Zagonyi's Charge

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

Robbie Camden: The Ridge Runnin' Romeo

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

Roscoe "Red" Jackson

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

Wilbur Underhill

My Desperadoes book contains a chapter about Wilbur Underhill, whose escapades during the 1920s in southwest Missouri, southeast Kansas, and northeast Oklahoma earned him the nickname the "Tri State Terror." By the early 1930s, as his crimes escalated, he was also known as the "Mad Dog of the Underworld," and he rose to the top of America's most wanted list. When he was finally gunned down by lawmen in Oklahoma in late 1933 and died a few days later, he became the first criminal killed by officers of the fledgling agency that would become known as the FBI. (Photo above is Underhill's headstone at Ozark Memorial Park Cemetery in Joplin.)
Yet, Underhill is not nearly as well known as gangsters of the 1920s and 1930s such as Bonnie and Clyde or the Barkers, because he was never romanticized in the press. And no one ever made a movie about Wilbur Underhill (at least not a commercially successful one). Maybe Underhill was just too mean. But as I say in the book, that, too, is little more than a caricature. For the real story of Wilbur Underhill, you have to go back to where he got his start--growing up on the streets of the rough and tumble mining town of Joplin in the early 1900s.

Bonnie and Clyde Again

One chapter of Ozarks Gunfights and Other Notorious Incidents was about Bonnie and Clyde's infamous shootout with police in Joplin that left two lawmen dead. I've devoted a chapter in Desperadoes of the Ozarks, followup to the Gunfights book, to the notorious duo's other misadventures throughout the Ozarks. For instance, in November of 1932, several months before the April 1933 Joplin shootout, the Barrow gang held up a bank at Oronogo, about 15 miles north of Joplin. In January of 1933, they kidnapped a Springfield motorcycle cop near the Shrine Mosque and took him on a pell-mell journey along the back roads of southwest Missouri before releasing him north of Joplin near present-day Stone's Corner. In February 1934, the gang stole a car in Springfield and took off to the south, roaring through Hurley and Galena, before kidnapping a local man (whom they later released) and having a gunfight with law officers near Reeds Spring. Less than two months later, in April of 1934, Bonnie and Clyde killed a lawman at the edge of the Ozarks near Commerce, Oklahoma. Another month later, the desperate duo were themselves finally killed by a police ambush in rural Louisiana.

Lamar's Lynching of Lynch

One chapter in my Desperadoes book is about the murder of Barton County (Mo.) sheriff John Harlow by Jay Lynch in early March of 1919 and the subsequent lynching of Lynch in late May of 1919 on the grounds of the courthouse at Lamar. A career criminal, Lynch was arrested on March 2 in northern Barton County as a fugitive from St. Louis and taken to Lamar, where he was turned over to Sheriff Harlow. The sheriff, who had a reputation as being kind and indulgent toward prisoners, allowed Lynch's wife and mother to visit the jailbird in his cell the next day, and later that evening he allowed Lynch to make a phone call as he was getting ready to escort him to St. Louis. Suddenly, Lynch whipped out a pistol that his mother or wife had apparently slipped to him and fatally shot Harlow. He also shot and mortally wounded the sheriff's 18-year-old son when the lad promptly appeared on the scene.
Lynch made his escape but was recaptured in Colorado in late May and brought back to Lamar to stand trial for the murder of Sheriff Harlow. He was quickly convicted but sentenced only to life in prison because the Missouri legislature had recently passed a law banning the death penalty. Furious over Harlow's murder and the new law, a mob quickly gathered outside the courthouse where the sentence had been pronounced and soon broke in, took the prisoner from his guards, and strung him up to a tree on the courthouse grounds. Later in 1919, the law banning capital punishment was rescinded.
This incident had at least a couple of ironic twists to it. The obvious one was that the victim of the lynching was himself named Lynch. (The word "lynch," by the way, comes from a Revolutionary War colonel named Lynch who organized a group of vigilantes in Virginia after the war and went about the countryside meting out punishment to former Tories. At first, the term meant any extralegal punishment and only later came to refer specifically to vigilante execution, especially by hanging.) The other ironic twist to this episode was the fact that Lynch was hanged from a tree that his victim had planted on the courthouse grounds about twenty years earlier during his first term as sheriff.

Pleasant Hill Shootout and Lynching

Another chapter in my Desperadoes book is about a shootout that occurred at the Pleasant Hill (Mo.) train depot (at left) on February 20, 1915, between city marshal Joseph Adams and nightwatchman Clarence Poindexter on one side and two tramps named Williams and Ryan on the other. The gunfight ensued when Marshal Adams tried to arrest and search the two men on suspicion of having committed a robbery at Richards, Missouri, sixty miles south of Pleasant Hill, the night before. The shootout left Poindexter dead, Ryan mortally wounded, and Williams less severely wounded but under arrest for the killing of Poindexter. In the wee hours of the next morning, February 21, Williams was dragged out of his cell by a determined mob and hanged from a water tower just a block or two from the jail. Later evidence showed that Williams and Ryan had not been the Richards robbers, but the feeling around Pleasant Hill was that they must have been guilty of something or they wouldn't have resisted arrest.

Arthur Tillman and Mandy Stephens

Another chapter in Desperadoes of the Ozarks is about 22-year-old Arthur Tillman's murder of his lover, 20-year-old Amanda Stephens, in March of 1913 in Logan County, Arkansas, near the small community of Delaware. Perhaps I should just say that the chapter is about the murder case involving Arthur Tillman and Amanda Stephens, because there are people, even today, who question whether Tillman really killed Mandy and suggest that he was wrongly convicted. I think that such a claim is nonsense, because the circumstantial evidence against Tillman was overwhelming.
Briefly, the facts of the case were as follows: Tillman, as he freely admitted at trial, was having regular sexual relations with Mandy and she turned up pregnant. She had also gotten pregnant and miscarried three years earlier, and Tillman had been one of several young men who had had sex with her prior to her first pregnancy. This time she was pressing Tillman to marry her, but he had another girlfriend and did not want to marry Mandy. The couple, though, were seen together on the day Mandy disappeared. Confronted, Tillman claimed not to know where Mandy was and then left town. A few days later he came back and was seen looking into an abandoned well on a neighbor's property adjoining the Tillman family farm. The next day, Mandy's body was found at the bottom of the same well, with a rock tied to her body with telephone wire. By the time the body was retrieved, Tillman had again skpped town but was tracked down at Fort Smith a couple of days later and brought back to face murder charges.
At his trial, it was revealed that telephone wire exactly matching that used on Mandy went missing from a general store in the Tillman neighborhood on the same day Mandy went missing and that Tillman was seen by witnesses in the vicinity of the store. Mandy had been killed with shots from a .22 rifle, and testimony further revealed that Tillman's father had given away a .22 rifle a day or two after Mandy went missing. A doctor testified that on the day before Mandy's disappearance, young Tillman had come to him seeking a potion or medicine that would abort her pregnancy but that he told Arthur he had no such medicine. The defense, of course, attempted to explain all these circumstances as mere coincidence. The defense also tried to suggest that Mandy's father had killed his own daughter or that perhaps Tillman's father had done the deed. However, the prosecution in turn rebutted the defense's rebuttal.
Tillman's first trial ended in a hung jury, with eleven voting for conviction and one for acquittal. He was retried, convicted with a unanimous verdict, and hanged in July 1914.
This, of course, is just a bare-bones accounting of the case. For full details, you need to read the book. By the way, I'm having a book signing for Desperadoes at Half Price Books of the Ozarks on the Plaza Shopping Center in Springfield on Saturday, November 19, from 1-3 p.m.

