Newton McKinney is a native of Cole County, Mo., his father, John McKinney, having come here when a boy of thirteen years from his native State of Tennessee. He settled in what is now Moniteau County, removed to Cole County, and there died in 1886 at the age of seventy-eight years. He could well remember when there was but one house near where Jefferson City is now situated, and he and his parents followed the Indian trail twenty miles west and settled on a farm, which they began clearing and which remained in the possession of the family until about twenty years ago. John McKinney married Miss Juda Landrum, who came with her widowed mother from Tennessee, and their union was blessed in the birth of five sons and daughters: Lina, married Henry N. Gough, who died at the age of forty, leaving four children, three of whom survive; James Henry resides on a farm near the old homestead, and is the father of one child, Jasper, a merchant of Aurora Mo., is the father of six children; Lewis A. is a hack driver, and is now at work at the insane asylum at Nevada, Mo., and John William farms near Centre Town, and is the father of four children. Newton McKinney lived with his parents until sixteen years of age, then began, farming for himself, and was married when he was twenty-three years of age to Miss Martha A. Chambers, a daughter of William Chambers, who was a merchant and the owner of 1,400 acres of land in Cole County. Mr. McKinney and his wife became the parents of four children, only two of whom are living, the other two having died in infancy: Mary Elizabeth, his eldest daughter, is the wife of Addison N. Wilhite, the mother of one child, Flavius Cleveland, and is keeping house for her father, her mother having died June 23, 1888; Mordecai N. also resides with his father, but expects to enter college soon. Mr. McKinney owns 114 acres of good land, well improved, and is one of the honest men of the county. He is a Democrat in politics, and in his religious views is a member of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, in which faith his wife died.

Transcribed from:
History of Cole, Moniteau, Morgan, Benton, Miller, Maries, and Osage Counties, Missouri, Goodspeed Publishing Company (1889).