President Truman in the Ozarks

President Obama visited Joplin last spring in the aftermath of the tornado, but presidential visits to the Ozarks, as a rule, have been pretty few and far between. I suppose President Truman visited the Ozarks while in office more than any other president. Perhaps that is to be expected since he was, of course, born at the edge of the Ozarks in Lamar.
I have written previously on this blog about Truman's visit to Bolivar on July 5, 1948, to dedicate the statue of Simon Bolivar. At the time it was called "Bolivar's greatest day," although the most memorable thing about the day to the president himself was apparently the unbearable heat. Truman supposedly was wont to use the expression "hotter than hell," but after his visit to Bolivar he instead used the expression "hotter than Bolivar" anytime he commented on extreme heat.
The heat of the Ozarks, though, was not enough to keep Truman from making at least one other trip to the region in the middle of a summer season during his presidency. On July 2, 1952, he came to northern Arkansas to dedicate both the Norfork Dam and the Bull Shoals Dam. He spoke at the Norfork dedication in the morning, then rode in his motorcade to Bull Shoals, where he helped dedicate the dam there in the afternoon.

Permilla Stephens

The story of Permilla Stephens is illustrative of how people suffered during the Civil War. She and her husband, John A. Stephens, were Union citizens living in Springfield at the time of the war. During Zagonyi's charge in the fall of 1861, Mr. Stephens, who was a schoolmaster by profession, watched the action west of town (near the present-day 1700 block of West Mt. Vernon Street) from an upstairs room on the public square. Afterwards, he started home on foot and was shot and killed by a Union soldier, who was helping to clear the streets of Rebels, when Mr. Stephens, as he approached the front gate of his yard, did not immediately heed the soldier's call to halt.
Then during the Battle of Springfield in January of 1863, several rental homes that Mrs. Stephens owned in the south part of town and which provided her only source of income, were purposely burned by the Federals in order to give the defenders a clearer view of the attacking Confederates.
Permilla Stephens was not immediately compensated for the loss. Left bereft of any means of support, she also encountered difficulty when she applied later in the year to Federal authorities for relief in the form of food and clothing for her kids and herself.
Although Mrs. Stephens was finally approved for aid, her experience could have easily turned her against the Union, one might think. Instead, she continued to support the Union and, after the war, became Springfield's first postmistress.

The Killing of Mary Willis

An interesting but tragic incident of the Civil War in Springfield occurred on May 21, 1862, at a house in what was then the east part of town. (probably somewhere around Benton/Kimbrough). An upstanding widow lady named Willis had recently arrived in Springfield as a refugee from northern Arkansas, where she and her family had been subjected to depredations by bushwhackers. Reportedly, the residence in which she and her family were lodged had previously been the domicile of a "squad of accommodating girls," and since many of the soldiers stationed at Springfield did not know about the change in identity or at least the change in character of the house's occupants, two sentries were placed at the home to protect the woman and her daughter, Mary Willis, from unwanted solicitations. However, on the day in question, Captain John R. Clark of the Fifth Kansas Cavalry, who was officer of the day at Springfield, got drunk and, in the company of his orderly, A. J. Rice, called at the home and demanded dinner. When Mrs. Willis refused, Clark grew irate, and he and Rice drew their pistols. When they started to force their way inside, one of the guards shot Clark dead. Rice then fired at the guards but missed, instead killing Miss Mary Willis. The second guard then shot and mortally wounded Rice.
Although Clark, who was buried the next day without military honors, was a member of the Fifth Kansas, he and most of his company were recruited out of Mercer County, Missouri, where he had been a sheriff before the war. Apparently, some of the more rabid Unionists in the regiment had not been keen on the idea of recruiting out of Missouri in the first place. Writing to the NY Times several months after the fatal incident in Springfield, one member of the Fifth who had previously belonged to fervent abolitionist James Montgomery's Third Kansas characterized Clark as a border ruffian who should have joined the rebels.

Springfield's Growth

Living in Joplin and not getting to Springfield on as regular a basis as I used to, I am struck by Springfield's growth, when I do visit the town, perhaps as much as or more than many of the people who live there. I recall, for instance, that when I first moved to Joplin in the mid 1970s, the traffic here (along Range Line as an example) was almost as bad as Springfield traffic. That is no longer the case and has not been the case for a long time. Going to Springfield is like going to a big city. Also the pattern of heaviest traffic in Springfield has changed or grown over the years. It used to be along Glenstone and Sunshine. Now streets like Campbell and Battlefield seem to have at least as much traffic as Glenstone and Sunshine.
The increased vehicular traffic, of course, is due to the town's population growth. When I was a kid growing up in Fair Grove during the 1950s, Springfield was a town of about 65,000. The city limits were defined for all practical purposes by Sunshine Street on the south, Glenstone on the east, Kearney on the north, and somewhere around what is now Kansas Expressway on the west. Obviously there were scattered residences beyond these streets, and the city limits signs (and thus the actual city limits) were farther out. However, the large majority of the businesses and homes were within the limits I've mentioned. By 1964 when I moved to Springfield, this had already started changing. The area of southeast Springfield around Glendale High School, for instance, had already been developed and was still being developed. (Although Hillcrest High School, built in the late 1950s, also lay outside the lines I mentioned, the growth of Springfield north of Kearney where Hillcrest was located did not approach the growth in the south part of the town.) By the late sixties, the growth in the southern part of the town had shifted to the southwest, where Kickapoo High School was shortly afterwards built. Somewhere along the line, though, this, too, changed, because nowadays the growth of Springfield seems to be taking place in almost all directions. The population of the place is approximately triple what it was in the 1950s when I first became acquaintd with the town.
If we go back even farther than my memory, the changes in Springfield have been even more dramatic. For instance, at the time of the Civil War, Springfield was a town of about 2,000, and its limits were defined, generally speaking, by Grand on the south, Grant on the west, Chestnut on the north, and Benton on the east. For instance, the area of Phelps Grove Park (where the John S. Phelps farm was located) was well outside town. Today, I would consider it to be in the central part of the city. My, how things have changed!

