Isaac Hasten, son of Daniel Haston, was one of the first settlers in Cass Township, Greene County, Missouri. The earliest settlers came “at various periods from 1830 to 1837.” In the “First Settlements” section of Chapter XXVIII of The History of Greene County, Missouri, the authors stated, “Isaac Hastings…an emigrant from East Tennessee, settled about a mile east of Cave Spring about 1835.” Cave Spring was one of the oldest villages of Greene County.
When the first settlements were made in this township, the pioneers often shot deer from their own door-yards. Wolves were very plentiful and gave the settlers no little trouble by carrying off their sheep and pigs. The usual privations of early settlers and pioneers were borne by those of Cass township.
Having grown up in the forests, thickets, and canebrakes of Middle and East Tennessee, life on the prairie where Isaac settled would have been very different for him, a “Tennessee boy.” One old settler who moved from East Tennessee to Greene County, Missouri, in 1837 stated that folks from the East “seemed to be rather suspicious of this prairie land. They did not know whether it would grow corn and oats or not.”
John H. Miller, son of Joseph Miller, one of the earliest settlers in Greene County, wrote a series of articles that were published in the Springfield, Missouri, Leader newspaper in the latter half of the 1800s.
Of pioneer life in Greene County, Mr. Miller says: The settlers in those days were driven by necessity to use their inventive wits. Doors were made of clapboards, floors of mother earth, bedsteads with one leg were fastened to the walls in the corners of the houses, and wagon grease was made of honey, which was only twenty-five cents a gallon, or about one cent a pound in the comb. When they were able to afford good puncheon floors and two bedsteads, it seemed quite like civilization. Bread was scarce, and what little was made was liberally divided so that all could have a little bread. Very few hogs, and pork was hard to get, but wild game was plenty, and with the faithful dog and flint-lock rifle, everyone had plenty. The meal was made by pounding the corn in a stump mortar, the coarsest for hominy and the finest for bread, and very dark at that. Men worked then at fifty cents per day, and I say this to put a correct idea and feeling into men who nowadays think it is a disgrace to work at that price. Honest labor at even twenty-five cents per day, where a man can’t do better, is far more profitable and honorable than idleness. In those days, neighbors were few and far between, but everybody was friendly and willing to divide the last mouthful.[i]
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The move of Isaac’s family to Missouri was undoubtedly challenging, and pioneer life on the prairie of Greene County was probably more difficult than anything Isaac had ever experienced at that time.
[i] R. I. Holcombe, The History of Greene County, Missouri. (St. Louis, MO: Western Historical Company, 1883), 153.
We Will Tell Isaac’s Missouri Story and Tour His Farm in Our Mid-America Gathering
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