Relics of the Rural Past

I have long been fascinated by what I call relics of the rural past. By that phrase, I mean institutions, buildings, and other objects that used to be common in rural areas and small towns but that are now either extinct or almost so. Examples are one-room schools, general stores, and rural post offices.
There was a time in America when almost every rural intersection of any importance at all had a general store and a post office. Some of the post offices operated as separate entities, but many were housed in the general store with the storekeeper often serving as the postmaster. Increased automobile travel and the rise of city supermarkets around the middle of the twentieth century spelled the doom of the general stores. The general store may have been convenient, but it couldn't compete with the cheaper prices that consumers could find at the supermarket. A number of factors, including the Unites States Post Office's desire to streamline its service, led to the demise of the rural post office about the same time that general stores were also disappearing from the scene.
One-room schools also used to dot the countryside, and some of the same factors that led to the passing of general stores, such as better roads and increased travel, also contributed to the disappearance of the one-room schools. It's not just rural one-room schoolhouses, though, that I tend to get nostalgic about. The movement in education toward school consolidation, especially during the early and middle 1900s, also left many small communities that formerly had high schools without such schools. Often when the school left, the town died, too. An example from my immediate area that comes readily to mind is the small community of Prosperity. At one time in the early 1900s, it was a booming little mining town with a two-year high school. The school consolidated with Webb City during the middle part of the twentieth century, and the town gradually died out to the point that very little remained except for the old, abandoned two-story school building. I remember taking pictures of the building and writing about it when it was little more than a deserted shell and the lot surrounding it was overgrown with weeds and brush. (The photo of Prosperity School accompanying this blog entry was taken during the mid to late 1970s.) About ten years ago the building was restored as a bed and breakfast, and it now looks nice and well maintained. I believe a couple of the rooms at the B&B are named for former teachers at the old Prosperity School.

Quantrill's Buried Treasure

According to Ward Schrantz's Jasper County in the Civil War, Quantrill and his large band of guerrillas (estimated at nearly 400 men) camped on Spring River near present-day Oronogo on the night of October 5, 1863, on the property of Judge Onstott as they were headed south to Texas just six weeks or so after the Lawrence Massacre. One of the judge's sons, Abraham Onstott, who was just a boy at the time, later claimed that a couple of members of the guerrilla band buried some valuables at the site that had been taken during the Lawrence raid. Years later, after it was concluded that the the men who buried the treasure were never coming back for it, a search for the buried cache was made but it could not be located.
Stories similar to this seem to abound in the Ozarks (and probably elsewhere as well). For instance, I think I recall hearing about some money taken in a bank or train robbery that Jesse James supposedly buried somewhere. I don't place much stock in most of the lore of buried treasures, but reading or hearing about the stories is still interesting.
By the way, on the morning after Quantrill's band camped in Jasper County, they crossed Shoal Creek at Grand Falls and turned west into Kansas, where they came upon an encampment of Federals stationed at an incomplete fort at Baxter Springs. After being repelled at the fort, they rode out on the prairie and met General James Blunt and his escort coming from Fort Scott. Thinking the guerrillas (many of whom were clad in Federal blue) composed a party sent out to greet him, Blunt was surprised and virtually annihilated at what became known as the Baxter Springs Massacre.

Winter's Bone

I had intended to read Winter's Bone a few years ago when it first came out but never got around to it. Then I recently saw the movie and decided I needed to get off my duff and finally read the book, too. I'm just now finishing it up.
Daniel Woodrell is an exellent writer, and I liked both the movie and the book. However, I have to agree with Dick from Blue Eye, Missouri, who, in the Mail Box section of the current issue of the Ozarks Mountaineer magazine, said that if the characterizations in the movie are true to Ozarks life, "those people need to stop reproducing immediately."
I think the type of people portrayed in Winter's Bone do exist in the Ozarks, and I would even agree that they might be more prevalent in the Ozarks than in some other parts of the country. However, I think what Winter's Bone does is give credence to the idea that violent, clannish people are common and, indeed, almost the norm in the Ozarks.
Although the fact that the people in Winter's Bone are involved in the illegal production, sale, and use of meth obviously contributes to their insularity and their suspicion of outsiders, the way they are portrayed in both the book and the movie, I think, still perpetuates the stereotype of Ozarkians as hillbillies. The only difference between now and a hundred years ago is that, instead of running moonshine stills, these modern-day hillbillies are manufacturing meth.
The fact is that, even though meth production and trade in Missouri and the Ozarks has become what law enforcement calls an epidemic, very few entire clans are involved in the activity as the Dollys are in Winter's Bone, and most people in the Ozarks, even those in isolated areas, are friendly and welcoming.

Swain Anderson Murder

An interesting criminal case in the Ozarks during the late 1800s that I've been aware of for a long time is the murder of Swain Anderson in Wright County, Missouri on the night of May 22, 1886 as he was walking home from a Masonic meeting at Mountain Grove. I say it is an interesting case, and yet it has never struck me as quite interesting enough for me to want to write extensively about it as I have many other notorious crimes in the Ozarks during the same time frame.
The case contains a bit of intrigue in that the the accused murderers included the victim's own wife and his own sons acting in conspiracy. The wife, Hannah, and one of the sons, Henry, were charged as accomplices, while another son, Ed, and a neighbor named Ewing Sanders were charged as the principals in the crime. Hannah was initially arrested on suspicion but later released. When the oldest daughter, Jennie, died unexpectedly, it was rumored that she had been poisoned by Hannah to keep her from testifying against her brother, Ed, and it was even suggested that a romantic rivalry of sorts had developed between the two women over a young preacher.
So, as I say, the case has some interesting elements to it. Yet, I've never really been moved to investigate it or write about it in more depth. I suppose part of the reason is that I doubt that the more sensational elements of the case, such as the wife poisoning the daughter, were true, and if you take those sensational elements away, there's really not much left except a fairly routine murder case. No vigilante justice. Not even a legal hanging. In fact, the only person convicted in the case was Sanders, and his sentence was later commuted to time served after Ed Anderson had been acquitted.

Faro, Seven Up, and Hazard

I mentioned in one of my posts several months ago that faro was the most popular gambling game in the Old West, even more popular than poker. I suppose the thing that made it so popular was its simplicity. There were few, if any, complicated rules to learn. If the first card turned over by the dealer matched the card you had bet on, you lost. If the second card turned over by the dealer matched the card you'd bet on, you won. There were a few other features of the game, but that was the gist of it. It is supposed that faro got its name because the backs of some early playing cards had likenesses of Egyptian pharoahs on them.
Another fairly popular card game in the nineteenth century was seven up. I think it was played more in private social groups and not so much in commercial gambling establishments as faro and some of the other gambling games. In fact, it was probably played quite a bit without gambling being involved at all. Seven up was a game that involved laying out one's cards to make books, similar to the way solitaire is played, and the first person to get rid of (or book) all his cards was the winner. I recall from reading a Quantrill biography (Connelley's Quantrill and the Border Wars, I think) that William Quantrill and his lieutenant George Todd, after they had had a falling out, got into an argument one time over a game of seven up.
Hazard was also a pretty popular gambling game, but it involved dice, not cards. The modern game of craps was derived from hazard. In the game of hazard, rolling two ones (i.e. snake eyes) was sometimes called craps or crabs. Thus, did the game of craps, a simplified version of hazard, gradually take shape.

Simcoe or Simco

I think I remarked in a previous post on the the fact that newspapermen of yore seemed to have employed more colorful language than their modern-day counterparts, who are given to a more matter-of-fact and linear style. The same observation seems also to apply to historians. Some of the county histories written during the late 1800s, for example, are fun to read not just for the wealth of information they contain but also for the colorful, sometimes amusing, way in which the authors impart the information. Two or three weeks ago, for instance, I quoted the colorful words that Sturgis's History of McDonald County uses to describe the demise of Silver Springs.
The author employs similar language in his description of the death of Simcoe (sometimes spelled Simco), a small hamlet located in the northeast part of the county five or six miles from Rocky Comfort. For a while during the latter part of the nineteenth century, the place had a cooperative store run by and for surrounding farmers, but the experiment failed and the store soon passed into private hands. Sturgis describes the rest of the story in his characteristically picturesque fashion: "The neighboring farmers who had banked their savings in the enterprise, for a while basked in the sunlight of their day-visions when they were to be bloated bond holders and sport gold-headed canes. But the weird soughing of the wind through the bare shelves and the rattle of mice in the empty sugar barrels awoke them from their bright dreams, and a melancholy search was made in the recesses of their jeans for about $2000 to settle the liabilities."
Today Simco is a mere wide place in the road, if it's even that. I've actually not driven through Simco recently, if ever. So, I'm not sure exactly what is there, but I know it's not much, whatever it is.

