1.
Alexander Majors
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Alexander Majors was a US businessman, who along with William Hepburn Russell and William B. Waddell founded the Pony Express, based in Kansas City, Missouri and it had previously been held by Butterfield Overland Mail, which delivered the mail in 25 days or more over a route that went through the South. Even though they succeeded in making the deliveries, they did not get the contract and they went bankrupt after the Transcontinental Telegraph opened in October 1861, as its competition eliminated the need for some mail service. He provided rail ties for the crews of the Union Pacific Railroad working on the First Transcontinental Railroad, after the railroad was completed, he continued to haul freight to towns not yet served by the railroad. Alexander Majors was born October 4,1814, in Franklin, in 1848 Alexander Majors started hauling overland freight on the Santa Fe Trail. On his first trip, he set a new record of 92 days for the 1564-mile round trip. Eventually he employed 4,000 men, including a 15-year-old lad named Billy Cody, Cody became one of his most famous Pony Express riders. In 1853 Majors was awarded contracts to haul supplies to United States Army posts along the Santa Fe Trail, Majors helped establish the Kansas City stockyards, which became a center of shipping beef to the East Coast and Midwest. In 1854 he teamed up with William B, Majors was responsible for the freighting part of the business, Waddell was to manage the office, and Russell was to use his Washington DC contacts to acquire new contracts. Waddell chose be a silent partner, so the firm was initially called Majors, in the 1850s their firm Russell, Majors and Waddell and the short-lived Pony Express were major businesses, contributing to the growth of Kansas City. Majors Overland Stage Company was part of a network that reached into the frontier West. Fifteen years later, it was all over, on the Missouri side of State Line at 81st Street, Majors built his two-story frame farmhouse in 1855. There, wagon trains loaded with goods from his warehouse down on the river headed west, in Westport, Majors operated a meat-packing plant. It supplied the trains with cured pork, soap and candles, for 15 years Majors and his far-flung interests were highly successful. In 1860 his Pony Express began, but by then, technology was already threatening. Telegraphs and railroads were a reality, the telegraph spelled doom for Pony Express, and the great iron horse killed Majors freighting and stage coach operations in time. By 1865 Majors sold out what remained and moved to Colorado. There,30 years later, his former young wagonmaster and Pony Express rider and he was old, ill and penniless
2.
Jim Bridger
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He was of English ancestry, and his family had been in North America since the early colonial period. Jim Bridger had a constitution that allowed him to survive the extreme conditions he encountered walking the Rocky Mountains from what would become southern Colorado to the Canada–US border. He had conversational knowledge of French, Spanish and several native languages and he would come to know many of the major European American explorers of the early west, including Kit Carson, George Armstrong Custer, Hugh Glass, John Frémont, Joseph Meek, and John Sutter. Bridger was a contemporary of British and American pathfinders including Peter Skene Ogden, Jedediah Smith. In 1830, Smith and his associates sold their fur company to Bridger, Bridger was part of the second generation of mountain men and pathfinders who explored the American West that followed the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804. James Felix Bridger was born on March 17,1804, in Richmond and his father, James Bridger, was an innkeeper in Richmond, and his mother was James wife Chloe. About 1812 his parents and the young Bridger moved to the vicinity of St. Louis, at the age of 13 Bridger was orphaned when both his parents died. Receiving no formal education, unable to read or write, Bridger was apprenticed to a blacksmith, Bridger remained illiterate for the rest of his life. Ashleys expedition included fur trapping on the sources of the Missouri River, while continuing his fur trapping venture and employment on the Ashley expedition, the young Bridger played a significant role in the ordeal of Hugh Glass. On June 2,1823 Ashleys men were attacked by Arikara warriors along the Missouri River, fifteen men were killed and the rest of the fur trappers fled down the river and hid in shelters until U. S. military support defeated the Arikara. In August 1823, near the forks of the Grand River in present-day Perkins County, South Dakota, while scouting for game for the expeditions larder, the bear charged, picked him up, and threw him to the ground. Glass shot into the air to scare the bear away and save his trapping partners, Ashley asked for two volunteers to stay with Glass until he died and then bury him. Bridger and John Fitzgerald stepped forward, and as the rest of the party moved on, later claiming that they were interrupted by attacking Arikara Native Americans, the pair grabbed Glasss rifle, knife, and other equipment, and took flight. Bridger and Fitzgerald later caught up with the party and incorrectly reported to Ashley that Glass had died, despite his injuries, Glass regained consciousness. After recovering, Glass set out again to find Fitzgerald and Bridger and he eventually found Bridger at the mouth of the Bighorn River, but apparently forgave him because of his youth. Glass later found Fitzgerald and reportedly spared Fitzgeralds life because of the penalty for killing a soldier of the United States Army, Bridger was among the first white men to see the geysers and other natural wonders of the Yellowstone region. In the winter of 1824-1825, Bridger gained fame as the first European American to see the Great Salt Lake, due to its saltiness, he believed it to be an arm of the Pacific Ocean. In 1843, Bridger and Louis Vasquez built a trading post, later named Fort Bridger, in 1835 he married a woman from the Flathead Indians tribe with whom he had three children
3.
