[This summary was prepared by Anne Durfee Gauss, and represents the state of the information as she knew it in the 1920s. It should not be considered definitive, but rather as a source of clues. -- SDC] Partly from PIONEER FAMILIES of MISSOURI, by William S. Bryan and Robert Rose, published by Bryan, Brand and Company, St. Louis, Mo. 1876. St. Charles was first called Les Petite Cotes (little hills), afterwards Village des Cotes (village of the hills). It was named St. Charles by the Spanish. Date of first settlement uncertain, most likely 1766 or 1769, by Louis Blanchette, the Chasseur, or hunter. Most of the pioneers (after French and Spanish days) were from Kentucky and Virginia, a few from North and South Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. After the Catholics, the first church was the Presbyterian, organized August 30, 1818, by Rev. Salmon Giddings, assisted by Rev. John Mathews. Thomas Lindsay and wife, James Lindsay and wife, were four of the nine members. Thomas Lindsay was an elder. Rev. Charles S. Robinson was pastor. John Jay Johns was born in Buckingham County, Virginia, June 27, 1818. His father was Glover Johns, his mother Martha Jones. Glover Johns was a tobacco planter and a magistrate, an office of great honor in the Old Dominion in those days. Glover Johns' father and mother were John Johns and Elizabeth Glover. After the death of his wife, Glover Johns sold his plantation and went with John Jay (his youngest child) to middle Tennessee in 1831, where his married daughter, Elizabeth, Mrs. Cowan, lived. The Cowans lived in Memphis, at least at one time. In 1834, Glover Johns and John J., his son, went to Mississippi, where an older son, Alfred (wife, Mary Wharton) had a plantation near Clinton, named "Chevy Chase". In 1836, John Jay went to Miami University at Oxford, Ohio, where he graduated in 1840. He was married the same year to Catherine A. Woodruff of Oxford, and returning to Mississippi, became a planter. In the spring of 1844 he removed to St. Charles County, Missouri. That was the memorable year of the great overflow of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, by which untold suffering and sickness were entailed upon the population. In 1845, attracted by the rich lands in the point Prairie, below St. Charles, Mr.. Johns settled there. St. Charles, at that time, was a small unprepossessing village, and many of its merchants and citizens were struggling against financial ruin which threatened them on account of the stringency of the times. In 1846, Mrs. Johns died, leaving two daughters, Louisa and Mary. There were a few scattering farms on the Point Prairie when Mr. Johns settled there, but its prospects soon began to improve, and a number of enterprising persons located there. Mr.. Johns, it is said, paid ten dollars an acre; some of his land was sold as high as $180.00 an acre in 1907, when his two farms were sold, in order to divide his estate. among his neighbors in the point were Willis Fawcett (brother of Henrietta, Mrs. Eugene Gauss), B. H. Alderson, Abner Cunningham, John Chapman, Charles Sheppard, and James Judge. On the 2d day of November 1847, Mr. Johns was married to Jane Amanda Durfee, daughter of Rev. Thomas Russell Durfee, and his wife, Anne Glenday, who was the niece and ward of Thomas Lindsay. the ceremony took place at the old Thomas Lindsay farm near St. Charles. In 1849, Mr. Johns, B. A. Alderson, Willis Fawcett and John Stonebraker bought the first McCormick reaper that was ever brought to the State. This gave a new impetus to the production of wheat in this great wheat growing county. In 1851, Mr. Johns removed his family to the town of St. Charles, where they continued to reside. Within a year or two, he built the home on a hill on the southwestern edge of town, where he lived until his death in April, 1899. Mrs. Johns died in this home February 20, 1915. They had a family of eleven children. Believing a cultivated and well trained mind to be more valuable than wealth, he gave all his children a good education and those who are grown occupy honorable and useful positions in society. Mr. Johns was made an elder in the Presbyterian Church at twenty-one years of age. Thomas Lindsay and his family lived in Scotland. The names of his children were, Thomas, Jr., James, John, Martha, Mary, Anne and Jane. James was married in Scotland to Charlotte Kettray, and came to America and settled in