The Alsups of Douglas County

I recently made a trip to Douglas County to take a picture of the monument dedicated to the early Alsups of the county and their race horses. (I have occasionally heard Douglas County referred to as Booger County, and now I can see why. To reach the monument, I had to take narrow and rocky gravel road about four or five miles off the paved highway, and I felt as if I was getting back into the boonies. Not that I have anything against those types of isolated areas. In fact, I feel pretty much at home in the sticks. But I can see why some people might think the place is "boogery.")
The Alsups were among the early settlers of Douglas County prior to the Civil War. During the war they were strong Union supporters, and most or all of the Alsup men served in the Federal army. For many years after the war, the Alsups dominated Douglas County politics, and they made many enemies because of their firm rule.
Like many disputes during the late 1860s and the 1870s, especially in the border state of Missouri, the animosity had its roots in the Civil War, because most of the people who opposed the Alsups were former Confederate soldiers or sympathizers (or else lukewarm Union supporters) while the Alsups were Radical Republicans. It wasn't as if the family was universally hated, because the Alsup clan also had many supporters.
In addition to being involved in county politics, the Alsups were also noted for their avid interest in raising and riding fine race horses, and the monument in northeast Douglas County (not far from the Denlow community) is dedicated to the Alsup legacy of raising outstanding race horses. The monument specifically mentions the three Alsup brothers who originally settled in the Douglas County area, Ben, Moses Lock, and William, and it also mentions Lock's sons, one of whom, Shelt Alsup, was a two-term sheriff of Douglas County during the mid 1870s and was involved in a gunfight with his successor in 1879 that left both men dead.
For more information on the Alsups, watch for my book entitled Desperadoes of the Ozarks (which is due out from Pelican next spring and is more or less a sequel to my Ozarks Gunfights book). It contains a chapter on the Alsups.

Elkton

I said last time that the Slicker Wars that occurred in the 1840s in Benton and neighboring counties of Missouri had some of the characteristics of vigilantism but degenerated into a feud. Actually, though, I may have gotten that backwards. The so-called "wars" may have started out merely as a feud but then took on aspects of vigilantism. Suffice it to say that the Slicker Wars involved feuding among rival families but also had characteristics of a vigilante movement.
I also mentioned last time that one of the accounts of the Slicker Wars that I have read cites Elkton in Hickory County as a hotbed of the conflict. About the only other thing Elkton is known for, as far as I know, is being the birthplace of Sally Rand, the famous (or infamous) burlesque performer who wowed audiences with her risque fan dance at the World's Fair in Chicago during the Depression. She also performed on at least one occasion at the Ozarks Empire Fair in Springfield.

Slicker Wars and other Vigilante Feuds

Vigilante movements of old usually started in one particular area but often spread to neighboring communities. For instance, the Bald Knobberism that sprang up in Taney County during the mid 1880s soon spread to nearby Christian and Douglas counties. Also, sometimes a later vigilante movement would simply take the name of an earlier one. The Regulators of Greeene County shortly after the close of the Civil War were preceded by the Regulators of Missouri's territorial days fifty years earlier. The territorial Regulators were centered around the St. Louis area, notably St. Charles County, and spread to nearby counties like Lincoln. The dispute, at least initially, involved bogus bank notes. There have been other vigilante groups throughout American history who called themselves "regulators," and there may well have been others just in Missouri's history, because the term "regulators" was quite common.
The Slicker Wars of the 1840s in Benton and Hickory counties of Missouri also had some of the characteristics of a vigilante movement, although it apparently devolved into little more than a feud. It, too, seemingly spread from its point of origin to neighboring communities, but even pinning down exactly where its point of origin was is somewhat difficult. I've read at least two different accounts of the feud. One says it started south of Warsaw but still in Benton County, whereas the other places the center of the feud around Quincy in Hickory County and extending as far south as Elkton, which was a "hot bed of contention." Both accounts give Turk, Jones, and Nowell (or Newell) as some of the principal family names associated with the feud, but one account also chronicles the large role played by the Hobbs family while the other fails to even mention the Hobbses. Apparently the Slicker Wars started out as a dispute over gambling but expanded into a general feud.
As I mentioned in a previous post, researching pre-Civil War events in the Ozarks is difficult, but finding out more about the so-called Slicker Wars of the Benton/Hickory counties area is something I might like to attempt one of these days.

Silver Springs

In previous posts, I've mentioned the mineral water craze that swept through the country about 1880 and continued throughout the next decade or two. I've also mentioned specifically several towns in the Ozarks that were established during this time as mineral water resorts. Some of them were very successful and are still thriving towns today. Eureka Springs is perhaps the best example. Others flourished briefly before declining almost as rapidly as they sprang up and then receding into history to the point that little, if anything, remains to mark the spot where the town was located. Saratoga Springs, which I wrote about in a previous post, is an example.
I guess, however, there is yet another category: mineral water towns that were laid out but never actually populated. Silver Springs in McDonald County, Missouri, appears to be such a town. The place was surveyed and given the name Silver Springs in August of 1881 by a couple named William and Arzelia Harness, but that's about as far as the venture ever got. Sturgis's History of McDonald County tells the story in vivid language of what happened afterwards: "The seasons came and went. William's beard grew grizzled, and the cheeks of the fair Arzelia lost the pink tint of youth, but adversity flapped her wings over the enterprise, and their bright dreams of stocking legs filled with the shining metal vanished for aye--and the water still trickles through the gravel as of yore."
The county history places Silver Springs in Section 6, Township 22, Range 29, but I haven't found it listed on any maps and I'm not familiar enough with the townships and ranges of McDonald County to know where the place was located (or was intended to be located).

The Elusive Frank Martin

As I've mentioned previously, I often find secondary topics to write about while I'm researching a primary subject. I don't necessarily take much notice of the second topic, though, unless I encounter the same subject again later on. If I run onto the same topic more than once, I usually begin to think that maybe it's a subject worth writing about.
An example is the case of Frank Martin of Laclede County, Missouri, that occurred circa 1880. When I first read about this case it didn't strike me as particularly fascinating, even though it had an element of romantic intrigue, but I've run onto multiple items about the case in 1880s newspapers and have begun to think that, if it was followed so closely at the time, maybe it's worth writing about now.
Briefly the facts of the case are these: Martin, a young man of about 20 years old, killed a man named George Mizer in Laclede County on June 9, 1879 (one report says Mizer was Martin's uncle). In February 1880, Martin was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang, but while the case was being appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, the sheriff's niece, Maggie Wilson, who apparently had fallen in love with the jailbird, helped him escape in November of 1880. She and the fugitive absconded together, got married, and settled down together in Tennessee. Martin, though, was recaptured in Sullivan County, Tennessee, about the first of September of 1881 and brought back to Missouri aboard a train. As the train slowed for a hill near Dixon (in Pulaski County just east of Laclede), the prisoner, even though he was shackled at the wrists and ankles, leaped from the train and made his escape, as a search turned up no trace of him. He was later recaptured at his father's farm in Laclede County, but in the meantime, the Supreme Court had granted him a new trial on the murder charge. He was retried in Dallas County on a change of venue in April of 1882 and was found not guilty. His wife, meanwhile, had given birth to twin babies after having been held briefly in the Laclede County jail for aiding her husband in his first escape, and the couple was, as one newspaper worded it, "rewarded by an opportunity for them to live in peace a wedded life begun under such adverse circumstances."

Killings in Butler

Recently I visited the Oak Hill Cemetery at Butler, Mo. to take pictures of the tombstones of J. H. Morgan and John P. Willis. The two men killed each other in 1889 while Morgan was serving as the city marshal of Butler and Willis was a deputy U. S. marshal. The incident will be one of the subjects covered in my next book; so more about them later. While I was at the cemetery, though, the sexton told me about another Butler lawmen, A. J. Aleshire, who also lost his life in the line of duty. A little research revealed that Aleshire was a night watchman and was killed by a man named Summer Holcomb when the two got into a dispute. Holcomb was eventually found not guilty of murder, something that seemed to happen with regularity in the Wild West days. If two men got mad at each other and one or both went for their weapons, the killer was often not convicted of any crime. Murder, it seems, almost had to be premeditated and cold-blooded in order to result in conviction of a crime. Aleshire's tombstone says that he died in March of 1893. However, a genealogy website that I found says the incident happened in March of 1883. I think the 1893 date is right, but I'll have to do a little more research to find out for sure. Interestingly, Aleshire's oldest son was killed in Butler just a little over a year after Aleshire was killed. Again the assailant was found not guilty.
I'm scheduled to give a presentation at the Grove (Oklahoma) Public Library at noon on November 18. I'll be talking about both my Ozarks gunfights book and my book on the two battles of Newtonia.

Two Blacks Lynched By Burning at Carthage

Last time I promised to give a brief account of the burning of two black men at Carthage that occurred in 1853, as the event was chronicled in the Springfield Advertiser (and later reprinted in the Liberty Tribune). The newspaper account largely agrees with the account written years later that appears in Livingston's History of Jasper County. Indeed, Livingston, who no doubt was privvy to details not available to the newspaper, gives a more thorough account than the Advertiser. The county history, though, was wrong in at least one important detail. Livingston says the event occurred in August of 1853 when the actual date was July 30, 1853. A slave named Colley, who belonged to a man named Dale, apparently decided to rob a Dr. Fisk after Dale paid Fisk a fairly large sum of money in a business transaction, and he recruited a slave who belonged to a neighboring farmer named Scott to help in the scheme. A few nights after the business transaction, Colley went to the Fisk house and said that his master, Mr. Dale, needed the doctor's services. Dr. Fisk grabbed his doctor's bag and headed toward the Dale farm. He had gone but a little distance when he was accosted by the Scott slave, who was lying in wait. Trailing behind Dr. Fisk, Colley came up and joined his partner in crime, and together the two killed the doctor by knocking him in the head with an ax. Not finding any money on the doctor, they returned to Fisk's house, where they killed his wife and child. (They reportedly also outraged the wife, but this report probably needs to be taken with a grain of salt, as it may have been an embellishment that was added to the tale simply to inflame opinion against the murderous pair.) Colley was quickly apprehended and made a confession, but the other slave made a run for it and was caught a couple of days later several miles north of Carthage. He was brought back to town, where the townspeople held an impromptu "trial" and convicted the pair of killing the Fisk family. A vote was taken on whether to hang the men or burn them, and burning won on an almost-two-to-one vote. On Saturday, July 30, the two were chained to stakes and burned to death in downtown Carthage with a large gathering of spectators in attendance.

