Scotland County, Missouri: History
The Missouri General Assembly organized Scotland County on January 29, 1841. At first its boundaries contained all the land now known as Knox County as well, but in 1843 the General Assembly divided it off. Stephen W. B. Carnegy suggested that the county be named after his native Scotland. He also gave several settlements in the area Scottish names.
The first white settlement in Scotland County was in 1833 by brothers Levi and George Rhodes and their families near a location known as Sand Hill. Sand Hill was in the southern part of the county, about 12 miles from present-day Memphis. A general store was opened there around 1835 by James l. Jones, who also served as Scotland County's first sheriff.
Slavery, while never as prevalent in Scotland County as in other counties further south in the state's Little Dixie region, existed from the county's earliest days. Robert T. Smith brought the first slaves, a group of three, to the county in 1834. In 1850 Scotland County had 157 slaves or other "non-free people of color", but by the 1860 census that number had dropped to 131.
Farming was Scotland County's primary economic lifeblood from its earliest times. Once the stands of timber were cleared and the tough prairie grass plowed aside, settlers found rich soil. Between 1850 and 1880 the number of farms in the county grew from 334 to 1,994. The value of the farmland, in 1880 dollars, was over $3.72 million. Corn was the major cash crop, followed by oats, wheat, and potatoes.
Scotland County was the scene of three notable engagements during the American Civil War. The first happened at Etna on July 21, 1861. The 1st Northeast Missouri Home Guards under Colonel David Moore with assistance from additional units from Iowa and Illinois attacked pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard (MSG) forces using Etna as a training and resupply point. The action was part of General Nathaniel Lyon's efforts to clear "rebels" from rural Missouri. After a brief battle the MSG forces, mostly lightly armed cavalry, were driven from the town and surrounding areas of Scotland County and Moore's unit returned to its main base at Athens, Missouri.
On July 13, 1862, Confederate Colonel Joseph C. Porter approached Memphis in four converging columns totaling 125–169 men and captured it with little or no resistance. They first raided the federal armory, seizing about 100 muskets with cartridge boxes and ammunition, and several uniforms. The Confederates rounded up all adult men, who were taken to the courthouse to swear not to divulge any information about the raiders for 48 hours. Porter freed all militiamen and suspected militiamen to await parole, a fact noted by champions of his character. Citizens expressed their sympathies variously; Porter gave safe passage to a physician, an admitted Union supporter, who was anxious to return to his seriously ill wife. One of Porter's troops threatened a verbally abusive woman with a pistol, perhaps as a bluff. Porter's troops entered the courthouse and destroyed all indictments for horse theft, an act variously understood as simple lawlessness, intervention on behalf of criminal associates, or interference with politically motivated, fraudulent charges.
At Memphis, a key incident occurred that darkened Porter's reputation, and which his detractors see as part of a behavioral pattern that put him and his men beyond the norms of warfare. …