The Murder of Vernon County Sheriff Joseph Bailey

A lot of notorious incidents happened in Missouri during the years after the Civil War. Many of them arose from resentment left over from the war or were at least related to the war in some way. One post-Civil War incident in southwest Missouri that I was not aware of until recently is the murder on March 26, 1867, of Joseph Bailey, the sheriff of Vernon County. Even though Bailey had been a general in the Union Army and the young men accused of his murder had reportedly been Confederate bushwhackers, the incident was apparently not directly related to the Civil War, or if so, the connection is not known.
Bailey was an engineer during the war who gained recognition for saving the Union's Army of the Gulf from almost certain capture and/or defeat on the Red River in the spring of 1864. A lieutenant-colonel at the time, Bailey was shortly afterwards promoted to colonel. Toward the end of the war, he was nominated for promotion to brigadier general, but the nomination expired without Senate confirmation. He was again nominated for brigadier general after the war was over and he had already left the service, and the promotion was confirmed to date from November of 1864.
In October of 1865, Bailey moved to Vernon County, and he was elected sheriff the following year. On March 25, 1867, he received a complaint that two brothers living northwest of Nevada, Perry and Lewis Pixley, had stolen a hog from a neighbor, and he went out to arrest the pair the next day. The brothers went with the sheriff freely at first, and he allowed them to keep their weapons. Part way back to Nevada, however, the desperate duo assassinated the sheriff and made their getaway. A $3,000 reward was offered locally for the capture of the pair, and the Missouri governor issued a proclamation offering another $300. The proclamation contained descriptions of the wanted men. Lewis Pixley was listed as about 25 or 26 years old, about 5' 11" and about 180 pounds. His brother was listed as about 22 years of age, about 5'10" and about 175 pounds. Both had light hair.
The Pixleys, who were never captured, were the sons of Plummer Pixley of Chariton County, Missouri. Plummer had been killed near the family home toward the end of the Civil War, but General Bailey had no connection to the murder, or at least none that anyone is apparently aware of. As far as the Pixleys having been Confederate bushwhackers, a Captain Pixley was a member of the Missouri State Guard in 1861, and this person could have been the older brother. In any case, the Pixley brothers were probably related to the captain, even if he was not one of them, because the captain is known to have come from the same general area where Plummer Pixley lived and Pixley is an uncommon name. There is no evidence that I am aware of, however, that Captain Pixley went on to become a notorious bushwhacker, as the brothers reputedly did.

Disbandment of the Regulators

I wrote briefly about the Regulators of Greene County, Missouri, on this blog approximately four years ago. The subject also constitutes a chapter in my book entitled Ozarks Gunfights and Other Notorious Incidents. Centered around Walnut Grove, the Honest Man's League, as the Regulators were officially known, was a vigilante group whose avowed purpose was to combat an outbreak of lawlessness that the civil authorities seemed unable to contain. During the spring and early summer of 1866, the group lynched three or four men suspected of crimes, and the outbreak of lawlessness quickly subsided.
I mentioned in my previous post about the Regulators that they held a mass meeting in northwest Greene County on July 28, 1866, but that they dissolved shortly afterwards because they had been so effective in stemming the tide of crime. Apparently, however, as I recently discovered, the group was not formally disbanded until the following spring.
On April 6, 1867, the Regulators held a meeting at Cave Spring in northwest Greene County in which the group essentially announced that it would no longer be active, because it had already "effected an important object in favor of the honest community." The group resolved that it would now "resort to 'the first law of nature' only in cases of extreme necessity." Another resolution was adopted that said, since the civil authorities had recently shown a determination to bring criminals to justice, the Regulators would fully support those authorities. The group requested that the proceedings of their meeting be published in both Springfield newspapers, the Leader and the Patriot.
Those attending the meeting included L.P. Downing, S.G. Appleby, John R. Earnest, John Evans, James Boston, R.C. Julian, Wesley Wadlow, S. Mason, Thomas Yeakley, James Callison, George W. Sloan, Jacob Longayer, Secretary T.W. Coltrane, and President John Small.

Emily Newell Blair

Perhaps you've never heard of Emily Newell Blair before. I was only vaguely aware of her myself until I started doing a little research on her, and what little awareness of her I had before that was due entirely to the fact that she was born in Joplin, where I live, and grew up in nearby Carthage. She is someone that I feel I should have known more about already, though, because she was one of the more famous and accomplished women ever to come out of southwest Missouri.
Her father, James P. Newell, was a lawyer who moved to Joplin in 1874 and invested in the lead-mining boom that had recently gotten underway there. Emily was born in 1877. Her father was elected as the county recorder of deeds in 1883, and the family moved to the county seat of Carthage, where Emily was an outstanding student at Carthage High School, graduating in 1894. She attended Goucher College and the University of Missouri before returning to Carthage to take care of her ailing father.
In 1900, she married Harry Wallace Blair at Carthage. He became a lawyer, and Emily became active in the Missouri Equal Suffrage Association. After World War I broke out, her husband went into the military, and Emily became active in the Missouri Woman's Committee of the Council of Defense. Later she worked for the Council of National Defense in Washington, DC.
In 1920, Emily helped found the League of Women Voters, and in 1922 helped found and became president of the Women's National Democratic Club. While still president of this organization, she also became the first woman to hold a prominent position in the Democratic Party, becoming national vice chairman. She campaigned for Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, and they became friends. Mrs. Blair was also friends with other powerful figures in the party, such as Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, and she and her husband were among the social elite of Washington, DC.
In addition, she served as editor of Good Housekeeping from 1925 to 1934. In 1944, Emily retired from active political and social life after suffering a stroke. She died in Alexandria, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC, in 1951.

Missouri State Guard Again

One last entry about the Missouri State Guard and then I'll move on to a different subject. I need to correct a couple of things I said in my post of November 28 about the pay of Missouri State Guard soldiers during the Civil War.
First, I said that I didn't know how the pay of MSG soldiers compared to that of U.S. soldiers or Confederate soldiers. Apparently, the answer is that MSG soldiers and U.S. soldiers were paid exactly the same. When the Missouri State Guard was created in 1861, its laws specified that soldiers would receive the same pay as soldiers of corresponding rank in the U.S. Army.
Secondly, I said that the clothes of State Guard soldiers were not paid for. That is only partly true, because I have discovered that they were given a clothing allowance of $3.00 per month. Only if the cost of the clothes they had been issued exceeded the total of their monthly allowances were they charged for their clothing upon discharge as I had previously stated. In light of this new information, being required to pay $3.50 for a pair of woolen pants, for example, doesn't seem so bad.
Discharged soldiers were also given a travel allowance at the rate of twenty miles a day and twenty cents a day. I assume that meant, for example, if they had to travel forty miles to get home and it took them two days to get there, they were paid forty cents, but if it took them three days to get there, they were still paid only forty cents; and if they had to travel less than twenty miles, they apparently weren't paid at all.
During November and December of 1861, many of the entries in the Missouri State Guard Letter and Order Book pertained to the anticipated transfer of General Price, commanding the State Guard, and many of his soldiers out of the State Guard and into the Confederate Army. One entry, for instance, instructed officers and soldiers who had claims for expenses incurred in waging war against the United States to prepare those claims so that they could be submitted to the Confederate government for payment when the transfer was finalized, in accordance with the terms of the treaty that Governor Jackson's Missouri state government in exile and the CSA had lately entered into perfecting Missouri's admission to the Confederacy. An interesting entry on December 2 stated that a separate camp was to be established for those soldiers who were going to enter the Confederate Army. Thus those soldiers were removed from the ones who were to remain in the State Guard or who were going to be discharged.

Civil War Punishment

Last time I wrote about the pay received by soldiers in the Missouri State Guard, as recorded in its Letter and Order Book. The same source also has a couple of interesting items illustrating how soldiers who committed crimes and misdeeds were punished.
In early November of 1861, the Guard held a court martial near Pineville for two soldiers, both of whom had been accused of stealing and deserting the army in Newton County a couple of weeks earlier. One of them, Rufus Walbridge, was found guilty and sentenced to receive fifty lashes on the morning of November 9 and dishonorably discharged. The sentence read as follows: "His back will be stripped, he will be tied by the hands to a tree where 50 lashes will be inflicted upon his bare back, well laid on with a raw hide or hickory, and will there receive a dishonorable discharge and be escorted beyond the limits of the camp and then turned loose." No doubt, had the same crimes occurred during battle, particularly the desertion, Rufus would have received an even more severe punishment--probably execution. The other soldier, Conrad Leibricht, was found not guilty, released from confinement, and returned to his company.
On December 4, another court martial was held on the Sac River near Osceola. Timothy Martin, a citizen of Hickory County, was accused of premeditatedly killing Jacob Kirtemeyer in Hickory County on or about July 31, 1861. He was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged in the town of Osceola on December 6, 1861 between ten and eleven o'clock in the morning. Apparently, however, the sentence was overturned or Martin escaped, because he was still living in Hickory County at the time of the 1870 census. He was ten years older than he was at the time of the 1860 census, when he was 23. Also, I think the actual name of his victim was Jacob Kirkhart, not Jacob Kirtemeyer. Jacob Kirkhart is the only person with a name even close to Jacob Kirtemeyer living anywhere near Hickory County in 1860. And Jacob Kirkhart seems to be missing from the 1870 census (probably because he was dead).

