Christmas Day 1907 Weather

Yesterday (Christmas Day 2019) was unusually warm in the Ozarks. I think the high here in the Joplin area was 70 degrees, give or take a degree or so. It felt more like mid-autumn than winter. I happened to be perusing some old Springfield newspapers yesterday and saw a story in a December 26, 1907, issue talking about how warm it had been the day before. So, I guess warm weather on Christmas Day is not a recent or a particularly rare phenomenon, although I should add that the temperatures we experienced yesterday were warmer than those Springfield and the Ozarks saw in 1907.
The headline in the Springfield Republican the day after Christmas in 1907 proclaimed, "LIKE A SPRING DAY: Weather That Prevailed Here on Christmas Day Would Be Hard to Beat." The story went on to say, "Reports were heard on every hand yesterday about what a fine day it was and what a warm Christmas the people of the Ozarks were enjoying." Some people compared the pleasant weather to balmy spring days, while others "went them one better" and said that the weather the previous day reminded them of "the good old summer time."
Men strolled upon the streets of Springfield without overcoats, and women went about "without their furs and great coats....All day the sun poured forth his warm rays in the Ozarks, and the thermometer, at his bidding, went tearing up around the sixty mark." Even at five o''clock, as the sun was starting to set, the temperature continued to hover around the fifty degree mark.
So, not quite as warm as we experienced yesterday, but still a nice, pleasant Christmas Day in 1907.

Butterfield Bank Robbery

A few weeks ago, I remarked that Barry County, Missouri, experienced five bank robberies within the space of two years (actually 25 months) from the late 1910s to the early 1920s. I've written about all five of those bank robberies on this blog. However, I later discovered that there were actually six bank robberies in Barry County during the designated time period. The one that I initially overlooked was the robbery of the Farmer's Bank of Butterfield. Occurring in February 1921, it was third in chronological order of the six bank robberies.
About 1:00 or 1:30 in the afternoon of February 4, a lone bandit entered the Farmer's Bank and flourished a revolver, backing cashier Cass Jeffries and his 17-year-old daughter, Allene, against a wall with their hands up. The local railway station agent walked past the bank during the holdup, and Allene waved at him and pointed to the robber. Taking the cue, the agent hurried to a nearby hardware store and asked the loan of a revolver because the bank was being held up. The store employees didn't believe him and refused to lend him a weapon.
Meanwhile, inside the bank, the bandit ordered Cashier Jeffries to open the money tills, and Jeffries replied that he couldn't do so with his hands in the air. The robber told him he could lower one hand as long as he kept the other one up. Jeffries then lowered one of his hands and opened up the tills. The bandit began gathering up all the currency and silver he could lay his hands on and stuffing it in his pockets. When there was just some small change left, the cashier asked the bandit the leave the rest of the money so that he could use it to finish the day's business, and the robber complied with the request. He then ordered Jeffries and his daughter into the vault, slammed the door, and made his getaway.
However, he had neglected to lock the vault, and the two captives quickly made their escape and gave an alarm. Jeffries said that, even though the robber had his face covered, he recognized him as Homer Bayless, a young man who lived south of Butterfield in the Antioch neighborhood. A posse quickly organized and was soon on the trail of the bandit. The lawmen followed the fugitive to some woods at the edge of Butterfield and found that he had made his getaway in a hack he'd left hidden there.
The robber made his way to Cassville, where, it was later discovered, he used some of the ill-gotten loot to get a haircut and to pay off a debt. He then started toward Exeter and was overtaken and arrested on the road by three lawmen who had been on his trail since the robbery. The bandit proved to be Homer Bayless, just as the cashier had said. The son of well-known farmer A.P. Bayless, Homer was twenty-three years old, married, and had three little kids. He admitted that he'd planned to rob the Butterfield bank a couple of weeks earlier but had gotten cold feet. He said he robbed the bank because he was desperate for money to provide for his family. He said he owed money to the Exeter Bank and they were pressing him for payment. He was on his way there to pay the debt, he said, when he was arrested.
Later the same evening after his arrest, Bayless was released on bond put up by his father and other friends. According to the Cassville Republican, "the crime was a shock to the entire community for Homer was a young man well liked and he comes of one of the old and highly respected families."
When his case came up in Barry County Circuit Court in late March, Bayless pleaded guilty, was sentenced to fifteen years in the state penitentiary, and was promptly forwarded to the Jeff City facility. However, Governor Arthur Hyde commuted his sentence in the spring of 1924, and he was released after serving only slightly over three years of his assessed fifteen years. In 1930, Bayless was back living in Barry County with his wife and several more kids in addition to the three he had at the time of the Farmer's bank robbery. The family later moved to Idaho, where they lived at the time of the 1940 census. Homer's occupation was listed as a carpenter. He died in Idaho in 1982 at the age of 84, apparently having lived the life of a law-abiding citizen after his release from the Missouri State Prison.

Bank of Barry County Burglarized

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that there were five bank heists in Barry County, Missouri, within the space of about two years from the late nineteen teens to the early nineteen twenties. Actually I've since discovered that there were six, but that's a subject for next week's post. For this week, I want to talk about the the robbery that I thought was the fifth of five but was actually the sixth of six. It happened in Cassville in early January 1922 and was not really a robbery but instead a burglary.
In the wee hours of the morning on January 5, an unknown number of burglars tunneled through a brick wall at the rear of the Bank of Barry County in Cassville, gaining access to the vault. The place where they tunneled through was the only spot in the vault weak enough that explosives were not needed to make a hole. The rest of the vault was steel reinforced, and the thieves could not have gotten through it except by use of explosives. This led investigators to speculate that at least one of the thieves knew the layout of the bank very well.
The burglars took twenty deposit boxes containing an undetermined amount of money, bonds, and other valuables, although one box alone was known to have contained over $700 in bonds. A number of other boxes containing a large amount of money were left alone.
The theft was discovered later the same morning, and a posse picked up the trail of the bandits north and northwest of Cassville in the direction of Pierce City, where several of the stolen deposit boxes were found empty and discarded along the road. As of late January, however, no arrests had been made in the case, and, as far as I've been able to determine, none were ever made.

Bank of Washburn 's Second Robbery

About noon on October 17, 1921, three young men, who were unmasked, wearing overalls, and otherwise "roughly attired," approached the Bank of Washburn (Mo.) on foot. One of them stood guard outside while the other two entered the bank and covered assistant cashier Graley Wines with revolvers. They rifled through the tills, the vault, and the safe, taking about $1,900 in cash and currency. (This was the second time the Bank of Washburn had been robbed in less than two years. See last week's blog entry.)
Just as they were getting ready to herd Wines into the vault, cashier Walter Jones returned from lunch. The guard spotted Jones as he started to enter the bank and fired a shot at him. Jones hurried into the bank, where he was met by the other two bandits, and both Jones and Wines were quickly forced into the vault. The robbers closed the door on the two bank employees and made their escape.
One of the captives sounded an alarm that was located inside the vault, and townspeople promptly arrived to set the two men free. A posse formed and pursued the three bandits, as they fled on foot. At a thicket of woods about two miles west of town, the posse briefly made contact with the robbers, and Bob Wines (father of the assistant cashier) fired his shotgun at the fugitives as they climbed over a fence. The robbers returned fire as they ducked into the woods. More men gathered to surround the woods, but when the posse advanced to try to flush the bandits out of the woods, they were nowhere to be found, having already somehow made their escape. It was thought they had split up, as a young man who was thought to be one of the robbers was spotted by a witness not far from the scene.
In the aftermath of the robbery, it was revealed that the three robbers had been hanging around Washburn for several days before the crime and had camped just outside town. One man who happened on the camp while squirrel hunting a day or two before the robbery reported that the three young men had ordered him to "move on." Also, during their flight, the robbers had been forced to abandon some of their gear, including some shoes and hats, and  part of the stuff was identified as having been stolen from a store in Exeter the previous week.
Rewards totaling about $1950 were raised for the capture of the robbers, but they were not immediately apprehended. A man was killed in early December during a bank robbery attempt at Cardin, Oklahoma, and he was tentatively identified as one of the Washburn robbers, since he closely matched the description. Another suspect was taken into custody near Rogers, Arkansas, in mid-December. He was identified as Brownie Long (aka Elmer Brown), but he was released in early January 1922 for lack of evidence. As far as I've been able to ascertain, no one else was arrested in connection with the second Washburn bank robbery, at least not during the first few months after the crime.