Jodie Hamilton and the Parsons Family Murders

Another chapter in my Desperadoes of the Ozarks book is about Jodie Hamilton's murder of the Parsons family in Texas County, Missouri, in the fall of 1906. Jodie worked for sharecropper Carney Parsons, but in October Parsons prepared to return with his wife and three kids to Miller County, where the family had formerly lived. Parsons sold his crop to Hamilton, but the two men got into an argument as Jodie was seeing the family off.
Reports vary as to whether the argument was over the price of the crop or involved a saddle Hamilton had apparently sold to Parsons, but all agree that it involved some sort of business deal. After Parsons and his family set out, Hamilton became more and more convinced that he had been cheated, and he started in pursuit of Parsons to try to make things right. The argument escalated when Jodie caught up with the family north of Houston on the Success Road just west of the Big Piney River, and Jodie ended up shooting Parsons with a shotgun blast and finishing him off by beating him with the barrel of the gun. Parsons's wife came to her husband's aid as he was struggling for his life, and Jodie also bludgeoned her to death with the gun barrel. He slit the throats of the Parsonses' six-year-old and three-year-old sons before finishing them off with the gun barrel to keep them from identifying him and finally beat in the brains of their one-year-old child to stop it from crying.
Hamilton was readily captured, convicted of murder, and sentenced to hang in late December of 1906. Although the killings of the five members of the Parsons family was one of the largest and most gruesome mass murders in Missouri history, Jodie elicited sympathy from some observers when he started professing religion from his jail cell and issuing statements exhorting young people not to follow his wayward example but instead to follow the straight and narrow path. Jodie started receiving letters of support, and some folks even composed poems about him. The convict went to the scaffold on December 21 with a sure-footed step, a song on his lips, and a friendly attitude toward the people gathered to witness his execution, cementing the legend of Jodie Hamilton that persists even today among longtime residents of Texas County. But, as I say in my book, who sang for the Parsons family?

Ozarks Lynchings

A chapter in my Desperadoes of the Ozarks book deals with lynchings in the Ozarks. The last couple of decades of the 19th century and the first two or three decades of the 20th century have been called the "lynching era" in America because of the large number of extralegal executions that occurred during that time. In particular there were a lot of lynchings of blacks by white mobs.
The racial violence was not quite as prominent in the Ozarks as it was in the Deep South, primarily because there were fewer blacks to begin with. Also, the frontier Ozarks had a history, dating back to the region's settlement in the early 1800s, of resorting to vigilante mobs or "rough justice" in dealing with heinous crimes not only by blacks but by whites as well.
So, the chapter in my book doesn't deal specifically with black lynchings, although the area's three most noted racial lynchings (i.e. Pierce City in 1901, Joplin in 1903, and Springfield in 1906) do receive particular focus. The chapter is just an overview of the subject of lynchings in the Ozarks, both black and white. If you want to read an in-depth account of racially motivated lynchings in the Ozarks, I would recommend Kimberly Harper's White Man's Heaven.

The Missouri Kid

Another chapter in my Desperadoes of the Ozarks book is about William Rudolph, the so-called "Missouri Kid," who, along with sidekick George Collins (shown at left) robbed a bank at Union, Missouri, in late December of 1902 and a month later killed a Pinkerton detective who was on the trail of the robbers. Rudolph and Collins were arrested at Hartford, Connecticut, in early March of 1903 and brought back to Missouri, where they were greeted by a group of admiring fans, including several young women, almost like returning heroes. Given the nickname the "Missouri Kid" by a sensationalist newspaperman, Rudolph escaped in July of '03 and went on the lam. He was apprehended again in January of '04 in Kansas, brought back to Missouri, and convicted in March of '04 of first-degree murder in the killing of the detective. While his trial was going on, Collins, who had already been convicted of the same crime, was hanged from a scaffold in the courtyard next to where Rudolph's trial was taking place. Despite several appeals, Rudolph himself was launched into eternity a year later using the same rope that had been used to hang Collins. I received my author copies of the Desperadoes book less than a week ago, and just a day or two afterwards there was already at least one review of the book posted on the internet at the following URL (the same review was also later posted on the Amazon website): http://dadofdivas-reviews.blogspot.com/2011/10/book-review-desperadoes-of-ozarks.html

Meadows-Bilyeu Feud

Another chapter in my Desperadoes book is about the Meadows-Bilyeu feud that culminated in the killing of Steve Bilyeu and two of his sons by Bud Meadows and his cohorts in late November of 1898 south of Ozark near the Christian-Taney county line. One newspaper called the feud, which had been building for months, a neighborhood feud, but it was really more like a family feud, because both Bud Meadows and his brother Bob had married into the Bilyeu family. Steve Bilyeu's land and Bud Meadows's land adjoined, and the source of the dispute was a fence separating their properties. The two men had put up the fence together, but Meadows apparently felt that Bilyeu was not contributing his fair share to the upkeep of the fence. The argument came to a head on Nov. 28, 1898, when Meadows and his pals started taking down the fence, and Bilyeu and his associates showed up armed to try to stop them. The confrontation left three Bilyeus dead and Meadows and four of his sidekicks indicted for murder. Meadows was convicted of 1st degree murder but later had the conviction overturned and was granted a new trial. However, the second trial never took place, as the charges were basically dropped.

Olyphant Train Robbery

One of the chapters in my upcoming Desperadoes book is about the train robbery that occurred at Olyphant, Arkansas,in early November of 1893. It's sometimes called the last great Arkansas train robbery, although that title seems a little misleading, because it suggests that there were a number of other great train robberies in Arkansas when, in fact, there were very few others, if any, as far as I know. At any rate, the train robbery in question happened when Train No. 51 of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway stopped during its run from Poplar Bluff, Missouri, to Little Rock about ten o'clock on the night of the 3rd to let off a passenger at Olyphant, a small community a few miles south of the Jackson County seat of Newport. During the holdup, the train's conductor fired shots at the bandits and was killed when they returned fire. The bandit gang was composed of eight men, all of whom were captured over the next few weeks. Most of them had previously been law-abiding farmers from the Siloam Springs (Benton County) area of Arkansas, and they had hatched the robbery plan as a get-rich-quick scheme. Three of the desperadoes paid with their lives for their greed when they were executed the following spring in the only triple hanging in Jackson County history.

Double Killing in Butler

I said a few weeks ago that my next several posts would deal with subjects covered in my upcoming book Desperadoes of the Ozarks. I've begun to realize, however, that many of the subjects in the book I've already touched on in previous posts. Two more examples are Pink Fagg and the Hudspeth-Watkins murder case. Each of these subjects constititues a chapter in my upcoming book, but I've already mentioned both in previous posts on this blog. So, I'll skip over them, as I have a couple of other chapters, and move on to the next. It concerns the incident in Butler, Missouri, in December of 1889 in which city marshal J. H. Morgan and deputy U. S. marshal John P. Willis killed each other in a shootout. In fact, this is an incident that I've also mentioned in a previous post but only in passing. I don't believe I've given the particulars of the incident. It occurred when Willis tried to arrest Morgan on what was basically a trumped-up charge motivated by a personal grudge. The previous day, Morgan had arrested Willis for disorderly conduct when the latter appeared on the streets of Butler in a state of intoxication and started verbally abusing citizens. Willis was released after only a couple of hours, and he promptly boarded a train for Kansas City, where he obtained a warrant for Morgan's arrest on a dubious charge of interfering with a deputy U. S. marshal during the legal performance of his duty. Willis got back to Butler late at night and went almost directly to Morgan's home, rapped on the door, and stated his business when Morgan came to the door. When Morgan asked to see the warrant, Willis whipped out a gun instead, and the two lawmen exchanged fire, mortally wounding each other.

Lane Britton

Another chapter in my upcoming Desperadoes of the Ozarks concerns the Alsups of Douglas County, Mo., especially the gunfight between sheriff Hardin Vickery and ex-sheriff Shelt Alsup in March of 1879 that left both men dead. However, since I've already discussed the Alsups in a previous post less than a year ago, I'm going to skip over this chapter and go to the next chapter, which deals with a desperado named Lane Britton, who hailed from Neosho, Mo.
The younger brother of Wiley Britton (who later gained fame as a Civil War author), Lane Britton first gained notoriety in 1875 when he was just a lad of 17 years. A night or two before Christmas, he was lounging at a "disreputable house" near the tracks in Neosho kept by Lizzie Sanford when a gentleman caller named Huffaker rapped on the door and demanded admittance. Both Lizzie and Britton told the man to leave, and when he kept banging on the door, Britton shot him through the door, killing him almost instantly.
The killing was eventually ruled justifiable homicide, and Britton settled in the booming mining town of Blende City (near present-day Carl Junction) in the early 1880s. He somehow got himself appointed city marshal but got in trouble in early 1883 for supposedly terrorizing the town instead of upholding the law. Soon afterwards, he killed two deputies who tried to arrest him on a warrant from Newton County on a felonious assault charge resulting from an incident a couple of years earlier. He fled west and turned up in Phoenix in the summer of 1885. He was captured but broke jail, eluded an intensive manhunt, and was never heard from again.

