Information Sheet

 

 

R         Russell family.

330                  Papers, 1837‑1938.

                                    Five folders.

 

 

 

This collection includes correspondence, legal papers, tax receipts, lists of household pur­chases, and miscellaneous papers of Cyrus Russell (1795‑1860), and his sons Cyrus Russell (1819‑1905) and Theodore Pease Russell (1827‑1889) of Arcadia in Iron County, Missouri.

 

Cyrus Russell of Somers, Connecticut, was among a number of New Englanders during the 1830s who were induced to move from settled areas of the east to the frontier of southeastern Mis­souri.  Following kinsmen and friends Henry Pease and J. L. Van Doren, also of Somers, Russell settled in the Arcadia Valley in what became Iron County, Missouri.  He was drawn partly by the industrial possibilities of “the Iron Mountain,” but especially by the agricultural and commercial potential of land in the undeveloped valley.  Russell settled in 1838 along Stouts Creek southeast of pres­ent‑day Ironton and quickly began clearing areas for cultivation.  A saw­mill on the creek pro­duced sawed lumber which was much in demand for construction of works at the mines and houses in Ironton during the 1840s and 1850s.  By 1860, Cyrus Russell and his sons Henry, Cyrus Jr., Theodore, Giles, and William owned nearly 1000 acres and were the most prominent citizens in the Arcadia Valley.  The Russells were directly connected with the found­ing of the first church and the first schools of the area, the creation of Iron County and construc­tion of the towns of Iron­ton and Arcadia, and were officers or sharehold­ers of various concerns including the Missouri Iron Company and the Arcadia Academy.  Known collectively as Rus­sellville, the Russell homesteads constituted a distinctly “Yankee” enclave in southeastern Mis­souri.  The Rus­sell family and the writings of Theodore Pease Russell are the subject of A Con­necticut Yankee In the Frontier Ozarks, by James F. Keefe and Lynn Morrow (University of Mis­souri Press, 1988).

 

The Russell family papers consist of correspondence, legal papers, tax receipts, and mis­cel­la­neous personal and business papers.  They concern primarily Cyrus Russell, Sr., and Cyrus Rus­sell, Jr., and, to a lesser degree, Theodore Pease Russell.  The legal and tax papers are nu­merous, reflecting the land acquisitions of Cyrus Russell and his sons, and transactions within the family during the 1840s and 1850s.  Only two pieces of personal correspondence are included from the period of the family’s greatest activity in the 1850s.  They are letters from Cyrus and Giles Rus­sell addressed to Cyrus, Jr., who had returned to Connecticut in 1850 for training as a master carpenter.  Several other letters written by Russell descendants in the 1930s concern Rus­sell fam­ily genealogy in New England and Missouri.

 

Some of the most interesting and useful items are in the miscel­laneous materials assem­bled in Folder 5.  They include “A Prisoner Dur­ing Price’s Raid” by Cyrus Russell, Jr.; the history of the Congregational Church, later reorganized as the Presbyterian Church of Ironton, probably authored by Theodore Pease Russell; lists of qualified voters in various townships of Iron County, 1867; items pertaining to the estate of Henry P. Russell, 1876‑1878; genealogical notes, ca. 1887; and a Russell family his­tory by Sarah Russell and John McCormick, ca. 1932‑1934.

 

 

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