Washburn Bank Robbery

Last time I wrote about Henry Starr's robbery of the Bank of Seligman on December 20, 1920, and I had previously written on this blog about the robbery of the Bank of Exeter that occurred on December 22, 1921. However, those heists were just two in an outbreak of five bank robberies that occurred in Barry County within a two-year period from the late teens to the early twenties.
The first of the five occurred on December 11, 1919, when two unmasked youths pulled up in an automobile outside the Bank of Washburn about two o'clock in the afternoon and left the car running as they strode into the bank armed with revolvers. They rifled through the tills and then forced cashier W. H. Jones and his wife (who was the assistant cashier) to open the safe at the point of a gun. The young robbers took about $4,000 in currency and several thousand dollars worth of Liberty Bonds, slammed the vault door shut on Jones and his wife, and made their escape. 
The crime was not discovered until twenty minutes later, when a customer came into the bank and found Jones and his wife locked in the vault. A posse was quickly organized, and the getaway car was found abandoned on the road southwest of Washburn. No other trace of the robbers was found, but it was thought they might be headed for Oklahoma.
However, the suspects were located near Stella two days later. One of them, a 28-year-old World War I vet named Claude Leonard, surrendered when officers opened fire on the duo, but the other young man, whom Leonard later identified as 21-year-old Bob Pankey (aka Paukey) of Lamar, made his escape to the woods. Leonard, who gave his hometown as Eldorado Springs, had about $1,650 on him, but he said Pankey had about $2,000 in currency and several thousand in bonds. The bank's total loss was placed at about $12,850. The chase after Pankey continued into the next day, December 14, before finally being called off when the lawmen lost the fugitive's trail.
On December 15, however, Pankey was arrested by police at a Joplin hotel where he had registered. He admitted the robbery, and he said his real name was Bob Forge (also given as Froge) but that he'd been reared by the Pankey family. He had about $8,500 in cash and bonds on him. He said he "used to be a Sunday school boy but somewhere I got away from it. But I never have sworn, smoked, or touched liquor."
Charged with bank robbery, both suspects were taken to Cassville to await trial. When their cases came up, both men pleaded guilty. Both were sentenced to forty years at the big house, but they were paroled in 1930 after serving a little over twenty.

Henry Starr and the Bank of Seligman Robbery

I've previously written on this blog about notorious outlaw/bank robber Henry Starr. One time I gave more or less an overview of his criminal career, and another time I focused on the 1893 train robbery near Pryor Creek, Oklahoma, which he was involved in. In the overview, I mention the robbery of the Bank of Harrison, Arkansas, in February 1921, during which Starr was mortally wounded. However, Starr was also involved in another bank robbery just a couple of months earlier, a crime I have not previously mentioned on this blog. 
About 10 a.m. of Dec. 20, 1920, a Marmon 6 automobile pulled to a halt in front of the Bank of Seligman. Two men got out and went into the bank, while a third stayed behind the wheel of the vehicle. Several people were on the street at the time, but nothing about the appearance of the men or the car aroused suspicion. Once the two men were inside the bank, though, one of them drew a revolver and ordered everybody to “Put ’em up!” Meanwhile, the other man looted the vault and the cash drawer, securing a little over $1,200, mostly in currency. The robbers ordered bank cashier Walter Stapleton, bookkeeper Lawrence Chapman, and patron F. W. Frost into the vault and closed the door on them. The two bandits then walked leisurely out of the bank to the awaiting getaway car. The Marmon sped away to the south toward Eureka Springs. 
Inside the vault, Stapleton went to work extricating himself and his fellow captives. He had recently read an account of a bank robbery in which a cashier had been locked inside a vault, and Stapleton had studied his own vault’s lock at that time to ascertain if and how one might be able to open it from the inside. His preparation proved worthwhile, because he was able to free himself and his companions in less than five minutes and give an alarm.
Stapleton described the apparent leader of the robbers as a dark complexioned man, who wore colored glasses, stood about six feet tall, and walked with erect posture. The second man, according to Stapleton, was blond, stood about five feet, eight inches, and appeared nervous. Neither man wore a mask, and Stapleton said he could easily identify either one.
After the alarm was given, a posse quickly organized and pursued the bandits about nine miles southeast of Seligman, where the burning Marmon was found at the foot of a steep embankment. Apparently the robbers had run the auto off the cliff intentionally and escaped to the hills on foot. Deputies followed the trail of the bandits into the woods but lost the track after about two miles.
A bank association of which the Seligman bank was a member offered a reward of $300 each for capture of the holdup men. Lee Ahl, from Galena, Kansas, was arrested on suspicion at Tulsa and brought back to Barry County in mid-January of 1921. Ahl had also been arrested on suspicion of robbing the Bank of Sarcoxie in January of 1920 and was out on bond when he was arrested on the Seligman charge. At his preliminary hearing, though, he was released for lack of evidence, and the Sarcoxie charge against him was soon dropped as well.
After notorious robber Henry Starr was mortally wounded in a botched holdup attempt in Harrison, Arkansas, in mid-February of 1921, Cashier Stapleton traveled to Harrison and identified Starr as the leader of the gang that had robbed him. In addition, Starr made a deathbed confession admitting that he and two sidekicks had pulled off the Seligman job.

Mount Vernon

In 1894, the Springfield Democrat ran a series of articles promoting Greene County and all of southwest Missouri, including specific towns throughout the region, especially those located on railroads and, therefore, readily accessible to travelers. Most of the articles about the individual towns were brief and didn't offer a lot of information, but some of them were nonetheless interesting.
Take, for example, an article that appeared in a September 1894 issue about Mount Vernon. The paper reminded readers that Mount Vernon, situated on the Greenfield & Northern Railroad about 40 miles west of Springfield, was the county seat of Lawrence County. Furthermore, the article claimed, Mount Vernon was also the "Mecca of this region for invalids." According to the newspaper, "The purity of the atmosphere, which winnows in from the mountains; the sulphur spring, which is renowned for its medicinal properties, and the reputation of the little city with its 2,000 inhabitants for longevity have made Mt. Vernon famous as a health resort."
The article then went on to cite statistics that, at least in the light of what me know about modern medicine and fitness, seem to call into question whether Mount Vernon was, in fact, a very healthy place. "There are thirty men in the place who weigh between 250 and 300 pounds," said the newspaper, "and the rising generation, some of them promise to tip the scales at 400 pounds and still not have superfluous flesh.
"The town has every possible natural advantage," concluded the article, "while in educational and religious matter it takes a back seat for nothing nor nobody."

