Female Horse Thieves

Carthage, Missouri, as most students of outlawry know, was where Myra Maybelle Shirley (aka Belle Starr), perhaps the most infamous female bandit in U.S. history, grew up, and I've written in the past about Cora Hubbard, who helped robbed the Pineville, Missouri, bank in 1897 and whom some sensationalist newspapermen referred to as the Second Belle Starr.
The southwest Missouri area also had more than its share of female horse thieves. The first one that I know about was Della or Delia Oxley, who made headlines in a Joplin newspaper in October of 1891. She was lodged in the county jail at Carthage for horse stealing and tried to dig her way out but apparently failed. I have not done enough research about her to know what happened to her afterwards or much of anything else about her case.
Seventeen-year-old horse thief May Calvin made her appearance on the scene about the same time as Della, but I know little about her "career" until the spring of 1893. In May of that year, she stole a horse in Jasper County and absconded to Kansas, where she was captured in early June. Brought back to Missouri, she was described as a "notorious horse thief" who was supposedly a member of a gang of outlaws. She was lodged in the Jasper County jail at Carthage but escaped on the 22nd of June by digging her way out through the same hole in the wall that Della Oxley had left unfinished a year or so earlier. May Calvin, or Colvin as the name usually appeared in newspapers, was eventually sent to the state penitentiary and was romanticized in the press, not only in southwest Missouri but also throughout the country and even foreign countries.  A St. Louis Republic reporter who visited her in prison in 1894, for instance, described her "a rustic beauty" with a "luscious" form that was "well rounded and plump."
In March of 1902, a young woman from Butler, Missouri, who had stolen a horse at Fort Scott, Kansas, turned herself in at Baxter Springs a few days later and was taken back to Fort Scott. A Fort Scott newspaper described her as the "first female horse thief since the palmy days of the reign of May Colvin." May's successor was described as about 22 years old and gave her name as Ethel Smith, although the Fort Scott paper identified her as Birdie McCarty.
I don't know a lot about any of these cases, but they are intriguing enough that I might research them a little more when I get time and possibly write a longer, better documented account of these young women's escapades.

Bill Jackson, Missouri Guerrilla

When I wrote my book Other Noted Guerrillas, one of the guerrilla leaders I considered writing about was Bill Jackson, but I ended up not including a chapter about him mainly because I decided there probably wasn't enough material to fill out a whole chapter. He was only active as a guerrilla leader for a couple of months during the summer of 1864, and he was not as bloodthirsty as some of the other Missouri guerrilla leaders of the time. Still, he was an interesting character.
Bill was the son of Missouri governor Claiborne F. Jackson. He was twenty-six years old and living with his father and the rest of the Jackson family in Arrow Rock Township of Saline County at the time of the 1860 census. Like most Missouri guerrillas, Bill Jackson mainly operated in his home territory. In Bill's case, that was Saline County and surrounding counties like Cooper and Pettis. All of these counties, except for perhaps the southern tips of Cooper and Pettis, are not really in the Ozarks, but, for the purposes of this blog about Ozarks history, I don't mind stretching the limits of the region a bit if there's an interesting subject I want to write about. Bill Jackson was sometimes confused with the more infamous and bloodthirsty Jim Jackson, but they were definitely not the same person. Jim operated mainly north of the Missouri River in Boone, Howard, and surrounding counties, while Bill operated mainly south of the river.
Bill Jackson conducted a number of raids throughout Saline, Cooper, and Pettis counties, but one of the more notable was his raid on the German community of Frankfort in Saline County northeast of Marshall on August 8, 1864. The previous day a guerrilla named Richard "Dick" Durrett had been captured by Federal soldiers five miles west of Arrow Rock, taken into Arrow Rock, and executed on the morning of the 8th. Durrett was not only a member of Jackson's band, but the two men were very likely good friends, since Durrett was from the same area of Saline County as Jackson. Jackson and about fifty guerrillas promptly marched to Frankfort, where they reportedly set fire to about twenty homes and killed several citizens. Jackson let it be known he was acting in response to Durrett's death, and he swore to kill ten men to avenge the execution. The St. Louis Missouri Republican, in reporting the event, noted facetiously that Jackson was the former governor's son and "seems to be in all respects worthy of the name he bears."  

Civil War Execution of John Wilcox

It was not altogether unusual during the Civil War for Confederate guerrillas captured in Missouri by Union forces to be executed. In fact, it was almost standard operating procedure. One such execution was the death by firing squad of John P. Wilcox.
Wilcox was a member of Shumate's band of guerrillas, who committed depredations during the spring and summer of 1864 in Cole, Miller, Moniteau, and Saline counties. (I'm not sure of Shumate's first name, but he was probably one of the Shumates listed on the 1860 Saline County census. John Wilcox, on the other hand, was probably from Miller County.) He was captured during April at a house where the bushwhackers were dancing and partying with a group of young women. When Federal troops surrounded the place, a fight ensued, and Wilcox was wounded and taken prisoner. It was first thought that his wound was mortal, but when it became apparent that he might survive, he was taken to Jefferson City and put in the military hospital there.
General Egbert Brown, commanding the District of Central Missouri, ordered Wilcox shot, but the intercession of Wilcox's friends induced General Rosecrans, commanding the Department of the Missouri, to countermand the order. Shortly afterwards, Wilcox made his escape from the hospital, but he stopped at a farm about four miles from Jeff City, probably because he was too weak to keep traveling, and was handed back over to military authorities by the farmer.
Shortly after this, Shumate's guerrillas captured two Federal soldiers, and sent one to Jeff City with a message offering to exchange the other one for Wilcox. In the meantime, however, a group of citizens skirmished with some of Shumate's guerrillas, and the second soldier made his escape during the confrontation. General Brown then issued another order, dated July 1, 1864, stating that Wilcox would be executed if Shumate's band or any other band of guerrillas continued committing depredations in the region.
As might have been predicted, the depredations did not stop, and General Alfred Pleasanton, who had taken over for General Brown, issued an order, dated August 6, stating that Wilcox would be shot on August 12 in accordance with Brown's earlier order. On the appointed day, Wilcox rode to the execution site in the west part of Jeff City on a spring-wagon that carried his coffin, and he was accompanied by his sister. A Rev. Manier, who had ministered to Wilcox during his final days, gave what was described as a "an impressive prayer" at the scene. Although Wilcox proclaimed his innocence, he bore his fate with "passive submission."
The prisoner was seated on the coffin with his hands pinioned at his sides, and a blindfold was put over his eyes. The assistant provost marshal of the district gave the command to fire, but all of the dubious marksmen missed their target. Another firing squad promptly stepped forward, and "twelve guns belched forth their deadly contents," according to the Jefferson City Missouri State Times. Wilcox fell forward on his face and died in about five minutes with one ball through his chin and five through his breast.    

Bob Cummings

I've mentioned in previous posts several famous people who were either born in the Ozarks or grew up here. Another such person, whom I don't believe I've discussed on this blog before, is Robert "Bob" Cummings. Cummings was a famous film and television actor. In the 1940s and early 1950s, he was known mainly as a film actor for comedies like the Bride Wore Boots with Barbara Stanwyck and dramas like Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder. During the latter fifties, he turned to television and had his own show, a popular comedy called The Bob Cummings Show.
Cummings was born in Joplin in 1910 and grew up there. His father was a doctor on the first staff of St. John's Hospital there, and Dr. Cummings also established a hospital in Webb City. Bob's mother was a Science of Mind minister. Bob learned to fly airplanes at a very young age, and when he was in high school, he earned money by charging residents of Joplin $5 to take them for airplane rides. When the government started licensing flight instructors, Cummings was issued Certificate #1, making him the first officially licensed flight instructor in the U.S. After high school graduation at Joplin, Cummings briefly attended Drury College in Springfield before moving to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and later to New York to pursue an acting career.

Blue Mound Baseball

There are several places in Missouri called Blue Mound, but the one I'm concerned with here is located in eastern Polk County near the Dallas County line. It is a hill or mound that got its name because it has a blue cast to it when seen from a distance. It is located in a rural area. Schofield, the nearest community mentioned on any maps, is itself a mere wide place in the road. However, apparently at one time Blue Mound was an actual settlement or community. At least the people of the area identified themselves as being from the Blue Mound community and were so identified by people from other communities.
I recently ran onto a piece in the Buffalo Reflex reporting on a baseball game that had taken place in the late spring of 1871 between "the 'first nines' of the Blue Mound and Buffalo clubs." The game was played on the Blue Mound field, which, according to the Reflex, was located about eight miles west of Buffalo. (It's actually southwest.) The baseball diamond was laid out on the prairie near the base of the Blue Mound. From the summit of the hill, according to the newspaper, "a delightful view is obtained of the country for from ten to twenty miles around. It is certainly a most happy location for pic-nicing, base ball playing or any other pastime which pleasure seeking mortals choose (to) indulge in." After the game, the players were treated to a picnic with food prepared by the ladies of the Blue Mound vicinity.
At least as interesting as the newspaper's description of the Blue Mound, the game played there, and the subseqent picnic is the box score of the game that was published along with the article. Blue Mound won the game by what today would be considered an incredible score of 63 to 46. The box score (as was usual for baseball games in the mid to late 1800s) gave only the number of runs each player scored and the number of outs he made. For instance, Swan, the Blue Mound pitcher, scored ten runs and made only one out.  

