Isaac McCoy

Rev. Isaac McCoy (1784-1846) = Baptist Missionary. Surveyor. US Commissioner Indian Agent. Ferry operator. Born in Pennsylvania and reared in the frontier settlements of Indiana and Kentucky.

Isaac brought his family of six west in 1830. His son, John Calvin, born in Indiana in 1811, his daughter, Delilah, and his son-in-law, Dr. Johnston Lykins. When the Rev. McCoy arrived, he knelt, offered prayer and dedicated the land.

Isaac built a log cabin high on a hill (northeast corner of Main and Linwood Blvd.) overlooking what was to become Westport.

In August of 1830, Isaac McCoy addressed a council of Shawnees on the subject of establishing a Baptist mission. He wrote in his diary: "The Methodists have been talking of forming an establishment among them. Today more than twenty Shawanoes assembled in obedience to a call of Major John Campbell, [sub-agent] to whom I made a pretty lengthy address on the subject of a mission being established among them. The celebrated Shawnaoe prophet, who was so often heard of in the last war, and brother to Tecumseh, replied briefly to me. An answer will be deferred, until I return from my tour in the wilderness."

Isaac McCoy surveyed the Indian reservation land in Kansas. Mrs. Eliza McCoy, a niece, worked at the Wea Baptist Mission near Paola in 1848.  

On July 13, 1835, Isaac purchased a female slave named Chiney for $15 to prevent her from being torn from her husband and family. He was against slavery, but promised to provide her freedom when Chiney had paid him back.. He left Chiney to his wife in his will and Jotham Meeker, another Baptist missionary, witnessed it.

A marker was placed at McCoy’s  home, near what became St. Luke’s Hospital on Wornall Road, in 1961 by the Jackson County Historical Society.

Historical Note: Isaac's brother-in-law, Judge William Polke of Rochester, was the conductor of the Pottawatomi Indians during the Trail of Death from Indiana to the Indian territory in Kansas in 1838. If you wish to know if a Pottawatomi ancestor traveled on the Trail of Death, see the Tribal Rolls here. 

 More to Read:

1. McCoy Papers, Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, KS www.KSHS.org

 or www.kancoll.org

2. The Annual Register of Indian Affairs within the Western (or Indian) Territory. By Isaac McCoy, 1837-1838. KSHS.org

3. History of the Baptist Indian Missions. by Isaac McCoy. 1840.

4. The Memoir of Mrs. Eliza McCoy. Calvin McCormick, Dallas, Texas, 1892.

5. Jackson County Pioneers. By Pearl Wilcox. 1975

6. A Historic Outline of Grinter Place from 1825 to 1878. Compiled by Harry E. Hanson. c. 1970.

7. “The Trail of Death” by Marilyn Mullins, Osawatomie and Its People. Osawatomie Historic Society, 1995

8. Annals of Shawnee Methodist Mission. Compiled by Martha B. Caldwell. Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, KS. 1977.

9. John Brown and the Legend of Fifty-Six. By James Claude Malin. 1942.
10. Missouri: Day by Day. By Floyd C. Shoemaker, Editor. Mo State Historical Society, 1942.

11. The History of the Jackson County Historical Society: 1909 to 1996. By Wilda Sandy. 1996. and  Here Lies Kansas City: A Collection of Our City’s Notables and Their Final Resting Places. Wilda Sandy. 1984.
12. History of Kansas. By Noble L. Prentis. E. P. Greer, Winfield, KS; 1899.
13. Polk Family & Kinsmen. By William Harrison Polk (1843-), Louisville, KY Press, 1912.
14. Memoir of Jason Mason Peck. Rufus Babcock. 1864.

15. Carey Mission, Michigan

16. Baptists in Illinois
17. John Calvin McCoy on Pearl Street, Kansas City, MO. And "Paving the Way to South Kansas City." 

18. “Missouri Star: The Life and Times of Martha A. “Mattie” Livingston Lykins Bingham. By Dr. Rose Ann Findlen. 2011. 

19. Isaac McCoy's 1812 Journal

20. Findagrave # 20796462

 

Places to see in Mo and KS.

1. Westport Landing, Missouri River and Grand Ave, Kansas City
2. Harlem, Clay County, MO Historical Marker 

3. Residence Marker, near St. Luke’s Hospital on Wornall. Kansas City, MO. Jackson County Historical Society. 1961.

4. John Calvin McCoy’s former home, 711 Olive Street, Kansas City, MO.

5. John built a two story log cabin in 1833 at 444 Westport Road, Kansas City, MO.

6. Look up! The Westport Historical marker is attached to a brick building on the corner of Pennsylvania and Westport Roads, Kansas City, MO. 
7. Pioneer Park, Westport Road and Broadway, Kansas City
8. Westport Historical Society/Harris-Kearney Home, 4000 Baltimore Ave, Kansas City

9. Red Bridge, spans Red Bridge Road between Blue River Parkway and Holmes Road, Kansas City, MO (Renew the Blue River)

10. Trail of Death Marker at Minor Park (between the old Red Bridge and the first park shelter on east side of Blue River), off Red Bridge Road, Kansas City, MO. (The west side of Blue river is where the Pottawatomi's camped in Nov. 1838 before reaching their reservation in Miami County, Kansas two days later).