City Crime Versus Country Crime

Do cities generally have a higher rate of violent crime than small towns and rural areas, even after you allow for the population difference? I suspect that they probably do. I think that people in small towns and the country often have stronger ties to the community, more of a sense of belonging, and just an overall sense of close-knittedness that is sometimes missing in large cities. However, my opinion is really just a hunch. What I know for sure is that this subject has been a matter of debate for a long time.
The day after Christmas of 1895, the St. Louis Republic reported that there had been 15 murders in St. Louis during the past 90 days. Anticipating the Republican National Convention that was scheduled for St. Louis in June of 1896, the newspaper suggested that the city's criminal record would be a magnet for criminals of every stripe from across the country and that they would turn St. Louis into a "harvest field."
The Republic blamed the recent uptick in crime in St. Louis on lax administration. For instance, the newspaper alleged that bad men were able to "purchase exemption" from their crimes and that such corruption only made the criminals bolder. Unless the city started enforcing the law more strictly, the newspaper warned, St. Louis would soon "witness such carnivals of crime as Chicago has seen."
About a week later the Taney County Republican reprinted part of the article from the Republic, and editors B. B. Price and S. J. Williams observed that the 15 recent murders in St. Louis had caused "less fuss" and received less publicity than one similar murder would have received "if it happened in Taney County." The editors went on to claim that, "for some reason or other, crime in the big cities does not receive such sensational treatment as crime in the country." They concluded that, in fact, life and property were much safer in Taney County than they were in St. Louis because the laws were more strictly observed and enforced. Perhaps the editors were a little touchy because of all the negative publicity Taney County had received during the Bald Knobber era of the 1880s, At any rate, they seemed to suggest that the only reason crime in rural areas received so much publicity was because such crime was rare, thus adding another twist to the debate about the prevalence of crime in the cities versus the country.

Lynching of George Graham

Shortly after one o’clock on Tuesday morning, April 27, 1886, a large body of horsemen rode into downtown Springfield from the west and surrounded the courthouse at the corner of College and the public square. Almost all the men were armed, and nearly all had handkerchiefs across their faces. They numbered about one hundred and fifty and appeared well-organized. Eight or ten of them dismounted at the jail, located on College Street at the rear of the courthouse, and they rapped on the door.

            When night watchman R. W. Douglas opened the door, the small mob presented their weapons and marched Douglas into the sheriff’s quarters, where two of them grabbed Sheriff F. M. Donnell as he was rousing from bed and putting on his pants. Donnell offered no resistance, against the heavily armed men.

            They told Donnell they didn’t want to hurt him but they would if he didn’t let them have George Graham, who had recently confessed to killing his first wife and dumping her body in an abandoned well on a Brookline farm owned by nationally known temperance revivalist Emma Molloy. Fearing for her husband’s safety, Mrs. Donnell turned over the key to a drawer where the jail keys were kept.

            After the mob retrieved the jail keys, two vigilantes guarded Donnell while the rest, taking Douglas with them, unlocked the door leading to the cells. Douglas refused to say which cell was Graham’s, but one of the men looked into Graham’s cell and recognized him. The mob soon had the door to Graham’s cell open.

            The prisoner thought the men were bluffing at first, but realizing they weren’t as they entered his cell, he became defiant, calling them Brookline murderers. One of the men put a shotgun to Graham’s head and ordered him to shut up and put on his clothes. Graham sobbed briefly as he dressed but quickly regained his composure.

            The vigilantes tied Graham’s hands, put a rope around his neck, and herded him outside. They put him into a spring wagon, and they made Douglas get in the wagon as well. The cavalcade started east on College Street, crossed the public square, and turned north on Boonville. Aroused by the commotion, many curious onlookers trooped along behind “the march of death.” Periodically the rear guard of the night riders stopped to warn the spectators back.

            The march continued north to within a couple of blocks of Division Street, then wound its way west, finally halting beneath a blackjack oak tree about 300 yards north-northwest of the woolen mill on or near the site of present-day Weaver Elementary School.

            The rope around Graham’s neck was tied to a limb about nine feet off the ground and the wagon driven out from under Graham. However, the rope was too long, allowing his feet to hit the ground. Two of the gang lifted him up while others adjusted the rope around the limb. The ones holding Graham up then let go, and he swung with his feet barely touching the ground until he finally choked to death. 

            It was after 3:00 a.m. when most of the gang rode away to the south and then went west out of town. About thirty men remained at the tree, but they, too, rode away a half hour later, leaving the curiosity seekers free to approach the body.

            They found Graham dead with blood oozing from his mouth and nose. Pinned to his coat was the following message:

When the Coroner is in possession of this paper, Geo. E. Graham will be dead, and as little punishment will have been inflicted as if he had been hanged by legal authority.
It is a matter of right to the community and justice to humanity that we, “The Three Hundred," ignore the law in this instance.
We recognize that our criminal statues are not equal to all occasions, therefore we have resolved to remove from our midst the worst criminal who has ever infested our country before he gets the “benefit of clergy,” that we may hereafter and forever live and be without his presence and vicious influence.

                       

            The note cautioned other criminals to stay away from Greene County and warned that anybody who tried to discover the identity of the lynchers would be “speedily DISPATCHED TO HELL.” It ended with a warning to Sheriff Donnell to keep his mouth shut if had recognized any of the vigilantes, or he would “die the death of a dog.”    

Released after the lynching, night watchman Douglas returned to town to get the sheriff, and the two lawmen went back to the tree to cut Graham’s body down. It was taken downtown, where a coroner’s jury later that day concluded that George Graham “came to his death by being hung by the neck until dead by parties to this jury unknown.”

            Speculation arose after the lynching as to the identity of the mob, but a grand jury failed to return any indictments. Critics of Mrs. Molloy, who had been charged as an accessory after the fact in Sarah Graham’s murder, suggested the lynching might have been instigated by her Springfield friends to keep Graham from revealing incriminating information about her.

            The available evidence does not support such a conspiracy theory. Instead, the lynch mob was probably organized in the Brookline area, where the murder had occurred.

            This blog entry is condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Bigamy and Bloodshed: The Scandal of Emma Molloy and the Murder of Sarah Graham.