Kansas City, Missouri
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Kansas City is the largest city in Missouri and the sixth largest city in the Midwest. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the city had an population of 475,378 in 2015. It is the city of the Kansas City metropolitan area. Kansas City was founded in the 1830s as a Missouri River port at its confluence with the Kansas River coming in from the west, on June 1,1850 the town of Kansas was incorporated, shortly after came the establishment of the Kansas Territory. Confusion between the two ensued and the name Kansas City was assigned to them soon thereafter. Most of the city lies within Jackson County, but portions spill into Clay, Cass, along with Independence, it serves as one of the two county seats for Jackson County. Major suburbs include the Missouri cities of Independence and Lees Summit and the Kansas cities of Overland Park, Olathe, and Kansas City. The city is composed of neighborhoods, including the River Market District in the north, the 18th and Vine District in the east. Kansas City is also known for its cuisine, its craft breweries, Kansas City, Missouri was officially incorporated as a town on June 1,1850, and as a city on March 28,1853. The territory straddling the border between Missouri and Kansas at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers was considered a place to build settlements. The Antioch Christian Church, Dr. James Compton House, the first documented European visitor to Kansas City was Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont, who was also the first European to explore the lower Missouri River. Criticized for his response to the Native American attack on Fort Détroit, Bourgmont lived with a Native American wife in a village about 90 miles east near Brunswick, Missouri, where he illegally traded furs. In the documents, he describes the junction of the Grande Riv des Cansez and Missouri River, French cartographer Guillaume Delisle used the descriptions to make the areas first reasonably accurate map. The Spanish took over the region in the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the French continued their fur trade under Spanish license. After the 1804 Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark visited the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, in 1831, a group of Mormons from New York settled in what would become the city. They built the first school within Kansas Citys current boundaries, but were forced out by mob violence in 1833, in 1833 John McCoy established West Port along the Santa Fe Trail,3 miles away from the river. In 1834 McCoy established Westport Landing on a bend in the Missouri to serve as a point for West Port. Soon after, the Kansas Town Company, a group of investors, began to settle the area, in 1850, the landing area was incorporated as the Town of Kansas
4.
