"Well do I remember when my father, Freeman J. Skaggs, then living in Knox Co,TN., sold his farm and on March 26, 1866, just 60 years ago, had a public sale of personal goods. Arrangements were soon made for wagons and teams and taking along what household goods we wished to take along with us, within two days we were in Knoxville, TN where we boarded a train for what we thought to be a long journey to that grand old state-Missouri. After only a few hours we arrived at Nashville, the state capital, then to Jacksonville, on the Cumberland River, where my father hired a steamboat which brought us to St. Louis and then up the Missouri River to Jefferson City,MO. From there we came overland by team to western Maries County, stopping on the Little Tavern Creek, on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1866. We rented a farm, then known as the Bob Rowden farm. Father rented for two years and then bought a farm on the Big Tavern Creek, in Miller County, known as the Colonel Whitaker Place." Col. Whitaker's daughter, Sarah Emiline, is my great-grandmother as she married William Pleasant Skaggs, my great-grandfather in Iberia,MO.in 1869. It has been said that the Freeman Skaggs family was very discouraged with the turn of events that had taken place in Tennessee during the days of the Civil War. They had lost two small daughters to Scarlet Fever and had lost a son in the War. They therefore decided to leave Tennessee for Missouri, as per the above account. Submitted by Ann Murrell Phillips. email; Annie1947@hotmail.com _____