The aftermath of the Civil War was devastating in much of Missouri, but one fortunate result involved the founding of the town of Wappapello. Samuel Robert Kelley served in Co. L, Third Missouri State Militia Cavalry, enlisting in January 1862, receiving promotion to 1st Lieutenant, and serving until January 1865. Kelley left Ohio, where he was born in Jackson County, at some time prior to 1860. He appears in the 1860 census as a 19-year-old farm laborer, born in Ohio, in the household of George Taylor in Ste. Genevieve County.
Part of his Civil War service took him to Wayne County, where he grew to love the country near where Wappapello Dam is today. Kelley survived the war and returned to marry a cousin from Arcadia in Iron County, Nancy Jane Phillips, in 1866. The couple had an unknown source of financial assets, because within a year Kelley purchased 80 acres lying just east of the Wappapello Dam area. He also borrowed over $650 in March 1869, which he paid back with interest before the end of the year--nearly $15,000 in 2024 dollars.
A legend among the descendants of Samuel and Nancy Kelley is that Samuel R. Kelley received his land from a grateful government for his Civil War service. Officials told him to ride on horseback from daybreak to sunset to establish boundaries of this land. However, the U. S. government stopped paying soldiers in land grants after the Mexican War, making this story unlikely. Rather, deed records in Wayne County include 18 land transactions totaling over 1500 acres between July 1866 and December 1883 in which land either Samuel R. or Nancy J. Kelley purchased land. Thus, they bought their large land holdings.
Kelley engaged in the stave bolt business, which boomed after the war, fueled by Wayne County’s vast timber resources. He also may have operated a grist mill. By the early 1880s, however, railroad fever gripped Southeast Missouri. Business interests throughout the region hoped the lines built by entrepreneur Louis Houck for the Cape Girardeau Southwestern would come to their areas. Kelleys had the land and financial resources to make this happen.
Samuel Kelley soon commissioned a survey for part of his property and platted a new town to house a railroad depot. Louis Houck named the town “Wappapello,” which is thought to come either from “Wapapilethe,” a Shawnee leader from early Missouri, or a general Shawnee word for “chief.” The Kelleys quit claimed three full blocks and 16 town lots in four other blocks to Houck but stipulated that he would pay $50 per acre if he moved or abandoned the railroad bed. Although the agreement is not in the deed, Houck gave the Kelleys free lifetime passes to his railroad at the time of the deed.
Predictably, the new settlement grew rapidly. From a population of 40 at the time the railroad arrived, Wappapello grew to 300 by 1900. The railroad depot remained past the time when the timber played out but closed along with the Hunter Branch line of the railroad in 1939 when construction of Lake Wappapello altered the area.
Sadly, Samuel R. Kelley died at the early age of 43. He caught cold while working outside in January 1886 and succumbed to complications on January 21. Nancy (Phillips) Kelley remarried to another former Union officer and widower, Pinkney Powers. She would survive Samuel Kelley for 30 years and was known as a frugal and canny businesswoman in her own right.
