A few weeks ago, I mentioned a brief story on the Officer Down Memorial Page website about Sheriff Bertie Brixey of Webster County, Missouri. It sounded as if it would make an interesting historical article, but it didn't pan out, because some of the information on the website proved incorrect.
Another interesting story on the same website concerns Douglas County Sheriff Hardin Harvey Vicory, who was killed on March 8, 1879, by the former sheriff, whom Vicory was attempting to arrest for a murder the ex-lawman had committed a couple of years earlier while still serving as sheriff. This, too, seems like a very interesting historical article in the making. Unfortunately, there seems to be even less firsthand information available about this incident, such as court records and contemporaneous newspaper accounts, than there was about the Brixey killing. For instance, I found, in a Springfield newspaper, a reference to an account of the Vicory killing that had previously appeared in a Marshfield newspaper, but the Marshfield newspaper itself no longer exists. If I can come up with additional primary sources, though, writing this story might be an interesting future project.
2 comments:
Sheriff Vicory, or as our name is now, Victory, was my Great Grandpa. We have always been told that most of the legal papers were burned in a fire in Ava. We have been trying to locate the grave of the sheriff for years. If you have any ideas please help. Thanks, Rex Victory
Rex,
Don't know that I can help as far as locating his grave, but I did come up with enough info on the incident in which he was killed to write a chapter in my Desperadoes of the Ozarks book about it. Actually, the chapter is about the Alsups in general, but especially focuses on the Shelt Alsup-Hardin Vicory incident.
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