11. Union Cemetery, 227 East 28th Terr. Kansas City, MO. (Note: According to John Mark Lambertson, a former member of the Union Cemetery board, Rev. Isaac McCoy passed away in the city of Louisville, Kentucky and was buried there. However, his son, John Calvin McCoy, was buried in Union Cemetery). 

12. Mary Ann Isaacs Dagenette Peoria's home, 708 E. Kaskaskia St., Paola (Private home).

13. Wea Baptist Mission History, Miami County Historical Museum, Paola, KS. 

Nathan Scarritt

Rev. Nathan Scarritt (1821-1890) = Methodist Preacher and Teacher. Missionary. Nathan was born in Edwardsville, Illinois on April 14 and was educated at McKendree College, in Lebanon, Illinois.

He arrived in the Kansas City area in September of 1848 to teach the classics at Rev. Thomas Johnson’s Shawnee Methodist Indian Manual Labor School. He also taught at early grammar schools in Westport, at a seminary for young women and at a Bible training school for missionaries.

Rev. Scarritt preached at the Delaware Indian Methodist Mission White Church organized by Rev. Thomas Johnson for a time. In 1852, the Independence Methodist circuit was dropped and a new Kansas and Westport circuit filled, with Rev. Scarritt appointed as preacher. He attended the St. Louis Methodist Conference at Springfield, MO. on Wednesday, October 24, 1855. Nathan was presiding elder over the Lecompton district in the fourth session of the Kansas Methodist Mission Conference held in Tecumseh on September 23, 1859.  In 1858-59, he was appointed to the Shawnee Reserve, and for the next two years he was the presiding elder of the Lecompton district. Later he preached at the Washington Street Methodist Episcopal Church, a preaching point begun by a Methodist layman, W.B. Barber in 1877.

Nathan married Martha Matilda Chick, daughter of Col. William Miles (1794-1847) and Ann Eliza Smith Chick (1796-1876) and produced nine children. Originally, Nathan and Martha lived in Westport, in a tidy two-story frame house, but moved to a farm in 1862, close to today’s Cliff Drive and Gladstone Blvd in Kansas City. Still standing is his eldest son’s 1898 Scarritt-Royster home.  In October of 1874, he married Mrs. Ruth E. Scarritt, the widow of his brother Isaac.

Nathan died on May 22 and is buried in the Mt. Washington Cemetery in Independence, MO. 

More to Read:

1. Kansas City Then & Now 3. By Monroe Dodd, Kansas City Star Books, 2007.

2. Here Lies Kansas City: A Collection of Our City’s Notables and Their Final Resting Places. Wilda Sandy. 1984.

3. He Came To Pray: History of White Church Christian Church: 1832-1996.

4. Lecompton Methodist Church" By Iona Spencer. Bald Eagle. Lecompton Historical Society, Lecompton, KS. Summer, 1998.

5. Methodist Episcopal Church, South History. By Rev. Joab Spencer.

6. Postcards from Old Kansas City. By Mrs. Sam Ray. 1980.

7. Westport: Missouri's Port of Many Returns. By Patricia Cleary Miller. Lowell Press, Kansas City, Mo. 1983. Repository: Mid-Continent PublicLibrary, Raytown Branch, 10016 E. 62st, Raytown, MO.
8. Findagrave #6870909

Places to Visit in KS. & MO.

1. Shawnee Indian Mission Historic Site & Museum, 3403 W. 53^rd, Fairway, KS

2. White Christian Church/Delaware Indian Mission (see stained glass window), 2200 N. 85th St., Kansas City, Wyandotte County, KS.

3. Lecompton & Tecumseh, KS.

4. Former home stood at 4038 Central street, Kansas City, MO.

5. Scarritt Point Memorial, (first home site), West side of Walrond Street and Norledge Ave, at Kessler Park, Scarritt Spring, Kansas City, MO. (section 34 shows Nathan Scarritt's name on this 1877 Jackson County, MO. historic map)

6. Scarritt Building, 9^th & Walnut, Kansas City, MO. (completed in 1907)

7. Scarritt-Royster home, 3500 Gladstone Blvd, Kansas City, MO.
8. Scarritt Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri
9. Westport Historical Society, 4000 Baltimore Ave, Kansas City

9. Mt. Washington Cemetery, 614 Brookside Drive, Independence, MO.

Biography written by Dolores J. Rush. Updated: 1/17/2020.