Civil War Pay

Recently I was looking through the Missouri State Guard Letter and Order Book 1861-1862 as transcribed by James E. McGhee, and one page in the book about soldiers' pay caught my eye. I'm not sure how closely the pay received by soldiers in the Missouri State Guard corresponds to the pay received by soldiers in the Union Army or the Confederate Army, but I doubt that the difference was very great.
The pay varied, of course, according to rank but also according to whether the soldier was in an infantry unit or in a cavalry or artillery unit. Somewhat surprising to me, soldiers in infantry units tended to receive less than those in cavalry or artillery units, particularly at the lower ranks.
A sergeant major received $21 per month, a quartermaster sergeant also received $21, and a sergeant received $17, regardless of branch. However, artillery or cavalry corporals received $14 while infantry corporals received only $13. Artillery or cavalry privates received $12, while infantry privates received just $11.
That wasn't much money to live on, even in 1861, but then, I guess, the soldiers didn't have a lot of expenses either. Food, of course, was paid for, although there were times when little was available. Clothes, however, were not paid for. Boots and so forth were sometimes issued at or shortly after enlistment, but the soldiers were charged for those items when settling up their accounts upon their discharges. And the amount they were paid seems very small in comparison to the amount they were charged for clothing. A pair of woolen pants cost $3.50, for instance, about one-third of a private's monthly pay. Cotton pants were $2.00. A pair of boots was $3.50. A winter coat was $8.00, and an overcoat was $6.00, but if you could get by with just a summer coat, that was only $2.50.
However you look at, a Civil War soldier wasn't left with much money to save or send home or spend on personal items. Viewed from today's perspective, $11.00 a month seems like a paltry sum, but when I stop and think about it, I recall that I was paid only about $31 or $32 a month when I first went into the U.S. Army in 1969 as a basic training trainee. The pay, even for trainees, has gone up a lot since then. But from 1861 to 1969, a period of 108 years, the pay only went up about $20. However, I should also add, to satisfy the terms of full disclosure, that my pay of $31 didn't last very long. As soon as I completed by eight weeks of basic, I was bumped up to the princely sum of about $115.

John David Mefford Again

John David Mefford was a character I wrote about in the "Jayhawker to Joplinite" chapter of my Wicked Joplin book. During the Civil War, Mefford was a captain in a Kansas cavalry unit. Stationed primarily at Fort Scott, he participated in the First Battle of Newtonia in September of 1862 and also operated against partisan rangers like Thomas R. Livingston. In 1864, he was captured in Arkansas and spent most of the rest of the war in a Confederate prison. Toward the end of the war (maybe while he was still a prisoner) he was promoted to major, a title that he wore proudly the rest of his life. He went by J.D. or David but was simply called "Major Mefford" most of the time.
I initially wrote about Mefford in my Wicked Joplin book because he was involved to a large extent in the saloon scene in early Joplin and in the gambling scene to a lesser extent. He ran at least three different saloons at various times from the 1870s until he died shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. He was indicted on numerous occasions for minor liquor offenses like selling liquor on Sunday or selling liquor without a license. Mefford also ran a saloon in Galena, Kansas, for awhile and, like nearly everyone else who came to Joplin in the early days, tried his hand at mining a time or two.
Until recently, however, I didn't realize just how notorious Mefford was. I noted in my book that he lived in Leavenworth, Kansas, for awhile before coming to Joplin, but I didn't know at the time why he had lived in Leavenworth. The reason was that he was in prison.
After the Civil War, Mefford returned to Fort Scott, where he had been stationed, and took up residence there. He met and married a young woman who lived there. However, in 1867, he killed a man named Thomas Dilworth, was convicted of murder, and sent to prison.
About 1871, Mefford was pardoned out of prison, and he came to Joplin shortly afterward. He was already living at Joplin in the spring of 1873 when he and his wife took a trip to Fort Scott to see her parents. While there, the "notorious Major Mefford," as one newspaper report called him, was arrested and briefly detained under suspicion of being somehow in cahoots with the Bender family in their bloody deeds.

Girl Scout Murders

I normally don't think of events that happened within the past fifty years or so (within the span of my memory) as history, and consequently I seldom write about such events. However, the murder of three girl scouts between the ages of 8 and 10 in June of 1977 in rural Mayes County, Oklahoma, at the western edge of the Ozarks stands out in my memory so much that I'm going to make an exception.
Sunday, June 12, 1977, was the first day of camp at Camp Scott, located near Locust Grove. A rain came up that evening, and the three girls huddled together in their tent in a wooded area at the edge of the camp. The next morning a camp counselor discovered the dead bodies of all three girls not far from the tent. One of the girls had been strangled and the other two bludgeoned to death. They had also been sexually molested. Two months prior to the crime, a camp counselor's belongings had been ransacked, her doughnuts stolen, and an ominous note left in the empty doughnut box saying that three girls would be murdered. However, the note was dismissed as a prank.
Gene Leroy Hart, a Native American who had grown up in the immediate area and who had been a star athlete in high school at Locust Grove, was almost immediately suspected of the crime. At the time of the crime, he was a fugitive from justice, having escaped from jail about three or four years earlier after being convicted of raping two pregnant women. He managed to elude capture for almost another year by hiding out in the rugged Cookson Hills that he was so familiar with and because, it is said, he had the help of friends in the area. When he was finally arrested, the case was considered solved, as the local sheriff announced that he was positive that Hart was guilty.
In a surprising verdict, however, Hart was found not guilty. In the end, though, it made little difference (at least from his standpoint), since he was sent back to prison to finish the term of 300 and some-odd years he had to serve for the rapes he had previously been convicted of. Not long afterwards he died while exercising in the prison yard, reportedly of a heart attack. In 2008, DNA testing not available at the time of the crimes was conducted on evidence taken from the scene, but it proved inconclusive, since the samples were too old.
The reason this event is so memorable to me is that it seemed so horrific and because the news coverage about it was so prevalent. The story dominated the TV news here in Joplin when it first happened, and the local stations continued to follow the story when Hart was captured, during his trial, and when he died in prison. And Camp Scott was not even in the normal viewing area of the Joplin stations. Camp Scott, which closed in the aftermath of the crimes, was nearer to Tulsa and also probably nearer to Fayetteville than to Joplin.

Tomato Industry

Last time I wrote about the apple industry in the Ozarks during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The tomato industry was also very important to the Ozarks economy in years past, although the peak of the tomato industry came a little bit later than the peak of the apple industry. Tomato growing and canning as a commercial enterprise began in the Ozarks sometime in the 1890s or thereabouts, reached a peak during the 1920s and 1930s, tailed off dramatically around the time of World War II, and died out completely around the 1950s or 1960s.
The tomato industry arose in the Ozarks primarily because growing tomatoes was well suited to small farms such as those in the Ozarks on which a variety of crops were grown. Tomato canning factories, most of them family owned or otherwise small in scope, popped up all over the place. Almost every community of any size had a canning factory, and tomatoes were sometimes called the "red gold of the Ozarks."
Fair Grove, the small town where I grew up, once had a canning factory. When I was growing up there during the 1950s, an old, ramshackle building that had formerly housed the factory still stood, but it had been abandoned a number of years earlier. In fact, I believe my friend and fellow writer Marilyn Smith, a lifelong resident of Fair Grove, may have written an article a number of years ago for The Ozarks Mountaineer about Fair Grove's tomato canning operation.
There were a number of reasons why growing tomatoes as a commercial industry died out in the Ozarks. The main reason was the simple fact that the small farms on which a variety of crops were grown began to die out or be replaced by more specialized farms. Also, as the machinery at the canning factories became obsolete or needed repair, many canners could not afford to update. In addition, the Ozarks began to lag behind places like California, where large, flat farms and moderate temperatures allowed for growing tomatoes in large quantities almost year round.
Today, many small farmers in the Ozarks still grow tomatoes and sell what their own families cannot consume. But most of these are usually small-scale operations in which the tomatoes are sold along the roadside or at farmers' markets rather than large-scale operations in which tomatoes are shipped to other parts of the country as they were during the heyday of the tomato industry in the Ozarks.

Apple Industry

There are still a few commercial apple orchards in the Ozarks. For instance, I know that there are at least one or two such orchards in southwest Missouri near Marionville. But these are not large orchards, and most of what they produce is sold locally. The apple industry in the Ozarks is "small potatoes," or should I say "small apples," compared to what it used to be in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
In 1890, Missouri produced 25,000,000 bushels of apples and was the leading apple producer in the U.S. Today, the state produces only about 1,000,000 bushels, which represents less than one half of one percent of total U.S. production. Much of the industry was centered in the southwest and south-central part of the state (i.e. the Ozarks).
The peak years in Arkansas came later. In 1919, when apple production in the state was at its zenith, Arkansas produced about 5,000,000 bushels, and the state's apple industry was centered in northwest Arkansas, particularly Benton and Washington counties. In 1900, 40,000 acres were devoted to apple orchards in Benton County alone. Compare that to the fact that today the total number of acres devoted to growing apples in the whole state of Missouri is only about 3,000.
The advent of the railroad in the late 1800s led to the boom in the apple industry in the Ozarks. On the other hand, there were a number of factors that led to its demise. Among them were drought, insects and disease, the mixing of seeds from different varieties, a growing reputation for shipping poor quality fruit, and the introduction of poor varieties, such as the Ben Davis.
Speaking of the Ben Davis, one of the curiosities left over from the boom days of the apple industry in the Ozarks is the small community of Bendavis, located on Highway 38 in Texas County, Missouri. It was platted about 1910 by James J. Burns, who hoped to build a town at the site, and he named it Ben Davis or Bendavis, because he planned to grow Ben Davis apples in his large orchards there. However, the town never amounted to more than a general store and a post office. Today, it is just a wide place in the road with a sign that says simply "Bendavis." Or at least the sign was still there the last time I was through there, which has been a number of years ago.

