Simeon Kemper

Simeon Kemper was born February 5, 1799, in Montgomery County, Kentucky. His grandfather, Henry Kemper, was a resident of Fauquier County, Virginia, and his father, William Kemper, was born in that county in 1765. He moved in 1783 to Bryant's Station, Kentucky. He died in 1846. The families of both Henry and William Kemper were large ones and there are many descendants.

Simeon Kemper taught school in Montgomery County. In 1835 he met Miss Jane Ann Shortridge of Baltimore, Maryland, who was visiting relatives in Kentucky, and on December 17, 1835 they were married in Montgomery County. Two years later they decided to move to Missouri. On November 5, 1837, they left Montgomery County with their first child, a daughter, proceeding to Maysville, Kentucky, where they embarked by steamboat down the Ohio River. Changing boats at Cincinnati, they continued down the river, through the canal at Louisville, and on to St. Louis. There they embarked by steamboat up the Missouri River to Liberty Landing, arriving November 27, 1837. They spent a year in Clay County where their second child, their first son, John W. Kemper, was born. They then spent a year in Clinton County and then decided to move to the land near Blacksnake Hills.

They arrived at Blacksnake Hills on December 22, 1839, and preempted 160 acres of land, the northwest quarter of Section 9. In February 1840 Simeon built a double log house at the approximate location of the present Twenty-second and Colhoun Streets. Kemper followed his profession of surveyor, and in May 1843 was invited by Joseph Robidoux to prepare a town plan for Robidoux's land-the southwest quarter of Section 8. He staked out his grid of streets twice, once north and south, and once diagonally to fit the contour of the land. Robidoux had also asked Frederick W. Smith to prepare a town plan. Kemper's plan provided wide streets and parks, while Smith followed the European custom of narrow streets. Robidoux chose the Smith plan which provided more lots to be sold.

Simeon Kemper became the first city and county surveyor, and in October 1848, at the direction of State Senator (later Governor) Robert M. Stewart, he made a preliminary survey for the route of the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad. This was followed two years later by his final survey of about one-third of the line.

Mr. Kemper and Israel Landis laid off the northwest twenty acres of his quarter section of land for Mt. Mora Cemetery. He developed the rest of his land for residential and business purposes, the boundaries being approximately Seventeenth and Twenty-second Streets, Highly to Mulberry, including Colhoun, Union, and Clay Streets. Mr. and Mrs. Kemper had ten children. Their oldest child, John W. Kemper, born in Clinton County, Missouri, attended Kentucky Military Institute in 1859, and became a captain in the Army of the Confederacy, participating in the battles of Lexington, Pea Ridge, Iuka, and Corinth. He was wounded at Corinth and died in the hospital at Coffeyville, Kansas, on October 31, 1862. He was twentythree years of age, and was buried in the Coffeyville Cemetery by the side of his commander Colonel Pritchard. Another son, Charles S. Kemper, was active in the mercantile business in St. Joseph, being associated with the firms of John S. Brittain & Company, Richardson, Roberts Dry Goods Company, and was a partner in Kemper, Hundley & McDonald. Charles S. Kemper's daughters, Miss Mary Lee Kemper and Mrs. George U. Richmond, are living today (1975).

In 1860 Simeon Kemper built the house on the northwest corner of Nineteenth and Clay Streets, later to be occupied by James McCord. This was on the land he had developed as "Kemper's Addition. He had named the street in honor of Henry Clay whom he admired. In 1862 his son, Charles S. Kemper, a boy of fourteen, saw a troop of federal soldiers going past the house. The boy, reflecting the influence of his family, shouted at them, "Hurrah for Jeff Davis. He was promptly arrested by the soldiers and confined for a brief time.

Financially, Simeon Kemper was badly injured by the Civil War, and he never fully recovered from these reverses. He died March 11, 1883, and it was said of him: "Few men have lived in the County as long as Mr. Kemper and no one has enjoyed in a greater degree the respect, esteem, and confidence than this sturdy pioneer. He has long been an earnest and consistent member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and his sterling qualities of mind and heart will long live in our memories. As one of the foundation builders of St. Joseph his name will stand.'