The Sickles Tavern (also known as Hickory Inn and has been spelled as "Sickels") is located NW of Wayland off of State Highway C in Missouri (Clark County). On October 22, 1979, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). Clark County is the northeasternmost tip of Missouri.
According to the nomination form for the NRHP, Sickles is spelled differently than on the gravestone of the tavern owner, Daniel Clifford Sickels. Also, according to The History of Clark County, Missouri published by Goodspeed Publishing Company in 1887, the Sickels family biography was included under this spelling of the last name. For the purpose of this writing, the spelling of Sickels will be used below.
The two-story Sickels Tavern was constructed around 1846. The vernacular frame building is rectangular and it has a basement and attic. In the 1800s, it's believed the house was both a tavern and a place for mail and passenger coaches traveling from Iowa to Kansas.
This building was in the middle of 300 acres of farmland. It has a rubble foundation and the weatherboarding was covered with siding. Electricity was also added. The interior includes oak woodwork. A significant alteration to the house was the addition of a one-story kitchen.
The house represents the movement of early Missouri settlement and those who lived there were witnessing western expansion. It's one of the oldest dwellings in Clark County.
The house was constructed around 1846 by Jacob R. Price. Price was a blacksmith and farmer. He made the doorknobs and latches in the house. The house was passed on to local politician, Charles O. Sanford, who was Price's son-in-law. Later, Sanford sold the building to Daniel Sickels.
Sickels was born on February 23, 1829, in New York. In 1834, he and his parents went to Petersburg, Virginia. In 1844, they went to Quincy, Illinois, and moved to Clark County, Missouri in 1851.
He is energetic and industrious, and has been very successful in raising and trading in stock. (Source.)
His father, also named Daniel, died in Clark County in 1861. In 1862, Daniel married Louise W. Williams Sickels and they had three children. He died on July 22, 1917, at age 88.
When the house was built, it was on a road the locals referred to as the Main Divide. The road was first used as a droving trail for cattle and hogs that were going to the slaughterhouses in Alexandria, Missouri. (Droving is the routine of walking livestock over long distances.) However, as settlers continued to use the road to travel west, it became a road for the purpose of heading west toward Kansas. The road was renamed the Alexandria-Bloomfield Road and became a stagecoach route for those heading west through Missouri from Iowa.
As such, and according to local tradition, due to the location of the house, it was used as a tavern and a stop location for mail stagecoaches. By the early 1900s, the building became a house again for those who were farming. The house is said to have been owned by Daniel Sickels' great-granddaughter.
Wayland, Missouri
According to the 2020 census, the population of Wayland was 408. Located in Clark County, Wayland is part of the Fort Madison-Keokuk, Iowa-Missouri Micropolitan Statistical Area. Wayland was established in 1880 and named after an early pioneer settler named Jerre Wayland.
There is a post office that's been operating in Wayland since 1874. This small city does have a City Hall.
Thanks for reading.
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