Also researching Gasconade and Franklin Counties in Missouri for Kehr and Blaske families. Both early settlers of Hermann, MO.

Fritzie is descended from the Rabbs of Mississippi and Whitakers of Maryland - Kentucky - Mississippi and the Craigs who we know little about.

• Statler Family
•  Settlers of Bollinger County MO
•  Kehrs of Gasconade County MO
•  Whitakers MD to MS
•  Rabb Family, MS
• Descendants of Johan Adam Stadler
  

Statler family is our familytree user page.

Settlers of Bollinger County include Bollinger, Conrad, Crites, Limbaugh, Seabaugh, Smith, Statler and others.

Other links are Rootsweb World Connect data banks on the subjects named.

Clifford A. Statler
127 Longleaf Drive
Searcy, AR 72143
501-279-9234

In about 1797 a North Carolinian named George Frederick Bollinger traveled by horseback, west to the Mississippi river. He and a friend crossed the river into the Upper Louisiana Territory at the Cape Girardeau Outpost. This land was under Spanish control at that time.

Bollinger soon met the spanish commander of the post, Louis Lorimier, and the two became friends.

Lorimier was anxious to increase the population in his area as a defense against English
expansion from across the river. At a time like this, shortly after the American Revolution, he
undoubtedly felt that Americans would make good colonists. Accordingly, he made Bollinger an
offer of cheap Spanish land grants for him and any settlers he could persuade to  move west. He
was able to offer up to 800 Arpents of land (about 680 acres) to each family for the cost of
surveying, just $41 total. Improvements were required as was permanent residency.

Bollinger returned to his home in Lincoln County North Carolina and began recruiting friends
and relatives to accept this generous offer. He persuaded  four of his brothers, John, Daniel,
Phillip and Mathias along with two grown nephews, Mann Henry and William Bollinger to
move their families west. Along with them came North Carolina neighbors Peter and Conrad
Statler, Joseph Nyswonger, George and Peter Grount, Peter Crytes, John and Jacob
Cotner, John and Isaac Miller, Frederick Limbaugh, Leonard Welker and Frederick
Slinkard with their Families.

After the fall 1799 harvest, these families left their established homes with all the belongings
they could carry and with their livestock to start a new land.

There has never been a written record of that trip found. One can only imagine the problems
along the way as well as the good times experienced. There would have been very few
settlements along their route and game would have made up a large part of the diet.

Verbal history has it that the group crossed the Mississippi River on New Years Day 1800. Most
accounts say that they crossed at St Genevieve. In those days and well up into the 19th century,
the river froze solid almost every year allowing  wagon crossings on the ice. It is unlikely that
any ferry could have crossed at that time of year so ice must have been their bridge.

After crossing and probably resupplying at St. Genevieve, the travelers moved on south to the
Cape Girardeau district where they all chose land along the Big and Little White Water Rivers
which is now part or Bollinger County Missouri. Their names all appear on Spanish land grants
in that area. It was not until 1803 that France took possession of  Louisiana Territory and in that
same year the Louisiana Purchase brought our settlers back into the United States.

For many years, beginning in 1805, Boards of Land Commissioners  for Missouri certified these
settlers claims.

The settlers must have written home about the good  life they were leading in the new land
because their old neighbors from North Carolina continued to arrive and establish farms and
businesses in the area. Our own ancestor, Christopher Statler married in North Carolina and
joined his brothers along the river about 1810.

This country was so remote that literally all the families inter married  and their descendants can
all call each other cousin.

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