Going Snake Massacre Part II

Last time I wrote very briefly about the Going Snake Massacre that occurred in present-day Adair County (near the present-day community of Christie). The events that led up to the massacre are probably at least as interesting as the massacre itself.
Zeke Proctor's killing of Polly Beck that led to the massacre also occurred in present-day Adair County a few miles west of Siloam Springs, Arkansas, on Flint Creek at the Hildebrand mill. Polly Beck, who had something of a reputation as a loose woman, had been married to Steve Hildebrand, former owner of the mill, but he had been killed during the Civil War, and she was running the mill with Jim Kesterson, who was either her fourth husband or her lover.
Although the Proctors and the Becks were both mixed-blood Cherokees, a rift had developed between the two families. A number of reasons have been suggested for the rift. Although Zeke Proctor, like Polly Beck, had a white father, Proctor was a member of the Keetoowah Society, a Cherokee group that strongly favored traditional tribal ways and resented white encroachment on the Cherokee way of life, while the Becks were not members of the society. Like most Keetoowahs, Proctor had fought on the side of the Union during the Civil War, while the Becks had fought on the side of the Confederacy. (Generally speaking, the rift among the Cherokees dated back to their removal from the Southeast during the 1830s when the tribe split into a Treaty Party that did not strongly oppose the removal and an Anti-Treaty Party that did. Whether this split was a specific factor in the Proctor-Beck feud is not known, but the Keetoowahs mainly grew out of the Anti-Treaty Party.)
As a member of the Keetoowahs, Proctor resented Polly Beck's relationship with a white man, and a somewhat dubious report also suggested that Proctor might have had a romantic interest in Polly himself. At any rate, he particularly resented Kesterson, because, at least according to some reports, Kesterson had once been married to Proctor's sister and had abandoned her and her children.
Proctor, who had a reputation for brawling and was even said to have previously killed at least a couple of men, showed up at the mill about February 13, 1872, to confront Kesterson. Apparently they argued and ended up going for their guns. According to most reports, Polly tried to intervene between the two men and ended up taking an accidental fatal bullet from Proctor's gun, while Kesterson escaped with a minor injury.

Going Snake Massacre

Resulting from a jurisdictional dispute between the U.S. government and the Cherokee court system, the Going Snake Massacre was a shootout in the Going Snake District of the Cherokee Nation (present-day Adair County, Oklahoma) on April 15, 1872, between U.S. marshals and Cherokee citizens. Ezekial "Zeke" Proctor, a Cherokee, was being tried in a Cherokee court for the killing of Polly Beck, also a Cherokee, and the wounding of Jim Kesterson (or Chesterson), a white man. Believing that Proctor would not receive the punishment he deserved in a Cherokee court, Kesterson had petitioned a federal court to have him tried by the federal court, and ten marshals were sent to arrest Proctor in case he were acquitted by the Cherokee court.
Before the trial even got started, however, a shootout erupted between the marshals and Cherokee bystanders, who resented the presence of the federal law officers. Seven marshals and one Cherokee were killed, and several people wounded. The next day, Proctor was acquitted in the Cherokee court, which was allowed to retain jurisdiction. There's a lot more to this story, but I'll save it for another time.

Cleburne County Draft War

The so-called Cleburne County Draft War was a violent encounter in Cleburne County, Arkansas, near the end of World War I between local officials determined to enforce the Selective Service Act of 1917 and a group of Russellites (forerunners of Jehovah's Witnesses) who were resisting conscription.
On the morning of July 7, 1918, Sheriff Jasper Duke and four deputies traveled to a rural area southwest of Heber Springs in search of delinquents who had not registered for the draft, and they arrived at the home of Tom Adkisson, whose son Bliss had been delinquent since October of the previous year. A shootout ensued, and posse member Porter Hazlewood was fatally wounded.
Duke returned to Heber Springs to recruit more deputies. With approximately 25 men, he returned to the Adkisson home, but during the interim Adkisson had also recruited more men, other deserters and delinquents from the area. Another gun battle erupted, this one lasting about 45 minutes, before the resisters fled and set fire to the underbrush to discourage pursuit.
Later that day, sheriffs and deputies from surrounding counties reinforced the Cleburne County posse and bloodhounds were brought in. The next day, thirty members of the National Guard arrived to bolster law enforcement officials. During the next couple of days, the soldiers and posse members raided through the countryside arresting draft resisters and their sympathizers and confiscating goods and ammunition that might otherwise be available to the resisters. A Russellite preacher and his family were put in jail, and another man and his son were arrested for carrying a copy of The Finished Mystery by Charles Taze Russell (founder of the Russellites). The book condemned the federal government for demanding that "peace-loving men" sacrifice themselves to the "butchery of their fellows" in the name of heaven, and it urged resistance to military service. Such revolutionary notions as refusing to kill one's fellow men were, of course, considered subversive.
On July 13, the same day the National Guard returned to Little Rock, a son-in-law of Tom Adkisson surrendered in neighboring White County, and several other resisters, including the Adkissons, turned themselves in during the next few days. Tom and Bliss Adkisson were charged with the murder of Hazlewood. Tom was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, while Bliss was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Headlee Murder Aftermath

Last time I wrote about the tremendous bitterness engendered by the Civil War, the part it played in the murder of Rev. S.S. Headlee in July of 1866, and the angry reaction of Southern sympathizers throughout the state of Missouri to the killing. The anger of the Southerners had scarcely slackened one year after the crime.
Sometime in the spring of 1867, the citizens of Webster County elected Henderson McNabb County School Commissioner. Although McNabb was not one of the men directly implicated in the murder of Headlee, he was the leader of the mob that had prevented Headlee from preaching at Pleasant View, and his election to office outraged Southern observers like O. S. Fahnestock, the editor of the Springfield Leader. During the spring and early summer, the Leader and the Marshfield Yeoman sniped back and forth at each other over the murder of Headlee and what Fahnestock and his co-editor, D.C. Kennedy, saw as a lack of will on the part of authorities (all of whom were, of course, Unionists) to do anything about the crime. McNabb's election to office especially rankled them.
After several exchanges between the two newspapers, the Yeoman concluded, "It seems the murder of the Rev. S.S. Headlee was a crime of such frightful turpitude that its contemplation has horrified the editor of the Leader into hopeless insanity.... He demands for the blood of one man, the execution of the Radical party. He arraigns as accessories before and after the fact the loyal people of Webster County." The Leader answered in its August 15, 1867, edition, "With all candor and earnestness, we do confess 'that the murder of the Rev. S.S. Headlee was a crime of frightful turpitude,' and we do arraign the Radical party of Webster County as accessories after the fact, because they have endorsed it by electing to office the man who is guilty of the crime...."
Alas, the outcries of men like O.S. Fahnestock produced little action on the part of authorities. The man who actually pulled the trigger in the shooting death of Headlee was ironically named William Drake (although he was no apparent relation to Charles Drake, the man after whom the Drake Constitution was named). William Drake was finally indicted for his part in the murder of Headlee about a year after the crime, but he did not actually go to trial for another four years. In 1870, about the same time that the stranglehold on Missouri politics that Radical Republicans held for several years in the wake of the Drake Constitution began to relax a bit, William Drake was finally brought to trial for the murder of Headlee, and McNabb was tried as an accessory. Both, however, were quickly acquitted. The grip of the Radical party might have been relaxing a bit, but it would be another several years before it would completely lose its grip and all the onerous provisions of the Drake Constitution would be removed.

Rev. Samuel S. Headlee Murder Again

I've written previously, both on this blog and in my Ozarks Gunfights and Other Notorious Incidents book, about the murder of Rev. Samuel S. Headlee that occurred on July 28, 1866, at the Pleasant View Church near present-day Elkland in Webster County, Missouri. I have mentioned that the incident was a product of the lingering bitterness between Northern sympathizers and Southern sympathizers in Missouri left over from the Civil War, but I probably did not adequately stress the depth of that rancor or how much this particular incident inflamed Southerners throughout the state, because I don't think I fully appreciated the level of resentment myself when I first wrote about the incident.
Before I get to the impassioned anger of Southern sympathizers in response to the murder, however, I should probably go back and briefly summarize the events and circumstances that led up to the crime. Although Missouri was dominated politically by Conservative Unionism during the time leading up to the Civil War and during the early part of the war, Radical Republicans, who eschewed compromise with Rebels and Rebel sympathizers, grew increasingly powerful as the war wore on, and they came to dominate politics in Missouri by the spring of 1865, when a new state constitution, called the Drake Constitution after its principal advocate, was adopted. The new constitution forbade anyone who had ever fought for the South or been a Southern sympathizer from voting, holding political office, or holding certain other jobs like lawyer, teacher, or preacher without first taking an oath of allegiance (which many of them, of course, could not do in good conscience).
Rev. Headlee was a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church South and had been an outspoken Southern sympathizer. He was one of those who refused to take the oath, but in the summer of 1866 he determined nonetheless to resume preaching of the gospel and announced his intention to preach at Pleasant View on July 28. Headlee's Southern wing of the church still held title to the church building, but the Northern contingent, which had taken over the building during the war, told Headlee not to try to preach there on the 28th and threatened him with violence if he tried.
When Headlee showed up on the 28th, he was met by armed members of the Northern faction. Headlee agreed not to preach at the church and started toward some land he owned nearby, where he had been told he would be able to preach unmolested. However, four members of the Northern contingent followed and shot him dead before he could reach his property.
The words of the editor of the California Central Missourian, in reporting the news of the murder about two weeks later, will give you an idea of how Southerners viewed the crime and the Drake Constitution that laid the groundwork for the crime to be committed: "To its long and damning list of outrages the dominant party of Missouri have added another, as horrible and inexcusable as any of its predecessors.-- A minister of the gospel, the Rev. Samuel S. Headlee is murdered in cold blood--brutally and cowardly murdered by one of Drake's 'avenging angels,' a self appointed champion of an infamous law."
After giving a few more details of the crime, the editor went on the say, "It would insult the intelligence of the reader to inform him that the murderer is still at large. It is equally superfluous to declare that in all probability he will never be brought to justice as long as the present dominant party holds sway in Missouri. That party is the protector of murderers, in league with them, and the justifier of their crimes."
Strong language, to say the least! However, I have read very similar reactions published in other Southern-leaning newspapers of Missouri in the wake of Headlee's death.