Pre-Civil War Southwest Missouri Records

Most of my historical writing has been about either the Civil War or events (often notorious events) that have occurred since the Civil War. One reason for this is simply that the Civil War provides a natural dividing point, but the main reason that I haven't written much, if anything, about pre-Civil War events is that there is a dearth of primary sources pertaining to those events, particularly if the events occurred in the southwest Missouri area, my primary area of interest. For instance, almost no southwest Missouri newspapers from the pre-Civil War era survive, mainly because they were burned during the war by bushwhackers or other raiding parties. Most county records were likewise destroyed when courthouses were burned. (Many county records were also destroyed by accidental fire after the war during the late 1800s.) There are a few scattered issues of Springfield newspapers from the pre-Civil War era that are extant, but that's about the extent of antebellum newspapers from southwest Missouri.
So, it's unusual to find a newspaper account of something that happened in southwest Missouri during the 1840s, 1850s, or early 1860s. Occasionally, however, if an event was newsworthy enough, other newspapers in Missouri or elsewhere might publish an account of the event from a special correspondent, or more likely they would reprint an account of the event that had originally appeared in a southwest Missouri newspaper. That is what happened in the case of the burning of two slaves at Carthage by a vigilante mob in late July of 1853. A brief story of the event was published in the Springfield Advertiser but then was reprinted in the Liberty (Mo.) Tribune. So, thanks to the Tribune, we do have at least a brief contemporaneous account of this event. (The event is also described in Jasper County histories written years after the fact.) I'll describe what the Tribune (i.e. the Advertiser) said about the event next time.

Cora Hubbard Addendum

My book on Ozarks Gunfights and Other Notorious Incidents contains a chapter on Cora Hubbard, the female bandit who helped rob the Pineville, Missouri, bank in 1897. Cora was convicted of robbery and sentenced to twelve years in prison, but, as I say at the end of the chapter, the sentence was commuted by the governor and she was released on January 1, 1905. I still don't know what happened to her after her release, but I do have a little more information (that I didn't have at the time I wrote the book) about Cora's time in prison. According to an article in a Jefferson City newspaper at the time of her release, she had been employed as a seamstress during her incarceration and had been a model prisoner. Now proficient at sewing, she planned to seek employment in that line of work.

McNatt

A couple of weeks ago I posted an entry about Indian Springs, the mineral-water town that sprang up in northern McDonald County in the early 1880s but died almost as quickly as it arose. I said that the town was renamed McNatt not long after it had fizzled as a mineral-water town. Actually, though, that's not exactly true, as I was recently informed by a man who currently owns property at McNatt. McNatt is located where the old Neosho to Pineville road crossed Indian Creek, and apparently there was a trading post or general store at or near the crossing quite a while before the town of Indian Springs sprang up on the nearby hill that overlooks the stream. The store's location at the crossing had no official name prior to the formation of Indian Springs, but after the demise of the mineral-water town, it was given the name McNatt after the person who ran the store and/or owned the surrounding land. So, in fact, McNatt and Indian Springs were two different places located very close to each other, not the same place as I suggested in my previous post. This crossing at McNatt is the one used by Confederate troops on their way south when they evacuated Newtonia shortly after the First Battle of Newtonia. Leaving Newtonia headed south, they struck the Indian Creek woods and followed the creek in a southwesterly direction until they struck the Neosho to Pineville road just above the crossing and then took this road south toward Pineville.

Mary Grabill

I have a confession. Even though I've written several books and numerous magazine articles about the Civil War, I'm really not very interested in military strategy, troop movements, or what sort of weapons were used during the war. I'm much more interested in the effects that the war had on people, both soldiers and civilians.
For instance, the thing that I found most interesting during my research and writing of The Two Civil War Battles of Newtonia was Mary Grabill's letter to her daughters, written years after the fact, detailing her experiences during the war. In fact, I tried to use Mary and her experiences as the connecting thread throughout the various chapters of my book.
Mary was a young woman (age 22 I believe) at the outset of the war, newly married to E. H. Grabill, a Newtonia merchant, and the family lived in Newtonia throughout most of the war. Even though her letter was probably written around 1900, many years after the close of the war, she recalled many of her experiences quite vividly, and her reminisciences shed light on not just what life was like in Newtonia during the war but what it must have been like for other people like Mary and her family in other parts of Missouri. Mary mostly talked about the hardships she and her family endured (because hardship was mostly what the Civil War was all about), but I found it interesting that she also mentioned some of the high points or pleasurable experiences that the war brought about. For instance, she commented on the pleasant visits and conversations that she and her husband occasionally had with Union officers and their wives, refined people that she might not otherwise have encountered had the officers not been stationed at Newtonia.
Mary and her husband continued to live in Newtonia for several years after the war, then moved to Springfield, where Mary died in 1912. She is buried at Maple Park Cemetery in Springfield.

Harrison Flood

My wife grew up in Harrison, Arkansas, and was in elementary school there at the time of the May 1961 flood. Over the years of our marriage, she has occasionally talked about her memories of the flood and the fact that school was called off for a long time, but I never really had an appreciation of the magnitude of the event until I recently read a brief piece about the disaster on the website of the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History (located in Springdale). A wall of water 12-feet high surged out of its banks from Crooked Creek. Merchants and customers were trapped inside buildings as the water raged through the downtown area of Harrison. Four people died, and many others narrowly escaped. Three hundred and thirty-one buildings were damaged or destroyed, and one hundred cars were reportedly "tossed around like matchsticks." Total property damage from the flood was estimated at 5.4 million dollars.
Now I have a better understanding of why my wife has such vivid recollections of this event from her childhood.

A Galena Lynching

Last time I mentioned that, although Joplin may have been the most populous of the mining towns of the tri-state region and probably had the most notorious reputation, several of the smaller mining towns in the area also witnessed more than their share of crime and rowdy behavior, and I cited Webb City as an example. Galena, Kansas, was another prime example. From its founding in the spring of 1877, Galena was a rough town where fights and even killings were not uncommon, the first murder being the shooting death of William "Tiger Bill" St. Clair at the hands of Bob Layton and friends in June of '77.
Galena was still a rowdy place over twenty years later near the turn of the century. The town witnessed an especially large rash of crime during one two-day period near the end of April 1899. The Joplin Globe reported that Galena "has been 'going on' at a lively rate for the past day or so, the old town having been the scene of cutting scrapes, exhibitions of cowboys on a rampage, murder and lynching, as well as larceny and other things. A history of the city for the past two days could be dished up in such a way as to rival the slaughter of the most bloodthirsty pirates or the lawlessness depicted in the most sensational of the dime novels."
The most shocking crimes during the spree were the murder of a black woman named Laura Canafax by her lover, Charles Williams, and the subsequent lynching of Williams by a mob of black men. After Canafax's body was found strangled to death on April 24, a coroner's jury quickly declared that she had come to her death at the hands of Williams, and the suspect was lodged in the local jail. During the wee hours of the morning of April 25, the mob of about fifteen men formed at the jail, broke the lock to Williams's cell, and invited him to come out. When he refused, they fired four bullets into his body, killing him instantly.
In addition to the murder and lynching, there were also two knife fights and a couple of lesser crimes committed in Galena during the same two-day period.

Webb City

I'm scheduled to give a presentation to the Webb City Genealogical Society tonight at the Webb City Public Library. It's the second time in recent months I've appeared at one of the group's meetings. The first time I talked about my Ozarks Gunfights book, and this time I'll talk mainly about my Newtonia book.
Speaking of Webb City, it was a pretty tough place during its early mining history. I've been doing research lately on early-day Joplin, and I keep running into newspaper accounts and court records pertaining to shootings, murders, etc. that occurred in Webb City.
For instance, during the period from December of 1906 to December of 1914, there were at least four murders in Webb City, and those are just the ones I've happened to come across. There may well have been more. As might be expected, at least one or two of the four murders I know about occurred in saloons.
Joplin has a reputation as having been a rough and rowdy place during its early mining days, but Webb City was no quiet, law-abiding place either. In fact, the whole tri-state mining district attracted a lot of rough characters, and consequently all the mining towns probably witnessed more than their share of crime during the early days.

Professor Babboo

I continue to marvel at how open the United States was to religious and social experimentation in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The Civil War had torn the social fabric of the country apart, and the old beliefs and the old ways of doing things no longer provided, for many people, a solid foundation they could count on. During the years after the war, entire communities were often founded by groups of like-minded individuals advocating an experiemental belief system or economic system. Liberal, founded in Barton County, Missouri, as a haven for freethinkers, is a good example.
The openness to experimentation and unconventional ways of doing things, though, extended beyond social and religious matters. The field of medicine was another area where the willingness to try new things manifested itself. Witness, for example, the mineral-water craze that I've written about in previous posts. Indeed, there was a tolerance toward (some might say a gullibility toward) anybody who claimed to be able to cure you of whatever ailed you, make you rich, read your mind, or tell your fortune.
For instance, I recently ran across a series of newspaper reports that appeared in the Joplin Globe during the month of May 1899 about a palm reader who called himself Professor Babboo the Hindoo Wonder. The so-called professor set up his headquarters in a Joplin hotel charging customers $1.00 per reading and was kept so busy that he tarried in Joplin throughout the whole month of May. The Globe reported in one instance that he was "besieged all day long by an eager, anxious crowd of patrons, seeking the consolation derived from a reading of the palms of their hands by this scientific adept." The Science of Palmistry, according to Professor Babboo, was "not fortune telling but is as plain as reading a book if one is educated in the Hindoo method." The Globe reporter, who seemed to be a true believer, urged his readers to take advantage of this rare opportunity to meet with a scientific adept such as Professor Babboo.