Granby Outlaws Revisited

I said a couple of weeks ago that, in my next several posts, I would be discussing some of the chapters of my upcoming book entitled Desperadoes of the Ozarks. One of those chapters is about George Hudson and another is about Bob Layton, two of Granby's notorious outlaws. However, since I've discussed both of these men in previous posts, I'll lump them together here rather than devote a separate post to each man, and I'll be brief. Suffice it to say about George Hudson that, during the post-Civil War era, Granby was home to a lot of desperate characters, and he was the most desperate of the bunch. Based on the number of crimes he committed, what amazes me most about him is that he wasn't gunned down or brought to justice much sooner than he was. Layton, on the other hand, was probably a victim of circumstances to a certain extent. Growing up in Granby, he fell in with the Blount-Hudson gang, and the association quickly led to his downfall. He was never one of the leaders of the gang, but he paid with his life for his allegiance to the group, in particular his allegiance to Hudson.

Bud Blount

I've previously mentioned all the desperadoes who came out of the rough and tumble mining town of Granby, Missouri, and I think I've specifically talked at least a little about Allen "Bud" Blount (often spelled Blunt). One of the chapters in my Desperadoes book will be about Blount. In fact, it will be one of the longer chapters in the book, because, to say the least, Bud Blount led an eventful life. So, to condense his life to a few lines here will be difficult, but I'll give it a try.
Born near Poplar Bluff, Missouri, around 1850, Bud moved west with his family about ten years later and eventually settled in Granby, where he grew up among the rough characters who populated the mining town. Bud, also called Newt, first got in serious trouble in 1871 when he was implicated as a possible accessory in the murder of a man on the streets of Granby. A few months later he was charged with felonious assault in Newton County. In the mid 1870s the whole Blount family moved to Arizona but came back to Mo. and settled at Carterville. Shortly afterward, Bud and his sidekicks terrorized Webb City in what became known as the "Webb City Riot" or the "Blunt Raid."
Not long after this, Blount went west again, committed several crimes in Colorado, and killed a man in Arizona.
Back in this territory in the mid 1880s after a hitch in the Arizona prison, he was sent to the Kansas State Prison for stealing horses or cattle in Mongomery County. When he got out around 1890, he came back to Carterville, and, on a visit to his old hometown of Granby, killed a railroad brakeman. He was sentenced to death but the sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. Still later, he was paroled and still later pardoned altogether. Around 1900 or shortly after, he came back to his hometown area and became a bartender at Joplin. In his old age, he went to the State Hospital at Nevada, where he died in the 1920s.

Baxter Springs Again

I've written on this blog a couple of times before about Baxter Springs, but because a chapter in my upcoming book, Desperadoes of the Ozarks, deals with the early history of the town, I'm going to briefly mention it again. The chapter in my book concentrates on the town's early cow town days and especially on the killing of two of the town's early marshals.
The first Baxter marshal to lose his life in the line of duty was H. C. Seaman, who was killed by Texas cow poke Thomas Good in the fall of 1870 when he tried to arrest Good's carousing partner, a sporting lady named Nellie Starr, for disturbing the peace.
Seaman's successor, Cassisus M. Taylor, was appointed by Baxter mayor J. R. Boyd, but the two men soon became political enemies. Boyd killed Taylor in the summer of 1872 when the marshal tried to arrest him for assaulting a local lumber dealer over a disputed debt.

Carney Murders

My book entitled Desperadoes of the Ozarks , which is more or less a followup to my Ozarks Gunfights book, will soon be released by Pelican Publishing. In fact, I think it's already available for pre-purchase on sites like Amazon. Each chapter in the book, as was the case with the gunfights book, is devoted to a different notorious character or incident. So, for the next several posts, I'll briefly describe some of the chapters.
The first chapter is about the killing of Jackson Carney and his wife, Cordelia Carney, by Carney's cousin George Moore at Shell Knob in December of 1869. Moore had grown up in the Carney home almost like a brother to Jackson, but he had left home about a year earlier and had apparently led a wayward life during the intervening year. He showed back up in Barry County in December and on the fateful day hung around Carney's store all day apparently just waiting to enact his murderous design. After the store closed, he killed both Carney and his wife, stole a couple of hundred dollars, and took off. He was captured a day or two later and taken to the Barry County jail at Cassville. A day or two after that, he was strung up on a corner of the Cassville square by an indignant mob bent on vengeance for the foul murders. Carney and his wife were buried at the Carney Cemetery, now called the Old Carney Cemetery, which is located about ten or fifteen miles south of Aurora just a few miles off Highway 39.

Wild Bill in Springfield

I have written on this blog before about Wild Bill Hickok's shootout on the Springfield square with Dave Tutt shortly after the close of the Civil War, and one chapter in my book entitled Ozarks Gunfights and Other Notorious Incidents is about this episode. However, as many people know but others may not, Wild Bill also spent considerable time in and around Springfield while the war was still going on. He served as a Union scout and spy during the latter part of the war, and General John Sanborn, commanding the Southwest District of Missouri, sent him on missions of reconnaissance and espionage throughout southwest Missouri and northwest Arkansas. When he was in Springfield, he helped the provost marshal enforce martial law, serving more or less as an MP (although I don't think the abbreviation "MP" was a commonly used term back then). For instance, I know that he testified or gave depositions against the defendants and for the military in at least one or two cases involving minor infractions like illegal liquor sales and was identified as a lawman in at least one of those cases.

Wilson's Creek

Yesterday, I went to the 150th anniversary re-enactment of the Battle of Wilson's Creek. I guess the thing that struck me most about the occasion was the number of people in attendance. I couldn't venture a guess as to the number who were there during Saturday morning while I was there, but it was a lot. It seems there has been a renewed interest in the Civil War over the past ten to fifteen years (or maybe it's just that my own interest has increased during that time frame), and the interest seems to have increased even more during the past year or two with the approach of the sesquicentennial of the war. Now that the first events of the sesquicentennial are actually occurring, the interest is really peaking.
I've been working on a book about Springfield during the Civil War, and one thing I learned in researching the book was that there was almost a second battle of Wilson's Creek. At least the Union thought for a while that there might be such a battle. It was during the fall of 1861 while Gen. John C. Fremont and his forces were occupying Springfield. Rumors that Southern forces under Gen. McCulloch and Gen. Price (the same officers who defeated Lyon at the Wilson's Creek battle two and a half months earlier) were amassing in the Cassville area and marching toward Wilson's Creek kept filtering in to Springfield, but the rumors proved to be just that--rumors. The Southern force in the Wilson Creek area was actually rather small, and before Fremont could act against even that force, he was removed from command at Springfield and his army withdrawn to Rolla and Sedalia.

Joplin and Marshfield Tornadoes

For the first month or two after the Joplin tornado, the affected area looked like a war zone in time of war. Now, after two and half months of debris removal, the affected area looks like a war zone after the war is over. For the first couple of months, the main impression I got upon driving through town was one of destruction. Now, the impression I get is one of desolation.
The Ozarks and the whole 4-State area, of course, has a long history of violent, tornadic weather. In April of 1880, for instance, a tornado virtually wiped Marshfield off the face of the map and killed over ninety people. In the number of people killed and certainly in the total amount of destruction, the Marshfield tornado did not rival the recent Joplin storm, but since Marshfield was a much smaller town, the 1880 storm at Marshfield destroyed a much larger portion of the town's buildings and killed a higher percentage of its people than did the Joplin tornado.
Although a sense of destruction and desolation is inevitable for those of us who drive through the affected area of Joplin on a daily basis, something else has made just as strong an impression on most of us as the images of ruin, and that is the outpouring of support that Joplin has received in the wake of the tornado.
Marshfield, too, received a lot of aid in the aftermath of its tornado. Help arrived from Springfield, for instance, within a matter of hours. In fact, Joplin was one of the communities that pitched in to help Marshfield back in the spring of 1880. Some citizens from Joplin, including notorious jayhawker Charles "Doc" Jennison, trekked to Marshfield to view the devastation for themselves in the days after the storm, then came back to Joplin and organized a local relief effort to benefit Marshfield, with Jennison leading the effort.
One other thing that the Joplin and Marshfield tornadoes have in common besides the widespread death and destruction and the outpouring of suppport afterward is the fact that in both instances the storm happened on a Sunday evening.