Laclede County Churches

Last time I listed rural churches that were on a U.S. Geological Survey map of northeast Greene County, Missouri (and the surrounding area) from the early 1940s. I have a similar map of southeast Laclede County and a small section of southwestern Pulaski County, and this time I'll list the rural churches that appear on this map.
The Pulaski County portion of the map shows several rural schools (which I listed in post a couple of years ago) but only one church, Fairview Church. I guess the Pulaski County folks were more concerned about education than religion. By the way, one of my great grandmothers is buried (in an unmarked grave) at the Fairview Church Cemetery.
The Laclede County portion of the map shows Mt. Pleasant Church, Crossroads Church, Mt. Salem Church, New Home Church, Cedar Bluff Church, Mt. Carney Church, and Porter Chapel. In fairness to Pulaski County, I should point out that Laclede also had several more schools than churches. So, that was probably just a general trend in earlier days. I suppose schools were closer together than churches because the thinking was that kids shouldn't have to walk very far to get to school but entire families were capable of making a longer trek to church.
I know even less about these churches than I do about the ones in Greene County; so if anyone has knowledge of any of these churches (e.g. whether they are still going) I would enjoy hearing from you.

Rural Churches

In two entries I posted a couple of years ago I listed the names of rural schools that showed up on topographical maps from the early 1940s of Greene County and Laclede County respectively that were put out by the U.S. Geological Survey. I thought some readers might find it interesting if I were also to list the rural churches that are shown on the maps.
The Greene County map includes only the northeast part of the county and also includes small sections of Polk, Dallas, and Webster counties. The churches in the southeast corner of Polk county are Rock Prairie and Union Grove. (There were also nearby schools bearing the same names.) The churches on the map in southern Dallas County are High Prairie, Union Mount, Olive Church, and Free Will Chapel. The western Webster County churches are Mission Chapel, Pleasant View Church, Timber Ridge Church, Epworth Church, Fellowship Church, and Mt. Pisgah Church. The northeast Greene County churches are Sunnyvale Church, Fruitland Church, Pleasant Ridge Church, Peace Chapel, Elm Spring Church, Mount Comfort Church, Liberty Church, Pleasant Home Church, and Potter Church. There were also at least a couple of churches each in Fair Grove and Strafford and one church in Bassville that were marked by crosses but not identified. Having grown up in Fair Grove, I know that the two churches in Fair Grove were the Fair Grove Baptist and the Fair Grove Methodist. I don't know the names of the Strafford Churches. I think the Bassville Church was known as Bass Chapel. Seemingly absent from the map is Cedar Bluff Church, which was, and still is as far as I know, located a few miles east of Fair Grove on Highway E.
I know that many of these churches were still active in the 1950s and early 1960s when I was growing up in Fair Grove, but, with a few exceptions, I'm not sure which ones are still active today. One of the exceptions is Mount Comfort, which I know is still going strong today. Both of the Fair Grove churches are still active, and I think Cedar Bluff is, too. Olive Church was still going the last I knew. Beyond these few, I'm not sure. I'd be happy to hear from anybody who has knowledge about the current state of any of these churches.

Reuben T. Wood

Since today is Labor Day, it's appropriate, I think, to write about Reuben Terrell Wood, a politician and labor leader from Springfield, Missouri, who was instrumental in improving working conditions for union members and all working people of the state during the first half of the twentieth century.
"Rube" Wood was born on a farm near Springfield in 1884. As a young man he apprenticed as a cigar maker, joined the union, and in 1901 showed up as a delegate to the Springfield Central Labor Council. In 1912, he was elected president of the Missouri Federation of Labor (now the Missouri State Labor Council) and served in that capacity until 1932, when he was elected as a representative from southwest Missouri in the U.S. Congress. After eight years in Congress, he returned to his position of president of the Missouri Federation of Labor and continued in that capacity until his retirement in 1953. He served a total of about 32 years as president of the state labor group. One of his main achievements was passage of a workman's compensation law in Missouri. Enabling workers to be compensated for injuries suffered on the job, it is a law, of course, that we now take for granted.
Wood died in 1955 and is buried at Greenlawn Cemetery in Springfield. By the way, he is no relation to me.

Moondog

Louis T. Hardin, Jr., usually known as "Moondog," was a blind musician and composer well known in the world of jazz, classical, and rock music. However, during the mid-twentieth century, he was perhaps best known as an eccentric and iconoclastic street personality who hung out in Manhattan, mostly on the corner of 6th Avenue and 53rd Street, dressed as a Viking and banging a drum.
Hardin was born in 1916 in Kansas and then lived in Wyoming, but his family moved to Hurley, Missouri, when he was thirteen. He played in the Hurley High School Band, but when he was sixteen, he lost his sight in an accident when a dynamite cap exploded in his face. He finished high school at a school for the blind in Iowa and later moved to the Batesville, Arkansas, area with his family.
In his mid to late twenties, he moved to New York, made the acquaintance of classical musicians like Leonard Bernstein and jazz performers like Benny Goodman, and soon made his own name in the musical world. In 1947, he started calling himself "Moondog" in honor a dog he had had in Hurley that, according to the musician, howled at the moon more than any dog he had ever heard of.
In 1974, Moondog moved to Germany to be closer to his Viking heritage, and he lived the rest of his life there, dying in 1999.

Pretty Boy Floyd

Another chapter in my Murder and Mayhem book concerns the so-called Kansas City Massacre, which occurred at Kansas City's Union Station on June 17, 1933, when three gunmen tried to rescue underworld figure Frank Nash as he was being escorted to federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas. According to the FBI, one of the gunmen was Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd, although certain modern-day historians have claimed Floyd was not involved.
What is known for sure is that Floyd and his sidekick, Adam Richetti, started driving from Springfield toward Kansas City early on the morning of June 16 along Highway 13. South of Bolivar, their car broke down, and a passing farmer towed them into Bitzer's garage in Bolivar. Richetti had formerly lived in Bolivar, and his brother still worked at the garage. While the mechanics worked on the disabled vehicle, Sheriff Jack Killingsworth dropped by the garage. Although he was simply paying a friendly visit, Richetti grew suspicious, pulled a machine gun from the floorboard of the car, and threatened to start shooting. A customer pulled into the garage and, seeing the situation, made his escape to a drugstore across the street, where he called the cops.
As the situation started to get out of hand, Floyd took over inside the garage, ordering the hostages to stand against a wall and instructing Richetti to go find a getaway car. Richetti commandeered his brother's car and brought it back to the garage, where he and Floyd transferred guns and other items from the disabled vehicle to the getaway car. Floyd forced Killingsworth into the backseat of the car as a hostage, and it sped away with Richetti at the wheel. Officers gave chase and at one point got very close to the fugitives, but the sheriff, at the point of a gun, waved for the lawmen to back off.
In the late morning, the gangsters exchanged vehicles by waving down a passing motorist and then continued their trip toward KC with the motorist as an additional hostage. Late that night, they let both hostages loose in Kansas City, and early the next morning the Kansas City Massacre occurred.
The FBI identified the ringleader of the gang who pulled the crime as Verne Miller, and Floyd and Richetti were identified as his two sidekicks. Miller was killed in a gang-style murder a few months later. Floyd was killed by police a year or so later, and Richetti was captured, convicted for his role in the crime, and sentenced to death.

Pearl Welton Murder Case

Another chapter in my Murder and Mayhem book is about the murder of Pearl Welton in western Shannon County, Missouri, near the small community of Teresita, in January 1919. Twenty-three-year-old Pearl had married Frank Welton, a man about twice her age, in September 1917. In the spring of 1918, Carrie Hofland, showed up, and Frank convinced her to let him introduce her to Pearl as his sister, even though he and Carrie were, in fact, common law husband and wife who had lived together for thirteen years. Carrie left after a few days and went back to her Nebraska home.
By the time Carrie came back to the Shannon County farm in January of 1919, Pearl had given birth, and she and Frank were now the parents of a baby about five months old. Carrie resumed the charade at first but after a couple of days, while Frank was out in the field working, she told Pearl that she was, in fact, Frank's wife. A heated argument ensued, and Carrie killed Pearl during the struggle, apparently with a blow to the head with a blunt instrument. Carrie dumped the body in a nearby low-water cistern and then apparently tossed the baby in, too.
She was still standing over the cistern when Frank walked up, and she panicked, telling Frank that Pearl had jumped into the cistern with her baby in a suicide attempt. She then helped Frank get the mother and child out of the cistern. The baby revived, but attempts to revive Pearl failed.
Frank at first believed Carrie's story that Pearl had jumped in the cistern and had apparently drowned. However, neighbors called to the scene were skeptical, and an investigation led to the arrest of both Carrie and Frank. Frank was released after Carrie confessed to the whole thing.
At her trial, however, she began to change her story, placing part of the blame on Frank. She was convicted of second degree murder, and Frank was rearrested and also tried for the murder. He, too, was convicted when Carrie was brought from the state prison to testify against him, and she incriminated him even more in the crime than she had previously.
Frank's conviction, however, was overturned by the Missouri Supreme Court. The high court said that Frank's story had been consistent from the very beginning, whereas Carrie's story had changed with each retelling. The evidence seemed to indicate Carrie's guilt and Frank's innocence. The court surmised that Frank had probably been convicted only because of the prejudice that existed against him becasue of his perceived moral failing.
Book signing from 1-3 p.m. at Always Buying Books on North Main in Joplin this Saturday August 17th for Murder and Mayhem.

