Shobetown

Shobe (aka Shobetown or Shobe Town) is an extinct town that was located in Bates County, Missouri, about two miles northwest of Rich Hill. Similar to Rich Hill, it was founded during the early 1880s as a mining town when coal was discovered in the area. In fact, the original mines were mostly located in the Shobe area, even though they were usually called the Rich Hill mines. According to a couple of sources, Shobe was named after Haley Shobe, but the best evidence I can come up with seems to indicate that it was actually named after Haley's older half brother, Hudson Shobe. A businessman living in Butler when the mines started up, Hudson Shobe moved to the area and opened a store. He was also an early postmaster of the place; so presumably the post office was located in his store, which was a common arrangement for small communities in the 1800s.
Like most mining towns, Shobe had something of an unsavory reputation in its early days. One citizen of the place complained to the Butler Weekly Times in mid 1885 that there was a petition circulating at Shobe to get another saloon for the place. If the effort succeeded, the correspondent said, "Shobe will be one of the most noted places in the county, as it is now hardly fit for respectable people to live in." The writer concluded that he hoped the county court would keep the law-abiding folks of the area in mind and require that such an initiative have a two-thirds majority vote of the township's citizens for passage.
The most notorious incident in Shobe's history occurred on the evening of November 16, 1896, when miner John "Pussy" Young shot and killed fellow miner Frank Terrell at Abe Tetlock's saloon located about a half-mile west of Shobe. The saloon was about midway between two mines, and the miners from both places would usually gather there at the end of each day's work to drink beer and swap lies. On the evening in question, Terrell was in the saloon, having already had a drink or two, when Young, who'd owned the saloon before Tetlock bought it, entered the place. Hearing Terrell say that he was raffling off a shotgun, Shobe spoke up and said he'd take a chance on the gun. Terrell told him, "No, you will not take a chance on my gun."
This angered Young, and the two men got into a heated argument and had to be separated by Tetlock. After the barkeeper stepped aside, though, the quarrel was renewed, and it escalated into a violent confrontation. Terrel threw out his hand as if to emphasize one of his points, and Young immediately drew a revolver, which had been concealed, and shot Terrel in the forehead. Terrel slumped to the floor gravely wounded. Two doctors were summoned from Rich Hill, but Terrel was beyond help when they arrived. He died about two hours after he was shot.
Meanwhile, Young went directly to Rich Hill and turned himself in to the city marshal about nine p.m. Later that night, a deputy took the prisoner via train to Butler, where he was lodged in the Bates County jail. He was charged with first-degree murder, but the trial, originally set for March 1897, was continued until the June term. I have found no record of Young having ever been convicted of murder or having ever served time in the Missouri state prison, which indicates to me that either he was acquitted or the charges against him must have been dropped or reduced. If he had been convicted of murder, newspapers of the day would surely have noted this fact.
Shobe lasted only another couple of years after this murder. By the turn of the twentieth century, it was pretty much a ghost town.

Siloam Springs

Last time, I wrote about Aurora Springs, one of the many resort towns that sprang up in the Ozarks during the mineral-water craze that swept across America in the late nineteenth century. Continuing that theme, let's take look at another such town, Siloam Springs, Missouri.
Dr. Jonathan Brown already owned land in northwest Howell County when he discovered some springs on his property in 1877 and began developing the site into a health resort the following year. He named the place Brown Springs and put in a small bath house and showers. Later, at the suggestion of his daughter, he renamed the resort Siloam Springs after the healing pool mentioned in the Bible.
D. F. Martin resigned his job as county treasurer of neighboring Iron County in the summer of 1878 and came to Siloam Springs because of his wife’s poor health. By 1880, Martin had acquired the resort from Brown, and he began promoting it heavily. In a letter to the Iron County Register in early July 1880, he told readers that the springs were “making themselves a wonderful reputation for their varied healing virtues in chronic diseases of all forms.”
Siloam Springs was growing rapidly, Martin said. It had 120 dwellings, several hotels or boarding houses, three general stores, two drug stores, and one livery stable. Homes suitable for small families were available to rent for two or three dollars a month.
Touting the almost magical powers of the healing waters of Siloam Springs, Martin said that, since he had come to the place two years earlier, thousands of people had visited the resort, and he had witnessed numerous cases that could only be described as miraculous cures. “So many have come here as a last resort after having been given up as incurable by their physicians, and their looks would seem to verify their conclusions; yet in spite of the judgement of their physicians, and the appearances of the patients, the waters seemed to take hold of them, and in a short time they would be on the highway to health and happiness.”
Martin said he didn’t claim to cure every disease known to man but that he could cure so many that his readers would be astonished if they were to visit. “You will see invalids brought here with the vital spark almost gone out by the wasting element of various chronic diseases, and as if by magic, some will spring into new life…while others more slowly, but none the less sure, will gather up thread by thread…until all is complete.”
Martin went on to enumerate some of the specific diseases and conditions that he and his waters could cure. He said he could cure every case of dropsy brought to the springs, as long as the edema had not been tapped. He could cure falling of the womb, all kinds of chills, and malaria of every form. “On kidney disease of all kinds the water acts like a charm,” Martin claimed. The springs also could cure general and nervous debility, paralysis and rheumatism, bronchitis, asthma, and catarrh. The springs could cure consumptive patients whose lungs were not already too far gone. All heart patients benefited from the waters, and half could be cured.
Concluding his spiel, Martin offered a money-back guarantee to any ill person who came to the springs and did not see benefit after two months of treatment under his direction.
About the time of Martin’s letter or shortly thereafter, he laid out the town of Martinsville at the resort, but the new name never took, as the post office and the springs themselves were still called Siloam Springs. Unlike many of the mineral-water towns that sprang up overnight and died about as fast as they came into being, Siloam Springs continued to boom throughout the 1880s and 1890s, when it reached a permanent population of about 600 residents. In the early 1900s, John Woodruff of Springfield acquired the springs and made extensive improvements, including electric lights, a modern sewer system, and playgrounds. The place declined, though, over the years, and Siloam Springs finally lost its post office about 1969.

Aurora Springs

I have previously written about a number of resort towns that sprang up in the Ozarks during the late 1870s and the 1880s, as the mineral-water craze of the late nineteenth century swept across the country. A couple of the places I’ve previously written about that come readily to mind are Indian Springs and Saratoga Springs, both in McDonald County, Missouri.
Another such place was Aurora Springs in northern Miller County, Missouri. Aurora Springs was started in the fall of 1880 and quickly grew into a booming mineral-water resort town. As with all such towns, the waters were advertised as having medicinal qualities, and by the spring and summer of 1881, people were flocking to Aurora Springs seeking cures for all kinds of ailments. The Tuscumbia Osage Valley Banner reported on May 19, for instance, that a little girl was improving rapidly from the effects of “scald head” after using the waters at Aurora Springs. The same issue of the newspaper reported that 1,500 people had attended divine services at Aurora Springs the previous Sunday.
The Banner reported on June 30, 1881, that Colonel J. H. Stover had relocated to Aurora Springs and was now reaping the benefits of the water. The previous Thursday he had supposedly stood alone for the first time in three years.
The Banner reported in the same issue that Aurora Springs was booming. Sick and invalid people were coming in and receiving benefits and then returning home. “Some of the most wonderful cures have been performed,” claimed the newspaper.
The editor urged everybody to go to Aurora Springs for the big Fourth of July celebration and picnic that was being planned. “The largest assembly of people ever witnessed in Miller County” was expected. The newspaperman said the park grounds, hotels, and bath houses wee being put in order for the big event, and he predicted that as many as 5,000 people would probably attend the Independence Day festivities.
The Jefferson City State Tribune of July 10, 1881, confirmed that at least 5,000 people did, indeed, attend the Aurora Springs Fourth of July celebration. “The Springs, as now arranged,” said the Tribune, “is one of the most pleasant points in central Missouri for public meetings and picnics.”
In August of the same year, one issue of the Banner reported that Aurora Springs had gained 100 permanent residents just within the past week. The next month the same paper reported that a woman who had suffered from “milk leg” for twenty years was now improving rapidly as a result of taking the waters of Aurora Springs.
In late 1881 or early 1882, the Missouri Pacific Railroad built a depot about a half mile southwest of Aurora Springs, and the community that grew up around the depot was at first called simply Aurora but soon came to be known as West Aurora. The main railroad line, however, ended up bypassing Aurora Springs and West Aurora altogether and went through Eldon instead, about two miles to the north.
Aurora Springs, however, continued to flourish throughout the 1880s and into the nineties. At its height, it was the most populous town in Miller County, with a population of about 700. It boasted three hotels, three lawyers, four doctors, six churches, and businesses of almost every kind.
A post office at Aurora Springs remained in operation until 1912. The community of Aurora Springs still exists today, but very little remains to suggest its glory days of the past.