Hot Weather

According to the weatherman on one of the Joplin TV stations, this summer is shaping up to be one of the hottest on record. I know it's one of the hottest in my memory.
I think the summer of 1954 is considered the hottest on record in the Ozarks, when we had 39 days (I believe) in which the temperature topped 100 degrees, with several of those days topping 110. At the rate we're going, we may challenge the 1954 record of 39 days with temps over 100.
I vaguely recall the summer of 1954, when I would have been seven years old. Actually, I don't recall the specific year. I only recall that during a couple of the summers of my childhood it was extremely hot. It has been only during my adulthood, after I read or was told that 1953 and 1954 were unusually hot summers, that I've concluded those must have been the years I remember as being very hot. We didn't have air conditioning, either, back in those days, but somehow the heat didn't bother me much. I'd hate to have to be without air conditioning this summer. I think it would bother me a lot, but, of course, I'm not seven anymore. Temperature extremes don't seem to bother kids the way they do adults. At least they didn't bother me and my childhood friends when we had important things to do like playing baseball or going fishing.
Extremes in weather always seem to be a topic of conversation. Recently I ran onto a piece in the September 4, 1881 Joplin Daily Herald in which a correspondent was reporting from McDonald County and complaining about the hot, dry weather. "The rains of last week that visited Joplin and vicinity failed to reach this region," the correspondent said, "and, if possible, everything looks more dry and desolate here than there. Early planted corn will make hardly a half crop, while late planting will barely make fodder. Wheat yielded about a two thirds crop. Along Lost Creek, in the neighborhood of Seneca, the corn crop would have been very good but for the chinch-bugs. What the drouth has accomplished in other localitites they have done there."

The Drake Constitution

The Missouri Constitution of 1865, passed at the end of the Civil War when Radical Republicanism was at its zenith in the state, completely disenfranchised unrepentant Southern sympathizers. Usually called the Drake Constitution after its chief proponent, Charles D. Drake, the constitution provided that anyone who had ever been in Confederate service or who had openly sympathized with the rebellion could not vote, hold office, serve on a jury or hold certain important jobs like teacher, preacher, or lawyer without first taking an oath of allegiance to the United States. The most amazing thing to me about the Drake Constitution is that, even with unrepentant Southern sympathizers barred from voting, it barely passed when put to a statewide vote in June of 1865. Obviously there were a lot of conservative and fair-minded Union people who didn't feel it was right to punish a person for what he believed or had believed in the past. There were just enough Radicals, though, to get the constitution passed into law. I can, to a certain extent, understand the punitive feeling of the Radicals who pushed the new constitution into law. If I had been a strong Union sympathizer during the Civil War, I would have found it hard to immediately start welcoming back with open arms the people who had wanted to rend the country asunder. However, the practical effect of the Drake Constitution was merely to deepen and prolong the bitterness that had torn the country apart in the first place. In some cases,it even led to violent incidents, such as the murder of Rev. Samuel S. Headlee, a Southern sympathizer who was killed when, without having taken an oath of allegiance, he tried to preach at Pleasant View Church just across the Greene County line in Webster County (near present-day Elkland) in the summer of 1866 with an eye toward restoring the congregation, which had aligned with the Methodist Episcopal Church North during the war, to the southern branch of the M. E. Church.
Fortunately the Drake Constituion didn't last very long. By the early 1870s, the most objectional provisions of the document were already being repealed.

Saline County

I just got back yesterday from a trip to Marshall, Mo. in Saline County. I don't normally think of Saline County as part of the Ozarks, because it's a little too far north; so I don't know a lot about the area's history and seldom write about it. However, I suppose Saline County is considered the northern edge of the Ozarks by some definitions, where the Missouri River represents the northern boundary, and even if it is not, it is close enough to the Ozarks that it won't hurt to mention on this blog the few tidbits of Saline County history that I am familiar with.
Saline County was the site of fairly significant Civil War action, the so-called Battle of Marshall (although it was little more than a good-sized skirmish). The Battle of Marshall was the culmination of Colonel Jo Shelby's raid into Missouri during the fall of 1863, the main purposes of which were to recruit for the Confederacy, lift the spirits of Southern sympathizing people in Missouri, and perhaps occupy Federal forces that could otherwise be used in fighting battles in the East. After chasing Shelby for several days, General Egbert Brown finally caught up with the Rebels at Marshall and almost succeeded in trapping them in a deadly circle. Shelby was able to break through the Federal line, but his forces became separated into two bodies during the escape and both columns had to beat a hasty retreat toward the Arkansas border.
Probably the only other thing about Saline County that I'm familiar with at all is the fact that Arrow Rock, located on the river east of Marshall, was a significant town in the very early history of Missouri. For instance, it was the home of three Missouri governors: Claiborne F. Jackson, Meredith Miles Marmaduke, and John Sappington Marmaduke. It was also the home of artist George Caleb Bingham, who was famous for his paintings of Missouri scenes.

James H. Fagg

I think I've mentioned Pink Fagg on this blog before. He was a notorious character in the Ozarks in the late 1800s. He first got in trouble in Springfield in the mid 1870s for theft, spent a stint in the state prison, and then got in trouble around 1880 for trying to kill his wife in Jasper County. He beat that rap but tried to kill a man at Pierce City a few years later and went up the river for another stay at Jeff City. He got released again after only a couple of years and went to Fort Smith, where he killed a man in an argument over a woman. After a term in the Arkansas State Prison at Little Rock, he finally settled down and lived out the rest of his days as a liquor dealer in Tulsa. My next book from Pelican Publishing, entitled Desperadoes of the Ozarks, will contain a chapter on Pink.
Pink Fagg apparently came by his wild streak honestly, because his father, James H. Fagg, was a character of some notoriety himself. When Pink was a kid, his father ran a grocery/saloon in Springfield and, during the Civil War era, often butted heads with law officers, both civil and military, over liquor and other violations.
To cite only one instance, James H. Fagg and his partner, DeWitt Brewster, got in trouble in December of 1863 with the provost marshal of the Springfield post for selling liquor to soldiers in violation of military policy. According to statements given to the provost marshal by soldiers and other witnesses, when Brewster and Fagg's business on the east side of town was raided in the wee hours of the morning of December 27, the pair was not only caught in the act of serving booze to soldiers but was also in possession of some flour that had been stolen the night before from one of the military units stationed at Springfield. Although Brewster denied all the charges, Fagg admitted he had sold liquor to soldiers but claimed that he thought the order against doing so had been lifted because all the other liquor dealers had been selling to enlisted men, too. Fagg implied that he was being singled out only because he had previously been accused of being disloyal, a charge which he denied. Brewster and Fagg ended up having their supply of goods confiscated by the government and getting their business shut down, but the closure must have been only temporary, at least in the case of Fagg, because he got in trouble with the provost marshal again for selling liquor to soldiers at least one more time later in the war.

Joplin Tornado

There's a reason why I haven't posted an entry on this blog for over a month. Until yesterday, I had been without internet service ever since the Joplin tornado. Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. I realize I'm lucky just to be alive, because there were people who lived only a block or two away from me who perished in the storm. I'm just explaining why I haven't posted lately.
I've read that the Joplin tornado ranks as the 7th deadliest ever in U. S. history. In terms of the amount of property damage, however, I'm sure it ranks quite a bit higher than 7th. The amount of devastation is mind-boggling.
Even now, over five weeks since that fateful Sunday evening when everything changed in Joplin, I can barely fathom the scenes that I continue to witness every day. It's still hard to come to grips with the idea that the Joplin many of us have known and loved for years no longer exists. Driving down 26th Street only a few minutes ago, I was struck once again by how much of the town is simply gone. Yes, we'll rebuild, and Joplin will once again be a vibrant, industrious town, but it has been forever changed. A few years down the road, Joplin may even come out of this stronger than ever, but it still won't be the same Joplin that I've known for 37 years.