Murder of a Nightwatchman

About noon on Christmas Day of 1899, twenty-five-year-old Edgar Spencer was armed with a knife and causing a disturbance in John Adkins's saloon in Vandalia, Missouri, when thirty-five-year-old nightwatchman Benjamin Eddelman, who happened also to be in the saloon, drew his pistol and ordered Spencer out of the building. Although later evidence suggested that Eddelman's weapon was not even been loaded, Spencer acceded to the threat and let a couple of his acquaintances, who had interceded, escort him out of the saloon.
Spencer went to the local livery, where he expressed anger at having been put out of the saloon and made threats toward Eddelman. Vandalia mayor J. Smelser confronted the irate man, telling him he needed to settle down and that Eddelman had already gone home.
Not long afterwards, however, Smelser found Spencer and Eddelman in front of the saloon exchanging words. He again warned Spencer to settle down or else he would have to put him in jail. Eddelman told the mayor to go ahead and put Spencer in jail because he was tired of fooling with him and didn't want any more trouble from him. However, Smelser allowed two of Spencer's buddies to again escort the troublemaker away.
About two o'clock, though, Spencer showed up at the saloon yet again, and this time he was armed with a pistol. Adkins tried to put him back out, but Spencer walked into an interior room where Eddelman was standing at a counter near an ice chest. Spencer strode up to the nightwatchman, grabbed him by the throat, and shot him in the head, killing him almost instantly. The assailant backed out of the saloon and fled, but he was soon apprehended by the mayor and placed in the calaboose.
At his trial in Audrain County Circuit Court early the next year, Adkins was found guilty of second degree murder and sentenced to ten years in the state pen. His lawyers appealed the verdict, claiming that Spencer feared for his life because Eddelman had made threats against him. In October of 1900, however, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld the verdict, saying that, even if Eddelman had made threats against Spencer, it made no difference unless the defendant was being threatened at the time of the shooting, and there was no evidence at all that such was the case. The high court admonished Spencer that he should be happy he got off with such a light sentence.
Spencer was then transported to the Missouri State Penitentiary in February 1901. Five years later, he found an official who was more sympathetic than the supreme court justices. Missouri governor A. M. Dockery commuted Spencer's sentence in 1906, after he had served only half of his ten-year sentence.

Murder of Sheriff John K. Polk

           Late Thursday afternoon, May 25, 1905, a young man named William Spaugh entered Robert Rasche's restaurant in Ironton, Missouri, and started bedeviling some of the customers by throwing peanut shells at them. He then caught one of the customers, William Edgar, by the leg, pulled him from his seat, and started dancing around the floor taunting Edgar and trying to get him to dance, too. After Edgar reclaimed his seat, Spaugh told him (Edgar) that the more he looked at his face, the more he hated it and struck him in the eye, inflicting a cut. He again jerked Edgar by the foot, pulling him to the floor. Here Rasche interceded and put Spaugh out of the restaurant. 
            Spaugh went to his home in Ironton, and the Iron County sheriff, John W. Polk, informed of the outrages on Edgar, went to the Spaugh home to arrest the assailant. William Spaugh was sitting on the front porch with his younger brother, Arthur, and another young man, William Brown, when Polk arrived. William Spaugh, according to Brown's later testimony, announced to the other two young men that the sheriff was there to arrest him, and Arthur got up and went inside the house. At the gate leading into the front yard, Polk hollered to William Spaugh that he needed to see him and for Spaugh to come to the fence. Spaugh demanded to know whether the sheriff had a warrant, and when Polk admitted he didn't, Spaugh got up and followed his brother inside.
            Sheriff Polk then went inside the gate, stepped onto the front porch, opened the door to the house, and started to walk across the threshold when four or five shots rang out. One of them was a shotgun blast that reportedly blew a hole in Polk's side big enough to stick a fist in. Polk was also shot with a ball to the heart and one to the head, and he was given yet another wound with some sort of sharp instrument, apparently after he had already fallen dead to the floor.          
           The Spaugh brothers left the premises immediately after the shooting, and search parties sent out in pursuit of them finally brought them to bay, with the help of bloodhounds, at an isolated cabin in Madison County about five days later. After a gun battle that lasted several minutes, the two fugitives finally surrendered and were arrested and charged with murder. Their mother had previously been arrested, and she also was charged with murder for allegedly urging her sons to resist Sheriff Polk.    
         In early July, a mob broke into the Iron County jail where the brothers were being held, tied up the newly appointed sheriff, and shot the brothers several times in their legs. By order of the Missouri governor, the Spaughs were then transferred to St. Louis for safekeeping while awaiting trial.
            The three Spaughs were scheduled for trial in late 1905 in Reynolds County on a change of venue from Iron County. William Spaugh was tried, convicted of first degree murder, and sentenced to hang. Arthur's trial and his mother's trial were postponed until the following summer. In mid-1906 Arthur was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to 55 years in prison, and the mother was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to ten years in prison.
            All three convictions were appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, but the verdicts were upheld in each case. However, the mother was later granted a new trial and was acquitted upon retrial. Also, William Spaugh's death sentence was later commuted to life in prison.
            In 1913, when William Spaugh was dying of tuberculosis, Arthur tried to take the blame for the killings in order to secure a parole for William so that he might die at home, but the request was denied and William Spaugh died in prison at Jefferson City in mid-1913. Later, Arthur also died in prison of tuberculosis after serving just a few years.

Great Blizzard of 1899

The Great Blizzard of 1899, sometimes called the Great Arctic Outbreak of 1899, was a winter-weather event that affected the entire United States, especially east of the Rockies. It occurred during the first half of February, with the peak cold weather happening between February 10 and February 14, and it set all kinds of records for lowest all-time temperatures. Until the mid-1930s, it was the coldest February on record for the United States, and for several individual states, including Kansas and Missouri, February 1899 still stands as the coldest February on record.
All of Missouri and the Ozarks, like much of the rest of the country, suffered during the cold wave of February 1899. A report from Joplin on February 8 said that southwest Missouri was experiencing its coldest weather since 1863. The cold weather brought the lead and zinc mines around Joplin to a virtual standstill. The Joplin report said that the output of ore the previous week had been only about half as much as normal, and the output was expected to drop even more dramatically during the coming week.
The next day, February 9, Webb City recorded a low temperature of 12 below, and a report from Golden City said it was 13 below there, with even the ripples in streams frozen solid. Various towns in north Missouri recorded temperatures as low as 28 below. On the same day, February 9, Galena, Kansas, reported, just as Joplin had on the 8th, that the mines were virtually at a standstill. Spring River was frozen twelve inches thick, whereas as ice even as thick as six inches was unusual.
The Kansas City Journal reported on February 12 that the previous day's low was -19 degrees. The 12th promised to be considerably colder, because February 11th's low mark of -19 had already been matched at 3 a.m. on the 12th when the newspaper went to press.
On February 12, 1899, Springfield, Missouri, recorded a temperature of -29 degrees Fahrenheit, paralyzing the town. I believe that mark still stands as the lowest temperature ever recorded in Springfield.
Temperatures in the Potosi, Missouri, area dipped to as low as thirty degrees below zero around February 12. By the 15th, the cold temperatures were starting to moderate, and the Potosi Journal summed up the weather phenomenon that the area had just endured: "The weather the past week has been the severest felt in this section for many winters. In fact, even the oldest inhabitant cannot recall anything like it.... Such intense cold is unusual in these latitudes and caused much discomfort and some suffering in the community. Business was practically suspended and people devoted themselves chiefly to attending fires and staying warm."

Birdie McCarty: Another Female Horse Thief

           The past two weeks, I've written about two different female horse thieves who made their appearance in southwest Missouri around 1890. After a decade's hiatus, another woman horse thief, Birdie McCarty, came on the scene, but most of her exploits took place just across the Kansas line. When Birdie made her criminal debut in the Kansas-Missouri border region in early 1902, one area newspaper waxed nostalgic, observing that law officers were “now dealing with the first female horse thief since the palmy days of the reign of May Colvin, the notorious woman desperado, who invaded this section of the country about ten years ago.” Sensationalized in the press over the next few weeks, Birdie made fewer headlines than her predecessor only because her career in crime proved briefer than May’s. 

