Sherwood, Missouri

A town that used to be but no longer exists and that is closer to my neck of the woods than Dubuque, Arkansas, which I wrote about a few days ago, is Sherwood, Missouri. The latter town was situated at the present-day intersection of JJ Highway and Fir Road in Jasper County between Joplin and Carl Junction. There are several houses at or near this intersection today, but all of them are of relatively recent origin. The only relic that remains of old Sherwood is a cemetery, at the end of a narrow lane off Fir Road just east of the intersection.
At the time of the Civil War, Sherwood was the third-largest village in Jasper County, trailing only Carthage and Sarcoxie. On May 18, 1863, Jasper County guerrilla leader Thomas Livingston surprised and overran a foraging party of Union soldiers southeast of Sherwood, killing about twenty of them. Most of the dead men were black soldiers stationed at Baxter Springs, Kansas, and the next day Federal troops from the post came back to Missouri and burned Sherwood to the ground, because most of Livingston's men lived in and around the village. Most of the civilian refugees from the destroyed town fled to Texas, and Sherwood was never rebuilt.