The Buckfoot Gang

I'm currently reading Kimberly Harper's new book about the Buckfoot Gang entitled Men of No Reputation. I haven't read enough of the book yet to know a whole lot about the gang, but it was headed by Robert Boatwright, who ran a big confidence game out of Webb City during the late 1800s and early 1900s in cahoots, more or less, with powerful businessmen and political figures. Or at least the movers and shakers turned a blind eye to Boatwright's activities. In researching local history, I had previously run onto one or two references to the Buckfoot Gang, but I'd never really paid much attention to them or tried to learn exactly what the Buckfoot Gang was. 

As I suggested, I still don't much about the Buckfoot Gang or the nature of the con, but basically it involved cheating people out of their money by taking wagers on rigged foot races. The runner that the mark had bet on, as I understand it, would usually jump out to a lead in the race but then "buck" his foot by tripping over a rock, stumping his toe, etc. so that another runner would win. Thus, Boatwright and his cohorts came to be known as the Buckfoot Gang. They raked in huge sums of money using this con, as foot races (and betting on them) were quite popular at the time. 

Ms. Harper will be speaking about her book at the Joplin Public Library on August 8, and I plan to attend. It will be interesting to hear her talk about the Buckfoot Gang. Some of you may be familiar with another of her books entitled White Man's Heaven, about the expulsion of African Americans from the Ozarks during the late 1800s and early 1900s.  

Elixir Springs, Dallas County

Recently, I've been writing about small communities that flourished briefly in the late 1800s or early 1900s but that no longer exist (or barely so). A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Chalybeate Springs in Lawrence County (MO). Another community that was founded because of the supposed healing waters of its springs but is now defunct was Elixir Springs in northern Dallas County. (Not to be confused with a resort by the same name that was planned in Miller County but never really got off the ground.)

The first mention of Elixir Springs I found was in a July 1881 issue of the Buffalo Reflex. According to this report, Elixir Springs was "fast becoming a popular resort." Two or three hundred people had visited the springs on the previous Sunday. The Reflex ventured that most of the visitors were there out of mere curiosity but that some of them claimed the water of the springs had healing or "medicinal qualities of a high order" and were there for the purpose of "partaking of its life-giving properties."

A month later, the Reflex reported that Elixir Springs was continuing to boom with a lot of buildings being constructed and "a great number of people camped on the ground. Hundreds visit it daily."

A post office called Elixir was established at the site in 1882. That summer, a "grand picnic" was held at Elixir Springs to celebrate the place's one-year anniversary, and it proved to be "a very pleasant affair."

Again, in the summer of 1883, Elixir Springs held a big picnic to celebrate its two-year anniversary. In the lead-up to the event, the Reflex predicted that it would be the biggest gathering of the season in Dallas County.  

By the summer of 1884, however, the springs of Elixir had become a laughingstock. Apparently, the people had begun to realize that the waters actually contained no medicinal or healing powers. At a big picnic held elsewhere in Dallas County that summer, when one speechmaker suggested with tongue-in-cheek that he thought the picnic was being held to commemorate the discovery of the Elixir Springs, the crowd burst out laughing because the springs were already "things of the past."

Despite the demise of the springs at Elixir, the little community itself, which was located about six miles northeast of Urbana, hung on quite a while longer and did not lose its post office until 1906.

I think Linda Crawford of the Dallas County Historical Society has done a lot or research about Elixir Springs and the community of Elixir and maybe even written a book about them.

A Christmas Day Murder

The 1883 History of Greene County (Missouri) gives a brief account of Charles Leighton's murder of Bion Mason in Springfield, which happened, according to the county history, somewhere around the first of January 1877. The incident actually happened on Christmas Day of 1876, and there's quite a bit more to the story than the county history provides.

On the afternoon of December 25, 1876, 18-year-old Charles Leighton was on his way into Springfield from his home three or four miles east of town when he happened to meet a neighbor named George McFarland. The two men were nursing a grudge toward each other, and the dispute was renewed. "Words led to blows, when McFarland struck (Leighton) with a gun which he carried in his hand. Leighton then drew a knife and stabbed his opponent several times in the side and back." 

