Washburn, Missouri
N 36° 35.310 W 093° 57.864
15S E 413730 N 4049657
A town in Barry County, Missouri named after one of the first white settlers in the area
Waymark Code: WMN78Z
Location: Missouri, United States
Date Posted: 01/10/2015
Views: 2
The Place
The boundary between the Ozarks Plateau and the prairies are like "fingers" that intermingle. A "finger" of the plateau may reach (usually northward) into the prairie, or a "finger" of prairie may stretch (usually southward) into the plateau. Washburn is in a long finger (or arm) of prairie that reaches down into the Ozark Plateau, with the latter surrounding the prairie on 3 sides. A settler named Samuel Washburn lived in the prairie for about 10 years, before he moved on to Texas (killed there in 1838). Another settler, Judge John Cureton also settled in the area, obtaining a claim in 1840. He moved on, leaving the claim to J. T. Keet, who built and ran a mill in the area. The town that grew up was called Keetsville, which name it still bore during the Civil War. (See E. B. Long's
Civil War Day by Day.)
The original Keetsville was centered around what is now the corner of MO-90 and MO-37. It was primarily settled by Scots-Irish. In fact, many of the old plat maps (even up to 1950) had large unsold tracts of land that were owned by the Missouri Land Company of Scotland. Many of the old family names still extant today are Scottish or Irish.
When the railroad came through west of the town in the early 1870s, two things happened: the original town of Keetsville was renamed to Washburn, after the early settler; and a second settlement sprang up closer to the railroad. It was named O'Day and is still larger than what was the old Keetsville. When Goodspeed's 1888 History of Barry County was written, the dichotomy of Washburn and O'Day still existed. When the first large school was built almost between them (nearer Washburn), the folks tired of having two different names for what was essentially one town. (Folk tales indicate that the children were the primary instigators in trying to eliminate one name.) By 1894 the name of O'Day was eliminated in favor of calling the town Washburn.
The 2010 US Census listed the population of Washburn at 435, which is a fraction of its glory days when it was actually larger than Cassville (since it predated Cassville); this due to the rural flight to the cities of the last century.
The Person
About the early settler Samuel C. Washburn during his stay in the area that would one day bear his name, not much is known. Apparently he was remembered in the area for so many years that the townsfolk eventually decided to rename their town after his name. A bit more information is known of
his fate in Texas where he had purchased 1,280 acres, but was found dead, robbed, and scalped in 1838. Both Samuel and Mary were buried in unmarked graves in
Washburn Cemetery in Grayson County, Texas.