Lynching of Henry Caldwell

I have mentioned on this blog before that, during the so-called lynching era of the late 1800s and early 1900s, Missouri witnessed a lot of extralegal hangings but that a much larger proportion of Missouri's victims were white than was the case in states like Mississippi. Missouri, in this respect, was more like the Old West than the Deep South. Much, but probably not all, of this phenomenon can be explained by the simple fact that Missouri had proportionately fewer blacks than the Deep South. So, I am not saying that Missouri was not the stage for an untoward number of racially motivated lynchings. Indeed, it was. The case I chronicle below is just one example.
On Thursday morning, July 27, 1882, some citizens in downtown Ironton, Missouri, according to the Iron County Register, heard cries for help from a nearby residence and, hurrying to the scene, found Mrs. Peck, a 60-year-old white woman, "struggling and screaming in the disgusting embraces of a black brute," 37-year-old Henry Caldwell, in the yard outside her home. Several men pulled Caldwell off the woman, and he was arrested and committed to the Iron County jail. The next day he was indicted for assault and attempted rape and held in lieu of $10,000 bond.
Caldwell, who was married with at least four children, had previously been considered a bit daft "in his every-day walk and at times out-and-out crazy." Back in May, he'd had one of his "spells" and threatened to kill his mother, his wife, and his children and been arrested for carrying concealed weapons. Apparently, though, as long as Henry was mainly a threat to his own family, no one in Ironton grew too alarmed. But, now in the wake of his arrest for assaulting Mrs. Peck, there was talk of lynching Caldwell, not only as a punishment for his own deed but "to serve as a deterrent to others whose 'craziness' might have a bent in a similar direction."
However, Thursday evening and Friday evening passed without any vigilante demonstration, and it was thought that the law would be allowed to take its course. The early part of Saturday night also passed quietly. About midnight, though, several squads of two or three men each, converged on the public square from different directions. Soon about 30 or 40 men, with blackened faces or wearing masks, had assembled in front of a millinery store, where they took an oath of secrecy. They then placed guards at each corner of the square, while the rest of the mob headed toward the jail.
The horde easily gained access to a corridor leading through the sheriff's two-story residence to the jail, but a heavy iron door at the end of the corridor blocked entry to the jail. An axe was procured, and the first blow to the lock awakened Sheriff William Fletcher from his slumber in his upstairs room. Springing from his bed, he appeared on a landing above the corridor with revolver in hand, but half a dozen revolvers quickly covered him in return. Two men walked up to the landing to relieve him of his weapon, and one of them whispered in his ear, "Bill Fletcher, you're one of my best friends, but, by God, we're going to have that nigger." Vastly outnumbered, Fletcher could do little but watch helplessly as the men proceeded to break down the door leading to the jail.
They forced Fletcher to give up the key to Caldwell's cell, looped a noose around the prisoner's neck, and dragged him outside. The mob took Caldwell on a run to a railroad bridge southeast of Ironton and hurried him up the steps to the center of the bridge. With one end of the rope still tied in a noose around Caldwell's neck, the vigilantes fastened the other end of the rope to a beam of the bridge and threw the condemned man over the parapet. Caldwell clung desperately to the timbers of the bridge until someone slashed through his arm with a knife, causing him to lose his grip and fall. Although he hung suspended, his feet barely touched the ground, and the mob, thinking the hanging might not be sufficient to cause death, immediately opened fire, riddling him with about 30 bullets fired at short range. The crowd then gave a yell and dispersed in all directions.
Advised of the incident about one o'clock on Sunday morning, the county coroner assembled a jury and went down to the bridge. They cut the body down and brought it back to the courthouse, where an inquest quickly yielded the usual verdict that the victim came to his death at the hands of parties unknown to the jury. Caldwell's body rested at the courthouse until 10 a.m. Sunday morning, when it was buried in the local potter's field.
The following week, the editor of the Iron County Register took a stance in sympathy with the mob. He claimed not to be an advocate of lynch-law, "but if there ever can be a case calling justly for its intervention, this was one." The editor said Caldwell's actions during the past few months had been such that he had been forbidden to enter the premises of several people for whom he worked, and "the heads of these families had been keeping him under continual surveillance."
One wonders, of course, how banishment from white homes and constant surveillance differed from the treatment any other black man in 1880s Ironton might have been subject to. One might also reasonably ask what punishment the actual rape of a white woman by a black man merited if the mere attempt to force oneself on a white woman justified lynching.

Murder of Thomas Howard and Hanging of William Fox

On Sunday morning, May 20, 1883, a body was found at Nevada, Missouri, south of the train depot near "The Cave," a notorious hangout for dissolute men and women. The body was quickly identified as that of Thomas Howard, and it was determined that he had been shot and had been dead only a matter of hours. Howard was about 35 years old, and he had come to Vernon County from Audrain County about a year earlier and settled with his wife in the Moundville area. Described as a "spreeing man" who sometimes stayed drunk for weeks at a time and who was "fond of lewd women," Howard had left his wife and come to Nevada, where he'd been spending time in saloons and houses of ill repute for several days prior to his death.
A coroner's inquest was held on Sunday, and based on the testimony of several witnesses, the jury concluded that Howard had come to his death on Saturday night, May 19th, at the hands of William Fox, a young man who, like Howard, had come to Vernon County from Audrain County a few months earlier. Fox's marriage, like Howard's, was on the rocks, and the two men had gotten together when they met up in Vernon County. They had been seen in company with each other throughout the day on Saturday and into the evening, and a man named Arnold, who had spent part of Saturday with the other two men, told the jury that Fox had confessed the killing to him on Sunday morning. Arnold said Fox told him he had committed the deed because Howard had tried to attack the prostitute, Mrs. Rose, whom Fox had been with. Based on this evidence, Fox was arrested on suspicion.
The 22-year-old Fox admitted that he was with Howard on Saturday, but he claimed he left him alive at 10 o'clock that night. Fox tried to implicate Arnold as the real culprit in the crime, but inconsistencies in his story only heightened the suspicion against him.
On Tuesday, May 22, Mrs. Rose gave a statement. She admitted being with Fox late Saturday night while her husband was at work, and she said Fox had confessed the crime to her, just as he had to Arnold. The next day Fox himself broke down and gave a full confession, although he now said the reason he killed Howard was to avenge an old grudge. The story Fox told was that, back in Audrain County, he had been accused of stealing a pig and had briefly left the county. Upon his return, he ran into Howard at a saloon, and Howard told him that it "looked suspicious" for him to leave the area while under accusations of stealing. An angry argument ensued, but Howard had quickly put the dispute in the past. He readily took up with Fox again when the two men met in Vernon County, but the younger man had not forgotten what he saw as a severe slight. Despite Fox's elaborate explanation for the murder, many observers around Nevada felt that Fox had mainly killed Howard just for his money--about $40, which he had taken off the man's body.
Fox was indicted for first degree murder on Thursday, May 24, and his trial began the following Wednesday. Fox's court-appointed lawyer did not deny his client's guilt but argued that there were mitigating factors. He said Fox loved Mrs. Rose, even though she was a dissolute woman, and that his client's original story to Arnold that he had killed Howard because Howard had struck or tried to strike Mrs. Rose was the true story. Fox had only changed his story to try to protect her from involvement in the crime, and he had acted out of passion, not out of greed or revenge as the other theories of the crime held. The presentation of evidence ended late that same night, and the jury retired to deliberate. The next morning, May 25, they announced a verdict of guilty. Fox's lawyer immediately asked for a new trial, partly on the basis that, during jury deliberations, someone had tossed a hangman's noose into the jury room. The judge overruled the motion and sentenced Fox to be hanged from the neck until dead on July 18, 1883. The case was then appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, which issued a stay of execution until October, so as to give time for the appeal to be considered. The verdict was affirmed later the same year, and the execution reset for December 28.
On December 27, the day before the scheduled execution, Fox was interviewed in his cell at the Nevada jail. He blamed his downfall on "whiskey and bad women." In addition, he said that he had gotten married too young and had married a woman to whom he was "too closely related." He and his wife were too much alike and, therefore, couldn't get along. The main reason he offered for his wayward life and for the murder of Howard, however, was simply that "Something has always been wrong with my head." Fox said he still loved Mrs. Rose but that she had not treated him right since he had been locked up. She had not visited him or even answered any of the letters he had written to her.
As many as 20,000 people poured into Nevada on December 28, and about 10,000 actually witnessed the hanging, which was staged from a gallows erected near the scene of the crime. The execution, according to one newspaper report, went off very smoothly and without "the usual painful preliminaries." Fox walked firmly up the steps to his doom and went immediately to the trap. At Fox's request, there was no clergy present, and the condemned man gave no lengthy speech, looking out over the crowd and saying only "Goodbye, boys" before the cap was placed over his head and he was swung into eternity.

The Lynching of James Layton

On January 30, 1841, James Layton of Perry County, Missouri, "beat his wife's brains out, in the presence of one of his children," according to a St. Louis newspaper, "and afterwards broke her legs and arms and otherwise abused her lifeless person, in a worse than savage manner." Layton then took his five children, left them at a relative's home, and fled the area. However, a "strong scout" started in pursuit of the villain, and he was apprehended and taken to Farmington, where he was lodged in the St. Francois County jail. (It's not clear whether the prisoner was taken to Farmington immediately after his arrest or was taken at first back to Perry County and was then granted a change of venue to the neighboring county.)
Over the next couple of years, Layton's lawyers kept managing to get the trial put off, but it finally came up in early 1843. He was convicted of the murder, based largely on the testimony of the son who had witnessed the crime, and sentenced to hang on June 17th. Layton's father, John Layton, was a prominent citizen of Perry County, and he interceded on his condemned son's behalf, writing to Governor Thomas Reynolds seeking a commutation of James's sentence. Reynolds refused to commute the sentence but did grant a stay of execution until September 1.
News of the respite, however, was not generally known to the public, and a large crowd, estimated as high as 3,000, assembled in Farmington on June 17th in anticipation of seeing a man die. When they learned of the postponement, many in the crowd reacted with anger and expressed the feeling that Layton would likely escape justice altogether if something was not done. Soon almost the whole crowd was roused up, and a mob began to form intent on taking the law into its own hands.
About 300 men broke into the jail and took Layton from his cell, although it's not clear whether this happened while the entire crowd that had gathered in Farmington to watch what they thought was going to be a legal hanging was still there or after the crowd had dispersed. At any rate, the mob took the man and hanged him just south of the jail in Farmington.

Lynching of Tom Little

Tom Little of Johnson County, Missouri, came from a Southern-sympathizing family. During the Civil War, he himself rode at least briefly with notorious Confederate guerrilla leader William Quantrill, and in 1864, two of his sisters were arrested and imprisoned at St. Louis for aiding guerrillas. (See my Bushwhacker Belles book.)
After the war, Little fell in with the James-Younger outlaw gang. On May 23, 1867, the gang robbed the Hughes and Wasson bank in Richmond, Missouri, of about $3,500 and killed three local citizens, including the mayor, when some of the townspeople tried to mount a defense.
Little was thought to have been among the robbers, and he and another suspect, Fred Meyers, were arrested in St. Louis in late May, brought to Warrensburg, and lodged in the county jail there on June 1. Friends of Little appeared and claimed they could obtain affidavits from the best citizens of Dover in neighboring Lafayette County that Little was in that community at the time of the Richmond robbery and was, therefore, innocent. They went to Dover, obtained the necessary affidavits, and upon returning to Warrensburg on the night of June 4th, were promised a hearing in Little's case the next day. However, the feeling around Warrensburg, a stronghold of Radical Republican sentiment, was strongly against Little because of his war activities. A "vigilance committee" headed by Warren Shedd, a former Union general, had been maintaining its own brand of law and order in the area for some time. Not waiting to hear the testimony that might exonerate Little, a mob broke into the jail at about five o'clock on the morning of the 5th, dragged Little from his cell, and hanged him in downtown Warrensburg.
Ten days later, the Weekly Caucasian, published at Lexington in Lafayette County, admonished James Eads, publisher of the Warrensburg Journal and a former Union officer, for misleading his readers about the fate of Tom Little. The Journal of June 5 had stated that Little was in jail when, in fact, he had already been lynched earlier that morning, and the June 12th issue failed to correct the error, making no mention of Little or the extralegal hanging. According to the Lexington editor, the vigilance committee had fractured over the lynching. Many of its members did not agree with the lynching, and General Shedd had supposedly not even been consulted prior to the mob action, which was carried out by the most Radical members of the group. Sentiment against the vigilante hanging was especially strong in the rural areas of Johnson County.
There are a few other details in county histories and on websites about Tom Little's hanging, but my telling of the story above represents most of what can be gleaned from newspapers published at the time the incident happened.
Saying he could not get a fair trial, Jesse James later cited the lynching of Tom Little as an example of why he would not give himself up to Missouri authorities, as some had urged him to do.