Vincennes, Indiana
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Vincennes is a city in and the county seat of Knox County, Indiana, United States. It is located on the lower Wabash River in the part of the state. According to the 2010 census, its population was 18,423, the vicinity of Vincennes was inhabited for thousands of years by different cultures of indigenous peoples. During the Late Woodland period, some of these peoples used local loess hills as burial sites, some of the prominent examples are the Sugar Loaf Mound. In historic times, prominent local native groups were the Shawnee, Wabash, the first European settlers were French, when Vincennes was founded as part of the French colony of New France. Later on, it would be transferred to the colony of Louisiana, several years later, France lost the French and Indian War, and as result ceded territory east of the Mississippi River, including Vincennes, to the victorious British. Once the area was under British rule, it was associated with the Province of Quebec and it then became part of the Illinois Country of the Colony and Dominion of Virginia. Next it became part of Knox County in the Northwest Territory, Vincennes served as capital of the Indiana Territory from 1800 until 1813, when the government was moved to Corydon. The first trading post on the Wabash River was established by Sieur Juchereau, with thirty-four Canadiens, he founded the company post on October 28,1702 to trade for Buffalo hides with American Indians. The exact location of Juchereaus trading post is not known, but because the Buffalo Trace crosses the Wabash at Vincennes, the post was a success, in the first two years, the traders collected over 13,000 buffalo hides. When Juchereau died, the post was abandoned, the French-Canadian settlers left what they considered hostile territory for Mobile, then the capital of Louisiana. The oldest European town in Indiana, Vincennes was officially established in 1732 as a second French fur trading post in this area. The Compagnie des Indes commissioned a Canadian officer, François-Marie Bissot, Sieur de Vincennes, de Vincennes founded the new trading post near the meeting points of the Wabash and White rivers, and the overland Buffalo Trace. De Vincennes, who had lived with his father among the Miami tribe and he also encouraged Canadien settlers to move there, and started his own family to increase the village population. Because the Wabash post was so remote, however, Vincennes had a time getting trade supplies from Louisiana for the native nations. The boundary between the French colonies of Louisiana and Canada, although inexact in the first years of the settlement, was decreed in 1745 to run between Fort Ouiatenon and Vincennes. In 1736, during the French war with the Chickasaw nation, de Vincennes was captured and burned at the stake near the town of Fulton. His settlement on the Wabash was renamed Poste Vincennes in his honor, Louisiana Governor Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville next appointed Louis Groston de Saint-Ange de Bellerive to command Poste Vincennes
5.
Transylvania University
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Transylvania University is a private university in Lexington, Kentucky, United States. It was founded in 1780, making it the first university in Kentucky and it offers 36 major programs, as well as dual-degree engineering programs, and is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Its medical program graduated 8,000 physicians by 1859 and its enduring footprint, both in national and southern academia, make it among the most prolific cultural establishments and the most storied institutions in the South. Transylvania was the first college west of the Allegheny Mountains, and was the namesake of the Colony of Transylvania, Latin for across the woods, Thomas Jefferson was governor of Virginia when the Virginia Assembly chartered Transylvania Seminary in 1780. Called Transylvania University by 1799, its first sponsor was the Christ Episcopal Churchs rector, the school later became affiliated with the Presbyterian Church. Originally situated in a log cabin in Boyle County, Kentucky, the first site in Lexington was a single building in what is now the historic Gratz Park. By 1818, a new building was constructed for students classes. Later, in 1829, that burned, and the school was moved to its present location north of Third Street. Old Morrison, the campus building at the time, was constructed 1830–34, under the supervision of Henry Clay. After 1818, the university included a school, a law school, a divinity school. This school was not affiliated with the modern University of Kentucky, founded by Baptist churches in Kentucky, Bacon College operated from 1837 to 1851. It was also distinct from nearby Georgetown College, another Baptist-supported institution and this school closed in 1860 and its Harrodsburg building burned in 1864. By mutual agreement and an act of the legislature the college was merged with Transylvania University in 1865. It attracted many politically ambitious young men including Stephen F. Austin, following the devastating Civil War, Kentucky University was hit by a major fire, and both it and Transylvania University were left in dire financial straits. In 1865, both institutions secured permission to merge, the new institution used Transylvanias campus in Lexington while perpetuating the Kentucky University name. However, due to questions regarding having a federally funded land-grant college controlled by a religious body, the A&M of Kentucky soon developed into one of the states flagship public universities, the University of Kentucky. Kentucky Universitys College of the Bible, which traced its roots to Bacon Colleges Department of Hebrew Literature, Transylvanias seminary eventually became a separate institution, but remained housed on the Kentucky University campus until 1950. It later changed its name to the Lexington Theological Seminary, in 1903, Hamilton College, a Lexington-based womens college founded in 1869, merged into Kentucky University
6.
