MEANDERING CREEK NAMED FOR SETTLER

"Every day...new settlers would arrive from the States, and after a long and weary journey, rest along the bank of a creek that meandered through (Andrew Ramsay's) plantation, and yet known as Ramsay's Creek..."

-- Goodspeed's "History

of Southeast Missouri"

Nearly 200 years and a spelling fluctuation later, a stream named for Southeast Missouri pioneer Andrew Ramsay still meanders through his former land southwest of Cape Girardeau, about a mile from Mount Tabor.

Wherever you go in Cape Girardeau and Scott counties, Ramsey Branch and Ramsey Creek seem to follow.

Though not large enough to qualify for the list of major local fishing streams published by the Missouri Department of Conservation and now disconnected from its branch, the creek crosses beneath Interstate 55 at four different points as it waltzes from the Commerce-Benton Hills to the Diversion Channel.

The northern part, referred to on maps as Ramsey Branch but often as Ramsey Creek on road signs, is little more than a ditch in some places but widens and deepens as it goes. During the 1993 flood, the Ramsey Branch inundated many of the homes in the vicinity of Meadowbrook Lane and Larry Avenue.

It begins near the northern intersection of I-55 and Highway 61 and skirts the interstate and new subdivisions for five or six miles, crossing under the road just north of the Highway 74 intersection below Cape Girardeau.

There it empties into the Little River Drainage District's Ditch No. 2, which funnels runoff water east to the Mississippi River just above the Diversion Channel.

The source of Ramsey Creek itself is some 12 miles to the south in the Benton-Commerce Hills. It roams through farms and crosses beneath I-55 three times and is joined by the Ramsey Illmo Branch just before meeting Sal's Creek 1 1/2 miles east of Scott City.

From there, the body of water is called the Ramsey Creek Diversion Channel, a channel dug about the same time as the headwaters Diversion Channel.

This channel runs north 2 1/2 miles until intercepting the main Diversion Channel.

Until the drainage ditches and channels were built from 1912 to 1916, the branch must have intersected with the creek in the general vicinity of the current Diversion Channel, according to Larry Dowdy, chief engineer for the drainage district.

"Logically, it must have hit Ramsey Creek before it hit Cape LaCroix," Dowdy said.

The difference between the spelling of the pioneer's name and the creek named for him is explainable, Dowdy said.

"The USGS (United States Geological Survey) named the creeks when they did the surveys," he said. "Usually they just used whatever name local people gave them."

Different spellings of the Ramsay name can be found even in history books.

Andrew Ramsay almost certainly fought in the Revolutionary War and was the first American settler in the Cape Girardeau district. He became an influential figure in the settlement and one of its largest landowners.

According to an 1803 census, his farm produced 240 bushels of wheat, 2,000 bushels of corn, 200 pounds of flax and hemp, 400 pounds of maple sugar, and was home to 110 cattle and 19 horses.

Like Cape Girardeau founder Don Louis Lorimier, he counted slaves among his possessions.

In 1799, Ramsay established the first English school west of the Mississippi at Mount Tabor. The school and the plantation are gone. His creek remains.