A Lynching in Saline County

I have observed before that, while lynchings during the 1800s and early 1900s were not everyday occurrences, they were frequent enough that, unless some sensational aspect in addition to the lynching itself attended them, they were often not widely reported. This, of course, was especially true if they occurred in rural areas, where they were witnessed by few, if any, outside parties. In such cases, details about the lynching were often scarce. I have written about at least one or two such cases previously, and another example was the case of Tom Stanton.
On the morning of December 17, 1873, a farmer named Fristoe (probably Thomas Fristoe) residing near the village of Cambridge in Saline County, Missouri, sold a large lot of hogs to a stock buyer in Cambridge for $1,000 in cash. A desperado named Tom Stanton, another tough named Highley, and three of their sidekicks got wind of the transaction and trailed Fristoe out of town until they reached an isolated spot a couple of miles outside the village, where they overtook him and shot him down. Pouncing on him, they cut his throat and then rifled through his pockets, securing the thousand dollars in cash.
The gang fled to some nearby timber to divvy up the stolen money but got into an argument about the split. Meanwhile, a passerby on the road discovered Fristoe's still-warm body and also overheard the argument in the nearby woods. Realizing what had happened, he left quietly and quickly rounded up a posse of men from the neighborhood. The posse set out after the culprits and captured three of them, with the other two making their escape. The three captives, according to a correspondent to the St. Louis Dispatch, were "summarily disposed of in accordance with the terribly stern and retributive judgment of Judge Lynch." A posse was sent after the remaining two killers, but they were apparently never found. It is also not certain whether Stanton and/or Highley were among the three villains who were hanged.

The 1918 Flu in Van Buren

The influenza pandemic of 1918 claimed more lives, an estimated 50 million-plus worldwide and about 675,000 in the United States alone, than any other natural disaster or outbreak of disease in the history of humankind. Yet, it seems we don't hear a whole lot about it. I don't remember studying much about it when I was in school. By comparison, World War I, which was raging at the time the epidemic broke out, claimed about 10 million lives worldwide and a little over 50,000 U.S. lives. Yet, I remember studying the Great War quite a bit in school. Part of the reason, I think, that we tend not to focus on the 1918 flu pandemic is because it did not receive a lot of publicity even at the time it was happening. This was partly by design. The U.S., Britain, and other Alllied powers discouraged or even censored such publicity, because they did want to publicize anything that might hurt morale and undermine efforts to win the war.
The 1918 flu pandemic spread to almost every country in the world, and here at home almost every community was affected. About 200,000 American people died in October of 1918 alone, when the pandemic was at its peak, and about 28% of the population suffered directly from the disease at some point during the fall and winter of 1918-1919. Even most of the people who did not actually have the flu had one or more family members who did, or at least they had friends who suffered from the disease.
The Van Buren Current Local described the epidemic in Van Buren, Missouri, in the fall of 1918, and the situation the editor described was fairly typical of communities across the country. In a short article in the November 7 issue, entitled "Influenza Claims Many," the editor began, "The Spanish influenza has been raging for the past two weeks in Ellsinore and vicinity. There have been over 100 cases and several deaths reported." (The 1918 flu was called the Spanish flu because it was thought at the time, incorrectly, that Spain suffered disproportionately from the disease.)
After naming some of the victims of the disease and expressing his sympathy with the families, the editor continued, "Let us hope this dreadful epidemic will soon disappear from our community. As to the sick ones here (i.e. Van Buren) it is impossible to try to name all of them. There are several instances where whole families are sick in bed at one time as 'ye correspondent' and wife and two boys were all down at once with the malady, we are in position to know how it goes. Both local doctors here have been on the go both day and night. Just at present we know of no real serious cases, and from what we can learn about it, the situation seems to be improving some."
The editor was right. The situation, not just in Van Buren, but across the country did improve fairly rapidly after early to mid-November, but the outbreak of flu did not completely run its course until early the following summer. In the November 14 edition of the Current Local, the editor noted that a young woman schoolteacher who had been staying in Van Buren with her parents while all the county schools were closed on account of the influenza epidemic was now returning to nearby Fremont to re-open her school. He added, "The influenza situation here is improving somewhat," although two deaths from the disease had been reported during the prior week.

Killing of Rube Sorrel and Arrest of His Sidekicks

Reuben Sorrel lived in the Canaan community of Gasconade County, Missouri, prior to the Civil War. When the war broke out, he evidently served as an officer in the Missouri State Guard for at least six months (although extant records do not confirm this). However, by the summer of 1863, he was back in his home territory of central Missouri, where he gained a reputation as a notorious bushwhacker. In late September he was killed, presumably by a detachment of Union soldiers, although this, too, is unclear. Word spread like a prairie fire, according to a Union report filed a few days later, and "rebels, secesh, and semi-rebels flocked in to the number of about 100 to see the corpse, which was not buried until the third day."
Shortly after her husband's death, Sorrel's widow, Martha, sent for a man named Matthews, whom she thought to be a Southern sympathizer. Among the things she told Matthews was that two men of the neighborhood, James M. Nelson and John D. Pope, had sworn that "four feds would have to pay for the killing of Rube."
Matthews, however, proved not to be a trustworthy friend. He reported what he had learned to the assistant provost marshal at Cuba, Ellis Evans, who in turn sent a letter on September 30 to his superior, a Captain Manning, describing Matthews's intelligence. Evans said both Nelson and Pope had been "noisy rebels" in Gasconade County. Nelson was described as "deformed," with a short arm and a head that drew to one side. He was fit enough, however, to have served in the rebel army under Sorrell for six months near the beginning of the war. (At the time of the 1860 census, Nelson was working on Sorrel's farm as a hired hand.) Evans thought that both Nelson and Pope should be banished outside Union lines or "else inside an inner line" (i.e. placed in jail) as other bushwhackers had been dealt with. He added that the Union men from the neighborhood between Canaan and Jake's Prairie, where Nelson, Pope, and the Sorrels lived, did not want Nelson and Pope arrested if they would only be turned loose shortly afterwards, because arresting them and not holding them would only make them worse when they came back. Evans concluded his letter by reminding Manning that the territory between Canaan and Jake's Prairie was "badly rebel."
An warrant for the arrest of Nelson, Pope, and the Sorrel family was issued, but precisely what action was taken has not been determined.
Sources: Union Provost Marshals' Papers, 1860 U.S. Census.

Lynching of Canada Bill

During the summer and fall of 1886, a half-blood Indian named Jack Barrett worked as a hired hand for various farmers in the Roark neighborhood on Buffalo Creek in northwest McDonald County near the Newton County line. Usually called Canada Bill because he was supposedly born in Canada, Barrett "had a bad reputation," according to a contemporaneous newspaper report, and was described in Sturges's History of McDonald County published 13 years later as "a man of vicious habits and of rather inferior mental faculties."
On Wednesday afternoon, December 15, Canada Bill went to the home of William Robert Roark and found his wife, 28-year-old Samantha, home alone except for one or two small children. When his indecent proposals toward the woman were rebuffed, he attacked her, tearing her clothes partially off, choking her, and badly bruising her. During the struggle, Samantha managed to flee the house but the assault continued until she reached the road about twenty or thirty yards away. Here Mrs. Roark's screams and those of her small children finally "alarmed the scoundrel," according to the Neosho Miner and Mechanic, "and he abandoned his fiendish purpose and fled."
Mrs. Roark immediately ran to the nearest neighbor and gave an alarm, and a posse quickly formed and gave chase. The villain was pursued into nearby Indian Territory and was captured later the same day. Either a U.S. marshal or an Indian policeman (reports differ) made the arrest, and the fugitive was brought back to Missouri and lodged that night under guard at the home of P.P. Rinehart in the Roark neighborhood. Not long after dark, a mob formed and surrounded the house, demanding that the prisoner be turned over to them. Rinehart went outside and pled with the men to leave. Apparently convinced by Rinehart's argument, the men left. Shortly afterward, Canada Bill was started on foot in the company of several guards toward Pineville, the seat of McDonald County. The party halted at the base of a big hill, near where the Seneca to Pineville road crossed Buffalo Creek, and they built a fire to keep warm while two young men named Lager who were among the posse went home to get a team and wagon for the completion of the journey. After waiting in vain for some time for the Lager boys to return, the rest of the posse members resumed the trip on foot. They had gone but a short distance when the mob reappeared and forced the posse to hand over the prisoner.
According to the McDonald County History, Canada Bill freely admitted his crime and said he ought to be sent to the penitentiary, but, sensing the fate that awaited him, he protested that he didn't deserve to be lynched. Nevertheless, he was taken down the road a ways to the edge of a field owned by Sam Owens and hanged to the limb of a black oak tree. The county history said that Canada Bill, in his last moments, "proved himself worthy of the stoical race to which he belonged. Seeing that his captors were devoid of mercy and protests were in vain, he resigned himself to his doom and met death in a spirit worthy of any hero." The guards, who witnessed the hanging, reported that Canada Bill "never uttered a groan or moved a muscle" when the rope was placed around his neck but instead was "drawn up like a log of wood and died as quietly as though he had lain down to a peaceful sleep." He had been guilty of a grievous offense, said the county history, "but grievously did he answer for it."
The body was left hanging throughout the night and was finally cut down late the next day. An inquest was held over the body, but the jury concluded, according to the Neosho newspaper, that "Nothing is known of the parties who executed this act of summary vengeance."
Canada Bill's body was placed in a crude coffin and buried at the top of the nearby hill.