Lexington, Kentucky
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Lexington, consolidated with Fayette County, is the second-largest city in Kentucky and the 61st largest in the United States. Known as the Horse Capital of the World, it is the heart of the states Bluegrass region, with a mayor-alderman form of government, it is one of two cities in Kentucky designated by the state as first-class, the other is the states largest city of Louisville. In the 2016 U. S. Census Estimate, the population was 318,449, anchoring a metropolitan area of 506,751 people. Lexington ranks tenth among US cities in college education rate, with 39. 5% of residents having at least a bachelors degree and this area of fertile soil and abundant wildlife was long occupied by varying tribes of Native Americans. European explorers began to trade with them but settlers did not come in force until the late 18th century, Lexington was founded by European Americans in June 1775, in what was then considered Fincastle County, Virginia,17 years before Kentucky became a state. A party of frontiersmen, led by William McConnell, camped on the Middle Fork of Elkhorn Creek at the site of the present-day McConnell Springs, upon hearing of the colonists victory in the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19,1775, they named their campsite Lexington. It was the first of what would be many American places to be named after the Massachusetts town, the risk of Indian attacks delayed permanent settlement for four years. In 1779, during the American Revolutionary War, Col. Robert Patterson and 25 companions came from Fort Harrod and they built cabins and a stockade, establishing a settlement known as Bryan Station. In 1780, Lexington was made the seat of Virginias newly organized Fayette County, colonists defended it against a British and allied Shawnee attack in 1782, during the last part of the American Revolutionary War. The town was chartered on May 6,1782, by an act of the Virginia General Assembly, the First African Baptist Church was founded c. 1790 by Peter Durrett, a Baptist preacher and slave held by Joseph Craig. Durrett helped guide The Travelling Church, a migration of several hundred pioneers led by the preacher Lewis Craig and Captain William Ellis from Orange County. It is the oldest black Baptist congregation in Kentucky and the third oldest in the United States, I would suppose it contains about five hundred dwelling houses, many of them elegant and three stories high. The country around Lexington for many miles in every direction, is equal in beauty and fertility to anything the imagination can paint and is already in a state of cultivation. Residents have fondly continued to refer to Lexington as The Athens of the West since Espys poem dedicated to the city, in the early 19th century, planter John Wesley Hunt became the first millionaire west of the Alleghenies. London Ferrill, second preacher of First African Baptist, was one of three clergy who stayed in the city to serve the suffering victims, additional cholera outbreaks occurred in 1848–49 and the early 1850s. Cholera was spread by using contaminated water supplies, but its transmission was not understood in those years. Often the wealthier people would flee town for outlying areas to try to avoid the spread of disease, planters held slaves for use as field hands, laborers, artisans, and domestic servants. In the city, slaves worked primarily as servants and artisans, although they also worked with merchants, shippers
7.
Isaac McCoy
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Isaac McCoy was a Baptist missionary among the Native Americans in present-day Indiana, Michigan and Missouri. He was an advocate of Indian removal from the eastern United States, proposing an Indian state in what is now Kansas, Nebraska and he also played an instrumental role in the founding of Grand Rapids, Michigan and Kansas City, Missouri. McCoy was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, in 1784, five years later, the McCoy family rafted down the Ohio River to Kentucky, settling first near Louisville and in 1792 in Shelby County. The senior McCoy was a Baptist minister, and he and his son had profound arguments on religion, while still young, Isaac was inspired to become a missionary to Native Americans and determined on that work. In 1804 at the age of 20, Isaac McCoy married Christiana Polke, age 16, in Kentucky, christianas family had been at Kincheloes Station, Nelson County, Kentucky, when it was attacked. Her mother and four siblings were carried into captivity by the Shawnee and they were taken to Michigan, where they lived with the Indians for 13 months. They were eventually bought or ransomed by the British, who sent them south to return to their people in Kentucky, the McCoys had 14 children, only four survived to adulthood. John Calvin McCoy assisted his father and became prominent in his own right in the history of the Kansas. McCoys wife, Christiana, died in Kansas City in 1851, a stream in Elkhart County, Indiana and a lake in Cass County, Michigan are named for her. Soon after their marriage, the couple departed Kentucky for Vincennes. Although he had no training and no education, McCoy became a part-time preacher. In 1808 the Silver Creek Baptist Church, the first Baptist Church in Indiana, the Silver Creek church was located near what became Sellersburg in Clark County. In 1809 McCoy became pastor of Maria Creek Church near Vincennes and he also spent time serving as the town jailor at Vincennes. Despite illness and poverty, McCoy traveled widely on the frontier promoting the Baptist church, in 1817, the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions appointed him as a missionary to the settlers and Indians in Indiana and Illinois territories. Though his original intention was to preach to frontiersmen, his interests, McCoy founded his first religious station and school in October 1818 in what became Parke County, Indiana, on Big Raccoon Creek upstream from the later Wea Indian reservation at Armiesburg. The mission was said to be situated between Rosedale and Bridgeton, the Wea showed little interest in the school, however, and it failed. McCoy at that time was likely the only settler in Parke County. In February 1819, he performed the first marriage in the county and this was the first reservation that came about as a result of a connection with Isaac McCoy, though McCoy had left the area by then
8.
