So, there are a new set of facts surrounding the Adkins family’s move to Missouri, and they have changed considerably.
We know that Wyatt was out here in Clay County as early as 1818, three years before statehood. He certainly would have come over road via the Boones Lick Trace, or Keelboat, more than likely he walked, from St Louis then St Charles where Daniel and Nathan Boone were living in the neighbohood on La Femme Osage Creek, to first Franklin, then crossed to the south side of the river at Arrow Rock and came up river via keelboat or up the Osage Indian Trail to Fort Osage, built by Captain William Clark chief of Indian affairs after his trip with Merriwether Lewis who had been in St Louis serving as Govenor of the Louisiana Territory until his untimely death in 1809.
Wyatts daughter Mary Ann Adkins, b. 1807, married Abner Adair in Clay County in 1821 at the age of 14, the year Missouri became a state. In 1822 they moved from Liberty, Mo south of the river to what would later become Independence. They bought a tract of land from the Osage Indians and built the first log cabin in Independence on what would later become the corner of Maple and Liberty St. immediately across the street from where Independences Court house would later be built and one of the four corners that make up the Courthouse Square today. In 1827 Mary Ann bore the first white male child to be born Jackson County Missouri, Joseph Adair. Joseph would fight with Gen. Fremont (later elected President) in the war against Mexico and later go West for two years as a Forty Niner, come home to Missouri then move to Texas where at the out break of the Civil War, he joined the CSA as a Lieutenant serving under General Shelbys Brigade.
The interpersonal relationships of William and Lydia Owens son Owen, and then Wyatt, and our line – whomever they are down from; John, William, Joseph and Roland remain a mystery and a product of our imaginations though at some level we know that communication must have existed as evidenced in the fact the brothers followed their cousin Wyatt out to Missouri. On another note, as it is recorded Wyatt died to the south of Jackson County in 1839 in Cass Cty. (then Van Buren Cty.) it would seem logical and more than likely that the Wyatt we see in the area of Boone County with Roland in the 1827-28 Land Patent Book is Wyatts son Wyatt Jr.
The journey of discovery in the search for our Williams, Josephs and Rolands parents continues to uncover new and exciting evidence that solidifies the Adkins families role on the early American frontier and the history of now, pre-statehood Missouri.
Stan
Adkins