James Wisdom's Murder of William Judy

On the night of December 3, 1883, William Judy, a young man not yet 20 years old, went to a dance on Elk River in McDonald County, Missouri, not far from Saratoga. Sometime during the evening, thirty-eight-year-old James M. Wisdom, who was postmaster of Saratoga and also a deputy sheriff for the county, showed up, according to his own later testimony, for the purpose of arresting a couple of young men for whom he had warrants. Wisdom might or might not have been acting under the auspices of the law, as he later said, but what seems clear is that he himself was drunk and behaving in an unruly fashion.
He flourished a pistol and starting swearing and verbally abusing Judy, who was presumably one of the men the deputy had come to arrest. Wisdom threatened to kill Judy if he didn't get on his horse and let the deputy ride behind. The young man volunteered to walk and let Wisdom ride the horse, but the older man insisted on riding behind Judy and continued to threaten and curse him. Finally Judy mounted up and rode over to a stump so that Wisdom could get on behind him. The two men rode off with Wisdom reaching around the other man to control the reins.
Some people on foot who trailed behind Wisdom and his captive heard shots and soon came upon Judy's dead body along the roadside not far from where the dance had been held. The next morning, Judy's horse was found at Wisdom's home, the deputy apparently having ridden it home after the murder. Wisdom claimed to have no memory of the events of the night before except for arriving at the dance with the warrants.
Wisdom was tried for first degree murder at the April 1884 term of McDonald County Circuit Court and found guilty and sentenced to hang. Wisdom appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, but the high court upheld the verdict around the first of March 1885 and set the execution for March 27. Governor John S. Marmaduke, however, intervened on March 17 and commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.
Wisdom was received at the Missouri State Prison in Jefferson City on March 24, 1885, to begin serving his life term. In 1887, however, he fell ill, and his family, friends, and a sympathetic physician petitioned for his release, based on their belief that he was in the late stages of consumption (tuberculosis) and had only a few weeks to live. Governor Albert Morehouse pardoned the convicted murderer on October 8, 1887, only two and a half years after he had been committed to prison, and Wisdom went home, supposedly to die. However, he soon regained his health and went on the live many years as a free man, even though he'd been convicted of first degree murder. At the time of the 1900 census, he was living in Oklahoma Territory with his wife and three adult children.

Sheriff Shelt Alsup Again

I have written previously about the Alsup family of Douglas County and especially about Shelt Alsup, who served as sheriff of the county in the mid to late 1870s. Specifically, my book Desperadoes of the Ozarks contains a chapter about the Alsups focusing in particular on the shootout between Sheriff Hardin H. Vickery and ex-sheriff Alsup, which left both men dead, a few months after Vickery had defeated Alsup in his reelection bid in the fall of 1878.
Recently I ran across a newspaper story about an incident involving Shelt Alsup that I was previously unaware of and, therefore, did not include in my Desperadoes book. It involves another shooting affray that occurred in 1876 when Shelt was still sheriff. Late on the night of September 4, 47-year-old James P. Stockton and Sheriff Alsup got into a dispute at the Berry Silvy place in the Arno neighborhood west of Ava. Exactly what the argument was about is unclear, but one report said they quarreled over a card game. Also, a constable said that a couple of weeks earlier he had encountered Stockton on a rural road as he was putting up a "notice to taxpayers" at the sheriff's direction and that Stockton had cursed him and drawn a revolver on him. In addition, Stockton was a fugitive from Dade County, where he was wanted on a charge of assaulting his brother, but Sheriff Alsup said he had no intent to make an arrest and had made no move to do so when Stockton attacked him. Finally, Stockton had reportedly been drinking on the night in question, and it's possible that both men had been imbibing.
Whatever the reason for the confrontation, Stockton yelled at the sheriff, "Damn you, you can't play off on me," pulled his gun, and started shooting. Shelt received several wounds, but he returned fire and, when he ran out of bullets, picked up a rock and knocked his assailant down with it. Stockton sprang up almost immediately, though, and retreated toward the house of Jesse McClain, his 66-year-old brother-in-law.
At the McClain residence, he roused the family and angrily demanded to see Margaret McClain, his 28-year-old niece, because she had supposedly spread some rumor about him. Jesse said his daughter was in bed and told Stockton he couldn't see her, but Stockton checked Margaret's bed for himself and found that she was not there. This angered him even more, and he began using threatening and violent language toward McClain. Stockton's sister, 48-year-old Lydia McClain, tried to calm her brother down and got between him and her husband. Stockton, however, pulled out his revolver, reached the weapon around Lydia, shot McClain, and ran from the house.
A couple of Jesse McClain's sons, including 16-year-old Newton McClain, gave chase, and Newt shot Stockton as he rose up on the far side of a fence. Following her sons outside, Lydia McClain told them, "Boys, don't shoot Uncle Jimmy any more." Seriously wounded but still on his feet, Jesse McClain appeared at the door and added, "Let him alone for he has killed me" and then collapsed in the doorway. Stockton, wounded but still very much alive, then made his getaway.
Meanwhile, Alsup, on his way to Ava to seek medical help, happened by the McClain place shortly after Stockton had arrived. The sheriff heard loud shouting, but he declined to intervene because of his wounded condition. When he reached town, a doctor treated him for two gunshot wounds to the upper left arm and one gunshot wound to the lower right arm. As soon as he was bandaged up, Shelt went back out "on the war-path," according to a report in the Douglas County Leader. Accompanied by a posse of three men, the sheriff set out after Stockton. At the McClain place, the posse found Jesse McClain dead, although he had lived about an hour after collapsing in the doorway. Continuing their pursuit, the posse split into two groups, with Shelt and his father (Lock Alsup) going to the left and Deputy Woods and Jesse Cox going right.
As Woods and Cox neared the Silvy place, where Stockton had assaulted Alsup, Stockton sprang up from behind a pile of brush, spooking Cox's horse, which became uncontrollable and went tearing off through some timber, leaving Woods to confront the fugitive alone. The deputy demanded Stockton's surrender, but Stockton declined the invitation to give himself up. Each man started shooting, and Stockton soon fell mortally wounded with three shots from Woods's rifle.
The next day, McClain and his murderous brother-in-law were buried near each other in the Ritter Cemetery.
Sources: Springfield Leader, Springfield Weekly Patriot, Find-A-Grave entry for Jesse Jasper Newton, census records.

Murder of John Henry Boller

On July 15, 1864, 63-year-old John Henry Boller was driving his horse and buggy into Boonville, Missouri, from his residence west of town when he passed three young men resting under a shade tree at the side of the road. One of the three young men was notorious Johnson County guerrilla Bill Stewart, another one was Stewart's sidekick Al Carter, and the third was a local young hellion named Robert Sloan. Stewart and Carter asked Sloan who the passerby was, and after being informed of the man's identity, Stewart decided to rob him. (The fact that Boller was German-born might have had something to do with Stewart's decision, since Germans were usually very strong Union supporters and were almost universally despised by the Missouri guerrillas.)
Stewart and his two companions caught up with and waylaid Boller about a mile from Boonville. They demanded his money, and Stewart reached for a watch Boller was carrying. Instead, of turning over his money and valuables, though, Boller resisted and started to drive on. Stewart promptly opened fire, hitting Boller four or five times. The bushwhackers then robbed him and also robbed another old man who happened along.
After he was robbed, Boller managed to drive on into Boonville, where a resident noticed his weak, bloody condition and took him into his house. Boller, however, died almost as soon as he got inside. The local militia was notified of the incident and immediately started in pursuit of the three bushwhackers. They overtook Sloan, and one of the Union soldiers shot him in the side of the head. Taken into custody, Sloan did not die of the wound but was left blind by it.
Meanwhile, Stewart and Carter escaped, at least temporarily. Carter and four other guerrillas were killed by Federal soldiers in Howard County on September 12, and Stewart was finally killed by a cattle drover on November 11 at Old Franklin in Howard County just across the Missouri River from Boonville when Stewart attempted to rob the cattleman.
On December 5, 1864, Louisa A. Boller filed an affidavit with officials at Boonville swearing that she was the widow of John Henry Boller, stating that his death had left her destitute and without means of support, and asking that she be given an allowance as compensation for his death. She swore that she had never given aid to anybody in rebellion against the U.S. and had, to the contrary, always been a strong Union woman. Whether any aid was given to Mrs. Boller is unknown.

A Civil War Murder in Springfield

As even casual students of the Civil War in Missouri know, the conflict in our state was characterized by bitter guerrilla fighting that spawned rampant lawlessness. Robberies, destruction of property, and even murders were not uncommon. Most of these criminal acts were related at least peripherally to military operations—either committed during the fight for control of the state early in the war or else during Confederate efforts to dislodge the occupying Federal Army after the Union secured Missouri in the spring of 1862. However, some crimes were personally motivated and had little or nothing to do with military operations. In the rural parts of the state, most such outrages were committed by partisans and freebooters who identified at least nominally with the Southern cause. However, crimes in the larger cities, which served as Union posts and headquarters, were also not uncommon, and these were often authored by the Federal soldiers themselves. An example is a shooting affray that occurred in Springfield in the spring of 1862, perhaps the city’s most notorious incident of the Civil War that did not directly involve military operations.
Union sympathizer Mrs. Mary Willis, having lost two sons at the hands of bushwhackers in her home territory of northern Arkansas, sought refuge at Springfield during the latter part of the winter of 1861-1862, and she and her family were placed in a vacant house in the east part of town. Because the house had previously been occupied by “a squad of accommodating girls,” two soldiers were placed as guards at the house to turn away unwelcome visitors. About sundown on the evening of May 21, 1862, duty officer John R. Clark and his orderly, A. J. Rice, both in a state of intoxication, called at the Willis home and demanded dinner. When Mrs. Willis declined to prepare the meal, Captain Clark and his companion grew irate, began cussing, pulled their pistols, and tried to force their way into the house. One of the guards shot Clark through the body, and he staggered back a few steps and fell dead. Rice promptly fired at the guard but missed and hit Mrs. Willis’s daughter, Miss Mary Willis, in the head, killing her instantly. The second guard then shot Rice and wounded him severely. The ball struck him in the breast and ranged up through the shoulder, which was badly shattered.
A Mexican War veteran, Clark was a member of Company B, Fifth Kansas Cavalry, but he and most of the men of his company had been recruited into Federal service from Mercer County, Missouri, where he had served four years as sheriff of the county and had been a delegate to the 1856 Democratic State Convention. Despite the circumstances of his death and despite the fact that he was considered by at least one member of his own regiment “a Pro-Slavery brute” who “ought to have joined the rebels instead of our side,” Clark was buried in Springfield the day after his death with both military and Masonic honors.
Upon initial examination, A.J. Rice’s wound was considered mortal, but he lived long enough to be indicted the following summer in Greene County Circuit Court for the murder of Miss Mary Willis. At the August 1862 term of court, he took a change of venue to Phelps County. He was tried at Rolla in late October and convicted on October 30 of first degree murder. The next day, he appealed and was granted a new trial on November 1. The following April the case was continued, but no record of it has been found after that. Rice might have died before the new trial began, because, according to Holcombe’s 1883 History of Greene County, Rice’s wound “eventually proved fatal.”