Military Roads

When I hear the phrase "military road" or "the military road" in the context of regional history, I automatically think of the military road that ran from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, through Fort Scott to Baxter Springs and then continued along the western edge of the Ozarks to Fort Gibson in Indian Territory, because this is the historic military road with which I'm most familiar. I live close to it, and I've written about it or at least mentioned it in several of my articles and books. 
However, there was another military road that traversed the Ozarks and that predated the one in eastern Kansas. This earlier military road crossed the Mississippi River and entered Missouri near Cape Girardeau. It then continued west, angling slightly south, and crossed the St. Francis River near present-day Greenville in Wayne County. From there, it veered south, roughly following present-day Highway 67, and crossed the Black River in what is now northern Butler County, a few miles north and slightly west of Poplar Bluff. From there, it continued southwest through present-day Fairdealing and Oxly in what is now eastern Ripley County. It crossed the Current River into Arkansas at Pittman's Ferry near the present-day community of Current View. It continued from there to Pocahontas, Arkansas.
This trail was called the Military Road because it was improved and used by the army during the presidency of Andrew Jackson for the removal of the Indians from the southeastern states during the late 1830s. The road, however, actually followed an earlier Indian trail called the Natchitoches Path. Early settlers moving into southern Missouri and northern Arkansas used this same trail, both before and after it became known as the Military Road.       

Small Town High Schools

One-room schools for grades 1-8 are often cited as disappearing symbols of America's rural past, but high schools in small, rural towns have also become almost a relic of bygone days. Just as the one-room schools consolidated with K-12 districts in surrounding towns, many of the the smaller K-12 districts have either merged to form larger districts or consolidated with already-existing larger districts. In Missouri, consolidation of the one-room schools was pretty well complete by the 1950s. Consolidation of the small K-12 districts, on the other hand, continued through the sixties and seventies. (In a few cases, consolidtions continued to happen in the eighties, nineties, and almost up to the present day, but the bulk of them happened during the mid twentieth century.) Small towns that have been left without high schools often struggle just to survive, because, in many cases, the school was the main unifying social force.
McDonald County is one area with which I'm fairly familiar where a lot of consolidation took place. The county now has only one county-wide high school, located at Anderson. Prior to consolidation in the 1960s, it had at least six high schools. Anderson, Goodman, Noel, Pineville, Rocky Comfort, and Southwest City all had their own high schools. In addition, Lanagan had its own high school at one time, but Lanagan lost its high school before the sixties. There may have been other towns in the county, such as Powell, that had high schools at one time, but I'm not sure. At any rate, the point is that a county that had a whole slew of high schools at one time now has only one. In the mid sixties, Goodman consolidated with Neosho, while the other five schools went together to form McDonald County High School.
Some of the towns are still doing okay. Anderson, home to the high school, is still thriving. Pineville, the county seat, is still going fairly strong. Southwest City is home to a chicken plant or two and is still doing okay. Noel is famous as the Christmas town, and it still does fairly well. Rocky Comfort, on the other hand, seems barely to be hanging on, and its fate is probably more typical of small towns throughout Missouri and the Ozarks that have lost their high schools.  

The Lumber Industry in the Ozarks

A huge lumber industry arose in the Ozarks, especially the central and eastern parts of the region, during the late 1800s, and it carried over into the early 1900s. Companies like the Missouri Lumber and Mining Company and the Ozarks Land and Lumber Company built large sawmills. Railroads were built to accommodate the new industry, and booming lumber towns sprang up almost overnight.
Fremont, Grandin, and Hunter in Carter County, for example, all grew up in the 1880s when the Missouri Lumber and Mining Company came to the area. (Another Carter County community, Ellsinore, also arose as a lumber town about the same time, but its origins are tied to a different operation. In fact, about the only town of any significance in Carter County that does not owe its existence to the lumber industry is the county seat of Van Buren.)
The population of Grandin soared to almost 3,000 around 1900 at the peak of the lumber industry in the area, but the population now stands at less than 250. Similarly, Hunter once boasted a population of about 700 but declined as the lumber industry in the area died out or moved elsewhere. Now Hunter has fewer than 200 residents.

 


 

The Hornet Spook Light

A reader of this blog recently emailed me suggesting ghosts or other mysteries of the Ozarks as a possible topic for me to write about. I replied that I'm not a big believer in ghosts and that the supernatural is not something I'm especially interested in writing about. I added that I had, however, written several magazine articles in the past about the spook light or ghost light that sometimes appears on a country road about ten miles southwest of Joplin, variously called the Hornet Spook Light, the Seneca Spook Light, the Joplin Spook Light, or the Quapaw Spook Light, and that I might write something about it on this blog as well. So, here goes.
According to oral legend, the Spook Light was first spotted in the late 1800s near the small community of Hornet, and it supposedly frightened some of the residents in the area so much that a few of them moved away. Over the years, many supernatural theories purporting to explain the light have arisen. For example, one such theory holds that a Civil War sergeant was decapitated by enemy gunfire in the area but was too tough to die and that every night he sets out with lantern in hand in search of his head. The other supernatural theories are just as irrational as this one.
More rational theories have also been offered, such as the idea that the light is an emanation given off by swamp gas or mineral deposits in the area. Perhaps the simplest explanation for the light is the mundane notion that it is merely the refraction of headlights from a distant stretch of highway in Oklahoma on old Route 66.
Scientific teams have studied the light over the years to try to determine its origin. One team even reportedly fired high-powered rifles at it back in the 1940s. Several but not all of the scientific studies have concluded that the light is, in fact, merely headlights.
Proponents of the paranormal, who, of course, have a vested interest in the outcome of their studies have also investigated the light. These psuedo-scientists almost always come away with the conclusion that the light is unexplainable.
As I said, I'm not a big believer in ghosts; so I tend to side with those who say the light is just the reflection of headlights. When the idea that the light might be only headlights was first put forth around 1940, it was reportedly discounted by old-timers in the area who claimed to have seen the light long before automobiles were prevalent in the region. However, I think this claim may well be merely part of the mythology of the spook light that was advanced by Arthur "Spooky" Meadows in order to promote his so-called Spook Light Museum, which he ran as a tourist destination during the 1940s and 1950s. Although the oral legend holds that the light was first seen in the late 1800s, the first written mention of the Spook Light did not occur until the late 1930s, several years after Route 66 was built through the region. So, I'm skeptical of the oral legend.
The only thing that bothers me about the headlight theory is the fact that spottings of the Spook Light seem to have diminished in recent years, while the number of vehicles in the area has held steady or increased. Not sure how to explain that, but I'm sure there is a logical explanation. Maybe the growth of trees, for example, has simply blocked the view of observers.
The photo below is from a postcard advertising the Spook Light, probably during the 1950s.

Rosati/Knobview

I've written previously about the phenomenon of communities changing their names. For example, I wrote on this blog a few years ago about Dadeville, Missouri, which was originally known as Melville. This phenomenon of name changing was not unusual in the Ozarks (and probably elsewhere as well). Often the name change was prompted by the U.S. Post Office. That is, a community often went by a certain name during its very early days, but when it approached the Postal Service about the possibility of obtaining a post office, the community was sometimes informed that a town by its name already existed elsewhere in the state. Sometimes the two names didn't even have to be exactly alike, if they were close enough to cause confusion. That's what happened in the case of Melville/Dadeville. Postal workers supposedly said that they kept getting Melville mixed up with another community in Missouri named Millville, and Melville agreed to change its name. There were several other reasons why a community might change its name. Sometimes name changes had political overtones, especially related to the Civil War. Sometimes names of places were changed to honor a prominent local citizen. Or, as in the case of Rosati, located in eastern Phelps County, names were sometimes changed because of a large influx of immigrants.
Rosati was originally settled during the 1840s or 1850s and called Knobview, supposedly because it was located on an eminence along the old Springfield to St. Louis road (which is roughly I-44 today) and, when travelers reached the spot, they could see three knobs or hills in the distance to the southwest. In 1898, a large group of Italian immigrants settled at Knobview and shortly afterwards started several vineyards in the area. (Rosati is still known today for its grape growing and its wine industry.) In 1931, residents of Knobview petitioned the Post Office to change the name of their community to Rosati, after Bishop Joseph Rosati, the first bishop of St. Louis and the first American bishop of Italian descent. The request was granted.

More Mineral Water Towns

I have written previously about the many towns that sprang up in the Ozarks (and elsewhere) during the mineral water craze that struck America about 1880. Such towns, however, were even more prevalent than I realized when I first started writing about them. As I continue to read about the Ozarks and read about its history, I periodically come across additional mineral water towns that I did not previously know about. For instance, I have long known about Ponce de Leon in northeast Stone County, Missouri, but only recently did I learn about the nearby mineral water towns of Reno and Eau de Vie. Ponce de Leon, of course, still exists and is listed on many maps, but almost nothing remains of the other two to suggest that they ever existed.
Reno was located in neighboring Christian County near where the county lines of Stone, Christian, and Taney meet. It sprang up almost overnight in the 1880s. Two hotels were built to accommodate visitors, and a saloon and a dance hall were also built to entertain them. A number of houses were also constructed, but the place died in the 1890s, almost as fast as it had come into being, as the mineral water craze subsided. The only thing that remains to mark where Reno was is the spring by that name that caused the town to be established in the first place. It is still listed on some maps.
Eau de Vie (French for "Water of Life") was located a little farther east, also in Christian County, near the Taney County line. It, too, sprang up almost overnight, and eighty acres were laid out in lots for the town. Stores and other businesses were built, along with houses, but, like its neighbor, it quickly passed into history. Nothing really remains to mark where it was.