Murder of Stanley Ketchel

Photo of Ketchel courtesy of Wikipedia.
Another chapter of my Murder and Mayhem in Missouri book is about the murder of world middleweight champion boxer Stanley Ketchel by Walter Dipley and Goldie Smith in October of 1910 on a farm near Niangua in Webster County, Missouri. The farm was owned by R.P. Dickerson, a wealthy Springfield businessman and a family friend of Ketchel. Dickerson had hired Ketchel to stay on the farm as its foreman while training for his next fight, and Dipley and Smith, lovers who were posing as husband and wife, were hired to work at the farm as a ranch hand and housekeeper respectively.
After just two days at the farm, Dipley shot and killed Ketchel as the latter was at the breakfast table, supposedly because Ketchel had sexually assaulted Goldie the day before while Dipley was at work in the fields and because Ketchel had displayed a pistol in a threatening manner when Dipley confronted him about the assault. Both Dipley and Smith were arrested for the murder and tried at Marshfield early in 1911. The state's theory of the case was that Goldie had helped in the murder by arranging for Ketchel to be seated at the kitchen table with his back to Dipley and that robbery rather than an assault on Goldie was the motive. Both defendants were found guilty and sentenced to long terms in the state prison.
Both Dipley and Smith appealed their convictions. Dipley's was upheld, but Goldie's was overturned. The state supreme court said there was absolutely no evidence showing that Goldie was in on the murder, and she was released after serving about a year. Dipley served another twenty-five years or so before he too was finally released on parole.
This is an interesting case because of the diametrically opposed theories of the state and the defense. I tend to think that there was probably something to Walter and Goldie's story that Ketchel had assaulted Goldie and that Walter had acted at least partly in self defense. However, the prosecution successfully painted Goldie, who had been married and divorced three times, as a loose woman, and Dipley, who had deserted from the navy, was also portrayed as being of low character. Ketchel, on the other hand, was well known and well liked, and his friend Dickerson was rich and powerful.

Murder of the Meeks Family

The killing of Gus Meeks and most of his family in May of 1894 in Linn County by brothers Bill and George Taylor constitutes another chapter in my Murder & Mayhem book, and it is one of the most notorious murder cases in the history of Missouri. The only connection this case has to the Ozarks is that the killers made their escape through southern Missouri and holed up in northern Arkansas, where they were captured at Buffalo City (near Mountain Home) in late June. However, I'm going to use that connection as enough of an excuse to go ahead and write about the case briefly on this blog about Ozarks history.
Meeks had been involved with the Taylor brothers in some shady dealings (cattle stealing, check forging, and arson) and had gone to the state pen in Jeff City in 1893 for his part in one of the crimes. Feeling they would be unable to convict the Taylor brothers without Meeks's testimony, the prosecuting attorneys of Linn County and neighboring Sullivan County petitioned the governor to release Meeks so he could testify, and the request was granted. When Meeks got back home, the Taylors almost immediately started trying to bribe him to leave the territory. They said they would pay him up to a 1,000 dollars to leave, and finally a bargain was supposedly struck, whereby the Taylors would escort Meeks out of the county and give him $800 and a wagon and team.
Meeks's wife, however, insisted on going with him and taking their three little girls. Late on the night of May 10, the Taylors drove the Meeks family away from their Milan home in Sullivan County. The next morning 7-year-old Nellie Meeks came crying to a farmhouse near George Taylor's farm in Linn County saying that her parents and both of her sisters had been killed and buried beneath a haystack on the Taylor farm. Nellie had been left there for dead but had survived, and she implicated the Taylors in the murders.
Because the Taylors, especially Bill, had considerable influence in the community, they succeeded in getting their first trial to end in a hung jury, despite the overwhelming evidence against them. (Jury tampering and bribing of witnesses were suspected.) However, they were convicted on retrial and sentenced to hang. George Taylor escaped a couple of weeks before his date with death and was never recaught, but his brother paid the ultimate price when he was hanged at Carrollton, where the trials had been moved on a change of venue, on the last day of April 1896.
I'm having a book signing for the new book at Half Price Books of the Ozarks in Springfield on Saturday, August 10, from 1-3 p.m.

Chenoweth-Mann Murder Case

Another chapter in my upcoming Murder and Mayhem in Missouri book concerns the murder of Dr. Albert Chenoweth at Pineville, Missouri, on September 12, 1883. Garland Mann, a farmer and former saloon keeper who lived outside Pineville, was immediately suspected of the murder because of prior threats he had reportedly made against the doctor and other circumstantial evidence. In fact, the evidence against Mann seemed so overwhelming that, at least according to certain newspaper accounts at the time and according to Sturgis's History of McDonald County written a few years later, almost everybody familiar with the case believed he was guilty.
Mann was, in fact, arrested and tried for the murder. His first trial in the spring of 1884 ended in a hung jury with the jurors evenly split. He was retried in August of '84 and found guilty, but the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the verdict on a technicality. His third trial in the spring of 1885 again ended in a hung jury. He was in the midst of his fourth trial in August of the same year when he was killed in his cell at the Newton County jail in Neosho by a mob that broke in, bent on vigilante justice.
When I first started researching this case, I, too, thought, based on the superficial evidence, that Mann was probably guilty. However, the more I researched it, the more doubt I began to have to the point that I now think that it is just about as likely that he was not guilty as it is that he was guilty. For more details on this interesting case, check out my book when it is released (probably within the next few days).

Assassination of Jesse James

Another chapter in my book, Murder and Mayhem in Missouri, is about the killing of Jesse James by Bob Ford in St. Joseph, Missouri, on April 3, 1882. Obviously this incident did not happen in the Ozarks, but the news of its occurrence reverberated throughout the state of Missouri and clear across the country. In fact, in my book, I call the killing and its aftermath the "greatest sensation in Missouri history," and I do not believe that is an exaggeration.
Part of what made the incident so notorious, of course, was the fact that Jesse James, even at the time of his death, had already established himself as the most noted outlaw in American history. However, what made the incident even more sensational was the method of his death. Not only was he shot in the back of the head by a purported member of his own gang, killed "in cold blood" as many observers said, but the killer, Bob Ford, was working in cahoots with the governor of the state, Thomas Crittenden. Despite his many desperate deeds, James had many people throughout Missouri who were sympathetic to him, some more than others, and some of his more ardent supporters even suggested that Crittenden should be arrested and charged with murder in the case.
One person who did not share such a view was the editor of the Joplin Daily Herald. Responding to an earlier editorial by Joseph Pulitzer's St. Louis Post Dispatch criticizing the governor, the Joplin newspaperman had this to say:
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, with its usual penchant for sacrificing common sense in order to be sensational, makes a villainous attack on Gov. Crittenden for the extreme measures taken to secure the breaking up of the most notorious band of outlaws and murderers that ever disgraced this or any other country. Had the rose-water scented Bohemian who villifies the Governor through his paper, been detailed to arrest Jesse James he would no doubt have armed a posse with bouquets from the vale of Cashmere, and pressed around the fugitive until he was asphyxiated by the ravishing perfume of the offering and then carried the lamblike form to the halls of justice on a silver platter. Pulitzer would be a daisy in the role of bandit hunter. We will wager our reputation for truth against his as a vanquisher of desperadoes, that Mr. James single and alone in his St. Joseph cottage would have routed a whole battalion of such goggle-eyed kangaroos, and considered it rather insipid pastime. Joe knows how to get up a live, readable evening newspaper, but as a capturer of bandits of the Jesse James ilk a whole acre of him wouldn't be worth hell-room.

Billy Martin

The romantic escapades of Billy Martin of Laclede County, Missouri, constitute another chapter in my new book, Murder and Mayhem in Missouri. This subject, like the Slickers and the slave burnings at Carthage, is something I've previously written about on this blog. So, I won't repeat the whole story here, since anybody who is interested can check out the previous posting in October 2010 (or better yet, read the expanded version of his story in my upcoming book). However, I will add a few details or observations about Martin's story.
For one thing, I called him Frank Martin in my previous post, and he did go by that name occasionally. However, his full name was William Franklin Martin, and he usually went by Billy. Also, the murder of his uncle George Mizer that I wrote about in my previous post was not Billy's first killing. In July of 1878, about a year before the Mizer shooting, Billy had gotten into an argument with two other young men at a wheat threshing. One of them apparently threatened Billy with a pitchfork, and he pulled out a pistol and killed one of them and wounded the other. In addition, Billy's killing of his uncle was not his last serious crime. In the mid-1880s, a few years after he had been cleared of all charges in the Mizer case, he was convicted of stealing a pair of horses and sentenced to the state pen at Jeff City.
He was released after serving about three years of his four-year sentence, came home, and resumed his life with Maggie, the girl who had helped him escape from the Laclede County jail after he had been sentenced to death for killing his uncle and was awaiting the outcome of an appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court. He and Maggie had married while on the run together, and she had stood by him through thick and thin. Apparently, they ended up having a happy life together after Billy was released from the state prison in the late-1880s.
I said in my previous post about Martin that I had run onto newspaper articles and so forth about his case several times but that I had never attempted to write extensively about the case because, despite the obvious contemporaneous interest in it and despite the element of romantic intrigue, it had never struck me as particularly exciting or dramatic. Suffice it to say, I was wrong.

Slicker War

Chapter One in my forthcoming book entitled Murder and Mayhem in Missouri is about the so-called Slicker War that occurred in the 1840s in Benton County, Missouri. I wrote previously about the Slickers in a post on this blog dated November 12, 2010. At the time, I lamented the fact that first-hand historical records in Missouri, particularly southwest Missouri, that predate the Civil War are few and far between, because many such records were lost during the war or afterwards because of courthouse fires and so forth. Indeed, one of the reasons I had not tried to write extensively about the Slicker War until I began my current book is that I had always assumed that first-hand documentation about the episode was scarce, just as it is in the case of almost everything else that happened before the war. The fact that nearly all the accounts I had ever read about the Slickers were reminiscences written many years later seemed to bear out my assumption.
However, I also indicated at the time of my previous post that, despite the seeming dearth of primary records, I might try to research the Slicker War a little more thoroughly sometime and try to write more extensively about it. What I have learned, as it turns out, is that the Slicker War is somewhat of an exception to the rule that little firsthand documentation survives concerning events prior to the Civil War. This is due mainly to the fact that almost all county records for the counties of Benton and Polk (which the Slicker War spilled into) have been preserved. This is rare, indeed, among Missouri counties. In addition to the county records, there are also some records pertaining to the Slicker War at the state level. And there are a few, although not many, contemporaneous newspaper accounts pertaining to the Slickers.
In my previous post about the Slicker War, I commented on the seeming confusion in the various reminiscent accounts, noting that some of them ascribed the events as having occurred in Benton County and some placed them in Hickory County. What I learned during my recent research is that there really is no discrepancy here. All, or almost all, of the events pertaining to the the Slicker War happened in what today is Hickory County. However, in the early 1840s, the northern part of the territory that became Hickory County was in Benton County, and the southern portion was in Polk County.