            Birdie’s saga began when she accompanied a young man from Butler, Missouri, to Fort Scott, Kansas, about the 20^th of February, 1902. After a few days in Fort Scott, her male companion proposed that she go to a livery and get a horse and buggy, which she did. The couple started south but got into an argument at Pittsburg over who owned the rig. The quarrel ended, according to the Joplin Globe, with the man telling Birdie to “go to hell.” Instead, “she concluded to go to a better place” and came to Baxter Springs, where she arrived on the evening of February 25 and turned herself in to the city marshal, confessing that she had a horse and buggy that belonged to a liveryman in Fort Scott.
               After she was placed in jail at Baxter Springs, “some little dispute” arose, according to the Globe, among the town’s officials over the auburn-haired prisoner’s attractiveness. The marshal claimed the woman was “beautiful to look upon,” while the mayor declared that “her face would stop a Frisco freight.”

            The next day an officer from Fort Scott arrived to escort the prisoner back to Fort Scott to face criminal charges. Confined with three other women in a basement room of the Bourbon County courthouse, Birdie was described as “a daring little woman about 22 years old.” The close quarters of the basement room didn’t hold Birdie for long. On Sunday, March 23, she “opened up a sensational Sabbath” by making what the Fort Scott Monitor called “a dash for liberty that even the professional crooks of the stronger sex might well envy…. Birdie McCarty had flown, and the other birds had soared away in her wake.”

            The four women parted ways after they escaped, with Birdie going in the company of a male accomplice named Red Taylor, while the other three fugitives headed north. Taylor took Birdie to meet Pete Sheflet, reputed to be her lover, and she and Sheflet “rode like the wind” on the same horse, according to Birdie’s later testimony, to the camp of two brothers named Ryder. Sheflet induced the Ryder boys to take Birdie on as a cook, and she started south with the brothers, riding in the back of their wagon.

            Birdie’s three fellow escapees were recaptured about two miles north of Fort Scott shortly after the jail break. The three women swore they had nothing to do with plotting the escape but that it was all the work of Birdie McCarty, who had been boasting for several days that her captivity would be brief. The women claimed to know nothing about the escapade until Birdie awakened them about five o’clock Sunday morning and told them the door was open.

            Meanwhile, the Bourbon County sheriff overtook the Ryder brothers about twelve miles south of Fort Scott, crawled into the back of their wagon, and found Birdie hidden beneath a pile of gunny sacks. He placed the fugitive under arrest and brought her back to Fort Scott. Taylor and Sheflet were also arrested. They were suspected not only of aiding Birdie in her flight but also of having helped her escape to begin with, although Birdie claimed she opened the door herself with a piece of wire.

            A few days after being recaptured, Birdie made headlines because of her scandalous predilection for tobacco. “Birdie McCarty, besides being an acknowledged horse thief,” read a brief story in the Monitor, “is quite a tobacco fiend.”

            Birdie’s trial for horse stealing came up during the May term of court. She was convicted of grand larceny and sentenced to five years in the Kansas Penitentiary. The judge, who’d heard the defendant mention that she was raised to go to church and knew the Lord’s prayer, offered to take a year off the sentence if she could recite the prayer by heart. Birdie reportedly hung her head and could not repeat even the first line, and the five-year sentence stood.

            Birdie was sent to the state prison at Lansing, where she was received on May 14, 1902.

May Calvin, Another Female Horse Thief

Last week I wrote about Della Oxley, a female horse thief who made headlines in Southwest Missouri in the early 1890s. Shortly after Della was sent to prison, May Calvin appeared on the scene to take up the work of horse thievery. May’s exploits were sensationalized in the press even more than Della’s, and she eventually joined her predecessor at the big house in Jefferson City.  

May came to Webb City around 1890, when she was about fifteen years old. Shortly afterward, she dropped out of school and joined Robinson’s Circus in St. Louis as a rider. Before long, she came back to southwest Missouri and drifted across the state line into Kansas, where she went on a criminal spree.
About the middle of October, 1892, May stole a horse and buggy at Fort Scott and immediately started south. She was captured at Weir City, brought back to Fort Scott, and placed in the Bourbon County jail. However, her youth and good looks won her the sympathy of the prosecutors, and the case against her was dismissed on January 21, 1893.
Less than twelve hours after gaining her freedom, a May appropriated a horse and buggy from a barn near Hepler, Kansas, and drove back to Fort Scott. She then “drove furiously” to Nevada, Missouri. There she left the stolen rig at a livery as security for another horse and buggy and resumed her mad dash. The day after she passed through Nevada, a posse captured her, and she was turned over to Crawford County authorities for the Hepler heist.
Placed in the county jail at Girard, May escaped or was again released in March or April, and she soon turned up in Joplin. Calling at the livery stable of W. V. White, she hired a horse and buggy for the stated purpose of driving to East Joplin, but she conveniently forgot to return the rig. Around the first of June, White recovered his stolen horse, but there was no sign of his buggy, nor of May Calvin. Then, on June 5, May was arrested in Columbus, Kansas, for disturbing the peace. The local officers held her until a Joplin constable arrived on June 7 to take her back to Jasper County. Unable to post bond, she was taken to Carthage and placed in the same jail cell where Della Oxley had been housed in 1891.

May was charged with grand larceny, but before she could be tried, she and a fellow female inmate made a daring escape from the county jail on June 16, 1893. According to the Carthage Press, they escaped through the same opening “commenced two years ago by Della Oxley.”

May was recaptured a day or two after her escape and taken back to Carthage. On June 22, she pled guilty to horse stealing and was assessed two years in the state penitentiary. Unabashed by the punishment, May greeted reporters cheerily as she was being escorted back to jail and asked them to “write her up right.”

A Press reporter proceeded to oblige her with an embellished account of her misadventures. “She…now goes to the penitentiary for the first time,” the newspaperman concluded, “though she has stolen dozens of horses and vehicles.”
The Carthage newspaperman’s account was tame compared to some of the incredible stories about May that appeared elsewhere. May made headlines across the country and even internationally. One story, first published in the US and later picked up by a New Zealand newspaper, called May “the phenomenal girl horse-thief,” whose career “surpassed anything of the kind before known.”
The stories about May continued long after she had been sent to the state prison. In 1894, a St. Louis Republic reporter visited May at the Jefferson City facility and wrote a fantastic story entitled “A Beautiful Horse Thief.” The newspaperman’s description of May bordered on the titillating, calling her “pretty as a picture” and “a rustic beauty,” with “great blue eyes and a mass of tousled hair of Titian hint. Her form is luscious…. Her mouth is one that an impressionable artist would go wild over, with its cherry red lips of sensuous curve.”
Admitting that she was guilty as charged, May told the Republic reporter, “I have no hard luck story to tell.”
May said she didn’t know why she’d turned out so bad because her mother and father had treated her well. She added, “I’m not like other women, either, in blaming my downfall on any man.”
After serving eighteen months of her two-year sentence, May was released from prison on December 22, 1894. What happened to her after her discharge remains a mystery.
This story, like the one last week about Della Oxley, is condensed from my book Wicked Women of Missouri.

                                                                                                     

Della Oxley: Female Horse Thief

During the puritanical Victorian era of the late 1800s and early 1900s, a woman who stepped out of her expected domestic role as wife, mother, or obedient daughter stirred gossip. If she ventured out too far, she created scandal and sensational newspaper stories.