Leighton then hurried on to town, leaving McFarland with serious wounds. (The injuries were at first thought fatal, but McFarland was on the road to recovery by the time the incident was reported in newspapers.) 

Upon reaching Springfield, Leighton, "having grown desperate from the excitement of the struggle in which he had just before been engaged, imbibed freely of intoxicating drinks, until he became a terror to all with whom he came in contact."

Early in the evening, he snapped a pistol at a young man named Weldon at the St. James Hotel. Later, he proceeded to a dance party at the home of a Mrs. Mills on St. Louis Street. (This was the same house where Mary Willis was killed by a Union soldier during the Civil War.)

Already in a "staggering condition" when he arrived, Leighton went upstairs, and 19-year-old Bion Mason, son of a prominent Springfield citizen, soon joined him on the second floor, where the two got into a dispute over some trivial matter. Leighton seized Mason, choked him against the wall, and drew his pistol.

The two young men were separated by others present, and Mason went back downstairs, where his companions tried to settle him down and told him to pay no further attention to Leighton. However, Leighton soon followed Mason downstairs, pulled his weapon again, and shot him in the heart without preliminary. Mason died within two or three minutes.

Leighton fled the scene but was quickly apprehended and placed under arrest. Charged with first-degree murder, he was lodged in jail and later officially indicted for murder. At his trial in January 1878, he withdrew his previous plea of not guilty and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. 

He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but in July 1885 the governor commuted the sentence to ten years and Leighton was discharged under the three-fourths rule, which required prisoners to serve only three-fourths of their sentence. He returned to Springfield, where he was fined $20 in 1887 for disturbing the peace. Apparently, he did not get into any more trouble after that, because his name does not appear in later Springfield newspapers in connection with any wrongdoing. Or perhaps he moved away.

Chalybeate Springs

I've written on this blog several times in the past about communities throughout Missouri and the Ozarks that sprang up as mineral water resorts during the late 1800s. One such place that I was not familiar with until recently, however, was Chalybeate Springs, in northeastern Lawrence County, Missouri. 

Located about four miles west of Halltown and about a half-mile north of Old Route 66, the place was originally called Johnson's Mill after a mill that was built on nearby Clover Creek (now Turnback Creek) about 1855. The name was soon changed to Chalybeate Springs after the supposed healing properties of a spring just east of the creek were discovered. The name derived from the fact that the water contained and was flavored with iron salts.

Chalybeate Springs was established as a resort by D. C. Allen about 1867, making it one of the earliest mineral-water resorts in the Ozarks. The fame of the springs, however, predated establishment of the resort, as the place was known for its supposed healing waters even before the Civil War. 

The resort became even more popular in 1872, when E. G. Paris opened a large hotel at the site. A post office called Chalybeate Springs was established at the site about the same time that the hotel was completed. The name of the post office and the community was changed to Paris Springs in 1874, although the springs themselves were still often referred to as the Chalybeate Springs. The springs were advertised in the newspapers of Springfield and other regional towns, and the place thrived throughout the late 1800s and into the early 1900s under Paris's promoting hand. In addition to the hotel, Paris Springs also boasted a general store, a wagon-maker, a shoemaker, a blacksmith, a livery stable, a livestock dealer, and an attorney-at-law. 

Advertisement from a 1870s Springfield newspaper.

Paris Springs reached a peak in popularity as a mineral-water resort about 1906, but it soon began to decline after that. The hotel closed around 1914 or shortly afterwards, and the abandoned hotel burned in 1917. The final death knell for the community sounded when its post office was discontinued in 1920.

When Route 66 was constructed in 1926, it bypassed Paris Springs by a half-mile or so to the south, and a new community called Paris Springs Junction sprang up at the Route 66 turnoff in order to cater to passing motorists. Among the businesses erected at the turnoff was a Sinclair service station. In 1961, Route 66 was realigned, bypassing both Paris Springs and Paris Springs Junction. Then, when I-44 was built in the mid-1960s, it bypassed the entire section of Route 66 from Halltown to Joplin by several miles.  

The service station at Paris Springs Junction burned in 1955. However, a replica of the station was built across the road many years later, and it is now about the only thing that remains at Paris Springs Junction. As for Paris Springs, nothing remains there to suggest the place was ever a booming resort. 