Slave Burnings 1853

My new book due out sometime next month is called Murder and Mayhem in Missouri. The second chapter deals with the burnings of three slaves within about two weeks of each other during the summer of 1853. Although there were three slaves burned, only two separate incidents were involved, as one of the incidents was a double lynching. It occurred in late July of that year at Carthage. I have previously written about this incident on this blog, and I am providing a link here to that earlier posting: http://ozarks-history.blogspot.com/2010/10/two-blacks-lynched-by-burning-at.html. Suffice it to say, however, that there is more to the story than I wrote in the blog posting.
The other incident occurred about two weeks earlier in mid-July of 1853 at Georgetown, Missouri. Georgetown was, at the time, the county seat of Pettis County, as Sedalia did not yet exist. Most blacks lynched by whites during the 1800s were accused of either killing a white person or raping a white woman, and the Pettis County case was no exception. A slave, about 20 years old, was charged with killing a white woman when she resisted his attempts to seduce her. Both the slave and his white master were arrested, because it was thought the slaveowner had instigated the black man to commit the heinous deed. The white man was soon turned loose, but he and his family were run out of the county. The slave, in the meantime, was incinerated at Georgetown with a large crowd in attendance. Many of those watching were other blacks who had been brought in from the countryside by their owners to witness the horrible spectacle, supposedly to deter them from committing a like crime. Again, there is more to the story than this brief summary covers. So, get hold of my book when it comes out if you want to read the whole story.

Summer 1980

I've written on this blog previously about unusual weather events in the Ozarks, ranging from the Great Blue Norther of November 11, 1911 (11-11-11) to the late winter snowstorm of March 1970. In one blog entry, I wrote about the summer of 1954, when I was not quite eight years old, as the hottest summer in my memory. Even today, when local weathermen give the record highs and record lows for a certain date, the year 1954 still pops up a lot, especially during the month of July, as the hottest year on record for the date in question.
I said during one of my weather posts that I think notable weather events (and other unusual events) probably make a bigger impression on young people than they do on older folks, which may partially account for the fact that I still remember the summer of 1954, even though it was almost 60 years ago. However, I recognize that we have had some very hot summers in more recent times as well.
One that I recall somewhat vividly is the summer of 1980. The heat wave was not quite as extreme as in 1954. For instance, the high temperature in Springfield, Missouri, in 1980 occurred on July 30 with a reading of 105 degrees. By comparison, the summer of 1954 had several days when the temperature soared above 110. However, 1980 was probably worse in terms of how long the unusual heat lasted. The heat wave started about June 22 and did not abate until September 17. The fact that the heat wave extended well into September several weeks after school had started is the part I remember most vividly about the summer of 1980. I was teaching school at the time, and the school did not have air conditioning. The mornings weren't bad, but afternoon classes were torturous for both teachers and students as temperatures approached or passed 100 degrees day after day.
The drought and heat wave of 1980 may also have been a little more widespread than the one in 1954, as it covered not just the Ozarks and not just the Midwest but even parts of the East. It may have been more deadly than the 1954 heat wave, too. Approximately 1,250 people died nationwide as a result of the 1980 heat wave (153 in St. Louis alone). I wasn't able to find an estimate for 1954.

Ezell Killing

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about A.J. Bass's supposed murder of his wife near Bassville, Greene County, Missouri, in 1911. As I noted at the time, the case was not particularly notorious or memorable except that it happened only a short distance from where I grew up. Likewise, I have long been vaguely familiar with Joseph L. Smith's killing of Benjamin Franklin Ezell because it happened at my hometown of Fair Grove, about three or four miles from Bassville.
On the morning of April 21, 1871, 31-year-old Joseph Smith and 25-year-old Ben Ezell got into an argument at the Ezell farm in the Ebenezer vicinity, southwest of Fair Grove. The quarrel was over a 17-year-old hired hand named Peter Goodwin. Smith had employed Goodwin to do some work for him, but then Goodwin had agreed to go to work for Ezell, and Smith accused Ezell of coaxing away his hired help. However, neither man was armed, and nothing serious happened at the time.
That afternoon, though, Ezell went to Fair Grove and, while there, was met by Smith, who had armed himself in the meantime. The argument was renewed, and Smith shot Ezell, who fell to the street mortally wounded and died three days later.
Smith was arrested and charged with murder. His first two trials ended in hung juries, but his third trial ended in early December of 1883 with a not guilty verdict. A newspaper report at the time observed, "Mr. Smith, from first to last, has had the sympathy of and support of many warm and influential friends, who rejoice with him and his family that this sad misfortune has at last been forever settled."

Boise City

Over the years, Arkansas's Prohibition laws have given rise to communities or settlements just across the border in Missouri that were established for the sole purpose of circumventing those laws (i.e. giving Arkansas residents a relatively close place where they could legally buy alcohol). I assume the community of Ridgedale on U.S. Highway 65 south of Branson just on the Missouri side of the state line was such a place. I don't know the actual history of the place, but I do know that for many years, about the only businesses located there were liquor stores or later convenience stores that sold liquor. Also, I think there used to be a sign on the southbound side of Highway 65 telling motorists, as they approached the Arkansas border, that Ridgedale was their last opportunity to purchase beer, etc. This, of course, was because Boone County, Arkansas, was a dry county, and it still is at least partially dry, I believe.
Another place that was established in response to Arkansas's restrictive liquor laws was Boise City, a community that sprang up in southern Oregon County, Missouri, just across the state line from Mammoth Spring, Arkansas in the mid-1880s during the building of a railroad to the booming mineral-water town. Boise City, or Spring City as it was called at first, was reportedly established by a local man who simply moved across the state line and started a saloon. Soon the place sported several drinking establishments, and the place was a lively little community for at least a short while (at least until the railroad was completed and the workers constructing it went home). Exactly how long the boom lasted I'm not sure, but I do know that by the 1930s or so, Boise City had ceased to exist as a separate town and was considered an addition to Mammoth Spring. Perhaps the larger town annexed the smaller one as way of controlling the flow of liquor, but exactly when that annexation took place is unknown.

A.J. Bass Murder Case

The following murder case is one I have been aware of for some time, as I have run onto mentions or descriptions of it two or three times over the years. There's nothing particularly noteworthy or out of the ordinary about the case, which is why I have not written about it previously. The only reason it caught my attention in the first place and the only reason it has continued to fascinate me to a certain extent is that it happened just a few miles from where I grew up.
On the early morning of January 24, 1911, the home of A.J. Bass, who lived near Bassville in Greene County, Missouri, with his wife and two young kids, caught fire. Bass ran to the houses of two neighbors to give the alarm, but the structure was beyond saving by the time help arrived. Bass's two children were found on the premises in a wagon, safe from the fire. However, the mother was nowhere to be found, and her body was later found in the ashes of the house.
Bass's story was that the upstairs of the house caught fire between 4 and 5 a.m., that he and his wife rescued their kids and took them safely outside, that they drew water from a well and returned to the house to try to put out the fire, that when the smoke and flames began to overcome them, he called for his wife to follow him outside and thought she was following him but couldn't see her for the smoke, that he was forced to jump from the second floor, that the fall momentarily knocked him out and he wasn't sure when he woke up whether she had made her escape or not, and that he then ran for help.
At first, no one doubted his story, but his wife's father began to have suspicions, and Mrs. Bass's body was exhumed several days after her death. Several shotgun pellets were found in her heart and other parts of her body, and Bass came under suspicion of having killed his wife and set the fire on purpose to try to cover up his crime.
After two preliminary hearings failed to yield an indictment, Bass took off to Arkansas by way of Mountain Grove and Cabool. While he was in Arkansas, however, he was indicted for first degree murder. Located in Stuggart, Arkansas, he returned to Greene County to face the charge.
The main evidence against Bass presented by the state during his trial at the March term of Greene County Circuit Court was that he had bought coal oil the day before the fire, that he owned a shotgun, that his wife had left him about ten months earlier, and that he had supposedly threatened to "get a gun" when she had refused to let him see their kids at one point during their brief separation. It was also conjectured, apparently with no evidence to support the theory, that Bass might have been involved with another woman.
Bass was convicted on this rather skimpy evidence and sentenced to life in prison. However, his lawyers appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, and the high court overturned the conviction in June of 1913, setting Bass free. In issuing its ruling, the Supreme Court noted that there was evidence that Bass had, in fact, tried to put the fire out after it started, which would make no sense if he himself had started it with the intent of burning the house down, and that he was very distraught when he raced to his neighbors' houses to give an alarm. It was also noted that the couple had reconciled months before the fire and were apparently getting along well at the time of the woman's death. The shotgun pellets in the woman's body were explained by the fact that Bass kept a large quantity of shotgun shells in his home and that the fire caused them to explode almost continuously as it burned. The numerous explosions were confirmed by the people who had arrived on the scene before the fire finished burning. (The state had tried to discount this theory of the woman's death by introducing so-called expert witnesses who testified that such explosions caused by a fire would not have the penetrating force necessary to lodge the pellets deep in the woman's body.) It was a given fact that the fire had started on the second floor, and the high court also questioned why, if Bass had been trying to burn his house down, he would have started the fire on the second floor instead of the first, when it was common knowledge that a fire spread much faster from bottom to top than vice versa. Finally, it was noted that Bass had left for Arkansas on the advice of family members, not to try to escape prosecution as the state had contended, and that he had returned voluntarily after his indictment. In conclusion the Supreme Court opined that the guilty verdict had probably resulted more from the fact that Bass had failed to make heroic attempts to save his wife and that he had been convicted based more on this perceived moral failing than on the actual evidence.