Britt's Killing of Renno, Springfield, 1838

I mentioned last time that grocery stores acquired an unsavory reputation, at least among temperance advocates, during the 1800s because most of them sold liquor, and the word "grocery" came to be almost synonymous with "saloon." A grocery was not a place for a respectable woman to do her shopping. Instead, women concerned for their reputation usually shopped at dry goods stores, general stores, or confectionaries. Groceries were reserved mainly for men, and many of them came to be seen as de facto saloons.
Such a grocery was the business of R. J. McElhaney on the Springfield public square during the pre-Civil War days. One day in early 1838, a group of men were inside the store drinking and having a good time when a man outside the store, looking for some rough sport, suggested to Jonathan Renno, another bystander, that he ought to go inside and clean the place out. Renno accepted the dare, marched inside, and took hold of the first man he came to, who happened to be Randolph Britt.
In the struggle that ensued, Britt took out a knife and stabbed Renno to death. Britt was convicted of manslaughter and spent a few years in the state penitentiary at Jeff City.
My book entitled Wicked Springfield contains a more detailed account of this incident. It also chronicles several other similar affrays in early-day Springfield. In addition, it covers in some detail what might be called general vice, like liquor violations, gambling, and prostitution. I'll be signing copies of the book at Half Price Books of the Ozarks on the Plaza Shopping Center in Springfield on Saturday, November 3 from 1-3 p.m.  

Groceries as Saloons

When we hear the word "grocery" or the term "grocery store" today, we think of a place that primarily sells food, and neither term has a negative connotation. That has not always been the case in this country.
When the temperance movement was at high tide during 1800s, the term "grocery" did have a negative connotation, at least among temperance advocates. Not all grocery stores sold liquor, but the many that did tended to give them all a bad name among zealous temperance advocates. So much so that the very word "grocery" became almost synonymous with "saloon," and many temperance advocates used the term with sarcasm or disdain to suggest a place that was a grocery in name only.
In 1856, the temperance advocates of Springfield, many of them women, managed to get a law passed by the Missouri Legislature, called the Springfield Liquor Law, that outlawed the sale of liquor in Springfield. After its passage, the ladies of Springfield, in a letter of appreciation to the legislature, boasted that there was now "no dram shop or grocery in Springfield."
This negative attitude toward the word "grocery" probably helps explain why businesses that we might tend to think of today as "grocery stores" were more often called "general stores" during the 1800s and early 1900s. If you didn't sell liquor, you let people know it by calling your place of business a general store instead of a grocery store. At least I suppose that was the logic, although I'm sure there were "general stores" that also sold liquor, under the counter if not openly.

Killing of Roberts by Judge Yancey

I said last time that one of the differences between Joplin and Springfield as far as the notorious history of each town is concerned was simply a matter of reputation, in that Joplin was widely perceived as a wild town even though Springfield probably had about as much unruly behavior as Joplin did. Another difference that I neglected to mention last time was that the heyday of vice in Springfield simply came later than it did in Joplin. Joplin was noted for its revelry and debauchery from the time it was founded as a town in the early 1870s (actually even a little before its official founding). Springfield, on the other hand, started slowly during the pre-Civil War days, as far as vice and wild behavior are concerned,  then picked up steam during and after the war, and really did not reach its peak until the early 1900s.
One notorious incident that did occur in Springfield during the pre-war years, however, was the killing of John Roberts by Judge Charles S. Yancey on the public square during the late 1830s. Roberts had served as Greene County's first coroner, but he was considered a rough character, especially when he had been drinking, and he had been charged with felonious assault at least twice for his part in affrays during the early to mid thirties. Yancey was a county court judge, and he had fined Roberts for contempt during one of Roberts's several court appearances. Roberts paid the fine but afterwards started taunting Yancey every time he saw him in public.
The fateful showdown finally came one day during the summer of 1837. After a confrontation on the square, Yancey started to walk away but, as he did so, he noticed Roberts start to reach into his pocket. Thinking Roberts was going for a knife that he was known to carry, Yancey promptly flourished a pistol and shot him dead. As it turned out, Roberts had not been reaching for his knife, but Yancey was acquitted at his subsequent murder trial. He later was appointed a circuit judge.     

Wicked Springfield Versus Wicked Joplin

About a year and a half ago, my book entitled Wicked Joplin, based on the notorious history of Joplin during its days as a booming mining town, was published. I now have a new book coming out entitled Wicked Springfield, Missouri: The Seamy Side of the Queen City. It, like the previous book, is based on the notorious history of the town in question.
Some people might find it a bit surprising that Springfield would be the subject of a book about the notorious side of its history. Most people who have lived within a hundred miles or so of Joplin for any length of time probably know that, almost from its very beginning, it had a reputation for being a wild town. By compariosn, most people, I believe, tend to think of Springfield during its early days as fairly tame. However, as I point out in the preface to my new book, even though Springfield was not founded as a raucous mining town and, therefore, was not the magnet for lawlessness in its early days that Joplin was from its very outset, Springfield was still a rough-and-tumble frontier town that had its share of shenanigans. A big part of the difference between the two towns was a merely a matter of perception. Springfield just didn't have the unruly reputation that Joplin did, even though it probably had about as much unruly behavior.
I intend to write more about the notorious side of Springfield's history next time.    

Douglas County Seat

Last time I said that changes in county seats were not unusual in the Ozarks during the formative years of the counties. Sometimes the changes happened for very practical reasons such as agreeing upon a more centrally located town as the county seat, and the changes took place with little dispute. Sometimes, however, intense rivalries developed between towns and resulted in "county seat wars."
Perhaps no county in the Ozarks (none that I can think of at least) had a harder time deciding on a permanent and final county seat than Douglas County, Missouri. When Douglas County was formed in 1857 from Ozark County, Red Bud in the eastern part of the county was named the county seat. The name of the settlement was changed to Vera Cruz two years later. During the Civil War, the county records were briefly moved to Rome in the southwest part of the county because of continual skirmishing around Vera Cruz. It was quickly decided, however, that Rome was no safer than Vera Cruz, and the seat was moved back to the latter place.
In 1869, three eastern townships of Douglas County were annexed to Howell County so that Vera Cruz was now less centrally located than it previously had been. An election resulted in the county seat being moved to Arno in the western part of the county. However, Arno was just as far west of the middle of the county as Vera Cruz was east of it, and dispute arose between the two sections of the county.
In 1871, a centrally located site was selected as a sort of compromise, and the town of Ava was laid out as the county seat. Some reports suggest that Militia Springs, a military training camp during the Civil War that continued as a government post office after the war and was located about a mile and a half north of the new town site, also served briefly as the county seat while Ava was being laid out and built. So, in all, the Douglas County seat has been located in at least four and perhaps five different places and has gone by at least five and maybe six different names.      

Multiple County Seats

A lot of counties in the Ozarks (and elsewhere) started out with a county seat different from the one they ended up with. In some cases, the move was prompted mostly because a more centrally located spot for the county seat was agreed on, and the move took place with little or no incident. In other cases, however, disputes arose over the location of the county seat and resulted in what might be called county seat wars.
One county seat dispute that comes readily to my mind is the one between Baxter Springs and Columbus that took place during the late 1860s over the location of the seat of Cherokee County, in the southeast corner of Kansas at the edge of the Ozarks. After a couple of disputed elections, Columbus was declared the county seat, but Baxter Springs, which had been the acting county seat, claimed the election was fraudulent and refused to relinquish the records. Officials from Columbus slipped into Baxter Springs one night and took the records back to Columbus, and for many years bitter Baxter Springs citizens recalled the time that Columbus "stole" the county seat.
The seat of some counties moved more than once and involved more than two towns, and the moves may or may not have involved disputes. Camden County, Missouri, for instance, comes to mind. The original county seat, when the county was known as Kinderhook, was Oregon. Oregon changed its name to Erie when the county changed its name to Camden in 1843. Erie was located where Linn Creek emptied into the Osage River and was prone to flooding; so in 1855, the town (and the county seat) moved up the creek about half a mile and took the name Linn Creek. Linn Creek served as county seat of Camden County until the town was destroyed during the building of Bagnell Dam and the Lake of the Ozarks. Old Linn Creek was covered with water, and two new towns, new Linn Creek and Camdenton, were built, with the latter town becoming the new county seat.

Crystal Cave

Growing up in Fair Grove during the 1950s and early 1960s, I was well aware of Crystal Cave, located about halfway between Fair Grove and Springfield on old Highway 65. (The segment between Springfield and Crystal Cave is now part of Highway H, and the segment between Fair Grove and Crystal Cave is, I believe, now called Shelby Road.) I went by the cave ever time I made a trip to Springfield. However, I never actually visited it until a few years ago when I did an article about it for the Ozarks Reader.
Crystal Cave was opened to the public in 1893 by Englishman Alfred Mann, and his three daughters took over the cave when he died in 1925. They ran it for over forty years (including the time I lived at Fair Grove), until the last one died in 1969 and willed it a family friend, Estel Funkhouser. She ran it until 1982, when her sister, Edith Richardson, and Edith's husband, Lloyd, took over. The Richardsons were still running the place in early 2005 when I visited. However, as far as I can tell, the cave is now closed to the public. Apparently the Richardsons either died or got too old to continue running it and could find no one to take their place. They were in their mid eighties at the time of my visit.
Crystal Cave was never highly commercialized. No drive-through trams or anything like that. No colored lights to try to enhance the beauty of the cave. As Lloyd Richardson told me during my visit, the cave was beautiful enough in its natural state and didn't need any artificial enhancement. Also, the cave was not particularly accessible. It had narrow pathways, several fairly steep climbs, and so forth. However, I have to say that Crystal Cave was one of the neatest caves I've ever seen and my visit to it was the most enjoyable cave tour I've ever taken (not that I've taken all that many).
So, it's kinda sad to see the old cave closed. It had been open to the public continuously (except for a very brief period in 1969) for well over 100 years. But now it's gone. Maybe someone will acquire it and reopen it one of these days.