Avola, Missouri

Continuing with the theme of my recent posts, let's look at another small community that once thrived but no longer exists: Avola, Missouri, located in south-central Vernon County.

The first white people in Drywood Township settled near what became Avola around 1840, but the area remained very sparsely populated until shortly before the Civil War. The Avola schoolhouse was built in 1859, and C. Correll taught the first school. He also held religious services at the schoolhouse on Sundays, since there were no churches in the area. The school district was quite large at this time, encompassing much or all of the present-day Sheldon School District.

The village of Avola was laid out in 1869, but the plat was never recorded. In the late 1800s, Avola had three churches, a store, a post office, and a hotel. Avola was the principal trading point of Drywood Township until the Pacific Railroad was built through the area and Sheldon was established along the line in 1881. Most of the population and businesses of Avola soon moved to the new town.

Today, about the only remaining vestige of the old community of Avola is the Avola Cemetery, located about six miles northwest of Sheldon on Highway N.

 

Hell on the Line

In 1881, a prohibition law went into effect in Kansas making it a dry state. However, gambling remained legal in the state. Meanwhile, drinking alcohol was legal in neighboring Missouri, but the Show-Me State disallowed gambling. To accommodate both the thirsty Kansans and the card-playing Missourians, enterprising businessmen began to build "double saloons" straddling the border. Missourians who wanted to gamble could simply walk a few feet from the Missouri side of the building into the Kansas side, and Kansans who wanted to imbibe in spirits could saunter over to the Missouri side. 

I've previously written on this blog about one such business establishment, built on the state line just east of Galena, Kansas, during the early 1880s. Called Budgetown, it had a notorious reputation, and was run during much of its existence by Joe Thornton, who was later lynched in Joplin for killing a police officer.

A similar place sprang up on the state line east of Pittsburg, Kansas about 1887. Alternately known as Berry Hill, the place was usually just called Hell on the Line. The place was established by P. H. Sawyer, a prominent citizen of Pittsburg, and one or more of his associates, but it was licensed and operated under the name of the bartender, no doubt to disguise where the money behind the place was actually coming from. 

However, the bartender died after the place had been operating just a few months. Sawyer and one of his associates, former Kansas state legislator A. J. Vickers, were arrested about the first of March 1888 and charged with selling liquor without a license. They gave bond of $500 to appear at trial. Although I have been unable to learn the ultimate outcome of their case, the Hell on the Line saloon soon ceased to operate. 

The small community of Berry Hill, which was never much more than a wide place in the road, continued to exist into the mid 1900s, but it, too, is now scarcely a memory. 

Nogo, Missouri

The past couple of weeks I've written about places in Jasper County that were once thriving little villages but that no longer exist or barely survive. I'm sticking with the general theme, but I'm shifting to Greene County this week. Nogo, which was located about three miles west of Strafford or seven miles east of Springfield along the railroad between the two larger towns, is another such place. 

Today, Nogo is completely within the bounds of Strafford, but at one time it was a separate place and was even something of a rival of Strafford. Strafford came into existence about 1869 or 1870 when the railroad was being laid between Rolla and Springfield, whereas Nogo didn't come along until much later, sometime around 1890. The people living in the area that became Nogo got together and decided they wanted a school of their own. They proposed to build the school themselves and petitioned to have a separate school district created for the school. The petition, however, was rejected; so, the schoolhouse became a "No Go" as well, and the entire community took on that name. 

In 1898, the people of Nogo stirred the ire of some Strafford folks when they petitioned the county to create a new township with Nogo as the seat of the township. The Nogoites didn't want to have to travel to Strafford to vote or conduct other legal business. Officials from Jackson Township, in which Strafford was located, opposed lopping off part of their township to create a new one because Jackson was already a fairly small township. Strafford, the officials said, was the center of the township and was already convenient for voting. According to a Springfield newspaper, some Strafford residents suggested that there would be more reason than ever for their little neighbor to the west to be known as Nogo by the time the township issue was settled. 

Alas, they were right. The township petition failed, and Nogo gradually faded into oblivion. At the time (1898), Nogo had a store or two, a blacksmith shop, and a post office. However, it lost its post office in 1905, and by the mid 1900s, all that remained of Nogo were a few foundation stones. Probably even those are gone now.