Indian Springs

Last time I mentioned Saratoga Springs, located in southwestern McDonald County, as an example of a town that was founded during the mineral-water craze of the early 1880s. Although it was briefly popular as a medical resort shortly after it opened, it never really caught on the way some of the other spring-water towns, like Eureka Springs, did. Another mineral-water town that was founded in McDonald County shortly after Saratoga Springs, however, did rival Eureka Springs in popularity, at least briefly among Joplinites. Indian Springs was laid out in July of 1881 on Indian Creek in the northern part of McDonald County. The growth of the place was so rapid that by August of the same year the founders were already laying out additions to the town, and the population soared, reportedly approaching 2,000 people at its peak. Among the visitors to Indian Springs during the summer and early fall of 1881 was a steady stream of folks from Joplin looking for a little relaxation and spa treatment. The greater popularity of Indian Springs over Saratoga Springs with Joplinites can be partially explained by the simple fact that it was closer to Joplin, but also Indian Springs was better organized and promoted. However, its popularity, too, like that of Saratoga Springs, soon ran its course, and by the turn of the twentieth century when its name was changed to McNatt (after the town's founder), Indian Springs was little more than a wide place in the road.

Saratoga Springs

When I was discussing on this blog a year or so ago the mineral water craze that sprang up in the Ozarks (and elsewhere) during the 1880s, I think Saratoga Springs, a town in McDonald County, Missouri, was among the examples I cited. Recently, while perusing the 1881 Joplin Daily Herald, I ran across a column written by a reporter who had taken a trip from Joplin to the fledgling community of Saratoga Springs in the late summer of 1881. The reporter said there were, at the time of his visit, two grocery stores and a drug store in the town as well as three or four dozen "summer houses" made of native lumber. Four or five springs flowed from a ravine below the town, but no medical qualities were claimed for even the largest of the group, which was dubbed the "Liz Weaver." In additon, the community had no organized town company or leaders working on behalf of building the place up. So, the reporter held out little hope that the town would flourish, and, of course, he turned out to be right. Today, Saratoga (the "Springs" part has been dropped from the name) is barely a wide place in the road on Highway 90 between Noel and Southwest City.
One place that did prosper, though, was Eureka Springs. It was tremendously popular, at least among Joplin citizens, from its very founding. It amazes me, in reading 1880s Joplin newspapers, how often I run into items reporting that a certain citizen was in Eureka Springs or had just returned from there. And I'm sure Eureka Springs was almost as popular with other residents of the Ozarks as it was with Joplinites.

W. S. Norton-Killer of Jake Killian

The current issue of Wild West Magazine contains an article of mine about Jake Killian of Granby, Missouri, and his notorious family, and my Ozarks' Gunfights book contains a chapter about the same subject that is similar to the article. I don't have anything else to say about Jake and his family right now, but I would like to add a few words about William S. Norton, the man who ended up killing Jake in the spring of 1878 at Empire City, Kansas (now part of Galena), because Norton was something of a notorious character in his own right.
Norton and Killian were members of the same unit during the Civil War, and the two men got into a violent argument over a card game during the latter part of the war. They grappled over Norton's gun, but Norton managed to turn the gun toward Killian and shot him in the face, blinding him in one eye. Killian swore revenge, a mistake that eventually cost him his life.
After the war, Norton lived in Dallas County, Missouri, awhile but came to Joplin soon after lead was discovered and the town was established in the early 1870s. He served briefly as a constable or deputy constable and became embroiled in an 1874 dispute in Joplin when he was appointed city marshal after the sitting marshal was ousted by the city council. The two men feuded awhile before the incumbent went to court and regained his office. Norton hung around Joplin a few more years and was reported to have killed at least one or two men in cases that were ruled self defense.
Shortly after lead was discovered on Short Creek in southeast Kansas in 1877, Norton moved to the booming new lead town of Empire City. He killed Killian in March of 1878 when the latter came looking for him. Although this killing, like the previous ones, was ruled self defense (primarily because Killian had a notorious reputation and had stalked Norton), it was actually a clear case of murder. Killian was not even armed at the time Norton gunned him down.
Norton later ran unsuccessfully for sheriff of Cherokee County. Maybe the good folks of southeast Kansas wanted someone for their chief law enforcement officer who was a little more deliberate in the use of firearms than Bill Norton.

Douglas County Murder

It's not unusual for me, while researching a historical topic, to run across newspaper stories about other interesting topics. In fact, that's how I come up with about half of my ideas. Recently, while researching the early history of Joplin, I came across a 1902 account of a murder trial which was getting ready to take place in Douglas County involving a crime that had occurred there in 1870, over thirty years before, at the beginning of what the newspaper called "the famous Alsup feud."
The Alsup family dominated politics in Douglas County for many years after the Civil War and made many enemies, but the term "feud" is a bit of a misnomer if we think of the word as implying a fight between two different families. At first the feud did involve the Alsups and their allies against John Hatfield and his few allies, but Hatfield was killed in the spring of 1871. So, the feud became one between the pro-Alsup faction and the anti-Alsup faction.
The murder about which I recently found the newspaper piece was committed by a follower of the Alsups named James Wilson, and the victim's name was Orville Lynn. After the murder, Wilson hid out in the woods awhile and ended up killing a second man named Hall when he heard Hall approaching in some bushes and, thinking his pursuers were closing in on him, fired at the noise.
Wilson later surrendered, but because he was an Alsup ally, he was not prosecuted and soon left the county. In 1889, almost twenty years later, after the Alsup reign had finally run its course, Wilson was finally indicted, but he was not captured until around the beginning of 1902, when he was caught in Oklahoma and brought back to Douglas County to stand trial. I'd be interested to know how the trial turned out, if anyone can fill me in.

Nathaniel Pryor

I atended the Cowboy Days festival at Pryor, Oklahoma, earlier today for a book signing, and I was reminded that a few years ago, at the time of the bicentennial celebration of the Lewis and Clark expedition, I did an article for the Ozarks Mountaineer about Nathaniel Pryor, after whom the town took its name. Pryor was a sergeant and scout on the expedition, and he later settled on a creek near present-day Pryor. Both the stream and the town that grew up nearby came to be known as Pryor Creek. Although the official name of the town, I think, is still Pryor Creek, it has for years been more commonly called "Pryor" without the "Creek" part.
When Nathaniel Pryor died in the early 1830s, he was buried at his trading post about three and half miles southeast of present-day Pryor, but his grave was later moved to Fairview Cemetery at the eastern edge of Pryor and a monument erected there in his honor.

Gambling

In researching the post-Civil War era (mainly the 1870s and 1880s), I have been struck by how much gambling went on during that time. Probably no more than today--in fact, probably less, given the overwhelming popularity of casinos nowadays. But it still seems like a lot, because I grew up during the comparatively tame 1950s and early 1960s thinking that gambling and other vices were rare in the halycon days of yore.
Most of the mentions of gambling from the 1870s and 1880s that I've run across pertain to Joplin and Baxter Springs, but I'm sure other towns, at least those of any size, like Springfield, also had their fair share of gambling establishments. By far the most popular game at the gambling houses was faro, but many of them also offered poker, keno, and other gambling games. Faro is no longer played in most casinos, because, unless it's a crooked game, the odds don't favor the house enough to justify it.
Men from the 1870s and 1880s, though, didn't have to go to gaming houses to gamble. They would bet on virtually anything: foot races, horse races, prize fights--you name it. Horse racing was probably the biggest competition for betting (outside of the gambling houses), but I imagine they even bet on baseball games.
By the way I have also been struck by how popular baseball was even as early as the 1870s and 1880s. It was not unusual for teams from neighboring towns to play each other. Often they were not affilated with schools as they almost always are today but instead were called "town teams" and were composed of any young men who wanted to play and could help the team. During this time period, basketball had not yet been invented, and the rules of football had not yet been standardized. The game still more closely resembled rugby than the game we know today as American football. So, I guess the popularity of baseball should come as no surprise. After all, that's why it has traditionally been known as the American pastime.

George Hudson Again

I recently had an article in Wild West about George Hudson, the notorious villain from Granby, Missouri. I also think I may have posted an entry about Hudson on this blog a year or more ago, but I'd like to add a brief update.
As I mention in the article, one of the several murders that Hudson committed during his infamous "career" was the cold-blooded killing in 1886 of Dr. L. G. Houard, a Joplin dentist. Hudson was finally arrested for the murder in 1891, and his case came to trial the following year at Rolla, Missouri, on a change of venue from Jasper County. At the trial, evidence was a presented by the prosecution that the motive for the murder was that Houard, a known womanizer, had been having an affair with the wife of wealthy Granby mine owner Peter Blow and that Blow had hired Hudson to do the job. Despite this and considerable other evidence against Hudson, he was acquitted.
Recently I read a piece online about Peter Blow that appeared in a Tennessee newspaper a year and a half ago. (Blow spent much of his later life in Tennessee.) In discussing the Hudson murder case, the author of the newspaper piece suggests that the trial amounted to an attempt to slander Blow's good name and that Hudson was indeed innocent. He says that although a few observers made the accusation that the outcome of the trial was a travesty of justice, few people believed this assertion.
To the contrary, Hudson was widely considered to be guilty by the people who knew him and his notorious record best--the citizens of the area where he lived. In southwest Missouri, most people considered the result of the trial at Rolla to be a "bought verdict." Hudson had used intimidation, bribery, and any other means at his disposal to escape prosecution in other cases, and the overwhelming opinion around Joplin and Granby was that he had done so again in the Houard case.
I can't say with any certainty that Peter Blow hired Hudson to kill Houard, as the prosecution claimed, but I do feel quite sure that Hudson did, in fact, commit the murder.