Kinch West

I've written quite a bit (on this blog and elsewhere) about the guerrilla conflict in Missouri during the Civil War. I don't consider myself an apologist for the Confederate guerrillas, because I think that they (and the South in general) were ultimately on the wrong side of history, but I can see the Southern side of the story. I think that much of the story that America has traditionally been told about the guerrillas has been skewed in favor of the Union because it was generally told by the victorious Union side. For instance, the Missouri guerrillas have often been portrayed as murderous outlaws who had no military legitimacy and whose only goal was plunder. My book Other Noted Guerrillas of the Civil War in Missouri contains a fairly thorough discussion of how I see the guerrillas, but suffice it to say here that this simplistic Union portrayal of the guerrillas as opportunist brigands is far from the truth in most cases. 
On the other hand, Southern apologists often go too far in the other direction and try to portray the guerrillas as gallant knights who were driven to take up arms only in response to the horrible maltreatment that they and their families received at the hands of the federal government. In many cases, there was some truth to this generalization, but it, too, is an oversimplification.
Take Dade County, Missouri, guerrilla Kincheon "Kinch" West (who was a first cousin of one of my great grandmothers, by the way), for example. Kinch is probably most famous for his raid on Melville (now Dadeville), in 1864. The Union side of the story seems to suggest that Kinch was nothing but an outlaw looking for plunder, whereas the Southern side of the story suggests that Kinch was a peaceful young man at the beginning of the war who only took to the bush on the Confederate side after his father was mercilessly killed without provocation by Union troops in 1863.
The truth is almost certainly somewhere in the middle. In all likelihood, Kinch joined the Confederate-allied Missouri State Guard near the outset of the war, although, as is often the case, no documentation of his military service has survived. What is known is that Kinch was later affiliated in his guerrilla activities with Lafayette "Fate" Roberts, who is known to have been an officer in the 8th Division of the Missouri State Guard during the early part of the war. So, Kinch, like most guerrilla leaders, probably did have some military standing or legitimacy, at least as far as the Southern side was concerned. However, it is also known that Kinch began his marauding activities before his father was killed by Union soldiers. In fact, his father was probably killed at least in part in retaliation for Kinch's activities. Of course, nothing would justify killing a father for what one of his sons had done, but the point I'm making is that Kinch was almost certainly not a peaceful young man who was staying home minding his own business at the time his father was killed, as the Southern side of the story would have us believe. In short, Kinch West was a desperate character, as the Union side of the story suggests, but he probably did not start out to be an outlaw and he did have personal reasons that helped drive him to desperation.
For anybody interested in more detailed information about Kinch West, I'm providing a link to a website dedicated to info about him:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cspowell/researchpages/Kinch.html

Bears in the Ozarks

When white men first started settling the Ozarks in the 1810s and 1820s, black bears were common in the region. They were killed at such a rate during the first 20 or 30 years of white settlement, however, that they were virtually gone by the time of the Civil War, or at least they were thought to be nearly gone. During the 1960s, Arkansas began reintroducing black bears to that state, and some of them have now roamed northward into the Missouri Ozarks. Also, there is some evidence that black bears never completely left southern Missouri. However, they are still nowhere near as prevalent as they were during the first half of the 19th century. In fact, they are probably still not as prevalent as they were during the years shortly after the Civil War.
For instance, in June of 1870, two black bears were killed in the Springfield vicinity within a week. The first one, as reported by the Springfield Missouri Weekly Patriot, was killed by a farmer living about nine miles east of town when the bear "strayed from his native forests too close to the habituations of the white man" and scattered some rails the farmer had used to enclose a spring. The farmer put his hounds on the trail of the bruin, they treed it, and he filled it full of lead. The next week, the same newspaper reported that another black bear had been killed by a man living about seven miles south of Springfield. The newspaperman remarked that he had thought, after chronicling the first bear's demise the previous week, he would probably never have occasion to report a similar story again. It's clear from his statement that the sighting and killing of two bears in such a short span of time and in the same general vicinity of the Ozarks was a rare instance in 1870, but the fact that two bears were, in fact, killed within a week not more than fifteen miles apart is also an indication that they were probably more common in 1870 than they are now.   

More About Ozarks' Feuds

I have previously mentioned several old-time Ozarks' feuds, including the Turk-Jones feud that led to the infamous Slicker Wars in Benton County and Hickory County, Missouri, in the 1840s; the Meadows-Bilyeu feud that led to the killing of three Bilyeu men by Bud Meadows in southern Christian County in 1898; the Matthews-Payton feud that predated the Meadows-Bilyeu feud, took place in the same general vicinity, and involved at least one of the same men (Bud Meadows); and the Alsup-Hatfield feud in Douglas County in the years right after the Civil War.
The Alsups were also involved in a pre-war feud with the Fleetwoods that was supposedly even bigger than their subsequent one with Hatfield and his allies, although very little can be documented about the Fleetwood feud. I suspect that the Fleetwood feud was probably not as violent as the oral legend would have one believe (e.g. as many as 200 men suppposedly killed over a period of many years) and that some of the information or misinformation that has been handed down about it may have actually grown out of the post-war feud. In other words, the two have probably become mixed together in the retelling.
Another notorious Ozarks feud, one that I believe I have not previously mentioned on this blog, was the Tutt-Everett feud of Marion County, Arkansas. Like the so-called Slicker Wars, the Tutt-Everett feud also took place mainly in the 1840s. Davis Tutt, who was killed by Wild Bill Hickok on the square in Springfield in 1865, was a descendant of the Tutt family that was involved in this feud.
Part of the hillbilly image that used to be attached (and sometimes still is attached) to the Ozarks by outsiders was a perception that the region, because of the clannishness of its people, was rife with family feuds that often erupted in violence. There was some truth to this perception, I suppose, but I also think that the number of family feuds in the Ozarks was probably not all that much greater, allowing for differences in population, than in some other parts of the country.
Even the Ozarks' own journalists, though, sometimes bought into the hillbilly image and helped propagate it. For instance, in 1915, after a murder in Douglas County awoke the memory of previous feuds in that county and elsewhere, the Springfield Daily Leader declared that, while not as common as they used to be, feuds "are still carried on in the Ozarks. Many times each year the thunder of a rifle or shotgun rings out from a blind, and the unsuspecting victim tumbles to the earth, knowing that some deed committed either by himself or his family, has been avenged, according to the old ethics of vengeance.
"Although never as notorious as the hills of Kentucky for feuds," the newspaper allowed, "the Ozarks of Missouri have been the scene of several bloody ones; man after man has been toppled from his horse as he wound his way through the seemingly peaceful hills; vengeance has been vowed over still forms as they lay in the roadside; families have clanned together against others and feuds have extended for miles around."
Although there is obviously a grain of truth to the Leader reporter's claims, most of this story strikes me as romantic nonsense. For instance, the idea that people still died in the Ozarks "many times each year" as late as the 1910s as a result of feuds seems incredible, but it probably made for good newspaper copy.

      

Thomas Covington Kills Sidney Norcross

In a recent post, I remarked on the frequency with which summary justice, such as lynching, was employed during the Wild West days in cases of violent crime. Because this was, indeed, the case, there is a tendency on the part of many people, I think, to assume that perpetrators of violent crime seldom got away with their crimes during the days of the Old West. Ironically, however, this latter assumption is not true. Murderers often got off scot free, especially if the crime was not premeditated but was instead committed during a heated argument. This tended to be true regardless of which party was the aggressor in the argument.
A case in point is the murder of Sidney F. Norcross by Thomas Covington in Bolivar, Missouri, on Saturday night, May 27, 1871. The two young men, along with two or three other pals, had been drinking at Gracey's saloon. Between ten and eleven o'clock, they left the saloon and went into Garrett's barber shop (which, like many businesses back then, kept late Saturday night hours). After the men took seats, Norcross asked Covington for some tobacco, and Covington handed Norcross his tobacco box. Norcross made a snide remark about the tobacco box, and Covington gave him a sharp reply. When Norcross retorted in anger, Covington picked up a nearby chair and struck Norcross across the head with it, knocking him to the floor. Norcross was taken home, where he died the next morning.
Meanwhile, Covington fled but turned himself in a few months later at the start of the fall term of the Polk County Circuit Court, and he was tried for second degree murder. However, the jury failed to reach a verdict, and he was released on bond, pending a new trial.
On Friday evening, March 8, 1872, while Covington was still out on bond, he got into a scuffle with another lad named William Stallings at a school exhibition in Bolivar. The two young men and a couple of others had been jabbing at each other playfully, mussing each other's hair, and so forth when Covington took offense to a shove from Stallings that he apparently thought was too rough. He suddenly pulled out a two-edged dirk knife and stabbed Stallings in the breast. Stallings's wound was serious but not considered life-threatening. Covington was arrested and transported to the Cedar County jail at Stockton for safekeeping.
"It now remains to be seen," observed the skeptical editor of the Bolivar Free Press, "whether killing and stabbing is a crime punishable in our courts of law, or must the lives of peaceful citizens be placed in constant jeopardy at the hands of the assassin emboldened by the prospect of escaping punishment."
Covington did, in fact, escape punishment once again, at least temporarily. He and a couple of other inmates broke out of the Cedar County jail in late March. I've thus far been unable to trace whether he was ever apprehended and, if so, what happened to him after that.           

