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Levi Pettibone (1780 - 1881)

Levi Pettibone
Born in Norfolk, Ct.map
Ancestors ancestors
Husband of — married 14 Jun 1831 in Bowling Green, Pike, Missouri, United Statesmap
Descendants descendants
Died at age 100 in Pike, Missouri, United Statesmap
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Profile last modified | Created 4 Nov 2012
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Biography

Very little is known of Levi Pettibone’s early years. Although he was born in Norfolk, he was living in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, when he was drafted for military service during the War of 1812. At that time he would have been around thirty-two years old. Levi Pettibone never had to fall into line because Governor Strong of Massachusetts denied that the U.S. Government had the authority to compel citizens to fight outside the state.

In 1817 Levi left Pittsfield and went to Vernon, New York, where his brother Rufus was practicing law, and urged his brother to "pull up stakes" and go west with him. Explorers and even settlers were beginning to penetrate the Missouri Territory, a huge area acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase which in 1812 took over the same limits and government as had formerly been called the Louisiana Territory and was ruled by a governor appointed by the President of the U.S.A. The Missouri Territory was the northernmost land west of the Mississippi which allowed slaveowners to bring their slaves with them, and by 1817 northerners who hoped to discourage the spread of slavery were very aware that a great slave state might be in the making there.

The two brothers agreed that Levi should go to Missouri to look it over and then return to Vernon with a report; if favorable, the two brothers would migrate to Missouri and make that state their home. Levi made his way by water and land to Shawneetown, Illinois, and for the rest of the way he road by horseback via Kaskaskia to St. Louis, found it very promising, retumed to Vernon with a very positive report, and with his brother decided to leave for St. Louis as soon as possible. In the spring of 1818, Levi Pettibone, Rufus Pettibone with his wife and three small children, and a friend of Levi's named Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, whose goal was to explore the geology and mineralogy of the new west, set out for Missouri. The usual route to the west was to descend the Allegany River by riverboat from Olean to Pittsburg. Levi had arranged in advance to have an "ark" ready for them when they reached Olean. It was a flat-bottomed boat of stout planks upon which posts were raised to form two rooms, one for cooking and one for sleeping, the whole covered with a flat roof. Near the front were two long sweeps, or oars, to guide the raft as it floated downstream. It had no source of power. At night they tied up, built a fire, and cooked their food. After a descent of 300 miles, they reached Pittsburg on 28 March 1818. Here Henry Schoolcraft left to take a separate route, rejoining the Pettibones in St. Louis in July.

In the fall of 1818 and the winter of 1819, Levi Pettibone and Henry Schoolcraft made a daring exploration in Missouri beyond the line of settlement to the Ozark Mountains. Schoolcraft published a narrative of it in which he says of Levi Pettibone, "He stood stoutly by me, was a reliable man who could be counted upon in all weathers to do his part willingly." Schoolcraft, in Crissey, History of Norfolk CT, 540]. They described numerous bears, white elk, and wild turkeys so large the just one supplied food for them for three days. They descended the White river to Batesville, in Arkansas, whence Levi Pettibone returned to St. Louis, then a good-sized settlement of 2,500 people. Within a few years he settled in nearby Louisiana, a much smaller village in Pike County, Missouri, where he lived for almost sixty years [Ibid.].

From the 1820s through the whole Civil War, Missouri was engulfed in fiery political controversy. Even after the territory was granted statehood as a slave state [see J441 '1O' Rufus Pettibone], northeners encouraged immigration of those devoted to freedom for blacks, and southerners fought to maintain their status quo and fiery debates dominated the news. In central Missouri, The Boonville Democratic Union published a pro-slavery newspaper from 1844 to 1849 called The Coon Hunter. Its motto was "Head the coons." An opposition paper, the Bowling Green Journal, founded in Bowling Green, not far from Louisiana, was sold in 1848 to two Presbyterian ministers who announced they would devote the paper to Christian interests. Renamed Seventy-Six, it numbered among its editors Levi Pettibone. An editor of another local paper wrote, "We now have the spectacle of a Whig newspaper, appealing to the spirit of whiggery for approval" [ibid., 4:148]. Actually the 1850 Census of Pike County, Missouri, lists one slave, age 50, black, male, as a resident of the household of Levi Pettibone; but it was not unusual for a northern abolitionist to take in a slave in order to protect him and eventually to get him to safety in a northern state. No slave was listed with him in the 1860 Census.

Although Levi did not have the advantage of college education enjoyed by four of his brothers, he had a disciplined mind, and his intellectual capacities were appreciated in his new homeland. He served as clerk of the circuit court while his brother Rufus was the circuit judge; and in the year Rufus died, 1825, Levi himself was appointed by the governor of the state to be Probate Judge of Pike County [Missouri Historical Review, 1:192]. Later he was for many years the county treasurer, and held other offices as well. Levi Pettibone retained the powers of his mind and body all his life. He was an unusually fine penman and bookkeeper; at the age of ninety he was hired to open a set of books for a bank, and at the age of ninety-four he was still working four hours daily as bookkeeper for a shoe store [Crissey, 540-41].

1n the 1850 US Census, Levi, 69, a merchant, was residing in the household of Ezra Hunt, 60, in Bowling Green, Pike, Missouri, United States. With him were his daughters, Margaret A, 18 and Martha L., 15, both born in Missouri. [1]

Sources

Find A Grave: Memorial #166225394 [2]

  1. United States Census, 1850 Bowling Green, Pike, Missouri
  2. Entered by Tom Bredehoft, Dec 21, 2012




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