Diamond Grove

In doing research about the Civil War in the area of Newton and Jasper counties, I have occasionally run into references to Diamond Grove. At first, I assumed that Diamond Grove was just a precursor to or another name for present-day Diamond, which did not exist at the time of the Civil War. There's some truth to this assumption, but it's not entirely true. While present-day Diamond did borrow its name from Diamond Grove and is located in the same general vicinity as the earlier community, it is not located in the precise same place.
Diamond Grove was north and west of present-day Diamond or due north of the George Washington Carver Birthplace. In fact, there's a Diamond Grove Prairie Conservation Area just a couple of miles north of the birthplace, and still farther north (on FF Highway or Joplin's East 32nd Street) there is a Diamond Grove Christian Church.
If there was an actual community or crossroads store during the Civil War at a place called Diamond Grove (and I assume there was), I have not, however, been able to determine exactly where it was. All I know is that it was not where present-day Diamond is. If anyone knows the precise location where the community of Diamond Grove was, please let me know.

Nettie Pease Fox in Joplin

I mentioned in a post a year or so ago that spiritualism revivalist Nettie Pease Fox came to Springfield in the fall of 1877, started a spiritualist newspaper there, and held a series of lectures at the Opera House on South Street. I mentioned that the revivalist fervor in Springfield had already started to cool by the end of the year, but apparently Ms. Fox continued to conduct lectures in other parts of the Ozarks for a while longer. For instance, on the last day of January of 1878, she lectured at the Opera House in Joplin, which was located at the corner of 2nd and Main.
In the late 1800s, nearly every town of sufficient size had its own opera house. Opera houses were used for more than just operas, though. They also hosted non-operatic theatrical productions, musical performances, public meetings, and lectures by noted speakers like Ms. Fox. Nettie Pease Fox was apparently fairly well received in Joplin but didn't cause the stir or stay as long as she had in Springfield.

Newtonia

My book on the two battles at Newtonia was recently released by History Press as part of the publisher's Civil War Sequicentennial Series. In an overall view of the Civil War, neither battle at Newtonia was particularly significant (although some people seem to want to try to make both of them more important than they actually were by overestimating the number of casualties, etc.) Still, they were certainly significant for the soldiers who participated in them and for other people (such as civilians who lived in Newtonia) who were directly affected, and each battle does have its distinguishing characteristics. For instance, the First Battle of Newtonia is one of the few conflicts of the Civil War that involved large-scale American Indian involvement on both sides. The second battle did not have such an unusual distinguishing characteristic, did not involve nearly as many soldiers as the first one, and did not last as long. However, it is remembered as the last significant fight of the Civil War in Missouri, and largely for that reason, therefore, it, too, is considered important. The Newtonia Battlefields Protection Association will be holding an open house at the Ritchey Mansion on Sunday afternoon, June 27, at two p.m., and they'll be hosting a book signing for me at the same time in conjunction with the open house.

Prostitutes in the Ozarks

Last time I wrote about the rowdy character of the town of Baxter Springs and cited the 1870 census as evidence, particularly the fact that the occupation of seven women living in the town at the time of the census was listed as "prostitute." Actually, I got to thinking about this whole subject of prostitution, gambliing, etc. in the early-day Ozarks because it was pointed out to me not too long ago that several women living in Joplin at the time of the 1880 census were listed as prostitutes. I know, too, that prostitution was fairly common around the mining town of Granby immediately after the Civil War before Joplin was even formed. I'm not as well versed on the early history of Springfield, but I'm pretty sure prostitution was fairly common there during the war, because Springfield was a Union headquarters throughout much of the war. Anywhere young single men congregated; be they soldiers, miners, or cowboys; prostitutes were sure to show up.
What strikes me about the census records is the fact the census takers (not necessarily the women themselves) were so open about calling a prostitute a prostitute. Today, prostitutes would more likely show up on census records as "escorts" or some other euphemism.

1870 Baxter Springs Census

If anyone doubts the wild and rowdy character of Baxter Springs during its early cow town days, all you have to do to see for yourself is examine the 1870 census for the town, paying particular attention to the listed occupations of the residents. As one might expect, at least a couple of cattle dealers resided in Baxter but not as many as one might think. Most cattle drovers probably lived in Texas and only drove their cattle to Baxter and then quickly returned home. Besides, the census was taken during early and mid summer when most cattle drovers probably would have been on the trail.
Not surprisingly, one of the most common occupations among Baxter residents in 1870 was saloonkeeper or liquor dealer. There were also a couple of cigar dealers, and at least one or two professional gamblers lived in the town. Several men gave their occupation as "loafing" or "loafer," while the occupation of a few others was noted as "no occupation." So, the town obviously had a number of idlers and hangers-on. Some of these were probably also gamblers at least part time. Maybe they just didn't make enough money at their chosen pastime to justify listing "gambler" as their occupation.
I counted at least seven young women whose occupation was listed on the census as "prostitute." There was one man and one woman whose occupation was listed as "keeper of a brothel," and several of the prostitutes lived with these two individuals. Not all of them though--there were at least a couple of sporting ladies who were apparently independent contractors. The fact that fully seven young women had their occupation listed on the census as "prostitute" made me wonder how many more who gave their occupation as "waitress" or something similar also engaged in the "world's oldest profession" at least part time.
To fully appreciate the wild character of a town with at least seven full-time prostitutes and at least a dozen or more saloonkeepers or liquor dealers, one needs to keep in mind that Baxter Springs had a total population at the time of a little over a thousand people. (The town continued to prosper as a cow town for at least a couple of years after the summer of 1870, and the influx of prostitutes, gamblers, and other adventurers continued as well.)

Jasper County Place Names

A year or so ago, I posted an entry in which I criticized the fact that the Jasper County portion of Moser's Directory of Towns, Villages, and Hamlets Past and Present (available on the Internet at the website of the Western Historical Manuscript Collection, the Springfield-Greene County Library, and possibly other sites) confuses Blende City with Blendville. Later, I issued a mea culpa for being overly critical when someone pointed out to me that libraries should not be held accountable for the accuracy of their web content any more than they are held accountable for the accuracy of every book they stock on their shelves, and I also realize that the compiler of a monumental work like Moser's directory should himself not be held accountable for the complete accuracy of everything included in the work. The compiler of such a large work in most cases has to rely on other secondary sources and cannot be expected to personally verify every fact. So I do not intend the following to be construed in anyway as a criticism but merely as providing additional information.
To repeat what I said a year or so ago, contrary to what Moser's directory says, Blende City and Blendville were not the same community. Blende City was located a mile or so southwest of Carl Junction near what is now Highway JJ, while Blendville was located in what today is southwest Joplin. Also, there seems to be some confusion about the various names by which Blende City was known. It was originally just a mining camp called Skeeterville after lead was discovered at the site around 1880. Supposedly the man who first stuck ore there named the camp Skeeterville, suggesting the presence of mosquitoes, to try to keep other miners away. The ploy didn't work, and soon so much blende (zinc ore) was being mined from the site that the booming community was named Blende City. A year or so later, an addition to the town was built and named Lehigh, and soon Lehigh had engulfed or at least overshadowed Blende City to the point that the entire community became known as Lehigh. Under the listing for Fidelity in Moser's directory, the author notes that Fidelity was also known as Skeeterville and Lehigh. This, at least as far as I have been able to determine, is not true. Fidelity was a completely separate place (located near the present-day intersection of I-44 and Highway 71) and was never known by any other name. Apparently someone simply got Fidelity and Lehigh (or Blende City) mixed up.
Parr Hill is mentioned in Moser's directory as a Jasper County place, but the notation under the listing says that it "could not be located." For the record, Parr Hill was a mining camp/community located in what is today southeast Joplin. There is still a Parr Hill Park just a couple of blocks north of the Dillon's store on East 20th Street. Swindle Hill is also listed in the directory as a separate community, but "nothing more is known about the place." Swindle Hill was another Joplin-area mining camp located near the present-day intersection of East 7th Street and Murphy Boulevard (the Ewert Park vicinity).

Jennison in Joplin

I've heard or read quite a few stories about notorious characters who frequented Joplin during its mining boom in the 1870s and 1880s. As I noted in a recent post, the notorious characters often mentioned in connection with Joplin include the James brothers and the Younger brothers. Although their connection to Joplin has been exaggerated, there were, in fact, a number of colorful or notorious characters who migrated to Joplin during the years immediately after the lead mining boom began in the early 1870s. Some of them, like Charles "Fletch" Taylor, were ex Confederate guerrillas, and others, like Bruce Younger and Hobbs Kerry, although not ex guerrillas themselves, had a close connection to the post-war outlaw gangs that sprang from the guerrilla bands.
Not all the shady characters who came to Joplin, though, were ex Confederates or were allied with ex-Confederate gangs. One notable exception was Charles "Doc" Jennison, who served during the Civil War as a colonel of the 7th Kansas Cavalry and made a name for himself as a notorious jayhawker. At least that's what many Missourians considered him.
After the war, Jennison served a couple of terms in the Kansas State legislature, but around 1877, he came to Joplin and opened a restaurant and saloon called the Saratoga. Jennison's name shows up repeatedly in Jasper County Court records, mostly in connection with violating liquor laws. Although I haven't delved into the records very much yet, I believe the violations were mainly for selling liquor without a license or for selling liquor on Sunday. I think he was also indicted a time or two for gambling violations--running a Faro bank, etc.
Jennison left Joplin in the early 1880s and died shortly afterwards at Leavenworth, Kansas.