Baptists
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Other tenets of Baptist churches include soul competency, salvation through faith alone, Scripture alone as the rule of faith and practice, and the autonomy of the local congregation. Baptists recognize two ministerial offices, elders and deacons, Baptist churches are widely considered to be Protestant churches, though some Baptists disavow this identity. Historians trace the earliest church labeled Baptist back to 1609 in Amsterdam, in accordance with his reading of the New Testament, he rejected baptism of infants and instituted baptism only of believing adults. Baptist practice spread to England, where the General Baptists considered Christs atonement to extend to all people, while the Particular Baptists believed that it extended only to the elect. Thomas Helwys formulated a distinctively Baptist request that the church and the state be kept separate in matters of law, Helwys died in prison as a consequence of the religious persecution of English dissenters under King James I. In 1638, Roger Williams established the first Baptist congregation in the North American colonies, in the mid-18th century, the First Great Awakening contributed to Baptist growth in both New England and the South. Baptist missionaries have spread their church to every continent, the largest Baptist denomination is the Southern Baptist Convention, with the membership of associated churches totaling more than 15 million. Modern Baptist churches trace their history to the English Separatist movement in the century after the rise of the original Protestant denominations and this view of Baptist origins has the most historical support and is the most widely accepted. Adherents to this position consider the influence of Anabaptists upon early Baptists to be minimal and it was a time of considerable political and religious turmoil. Both individuals and churches were willing to give up their theological roots if they became convinced that a more biblical truth had been discovered, during the Protestant Reformation, the Church of England separated from the Roman Catholic Church. There were some Christians who were not content with the achievements of the mainstream Protestant Reformation, there also were Christians who were disappointed that the Church of England had not made corrections of what some considered to be errors and abuses. Of those most critical of the Churchs direction, some chose to stay and they became known as Puritans and are described by Gourley as cousins of the English Separatists. Others decided they must leave the Church because of their dissatisfaction, historians trace the earliest Baptist church back to 1609 in Amsterdam, with John Smyth as its pastor. Three years earlier, while a Fellow of Christs College, Cambridge, reared in the Church of England, he became Puritan, English Separatist, and then a Baptist Separatist, and ended his days working with the Mennonites. He began meeting in England with 60–70 English Separatists, in the face of great danger, Smyth and his lay supporter, Thomas Helwys, together with those they led, broke with the other English exiles because Smyth and Helwys were convinced they should be baptized as believers. In 1609 Smyth first baptized himself and then baptized the others, in 1609, while still there, Smyth wrote a tract titled The Character of the Beast, or The False Constitution of the Church. In it he expressed two propositions, first, infants are not to be baptized, and second, Antichristians converted are to be admitted into the true Church by baptism. Hence, his conviction was that a church should consist only of regenerate believers who have been baptized on a personal confession of faith
9.
