Windsor History

Although Windsor was platted on September 11, 1855, the history of this area started long before. Missouri became a state in 1821 and this area was wilderness. The Shawnee and Osage Indians were the only inhabitants and they were not permanent. They used this part of the state for their hunting grounds. Slowly, trappers and pioneers began coming west and by 1831 the first white settler had come to the area now known as Windsor. He was Thomas Anderson, a blacksmith and gunsmith by trade. He built his cabin and blacksmith shop near what is now Laurel Oaks Cemetery on what was formerly known as Allen Street. He was married and had several children. However, as civilization came here, Anderson moved on west. His family was not in Windsor in 1860, but in the rural area around Clinton.

Trappers, traders, and early settlers found it difficult to buy even necessary items because the closest towns of any size were river towns such as Boonville or Warsaw. At that time, products had to be moved via ox and wagon. The closest thing to a road in the 1830s through 1855 was an old Indian trail that had been used and widened by wagon wheels into a wagon road made by travelers going on to Osceola and through to Fort Scott, Kansas. It was quite profitable for the early settlers in this area to make friends with the Indians living in the neighborhood and trade furs, etc., with them. They had an agreement with the U.S. government to get an annuity each year, and it was paid in ammunition. Our forefathers got much of their gunpowder from the local Indians. Old settlers remember after Windsor became a town seeing the few Indians left here traveling south, single file, out south of town by the Hughes place (Highway E) heading to Oklahoma.

Some time around 1839, the land which is now the center of our town was purchased by Mr. R.F. Taylor and Mr. Weeden Major. Additional land was added by men named Foster and Mercer. Accounts vary on whether the town was platted by R.F. Taylor, Weeden Major or by an attorney named William Steele, whose great-grandmother was a sister to George Washington. They all reflect, however, that the town was first called Belmont, and that the four business blocks of town were laid out on September 11, 1855, with lots selling for five to fifteen dollars each.

If we could go back in time to Windsor, we would hear cattle, chickens, and hogs belonging to the townspeople living and grazing in people's front yards. A lady remembered that as a girl in 1859, at the age of four years, she was traveling west with her parents and wrote the first written reference seen to date of our town in The Clinton Eye in May 1899. Here is her description: "We crossed over the place, now the city of Sedalia, wading through grass three feet high, prodding an ox team along, right where Sedalia's principal streets are located. The next town on our route was a small place, consisting of a store, a blacksmith shop, and a post office. It bore the euphonious title of Belmont. This was the germ of the thriving city of Windsor."

After the landowners, Taylor and Weeden, surveyed the town and decided to call it Belmont, they found there was a problem. For the next four years much controversy arose as to the name of our town. Postal authorities informed the founders that there was another Belmont, Missouri. Robert Means, another early settler who was a lover of English history and an admirer of Queen Victoria, wanted to name the town for the Queen's residence - Windsor Castle. Tradition has it that the Indians called this area Willow Springs, so many of the early citizens wished to call this new town Spring Grove, and that is probably the name we would have had if the government had not informed them that another Missouri town bore that same name.

For three or four years there was much confusion. Many town meetings were held to discuss this matter. If one wanted to post a letter to anyone living in Belmont, the letter had to be addressed to the Windsor post office. Finally, on December 9, 1859, this dual existence ceased. By an act of the state legislature, the name was changed from Belmont to Windsor. Windsor was incorporated by the county court on February 5, 1873, and became a city of the fourth class on October 15, 1878, with J.M. Burress as our first mayor. By 1841, the area formerly known as Lillard County had become Lafayette County and then subdivided. Our immediate region was called Rives County and finally Henry County, in honor of Patrick Henry.

When Taylor and Major laid out our town, it never occurred to them that they were going to confuse generation after generation in establishing the right direction. The pattern of Windsor had long been carved before either of the founders came to this area. The main street of Windsor was the old wagon road used by travelers and traders from the river town westward through Osceola and on to Fort Scott, Kansas. So naturally these men laid off the plat to follow the windings of this old road, earlier an indian trail.

Mr. Taylor did not build his log house to face the road, but straight with the world. His house was located a few feet north of 310 N. Main Street, across the street from where Royal Oaks Hospital is located today. It was actually nearer a little crooked street called Taylor Street located behind the house noted on Main. Taylor's famous well, with the windlass and oaken bucket, was known far and near by the early travelers. Present day citizens (written in 1955) who have drunk from this well have said that it had the coldest water they ever drank. The correct location of the well is on the front lawn of the property owned by John Lewis at about 314 N. Main Street. It is next to the sidewalk, and one can see where it has been cemented. He built his general store building next to the well so that travelers, as they drank and watered their livestock, could conveniently do a little shopping in his store on the way west. So Windsor's business section was actually about two blocks northeast of where it is today.

By 1860, Windsor's population was about 300 people. A large log schoolhouse had been built and several new business buildings had been constructed. The years of the Civil War meant hardship for the people here, as forces from both the Union and the Confederate armies battled back and forth across Missouri, which was known as a border state. The first Confederate flag to be raised in Missouri was in Windsor, an event at which William Steele was the speaker of the day.

After the war, however, things began to look up for the people of our town. By 1870 our population had grown to 872 residents. We proudly claimed five dry good stores, two dram shops (or pharmacies), ten hotels, two millinery shops, two butcher shops, one harness shop, two grocery stores, two lawyers, three doctors, seven preachers, and NO saloons! The first railroad was built through town the year before this; it was named the Tebo and Neosho Railroad and its line extended from Sedalia, Missouri, to Fort Scott, Kansas. Later this became the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, or M. K. & T. Railroad. The "Katy" depot was first built near the corner of Fifth and Colt Streets.

Windsor flourished in the years to come. The necessity of a cemetery resulted in the surveying of Laurel Oaks Cemetery on a six-acre site in March of 1871. Our town's newspaper, the Windsor Review, was founded by Will Walker in the 1870s, as was the Windsor Bank, which remained family owned until 1986 when it was purchased by the United Missouri Bank of Warrensburg, now known as UMB Bank.