Bloody Conspiracy Theorists

I remarked several months ago about the tendency that many people have to claim a connection to notorious figures from the past. I think I was speaking specifically at the time about the exaggerated idea that Jesse James spent a lot of time in and around Joplin, Missouri, when the best evidence seems to suggest that he did not. But, of course, it's not just groups or whole towns that claim dubious connections to notorious historical figures. Individual persons do so also, probably to an even greater extent. For instance, it's not unusual at all to run on to someone who claims to be related to Jesse. I've met enough such individuals that I'm convinced that not all of them could possibly be correct.
In addition to claiming unfounded kinship to notorious individuals, a lot of people also seem to want to rewrite history where renowned historical figures, both famous and infamous, are concerned. For instance, I suppose there are still people around who refuse to believe Elvis is dead. I know there are people who don't believe Jesse James was really killed in St. Joseph in 1882 by Bob Ford. Likewise, there are people who don't think Bloody Bill Anderson was killed in Ray County in 1864. People seem to love an intriguing mystery, and if none exists, they'll create one.

Skirmish at Ft. Lawrence

On the early morning of January 7, 1863 (some sources mistakenly say January 6), a skirmish that occurred at Fort Lawrence in what was then Taney County served as a prelude to the Battle of Springfield the next day. Fort Lawrence was just a blockhouse manned by the local Enrolled Missouri Militia. It was located on Beaver Creek, and the place was sometimes referred to as Beaver Creek Station or just Beaver Station. It was located in a part of Taney that later became southwestern Douglas County (near present-day Rome). When the E. M. M. at the fort were surprised by a force under Colonel Emmett McDonald, who was temporarily detached from the larger force under General John S. Marmaduke that later attacked Springfield, many of the militiamen took to flight at the sound of the first gun. The Enrolled Missouri Militia in general contained a lot of reluctant warriors. The E. M. M. was created in the summer of 1862 as a sort of home guard force to supplement the already exisisting Missouri State Militia Cavalry and to free up the MSM to pursue guerrillas or meet other threats throughout the state. Since service was compulsory for all able bodied men not already in the Federal military, the creation of the E. M. M. drove many Southern sympathizers into Confederate service or into the bush as guerrillas. Many others, however, went ahead and joined the E. M. M. rather than reveal their true sentiments and became dubious warriors for the Union cause. When it came time to do battle, though, they often fled at the first fire or, in some cases, even went over to the other side. For this reason, the E. M. M. was derided as the "Paw Paw Militia" in some parts of Missouri. I'm not saying the E. M. M. at Fort Lawrence were Southern sympathizers, but, like a lot of their comrades, they apparently weren't any too eager to do battle.

Unionist Arkansawyers

First, I want to call attention to the fact that I did not entitle this post "Unionist Arkansans." I hate that term. When I hear it, I always think the speaker must be from Kansas or someone who is trying to put on airs. People from Arkansas, at least not if they are old-time hillbillies, don't call themselves Arkansans.
Anyway, now to the real topic of this post. As a Missouri native and a somewhat serious student of the Civil War, I always think of my home state as a place that witnessed a particularly bitter form of guerrilla warfare and a place where the civilians suffered more than their share of depredations. There was, of course, a good reason for this. Missouri stayed in the Union, but its people were bitterly divided in their political sentiments. As a slave-holding border state, Missouri had many Southern sympahtizers, despite its inclusion in the Union.
I sometimes tend to forget that Arkansas to our south was just as bitterly divided, at least in the northern counties. Even though Arkansas seceded from the Union, many of the hillfolk in the northern counties were Union sympathizers, and they were treated just as badly as their counterparts in Missouri by the roving bands of guerrillas and quasi-Southern soldiers that infested both states. After describing the deplorable situation that Union citizens in southwest Missouri faced in the summer of 1862, a correspondent of the New York Times, writing from Springfield, turned his attention to Missouri's neighbor to the south. The condition in northwestern Arkansas, he said, "is still worse. In Carroll, Washington and other Counties, there are hundreds of Union men; but they are at extreme peril of property and life. The rebel Conscription act, and roving bands of plunderers, have compelled many of them to leave their homes, to find their way within our lines as best they might."

Springfield and Joplin Street Names

Joplin has a pretty simple system of street names. The main east-west thoroughfare in the very early days of the town was Broadway, which connected East Joplin and West Joplin. All the east-west streets south of Broadway were numbered: First Street, Second Street, Third Street, etc. All the east-west streets north of Broadway were designated by letters of the alphabet: A Street, B Street, C Street, etc. You can't get much simpler than that. The main north-south street in Joplin is Main Street, or at least it was in the early days. Most of the north-south streets east of Main were named after states: Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, etc. Many of the north-south streets west of Main, at least in the beginning, were named after founding fathers of the town: Byers, Murphy, Sergeant, etc. Again, it's a fairly simple system. As the town got bigger over the years, the people who name the streets varied from the original system, of course, especially when naming the north-sourth streets, because they soon ran out of founding fathers, but the basic plan is still easily discernible.
Springfield, too, had a pretty simple system for naming its streets, at least in the very early days. Many of the main streets were named after the principal town to which they led. For instance, St. Louis, which ran east off the square (and still does) was so named because the road ultimately led to St. Louis. Boonville was so named because it led to Boonville. Jefferson, I think, was named Jefferson not after the president but because it was the road one usually took out of Springfield to go to Jefferson City. South Avenue was so named for an obvious reason: it ran south off the square. Mt. Vernon Street led to the town of Mt. Vernon, the county seat of Lawrence County. State Street was given its name because it was a main state road that one took out of Springfield to go to Cassville and eventually to Fayetteville, Arkansas (which became known as the Wire Road). Then there is College Street, the fourth street leading off the square, which got its name because an early academy or college was located on it. No fancy explanation for how the streets got their names, at least not if you know a little about the history of the town.
When I visit a town I've never been to before, I appreciate simple systems for naming streets. New York City, for instance, is very easy to know you're way around in. All the main east-west roads are numbered streets, and most of the principal north-south roads are numbered avenues. Tulsa, Oklahoma, is another city that comes readily to mind as a place that has a simple system of street names.

The Price of Gas and Corn

Nearly everyone is complaining about the price of gasoline nowadays, as it approaches four dollars a gallon, and I admit that I'm right there with them. It really takes a bite out of the old pocketbook when you have to pay well over $50 for a fill-up. It's especially a hardship on people who commute back and forth to work a considerable distance each day.
Yet, when viewed from a historical perspective, the price of gasoline is really not all that far out of line from other goods and services. I can recall paying as little as 17 or 18 cents a gallon for gasoline during the 1960s, but that was during the so-called "gas wars" that were relatively common in those days. The usual price was more like 25 to 30 cents a gallon. Until recently, the price of gas nowadays was in the three dollar per gallon range. So, you might say that gasoline has only gone up by approximately a factor of ten. I can think of many other products that have gone up at least that much. For instance, I recall that the going price for a candy bar when I was a kid was a nickel. Nowadays, a Snickers bar costs over a dollar if you purchase it at the local convenience store. That's a factor of twenty! Things like health care and higher education have probably increased that much as well.
The price of some things (notably U. S. agricultural products), on the other hand, have not increased even ten times. In doing historical research on another topic, I recently ran onto an advertisement of the Jefferson City Market, wholesale and retail dealers in groceries and other provisions, in an 1858 edition of the Jefferson City Inquirer that gave the price of various commodities at that time. A bushel of shelled corn, for instance, ranged from 75 to 80 cents. That, I'm assuming, was the retail price. So, it's hard to compare that price to the price of a bushel of corn today, because corn is usually not sold by the bushel at the retail level (at least I've never purchased it that way). The wholesale price for a bushel of corn nowadays is in the seven dollar range, I think, and that's after a fairly dramatic increase in recent years. So, you might say that the price of corn has gone up only somewhat more than a factor of ten in over 150 years. If that were true of everything else and yet we all still had the same income we do today, most of us would be rich.

