It seems like Almost Yesterday that a 4,000 acre tract of farm land was sold in New Madrid County, Missouri for what was in February 1924 an impressive sum: over $100.00 per acre. The sale was announced by Mr. Will Hunter, manager of the Hunter Land and Development Company of New Madrid, Missouri.
The purchaser of the 4,000 acre was Mr. George Taylor, a cotton planter from Memphis, Tennessee. Seven hundred acres of land in the sale was located just north of Marston, Missouri. The remaining 3,300 acres was in the vicinity of Point Pleasant, south of New Madrid Bend. The Hunter Land Company received cash and land in Mississippi in exchange for the 4,000 acres.
Mr. Taylor, an experienced cotton planter, acquired the land, recently drained as a part of the substantial drainage program in Southeast Missouri in the first two decades of the 20th century, and announced that he was going to further improve the property – turning it into cotton plantations, similar to those he owned and operated in Tennessee and Mississippi.
Taylor indicated that he would soon be constructing a large number of tenant houses and would import laborers from Mississippi to work the land.
Much of the motivation for the Mississippi planters to move into Southeast Missouri in the period between 1920 and 1924 was the transformation of the Missouri landscape from wetland to farm land – and the recent devastation of the cotton crop in the Deep South by the troublesome boll weevil. In the first two months of 1924 the Hunter Land and Development Company sold over 26,000 acres of farm land in New Madrid County.
In this time period – and for these reasons – Southeast Missouri was significantly changed.
It seems like Almost Yesterday.