Quincy, Missouri

I drove through the small community of Quincy in Hickory County a few weeks ago, and it was the first time I'd ever been there. That's partly because it's more or less off the beaten path. It's on State Highway 83, but the nearest road that might be considered a major highway is U.S. Highway 54, which passes several miles to the south of the town. Despite the fact that, at least nowadays, it is considered somewhat isolated, it was a fairly important little community in the early and mid 1800s.
The first white settlers arrived in the vicinity about 1833 or so, and the first settler on the actual site of present-day Quincy came several years later. In the early and mid 1840s, the place was known as Judy's Gap, because a man named Samuel Judy had a blacksmith shop there. The date when the town was surveyed and platted is not known for sure, although one report places it as 1848. At that time, the community was given the name Quincy, reportedly after former President John Quincy Adams, who had died earlier the same year.
In the early to mid 1840s, while still known as Judy's Gap, the place played a minor role in the so-called Slicker War or Turk-Jones feud of that era, because it and its immediate environs served as somewhat of a gathering place. For instance, one of the very first incidents of the feud happened at Turk's tavern just north of Judy's Gap.
Quincy was also the site of a few minor skirmishes and other incidents during the Civil War. One, in particular, that I know about occurred on September 4, 1863, when a band of men under a notorious guerrilla leader named John Raftre (aka Rafter) dashed into the town and immediately started shooting up the place.
Raftre had been known in the area of southeast Henry County, northeast St. Clair, southwest Benton, and northwest Hickory since at least March of the previous year, when he was reported killed in a skirmish with Federals southeast of Leesville near the Henry-Benton County line. Reports of Raftre's demise, however, were premature. In January of 1863, he was spotted prowling about Clinton, Missouri.
Then eight months later, he came charging into Quincy and started shooting at some citizens sitting in front of a store. One man was killed, and the others scattered. The guerrillas then turned their attention to four soldiers of the 18th Iowa Volunteers, who had just arrived on a stagecoach and taken shelter in one the houses in the town. Raftre and his men followed them to an upstairs room and took them prisoner, then plundered the few businesses in town and were in the act of setting the whole place on fire when the 8th Missouri Militia Cavalry came galloping into town, opened fire, and scattered the bushwhackers. Raftre was killed in the skirmish, and this time he didn't come back to life. The Federals also succeeded in regaining possession of some of the plunder that had been taken from the stores and citizens.
The remaining guerrillas herded the soldiers they had captured along with them as they made their escape, and, no doubt in retaliation for the death of their leader, killed the prisoners not far outside town. Presumably all four of them were killed, although only two bodies were found in the immediate aftermath of the incident.

Fisher's Cave

Although I grew up in the Springfield area and lived in Springfield for several years during my college days, I was never aware of Fisher's Cave until recently. It is a river cave located in Sequiota Park near the old village of Galloway in what is now southeast Springfield. The cave has been known at various times as Brashear's Cave, Fisher's Cave, Springdale Cave, and occasionally even Sequiota Cave.
Apparently, the first white settler on the land that includes the cave was Jacob Painter, who settled there in the mid to late 1830s. Painter was later a prominent gunsmith in Springfield and had his shop on Olive Street just off the square. During the Civil War, the land was owned by Benjamin Brashears. Shortly after the war, a man named T.B. Fisher acquired the land and began developing it as a resort with the cave as the main attraction.
In 1881, P.F. Vaughan bought the land from Fisher with the intention of developing the resort even more. He planned to beautify the grounds with shrubs and trees and to construct ponds for fishing and boating. Some of the trees were to be planted in groves to serve as gathering places for picnics. However, the cave, renamed Springdale Cave, would remain the main attraction.
Apparently, at least some of Vaughan's plans materialized, because Springdale Cave, or Fisher's Cave as it was often still called, and surrounding grounds did become a popular resort during the latter part of the nineteenth century and into the early years of the twentieth. One of the main attractions was guided boat tours of the cave.
By the 1910s, however, Fisher's Cave had been given over mainly to agricultural use. Mushrooms were grown in the cave and sold in St. Louis for fifty cents a pound. The mushroom spawns were spread in the cave, and six weeks later the whole grounds would be covered with mushrooms, ready for harvest. Rhubarb and celery were also grown in the cave, producing, some people said, a better quality plant than those grown outside in regular gardens.
In 1920, the grounds of Fisher's Cave became a state park and a fish hatchery. In 1959, the fish hatchery was removed, and the grounds became a Springfield city park. Now named Sequiota Park, it and all the other territory around Galloway were annexed into the city of Springfield in 1969.
Sequiota Park is still a local attraction. I'm not sure whether the main cave (Fisher's Cave) is open to the public or not. At least one source I checked said it has a gate across the entrance and is closed except by special permission from the city, partly because of the endangered species that inhabit it. (There's probably a liability issue, too. City doesn't want to be held responsible if someone were to drown inside the cave.) Another source, though, indicated that people could enter and explore the cave at their own risk if they wanted to.
For the less adventurous, there are two other caves at Sequiota Park that are open (at least officially) to the public. The reason I say "at least officially" is that, although they are open, they are hard to access. One is called the Crawlway-Crawl-All-the-Way Cave, and as its name indicates it is very low. It's not very long either. The other is called the Walkway-Walk-All-the-Way Cave. It is, as the name implies, tall enough for walking, but it, too, is not very long.

M.E. Gillioz

I go walking occasionally on the Wildcat Glades Nature trails along Shoal Creek south of Joplin. Part of the trail system goes over an old abandoned bridge that spans the creek. It used to be part of Highway 86 but was closed to vehicular traffic a number of years ago when a new bridge was built and now is open only for foot traffic as part of the trail system.
A few weeks ago I noticed a metal plaque on the bridge that said "M.E. Gillioz, Contractor. Monett, Missouri." I immediately wondered whether this was the same Gillioz for whom the Gillioz Theatre in Springfield was named. That is the landmark with which I automatically associate the name Gillioz. A little research on the Internet revealed that the answer is "Yes." It is the same man. Maurice Ernest "M.E." Gillioz was primarily known as a road and bridge contractor, but he also constructed a number of buildings like the theater in Springfield that bears his name.
Gillioz grew up around Rolla, Missouri. The first important building he built in southwest Missouri was the St. Mary's Catholic Church at Pierce City in 1904. He soon started building in Monett as well, moved there in 1914, and became a prominent citizen and benefactor to the community. Among the buildings he constructed in Monett were the high school, the Masonic temple, and the Gillioz Theatre of Monett. I believe the Gillioz Theatre of Monett, however, is gone and the Gillioz Theatre in Springfield is the only remaining building that still bears his name.
There are still a number of bridges remaining, though, that were constructed by Gillioz, including the Redings Mill Bridge south of Joplin that I usually walk over at least once or twice a week and that was built in 1930.

The Staffelbach Bordello

There is a controversy of sorts that has been going on in Galena, Kansas, for the past several weeks over a business that was opened up not long ago and called the Murder Bordello by its owner. It consists of an old Victorian house at the corner of Front and Main streets in Galena that has been restored and opened for tours. In addition to claiming the the place was once a bordello where a murder took place, the owner also claims or at least strongly suggests that the place was not just any bordello but the one operated by the infamous Staffelbach (aka Staffleback) family and the one where they lived in 1897 at the time they killed Frank Galbreath, the man whose murder the family was convicted of later in '97. The owner has also suggested that the place is haunted.

There are certain people upset because it can be demonstrably shown that the Stafflebachs did not live at the corner of Front and Main streets in 1897 but rather a half mile or so away on the western edge of the town. Furthermore, there is no evidence to even to suggest that a murder ever took place on the grounds of the Main and Front streets property or its immediate environs. Also, the only people who think the place is haunted are those people who seem to believe all old houses are haunted, and it's not absolutely known that the place was ever even a bordello.

The people upset by the new business don't like someone perverting the town's history in order to try to make a profit from it. Meanwhile, some people on the other side argue that it makes little difference whether the restored house is actually THE Staffelbach house. As long as the businessman is bringing tourists and shoppers to Galena and helping to revitalize the downtown, he should be left to do his thing. The Staffelbach legend is, after all, part of Galena's colorful history, and the town should be allowed to cash in on it without interference from those insisting on a strict adherence to historical fact.

I tend to side with the purists who object to the location at Front and Main Street being identified, even by implication, as the house where the Staffelbachs lived at the time they murdered Galbreath. If there were any doubt whatsoever, it might be different, but there is ample proof in the form of contemporaneous newspaper articles and other documents to show beyond doubt that the family did not live there.

Small Town High Schools

I think I've commented on this blog previously about small towns that used to have high schools and no longer do. For instance, I believe I recall citing the example of McDonald County, Missouri, as a place where school consolidation, particularly during the 1960s, left several small towns without high schools. It is little wonder that small towns tend to fight school consolidation, because the towns that are left without high schools often die a rather rapid death. Often, the school had functioned as one of the main hubs of social activity, and when that unifying social force is gone, the rest of the town disintegrates as well. This general observation, however, does not really apply to the case of McDonald County that I previously discussed. Of the several towns in McDonald County whose schools went together to form McDonald County High School, the only one that has almost died out in the years since is probably Rocky Comfort. However, I think the general observation still applies in the majority of cases. For instance, another area with which I am familiar, the area of Dallas and Hickory counties, Missouri, comes to mind. I remember when Tunas and Windyville in Dallas County both had high schools. Both, however, were consolidated in the 1950s or 1960s, and now both of them are virtually ghost towns. I believe Louisburg also had a high school at one time, and it, too, hardly exists today. In Hickory County, the same can be said about Cross Timbers and Preston. About the only town in either county that used to have a high school and no longer does but yet manages to survive is Urbana. And that's probably due in part to its proximity to Skyline High, which formed when Cross Timbers, Preston, Tunas (or part of it), and Urbana came together. Louisburg and Windyville, I think, are now part of the Buffalo School District, and I think a part of Tunas may have gone to Buffalo as well. There are other communities in these two counties, such as Charity, that also had high schools at one time, but that time was longer ago than my memory goes back. I'm old but not quite that old.