Murder of Peter P. Keen

On or about March 26, 1862, thirty-seven-year-old Peter P. Keen was killed by a gang of bushwhackers in Johnson County, Missouri, in the vicinity of Holden. Members of the gang included Andrew J. Wallace, Joseph Ross, Jack Briscoe, George Smith, and William F. Smith, but nothing was done about the crime at the time because the alleged perpetrators could apparently not be located.
In late December of 1862, however, two and a half years after the crime, an investigation was undertaken after several letters passed through the Holden post office addressed to Andrew J. Wallace, giving his address as Frankford, Illinois. (This might have been a misspelling of Frankfort.) Three citizens of Johnson County, including Keen's widow, promptly offered their testimony about Wallace's involvement in the killing of Peter Keen.
Harriett Keen said she knew Wallace was one of those who had participated in the murder of her husband and that Wallace was known in the area at the time as a notorious bushwhacker.
Elijah Buchanan echoed Mrs. Keen's testimony, saying that, at the time of the murder, he was close enough to the scene of the crime to hear the gunfire, that he saw the gang of bushwhackers immediately afterward, and that Wallace was one of them.
Holden postmaster William Rose (who no doubt was the one who called attention to the letters addressed to Wallace) said that Wallace and his comrades had taken him prisoner on the same day Keen was killed and had threatened to kill him, too. Rose said the bushwhackers spared him only because his father-in-law pled with them to do so. Rose added that the bushwhackers said in his presence that they "would kill every damned Union man in the county" or any man who went among the Federal soldiers. Rose said that Wallace had been a schoolteacher before the war and that he thought he was also teaching school in Illinois.
Apparently Wallace was never brought back to central Missouri to answer the charge of killing Peter Keen, or if he was, he was not detained long. He spent most of his adult life in the Decatur, Illinois, area and died there in 1908.

Maria McKeehan, Another Bushwhacker Belle

Sometime in the fall of 1863, Union authorities in Johnson County, Missouri, arrested several young men, supposed to be members of what was called the Knob Noster Independent Company, as bushwhackers and as suspects in the murder of a man named William Dillingham. Twenty-four-year-old Maria McKeehan (spelled Mariah in Union records) was arrested near the same time for aiding and abetting them.
In December of 1863, Dr. James M. Mitchell of Knob Noster gave a statement to Union authorities against Maria. Presumably he was compelled to do so, since he himself was a Southern sympathizer.
Dr. Mitchell said that on the 9th of August, he was called to the home of Catherine Hart, Maria's married sister, located in the Bristle Ridge neighborhood about six miles southwest of Knob Noster, because a family named Jones who was staying there had a sick child. While Dr. Mitchell was at the Hart residence, Maria, whose parents lived about two miles east of Knob Noster but who was then staying with her sister, asked Dr. Mitchell for a bottle of medicine for her sick brother, who was in the bush with the bushwhackers. Maria informed the doctor that she had been to the bushwhackers' camp that very morning and that the guerrillas told her that they had killed Dillingham earlier the same morning about two miles from her sister's home. (Dillingham was indeed killed on the morning of August 9 at his home near Bristle Ridge and his body was found "shot into holes" about 30 yards from his house.)
Maria further stated that she regularly fed the bushwhackers and aided them with medicine and information. She told Dr. Mitchell that she had heard one of the bushwhackers, Sam Whitley, threaten to kill him (i.e. Dr. Mitchell) because he would not come into the bush to administer to the bushwhackers' medical needs, and she told the doctor which road to take back to Knob Noster to avoid the guerrillas. Dr. Mitchell said the reason he thought Maria had helped him was that he had been kind to her aged father and had been the family doctor for a number of years.
A Union official noted on Mitchell's deposition that the doctor was a truthful man, even though he was "secesh."
Apparently little more ever happened in Maria McKeehan's case, as I have been unable to find any record of her having been shipped to St. Louis for banishment or trial as many women arrested during the Civil War for helping Missouri's guerrillas were. And that's why I did not include her in my Bushwhacker Belles book published earlier this year.

A Civil War Murder at New Tennessee

Around the middle of July, 1864, a young man named Eli Vansickles was arrested by Union authorities at Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, on suspicion of having been an accessory to the murder of a school teacher in the New Tennessee settlement of Ste. Genevieve County in the fall of 1861. On July 20th, an anonymous letter writer told officials that he knew several people who were knowledgeable about the murder, and he forwarded the names of Thomas Arendall, Arendall's wife, and Joseph Townsend as possible witnesses.
Authorities apparently did not locate Joseph Townsend, but they did take a statement from his older brother, John Townsend, on July 29. John Townsend told them that he lived in the New Tennessee settlement (located in the southern part of Ste. Genevieve County) and that it was "generally known in the neighborhood that Andrew Burnett, a rebel, murdered the man and that Eli Vansickles, now under arrest as accessory to said murder, was at the time and place in company with said Burnett and that said Eli Vansickles is also a rebel and was in the Rebel Army."
John Townsend went on to say that, after the murder, he and Joseph Townsend (whom he did not identify as his brother) went to the place where the body was lying dead, that Joseph Townsend helped bury the corpse, that he saw Joseph Townsend take a watch and some other articles off the body before the burial, and that, as far as he knew, Joseph Townsend had never accounted to anyone for those items.
The same day, July 29, William Thomas Arendall also gave a deposition in which he stated that he knew Andrew Burnett, now deceased, was the person who killed the school teacher (name not given), and he recalled the date of the murder as approximately November 1, 1861. He said the school teacher was just passing through and was shot down about 300 yards from his (Arendall's) house. Later that same evening, Arendall saw Burnett at a mill about three-fourths of a mile from where the murder had occurred and that Burnett told him that he was the one who had killed the man and that Vansickles was with him when he did it. Burnett, according to Arendall's testimony, said that both he and Vansickles belonged to Jeff Thompson's Rebel army.
Whether Vansickles (sometimes spelled Van Sickles or Van Sickle) was ever punished for his part in the crime and, if so, how severely, is not known. What is known is that Vansickles continued to live in Ste. Genevieve County after the war and died there on the last day of 1882 after "a long, painful illness."

Lynching of Abraham W. Smith

Abraham W. Smith was convicted of murder in Madison County, Missouri, sometime around the early part of 1844. (I have yet to learn the details of his alleged crime.) He was sentenced to hang at the end of June, but the sentence was stayed until September 1. Apparently upset by the slow-turning wheels of justice, a mob tried to execute Smith around the first of June (probably near the time the stay was announced), but they were deterred by another group of citizens.
However, on August 5, a drunken mob broke into the county jail at Fredericktown with axes, crowbars, and other tools. One of the gang went down into the dungeon-like cell, where the prisoner was held in irons, and placed a rope around Smith's neck. The rest of the mob hauled him up by the rope and then dragged him down some stairs and outside to a walnut tree located about fifty yards from the jail. Notwithstanding the fact that he was apparently already dead by the time they reached the tree, the mob strung him up to the tree and let him hang for several minutes. They then let him down, but one of the gang, suspecting Smith might still be alive, insisted that they hang him again. The body was accordingly strung back up until the bloodthirsty mob was sufficiently convinced that life was extinct.
That very night, an inquest was held over Smith's body, and the jury returned a verdict that he had come to his death at the hands of a mob that included men named Jones, Sinclair, Mayse, Pollis, Cox, Blackburn, and Shetley, as well as five other men. Pollis, Cox, Blackburn, Shetley and one other man suspected in the vigilante execution were promptly arrested. Several days later Mayse was spotted at St. Mary's Landing, a small community on the Mississippi River in Ste. Genevieve County. It was presumed he was trying to catch a boat to make his escape. Around the first of October, John Sinclair was recognized on the streets of St. Louis and arrested. Accused of being the man who had placed the rope around Smith's neck, he was taken back to Madison County, where he and several of the other men involved in the lynching of Smith were indicted on charges of murder. However, I have so far been unable to determine the outcome of their cases.

Martha Misner and the Plain View Hotel

Sometime during the first half of 1895, seventy-year-old Martha Misner and her husband, Henry, moved into Springfield, Missouri, from an outlying farm and took up quarters in some rooms over a store near the corner of Campbell and College streets. The couple didn't sell their rural property but instead used it to secure one or more loans that they took out. They also owned a house at 895 Franklin Avenue in the north part of Springfield, which they rented out to Belle Wilson. Belle, who had a notorious reputation as a prostitute and madam in Springfield dating back to the 1870s, ran the place as a bawdy house.
Martha decided to start her own "sporting business," renting out one or more of her upstairs rooms as trysting places. Police raided the Misner rooms not long after Martha and Henry moved in and arrested two men and two young women whom they found in bed together. (It's not clear that Henry was living with Martha at this time. He might have still been living on the rural property.)
Henry Misner died in 1896, and Belle Wilson vacated the house on Franklin about the same time. Martha moved out of the rooms at Campbell and College and took over the Franklin Avenue property, continuing to run it as a bawdy house. Not long after Martha took possession of the place, a policeman stopped by to levy a fine against her (which was the normal cost of doing business), and Martha told him she couldn't afford to let the house sit idle and that "this is the only way I can get any income from it."
Martha was indeed facing financial difficulty. Within a year or two after her husband died, she defaulted on the loans they had taken out against their farm, and the rural property was put up for sale at auction to pay off the debts.
Apparently Martha simply doubled down on her prostitution business in order to stay afloat financially. In 1899, her "boardinghouse" on Franklin was still going strong as the main bawdy house in Springfield. Often called the Plain View Hotel, its name hinted at its method of operation. Gentlemen callers were received by Rosa Cameron, who managed the place for Martha and also entertained guests herself on occasion. Rosa would summon the girls from the upstairs rooms to come downstairs and line up in "plain view" so that the men could pick out the girl they wanted. The customers paid Rosa before escorting the girl of their choice back upstairs. They were charged from $1.00 to $5.00, depending on how long they stayed and other factors, and at the end of each day, Rosa gave half of the money back to the girls in accordance with how much each one had brought in. One girl testified to a grand jury that she usually brought in about $60 to $100 a month, which she had to split with Martha to pay for her room and board. Occasionally Martha or one of her girls might be summoned to police court, but usually they simply paid periodic fines ranging from $6 to $10 directly to police officers. In other words, prostitution was a money-making operation not just for the girls and the madams but for the cops as well. If any of Martha's girls wanted to leave the Plain View at night, they normally had to pay the madam $2.50 as compensation for the lost income.
Martha Misner continued to operate the Plain View Hotel, or the White House as it was also called, until at least 1908. It was one of the few authentic bordellos in Springfield, if not the only one, during the turn-of-century era, although a large number of sporting girls worked out of boardinghouses and hotels on a freelance basis during the aughts and teens. Martha Misner died in July 1912 and is buried at Hazelwood Cemetery beside her husband, Henry. For more information on Martha Misner and Springfield prostitution in general, see my book Wicked Springfield, Missouri.

