Jacket, Missouri facts for kids

Jacket (sometimes spelled Jackett) is a small, quiet place in the southeastern part of McDonald County, Missouri, in the United States. It's not a city with its own government, but rather an unincorporated community. You can find it on Missouri Route KK, about half a mile north of the Missouri-Arkansas border. It's also about a mile west of the border between McDonald and Barry counties. Jacket is located right on the east bank of Big Sugar Creek.

Early Settlers and How Jacket Got Its Name

The hilly and rocky Ozark Mountains area where Jacket is located was home to Native American tribes for hundreds of years. The last tribe to live here was the Osage. The United States government took their land in the early 1800s. By the mid-1800s, pioneers from eastern states like Kentucky and Tennessee, and other parts of Missouri and Arkansas, began to settle in the area.

The first European settlers arrived in Jacket around 1840-1841. Among them were John Rose, James Boles, and a man known as Clemons. Clemons built a special mill that used water power to grind corn. This "corn cracker" was built where Otter Creek flows into Big Sugar Creek.

People believe that both the names "Big Sugar Creek" and "Jacket" were created around this time. A local story says that Big Sugar Creek got its name because many sugar maple trees grew along its banks. The name Jacket might have come from the large numbers of yellow jacket wasps in the area. Another idea is that the name came a bit later, during the Civil War, from a group of fighters called "Yellow Jackets."

In 1846, Henry Schell (1810-1863) bought Clemons' corn cracker. Schell had already started the community of Shell Knob in Barry County. When he moved to Jacket, he brought his wife, Elizabeth Yocum Schell, and their young children. They claimed large areas of land that were available for homesteading. Henry Schell then built a grist mill (a bigger mill for grinding grain) at the same spot as the corn cracker. He also built a house west of the mill using lumber from a mill in War Eagle, Arkansas. By the time he passed away in 1863, he owned more than 1,000 acres of land.

Jacket During the Civil War

In the summer of 1863, the Civil War was happening all over the country. Southwest Missouri and northwest Arkansas were areas where people had strong feelings for either the North or the South. Henry Schell's four oldest sons were fighting for the Confederate States of America.

On July 11, 1863, Henry Schell was working in his mill when he saw or heard a group of "bushwhackers" coming his way. Bushwhackers were like guerrilla fighters who often attacked people and property during the war. Henry tried to run to his house, but he was shot as he went up the hill. His wife, daughters, and some neighbor women prepared his body for burial. They used a meal box from the mill as a coffin and buried him in the front yard of his home. Later, one of his sons, who was a blacksmith, put a wrought iron fence around the grave.

After Henry Schell's death, his 1,000 acres of land were divided among his children. They built homes, started businesses, and set aside land for churches, a cemetery, and a school. Over time, his descendants continued to divide their land and sold parts of it to other families.

Businesses in the Early 1900s

Henry Schell's original grist mill was destroyed by a flood a few years after his death. But his son, also named Henry Schell (1841-1928), built a new one about a quarter-mile north on Big Sugar Creek. This new location became the center of the Jacket community.

The younger Henry Schell opened the Jacket store before 1908, on the hill directly north of his mill. At some point, Jasper Armstrong (1888-1967) became his partner in the store. Like many general stores of that time, the Jacket store was more than just a place to buy things. It was a meeting spot where people could talk and catch up. Later, it even had a gas pump.

Henry Schell was appointed the postmaster for Jacket on January 27, 1908. Mail service in the community officially started on October 2, 1911. In October 1911, Schell sold his share of the store to Jasper Armstrong's stepbrother, Joseph J. Vaughn (1878-1955). Joseph Vaughn also moved his blacksmith shop to the store's location. Vaughn and Armstrong ran the store together for a while.

Over the years, ownership of the store changed several times. The Jacket post office, which was inside the store, also had different postmasters. It was finally closed on April 30, 1930, and mail service for Jacket shifted to Garfield, Arkansas.

The store itself continued to operate with different owners until it finally closed around 1950. Besides the mill, store, and blacksmith shop, Jacket also had a small tomato canning factory. This factory was also owned by members of the Schell family, who had similar businesses in Powell, Missouri and Pea Ridge.

Community Life in Jacket

Community life in Jacket was active, especially for women and young people. An Extension Homemakers club was popular among women in the 1930s and 1940s. Two 4-H clubs were started in 1937: one for boys focused on farming, and another for girls focused on sewing.

For most of the 20th century, two churches served the community: Antioch Church of Christ and Sugar Creek Baptist Church. The Church of Christ, which has a unique flagstone outside, still holds services today.

The original one-room Baptist church was built in 1897 by local men. It was a meeting house for two different groups: Primitive Baptist and Missionary Baptist. The church was designed with two front doors. This was because Primitive Baptists at the time believed men should enter through one door and women and children through the other. The Missionary Baptists used the building on the first and third Sundays of the month, and the Primitives used it on other Sundays. Eventually, the two groups joined together and became part of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Starting in 1965, the Baptist church was updated and expanded. An education wing was added to the back, and a second story was built on it in the mid-1970s. The inside was modernized, and the two front doors were replaced with a single set of double doors. A porch was added, and a steeple with a bell was put on the roof. Despite these updates and a period of growth, membership declined by the mid-1980s. In 1986, the church decided to close. In the early 1900s, the grounds of the old Baptist church were used for annual 4th of July celebrations and other community events.

The Jacket school, also known as the Pleasant View school, taught children from first through eighth grade for many years. There were at least three different buildings for the school over its history. The earliest known building was replaced in 1923. That building was destroyed by a fire the day before school was supposed to start in 1937. After that, the final Jacket school building was constructed. In the late 1950s, all the small rural schools in the area were combined into a new building on the Southwest R-V school district campus in Washburn. The 1937 school building remained standing until it was destroyed in another fire on October 22, 1963.

In 1929, the county approved the building of a bridge across Big Sugar Creek in Jacket. This bridge replaced a ford, which was a shallow place in the creek that could be crossed by vehicles. The ford was unusable when the water was high. The new single-lane bridge was built on concrete supports with steel beams and a wooden deck and railing. It crossed the creek about an eighth of a mile north of where the Civil War-era Schell mill stood. This bridge was used until it was replaced by a two-lane concrete bridge in early 1993. The south end of the current bridge is very close to where the earlier Schell mill was located.

Jacket's Decline

Jacket's businesses began to fade after the new bridge was built and more people owned cars. This made it easier for local residents to leave the community regularly to shop, work, or go to church. By 1960, the store, blacksmith shop, grist mill, post office, tomato plant, and school were all closed.

Today, only parts of the old community remain. The old general store building is still standing, but it has been changed into a barn. The former Baptist church is also still there, but it is now used as a private home. The tomato canning plant, blacksmith shop, gristmill, and school buildings are all gone.