Sons of Temperance

I've written on this blog previously about a temperance crusade called the Murphy Movement that reached the Ozarks in early 1878 and was very prominent for a few months before the movement lost some of its fervor. The Murphy Movement, however, was just one of several temperance campaigns that took hold in the United States during the 1800s and early 1900s.
One of the early temperance organizations was the Sons of Temperance, which was organized in New York in 1842. It not only promoted abstinence and lobbied for prohibition but also served as a fraternal organization for its members. For instance, members (called brothers) were expected to visit any fellow member who became sick. The group even acted as an insurance company of sorts, since the bylaws of the organization also required it to pay $30 to cover the burial costs of any brother who died. The group was selective in admitting members, and the brothers practiced secret rituals and had secret signs, passwords, hand grips, and regalia.
A chapter of the Sons of Temperance was organized in Springfield in 1849. By 1851, the Sons of Temperance and other prohibitionists succeeded in getting an ordinance passed outlawing dramshops (i.e. saloons) in Springfield. The law lasted only a few months, but the question of prohibition remained a contentious issue in Springfield and elsewhere for many years, culminating, of course, in passage of the Volstead Act that ushered in prohibition nationwide.    

Springfield City Cemetery

Springfield's original city cemetery was located in the northeast quadrant at the corner of Campbell and State streets in a plot donated by early resident John A. Stephens. Stephens served Springfield as a schoolmaster for about ten years and also owned a store on the public square. Although he was a Union man himself, he was killed by a Union soldier during the aftermath of Zagonyi's charge as he was walking home and failed to heed the soldier's command to halt as he neared his front gate.
The city cemetery was the scene of some of the hardest fighting during the Battle of Springfield in January of 1863. R. I. Holcombe, in his 1883 History of Greene County, described the action there in his typically colorful language: "Some of the sharpest and hardest fighting of the day was done in and about this graveyard, amid the tombstones and the cold "hic jacets" of the dead. Back and forth through the aisles and across the graves of the silent sleepers ran blue coats and gray jackets, and through the trees, where nothing but birds and sun and soft breezes had blown aforetime, now whistled the cannon shot and the bombshell."
Many bodies of soldiers that had been buried in the city cemetery were disinterred and reburied at the National Cemetery after it opened in 1867. Other bodies were later dug up and reinterred elsewhere as well. An example was Davis Tutt, who was killed by Wild Bill Hickok on the Springfield square in July 1865. He was reburied at Maple Park Cemetery in 1883. Eventually all the bodies were removed from the old city cemetery to make way for housing development in the area.  

Hudson & Blount Again

I've written previously, both on this blog and in my Desperadoes book, about George Hudson and Bud Blount, perhaps the two most notorious of a whole slew of notorious men who came out of Granby, Missouri, during the post-Civil War days. However, I ran onto a newspaper story in a historic Colorado newspaper recently that sheds new light on a criminal episode in which the two desperadoes were involved in 1879 at Granite, Colorado.
After making a notorious name for themselves in Missouri during the early and mid 1870s, the pair took off for Colorado in the late 1870s and promptly resumed their criminal careers around the booming mining town of Leadville. Based mainly on information supplied by Blount after he was arrested for murder back in Missouri in the early 1890s, I said in my Desperadoes book that he and Hudson waylaid a man named Shultz at Granite Pass in early June 1879 and stole from 1,500 to 1,700 dollars from him. The real facts, as revealed by the newspaper report I recently read, are slightly different. The incident took place in late May, not early June, and it took place at Granite (17 miles south of Leadville), not Granite Pass (which is a completely different place in Colorado) Also, the man, whose full name was Henry Shultz (or Schultz), wasn't exactly waylaid, if you think of "waylaid" as being ambushed along the road somewhere. Instead, Schultz was a storekeeper at Granite, and Blount and Hudson walked into his store and promptly struck him a heavy blow on the head. They then stole $1,500 and absconded to a nearby saloon, where they joined in a card game. As Blount and Hudson were wont to do, they soon got into a barroom brawl with another customer of the saloon, a blacksmith named William Ward. Ward reportedly gave one of the desperadoes a thrashing, and he (either Blount or Hudson) marched out of the saloon and promptly returned with a pistol. The outlaw fired a single shot at Ward, killing him instantly, and the two hombres made their escape before the shocked bystanders could do anything about it. The Colorado newspaper did not identify either Blount or Hudson by name, but based on similarities between the newspaper story and the story Blount told from his jail cell (later corroborated by Mr. Schultz), it is obvious that the Granite crimes were the work of the Granby desperadoes.

Raid on Florence

Few towns in Missouri escaped the Civil War untouched by at least one attack from either Confederates or Federals at some time during the war. Many were virtually wiped off the face of the map, including the small village of Florence in Morgan County. On Thursday morning, July 9, 1863, a gang of bushwhackers galloped into the town and took possession of the place by flourishing their firearms and shouting orders. The guerrillas began plundering the general store of of E. F. W. Smith and stealing and drinking whiskey from the grocery/saloon of S. S. Burns on the opposite corner of the crossroads village. Six men, constituting most of the adult males in the village, were lined up in the street near Smith's store. Led by a man whose name was also Smith, the bushwhackers compelled the captives to say whether or not they would take the oath of allegiance to the Union. Only two had the guts to admit they would, but the reticence of the others apparently did not save them from the wrath of the gang, because the desperadoes ended up shooting four of the men in cold-blood, at least two of whom died either immediately or shortly afterwards. According to a report that appeared in the Jefferson City Missouri State Times almost a month later, only the screams and entreaties of the local women prevented further bloodshed. Laden with plunder, the guerrillas mounted up and rode away, but three of them soon came back and announced their intention to burn the town. The clerk of the grocery was forced to pay ten dollars before he was allowed to retrieve the store's books, and then the desperate trio set fire to both the grocery and the general store. The three men also set fire to one residence, and they demanded and received money from some of the other citizens in order that their houses might be spared. Announcing that anybody who tried to put out the fires would be shot, the three men then rode away. Among the guerrillas recognized by the townspeople were Robert Wilson, Thomas Jobe, Jack Smith, Matthew Smith, and Young Harrison.
A report in the immediate wake of the raid differed in a few respects from the more thorough report that was issued a month later. The initial report said four men were killed, while the later report confirmed only two deaths, and the earlier report said that four or five houses were consumed by fire. Both reports agreed that the leader of the band was named Smith, but neither said whether he was Jack Smith or Matthew Smith. The first report also suggested that the raiders hailed from south of the Osage River in the Buffalo neighborhood of Dallas County, but this is questionable, since at least a couple of the guerrillas (i.e. Thomas Jobe) were living in Cole County at the time of the 1860 census.            

Missouri Territorial Regulators

In the past, I have researched and written about the Regulators of Greene County, Missouri, a post-Civil War vigilante group that arose around Walnut Grove in response to an outbreak of crime in that vicinity and beyond. In researching this group, I became aware many years ago that there was also a group calling themselves the Regulators during the territorial days of Missouri. I assumed at the time of my initial research that the two groups were probably quite similar. They were, in fact, akin in that they both arose in response to a perceived outbreak of crime, but there were also several key differences.
One key difference was that the Greene County Regulators arose in response to horse thievery and other kinds of direct theft of property, while the territorial Regulators, who were centered around St. Louis and St. Charles counties and were most active in 1815 and 1816, arose in response to an outbreak of counterfeiting. Also, the territorial Regulators were apparently not quite as violent in their treatment of the supposed wrongdoers as the Greene County bunch was. The Greene County vigilantes summarily hanged three or four men within a matter of a couple weeks, and the group then quickly died out, reportedly because they had been so effective in ridding the region of crime. The territorial Regulators, on the other hand, lasted a little longer but mostly meted out their justice in the form of whippings. During the reign of the territorial Regulators, as was often the case with vigilante movements, a lot of men got accused of crimes (counterfeiting, in this case) that they likely did not commit, and several wrote letters to the Missouri Gazette and other newspapers denying their involvement in passing fraudulent notes.  
  

Another Murderer Lynched

I don't want to go back to the days when people were denied due process. There were too many people in those days who suffered for crimes they didn't commit. Still, when I see people nowadays who are almost certainly guilty of murder or some other vicious crime getting off scot free or getting released after spending only a few years in prison, I can't help pining, on some level, for the summary justice that was often meted out in the days of the Old West. If a man was known to have committed a heinous murder, there was a good chance that, one way or another, he was going to hang for it, and often the one way was the vigilante way.
As I indicated above, the problem with such lynchings was that occasionally the victim turned out to be innocent. Blacks, in particular, were not infrequently the wrongful victims of mob violence by whites. However, white criminals were also often strung up by other whites.
One instance of such an extralegal hanging was the case of John Richmond, a Lawrence County (Mo.) man who stole a mule from a farmer living near Halltown on August 19, 1878, and hightailed it to Kansas with the animal. He passed through Chetopa, Kansas, disposed of the stolen mule shortly afterwards, and started back toward Missouri. Richmond, however, had been pursued by a party of men from Lawrence County, and when they reached Chetopa, they gave authorities a description of the thief. R. H. Clift, who was both a deputy U. S. marshal and city marshal of Chetopa, went out after the fugitive on August 25 and came upon him not far outside Chetopa. Richmond at first offered no resistance and said he'd go with Clift but then quickly drew his pistol and shot the lawman in the neck, and Clift died that night.
Richmond continued to Missouri, foolishly returning to his home territory of Lawrence County, where he was arrested on August 28 at the home of his father-in-law on a charge of stealing the mule. The next day or later the same day a posse from Chetopa, who had followed Richmond from Kansas, showed up and informed Lawrence County authorities of the murder of Clift. A few days later, after a requisition for Richmond's return to Kansas was issued by the Kansas governor and granted by Missouri authorities, the prisoner was put on a train bound for Chetopa. When the train pulled in at Chetopa near midnight on the night of September 5, a mob of masked men promptly appeared and forceably took Richmond away from the two law officers who were escorting him. The next morning Richmond's body was found hanging from a bridge about a mile southwest of Chetopa with his feet not quite touching the ground.
It was later learned that Richmond was already a fugitive from Arkansas on a murder charge at the time he stole the mule. As I say, mistakes were sometimes made in the dispensing of summary justice in the Old West, but apparently the vigilantes got it right this time. At any rate, no effort was ever made to apprehend or punish any of them.       
 