Zagonyi's Charge

As someone with an interest in the Civil War in the Ozarks, I had a passing acquaintance with Zagonyi's charge even before I started researching and writing my Civil War Springfield book. However, I knew very few details, and my shallow knowledge about the event contained some misconceptions. I knew that the charge drove the Southerners out of Springfield in the fall of 1861 in advance of Fremont's occupation of the town, but that's about all I knew. I imagined the Federals charging through the streets of Springfield, driving the Rebel soldiers from the public square and chasing them out of town. Such an action did more or less occur but only after the initial action and main charge had already happened on the western outskirts of town at approximately the 1700 or 1800 block of present-day West Mt. Vernon Street (where the monument shown above is located). Only after the Confederate-allied Missouri State Guard troops had been routed in a field west of town did the Federals chase them through the streets as the Rebels scattered in several directions. I also was not previously aware of how far Zagonyi and his Body Guard had to march merely to reach Springfield. I had previously assumed that Fremont and the main body of Federal troops were outside town only a few miles away when Zagonyi undertook his celebrated mission, but, in fact, the march started from Hickory County just a few miles south of Quincy and approximately 50 miles north of Springfield. It was, to say the least, a daring and problematic undertaking, but it turned out all right for Zagonyi and proved the mettle of his Body Guard, helping to dispel the unit's dubious reputation as mere parade soldiers. However, when Fremont was relieved of duty shortly afterwards, the soldiers of the Body Guard were also discharged because of their zealous loyalty to the general.

Robbie Camden: The Ridge Runnin' Romeo

The last chapter in my Desperadoes book is about Robert Camden, a diminutive outlaw from Reynolds County (Mo.) who terrorized south central Missouri during the 1920s and 1930s but cut enough of a romantic swath to earn the nicknames "Robin Hood of the Ozarks" and "Ridge Runnin' Romeo" along the way. Usually called Robbie or Bobby, Camden was born near the eastern Dent County community of Boss but grew up mostly in neighboring Reynolds County. He first ran afoul of the law in 1918, at the age of 17, when he and a couple of older cousins teamed up to burglarize a store in the Reynolds County community of Oakes. He and his sidekicks broke out of jail while being held at Ironton and committed another burglary while on the run, after which Camden was sent to the state reformatory at Jeff City. He was released after a year and a half but soon got in trouble again when he partipated in a holdup at Thayer, Missouri, in December of 1921. Sent to Jeff City again, this time to the big house, he was released in early 1925 and quickly resumed his criminal career, graduating to violence along the way. He and cousin Burley Barton (younger brother of the two cousins with whom Camden had gotten in trouble a few years earlier) went on a robbing spree through Pulaski and Dent County and got in a shootout with law officers in Dent that left young Barton dead. Camden, however, escaped to Arkansas, where he was finally wounded and captured in another shootout with authorities in August of 1925. He was sent to the Arkansas penitentiary but paroled after a few years. He committed some petty crimes in Kansas in 1930, spending time, for example, in the Wichita city jail, before going on another burglary binge with another cousin, Mac Camden, in St. Clair County, Missouri, in early 1931. Both men gave fake names when they were caught and were sent to Jeff City under their aliases before their real identities were discovered. Camden was released in June of 1933 but, as he had already proved several times, could not stay out of trouble. He promptly set out on a string of burglaries and holdups in his home territory of south central Missouri and finally killed a country preacher in Reynolds County in a murder for hire in August of 1933. It was during the intense manhunt for Camden over the next several months that the legend of the "Robin Hood of the Ozarks" sprang up. Hiding out in his familiar hills, Camden reportedly let it be known that he would provide for any poor family that lacked food during the Depression winter of 1933-34. Finally captured in April of 1934, Camden was sent back to Jeff City for a 30-year stretch on a robbery charge. He later confessed to and was convicted of killing the preacher and had his sentence extended to life in prison. He escaped in April of 1951 but was recaptured a few months later and sent back to the state pen. He was paroled for a year in the late 1950s but had the parole revoked. He was paroled again in 1966 and released altogether in 1971. He died three years later in Ironton, Mo., just short of his 73rd birthday. Thus ended the lengthy outlaw saga of Bobby Camden.

Roscoe "Red" Jackson

Another chapter in my Desperadoes book is about Roscoe Jackson's murder of traveling salesman Pearl Bozarth in early August of 1934 near Brownbranch in northeast Taney County and the subsequent hanging of Jackson at Galena in Stone County in the spring of 1937. Originally from the Howard's Ridge area, Jackson, after having lived in Oklahoma for ten years, was trying to get home to Ozark County when he was picked up by Bozarth south of Springfield on August 1 and taken on to Forsyth. The next day, as the trip continued toward Ava, Jackson killed the man who had befriended him, apparently for his money. Jackson stole Bozarth's car and made a run for it but was captured in Oklahoma and brought back to Taney County. His trial was moved to Stone County, where he was tried and convicted and eventually hanged (over the protests of Stone County citizens, who felt the execution should occur where the murder had taken place) in May of '37. The execution, the last legal hanging in Missouri, became a public spectacle that drew a big crowd. It has been called the last public hanging in the U. S., but the validity of that claim depends on one's definition of "public."