Jesse Roper

I first ran onto the name of Jesse Roper when I was reading about the infamous train robbery that occurred at Olyphant, Arkansas, in the fall of 1893. At the time Roper had been on the run from the law for over a year, after having killed Sheriff Byler of Baxter County in mid June of 1892. When one of the robbers was caught a few days after the train holdup, it was first thought that he was Jesse Roper. After a man who knew Roper viewed the prisoner and said positively that he was not Roper, it was still thought, however, that Roper was probably one of the eight men who had held up the train. (He wasn't.)
While researching other topics, I have since run onto Roper's name two or three more times. From what I've been able to ascertain so far, Roper was apparently never caught, but there were numerous false sightings of the fugitive, and a number of men were captured who were first thought to be Roper but who turned out not to be.
So, now I'm starting to get hooked, and sooner or later I'll probably have to end up delving into the Roper story a little deeper. That's usually how it happens. I run onto the name of a colorful character in Ozarks history or the mention of an infamous incident, and I lodge the name in the back of my mind but don't think much about it at first. If I run onto a second or third mention of the same character or incident, though, I start thinking more seriously about it and usually end up having to write about it in one fashion or another.

County Names

In an entry I posted a year or so ago, I remarked that certain towns in the Ozarks were once known by a previous name, such as Dadeville having first been called Melville. The same is true about some of the counties in the region. For instance, Texas County was first called Ashley County, and McDonald County was first named Seneca County (after the Seneca Indians who lived in the region). What was originally Kinderhook County is now Camden county, and Dallas County was supposedly given its present name because its original name, Niangua, was considered too hard to spell and pronounce. One of the more interesting name changes pertains to Ozark County. It was originally given that name when it was first formed but changed its name to Decatur County and was known as such for a couple of years during the 1840s before changing its name back to Ozark.
I'm not sure whether there is an equivalent town in the Ozarks--one that briefly flirted with a different name before changing its name back to its original.

Jesse James Was My Great Uncle

Yesterday, I was looking through some books in the local history room of the Joplin Public Library about Joplin's early history. Some of the stories chronicled in a couple of the books appear to be based mainly on oral legend and after-the-fact exaggeration rather than contemporaneous evidence. One such story that caught my eye was the oft-repeated assertion that the infamous outlaw Jesse James spent considerable time in and around Joplin. For instance, Jesse, using an assumed name, was supposedly introduced to a Joplin banker during the 1870s, and when the banker found out Jesse''s real name, he worried that the James gang would rob his bank. Jesse, though, upon learning of the man's concern, assured the banker that he would never rob a bank around Joplin because he considered it his hometown.
From what I've been able to discern from first-hand sources, this story and those like it are, at best, exaggeration. It's true that Jesse James was known to have passed through the Joplin area at least a time or two, but there's no documentation that he ever spent any considerable amount of time here. Same goes for the Younger brothers, who, like Jesse, are sometimes reported to have been denizens of Joplin. The Youngers' half-uncle Bruce Younger did frequent the town during its early days, and Fletch Taylor (Quantrill lieutenant and the James boys' immediate commander during the Civil War) did move to Joplin during the early lead-mining days and became a leading citizen of the town. Jesse's sister was even reported in a local newspaper as having visited Taylor in Joplin. But the Younger gang and the James boys mainly spent their time (when they weren't actively on the run) farther north around Jackson County, St. Clair County, and so forth, or else in Texas.
The exaggerated stories about Jesse James's exploits in and around Joplin, though, are hardly unique. Nearly every county in the Ozarks (or the Midwest for that matter), it seems, lays claim to some connection to the notorious outlaw. And if you get to talking about family history with the people you meet, it seems that about half of them claim kinship to Jesse, as though it were some badge of honor.

Old-time Newspaper Editors

I do a lot of perusing of old newspapers, and I am often amused by the sardonic wit that editors of the nineteenth century exhibited, a sense of humor that is often missing in today's more matter-of-fact approach to journalism. Another thing that characterized reporting from the 1800s that is largely absent today was a keen competition between rival newspapers. (Perhaps the main reason it's missing today is the simple fact that there are not nearly as many papers as there used to be.)
Often these two traits of nineteenth century reporting (humor and competition)were combined when the editor of one newspaper would snipe at the editor of a rival paper. If the rival papers happened to be situated in rival towns (as opposed to being located in the same town), the sniping was often accompanied by bragging on one's own town while poking fun at the rival town. It's amusing today to look back at some of these editorial jabs.
Here, for instance, is a brief comment from the editor of the Springfield Times that appeared in his November 7, 1877 edition: "Blessed is Granby! She only has 37 dogs within her corporate limits. Our marshal sees to it that more than that number are killed every week." This little item was no doubt in response to a complaint about dogs that had recently appeared in the Granby Miner. Another item from a later edition of the same Springfield paper gives a hint of the rivalry that existed between Springfield and Joplin: "The following, from the Joplin Herald, is cool and refreshing in a village like ours: 'Main street presented its old-time appearance last night. The gambling halls and saloons were crowded and money seems to be plenty.'" The editor may have been a bit smug about Springfield's superior morality, but many Springfieldians couldn't resist the lure of the money that flowed in Joplin during the mining boom and moved 70 miles west to get in on the riches.

Highway 63 and Marked Tree

I just came back from Sunday's Talladega Superspeedway NASCAR race. On the way home, we drove to Memphis and then took Highway 63 thru Jonesboro, Ark. to West Plains, Mo. It's a stretch of road I had never been on before. Considering that I have lived in the Ozarks virtually my entire life of over 60 years, it sometimes amazes me that there are still a lot of places in this region that I've never been. I've probably been to most of them but not nearly all.
One of the towns I had never been to that we passed through was Marked Tree, Arkansas. The name caught my attention because it just so happens that I've been doing a little research on a notorious character named Robbie Camden, sometimes called the Robin Hood of the Ozarks, who was a terror to south central Missouri during the 1920s and 1930s. He was from the Reynolds County area, but one time, when he was on the run from the law after a shootout with the Dent County, Missouri, sheriff, he got into a second gun battle with police near Marked Tree. He was seriously injured, and it was thought his wounds might prove fatal, but he recovered and, after getting out of prison, went on to pull off other crimes, including at least one murder.

Missouri Counties during the Civil War

Recently I was reading excerpts from William Monks's book entitled A History of Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas, and I was struck by an observation the author made about the differing political makeup of Howell County, where he lived, and that of neighboring Oregon County. Monks was a former Union officer who had made a name for himself fighting Confederate bushwhackers during the war. After the war, he went home to West Plains. Although his family and those of many other Union men had been forced out of Howell County during the war, Union sentiment soon dominated in the county once they returned. Not so in neighboring Oregon County, where lawless bands under former Confederate guerrillas like Dick Kitchen and Jim Jamison held sway. Monks was called upon by Missouri Governor Thomas Fletcher to help eradicate the lawless bands from Oregon County.
What struck me as interesting was the fact that two adjoining counties could be dominated by such diametrically opposed political sentiments. During the Civil War, the state of Missouri was very divided, but generally speaking Union sentiment dominated in the urban areas (especially St. Louis), while Confederate sympathies were more prominent in the rural areas. The general rule, though, did not always apply. For instance, in the southwest corner of the state (the part of Missouri I am most familiar with), Vernon County was about as Southern in sentiment as a county could be. Yet, Cedar County, right next door to the east, tended to be dominated by Union sentiment. This clash in sentiment between neighboring counties led indirectly to the murder of Augustus Baker by John Frizzell in May of 1863 and more directly to the subsequent burning of Nevada later the same month.

Hudspeth-Watkins Murder Case

The Andrew Hudspeth-George Watkins murder case that occurred in Marion County, Arkansas, in the late 1880s is one of the most interesting in the history of the Ozarks. The families of the two men were living together on the same farm west of Yellville, and apparently the intimate living arrangements proved too much temptation for Hudspeth and Watkins's wife. One day Hudspeth and Watkins came to Yellville together in Watkins's wagon, and that night Hudspeth came home alone driving the wagon. After the disappearance came to light, Rebecca Watkins admitted that she and Hudspeth were lovers, that they had plotted her husband's murder together, and that she was sure Andy had carried it out, although she wasn't present at the time and didn't know what he had done with the body. Much of her story was supported by the testimony of her and George's eleven-year-old son.
Andy Hudspeth was convicted of the murder, and, after considerable delay caused by his escape from jail and by numerous appeals on his behalf, he was eventually hanged in late 1892. In the meantime, Rebecca, awaiting indictment on a charge of being an accessory to the crime, died while in custody. The case took a strange twist in the summer of 1893 when George Watkins was supposedly found alive living on a farm in Kansas. The report was soon followed by a second story claiming the first one was a hoax, but the idea that George Watkins was found alive after Andy Hudspeth was executed for his murder is repeated as gospel even today on certain websites dedicated to exposing abuse in the American justice system. Obviously, if the story were true, it would be an extreme miscarriage of justice, but there is considerable evidence to suggest that Hudspeth did, in fact, kill George Watkins. The same websites that claim George Watkins was found alive after Hudspeth was executed also give Hudspeth's name as Charles Hudspeth. His name was Andrew J. Hudspeth. Failure to get the name of one of the principal characters right is, in and of itself, reason enough to distrust the rest of their version of the story.

