Immediately following the passage of the territorial act the immigration of Missourians to Kansas began, and, indeed, before its final passage the best of the lands had been located and marked for preëmption by the Missourians. This was true, apparently, in the case of George M. Million, whom the records disclose was the first settler in Atchison county, after Kansas was made a territory. Mr. Million was of German descent and came to the vicinity of Rushville in the hills east of Atchison from Coal county, Missouri, prior to 1841, where he was married to Sarah E. Dixon before she was fifteen years old. In 1841 Million occupied the present site of East Atchison as a farm. At that time the bottom land just east of Atchison was covered with tall rushes and was known as Rush bottom. The town of Rushville was originally known as Columbus, but the name was subsequently changed to Rushville because of the character of the country in which it was located. During the winter Million eked out his livelihood by cutting wood and hauling it to the river bank, selling it in the spring and summer to the steamboats that plied up and down the Missouri river. Sometime subsequent to 1841, Million built a flat-boat ferry and operated it for seven or eight years and did a thriving business during the great gold rush to California. He accumulated considerable money and later operated a store, trading with the Indians for furs and buying hemp, which he shipped down the river. In June, 1854, he “squatted” on the present townsite of Atchison, and built a log house at the foot of Atchison street, near his ferry landing, and just opposite his cabin on the Missouri side of the river. Following Million, in June, 1854 came a colony of emigrants from Iatan, Mo., and took up claims in the neighborhood of Oak Mills. They were F. P. Goddard, G. B. Goddard, James Douglass, Allen Hanson and George A. Wright, but the actual settlers and founders of Atchison county did not enter the territory of Kansas until July, 1854. On the twentieth day of that month Dr. J. H. Stringfellow with Ira Norris, Leonidas Oldham, James B. Martin and Neil Owens left Platte City, Mo., to decide definitely upon a good location for a town. With the exception of Dr. Stringfellow they all took claims about four miles southwest of the present city of Atchison. Traveling in a southwesterly direction from Platte City the party reached the river opposite Ft. Leavenworth and crossed to the Kansas side. They went north until they reached the mouth of Walnut creek, “and John Alcorn’s lonely cabin upon its banks.” They continued their course up the river until they came to the “south edge of the rim of the basin which circles around from the south line of the city, extending west by gradual incline to the divide between White Clay and Stranger creek, then north and east around to the northern limits of the city.” It was at this point that the Missouri river made the bend