St. Charles County in 1817. Johns settled in South Carolina, where he died. Anne married Peter Glenday, of Forforshire and Perthshire, Scotland. They came to St. Charles in 1817. The names of their children were: James, Ellen or Helen, Thomas, Anne and Andrew. When they came to St. Charles, Helen was twelve and Anne, six. Peter Glenday remained in St. Charles six years. During that time his wife, Anne Lindsay Glenday died. He returned to Scotland with his daughter, Helen. Anne chose to remain behind with her uncle, Thomas Lindsay, Jr. Anne L. Glenday's grave in St. Charles was lost in the changes that came in the town but there is a gravestone for her in Rattray Kirkyard, Blairgowrie, Perthshire, Scotland, where her husband, Peter Glenday, is buried. Their son, James, was married a merchant with trading operations in Scotland, Mexico, Missouri, and other places. He married Mary Thom of Forfar, Scotland. They lived in St. Charles and in the County. James Glenday died when middle-aged or a cut on his foot which was not properly cared for. His children died young. His widow spent the latter half of her life in the home of her husband's niece, Mrs. John Jay Johns. she died, aged 80 years, at St. Joseph's Hospital, St. Charles, in spring of 1899. Helen Glenday, who returned to Scotland with her father, after his death, married Mr. Butchart and lived to be over ninety years of age. They had one son, James Patrick, who died in Rattray, December, 1912, leaving his widow, a son, Edwin, and daughter, Ada. James Patrick Butchart was 68 years of age when he died. Thomas Glenday, of a daring temperament, made expeditions into new country. He married "Polly" Cayce of Missouri and they lived in St. Charles County. some time after her death he went far west and never returned; was supposed to have been killed by Indians. Andrew died rather young in Mexico. Anne grew up in the home of her uncle, Thomas Lindsay, in St. Charles County, and married in 1828, Rev. Thomas R. Durfee. Rev Thomas Russell Durfee came to St. Charles from Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1827. He was a graduate of Brown University, Rhode Island, and of the Theological Seminary at Andover, Mass. In 1828, in St. Charles County, he was married to Miss Anne Glenday, who was a niece of Thomas Lindsay and then living with him. Mr. Durfee lived for a time after his marriage in Callaway County, as pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Auxvasse. He afterward returned to St. Charles, and was agent of the American bible society, and in 1833, the great Cholera year - he died (not of Cholera but a congestion) at the house of Thomas Lindsay. He was 32 years of age, was a man of great worth and a fine preacher. He left two daughters, Jane Amanda, who afterwards was married to John Jay Johns, - and Margaret Lindsay, who married Edward Payson Borden of Philadelphia. Mrs. Durfee, after the death of her husband, continued to live with her uncle, Thomas Lindsay, until his death in 1843, At her uncle's death, she was, by his will, possessed of his old homestead, where she continued to reside until 1850 when she went to live with her son-in-law, John Jay Johns. she died at his home in April, 1890, aged 80 years. She was a great enthusiast on the subject of education, and used her means freely in educating her grandchildren. Her elder daughter, Mrs. Johns, was educated at Lindenwood and at Monticello, Godfrey, Illinois; and Mrs. Borden at Bradford Seminary in Massachusetts. (Copied from information sent by Minna Gauss Reeves, granddaughter of John Jay Johns and Jane Amanda Durfee Johns) Fragmentary copy of this in Anne Durfee Gauss' hand in the private collection of the Chambless family, as is the typewritten copy from which this was transcribed. Most likely the typewritten copy was made by Florence Johns in the 1960s. Transcribed to softcopy by Susan D. Chambless, January 21, 2000. copyright, 1998-2000 by Susan D. Chambless Susan D. Chambless listowner for the CHAMBLESS, GAUSS, GLENDAY, HORNE, BORDEN, DURFEE, SANDERSON & JOHNS surname lists, now at RootsWeb - http://www.rootsweb.com - please join us! Check it out: http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~schmblss I'm posting a lot of old family letters & papers centered around the Charles Henry Gauss family of St. Charles, MO. Surnames are: Gauss, Johns, Fawcett, Glenday, Durfee, Lindsay, plus, of course, the people they knew.