More Weather: 11-11-11

Last time I mentioned a few memorable weather events that have occurred in the Ozarks over the years. I forgot to mention perhaps the most spectacular one of all, though, "the Great Blue Norther" that happened on November 11, 1911. It was then that many areas in the Midwest, including towns like Springfield, Missouri, recorded their record high and record low on the same day. The morning and early afternoon of 11-11-11 was unusually mild. In Springfield, for instance, the temperature was in the low 80s in the early afternoon before the storm hit. By midnight it had dropped to around 13 degrees. Both extremes set records for the date, and I believe that one or both records still stand. I, of course, don't remember this weather event. I'm old but not quite that old. I do, however, remember old-timers from my youth occasionally talking about it. My grandmother, for instance, recalled that the temperature dropped so rapidly that most of her family's potato crop, which had been stored in a shed, froze before she and her siblings could move the potatoes to the cellar.

Ozarks Weather

Last weekend, we had a late winter storm that dropped about six to eight inches of snow on the Joplin area. The photo at left of the deck and backyard at our house will give you an idea of what it looked like. It reminded me of other late winter storms of more historic proportions, such as the one in March of 1970 that dumped up to thirty inches of snow on the Ozarks. I was in the Army at the time and didn't witness that one firsthand, but my wife and other people still talk about it. Lee George, a former weatherman for Channel 12 here in Joplin, had notoriously forecasted flurries leading up to the 1970 storm, and always after that he would never use what he called the "f" word when it came to predicting snow.
A freakish Ozarks snowstorm that I remember from my childhood occurred in early November of 1952. I still have pictures of my sister and me playing in drifts up to our waists or higher and other photos of automobiles almost completely covered by snow, so that, if not for the shape, one would not know for sure what the objects were.
I think unusual weather makes a more indelible impression on children and young people than it does on adults. At least it seems we tend to remember weather events from "back in the day" better than we do recent ones. However, I would have to say that the ice storms of 2007 (January and December), for instance, have to rank with anything I had ever witnessed previously during my sixty years or so of living in the Ozarks. And the 2003 tornadoes that hit towns like Franklin, Kansas, and Carl Junction, Stockton, and Pierce City in Missouri were probably about as devastating, except in loss of life, as the infamous tornado of 1880 that destroyed Marshfield. With modern forecasting, the availability of storm shelters, and so forth, we are probably just better prepared to survive storms than we were a hundred and thirty years ago. As far as I know, though, no one has yet composed a song about the 2003 tornadoes the way ragtime musician Blind Boone did about the Marshfield twister.

Bill Cook

From an early age, Bill Cook seemed destined for a life of crime. When he was only about five years old, his mother died, leaving his father to take care of Bill and his several siblings. Bill Cook Sr. apparently had neither the means nor inclination to tend to a whole passel of kids. He left them in a small cave in northwest Joplin in the side of a hill with an older sister in charge and merely checked in on them from time to time to bring food. Later young Bill stayed briefly with the older sister after she married but mainly got shuffled from one foster parent to another. When he was ten, he was placed with a foster mother but became incorrigible and left home when he was about twelve. Told that he had to stay where he was placed or else he would be sent to the reformatory, he chose the reformatory.
Bill Cook's crimes and troubles with the law only escalated from there, and he spent the next nine years or so in and out of the reformatory and the Missouri State Penitentiary. Then, during the wee hours of the morning of January 2, 1951, Cook wrote his name in the annals of American crime when he committed what, at the time at least, was one of the worst mass murders in U. S. history. He had flagged down motorist Carl Mosser and his family (wife and three young kids) a couple of days earlier on Route 66 in Oklahoma, jumped into their car, and forced Mosser at gunpoint to drive him pell-mell across the country. After more than two days of criss-crossing back and forth through the Southwest, Cook brought his hostages to his hometown of Joplin, where he killed all five of them near the intersection of 30th and Maiden Lane after almost being discovered by a Joplin policeman. He then dumped their bodies in an abandoned mine shaft in northwest Joplin, the area where he had grown up.
Cook then went on the lam and killed a couple of more people in southern California before finally being captured in Mexico and brought back to the U. S. to answer for his crimes. He was executed in late 1952 in California for one of the latter murders. His body was brought back to Joplin and buried in an unmarked grave at Peace Church Cemetery at the northwest edge of Joplin.
My book Ozarks Gunfights and Other Notorious Incidents contains a more complete version of Bill Cook's story, as well as twenty-four other incidents, all of which I've mentioned over the past few months. Now that I've mentioned all of them, I will try, for at least my next few postings, to talk about other things besides notorious incidents covered in my book.

Bonnie & Clyde in Joplin

The apartment building at 3347 1/2 Oak Ridge Drive in Joplin where Bonnie and Clyde had their infamous shootout with police in April of 1933 has received quite a bit of attention lately. A new owner bought the property a few years ago and wanted to convert it to a bed and breakfast but couldn't get the request passed by the city council, mainly because of opposition from some of the neighbors living in the immediate area of the apartment. The last I knew, though, the owner was still trying to get the building declared a historic site.
For anyone unfamiliar with the location, the building sits just a couple of blocks off South Main Street, and although the address is Oak Ridge Drive, access to the apartment is actually from 34th Street. Back when many garages were detached from the primary house, the apartment at 3347 1/2 Oak Ridge was built over the garage, which was ideal for the Barrow gang's purposes. The gangsters could pull their cars into the garage and unload weapons or other contraband without being seen.
Clyde's brother, Buck Barrow, rented the apartment under an assumed name from Paul Freeman, and the gang had been there about two weeks before neighbors began to get suspicious of the comings and goings at the building and called police. The result, of course, was a bloody shootout that left two officers, J. W. Harryman and Harry McGinnis, dead.
The location on the outskirts of town near Main Street was another good thing about the apartment from the gang's standpoint, because after the gunfight, they made their escape south on Main Street, roaring through Redings Mill south of Joplin and eventually making their way to Texas.

Young Brothers

Many people are familiar with the so-called Young brothers massacre that occurred near Brookline in 1932, during which Harry and Jennings Young killed six law officers sent out from Springfield to arrest them. Suspecting little resistance, the officers carried only handguns while the Youngs were armed with high powered rifles. Both of the brothers were ex-cons, and at least one of them had vowed not to be taken alive. Still, the officers failed to realize the desperate nature of the men they were after, and they paid a dear price for the mistake. The incident still ranks as the deadliest shootout in history for U. S. law enforcement. After the killings, the Youngs escaped to Houston, Texas, where they themselves died in another shootout with police a couple of days later.
What many people, even some who are generally familiar with this incident, may not know is that the Young brothers were brought back to Missouri and buried at Joplin's Fairview Cemetery. Reportedly, the Young family wanted to bury them in Greene County, but outraged citizens met the hearse at the county line and refused to let it enter the county. The driver turned back and drove to Joplin, where the bodies were buried in an unmarked grave. A sister of the Young brothers later placed a stone on the grave.
The story of the Young brothers massacre forms a chapter in my book entitled Ozarks Gunfights and Other Notorious Incidents. By the way, I am having a book signing for the book this Saturday, March 13, from 1-3 p.m. at Always Buying Books in Joplin. Also, I'm scheduled to speak to the Webb City Genealogy Society at their regular monthly meeting on April 6 at 6:00 p.m. at the Webb City Library, and I'll probably talk mainly about the Gunfights book.

Ma Barker gang

Of all the gangs that roamed the country during gangster era of the 1920s and 1930s, none had stronger ties to the Ozarks than the Ma Barker gang. Bonnie and Clyde and others sometimes used the Ozarks hill country as a hideout, but the Barkers were actually from this area.
Ma herself was born near Ash Grove as Arizona "Arrie" Clark. She got married at Aurora and she her husband, George Barker, had their first three sons there. A fourth was born after they moved to Webb City about 1903.
The Barkers first got into serious trouble with the law when the oldest son, Herman, and a couple of young sidekicks robbed some men who were playing poker in the back of store in Webb City. The Barker family moved to Tulsa shortly after this incident, but members of the Barker gang continued throughout the gang's criminal career to return on occasion to the southwest Missouri region, where they had friends like Herb Farmer who would hide them out.
And several of the gang's noted crimes were committed in the Ozarks. Among the more notorious was the murder of the Howell County sheriff at West Plains by Alvin Karpis and Herman's younger brother Fred.
Most of the Barkers, including Ma, are buried at the edge of the Ozarks in a rural cemetery near Welch, Oklahoma.

Roy Daugherty

One of the most interesting notorious characters of the Old West era from the Ozarks was Roy "Arkansas Tom" Daugherty; yet he is someone that many people are not familiar with. Actually, Daughterty's criminal career merely started during the Old West era with his participation in the Doolin gang's infamous shootout at Ingalls in Oklahoma Territory in 1893. It continued well into the twentieth century until he was finally killed in a shootout with Joplin police in 1924.
Daugherty was born in Missouri but apparently spent enough time in Arkansas to acquire his colorful nickname before drifting into Oklahoma Territory and hooking up with Doolin. Daugherty was captured at Ingalls, although the rest of the gang escaped. He spent a good while in prison but was paroled in the early 1900s and was even in a movie called Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaws, in which Henry Starr also had a bit part. Daugherty, though, apparently decided that being an outlaw was more fun than playing one in the movies, because he soon resorted to bank robbery, except that now he was using motor vehicles instead of horses as his means of transportation (and escape). He robbed banks at Oronogo, Fairview, and Asbury (all in southwest Missouri) and perhaps other places as well before his encounter in west Joplin with the constabulary of that town proved to be his undoing. After he was killed, his body was taken to a Joplin undertaker, and the next day thousands of spectators filed through the mortuary, anxious to get a glimpse of a man who was one of the last links to the Wild West days of yesteryear.

