Monroe County Article written by Thomas V. Bodine, Paris

Jefferson township, lying along the eastern border of the county, has more actual history perhaps than any other township in the county unless it be Jackson, but the wealth of legend regarding its early life. particularly that at Florida, is lost sight of and obscured by the one supreme fact of its existence—it was the birthplace of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known to American letters as Mark Twain, who first saw light at the then busy little village in 1834.

In the shadow of this important event the historian is prompted to overlook and ignore the dry facts and details of lives not known outside the traditions of the county, and would in a measure perhaps be justified. Yet while Florida, by some son of accident, produced the king of American letters, it was not lacking in other good human stuff, which might have shown genius fully as commanding under like circumstances.

One of the earliest settlements in the county was at the point where the great humorist was horn and the names written on the headstones in the burying ground there today are those that were prominent in the day when the town was thought to have a future and when it drew settlers from far and near led by the belief that the dream, later embodied in ‘‘The Gilded Age,’’ might by sonic happy chance, come true.

Among the early pioneers in this oldest of townships was Major William Penn, whose wife was god-mother to Clemens and whose oldest daughter, Miss Arzelia, afterwards Mrs. William Fawkes, was the first sweetheart of America’s greatest literary genius. Along with Penn were the Hickmaus, Stites. Scobees, McNutts, Buckners, Violetts, Poages, Merediths, Chownings, Quarles and a host of others whose names are readily recognizable to Monroe countians.

Florida is located upon a high point of land between the middle and north forks of Salt river and seems to have been looked on as a likely spot even by the prehistoric people who inhabited this continent, as so-called Indian mounds in various states of preservation are to he found all around it.

Owing to the presence of water power it was in the early days a great milling point. The first mill, that on South Fork. was built by Peter Stice, a German whom legend describes as jolly ‘‘—all millers in ye olden time were jolly—and that on North Fork by Richard Cave. The Stice mill was purchased by Captain Hugh A. Hickman in 1830 and was operated by him for nearly forty years. The Cave mill was bought by Aleck Hickman from Dr. Meredith, a New Englander. in 1852, and from 1845 to 1860, the two plants were the most famous in this section of the state, doing the largest milling business perhaps ever done in the county. They shipped flour to Hannibal, Mexico and other surrounding points, and the fame of their product finally reached the St. Louis market, with the result that several boats loaded with flour were run down Salt river to the Mississippi by Hugh Hickman and floated from there to St. Louis, where it found a ready sale. Captain Hickman was a large, handsome, muscular man, a gentleman of the old type, and is still remembered lovingly, though his dams have washed out and his burrs are dust. Among the early merchants at Florida were .John A. Quarles and John Marshall Clemens, father of Mark Twain, who were brothers-in-law. Clemens was a visionary, but Quarles was an essentially practical man and one of the strongest figures and most forceful characters in the history of the county. Both were Tennesseeans and both married Lamptons. who were were Kentucky women. Quarles came to Florida first and later sent back for his improvident brother-in-law and family. Clemens failed at Florida, as he did subsequently at Hannibal, and Quarles, alternately merchant and farmer, finally hotel keeper at Paris, attained a measure or success though dying poor.

The influence be had upon the subsequent life of his nephew by marriage, who bore a striking resemblance to him, both in his physical aspect and in his whimsical personality, was emphasized and elaborated in an article by the writer appearing in the Kansas City Star during May, 1912.