An unusual outbreak of horse stealing by young women in the southwest Missouri area during a twelve-year period from the early 1890s to the early 1900s provided just the kind shocking material that journalists of the time thrived on. Della Oxley was the first of three female horse thieves from the region who made headlines across the country.

Twenty-year-old Della first ran afoul of the law in 1890 when she and her husband, Perry Oxley, were charged with prostitution in Kansas. Then she wrote her name in the annals of horse thievery in 1891 after she and Perry drifted into southwest Missouri, where she got arrested in Jasper County for stealing a horse on the Fourth of July near Medoc.

Tried at Carthage on October 24, Della was convicted and sentenced to five years in the state prison at Jefferson City. When officers went to take her breakfast the next morning, she had escaped by sawing one of the cell bars in two and dropping to the ground below. It was thought someone from the outside had supplied her with the saw.

A note in which Della appeared to contemplate suicide was found in her cell after her escape, but a Carthage newspaper dismissed the letter as a ruse.

After her escape, Della made her way to Baxter Springs, Kansas. Arriving on Monday morning, October 26, she “proceeded to take in the town,” according to the Baxter Springs News. Among other activities, Della reportedly had her picture taken and mailed to a friend. She had cut her hair short before her escape, and when she arrived in Baxter, she was dressed in men’s clothes and “presented the appearance of a smart, smooth-faced young man,” according to the News.

An effort to upgrade her wardrobe led to Della’s recapture. She went to a clothing store and bought a pair of trousers and a cowboy hat, but in changing trousers she left a letter that was addressed to her in the old pair of trousers. The letter aroused the suspicions of the storekeeper, and he notified Baxter Springs law officers, who arrested Della about 11:00 o’clock that night. She admitted she was the escapee from Carthage, and Jasper County authorities came to Kansas and took charge of the prisoner. Bidding adieu to Mrs. Oxley, the News claimed she was a notorious burglar and thief who had “broken out of several different jails” and a Joplin paper dubbed her “the female horse thief.”
Upon her return to Carthage, Della was assigned to her old quarters, but she was securely chained to the floor. On November 4^th, officers discovered her shackles had been filed almost in two. A threat from the sheriff to put her in a dungeon induced her to give away the two accomplices who had helped her escape the first time and had supplied the file for her latest jailbreak attempt. Both young men were arrested and lodged in jail at Carthage.

On November 11, Della was shipped to Jefferson City to serve the five-year term she had been previously assessed. A correspondent to the Fort Worth Gazette gave readers an exaggerated and inaccurate description of Della at the time, starting with the fiction that she was thirty-six years old and was born “in a New England village.” In addition, Della had supposedly become “a hardened criminal” when she was only twelve years old. The Gazette correspondent continued his extravagant account: “She drifted to the West and organized a band of horse thieves and burglars, which had for its range the states of Kansas and Western Missouri. For the past ten years these robbers have been living off of the farmers of this section, and all the raids and burglaries were planned by the woman, Della Oxley.”

Della was, in truth, only twenty-one years old, not thirty-six, and ten years earlier she was not organizing a gang of horse thieves in Kansas and Missouri, since she was an eleven-year-old girl living in Indiana with her parents at the time.
Della was released from the Missouri State Penitentiary on August 13, 1895, under the state’s three-fourths law. The following January, Perry Oxley filed for a divorce, and later in 1896, Della was remarried in Illinois. She died in Taylorville, Illinois, in 1898 at the age of 28.

This story is condensed from my book Wicked Women of Missouri.

Ben Davis Apples

Growing apples was a big industry in Missouri during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Missouri was one of the top two or three states in the country for apple production during this time, and the Ben Davis variety was king in Missouri.
According to the Kansas Farmer, the Ben Davis apple was brought from North Carolina to Kentucky with other seedling apples by the Davis family. Later the Davis family moved to Butler County, Missouri, and planted the state's first Ben Davis orchard. Some years later, as the new apple variety gained popularity, the question arose as to what to call it, and the name Ben Davis was settled on, because he was the person who first brought the seedling sprouts from North Carolina.
Almost from the very beginning, the Ben Davis apple had its detractors, because it was not very flavorful and its color was not very good when grown in northern climates. However, for many years, these deficiencies were more than offset by the variety's good qualities, at least in the eyes of many growers. In southern Missouri and other temperate climates where the seasons were long enough, the Ben Davis grew to be a large, colorful fruit, and Missouri became known as "the land of the big red apple." As one observer commented in 1906, "People will buy fruit on its looks, even if they know its quality is not as great as the quality of some other fruit." Also, the Ben Davis was very productive, making a good crop every year, whereas some varieties produced no or very little fruit in alternate years. Growers of Ben Davis apples could count on having a steady income year after year, even if the apples sold for up to $2 a bushel less than other varieties like the Jonathan, as was sometimes the case. The Ben Davis apple was a good keeper and could be stored for long periods of time without rotting. When it was bruised, it merely dried up at the point of the bruise and formed a hard crust, which could later be cut off, whereas most other apples would immediately start rotting if bruised. In addition, the Ben Davis apple tree was said not to be as susceptible to infection and disease as certain other varieties. Finally, the Ben Davis was known for its soil adaptability. It could be grown almost anywhere. Thus its popularity spread to growers in other states.
The popularity of the Ben Davis variety began to wane, however, by the early 1910s. 
There were a number of factors that led to the decline of the Ben Davis and to the apple industry in general in Missouri. Some growers began to neglect their trees, and insect and disease spread to neighboring orchards. Drought has also been cited as a factor, but the main reason for the demise of the apple industry in Missouri was its growing reputation for shipping inferior fruit, particularly the Ben Davis. The Pacific Northwest soon supplanted Missouri as the apple-growing capital of the US.
Commenting on the decline of the apple industry in Missouri in 1920, a columnist for a Jefferson City newspaper remarked, "Missouri, in the zenith of its apple-growing fame, never was especially noted for its fancy 'eating' apples. The Ben Davis has been the great product of the state. Those who have ridden down Missouri lanes flanked with great orchards of Ben Davis apples just about the time of year when the first breath of winter is in the air, will never forget the sight. A Ben Davis apple orchard with the big red apples backed by the green leaves of the trees is a pastoral picture ever to be remembered. To the uninitiated, it creates a desire to eat, a most unfortunate urge because Ben Davis apples, for eating purposes, don't live up to their beauty. Take them home, however, fry them and dish them up with strips of broiled bacon, plenty of hot biscuits and great glasses of foamy milk and you have a real Missouri supper worth the name."
One of the curiosities left over from the boom days of the apple industry in the Ozarks is the small community of Bendavis, located on Highway 38 in Texas County, Missouri. It was platted about 1910 by James J. Burns, who hoped to build a town at the site, and he named it Ben Davis or Bendavis, because he planned to grow Ben Davis apples in his large orchards there. However, by 1910, Ben Davis apples were already in decline, and the town never amounted to more than a general store and a post office. Today, it is just a wide place in the road.

