living in this old house: Galen Clark, born October 2, 1846; Rosemary Young, born July 18, 1848; and Leo Lewis, born August 1, 1850.

In the fall of 1850 Joseph McCoy moved to Alexandria, Clark county, and embarked in the general merchandise and warehouse business, becoming proprietor of a general store. Alexandria being on the Mississippi river, during the memorable flood of 1851, Joseph McCoy and a man by the name of Brown hired a river steamboat and moved their families and some household goods to higher ground, called the "sand ridge," which was about six miles to the west. In that cargo was the family horse and buggy. The horse lived until 1870 and was carefully buried in the edge of the family graveyard. When the waters subsided that summer, Mr. McCoy moved his stock of goods to a tract of land he entered, which was twelve miles from Alexandria and which joined the "old place". This was on a sort of ridge between the Des Moines and Fox rivers. The ridge later became the great highway to the west and the historic "Alexandria and Bloomfield road." Mr. McCoy continued in the merchandise business at this new place until 1854, when he sold the building and stock of goods to Roswell Shellhouse. He also sold Mr. Shellhouse two acres of land on the northwest corner of the place to which the store building was moved. In May, 1855, a post office was established there, called Boneta, with Roswell Shellhouse as postmaster. At this new place Joseph McCoy and his wife became the parents of four more children: Alexander McKean, born June 9, 1852; Solon, born August 4, 1854; Adrian Hill, born February 24, 1857; and Mortimer Wilson, born February 19, 1859.

In the spring of 1864, Mr. McCoy sold this place on the Alexandria and Bloomfield road to a man by the name of Sowers and moved with his family to St. Francisville, to obtain the benefit of a good school, and there they lived until the spring of 1866. Then they moved to a fine farm of three hundred and twenty acres, known as the old Colonel Mitchell place, which Mr. McCoy purchased in the spring of 1865 and began to improve. This was one of the most valuable farms in Clark county, and Mr. McCoy was one of the earliest and most noted breeders of fine Durham cattle in that section of the state. He was engaged rather extensively in the buying, feeding and shipping of beef cattle to Chicago and other markets. During the Civil war he carried on extensive operations in the purchase of cattle for the Illinois feeders. The latter feared the Missouri bushwhackers of those days, so they would go to Warsaw, Illinois, or Keokuk, Iowa, send for Mr. McCoy and give him considerable money to furnish a band of good feeder steers, delivered across the Mississippi river. Mr. McCoy bought and gathered cattle as far south as the Missouri river. He was so well known and respected that he could ride over the country, carry money to pay for cattle and not be molested by the soldiers on either side. Mrs. McCoy died September 2, 1871, and was buried in the Wolf cemetery in St. Francisville. Late in the fall of that year Mr. McCoy and his daughter came to California for the benefit of their health, spending about ten months in this state. At that time the members of the family were well scattered. Galen was engaged in buying hogs for the Andy Maxwell Packing Company of Alexandria, which was then perhaps the largest pork packing company in the United States. Leo and Alexander were students at La Grange College, while the three younger boys were in the Musgrove Academy of Alexandria. A few years later found Mr. McCoy and his daughter, then the widow of W. H. Baxter, living entirely alone on the old farm, the boys all having removed to other sections of the country. Galen, Leo and Alexander were residents of Red Bluff, California; Adrian had a large cattle ranch in the Panhandle of Texas; Mortimer was in Kansas; and Solon had gone to Kahoka, Missouri, or possibly to Texas. Mr. McCoy finally sold his farm in Clark county, Missouri, and moved with his daughter to Santa Cruz, California, while later he lived for a few years at Los Gatos. In the fall of 1899 he came to Red Bluff, where his three sons, Galen, Leo and Alexander, resided. He died January 1, 1900, when nearly seventy-seven years of age, and his remains were interred in Oak Hill cemetery at Red Bluff.

A contemporary biographer said: "Mr. McCoy was a most wonderful character; a perfect gentleman at all times and under all circumstances; as gracious to the slaves of that day as he was to the master; as honest as the day God of heaven, and as true as the needle to the pole. David M. Lapsley once wrote to the son, Leo Lewis, in California: "I knew your mother when she was a girl and I went to school with your father in Waterloo, Missouri, in 1837." In another letter he said: "Your father gave his family a better education and business training than any other man in Clark county." Mr. McCoy always fostered good schools, often had his children in private schools and during two years of the war, when schools were closed, hired a fine teacher for his children. In the spring and summer of 1867, he and George K. Biggs, brother of Major Biggs of Butte county, California, erected a two-room building for a schoolhouse at their own expense. They selected an excellent teacher, the Rev. Thomas J. Musgrove, who chose his own assistant, and in September, 1867, a pay or subscription school was opened, called Pleasant Hill Academy, from which Leo and Alexander McCoy graduated in the spring of 1869, afterward entering La Grange College.

James A. Jenkins, a prominent member of an old-time family of Clark county, in writing the history of the pioneers of the county, introduced the biography of Mr. McCoy with these words: "Joseph McCoy deserves more than a passing notice. He was well known, universally respected, successful in business, faultless in cultured politeness, a Chesterfield seven days in the week. His like was never known before or since in Clark county." Another writer characterized him as follows: "He was the personification of truth and veracity. He never told a lie, never even 'chopped the cherry tree,' so he had no cause for the prevarication of any truth. His father once in telling something of the boy's youth said: 'Joseph never told a lie and was never inside of a meetinghouse till he was twenty years old.' He was very chaste in his language, never told a shady story, never swore or used an expression inappropriate before a Sunday school class of children. He was never a member of any church or of any secret organization, never an open professor of religion -- but he lived the life." There is now in possession of his son, Leo Lewis McCoy, a book of nearly three hundred pages, "The American Chesterfield," containing a variety of choice selections, for the building of character, from the letters of Lord Chesterfield to his son. The inscription on the fly-leaf shows that this book was given to Mr. McCoy by Galen Clark in 1837, when the former was a youth of fourteen years. As he had but few books at hand, he seems to have carefully studied and turned well to account the best that Lord Chesterfield had given to his son.

Transcribed by Sande Beach.

 

© 2005 Sande Beach.