Murder of Jacob Woolford

I have written quite a bit about murders and other incidents of violence in Missouri and surrounding states during the late 1800s that were motivated largely by personal and political hatred left over from the Civil War, but of course there were even more such incidents that occurred during the war. One was the killing of Jacob Woolford in Reynolds County, Missouri, in August of 1861.
On Monday, August 26, a party of about ten Southern men called at a mill run by Jacob Woolford on one of the forks of the Black River north of Lesterville. Woolford was a Union sympathizer who had apparently incurred the ire of one or more of the Southern men. When he appeared at the door of his mill, several of the men opened fire killing him almost instantly. After the murder, the gang found two Union soldiers at the mill and took them prisoner.
The identity of the killers remained unknown or unclear for a number of months. Finally, during the latter part of 1862, Edmond Falkenberry was arrested as a suspect in the murder, and he gave a full statement about the crime to the provost marshal at Pilot Knob on December 5, 1862. He named himself, James Stout, James A. McClurg, E.G. Clay, John Quigley, Joseph Quigley, Albert Wilson, William Wilson, Tolbert Hunt, Thomas Falkenberry (Edmond's brother), and William H. Copeland as participants in the incident. Edmond Falkenberry said that John Quigley was the "captain" of their squad, and he identified James McClurg and William Wilson as two of the principals in the actual murder. He said McClurg fired the first shot, and that Albert Wilson later told him that he (Wilson) had fired the shot that actually killed Woolford. Falkenberry himself claimed not to have been on the immediate premises of the mill when Woolford was shot but instead was some distance away. He also said that, as far as he knew, his group only planned to capture Woolford and take him south, either as a prisoner or a conscript, to the camp of Brigadier General William J. Hardee, who was organizing troops for the Confederacy in Arkansas. Falkenberry said he did not know that any of his comrades wanted to kill Woolford.
Sometime around the first part of 1863, James Stout and James McClurg were arrested for their part in the crime, tried and convicted by military commission, and sentenced to death. The two were shipped to St. Louis to await the execution of the sentence, but McClurg escaped, either in route or shortly after arrival. Stout also escaped a short time later.
William Copeland surrendered voluntarily about the time of Falkenberry's statement and was held for his part in the killing of Woolford. He was sent to St. Louis with a recommendation for lenient treatment since he had surrendered voluntarily and had complied with the terms of his parole. He later was either tried and found not guilty or was pardoned and released. Falkenberry and his brother also appear to have been given lenient treatment in the Woolford killing.
Most of the rest of the men involved, however, remained at large, and they had still not been captured in February 1869, four years after the war, when Missouri governor Joseph W. McClurg offered a reward of two hundred dollars each for their apprehension. Apparently, however, they were never brought to justice.

Murder of A.M.F. Hudson

Alexander McFarland Hudson was a lawyer and editor of a Republican newspaper in Lebanon, Missouri, during the Civil War era. A strong Union man during the pre-war unrest and early part of the war, he voted for Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 election and was personally acquainted with the president. In the summer of 1862, Hudson was appointed to the Laclede County Board by Union brigadier general E.B. Brown, commanding the Southwest Missouri District. He was named a lieutenant colonel of the local Enrolled Missouri Militia about the same time. So, it’s clear he was still in good standing with Union officials at this time.
Hudson, though, was not altogether without sympathy for the Southern cause, or at least for certain Southern men, even at this stage of the war. In May of 1862, shortly before his appointment to the county board, he wrote to Union officials on behalf of his acquaintance Rufus Phillips, a strong Southern man who was being held prisoner in St. Louis on charges of disloyalty.
It was not until the fall of 1862, however, that Hudson had a real change of heart, or so his critics said. In October, he was held prisoner by Confederate forces, and in January of 1863, not long after he was released, a Union scout returned from spying among Rebel forces and reported that Hudson, while he was a prisoner, told his captors that, if they attacked Lebanon, he and his E.M.M. regiment would go over to their side.
Acting on this intelligence, Lieutenant William Gibbs, Union provost marshal at Lebanon, gathered evidence to support the allegation of disloyalty. On January 11, he took a number of depositions from local men who knew Hudson. Although a few stated that, as far as they knew, Hudson was loyal, several others accused him of uttering disloyal statements. One man said he’d heard Hudson say just the previous day that the Rebels would take Lebanon and Laclede County and that “Lincoln would have to give it up.” The witness also said he had heard Hudson say that Union men were just as bad as Rebels in stealing and plundering. Another man stated that he heard Hudson say he wouldn’t follow such a set of thieves as the Federal troops at Lebanon and that the men calling him a Rebel didn’t have as much Union blood in them as he (Hudson) had in his little finger. The man added, however, that he didn’t think Union men would put up bonds for Rebels as Hudson had done. (This might have been, at least in part, a reference to Hudson’s support of Rufus Phillips.) Yet another deponent claimed Hudson was elated by the recent (January 8) Confederate attack on Springfield and that he was one of the strongest and most dangerous Rebels in the area.
The fact that several witnesses against Hudson mentioned his statements opposing theft by Union soldiers supports a statement in the 1889 History of Laclede County that the root cause of Hudson’s clash with Union authorities was that he would not overlook depredations by Federal troops, as many other Union men did.
Lieutenant Gibbs had Hudson arrested and escorted to St. Louis as a prisoner on or about January 20, 1863. Hudson got no farther than Rolla before prominent Union men interceded on his behalf. Among those who wrote letters to Union authorities protesting the arrest and vouching for Hudson’s loyalty were Colonel John M. Glover, commander of the Rolla District; and J.W. Thrailkill, a prominent Rolla physician.
Hudson was released at Rolla on his parole of honor that he would travel to St. Louis on his own and report to Union authorities there on January 25. After he reached St. Louis, the charges against him were dropped, and he returned home a free man. Resentment against Hudson lingered, however, among some Union soldiers and citizens.
On July 17, 1863, Hudson was killed about ten miles east-northeast of Lebanon on Bear Creek along the Rolla road. A coroner’s jury examined Hudson’s mutilated body the next day and concluded he’d been shot several times and stabbed once, as he was walking toward Lebanon.
An investigation by Colonel Joseph Gravely, commanding the post at Lebanon, revealed that a Union wagon train had passed the location where the body was found near the time residents of the area reported hearing gunshots, and the soldiers of the escort were suspected of the crime. George Johnson and John Rupell, members of Gravely’s 8th Missouri State Militia, came under particular scrutiny. They were seen off by themselves on the morning of the murder near the place and time the crime occurred. The two men testified, however, that they had not even seen Hudson on the morning he was killed. After several teamsters, members of the escort, and citizens living near the scene of the crime were interviewed, Gravely decided there was not enough evidence to bring charges, and his superior officer, Brigadier General John McNeil, concurred.

Summer of 1954

The temperatures in the Ozarks have been pretty hot this summer but probably not much more so, if any, than normal. In fact, July has so far, as of the 22nd, probably not been quite as hot as usual. At least, I know that in Springfield the month of June had more really hot days than July has so far, and that is the opposite of what we normally expect in the region. The high temperature thus far in Springfield this year has been 96 degrees recorded on June 22, again on June 23, and finally matched yesterday (July 21). June also had two other days with a high temperature of 95 degrees and one day with a high temperature of 94 degrees. By contrast, the hottest Springfield temperature in July before yesterday was 93 recorded on the 18th. The high temperature so far this year in both Rolla and Joplin, 96 and 98 respectively, also occurred in June, on the 22nd. I should add, however, that the forecast for the next couple of days calls for rising temperatures; so we’re not out of the woods yet as far as extremely hot July temperatures are concerned.
My overall point, though, is that so far the summer of 2016 has not been an extremely hot one. At least not when you compare it to the hottest summer on record, which was 1954. During that summer, Springfield had thirteen days on which the thermometer reached triple digits. Joplin, located seventy miles to the west and nearer the Great Plains, where temperatures are almost always somewhat hotter than they are in the Ozarks, recorded an astounding thirty-nine days on which the temperature topped 100. Eighteen of those days happened in July, including twelve straight days from July 11 through July 21. During that span, the temperature reached 114 on July 14, the hottest temperature on record for Joplin. Springfield had an all-time record high of 113 the same day. Rolla topped out on July 14 at 109 or 113 (depending on the source), and the mercury there reached triple digits a total of ten times during the summer of 1954.
I vaguely recall the intense heat of the summer of 1954, when I would have been seven years old. Actually, I don't recall the specific year. I only recall that during a couple of the summers of my childhood, when I was growing up in the Springfield area, it was extremely hot. It has been only during my adulthood, after I read or was told that 1953 and 1954 were unusually hot summers, that I've concluded those must have been the years I remember as being very hot. We didn't have air conditioning, either, back in those days, but somehow the heat didn't bother me much. I'd hate to be without air conditioning this summer, even though it hasn’t been one of the hottest summers on record thus far. I think it would bother me a lot, but, of course, I'm not seven anymore. Temperature extremes don't seem to bother kids the way they do adults, especially older adults like me. At least they didn't bother me and my childhood friends when we had important things to do like playing baseball or going fishing.
I should probably add that, by pointing out that the hottest summer in the Ozarks occurred over sixty years ago, I am not trying to deny that the earth is getting warmer overall. The trend of year-round temperatures for the whole globe is definitely upward. Of the sixteen hottest years on record for worldwide average temperature, all but one of them have occurred since 2001. So, global warming is definitely real.
It’s just that the summer of 1954 happened to be abnormally hot in this little part of the world.

