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AndyI picked up an old cabinet card from a collector who picked it up in an S.F. Estate sale. My best research efforts have placed it at around 1870, this based primarily on the fact that the gent in the photo has a jersey that reads "Kemper-Paxton" and my best research efforts find an un-named baseball team in Caldwell County Missouri in around 1870, and two of the prominent businessmen/family names in the county were Kemper and Paxton. There was also a Kemper-Paxton dry goods store in town, and the members of those two great families are buried in the Kemper-Paxton plot.
I can send a scan to anybody who REALLY thinks that they can help; I have spoken with residents of Hamilton, MO and surrounding communities, and have found no definitive leads. Read the below excerpts from a Caldwell county historical website and see what I mean.
Here is some info from http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/mo/caldwell/misc/booth1a.txt:
JAMES M. KEMPER HAMILTON MERCHANT IN THE SIXTIES
Narrator: W.T. Kemper, 68, of Kansas City and Others
Wm. T. Kemper, the Kansas City banker, is a son of James Madison Kemper, a
pioneer of Hamilton and Sallie Paxton both natives of Kentucky. James M.
Kemper came to Hamilton at the age of seventeen in 1858 to be a clerk in the
A.G. Davis store - the first store here - located at the site of the Courter
Theater facing south. He was a clerk under John Burrows of Mirabile, who
managed the Davis Store. When he came, people called him Jimmy and for
years he was thus known. When about twenty one he and Wm. Stone started a
General Store in the Davis Building for themselves and it was in this store
that the Casey-Bristow killing began.
Later the firm was made up of John Ballinger, S.P. Cox, and J.M. Kemper,
still down by the railroad. An old ad in the 1864 Kingston Newspaper said
they had a good supply of flour, salt, dry goods, groceries and took produce.
They had a salt yard just north of their store building.
In 1865, Kemper and Paxton built a two-story frame on Main Street on the
spot where the Bram Store now stands. James Whitt lately of Daviess County
was the head clerk and above the store lived the young George Lamson and
wife and baby Harry, who was then depot agent.
This store was popular and a money maker as all the early old timers recall
it. It burnt sometime about 1870 and Kemper sold the site to Anthony
Rohrbough and son-in-law Moore who built on the site the brick block which
still stands.
When James Kemper decided to leave town a farewell dinner was given in his
honor and B.M. Daley a prominent young lawyer sang a funny song with a
refrain, "Jimmy Don't Go." Where upon every one present was supposed to
weep in fun and ended by weeping in earnest.
During the rest of his life Mr. J.M. Kemper's heart was always in Hamilton.
Here in this county he had met and lost the bride of his youth Sallie Paxton
and they are both buried in the Kemper-Paxton lot in the Highland Cemetery.
While living here he owned the big white house on the hill in the west end
of town, now the James Kautz home.
He left here to enter a Mercantile business in St. Joseph where he stayed
forty years. His first wife having died, he married again. He died in
California 1928.
He was related to the Kemper family which have lived for years in the
Mirabile neighborhood. He was also related by inter-marriage with the
Paxtons of Mirabile and with the A.G. Davis family and the Penney family of
Hamilton.
TAYLOR ALLEE IN HAMILTON IN 1865
Narrator: Taylor Allee, 85, of Hamilton, Missouri
Mr. Allee's parents were Isaac Reed Allee (1812 War soldier) buried at
Kingston and Mary Ann Parks Allee buried in Highland Cemetery Hamilton. He
was born in Henry County Indiana. In 1865 Taylor Allee, his sister and half
brother came to Caldwell County, the father and mother came 1866. The
children had come because a near relative Sarah Smith and her husband
Philander Smith had located in the county. Their father's farm was a half
of the later Waterman farm three miles west of Hamilton, the other half was
the P. Smith farm. Later Allee sold to W.H. Henry, a relative, and bought
in Daviess County. Isaac Allee was an herb doctor and doctored many people
here and in Indiana. In Indiana he had his own herb garden and always
compounded his own medicine. The Taylor Allee family still have some of his
old bills in which his charges are shown as 12 1/2 cents for medicine, 16
2/3 cents for a visit.
Taylor Allee with five other Allees enlisted in the Union army from their
county in Indiana. He declared he was 18 but really was 15. He was a big
boy five feet seven inches weighed 143 pounds, and got by with it. They
examined him by giving him two big thumps on the chest and having him jump
over a box. His job was to hunt down bush whackers.
He well recalls Hamilton of the 1865 day - which was the time he first saw
the town. Then, Kidder was a better town than Hamilton. There were not
five hundred people here. He came fresh from the war - age 16.
He as all the other older citizens begins the description of early Hamilton
by going to the corner now occupied by the Picture Show north west of the
depot. This in 1865 was occupied by the Brosius Brothers (George and Jim)
in a general store and Otis B. Richardson had his Post Office in the store.
Then came a space and then Charley Manuel Saloon, then a space and Aiken Dry
Goods and Saloon then a space and a Drug Store which might be Jas. A. McAdoo
or he might have come a little later.
On the south east corner of this little street in 1865 was a vacant lot but
it was soon to have the Dry Goods Store of Bye and Gibson. Due south of the
depot on a high bank was the Hamilton House with Uncle Jake Brosius (father
of George and Jim) as landlord. On north Main just north of Bye and Wilson
was the Van Buren grocery. It was a few years later that Phil Covington
opened a restaurant in a poor building located where Hopson is now (and
about the same time John Minger had one across the street). About the time
of Mr. Allee's coming, the Goodmans had built a hotel south of Covington and
Sain had a saloon in the back room. It was in the brick now owned by
Whitman and erected as a part of the Goodman block.
On the east side of Davis (Main) was the Kemper-Paxton store (a frame on the
Bram site) first building in 1865, then came a space and the livery stable
of Thurston Green brother of Harvey who ran the stage coach line which
originally ran from Richmond to Gallatin with Hamilton as a middle point.
As the railroads developed to the north it was shortened from Richmond to
Hamilton.
In the middle sixties Dr. Nunn was the only doctor. Before 1870 Bennett
Whitely built a mill due east of what is now the park on the south west
corner of the block. This was afterwards used for church and school. He
was an ordained Baptist Elder, a merchant and Editor in his time. There was
the Goodman lumber yard on Broadway on present Ralph White home.
Before 1870, on Mill street about the site of Parker's grocery, Austin Dodge
had a blacksmith shop. His wife soon opened up a millinery shop on the
corner of Mill and Broadway. At his death, she married R.D. Dwight and the
shop became known as Mrs. Dwight's Millinery Shop.
After Mr. Allee's father bought the Daviess County farm Taylor went there
and worked ten years, so he knew little of Hamilton in the seventies. It
was about 1870 that the elevator by the right of way on Main was put up, Guy
and Naugle ran it, Love and Lamson, Love and Eugene Low, were some of the
early men there.
When he came back to Hamilton after living in Daviess County he worked for
Schaffer-Tanner in the hard lumber business, site of Alec Warden's home
south of the tracks on Broadway. Then he worked seven years for Lamson and
Love in the elevator. Then he began clerking for Emmet White who bought
out Deaerick on north Main.
Mr. Allee played on the first baseball team in Hamilton about 1870.
Dr. King was captain, another player was Roy Bowman (Alston Bowman's son).
They played in Dudley's pasture. There were some differences in the old
game. The pitch was underhand pitch, not a throw. The pitcher had to give
the batter whatever kind of a ball he asked for, as a knee ball, a waist
ball.
Interviewed June 1934.
09-07-2004, 08:41 PM
How to identify an old cabinet card?
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