The Irish Settlement

In the past I've discussed various Utopian or otherwise non-traditional communities, and I'm going to continue that theme today. The Irish Settlement in south central Missouri on the border of Oregon and Ripley counties was not founded on Utopian principles as some of the others I've previously discussed were, but, still, it was unusual in that it involved a sort of communal living. The Irish Settlement was founded in the late 1850s by a St. Louis priest, the Rev. John Hogan, as a relief effort for poor Irish Catholics, many of whom were former railroad workers who had been laid off because of the financial panic of 1857. The Rev. James Fox of Old Mines, Missouri, bought a tract of land in southern Missouri for the settlement, and the Rev. Hogan moved there in the fall of 1858. By the spring of 1859, about forty families had arrived. A log cabin, forty feet square, was erected and partitioned off. One section was used as a chapel and the other section as a private residence for the priest. Meanwhile, the families settled on farms carved from the large tract of land and sold at twelve and a half cents per acre or else on already existing farms nearby. During the Civil War, nearly all the residents of the Irish Settlement were either killed or run off, and the buildings were destroyed by roving bands. After the war, the place was never rebuilt. It was soon overgrown with brush and became known as the Irish Wilderness. A small community in northeast Oregon County called Wilderness, founded in the early 1880s about two miles northwest of where the priest's cabin and field had been located, is about the only surviving reminder of the Irish Settlement.

Incoming Kingdom Missionary Unit

Anyone who has followed this blog at all over the past few years knows that I am fascinated by the Utopian social and religious movements that have occurred in this country, particularly during the latter 1800s and early 1900s. Another such movement was the Incoming Kingdom Missionary units that were established around 1920 by the Rev. John A. Battenfield, a minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Around the turn of the 20th century, Battenfield claimed to have discovered within the Hebrew text of the Old Testament "patterns of seven" by which he could discern the true meaning of the scriptures. In 1913, he began publishing a series of pamphlets called "The Great Demonstration" in which he announced that the world as it existed would end by 1926 and perhaps earlier. About the same time, he left the formal ministry and began traveling around the country as a religious lecturer, supposedly to prepare the world for the coming apocalypse. In 1919, the first issue of his newspaper, the Incoming Kingdom Harbinger, was published in Olney, Illinois, and he began urging his followers to build economically self-sufficient communities in isolated, mountainous areas of the country, where they would be able to survive the holocaust and emerge afterwards to establish the Millennial Kingdom of God. Gilbert, Arkansas (located in Searcy County) was chosen, because of its remote location, as the site for one of the units. People began arriving at Gilbert in September of 1920 when wealthy Illinois farmer C.E. Jordan, a firm believer in Battenfield's teachings, bought land for the site and started selling lots at cost to Battenfield's followers. A church and a schoolhouse were quickly constructed, as was a printing plant for the Incoming Kingdom Harbinger. Within a few months about 70 people had arrived in the community, and the number of people living in the community rose to about 200 within a couple of years. The Gilbert millenialists began mission work or "witnessing" to people in surrounding communities. According to Battenfield's vision, believers were to share their belongings and live communally, and cooperative stores and other cooperative endeavors were begun. However, problems soon arose because some of the colonists who came to Gilbert were reluctant to share their belongings. Also, Battenfield alienated some of his followers when he began to abandon traditional Christian teachings about the Trinity and other subjects. The movement became more and more endangered as the years began to elapse with no holocaust and no appearance of the Messiah. The last straw came in 1925 when Battenfield announced that he would bring one of his followers who had died back to life and his several public attempts to do so failed. Battenfield reportedly suffered a nervous breakdown. His publication suspended operation, he and his family left Gilbert, and his remaining followers soon renounced his teachings. For more information on this topic, visit the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas at www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net.

Rose O'Neill and Bonniebrook

Yesterday, my wife and I drove by the Bonniebrook Mansion and Museum a few miles north of Branson on U.S. Highway 65. I had noticed it before but never paid much attention to it, and my wife was surprised that I didn't know more about Rose O'Neill, who owned and lived at Bonniebrook during the early part of the 20th century and was the designer of the kewpie doll. So, I read up on her a little bit. Rose was born in 1874 in Nebraska, and at age 14 she won an illustration contest sponsored by the Omaha Herald. In 1893, her father bought some land in Taney County, Missouri, and the family moved there. About the same time, Rose, who was already making a name for herself as a cartoonist and illustrator, went to New York to further her career, and she soon became famous as an illustrator for leading magazines and other publications. Meanwhile, her father began building a mansion on the land in Taney County. It was called Bonniebrook and was financed largely by Rose's earnings from her work as an illustrator. In 1901, Rose divorced her first husband and moved to Bonniebrook. A year later, she remarried and the couple lived at Bonniebrook. Rose continued her work from the Taney County farm, and her husband wrote a popular novel, which she illustrated. She and her 2nd husband divorced in 1907. In 1909, Rose's kewpie illustration appeared in the Ladies Home Journal, and in 1912 a German manufacturer began producing dolls based on the illustration. O'Neill became enormously popular and also very wealthy. In addition, she was considered one of the most beautiful women in the world. Besides Bonniebrook, she owned a townhouse in New York's Greenwich Village, and she was called the "Queen of Bohemian Society." She also owned property in Europe and studied sculpture under Rodin. However, the Depression and her own extravagant lifestyle left her no longer wealthy by the time she came back to Bonniebrook to live permanently in 1937. She became popular in the Branson area, presented artistic workshops, and donated some of her artwork to the School of the Ozarks at Point Lookout. A strong advocate of women's rights, she also lectured on women's equality. Rose died in 1944 at Springfield and is buried at Bonniebrook. Today, Bonniebrook Mansion and Farm is maintained as a museum.

William Monks

I'm not sure whether I've ever previously mentioned William Monks on this blog, but if I have, it was a just passing mention. A staunch (some might say "rabid") supporter of the Union, Monks was taken prisoner by the Missouri State Guard early in the war and served as a cavalry captain in the Union army later in the conflict. A Howell County resident, Monks made a name for himself fighting guerrillas in south central Missouri and north central Arkansas during the war, but it was during the years immediately after the war as a major (later colonel) in the state militia that he really became notorious (at least in the eyes of former Confederates) because of his sometimes overzealous and harsh tactics in attempting to drive out or bring to justice the lawless bands that inhabited the south central region of Missouri during the late 1860s. Monks claimed he only targeted outlaws, but critics accused him of targeting anybody who had been sympathetic to the Southern cause. He was also roundly criticized for roaming into northern Arkansas, even though his authority was supposedly limited to Missouri. The commentary of the Springfield Leader (which was published by an ex-Confederate) in response to Monks's campaign in Howell county during the late spring and early summer of 1869 will provide a glimpse of how his activities were viewed by Southern sympathizers. In June, after driving Dr. R. K. Belden, "a peaceable and respectable citizen," from the county, Monks and his men, according to the Leader, "directed their infernal machinations against other and equally orderly citizens, and by threats and intimidations, attempted to drive them from the county also. A perfect reign of terror was inaugurated, the best citizens of the place held their lives in their hands, and an outbreak was momentarily expected which it was feared would be attended with the destruction of property and the flow of blood. Enraged by his arrest and backed by a hundred or more cut-throats, each sworn to do his bidding, it was thought and feared that Monks would scruple at no infamy to appease his hellish passion." In 1907, Monks published a memoir of his Civil War-era adventures called History of Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas. For a thorough account of Monks's activities, I refer you to a new edition of the book, edited by John Bradbury and Lou Wehmer, that was published in 2003 by the University of Arkansas Press. The editors fill in the gaps of the narrative originally told by Monks and give details about people and places mentioned in the original book that Monks did not provide. The editors also have a website (www.colonelmonks.com) that contains lots of info about Monks.

Oronogo Again

One of my posts a few years ago dealt with the town of Oronogo in Jasper County, Missouri, and quite a bit of that post dealt specifically with how the town got its name. The legend that I repeated is that during the early days it was common for people to barter with merchants for goods. For example, a trapper might offer hides in exchange for groceries. Supposedly when an early-day merchant at Minersville (Oronogo's original name) was offered something like hides, he refused, saying it was "ore or no go," meaning that the only thing he would accept other than cash was lead ore. This story is repeated in the history books of Jasper County, but I've recently learned that the legend is apparently nonsense. Shirley Kennedy, a Jasper County researcher and genealogist, recently ran across an article from February 1902 in the Joplin Daily News Herald that pretty well disproves the legend. The same newspaper had run an article in a Sunday edition about various communities in Jasper County and had included the bartering legend in discussing how Oronogo got its name. Later in the week, two different men wrote letters to the Herald positively denying the validity of the story. Both claimed to have been present at the meeting when the name "Oronogo" was selected, and their stories were not only convincing in their similarity but also were more logical than the legend. In fact, one of the men had been the postmaster at Minersville at the time its name was changed to Oronogo and was, therefore, very much a part of the process of selecting a new name. The change was made about 1871, when the railroad came to the town. At the time, the town was known as Minersville, but the post office was called Center Creek (the name of the stream on which Minersville was located). Although the post office was officially called Center Creek, mail was often addressed to Minersville. Complicating the mess was the fact that another Minersville already existed elsewhere in Missouri and mail meant for the Jasper County town would often get sent to the other place by mistake. There was a perceived need for the town and post office to go by the same name, but for some reason Center Creek was not considered a good option. So, a meeting was held to rename both the post office and the town. During the meeting several options were discussed, and somebody commented that the name needed to have a reference to the fact that the town was a mining town--that it was "ore or no go." Another person immediately suggested that they adopt that name--"Ore or no go"--but spell it Oronogo, and the name was quickly agreed on. Thanks to Shirley for uncovering this information and for allowing me to repeat it here.