Gov. Daniel Dunklin

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dunklin *http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7279715

Daniel Dunklin (January 14, 1790 – August 25, 1844) was the fifth Governor of Missouri, serving from 1832 to 1836. He also served as the state's third Lieutenant Governor. Dunklin is considered the "Father of Public Schools" in Missouri. Dunklin was also the father-in-law of Missouri Lieutenant Governor Franklin Cannon. Dunklin County, in the Missouri bootheel, is named so in his honor.

Daniel Dunklin was born to Sarah Margaret (Sullivan) and Joseph Dunklin Jr. in 1790 in Greenville, South Carolina. In 1805 Daniel's father purchased land in Caldwell County, Kentucky and intended to move his family there. However he died before the move could happen. Dunklin's older brother and mother were successful in moving the family the next year. The teenage Dunklin worked unsuccessfully at farming while he also studied the writings of William Blackstone and others in hopes of a career as a lawyer. In late 1810 Daniel Dunklin and his mother left Kentucky and moved to Louisiana Territory (Missouri Territory after 1812), living first in Ste. Genevieve then in 1811 settling in the area around present-day Potosi on a parcel of ground he received through a Spanish land grant. During the War of 1812 Dunklin served with the Missouri militia, seeing battle in several actions in Missouri and Illinois.

Following the war Daniel Dunklin traveled back to Kentucky for a short time so that he might marry his childhood sweetheart, Emily Willis "Pamela" Haley, on May 2, 1815. Soon after the couple returned to the Potosi area where Dunklin engaged in mining activities as well as built and ran a tavern. By this time Dunklin had also fulfilled an earlier dream and was a practicing frontier lawyer in Potosi and elsewhere in the region.