A Would-Be Bonnie and Clyde

Bonnie and Clyde's notorious reputation had become so ubiquitous by the spring of 1934, shortly before their deaths, that false sightings of the desperate duo were not unusual. One example occurred in Texas County, Missouri, in early May, just weeks before the real Bonnie and Clyde were killed in Louisiana.
On the night of May 2, an automobile with two young men and a young woman pulled into a filling station at Cabool, and something about them aroused the station attendant's suspicion. The older of the young men and the woman appeared to be a couple, and the other young man seemed to be along for the ride. The attendant concluded that the threesome might be Bonnie and Clyde and a male sidekick, and he notified authorities.
Highway patrolmen Nathan Massie and Ben Graham answered the call. They caught up with the suspect vehicle just north of Cabool, and a brief exchange of fire ensued. Breaking contact once again, the fugitives abandoned their vehicle, and the two men took to the woods, leaving the young woman behind.
Coming upon the abandoned car, the officers placed the young woman under arrest. She gave her name as Florence Iseley and said she didn't even know who the two young men were, because she had simply hitched a ride with them near Charleston, Missouri.
Bloodhounds were called in to help track down the two young men. The dogs located the fugitives' hiding place late the next day, May 3, and another exchange of gunfire ensued. The older young man was killed, and the other one was shot in the arm and surrendered. The wounded man gave his name as Walter Allen and said he thought the other man was Harry Williams of Evansville, Indiana, although Allen, too, claimed at first just to be a hitchhiker. He soon changed his story, however, admitting that the dead man was his older brother, Edgar Allen, and that the woman was his brother's wife.
Young Allen said he was from Quincy, Illinois, was 18 years old, and had been released from the Algoa Reformatory near Jefferson City only four months earlier, having originally been sent there from Hannibal, Missouri.
A shotgun, some burglary tools, some ammunition, and some merchandise thought to have been stolen was found inside the abandoned vehicle. Notified of the shootout, officers in Quincy said the brothers were wanted there for theft of an automobile from a showroom on March 29 and that they had tried unsuccessfully to sell the car in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Both Walter Allen and his sister-in-law were lodged in the Texas County jail at Houston, but I'm not sure what happened to them after that.

Kidnapping and Murder of Dr. J.C.B. Davis

On Tuesday, January 26, 1937, as Dr. J.C.B. Davis of Willow Springs, Missouri, was leaving his office, he was approached by a young man who introduced himself as "Mr. James" and said his wife was ill and needed the doctor's help at their home in rural Willow Springs. Davis left with the stranger and did not return in a timely manner. The next day, he was reported to authorities as missing, and Missouri State Highway Patrol began an investigation.
A ransom letter, mailed from West Plains and postmarked January 28, was received the following day, Friday the 29th, and FBI agents were sent to Willow Springs to join the investigation. Opening with the salutation "Dear friend," the letter was written in the doctor's handwriting, meaning the kidnapper had forced Davis to write his own ransom letter. It demanded that $5,000 be paid in four $1,000 bills, nine $100 bills, and five $20 bills. It threatened the doctor with death if the family did not comply, and it contained instructions for delivering the money.
The same day, January 29, Davis's medical kit was found about thirteen miles southwest of Willow Springs in the North Fork River. This no doubt raised fears that the doctor had already been foully dealt with, but nevertheless Davis's son-in-law, following the letter's instructions, drove along the road between Willow Springs and Ava after dark looking for a white flag that the letter said would mark the spot where the ransom money was to be dropped, but the son-in-law, his vision obscured by heavy fog, failed to find a white flag.
On Monday, February 2, Davis's wife received a second note, written in unfamiliar handwriting, renewing the demand for $5,000 in ransom and directing that it should be delivered by 9:00 p.m. February 4th.
Meanwhile, acting on a tip from a person who had seen the doctor and the young man in an automobile together on the day of the doctor's disappearance, highway patrol officers located, early on the morning of February 3, an automobile matching the witness's description at the home of Samuel Kenyon in Grimmet, a small community northwest of West Plains about halfway between West Plains and the North Fork River where the medical bag was found. Officers identified Kenyon's twenty-one-year-old son, Robert, as a suspect in the kidnaping, and during a search of the residence, they found a notebook pad with the top sheet containing barely legible indentations that matched the words and handwriting of the second ransom note. Young Kenyon was also in possession of a .25 caliber automatic pistol, and it was determined that the suspect automobile found on the premises had been stolen from Rolla a few months earlier.
Robert Kenyon confessed to kidnapping and killing Davis, and he led officers to the doctor's body in a brushy area just off Highway 63 near Olden, Missouri. Davis was found face down clutching a pair of gloves in one hand and a checkbook in the other. It was concluded upon close inspection and further investigation that the doctor had been killed shortly after he was kidnapped, having been shot while in the act of trying to write a check to pay his own ransom. The only explanation Kenyon could offer for his desperate deed was that he wanted money so that he and his girlfriend could get married.
Kenyon was arrested and taken back to Willow Springs but quickly whisked away to Kansas City early the same morning (Feb. 3) to avert feared vigilantism. Kidnapping and first-degree murder charges were filed against him later the same day. His trial was held in July at the Oregon County seat of Alton on a change of venue. He was convicted and sentenced to death. Kenyon's lawyers appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, but the verdict was upheld. Kenyon was executed in the gas chamber at Jefferson City on April 28, 1939. He was the first person to be put to death in Missouri by gas, as execution by hanging had recently been abolished.

Murder of Minnie Grimes and Swift Retribution

In the spring of 1886, a young man in his mid to late twenties named Francis "Frank" Lyle, who lived with his brother north of Hume, Missouri, near the state line, was courting a seventeen-year-old girl named Minnie Grimes, who lived just across the border in Linn County, Kansas. At some point, the courtship developed into a serious romance, or so Lyle thought, but by May, as Frank pressed her to marry him, Minnie started trying to extricate herself from the relationship. Her parents reportedly opposed the match, partly because of the age difference.
Minnie had also developed an interest in another young man, William Scott, and on Sunday evening, May 9th, she went out with her new beau, infuriating Lyle. The next day, he left his brother's house, packing a .22 revolver, and trekked into Hume to buy cartridges and a pint of whiskey. He then hiked across the border to Minnie's house, drinking the whiskey along the way to steel his nerves. At the Grimes residence, Lyle was told Minnie was at the nearby home of Henry Spencer. He then struck out across the field toward the Spencer place.
Minnie was walking along the road near the Spencer residence with Mrs. Spencer when the girl saw Lyle coming toward them a little after four o'clock in the afternoon. Minnie told her companion that the young man probably wanted to see her, and she walked out to meet him. Lyle demanded to know once again whether Minnie would marry him, and when she still refused, he promptly pulled out his revolver and started firing. Minnie fell at the second shot but recovered and ran toward the Spencer house. Lyle then unloaded his pistol, firing the rest of his cartridges into her back. Meanwhile, Mrs. Spencer, at the first fire, ran toward a nearby field to alert her husband.
Minnie fell again as she neared the Spencer home, and Lyle walked up, calmly reloaded his revolver, and again emptied it into Minnie's now-lifeless body. All told, he reportedly fired from ten to fourteen shots. For good measure, he slashed her throat with his pocket knife after firing out all his cartridges and then picked up a fence board and clubbed her face "to a jelly."
Henry Spencer and a neighbor named Howard, whose aid he had enlisted, reached the scene shortly afterward and found Lyle still there, supposedly guarding the body, as he said, to keep predatory animals away. He offered little resistance, freely admitting that he had done the bloody deed and was "d----d glad of it." He said he would "learn these western girls that when they promised to marry a man, they would keep their word."
Spencer tied the villain up while Howard guarded him with a shotgun, and they then summoned authorities. One or more law officers arrived to take charge of the criminal, but, in the meantime, a mob formed and promptly took Lyle into custody themselves. A man who was passing the scene in a buggy stopped to inquire what was going on. Informed of the situation, he asked one of the mob whether they expected to wait until dark before stringing the desperado up. The vigilante replied that they "didn't expect to wait a minute," and the passerby got back in his buggy and drove away so as not to be a part of the grisly incident. At least one report, however, said the lynching did not take place until about nine or ten o'clock that evening (May 10), when the vigilantes strung the murderer up to a tree at the head of Walnut Creek just inside Kansas, about a mile north and three and one-half miles west of Hume.
Lyle was left hanging all night, and his body was not cut down until about 11:00 a.m. the next morning, when an inquest was held at the scene. Afterward, Lyle's body was turned over to his brother, G.T. Lyle. Meanwhile, Minnie was buried in the Littell Cemetery at Pleasanton, Kansas.

