Monroe County Article written by Thomas V. Bodine, Paris

Among the oldest townships in the county, and one about which tradition clusters in myriad forms, is Washington, settled by the Coombs, Maupins, Raglands, Crutchers, Harts, Dulaneys and Bufords.

Old Clinton, famous as a muster point, was established in 1836 and was laid out by George Glenn, Samuel Bryant and S. S. Williams, who built the first store and operated the first mill in the town. Jacob Kirkland was a pioneer blacksmith there and among its early citizens were Major Howell, afterwards the county’s leading lawyer, and Daniel Dulaney, muster captain, subsequently the Hannibal lumber king, legends of whose doughty plume still survive among the older men who remember it and the man who wore it on these annual events. Clinton was at one time an enterprising town, but the completion of the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad a few miles north, resulted in towns like Shelbina and Hunnewell and it soon began to decay. Today nothing remains of it but a few ramshackle buildings and ragged cabins to speak a former glory. It is located in the North Fork hills, one of the most picturesque sections in north Missouri, and long ago lost even the likeness of a town.

Jonesburg, Clinton’s rival, built by Colonel Gabriel Jones in 1836, and separated from its neighbor by only a narrow alley, died along with its more ambitious rival, and nothing but the merest legend remains concerning it or the unconscious element of grotesque humor that led to its organization. Among the first merchants at Jonesburg were Blakey & Lasley and Coombs & Gough. The names still survive in the life of the county today, as does that of Ragland, the founder of which family became famous as keeper of the historic tavern at Clinton, which, in its day, entertained United States Senator James S. Green and many other honored guests. It might be mentioned in this connection that Senator Green, when a young man, spent several years at Paris as a hatter’s ap­prentice, and that he never failed to capture the suffrage of Monroe county.