2004—The Big Blue
The next evening, we came to the Missouri River at Kansas City (Missouri on this side, looking west, and Kansas on the other). You can no longer see where the Big Blue River used to flow from behind this Jackson County vantage point into Old Misery. In 1833, though, the “Mormon” Church (then still called officially the Church of Christ: the Latter-day Saints part wouldn’t be revealed for a few more years) owned the ferry over the mouth of the Big Blue. A profitable venture: any traveler who wished to go north on the United States side had to pay the Church’s toll. The other side was still unincorporated Indian territory.
0608BigBluec
No visible evidence remains of two very interesting historical and family-historical events that took place here:
  • 6 April 1833: Our nineteen-year-old Uncle Orrin Porter Rockwell and his pregnant first wife, Luana Beebe, hosted a general conference of the Church in the ferry-master’s house, which Port had only recently completed. This was the third anniversary of the organization of the Church and the first time on record that the “Mormons” celebrated that birthday in Conference assembled.

  • 22-23 October 1864: Confederate General Sterling Price (Remember Rooster Cogburn’s cat in True Grit?) and his Army of Missouri were defeated in the Battle of Byram’s Ford by Union forces including Major General Samuel Ryan Curtis, whose home in Keokuk we would come close to purchasing in 2005.
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