John Bozarth

Born in (maybe) Kentucky to Elizabeth and Joseph Bozorth
Married Sarah Shaw 2 September 1789 in Kentucky
John-Mary Ann-Sarah-Charles William-Fenly-Clifford
Died in 1836/7 in Lagrange, Missouri

The following is from the Bozarth Beacon Volume X, No. 1 page 986:

In the spring of 1819, John Bozarth came from Grayson County, Kentucky and opened a small farm in the Mississippi bottom, a short distance below the present sight of LaGrange, Missouri. He settled on the southeast quarter of section 11, township 60, Range 6. He was accompanied by his son-in-law John Finley and his son Squire Bozarth, and was the first white settler of Lewis County.

He built a house which consisted of a log cabin and that year planted 20 acres of corn. The following fall he returned to Kentucky and in the later part of November brought his family. Another son-in-law, Jacob Weaver, and his slaves, eighteen people in all accompanied him. All of whom came to make their permanent home. They crossed the Mississippi River above Alton, Ill., landing in St Charles County on the 19th day of November. From there the journey was made by land on the Missouri side.

The following account was given in 1874 by Reason Bozarth, son of John Bozarth:

When we came to this county in the fall of 1819, it was then part of Pike.

We put a log cabin, which had no chimneys; it had a hearth in the middle of the room and it required an open roof for the escape of the smoke. When our day's work was done we lay down to sleep around the family hearthstone.

The house consisted of one room -- Eighteen of us occupied it. Our food was principally boiled corn and honey, the latter that we procured from bee trees, which we made a business of hunting. Our bread that we made from meal, which was made by pounding corn in a mortar and our clothes, were made from buckskin, which we tanned ourselves. Our nearest neighbors were 20 miles away; we had chills but nobody died until a doctor came to the county.

John Bozarth erected a mill on the Wyaconda (a mile above the one John McKinney had in 1830) near its mouth immediately North of LaGrange, near the bridge on the LaGrange and Canton Road. It was a water saw and gristmill.