Emancipation Day

Emancipation Day commemorating the freedom of African Americans from the bondages of slavery is celebrated at various times throughout the country. (In fact, Emancipation Day, commemorating the feedom of various formerly enslaved people, is celebrated throughout the world.) For instance, in Washington, D. C. emancipation is celebrated near the middle of April, because the District of Columbia slaves were freed in April of 1862, nine months before Lincoln's famous Emancipation Proclamation the following January. In one recent year, as you may recall, the IRS moved back the due date for filing one's income taxes because the normal due date (probably the 15th) fell on D.C.'s Emancipation Day. The states and regions of the U. S. South celebrate Emancipation Day at a various times, depending on when the slaves in that state or that area first learned of emancipation. In Texas and some other states or parts of states, for instance, the date is June 19, often called Juneteenth. In fact, I think that much of Missouri celebrates the anniversary of emancipation on Juneteenth.
In southwest Missouri, however, many communities still celebrate Emanciaption Day on the first weekend in August, since that is near the time slaves in this area first learned of the Emancipation Proclamation. I know that Joplin is one such community, and I'm sure there are others. The tradition of celebrating in early August has been going on continually (or very nearly so) as long as I've lived here and probably much farther back than that--all the way back to 1865.
But Joplin is not the only place that commemmorates Emancipation Day in southwest Mo. in August. At least, I know for sure that there were others that did so in the past. Golden City, for example, held a big Emancipation Day celebration on August 3 and 4, 1897. The evening of August 2, according to a brief piece in a Kansas City newspaper, was spent roasting and barbecuing beef and mutton so that there would be enough to last the next two days. All kinds of amusements were set up on the grounds, and the festivities drew not only black people but also many white people, "including a large number of suspicious characters." However, the celebration, featuring speakers from throughout southwest Missouri apparently went off without a hitch.

Sam Hildebrand Rescued from Jail

Sam Hildebrand, notorious southeast Missouri guerrilla during the Civil War, became an outlaw after the war. According to Hildebrand and his apologists, he was supposedly driven to a life of crime because Federal authorities and his Union neighbors would not let him live in peace after the war. (Apologists for the James and Younger brothers later made a smililar claim to try to justify their unlawful deeds.) There is very likely some grain of truth to the claim, but I doubt that Hildebrand or any of the other guerrillas-turned-outlaws were actually forced into a life of crime after the war.
Sometime around the early part of 1868, Hildebrand allegedly killed or participated in the killing of a man and woman in northern Arkansas. According to the Hildebrand legend, as recounted by latter-day apologist Carl Breihan, the man killed was the former brother-in-law of a friend of Hilderbrand's who had deserted the friend's sister and taken up with a black woman. The friend supposedly asked Hildebrand to help him teach the "guilty pair" a lesson by giving them a flogging, but the man and woman ended up dead from drowning. Breihan's reference to the man and woman as the "guilty pair" suggests that, in the Hildebrand myth, deserting one's wife for a black woman was apparently worse than murder.
According to an article in a St. Louis newsapper that I recently ran across (reprinted in a Springfield paper), the couple killed was an "old man and his wife," with no indication that it was a mixed marriage. After the killing, Hildebrand was arrested, convicted of murder, and sentenced to be hanged. He was lodged in jail at Pocahontas, Arkansas. (Breihan says Jacksonport.) Sometime in late 1868 or early 1869 just a few days before the scheduled execution date, Hildebrand escaped with the aid of friends on the outside. According to the newspaper article, Hildebrand's cohorts donned the uniforms of Federal soldiers and arrived at the Pocahontas jail with papers ordering that Hildebrand be turned over the them for "government action." The sheriff complied, and Hildebrand and his friends were long gone before the fraud was discovered.
Hildebrand returned to southeast Missouri where he had been "roaming around...as fearless as a lion" at the time of the July 1869 newspaper article. Missouri Governor McClurg had just returned from a personal trip to St. Francois County, where he had gone to try to assuage the fears of citizens in the area who were terrified of Hildebrand and to help organize posses to track him down. Some people even wanted the governor to declare martial law, but he resisted such a measure, because the majority of people opposed it. In fact, in at least one county (perhaps St. Francois) the majority of citizens were reported to be in sympathy with Hildebrand.
Despite the intense manhunt, Hildebrand eluded capture. He was finally killed in 1872 across the Mississippi River in Illinois during a confrontation with law officers, who did not know his identity at the time.

Water Towns, Mining Towns, Railroad Towns, & Spring Towns

As a kid and even as a young adult, I never gave much thought to how the towns of the Ozarks that I was familiar with got started. I more or less assumed that people just got together and decided they were going to lay out a town, which I guess is somewhat correct as far as it goes, but there was, of course, more to it than that. With few exceptions, there was a reason why towns were located where they were. Rarely did people just get together and decide to create a town in the middle of nowhere.
Offhand, I can think of four reasons why the towns of the Ozarks were located where they were. In other words, we might say that there are four historical categories of towns. I'm sure there may be other categories of towns or other reasons for why they were situated where they were, but these are the four categories I can think of without giving the subject a lot of thought:
Most, if not all, of the older towns of the Ozarks (generally speaking, those that predated the Civil War) were located where they were because of their proximity to a source of water--a river, stream, or spring. A few county seats might have been situated where they were merely because the site was near the center of the proposed county, but even most county seats that I'm familiar with are relatively near a source of flowing water. Lebanon, county seat of Laclede County, and Marshfield, county seat of Webster, might be exceptions. I don't know of significant streams near Lebanon and Marshfield, but maybe there are such streams. Or maybe they were situtated where they were because they were along the old road from St. Louis to southwest Missouri. See, I'm already coming up with other possible categories, but I digress.
Another group of towns got their start as mining towns, notably a good number in the extreme southwest part of Missouri, like Granby, Joplin, and Webb City.
A third group are what might be called railroad towns. Monett is a good example. Originally called Plymouth or Plymouth Junction, it got its start in the late 1880s as station along the Frisco Railroad. Other towns may have existed as little more than wide places in the road before the railroad reached them but didn't really start growing until after the railroad came. Ash Grove is an example. I would still consider towns like Ash Grove "railroad towns."
A fourth category would be mineral water towns that sprang up, most in the 1880s, during the mineral water craze that swept the country. In a way, these towns might be considered water towns, too, but the water was a specific type--mineral water from springs sought for its supposed medicinal properties as opposed to water for merely quenching thirst or streams for navigating boats on. So, I consider these towns a separate category, and I've talked about them on this blog before. The most noted example is Eureka Springs, but there are numerous others.
Are there other categories I've omitted? Do towns situated near a main thoroughfare, such as the possibility of Lebanon and Marshfield I mentioned above, constitute a fifth category? How about county seats located where they were simply because the site was near the center of the county?  
  

William Taylor's Murder of Nathan Gann

I have mentioned Elkton in Hickory County, Missouri, a couple of times previously on this blog--once in connection with infamous fan dancer Sally Rand, who was born there in the very early 1900s.
Elkton was also the setting for a notorious murder in the fall of 1876. On October 23 of that year, William Taylor, an older family man of about 55; and Nathan Gann, a young single man of about 25; and several other men were pitching horsehoes and engaging in some friendly banter when Taylor took offense at something Gann said or did. They argued and had to be separated by the other men. The quarrel resumed a couple of times later in the day, but the other men again intervened. Finally, Taylor went home and got his gun and started back to town, telling several people along the way that Gann would be a dead man before the sun went down. In town, he went into a store and spotted a man turned away from him whom he took to be Gann. He pointed his shotgun at the man's back and was getting ready to pull the trigger when the man turned around, and he realized it wasn't Gann. He turned, marched out of the store, and met Gann just outside the door. Without a word of warning, he fired a load of buckshot into Gann, who collapsed and died within minutes.
Taylor was apprehended and indicted for murder in Hickory County, but he took a change of venue to Webster County. The case was argued at Marshfield in the spring of 1877, and Taylor was convicted on April 3 and sentenced to hang in May. However, he later was granted a new trial on appeal and was given a fifteen-year prison sentence.