Clinton Flogging Revisited

About a year and a half ago, I posted an entry on this blog about the whipping of some Union soldiers at Clinton, Mo. that occurred on the Fourth of July of 1861. A combined force of U. S. Army regulars and Kansas volunteers of about 2,000-3,000 men were marching from Kansas to link up with General Nathaniel Lyon, who was on his way to Springfield. At Clinton, some of the volunteers got drunk and started committting minor depredations like stealing chickens from local residents. I reported last time that Major Samuel Sturgis, in command of the combined force, ordered the volunteers flogged with fifty lashes each from a black-snake whip, and the punishment was carried out by some of his regulars, which almost caused a mutiny among the volunteers. There was more to the story than that, however, and I recently ran across a newspaper article that sheds additional light on the circumstances of the flogging. Colonel George Deitzler, commanding the volunteers, came under criticism in the Kansas press for allowing the whipping of the volunteers, and the newspaper article contained a letter from one of Deitzler's captains explaining what had happened in more detail and defending the colonel. Apparently at least a couple of regulars were also among the soldiers that Major Sturgis had arrested and brought before him because of their unruly behavior. Colonel Deitzler was notified of the arrests, and he called a meeting of his captains to decide what should be done. The officers agreed that the men should be given stern punishments in order to instill a sense of discipline in the command, and they agreed to leave the volunteers with Sturgis to allow him to mete out the punishment. However, they did not expect the men to be so severely punished as to be flogged with a teamster's whip. When Col. Deitzler learned of the first whippings, he hastened to Sturgis's headquarters and protested the brutal punishment. Sturgis at first refused to countermand his order or to turn the volunteers over to Deitzler, but at last Deitzler succeeded in getting a few of the volunteers released into his custody and saved them from the harsh punishment.
Speaking of the Civil War, I'm happy to announce that my book on the two battles of Newtonia recently won the Walter Williams Major Work Award, an annual award given by the Missouri Writers' Guild for a "major work" written by one of its members. My Ozarks Gunfights book also took a second place in the Best Book about Missouri category.

Little York

I've always been fascinated by the way some early communities prospered and grew, while others stagnated or completely died out. And often the towns that nowadays are the most populous and vital are not the oldest. For instance, Little York was a prosperous little community in western Greene County, a mile or two west of present-day Brookline, that no longer even exists. When the railroad came through about 1872, the new community of Brookline grew up beside the railroad, and most of the people of Little York moved to the new town. Republic came along in the same general vicinity about the same time as Brookline and, of course, outshone both Little York and Brookline to the point that Brookline, too, is today little more than a wide place in the road. Ebenezer and Cave Spring, a couple of other very early communities of Greene County, barely exist today. Then you have towns like Fair Grove and Walnut Grove that have been around since before the Civil War but have never experienced quite the growth that newer communities like Nixa, Republic, and Willard have. In the case of Fair Grove, its lack of growth during the late 1800s and early 1900s may have had to do with its lack of a railroad. In the case of Walnut Grove, it may have had more to do with its distance from Springfield. The same phenomenon that we see in Greene County was also at work here in Jasper County (as well as other places, I'm sure). We have communities here like Medoc and Fidelity that predated the Civil War but that barely exist nowadays, whereas newer communities like Carl Junction have boomed in recent years. In fact, because Jasper County was a huge mining district in the late 1800s, we probably have more than our share of once-booming little towns that now no longer exist or barely exist. Then we have Oronogo, which is an example of a town that was a booming mining town, virtually died out, but has made a comeback in recent years and is now a thriving bedroom community for people who work in the Joplin area. Joplin itself, of course, is not nearly as old as some of the other towns in Jasper County, like Carthage and Sarcoxie.

Civil War Ozarks

Holcombe's 1883 History of Greene County, Missouri, in discussing the months leading up to the Civil War, observes that people were very fickle in their political sentiments--that Unionists one week became secessionists the next and vice versa. This observation applies not just to the people of Greene County but to people throughout Missouri and probably northern Arkansas as well. The number of ardent Unionists or ardent secessionists was relatively small. Most people were somewhere in the middle, and they were guided not so much by political beliefs as they were by impulses of self-preservation. A vast number of people (and I don't mean this as a criticism) were willing to shift with whichever way the wind was blowing. When Union troops were in their area in force, they were Union sympathizers; when Confederate forces were in control, they became Confederate sympathizers. This state of things was truer at the very beginning of the war and during the months leading up to its outbreak than it was later in the war. A lot of people who would have preferred to stay neutral were forced to choose sides at some point. However, even later in the war, the overriding principle for many people was simple--how they could best survive the war. This partially explains why the people of Missouri, who were predominantly conservative Unionists at the start of the war, became even more Unionist in sympathy as the war wore on and it became increasingly clear that a Southern victory was a longshot.

Hot Springs

I just returned from a weekend vacation with my wife in Hot Springs. Although not technically in the Ozarks, Hot Springs is located in the neighboring Ouachita Mountains and has a very interesting history. I'm not sure how geographers distinguish between the Ouachita Mountains and the Ozarks. The Boston Mountains, I believe, are considered to be the southern range of the Ozarks. However, if you go a little farther south, even though you have never left mountainous territory, you are considered to be in the Ouachita Mountains, a separate range. What's up with that? Anyway, back to the town's interesting history. On this blog, I've previously discussed towns, such as Eureka Springs, that grew up in our region during the late 1800s because of nearby mineral water springs. Hot Springs, however, predated Eureka Springs and most of the other mineral water springs of the Ozarks by almost half a century. People started trekking to Hot Springs to "take the cure" as early as the 1830s. The town became one of the first, if not the first, resort spa in America. I'm even more fascinated by the criminal history of Hot Springs than by its mineral water history. By the late 1800s, the town had become not only a famous mineral-water town but also a mecca for gamblers. During the 1880s, Frank Flynn controlled most of the gambling--the town's organized crime boss, so to speak. In the mid 1880s, Alexander S. Doran, a former Confederate major, came to town and opened up his own gambling house. He and Flynn clashed almost immediately, and they ended up in a gunfight. Flynn was wounded, but Doran soon left town, relinguishing any claim on the town's gambling interests. A couple of years later, Doran was killed in a shootout in Fort Smith (an incident that is the subject of a chapter in my upcoming book, Desperadoes of the Ozarks). Meanwhile, Flynn continued to control gambling in Hot Springs. Law enforcement officials not only looked the other way where gambling was concerned but actually supported it because of the revenue it brought in. Hot Springs gambling eventually led to a notorious shootout in 1899 between city police and the county sheriff's department. On the surface, the city police seemed to support the gambling interests while the sheriff's office appeared to be trying to crack down on the vice, but the battle was really over which side would control the gambling. Later, during the gangster era of the 1920s and early 1930s, gangsters like Al Capone hung out in Hot Springs when they wanted to take a break from their regular gangster activities in Chicago and elsewhere. In fact, there's a Gangster Museum in Hot Springs today.

John David Mefford in Joplin

I knew even before I started researching my Wicked Joplin book that a couple of colorful characters from the Kansas-Missouri border region during the Civil War ended up coming to Joplin after the town got its start as a booming mining camp in the early 1870s. Namely, I was aware that Charles Fletcher "Fletch" Taylor, who was a lieutenant under Quantrill during the Civil War, came to Joplin very early on in the town's history and, in fact, served a term on the city council during the 1870s. Taylor's residence in Joplin partially explains the legend of Frank and Jesse James's connection to Joplin, because Taylor was the James brothers' immediate commander during 1864. The James boys probably did visit Taylor in Joplin at least a time or two after they became notorious, but the legend of their close connection to Joplin has probably been exaggerated. I also knew vaguely that Charles R. "Doc" Jennison, the notorious Kansas jayhawker, came to Joplin in the late 1870s and lived here into the 1880s. However, I was not aware of the prominent role he played in early-day Joplin. Despite being one of the town's biggest gamblers, he was also considered a leading citizen.
The character that I knew nothing at all about, as far as his residence in Joplin is concerned, prior to writing the book is David Mefford. He was neither a guerrilla like Taylor nor a notorious jayhawker like Jennison, but he was still a character of some note during the Civil War, operating against Tom Livingston and others along the border as a captain (later promoted to major) in a Kansas cavalry unit. He, like the other two men, came to Joplin during the 1870s. He was a saloonkeeper both in Joplin and in Galena, Kansas, and also tried his hand at mining, as did nearly every other man who came to Joplin during its early days.