Zeo Zoe Wilkins: Gold Digger Extraordinaire

In 1903, Zeo Zoe Wilkins lied about her age and got herself admitted to the American School of Osteopathy at Kirksville, Missouri, when she was just seventeen. She made decent grades, but what she really had her sights set on was meeting a wealthy man.
In 1904, she wed Charles Garring, a recent graduate of the Kirksville institution, when she was just half his age. After Zeo graduated, she joined her husband’s practice in Durant, Indian Territory, but she ended up shooting Dr. Garring a few months later as he returned home late one night. She said she mistook him for an intruder, but Garring claimed she tried to kill him for his insurance.
Zeo next hung out her shingle in Sapulpa, Indian Territory, where she became the mistress of a banker, who was accused of embezzling funds for her use. Moving on to her next target, Dr. Wilkins set up shop in Tulsa. The “brunette of dazzling beauty,” as a local newspaper called her, had many male friends in Tulsa and reportedly entered into another short-lived marriage.
About 1911, Zeo moved to Claremore, where another young man fell into her clutches. He reportedly lavished her with gifts, and she repaid him with counterfeit love, driving him to suicide.
In 1912, Thomas Cunningham, a wealthy, sixty-eight-year-old banker from Joplin, Missouri, came to Claremore to take the cure at Zeo’s medical clinic. The elderly Cunningham was an easy mark for the beautiful twenty-six-year-old doctor, and she could hardly wait to get her hands on him—and on his money.
Not long after they met, Zeo used Cunningham’s money to set up a practice in Kansas City. Meanwhile, Cunningham maintained his home in Joplin, but the two secretly wed in 1914. Shortly afterward, Zeo moved to Colorado Springs, where Cunningham occasionally visited her. None of his friends in Joplin suspected anything out of the ordinary, until he left for Colorado in October 1916 and did not return promptly.
The banker’s friends were right to be concerned. In December, Zeo coaxed Cunningham into signing all his stock in the Cunningham National Bank over to her. She then promptly sold the stock to a rival banker for over $300,000.
The sensational news that Cunningham’s young wife, whom no one in Joplin even knew about, had sold his bank reached Missouri in January 1917. Cunningham’s live-in housekeeper and common-law wife, Tabitha Taylor, immediately filed for divorce. Stories about the scandal of Zeo’s marriage to a wealthy man old enough to be her grandfather appeared in newspapers across the country.
Cunningham’s Joplin friends tracked him down in Chicago and persuaded him to return to Missouri. He was met with a subpoena to appear for an inquiry into his sanity. Tabitha Taylor visited him in Carthage, and two seemed pleased to see each other.
Interviewed back in Chicago in her fancy hotel suite, Zeo laughed off Tabitha Taylor’s attempt to claim part of Cunningham’s fortune, saying the old woman would “never get a cent.”
In mid-February, the insanity hearing against Cunningham was canceled, and he moved back in with Mrs. Taylor.
About the same time, he sued Zeo, alleging that her sale of the Cunningham Bank had been transacted without his approval, and he sought to recover the money she had paid the other banker. On February 24, Cunningham also filed for divorce, claiming Zeo defrauded him and humiliated him by stating publicly that she only married him for his money.
The divorce was granted in early April, but Zeo kept most of the funds from the sale of the Cunningham Bank. Less than a month later, she married Albert Marksheffel in Colorado. She and her new husband spent money extravagantly and hosted wild parties, and Zeo developed a drinking problem. She and Albert split about 1919.
After the breakup, Zeo returned to Kansas City and launched into an affair with wealthy saloonkeeper John McNamara, which only ended after McNamara’s wife filed an alienation of affection suit against Zeo and McNamara promised to “cease his affections” for the vampish doctor.
Zeo’s divorce from Marksheffel became final in 1921, and she moved permanently to Kansas City, renting a house near downtown, where she practiced osteopathy. However, her life continued spiraling downward as she became increasingly addicted to alcohol and drugs. Although not the stunning beauty she had been, Zeo still drew men like moths to a flame, and she entertained a whole series of lovers.
In mid-March 1924, Zeo was found stabbed to death inside her home. Several suspects were interrogated, and some people even intimated that her lawyer, Jesse James, Jr. (son of the infamous outlaw) might be involved in the crime.
As details of Zeo’s personal life emerged during the investigation, detectives despaired that her killer would ever be found. A Kansas City newspaper said, “So many stories of intrigue and adventuring have been woven around Dr. Wilkins’s name in the last eight years, police are left groping in a maze of innumerable hypothetical clews.” Almost one hundred years later, the mystery has still never been solved.

The Sextraordinary Sally Rand

I've briefly mentioned Sally Rand on this blog previously (several years ago), but below is a more extensive telling of her story, condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Wicked Women of Missouri. Not that Sally was actually wicked--just a little naughty, you might say.
Burlesque dancer Sally Rand was born Helen Gould Beck in 1904 in Elkton, Hickory County, Missouri. When Sally was a toddler, the family moved to Kansas City, where she got her first job in show business at age thirteen as a chorus girl. She later joined a juvenile vaudeville troupe and studied dance, voice, and drama.
Sally enrolled in Christian College in Columbia but dropped out in 1922 and went to Hollywood, where she found work as a Mack Sennett “bathing beauty.” Using the stage name Billie Bett, she progressed to more serious roles, and Cecil B. DeMille signed her to his stock company. DeMille suggested she change her name to Sally Rand, supposedly picking the name after glancing at a Rand-McNally map.
She went on to have starring roles in several silent films, but her prominent lisp prevented her from transitioning to talkies in the late 1920s. With the coming of the Depression, Sally found herself facing hard times. In 1932, she arrived in Chicago as part of a traveling burlesque show, but she gave up vaudeville later the same year to appear in legitimate theater. The play was a critical success but a financial failure.
After its closure, Sally took a job at a Chicago speakeasy, the Paramount Club, despite her initial uneasiness. It was here that she first started doing the fan dance, which would soon make her a household name.
She found two large pink ostrich feathers at a costume shop and choreographed her dance to the strains of classical music. Moving rhythmically to the music, she danced nude, or nearly so, behind the feathers she manipulated in front of her, occasionally showing audiences a bare leg or a glimpse of derriere.
Although biographies of Sally Rand routinely assert that she “danced nude,” she was actually covered by white body powder or a sheer body suit during most of her performances. Sally’s act was all about illusion, and its success lay in her ability to make audiences think they had seen something, even if they hadn’t. “The Rand is quicker than the eye,” Sally told reporters.
When the World’s Fair came to Chicago in the spring of 1933, Sally tried to get a job dancing at the fair’s “Streets of Paris” concession but was turned down. The next night, she galloped through the streets of Chicago wearing nothing but a very long blonde wig and tried to crash one of the fair’s inaugural balls. She was not admitted, but her Lady Godiva act caused a sensation and got her hired as the lead performer in the “Streets of Paris” sideshow. Although Sally’s act was tame by modern standards, she soon found herself in court answering charges of lewdness. The publicity surrounding her arrest only heightened the interest in her act, and when she was released, spectators flocked to see her fan dance by the thousands. “Sally Rand dancing nude on the Streets of Paris has been jamming the place nightly,” said one contemporaneous report.
By the end of the summer Sally had rocketed to international fame, and when the World’s Fair reopened in 1934, Sally’s bubble dance was almost as big a hit as her fan dance had been the previous year. After the fair closed, she was sought as an exotic dancer all across the country. However, she didn’t like the term “exotic,” because she considered her dancing artistic. “Exotic means strange and foreign,” she reportedly told a reporter. “I’m not strange, I like boys; and I’m not foreign, I was born in Hickory County, Missouri.”
Despite some success in serious roles over the next several years, Sally kept going back to her hide-and-peek dances, and she continued appearing at expositions throughout the forties and fifties. In 1941, she came back to Missouri to appear at the Ozark Empire Fair in Springfield. Her appearance helped attract a record attendance and was credited with saving the financially struggling fair.
In 1951, Sally came back to her home state again, this time for the Missouri State Fair at Sedalia. Sally was a hit, and the fair’s gate receipts surged.
Standing only five feet tall, the petite Miss Rand maintained her girlish figure and was still strutting her stuff into the 1960s and 1970s. On April 7, 1972, sixty-eight-year-old Sally stepped off an airplane in Kansas City dressed in spike heel sandals and a miniskirt in advance of her scheduled performance at Union Station, where she wowed audiences the next night with her fan dance.
Even becoming a grandmother in 1974 didn’t slow Sally down. “What in heaven’s name is so strange about a grandmother dancing nude?” she asked.

Sally Rand died on August 31, 1979, at the age of 75, in Glendora, California.

Kinderpost

Last time I wrote about the Back to the Soil movement that occurred about 1909-1910 in the United States. As a product of that movement, the National Farm Homes Association was organized in St. Louis in May 1910, with Missouri governor Herbert Hadley as its president. The goal was to establish farm colonies, particularly in Missouri and other Midwest states, populated by families who would relocate from the cities and support themselves in communities under the supervision of an expert agriculturalist who would live on a central farm surrounded by the smaller family farms.
One of the first colonies was established at Kinderpost in northern Texas County, Missouri. Kinderpost itself was a post office/general store established about 1902 or 1903 by Texas County resident Columbus Bradford, a Methodist minister. Bradford's original vision for Kinderpost was that it would be a place where orphans and other needy children could live surrounded by nature and away from the corrupting influence of the cities. To that end, he started Ozark Kinderfarm, and in 1904 he published a pamphlet entitled The Kinderfarm Journal outlining his objectives for the place. The experiment lasted only a few years, and Kinderfarm had ceased to exist by about 1908.
In 1910, however, Bradford embraced the "back to the farm" movement, and Kinderpost was selected about the first of August as the site of the second colony of the National Farm Homes Association. (I'm not sure where the first was.) A newspaper report later in the month described the progress of the project. The Kinderpost colony contained about 2,000 acres with Bradford, who was described as "an expert farmer," living on a central farm of about 160 acres surrounded by forty small, family farms of about forty acres each. At the time of the mid-August report, five families had thus far been put on the land, "and the association is ready to receive applications for the other thirty-five homes."
Plans called for the forty-acre homesteads to be cleared to the extent each settler desired, and all buildings, cisterns, wells, fencing, and other improvements were to be constructed at cost (with no profit to Bradford or the association) and added to the price of the land. The base price for uncleared land was $10 an acre. Ten percent of the total cost was required as a down payment, and purchasers would have up to ten years to pay off the rest of the purchase price with no payment due the second year. In other words, the second payment would not be required until two years after the down payment.
The newspaper account further reported, "A limited number of colonists, who may need to do so, can find employment from Bradford in the work of improving the colony, at reasonable wages, and may thus use their wages to help pay for their lands. The colony is already equipped with a sawmill, planing mill, corn mill, sheller and crusher, store and postoffice.
An Immigration Board of the homes association had previously examined the property and found it to be "upland of a good grade, reasonably rolling, but not too bad to wash in heavy rains." The location was "almost exactly in the center of the Ozark region" with "natural and perfect drainage, pure water and ozone-laden atmosphere." Although the report lamented the fact that no railroad ran nearer to the colony than twenty miles, it noted that a new railroad from Rolla to Licking was currently under construction that would run much nearer to the colony.
Alas, the promised railroad was never completed, which has been cited as part of the reason why the National Farm Homes Association colony, like the Kinderfarm that preceded it, was short-lived. Other reasons for the colony's failure included a lack of agricultural experience on the part of many of the settlers and a curtailment in state aid and private donations for the project.
Bradford ran unsuccessfully for U.S. congressman on the Progressive Party ticket in 1914. He died in 1949 and is buried at Licking. Kinderpost is still listed on many maps today, but it is little more than a wide place in the road.