The Hanging of Sam Orr

In the late afternoon of December 14, 1872, some unknown men called at the home of George W. Davis in Christian County, Missouri, and inquired about feed for their horses. They were referred to the barn, where Davis was doing his evening chores. After exchanging a few words with Davis, the men opened fire on him, hitting him several times in different parts of the body. The men fled and Davis was carried into his house dead.
At first, several parties who had previously assaulted Davis were suspected of the crime, but suspicion soon settled on Sam Orr and Albert Cox. They were indicted in Christian County for murder, but in the meantime, they had fled the country. Orr was captured in June of 1874 at St. Joseph and brought back to the Springfield jail but escaped in December. Cox, meanwhile, was captured in Texas and brought back to Missouri to stand trial.
Orr was caught again, this time in Arkansas, and brought back a second time in March of 1875. After several continuances and changes of venue, he was finally convicted in Lawrence County of first degree murder and scheduled to hang on May 3, 1877. He was granted a delay, and the date was rescheduled for May 18. His hanging at Mt. Vernon on the latter date was, according to Goodspeed's History of Lawrence County "a dreadful spectacle." A large crowd gathered to watch the murderer "launched into eternity. Owing to some error, the wretch was choked slowly before that crowd, taking twenty-three minutes to die."
After Orr had been convicted and while he was waiting to swing, Cox was also convicted and sentenced to hang.  

Leeper's Killing of Ferguson in Springfield, 1865

In the summer of 1865, even though the Civil War was officially over, Springfield was still an army post with a considerable number of soldiers and government employees stationed there. On August 4, two men employed as teamsters arrived at Fort No. 5 (near present-day St. Louis Street and John Q. Hammons Parkway) to haul some logs. One of them, a man of about 45 named Harrison J. Ferguson, complained to one of the men who was overseeing the loading of the wagons that some of the logs were too long for his wagon bed. The other teamster, a young man named Jerome J. Leeper, overheard what was said and interjected that Ferguson's wagon was just as long as his (Leeper's) and that Ferguson could haul the logs just as well as he could. Ferguson told Leeper that he wasn't talking to him and for him to mind his own business. Leeper warned Ferguson not to give him any of his lip, and he started getting down from his wagon. As the argument escalated, Ferguson called Leeper a son of a bitch, and he too, started to climb down from his wagon. Leeper immediately picked up a large rock and threw it at Ferguson, striking him in the head. Ferguson slumped against the wheel of his wagon, and Leeper struck him in the head with another rock. Ferguson was taken to the nearby Berry Hospital (former home of Springfield citizen D. D. Berry), but he died before he got there or shortly after arrival. A coroner's inquest was held at the hospital the next day.
Meanwhile, Leeper, who was already out on bail awaiting trial for horse theft when he killed Ferguson, fled the country. He reportedly lived in Arkansas for several years after the murder but was not heard from again in Springfield until he showed back up in August of 1869, was arrested by the city marshal and a deputy sheriff, and lodged in the county jail.
I have not yet investigated what happened to Leeper afterwards. I don't know whether he was found guilty or not guilty or perhaps escaped again before coming to trial. Greene County Circuit Court records show that his bond in the horse stealing case was forfeited in 1866 but that this judgment was set aside in January 1867 after Leeper appeared in court with his attorney, but no mention of the murder case at that time. I have not yet checked later records.    

1860s Baseball

I recently came across a piece in the May 16, 1867 edition of the Springfield Leader reporting on a baseball game that had been held in Springfield a few days before. This was in the days before Major League Baseball and, indeed, before any kind of professional baseball in the U. S. However, there were amateur baseball clubs throughout the country, and the sport was becoming very popular. Its popularity had been spread partly by the Civil War. Soldiers from regions of the country where the game was popular, such as the Northeast, had brought the sport to other regions, but the rules of the game still lacked complete uniformity, varying from one region to another.
The game in Springfield involved the Springfield Base Ball Club, and it took place south of Fort No. 2, which was situated near the intersection of South Street and Mt. Vernon Street. According to the Leader, "There was quite a number of spectators present, including several ladies."
What I found interesting was the box score that was published along with the article. The only statistics given were outs and runs. On one of the teams, one of the players scored 12 runs by himself and made only two outs. The team total for runs was 86. Although the other team scored only 34 runs, the teams obviously placed very little premium on defense or were simply not very good defensively, at least not by modern standards. Also, the players on both teams were listed by position: catcher, pitcher, shortstop, first base, second base, third base, left field, center field, and right field. I assume this means they probably batted in that order as well, but perhaps not.

Alf Bolin: Just the Facts, Part II

The amount of firsthand documentation about the activities of notorious guerrilla Alf Bolin while he was still alive is very scant. Contemporaneous sources of information about his death are also few and far between, but we can learn a little bit more from primary sources about his death than we know about his life.
Sometime around the beginning of 1862, the Federal army placed a bounty on the head of Alf Bolin because of his murdering and pillaging. According to Federals on the Frontier, the Civil War diary of Sergeant Benjamin F. McIntyre, a soldier of the 1st Iowa Cavalry named Zack Thomas set out to collect the reward by implementing a scheme hatched by Union officials. Dressed as a southern soldier or "butternut," Thomas made his way south from Springfield to southern Taney County near the Arkansas border, where Bolin was known to hide out. Here Thomas stopped about the first of February, 1863, at the home of a woman who knew Bolin and who had promised to help carry out the scheme. (Later accounts, which appear to have considerable merit, reveal that the woman was a Mrs. Foster, and that she agreed to cooperate in order to gain the freedom of her husband, a Confederate sympathizer who had been arrested by Union authorities.) The woman went to where Bolin was staying and asked him to come to her cabin the next morning. When Bolin arrived, Thomas, who was introduced as a southern soldier, bided his time while awaiting an opportunity to kill the desperado. Finally, as Bolin leaned down near the cabin's fireplace, Thomas clubbed him over the head with a broken plow coulter, causing his death. (Later versions of the story suggest that Bolin started to revive a short while after being struck in the head and had to be finished off with gunfire.)
McIntyre was present when Bolin's body was brought to Forsyth the next day, February 2, and he went to view the corpse. He described Bolin as a "large sinewey man" who "must have been of great strength and indurence." According to McIntyre, Bolin had boasted of killing forty Union men and had been a terror to several counties in southern Missouri. Another contemporaneous source, a letter written at Forsyth by Madison Day of the 14th Missouri State Militia Cavalry on February 2, the day Bolin was brought in, also describes Bolin as a desperado--specifically a "highway robber and murderer."
The last sentence of McIntyre's February 2 diary entry tells us that plans called for Bolin's body to be sent to Springfield as proof of his death so that the reward could be collected by the appropriate parties. The next thing we know from contemporaneous sources is that Bolin's head, severed from his body, did arrive in Springfield on the evening of February 4. This we know from a brief piece written by a Springfield correspondent on February 5 that appeared in a St. Louis newspaper a week later. Exactly what happened between Forsyth and Springfield is less certain, but according to seemingly reliable accounts that were written later, the head was chopped off with an ax about a mile or so north of Forsyth and the body buried at the road side. The head was then placed in a wooden box and taken to Ozark where it was displayed on a pole. It was also supposedly displayed for public viewing after it reached Springfield on the evening of the 4th.
What we can fairly safely conclude from the available evidence is that Alf Bolin was, in fact, a notorious bushwhacker who operated in the Taney County area during the Civil War, but he almost certainly was not as notorious as his legend would lead one to believe. His claim to have killed 40 men, for instance, was almost surely an exaggeration, and some of the ones he did kill were probably not killed by him personally but by men associated with him. (We know from contemporaneous sources, for example, that Old Man Budd, who was supposedly one of Bolin's victims, was actually killed in the early fall of 1861 by a gang of men who had previously been part of Missouri State Guard captain David Jackson's command and who were now led by a man named Hilliard. Bolin may have been in the gang, but he wasn't the leader.)       