Maiden Lane

Anyone who is familiar with Joplin knows that one of the main north-south streets in the town is Maiden Lane. Anyone who has lived in Joplin very long has probably also heard the legend of how the street got its name. Supposedly it was named Maiden Lane because it served as Joplin's principal red light district during the town's early mining days.
In researching my Wicked Joplin book, I turned up no evidence to support this legend. In fact, I can say almost unequivocally that there is no truth to the legend. The main area for prostitution in Joplin from the very early days of the 1870s through the 1910s (shortly before Prohibition put a damper not only on Joplin saloons but also on the town's other vices) was the downtown area, not a street almost one mile west of downtown.
It seems plausible to me to speculate that Maiden Lane probably got its name because during Joplin's early days it was the site of the town's horse racing track in what was then the extreme southwest edge of town. In the world of horse racing, of course, a "maiden" is a horse that has not yet won a race, and there often are races held especially for maidens. The road that we now know as Maiden Lane would have been the "lane" down which the "maidens" would have traveled to reach the race track.
The oval race track to which I referred in the previous paragraph was located at about 17th and Maiden Lane across from the present-day Price Cutter store, and it was built in the late 1870s. However, even in the early 1870s there was a straight one-half mile race track for horses in Joplin that ran on a diagonal from near the entrance of present-day Fairview Cemetery (then called the City Cemetery) to near present-day West Central Elementary School on 7th Street. So, almost from the town's beginning, Maiden Lane was the place for "maiden" race horses.

Butterfield Overland Stage Reaches Springfield

In October of 1858, when the first eastbound stage coach of the newly formed Butterfield Overland State Line reached Springfield from San Francisco, over a hundred local residents, according to the Springfield Advertiser, were there to greet it when it drew up in front of Smith's Tavern and Hotel just off the public square on Boonville. The stage had made the trip in what was considered an incredible time of less than twenty-two days, and an air of excitement attended the arrival. The stage got to Springfield at 3:30 on the afternoon of October 8 carrying six passengers, all of whom had come all the way from California. After changing horses and coaches at Springfield, the travelers continued on their way on the last leg of the stage journey to Tipton, Missouri, where they would then board a train for St. Louis. That evening, after the stage had already departed for Tipton, Springfieldians celebrated the momentous occasion of its arrival in their town with a fireworks display.

Wicked Joplin

My latest book, entitled Wicked Joplin, has just been released by History Press (the same company that published my Newtonia book). As the name implies, the book is about the notorious history of Joplin when it was a booming mining town with lots of gambling, saloons, and other vice.
The first chapter is mainly about the very early history of Joplin prior to incorporation in 1873 and the first couple of years after incorporation. During the pre-incorporation days, Joplin experienced what came to be known as the "reign of terror." Because the closest law enforcement officers were at the county seat of Carthage twenty miles away, the rowdy miners infesting the mining camp of Joplin pretty much had things their own way, and the anything-goes atmosphere attracted not only a lot of rough characters who were habitually getting into fights but also a lot of gamblers, prostitutes, and other ne'er-do-wells.

The Lynching of Mart Danforth

The case of Mart Danforth, a black man who was lynched in Springfield, Missouri, in August of 1859, was fairly typical of the time. He was accused of raping a white woman, supposedly confessed to the crime, and was strung up by a mob before any legal punishment could be meted out.
Holcombe's 1883 History of Greene County says about the case only that Mart Danforth, a "negro rapist," was lynched in a grove just west of the cotton factory in August of 1859. Fairbanks and Tuck's Past and Present of Greene County , published thirty years or so after the first county history, adds a few more details. It says that Danforth was arrested and indicted and that he promptly confessed his guilt but before he could be brought to trial, a mob took him from the custody of his guards and hanged him from a tree in the Jordan valley, "just east of where Benton Avenue now crosses that stream."
I recently found a contemporaneous account of this incident in a Missouri newspaper that was originally published in the Springfield Mirror. From the newspaper account, I've learned that the exact date of the lynching was August 25, the alleged rape having occurred a few days earlier on the 20th. On the latter date, according to the newspaper account, Mart, a slave belonging to the estate of a recently deceased man named Danforth, "went to the house of a respectable married lady who resides about five miles from this place (Springfield) and whose husband was absent at the time, and demanded entrance." When the demand was refused, the black man reportedly broke a window in the house to try to gain entrance and a struggle ensued. The woman threw hot but not scalding water on her assailant but couldn't deter him. Seizing her by the throat, he choked her "senseless" and accomplished his purpose on her.
Immediately afterwards, the woman reported the incident to her neighbors, and a determined search for the culprit was begun. He was not immediately located, but over the next few days supicion began to be attached to Mart Danforth, and, on August 24, several days after the incident, a "posse" went to where he was at work and elicited a confession from him. According to the Mirror, "No force or threats were used to induce him to tell." He was kept under guard and brought to Springfield the next day. Circuit Court was in session at the time. The sheriff took charge of the prisoner, putting him under guard at the Temperance Hall, and his case was going to be taken up that very day. However, a mob of about three or four hundred men gathered around the Temperance Hall, gained entrance, took the prisoner out to the edge of town, put a rope around his neck, and hanged him.
The assertion that Danforth's confession was not coerced, of course, needs to be taken with a grain of salt. No doubt black men did occasionally rape white women during slavery and the years following slavery when blacks were still oppressed, but it is also undeniable that black men were sometimes forced through abuse and intimidation into making false confessions. (It's probably also true that black men raping white women did not occur as often as white men raping or taking advantage of black women.) Nothing incited white men to violence toward blacks quicker than the idea that "their women" might be "despoiled" by a black man, whether through forcible rape or consensual sex. A black man having sex with a white woman was the ultimate challenge to white, male authority. Fairbanks and Tuck's account of Danforth's lynching illustrates the attitude I'm talking about. The authors attributed the outbreak of mob violence in 1859 to "that ever-present menace where there is a large negro population" and later suggested that "this crime committed by a black ruffian upon a helpless white woman instantly kindles a flame that nothing short of the quick and merciless death of the guilty one can satisfy." They seemed to suggest that it was not only understandable but appropriate that, throughout U. S. history, in cases like the lynching of Mart Danforth, the law had almost never been able to convict any of the "indignant slayers of the ravisher."

Dueling and Early Missouri Politics

I read a book one time about dueling as an especial phenomenon of the Old South. It put forth the idea that dueling was one manifestation of the language of honor (specifically that Southern gentlemen often challenged other men to duels when they perceived that their honor had been questioned). The book went so far as to suggest that being the victor in a duel accorded the person added status and sometimes even served as a springboard to political office.
The author cited numerous examples to support his thesis, and it does seem to have some credence. For instance, I am aware of a couple of examples just in the early politics of Missouri. When Thomas Hart Benton (great uncle of the artist) was a lawyer at St. Louis during Missouri's territorial days, he killed a rival lawyer in a duel in 1817, and then when the territory became a state in the early 1820s, he was elected one of Missouri's first senators and served about thirty years. (Benton had also shot Andrew Jackson, a political ally, during a dispute a few years before the St. Louis incident.) General John S. Marmaduke killed General Lucius M. Walker near Little Rock, Arkansas, during the Civil War when Walker challenged Marmaduke to a duel after Marmaduke had made statements that seemed to question Walker's courage. Marmaduke, of course, went on to become governor of Missouri several years after the close of the war.

Sam Hildebrand and Family

When I was writing my book Other Noted Guerrillas of the Civil War in Missouri and specifically when I was researching the chapter on infamous guerrilla Sam Hildebrand, one of the most surprising things I found out about the man had nothing to do with his Civil War exploits but instead pertained to his family heritage. I was surprised to learn that his great great grandfather, John Hildebrand, was the very first white man to settle away from the early French villages in what later became Missouri. In 1774, he settled on Saline Creek south of St. Louis in the area that later became Jefferson County. I found it rather amazing that there were white settlers in Missouri almost fifty years before statehood. In fact, I was also quite amazed, while studying my own family history, to learn that my earliest ancestors in Missouri came here before statehood. Not fifty years before by any means, but still the idea that I had ancestors in Missouri (the Franklin County area) as early as the 1810s was certainly surprising. So, I guess that's why I identify so strongly with the Ozarks. At least one branch of my family has been here for almost 200 years, and the other branches weren't far behind.