Santa Fe Trail
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The Santa Fe Trail was a 19th-century transportation route through central North America that connected Independence, Missouri with Santa Fe, New Mexico. Pioneered in 1821 by William Becknell, it served as a commercial highway until the introduction of the railroad to Santa Fe in 1880. Santa Fe was near the end of the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro which carried trade from Mexico City. Comanche raiding farther south in Mexico isolated New Mexico, making it dependent on the American trade. The Trail was used as the 1846 U. S. invasion route of New Mexico during the Mexican–American War, the road route is commemorated today by the National Park Service as the Santa Fe National Historic Trail. The trail was used to manufactured goods from the state of Missouri in the United States to Santa Fe. Santa Fe was near the terminus of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. This limited trade traffic transited the site that would become Fort Bent in Colorado and this post was only eight miles east of the site of Fort John on what became the Oregon Trail. The lost fort was on the site where Fort Bernard was later founded in the eastern Oregon Country. That Fort Bernard ran cargo mule trains to the Santa Fe is historically certain, the earlier Fort and its traders are less so, and that gives weight that they might have been independents, and not employees of the large fur companies. Regardless of the lack of documents, it is known the light trading with Mexico used the trail. In 1825 the merchant Manuel Escudero of Chihuahua was commissioned by New Mexico governor Bartolome Baca to negotiate in Washington for opening U. S. borders to traders from Mexico. In 1835 Mexico City had sent Albino Pérez to govern the department of New Mexico as Jefe Politico, New Mexicans had grown to appreciate the relative freedoms of a frontier, remote from Mexico City. The rebels defeated and executed governor Albino Perez, but were ousted by the forces of Rio Abajo led by Manuel Armijo. The Republic of Texas claimed Santa Fe as part of the territory north, in 1841, a small military and trading expedition departed from Austin, Texas representing the Republic of Texas and their president Mirabeau B. Their aim was to persuade the people of Santa Fe and New Mexico to relinquish control over the territory dispute with Mexico. Having knowledge of the recent political disturbances, they believed that they might be welcomed by the faction in New Mexico. Known as the Texan Santa Fe Expedition, the Texans encountered many difficulties and were captured by governor Armijos Mexican army under less than honest negotiations
10.
Oregon Trail
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The Oregon Trail is a 2, 170-mile historic east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of the state of Kansas. The western half of the trail spanned most of the states of Idaho. The Oregon Trail was laid by fur traders and traders from about 1811 to 1840, by 1836, when the first migrant wagon train was organized in Independence, Missouri, a wagon trail had been cleared to Fort Hall, Idaho. From the early to mid-1830s the Oregon Trail and its offshoots were used by about 400,000 settlers, farmers, miners, ranchers. The eastern half of the trail was used by travelers on the California Trail, Mormon Trail. Use of the trail declined as the first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, making the trip west substantially faster, cheaper, and safer. Today, modern highways, such as Interstate 80 and Interstate 84, follow parts of the same course westward and pass through towns originally established to serve those using the Oregon Trail. Although Lewis and William Clark found a path to the Pacific Ocean, it was not until 1859 that a direct and practicable route, the first land route across what is now the United States was mapped by the Lewis and Clark Expedition between 1804 and 1806. On the return trip in 1806 they traveled from the Columbia River to the Snake River and they then traveled overland up the Blackfoot River and crossed the Continental Divide at Lewis and Clark Pass and on to the head of the Missouri River. This was ultimately a shorter and faster route than the one they followed west and this route had the disadvantages of being much too rough for wagons and controlled by the Blackfoot Indians. They did show the way for the men, who within a decade would find a better way across. Founded by John Jacob Astor as a subsidiary of his American Fur Company in 1810, two movements of PFC employees were planned by Astor, one detachment to be sent to the Columbia River by the Tonquin and the other overland under an expedition led by Wilson Price Hunt. Hunt and his party were to find possible routes and trapping territories for further fur trading posts. Upon arriving at the river in March 1811, the Tonquin crew began construction of what became Fort Astoria, the ship left supplies and men to continue work on the station and ventured north up the coast to Clayoquot Sound for a trading expedition. While anchored there, Jonathan Thorn insulted an elder Tla-o-qui-aht who was elected by the natives to negotiate a mutually satisfactory price for animal pelts. Soon after the vessel was attacked and overwhelmed by the indigenous before being blown up, killing all the crew, from there they went over the Teton Range via Teton Pass and then down to the Snake River into modern Idaho. They abandoned their horses at the Snake River, made dugout canoes, after a few days travel they soon discovered that steep canyons, waterfalls and impassable rapids made travel by river impossible