Alf Bolin: Just the Facts, Part I

I published a post recently in which I decried the fact that so much misinformation, outright falsehood, and pure speculation about notorious Civil War bushwhacker Alf Bolin has seemingly become accepted as truth. Subsequently, a reader responded that he would like to see a chronicling of what is actually known for sure about Bolin, and I said I would try to provide such a chronicle. So, here goes.
The legend of Alf Bolin says that he grew up in the area of Christian, Taney, and Stone counties. In almost all versions of the legend, he was supposedly reared in a foster family because his parents were either dead or had abandoned him. In most versions of the story, the foster family was the Bilyeu family of Christian County, although one version of the legend that I know about says he was raised by the Cloud family of Stone County.
However, even these basic elements of Alf Bolin's early life cannot be substantiated by firsthand documentation. I have not been able to find Bolin in either the 1850 or the 1860 census, and, as far as I know, no one else has either. About the only thing I've been able to confirm is that Bolin was NOT living with either the Bilyeu family or the Cloud family at the time of the 1860 census. The letter about Bolin I recently referenced, which was published in a Springfield newspaper only a few years after the close of the Civil War, calls into question even the idea that Bolin was an orphan, because it suggests that Bolin's mother was still alive and a presence in his life during the war. The only Alf or Alfred Bolin living in Missouri at the time of the 1860 census who was anywhere near the right age to be the desperate bushwhacker was living in southeast Missouri near the Bolin brothers who became infamous during the war in that part of the state--John F., Nathan, etc. However, the Alfred Bolin of southeast Missouri was still living there in 1870. So, he was obviously not THE Alf Bolin. I do believe, though, that the two may have been related--perhaps even named after a common ancestor. One of the legends about Alf Bolin even suggests that he traveled east from the Taney County area about the time the war broke out to try to find his father before returning to the Forsyth area. There was also a 26-year-old man named "Alford Bowling" living in Stone County not far from the Clouds at the time of the 1860 census, but according to one of the proponents of the "Clouds as foster family" hypothesis, this person also could not have been THE Alf Bolin, although I'm not sure what proof exists that this is not our man. Until I see such proof, I'll keep open the possibility that this could be the Alf Bolin we're looking for. It is, of course, possible that Alf Bolin was simply missed in the 1860 census. The omission of people from early census records is something that did occur with some regularity but not with the frequency that beginning genealogists might think. More often they were listed under a variant spelling of their name or in a household headed by someone with a different name. I'm not saying that is necessarily the case here, but it's a possibility.
The earliest mention of Alf Bolin in contemperaneous records that I know about appears in a letter from Springfield dated July 18, 1862, in which a correspondent to the New York Times stated, "A young man, named Bowling, has devastated a strip of country thirty miles in width, between Arkansas and Missouri. Five or six others are associated with him. Armed with a long rifle...he lurks by the roadside to murder National soldiers and known Union men. You can no more find him by searching for him than you can find some particular deer in the forest. He never acknowledges having killed anyone, but he sometimes says, 'If my gun had not snapped, I would have tumbled a Federal over today.' It is thought that he has killed at least thirty men with his own hands. Union men have fled in fear of their lives, leaving their houses empty and their grain standing ungathered in the field. Secessionists have fled, dreading that vengeance will be taken upon them for his crimes." This letter lends some credence to the idea that Bolin was a terror to the countryside and that he may very well have killed a good number of Federal soldiers and/or Union citizens, but it seems to contradict the notion that he was indiscriminate in his killing.
Another contemporaneous source is a report written by Major John C. Wilbur at Ozark, dated August 10, 1862. Wilbur had just returned from a scout to Forsyth and beyond, and his scouting party had encountered a group of bushwhackers west of Forsyth along the White River. Some of the Federal scouts gave chase south of the river and "into the hills toward Laten's Mills, where I learn Boler has a band of horse-thieves, numbering some 50 men." Although Bolin's name is misspelled, "Boler" is almost certainly a reference to Alf Bolin. I have not seen the original document, but it is quite possible that the "n" in his name was simply mistranscribed as an "r." "Laten's Mills" was a reference to Layton Mill, which was located near the Missouri-Arkansas line about three miles south of the Murder Rocks, where Bolin supposedly killed many of his victims. In his report, Wilbur goes on to say that his advance guard was fired on by a party of five men belonging to Boler's command. When the Federals returned fire, the guerrillas reportedly threw their guns away and scattered into the woods to keep from being captured or killed.
The next contemperaneous reference to Alf Bolin that I know about appears in an October 14, 1862 letter written from Springfield by Colonel Clark Wright of the 6th Missouri Cavalry that can be found in the Union Provost Marshals' Papers. In the letter, Wright says he has received reports of a gang of bushwhackers under Bolin committing depredations west of Bower's Mills. This is surely a reference to Alf Bolin, but it also almost as certain that Wright had been misinformed. Bower's Mills was located on the Lawrence-Jasper county line fifty miles west of Springfield and even farther from Forsyth. It's unlikely Bolin had roamed that far afield.
The next contemperaneous references to Bolin concern his death, and I'll save those for next time.

Cherokee Feud

In the early 1800s, a feud developed among the Cherokee Indians of the southeastern United States over the question of removal to western lands. One group felt removal was inevitable and wanted to reach a treaty with the U. S. government for removal that provided the best terms possible for the Indians. This group, called the Treaty Party, was led by Major Ridge, his son John Ridge, and his nephews Elias Boudinot and Stand Watie. Members of the Treaty Party tended to be mixed race Indians who had already assimilated into white society to some degree. Members of the other group, called the Anti-Treaty Party, tended to be full-blooded Cherokees, and they vigorously opposed removal from the tribe's ancestral lands. The group was led by John Ross, who ironically was only one-eighth Cherokee himself.
The Treaty Party's belief that removal was inevitable proved correct, and the Indians were forcibly removed to present-day Oklahoma in the late 1830s. The feud, however, continued after the arrival of the Cherokees in Indian Territory, partly because the Anti-Treaty Party blamed the Treaty Party for the infamous Trail of Tears on which so many of the Cherokees died of starvation, disease, and hardship. On June 21, 1839, the leaders of the Anti-Treaty Party met and pronounced a death sentence on Boudinot, Watie, and the two Ridges for their role in relinquishing the ancestral lands, which was considered a capital offense under "blood law."
The next day Boudinot and the two Ridges were killed by members of the Anti-Treaty Party, while Stand Watie survived an attempt on his life the same day and became the undisputed leader of the Treaty Party. During the next several years, the feud between the two factions intensified, as Watie's group, which included the infamous Starr family, sought revenge for the June 1839 killings. In 1842, Watie partially avenged the murders (as he considered the killings) when he killed a man named James Foreman, who had participated in the killing of Major Ridge. Both sides, however, continued to carry out raids against the other into the mid-1840s.
One chapter of my Two Civil War Battles of Newtonia discusses the removal of the Cherokees, the feud between the two factions, and how the feud carried over even into the Civil War. Virtually all the sources I consulted in writing the chapter were secondary sources, but I recently ran across an 1846 newspaper article about an incident that represented an outbreaking or resumption of the feud. Under the headline "Another Indian Murder," the piece (which was reprinted in the Springfield Advertiser on March 14, 1846 from a prior issue of the Arkansas Intelligencer) reported that Ta-ka-tan-ka, leader of the police at the time James Starr was killed, had recently been killed himself. After briefly relating the contradictory reports concerning the exact circumstances of Ta-ka-tan-ka's killing, the newspaper journalist opined, "Again, we fear there will commence a series of murders by both parties. The friends of Ta-ka-tan-ka will certainly take revenge on some one, whether he be the real offender or not; and in return, the friends of Starr will be equally sure to kill some of the other party."
 

Odds & Ends

First I need to append an addendum to my recent post about Pleasant Hope and Pin Hook. I said in that post that I had recently read a newspaper article in an 1872 Springfield newspaper mentioning that the new town of Pleasant Hope was situated near where Pin Hook used to be. Apparently, however, Pleasant Hope was not all that new in 1872, because just a day or two ago I ran onto another piece in a different Springfield newspaper, this one from late 1865, just a few months after the Civil War ended, in which Pleasant Hope is mentioned as a stop on a mail delivery route from Bolivar. So, I still don't know exactly when Pleasant Hope began as a town, but apparently its forerunner, Pin Hook, predated the Civil War.
A reader responded to my recent post about Alf Bolin agreeing that a lot of what has been handed down about Bolin is probably untrue or exaggerated and saying that he would like to see a post dealing with what we do know to be true about Bolin. So, that is something I have in mind for the future. There's actually not a whole lot about him that can be proved, but I'll see what I can come up with.
I'm happy to report that it was announced this past weekend at the Missouri Writers' Guild annual conference that my Wicked Joplin book won first place in the Best Book category of the guild's annual contests. My Civil War Springfield book took second place in the Major Work Award category (the guild's most prestigious award), and I also won a second place in the Best Article category for my story about the Joplin Spook Light that appeared in the Mysteries of the Ozarks, Vol. 3.

In Defense of Alf Bolin

Alf Bolin, a Civil War bushwhacker in the Taney County, Missouri, area, was, according to legend, one of the worst fiends who ever lived. The legend holds that Bolin slew upwards of forty people and was largely indscriminate in his heinous crimes, killing defenseless old men as well as young boys, although the legend does allow that he tended to target loyal citizens more than Southern sympathizers.
The problem with the legend is that very little of it can be documented, and much of it is probably untrue. The main reason it gained credence more than likely had to do with the unusual circumstances of his death. With a Federal bounty on his head, Bolin was double crossed by people he thought were his friends and killed in a scheme hatched by Yankee authorities. Then his corpse was decapitated and his head taken into Ozark and later Springfield for public display.
As the story of Alf Bolin's life and death was told and retold, details of his life no doubt had to be invented or the real details embellished so that they were just as sensational as the details of his death. Thus, the legend grew in the retelling until Alf Bolin became almost a caricature of evil.
The legend of Alf Bolin as bogeyman that has been handed down is, understandably, told mostly from a Union perspective, but I recently ran across a letter published in an 1872 Springfield newspaper showing that, where Alf Bolin was concerned, the Union side had no monopoly on exaggeration. The letter was written by a correspondent calling himself simply "Reb," and it is as full of absurd claptrap as the Union legend.
According to the Southern version of Bolin's story, Alf and about ten or twelve other Taney County men banded together at the beginning of the Civil War for their own protection but vowed not to join either army. However, all of the men except Bolin betrayed their pledge as soon as the Union army made its appearance in the region, as they quickly enlisted in Federal service. To prove their loyalty, they almost immediately arrested their old pal Bolin and started with him to Springfield. When Bolin tried to escape on the way to Springfield, the men riddled him with bullets and left him for dead beside the road, but Bolin survived and eventually killed all of his betrayers, thereby "earning for himself at the same time the reputation of being a desperado." Stories unfairly representing Bolin to be a fiend were soon circulated and a bounty placed on his head. Shortly afterwards, a party of Yankees started in pursuit of the incarnate devil and went to his mother's home asking his wheareabouts. When "the old and tottering mother of the victim" refused to tell, the low-life Yankees whipped her with a cowhide. Enraged by this act, Bolin "watched his opportunity and put a ball through the brain of each one who took part in the dastardly act of whipping his mother."
The rest of the letter, detailing the Yankee scheme for capturing and killing Bolin, follows the Union version of the legend fairly closely, and, in fact, I think it's fairly safe to say that the part of the legend involving Bolin's death that has been handed down is probably pretty accurate. I think it's just as safe to say, however, that the Union version and this "Reb" version of Bolin's Civil War career prior to the events surrounding his death are both a bunch of malarkey. Both versions may contain certain elements of truth, but Bolin's Civil War "career" was almost certainly much less sensational than either version would suggest.