Crystal Cave, Crystal Cave, and Crystal Caverns

Having grown up in the Springfield area, I've known about Crystal Cave, located seven or eight miles north of Springfield, for most of my life. For many years, it was a pretty successful show cave, but it closed to tours twelve years ago or so, and, as far as I know, has still not re-opened. In fact, it was recently up for sale, but I don't know whether it still is.
As a longtime resident of Joplin, I am also fairly familiar with the old Crystal Cave that was located on West 4th Street in Joplin. It, too, was a tour cave during the early 1900s, but it closed in the early 1930s because of slackening attendance, high humidity inside the cave, and other problems. About that time or shortly afterward, mining in the Joplin area began tapering off and the cave began to fill with water, since the surrounding shafts were not being pumped out as they had been. An attempt was made in the 1940s to de-water the cave so that it might be opened back up, but the effort was unsuccessful and the cave was sealed back up. Today, a historical marker stands at the northwest corner of Fourth and Gray in Joplin as the only visible reminder of the cave's location.
However, I was not familiar with Crystal Caverns at Cassville until just a day or two ago. I think I might have vaguely been aware that such a place existed, but that was about all I knew until I started doing some research for this blog.
Crystal Caverns, located less than a mile north of Cassville just off Business Highway 37, was discovered in the mid-1800s, but it remained a private cave for almost eighty years. The website of the Barry County Museum says the cave was first opened as a show cave in 1924, but the Missouri Cave and Karst Conservancy says that 1994 marked Crystal Caverns's 65th and final year as a show cave. The latter statement seems to jibe with my own research, because, as best I've been able to determine, the cave was first opened for tours on July 19, 1930. A notice in the July 17, 1930, issue of the Cassville Republican announced that the cave would open on the 19th. Follow-up articles in the same paper make it clear that the cave did indeed open on or very near the 19th, and they also make it pretty clear that this was not a re-opening for the season but rather a first-time opening.
In the summer of 1930, the cave was being developed by Philip Eidson and John McFarlin. (McFarlin was married to Eidson's sister, and her and Eidson's father had previously owned the property.) It's clear from issues of the Republican in the summer of 1930 that the cave enterprise was a new or recent undertaking. For instance, the owners were still in the process of naming the formations in the cave. In addition, an article published in the Republican in early July of 1931 mentions that the cave "was first opened" less than a year ago. So, if the cave opened in 1924, as the county museum says, it must have been on a very limited basis and must not have been very well promoted.
When the cave opened in 1930, guided tours costs fifty cents, and they were conducted by flashlight and Coleman lanterns. The tour took visitors to six different rooms. At this early stage, the cave was sometimes called Crystal Cave. The fact that there were two other caves in the region by the same name may have been partly why the Cassville cave soon came to be called Crystal Caverns instead of Crystal Cave.
In the spring of 1931, McFarlin and his family went to Kentucky to tour several show caves in that state to get a better idea how to operate their own cave back in Cassville.
The McFarlin family or relatives of the family continued to operate Crystal Caverns, with a brief interruption, until Gary and Linda Sartin leased the property in 1977. The Sartins kept the cave open until 1994. It then sat vacant for about five years until the Missouri Cave and Karst Conservancy took it over. The group spent the next ten years or so surveying, mapping, and restoring the cave. The cave is now primarily an educational resource and is open by appointment only. In 2015, someone broke into the cave and vandalized it, destroying many rock formations.

William Henry Lynch and the Development of Marvel Cave

Today, tours of Marvel Cave, located on the grounds of Silver Dollar City, are free to anyone paying admission to the theme park. The cave is little more than a sidelight, though, and many visitors to Silver Dollar City bypass the subterranean tour altogether. Once upon a time, the situation was reversed. As most people who live in the Ozarks know, Marvel Cave as a tourist attraction predated Silver Dollar City by many years. The cave was not just the main attraction in the vicinity; it was the only attraction. Starting about 1960, Silver Dollar City grew up around the cave, but in the very early days of the theme park, the cave was still the main attraction. Visitors had to pay to tour the cave, but admission to Silver Dollar City was free. Quite a switch from the way it is today.
Evidence suggests that Marvel Cave was known to Osage Indians hundreds of years before white men inhabited the Ozarks, and early Europeans may have explored the cave as early as the mid-1500s. The first recorded exploration of the cave, however, was led by St. Louis lead-mining magnate Henry T. Blow in 1869. Blow's group didn't find lead, but in the early 1880s, another group of explorers, led by T. Hodges Jones, found evidence of what they thought was marble. Jones and his fellow investors bought the property, named the cave Marble Cave, and formed the Marble Cave Mining and Manufacturing Company. A town called Marmaros (Greek for marble) was platted nearby, and it soon had a hotel, a general store, and several other businesses.
However, no marble was ever taken out of the cave, and when the mining enterprise died, so did the town. In 1889, William Henry Lynch bought the property sight unseen and planned to develop it as a tourist attraction. When he explored it shortly afterward, he was especially impressed by Marble Cave's huge cathedral room, which he envisioned as an entertainment venue that could draw thousands of people to hear music, listen to speeches, and so forth. Lynch opened up previously blocked passages of the cave and installed ladders to accommodate tourists of the cave, and he began promoting the cave not only as a place to tour but also as an entertainment venue. He called the cave the "greatest natural chamber in the world." The thing that was working against the cave, however, was its isolated location and the lack of transportation to reach it. Lynch focused much of his attention on trying to bring a railroad to the vicinity of the cave.
In early 1893, there was still no railroad to the area, but word had gradually begun to reach the outside world about the wonders of Marble Cave, thanks to articles in magazines and newspapers like the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and the Kansas City Times. While still waiting for a railroad, Lynch arranged, in the meantime, for a daily stage line to run between Springfield and Marble Cave. He also had plans to light the cave with electric lights and to build a hotel near the cave to accommodate overnight visitors. In the fall of 1894, Lynch staged a huge celebration in and on the grounds of Marble Cave, taking out entire newspaper supplements to publicize and promote the event. He advertised the event as a big musical bash, a literary convention, an oratory competition, a sightseeing expedition, and a religious observance all rolled into one. He even invited young couples to come to the event to get married in the beautiful cathedral room. He told the people of the region that the success of the event would help sell the Ozarks as a place where people would want to come and visit.
The fall 1894 event was a moderate success, but it demonstrated once again the need for a railroad. By late 1902, the nearest railroad to Marble Cave was still forty miles away, but the Missouri Pacific was in the process of building a line to the cave. As the project was announced and got underway, Lynch once again threw himself into promoting the cave. He gave speeches in St. Louis and other cities about the wonders of the cave and got write-ups about it in various newspapers. It was also in 1902 that the cave first started being called Marvel Cave instead of Marble Cave, at least informally. However, the two names were used almost interchangeably and the official name may not have been changed until after Lynch's death in 1927, as the Silver Dollar City website says.
Alas, the plans for a railroad to Marvel Cave never materialized, but by the 1910s, the advent of automobiles had made the question a somewhat moot point. For example, in November 1915, during a special event at the cave, auto service to the cave was offered from nearby Reeds Spring, which did have a railroad.
In 1927, William Lynch died, his daughters took over Marble Cave, and it officially became known as Marvel Cave, although, as I say, it had been called Marvel Cave at least on an irregular basis for twenty-five years. In 1950, the Herschend family purchased a 99-year lease on the property from the Lynch sisters. In 1960, the Herschends opened Silver Dollar City on the grounds of the cave, and over the years, the theme park has gradually engulfed the cave and dwarfed its importance. Although there are still many people who enjoy tours of the cave, there are many others who go to Silver Dollar City exclusively for the amusement rides and other entertainment.