Absalom Stonecipher Humbard

There seems to be a common misconception that the Missouri guerrillas during the Civil War were little more than outlaws. Of course, that's how Union authorities tried to brand them, but the truth is that many, if not most, of the guerrillas were respected citizens before the war (or, in the case of the younger guerrillas, came from respected families). An example is Absalom S. Humbard of Jasper County. Humbard got married in Jasper County in 1856 and was an established farmer when the war came on. In the years immediately preceding the war, he was a member a group calling themselves the Minutemen who formed in Jasper County for protection against Kansas jayhawkers. Leader of the group was county judge John R. Chenault. At the outset of the war, Humbard joined the Missouri State Guard but declined to re-enlist when his initial six-month term was over. Many of the men who initially joined the State Guard did so with the limited goal of protecting their own soil, and this was true of Humbard. By the end of the six-month enlistment, though, most of them were being asked to join the Confederacy or were being otherwise expected to fight outside Missouri. Like a lot of his fellow State Guardsmen, Humbard balked at this idea and instead returned to Jasper County, where he began recruiting his own small squad. Not long afterwards he fell in with Tom Livingston and became an officer in Livingston's command. Although officially affiliated with Standwatie's Cherokee Indian regiment as part of the Confederate army, Livingston's men were usually referred to as a guerillas. At one point during the war, Humbard was taken prisoner and held at Springfield for six weeks. At the end of the war, he moved to Texas and became a prominent farmer. Humbard's story is probably more typical of the Missouri guerrillas than that of the men we tend to hear about--men like Frank and Jesse James, who became post-war outlaws.

Merrell's Female Tonic

I've mentioned on previous occasions the mineral-water craze of the late 1800s. Mineral water spas in places like Eureka Springs and Eldorado Springs were immensely popular, and thousands of people trekked to the mineral-water towns to take the cure. However, it wasn't just mineral water that people thought would heal whatever ailed them. All sorts of tonics were also thought to have curative powers. Even soda pops like Dr. Pepper and Coca Cola were marketed as much for their "pick me up" qualities as for their taste. No matter what ailment might afflict a person, there was bound to be some sort of tonic to relieve the condition, and some tonics, if you believed the advertisements of the day, could relieve virtually any symptom.
An ad from an 1887 Springfield newspaper for Merrell's Female Tonic will illustrate what I'm talking about: Merrell's Female Tonic is prepared solely for the cure of complaints which afflict all womanhood. It gives tone and strength to the uterine organs, and corrects dangerous displacemnts and irregularities. It is of great value in change of life. The use of Merrell's Female Tonic during pregnancy greatly relieves the pains of motherhood and promotes speedy recovery. It assists nature to safely make the critical change from girlhood to womanhood. It is pleasant to the taste and may be taken at all times with perfect safety. Price $1. For Sale By All Druggists.
In truth, of course, Merrell's Female Tonic probably had no curative powers whatsoever, no matter which sex the person taking it happened to be. It was not until the first Food and Drug Laws were passed in 1906 that restrictions began to be placed on the claims that manufacturers could make for their products.

Bolivar's Greatest Day

I recently visited the RootsWeb genealogy site for Polk County, Missouri, and I noticed the site mentioned the dedication of the statue of Simon Bolivar that took place in Bolivar on July 5, 1948. I wrote an article about this event, sometimes referred to as "Bolivar's Greatest Day," a few years ago for the Ozarks Reader. After taking office earlier in 1948 as Venezuela's first popularly-elected president, Romulo Gallegos wanted to present a statue of Simon Bolivar to the U. S. as a gesture of good will. Bolivar, Missouri, was selected as the site for the presentation because it was one of the more populous towns in the U. S. that was named after Simon Bolivar, and July 5, the Venezuelan Independence Day and only one day after our own Independence Day, was selected as a fitting date. Both Gallegos and U. S. President Harry Truman were present for the occasion, as were the governor of Missouri and other dignataries. The town of Bolivar went all out in preparation for the event, and a crowd estimated as high as 60,000 people turned out. The statue was unveiled in Bolivar's Neuhart Park, and both presidents gave speeches. Perhaps the most memorable thing about the day, however, turned out to be the intense heat, as the temperature soared to near 100. In later years, according to legend, President Truman, who previously had been inclined to use the expression "hotter than hell" when talking about the weather, resorted instead to describing unbearably hot weather as "hotter than Bolivar."

West Plains Dance Hall Explosion

I've been reading a book by Lin Waterhouse entitled The West Plains Dance Hall Explosion. It's about a tragedy that occurred in West Plains, Missouri, on the night of Friday, April 13, 1928, in which 39 people were killed and numerous others injured. A dance was taking place on the second floor of a building on East Main Street just off the square when a tremendous explosion on the bottom floor of the same building (where an auto dealership was located) blew apart not only the building where the dance was taking place but also the two buildings on either side of the dance hall and set them on fire. The dancers, most of whom were young people from prominent families, were blown momentarily upward before plunging down into a large heap of burning debris. Many who were not killed by the initial explosion were trapped in the rubble and burned to death.
What is surprising to me is that, despite the magnitude of the tragedy and despite the fact that I'm a life-long resident of the Ozarks with an interest in the region's history, this is an event that I had never even heard about until the book came out a month or so ago. One of the points Ms. Waterhouse makes in the book, however, is that many people who survived the tragedy didn't like to talk about it, and it became almost a hush-hush subject in subsequent years. So, maybe that is partly why I'd never heard about it. Anyway, the book is interesting, particularly, I would think, for anyone who has a connection to West Plains.

Laclede County Rural Schools

Last time I listed a number of rural schools from the Greene County area that were present on a 1940s topographic map but that have long been gone. I have a similar map showing the southeastern part of Laclede County and a small chunk of western Pulaski County, and it, too, shows a whole slew of rural schools that no longer exist. The ones in Pulaski County are Prospect School, Fairview School, Cave Spring School, and Bellefonte School. The Laclede County schools listed on the map are Prairie Creek, Similin, Rippy, Crossroads, Stockdale, Brownfield, Mt. Salem, Oakland, Nurse, Simpson, Morehouse, Nelson, Harmony, Heard, Barnett, Delto, Franklin, Fairview (not to be confused with the school by the same name in Pulaski), and Success (not to be confused with the Success School in nearby Texas County, which, the last I knew, was still in existence. As far as I know, all of these small, rural schools in Pulaski and Laclede no longer exist. Again, if anybody out there attended one of these schools or knows anything about any of them, I'd be interested in hearing from you.

Rural Schoolhouses

Last time I talked about what I call relics of the rural past; one-room schoolhouses, rural post offices, and crossroads general stores, for example. Following up on that post, I dug out a detailed topographic map, dating from the 1940s, that used to belong to my dad. It was part of a series of such maps put out by the U. S. Geological Survey. This particular one covers the northeast part of Greene County, Missouri (including Fair Grove and Strafford), the western edge of Webster County, the southern part of Dallas, and the southeast corner of Polk. I was struck by the number of small, rural schools listed on the map that, as far as I know, do not exist today. They include Persimmon Grove School, Rock Prairie School, and Union Grove School in Polk County; Hasten School, New Garden School, Old Goss School, and Olive School in Dallas County; Bodenhammer School, Goss School (not to be confused with Old Goss School), Holman School, and Minor School in Webster County; and Bell View School, Hickory Barren School, Ingram School, Liberty School, Locust Prairie School, and Whitlock School in Greene County. And this, mind you, covers just a small area of about 18 by 14 miles.
Of the schools mentioned above the one that was closest to Fair Grove, where I grew up, was Hickory Barren. (Actually Old Goss School might have been slightly closer, but it was in Dallas County.)
I well remember when Hickory Barren closed and was consolidated with Fair Grove. I was starting third grade when the kids who had previously gone to Hickory Barren came to Fair Grove; so this would have been the fall of 1954. Most of the others probably closed about the same time or even earlier. If anybody knows anything about any of the other schools I've listed above, I'd enjoy hearing from you.
By the way, Elkland in Webster County, also falls within the boundaries of this map, and it used to have a high school that, sometime in the late 1950s, consolidated with Buffalo, Fair Grove, and Marshfield. For many years after that, it had only an elementary school, which was part of the Marshfield school system. I'm not sure whether Elkland still has a grade school or not.