Eureka Springs Bank Robbery

Henry Starr, as I pointed out last time, was killed in a bank robbery at Harrison, Arkansas, in February of 1921. The rest of the gang escaped, but apparently they didn't learn much from the fatal outcome of the crime. A year and a half later, in September of 1922, the attempted holdup of a bank in Eureka Springs ended even worse for the remnants of the gang than the Harrison caper had. Local citizens armed themselves when they realized a crime was in progress, and three of the gang members were killed and the other two wounded and captured in the ensuing shootout. Commenting on the downfall of the gang, some people have pointed to various mistakes the robbers made, such as the fact that they chose a difficult target with few easy escape routes and the fact that they brought along a raw, inexperienced kid as the driver of the getaway car. There is little doubt that the gang was pretty inept, but the main mistake they made was not taking into account the determined resistance the townspeople put up. As one newspaperman pointed out at the time, maybe they didn't realize they were in Arkansas, and standing idly by while their bank was getting robbed was not how they did things in Arkansas back then.
I recently had an article in The Ozarks Mountaineer about the failed Eureka Springs bank robbery, and you can also read a version of the story in my book about notorious Ozarks incidents, which, by the way, I've finally received a copy of. So, it should be available in bookstores very soon if it isn't already. I thought it was going to be out long before now, but the wheels always turn slowly in the publishing world and sometimes even more slowly than others.

Henry Starr

If a tendency toward violence and crime is inherited or even if one's social environment plays an important role, it is little wonder that Henry Starr, the so-called "King of the Bandits," grew up to become a notorious outlaw. Also sometimes called the "Cherokee Badman," Starr's mixed-race Cherokee family had a long history of violence dating back to the feud that developed between the John Ross faction (mostly purebreds) and the Major Ridge faction (mostly mixed-race Cherokees) over the question of removal of the Indians from their native homelands in the southeastern United States. Henry's great grandfather, James (whose mother was a full-blooded Cherokee and whose father was white) was a member of the Ridge faction, which favored the removal treaty. After the removal to Indian Territory in the late 1830s, bitterness lingered, and open warfare erupted between the two sides during the 1840s. James's son Tom (Henry's grandfather)was suspected of killing several members of the Ross faction, and James was killed in retaliation for his son's actions. Tom then supposedly killed several more pro-Ross Cherokees in revenge for his father's death before a treaty between the two warring factions finally brought the bloodshed to a close, at least until the Civil War. During the war, Tom Starr served with Stand Watie and most of the other other mixed-race Cherokees in the Confederate Army, while many of the purebreds served in the Union. After the war, Tom's son Sam became notorious in his own right and later married Belle Shirley Reed, the widow of outlaw Jim Reed, who became infamous as Belle Starr. Another of Tom's sons, George, was the father of Henry, who went on, according to legend, to carry out more robberies than any other outlaw in American history, beginning during the Old West days of the 1890s and ending in February of 1921 when he was killed trying to rob a bank in Harrison, Arkansas. You can read more about Henry Starr and particularly the Harrison bank robbery in my book about notorious Ozarks incidents.

Cora Hubbard--Female Bandit

After Cora Hubbard helped a couple of male sidekicks hold up the Pineville Bank in the summer of 1897, one area newspaper compared her to Belle Starr, the so-called "Bandit Queen." In actuality, of course, Cora's notoriety never approached that of Belle Starr, but Ms. Hubbard did cause quite a stir in the southwest Missouri region for a brief time, not only for the audacity of her bold act but also for her unrepentant atttitude about the deed she had committed. In fact, she seemed quite proud of having committed the crime and, after being captured, even posed for pictures wearing the men's clothes she had donned for the robbery and holding the rifle she had wielded. A pistol that was recovered from the crooks when they were caught had the initials of one of the Dalton gang carved on its handle, and Cora claimed the weapon belonged to her and that she had been with the Daltons several years earlier. Cora seemed to like the idea of shocking people, but in the end the only thing her unabashed attitude got her was a good long stretch in the Missouri state pen. She was let out after serving about seven years, but what happened to her after that is not known.
I've had articles about Cora Hubbard published in Wild West and The Ozarks Mountaineer, and a version of her story also appears as a chapter in my Ozarks Gunfights book.

The Staffelbachs

Galena, Kansas was founded as a lead mining camp in the late 1870s, and it was a wild and rowdy place during its early days. Several notorious incidents happened in the vicinity during the late 1800s, a couple of which I've already mentioned in previous posts. Perhaps the one that is most famous (or infamous) locally, however, is the murder (or murders) committed by the Staffelbach family in 1897. The Staffelbach home sat near present-day West 7th Street in Galena, and the family consisted of the mother and several grown sons, all of whom were shady characters. The old lady ran a house of ill fame out of her home, and the boys were in and out of trouble for a number of petty crimes. In the summer of 1897, they graduated to murder when two of the sons killed a gentleman caller who came to the house one night in the wee hours of the morning and insisted a bit too strongly upon seeing one of the female occupants of the house. The body was dumped in an abandoned mine shaft not far off 7th Street. After the body was discovered, the Staffelbachs were quickly suspected of the crime, and soon the whole gang was rounded up. At their preliminary hearing and trial, several other crimes came to light of which they were suspected, but they were tried only for the death of the gentleman caller. That was enough. The whole family, including the old lady, were convicted on various counts and given sentences of varying severity. The two sons who had actually commited the deed were given the death sentence but later had the penalty commuted to life imprisonment.

Bill Doolin's Southwest City Bank Robbery

When I wrote about the Daltons' fiasco at Coffeyville last time, I remarked that Bill Doolin has been mentioned as possibly having been the gang's supposed "sixth rider." What is known for sure is that Doolin soon organized the remnants of the Dalton gang into the Wild Bunch (not to be confused with Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch) and almost reenacted the Dalton disaster when he and the gang held up a bank in Southwest City, Missouri, in May of 1894, a year and a half after the Coffeyville caper. The townspeople of Southwest City opened fire on the outlaws the same way the citizens of Coffeyville had done with the Daltons. The outlaws returned fire, and over a hundred bullets whirred through the air on Main Street in a gun battle that one observer described as akin to war times. The outcome, though, was very different from what happened at Coffeyville. When the shooting stopped, one townsperson lay mortally wounded and a couple of other had lesser injuries, while the robbers had run the gauntlet of the citizens' guns and escaped with about $3,500 in cash and only minor wounds. Bill Doolin was finally captured about a year and a half after the Southwest City robbery. He escaped about six months later but was tracked down and killed by a U. S. deputy marshal only a month or two after his escape.

The Daltons' Coffeyville Fiasco

Although Coffeyville, Kansas, is not actually a part of the Ozarks, it's close enough to my hometown of Joplin that I consider it to be in the general region. So, I've included a chapter on the Dalton gang's unsuccessful attempt to rob two Coffeyville banks simultaneously in my book about notorious incidents of the Ozarks.
The holdup attempt occurred on October 5, 1892. The Daltons had grown up hearing about and idolizing their notorious cousins, the Youngers, and the Youngers' even more infamous sidekicks, the James brothers; and Bob Dalton had supposedly boasted that he meant to top the record of Jesse James. Instead, the whole gang was virtually wiped out by vigilant townspeople who armed themselves when they realized the banks were being robbed and shot the outlaws to pieces. Four of the five gang members were killed, and the fifth was seriously wounded.
The story of the failed holdup attempt has been written about fairly extensively, and one of the elements of the story that continues to fascinate students of the Old West is the question of whether or not there was a so-called "sixth rider," as popular myth holds. This person, so the story goes, acted as a lookout on the outskirts of town and managed to escape when the shooting started, and there has been much speculation about the person's identity, if, indeed, he existed. Some, for instance, have claimed that Bill Doolin was the sixth rider.
Local residents who met the Daltons coming into Coffeyville on that fateful morning reported seeing six men, and their testimony has given rise to over a hunded years' worth of sometimes wild speculation. None of the citizens in town, however, saw more than five men, and Emmett Dalton, the only outlaw who survived the ill-fated holdup attempt, also said the gang numbered only five. I think Emmett was probably telling the truth, but many people love a mystery and will eagerly advance a marvelous explanation while scoffing at a simpler, more logical one.

Blalock-Fry Gang

Although they didn't rival the James gang, the Youngers, or the Daltons, the little-known Blalock-Fry gang had an unsavory reputation that made them notorious throughout southeast Kansas during the late 1880s. Centered at Columbus, the gang consisted of several brothers and a cousin from two different families. One or two of the parents were also involved in aiding and abetting the criminal activities of their sons, and a Blalock sister named Clara, although she had previously had an outstanding reputation in the community, ended up implicating herself as the "secretary" of the gang.
The gang pulled off a series of burglaries, arsons, and other petty crimes in southeast Kansas and then finally escalated to murder when two of the Blalocks gunned down Columbus constable David Gordon in March of 1888. The whole gang went on trial for various crimes, and nearly all of them, including the Blalock mother and the Fry father, were convicted. The two Blalock brothers, John and William, were convicted of the most serious charge--killing Gordon.
I had an article about the Blalock-Fry gang published in the October 2009 issue of Wild West Magazine. The gang's story also composes a chapter in my book about notorious Ozarks incidents.