Gambling in Early-Day Springfield

Gambling was prevalent in Springfield almost from the town’s beginning. In 1835, for instance, William Lloyd was indicted for keeping a faro bank. This is the only reference to faro in early Greene County Circuit Court records. However, there are numerous references to gambling devices or gambling tables, and it is safe to say that many of these pertain to faro, a card game that was very popular in gambling circles throughout the 1800s. The game usually involved a table with the thirteen cards of a single suit (normally spades) already painted or pasted on the tabletop. Players would place bets on one of the cards, and the dealer, using a separate deck of cards, would deal two cards from a device called a faro box, turning them face up one at a time. If the first card, called the dealer’s or banker’s card, matched the card on which the bet was placed, the player lost and the dealer collected the money. If the second card, called the player’s card, matched the card on which the bet was placed, the player won and collected from the dealer or banker an amount equal to the bet. If neither card matched the card on which the bet was placed, the player could retract his bet or let it ride for the next two-card turn. The term “faro bank” could refer to the stakes in a game of faro, to the gambling establishment where the game was played, or to the game itself. In Lloyd’s case, the charge against him of keeping a faro bank was dropped when the defendant could not be found in Greene County.
Sometimes even Springfield’s founding fathers or other leading citizens were involved in gambling. For example, John P. Campbell, the town's founder, was charged in Circuit Court in 1841 with “suffering a gambling device to be set upon his premises.” The same year, Benjamin Cannefax, brother of the second sheriff of Greene County, was found guilty of gaming and fined one dollar. Other gambling offenders in early-day Greene County included Ephraim and Levi Fulbright, sons of William Fulbright, who was one of the very earliest settlers in the area that became Springfield. Not surprisingly, some of the gamblers were multiple offenders.

Gambling of any kind was at least nominally illegal in early-day Springfield, but in antebellum Greene County the offense was made more serious if one gambled with the wrong person. For instance, at the December 1850 term of the Greene County Circuit Court, several men, including Fleming Taggard, were indicted for “Gaming with a Negro.” The following June, Taggard was again charged, this time with “Playing Cards with a Negro.” Augustine Yokum was charged in December of 1850 with the doubly grievous offense of “Playing Cards with a Negro on Sunday.”
Early Springfieldians did not need a device specifically designed for games of chance in order to enjoy gambling. Holcombe’s 1883 History of Greene County noted, for instance, that there was considerable betting in 1855 on the outcome of the elections that year. Betting on horse races was an even more popular pastime in the mid to late 1800s than betting on elections.
This blog entry is condensed from my book Wicked Springfield.

Budgetown

Located on Short Creek just a mile or so west of the Missouri state line, Galena, Kansas, sprang up in the spring of 1877 as a booming lead mining town. Like most towns founded as mining camps, Galena, during its early years, was a wild, raucous place where whiskey flowed freely. A prohibition law that went into effect in Kansas in January 1881 put a damper on the liquor trade in Galena, as all ten of the town's saloons quickly went out of business. However, the new law couldn't slake the rowdy miners' thirst for liquor, and two enterprising saloon keepers found a way around the new law.
They simply moved a mile east and started a new town on the state line of Missouri, where liquor was legal. The original idea was to start a regular town where people would want to live, but that idea never quite got off the ground. Instead, the town became just a place for the miners to go and raise hell, and it mainly consisted of just a couple of saloons. At least one of the buildings, called a "double building," actually straddled the border, with the saloon portion in Missouri and the Kansas portion serving as a gambling hall, since gambling was still legal in the sunflower state but not in Missouri.
Officially named Dubuque, the new town became known as Budgetown or Budgeville, because "budge" was a slang term for liquor in the Old West. From the very beginning, Budgetown had a bad reputation, and the respectable citizens of Galena looked upon their new rival with disdain. Commenting on the new town in March of 1881, the Galena Miner suggested that the "b" in Dubuque be changed to a "p," and the name of the town would then "be about correct." A couple of months later, a resident of Neosho, Missouri, traveled to Galena and reported back to his hometown newspaper, the Miner and Mechanic, that there was not a drop of liquor to be found in Galena but that a new town named Budge had sprung up on the state line and the "eyes and feet of the thirsty Short Creekers turn that way as the sunflower expands its charms into the sun."
In late May 1881, just a week or so after the Neosho resident's visit, the Galena Miner gave its readers an update on Budgeville. According to the newspaper, the new town had failed to prosper as its founders had envisioned, and it was generally very dull. However, "There are seasons when there are wild times," the newspaperman allowed. The rural residents in the vicinity of Budgetown regularly complained to law enforcement of the indiscriminate discharge of firearms in and around the town, and they lived in fear that they might be hit by a stray bullet. The Miner concluded by reiterating that Budgetown as a business enterprise was a complete failure and would continue to be so as long as the sole object of those inhabiting the town was to "drink whisky and play cards."
 
Despite the negative publicity Budgetown received almost from its beginning, rumors persisted in the spring of 1881 that the new town on the border was booming and already had a population numbering as high as 2,000. In early June, the Miner once again felt called upon to dispel the rumors. The editor assured his readers that the only place in Budgetown where a person could buy groceries had recently closed and that there was nothing left in the town that was in the least attractive to anyone except those who desired to "get where they have almost unrestrained license. Budgetown will never be a place where men will want to take their families."
The Miner editor was right. Budgetown remained little more than a place to drink and raise hell for the next few years. In early 1884, Joe Thornton, whose brother ran a grocery store in Galena, took charge of the only remaining business in Budgetown, a "double building" straddling the state line. Unlike his brother, Joe had developed an unsavory reputation, and it didn't take him long to start getting into trouble again once he removed to the state line. His troubles culminated in the summer of 1885 when he shot and killed a Joplin city policeman and was hanged by a mob later the same evening. You can read more about Joe Thornton in by book Wicked Joplin. I also have another book in the works about notorious incidents in Jasper County history, and one chapter of that book will detail Thornton's noted criminal career.
Budgetown was still shown on maps as late as 1895 under its official name of Dubuque. It was located on the state line between present-day Seventh Street and Old Route 66, in the general area where the Phillips 66 State Line convenience store and gas station is situated.

The Crime of Seduction

The crime of seduction has traditionally been defined in English common law as a felony committed when a male induces a previously chaste, unmarried female to engage in sexual intercourse with a promise of marriage. Although such laws are still on the books in some states of the US, cases of seduction are rarely prosecuted nowadays. The exception, of course, is when an underage female is seduced by an older male, in which case the male, especially if the age difference is pronounced, is often charged with statutory rape. However, if both parties are of legal age, laws against seduction are rarely invoked nowadays. It hasn't always been the case. It was not uncommon for a man to be charged with seduction a hundred or more years ago. The case of Allen Stemmons, of Jasper County, Missouri, is one example.
Stemmons was a young man about twenty-six years old living in the Carthage area when Viola Shottenkirk (surname also given as Bailey), about nineteen or twenty years old, came to his neighborhood from Kansas in December 1914 for an extended stay with her grandparents. Stemmons was attracted to the young woman right away, and they soon began keeping company. In August 1915, he proposed marriage to her. She accepted and began preparing table linen, sheets, and other household items in anticipation of the marriage. Their relationship even made the gossip column of the Jasper News when the paper reported on September 9, 1915, that "Viola Shottenkirk and Allen Stemmons of Maple Grove motored to J. F. Gullick's Sunday." (Maple Grove was a small community north of Avilla, about fifteen miles northeast of Carthage.)
Stemmons continued his attentions to Viola until one day in October, when they were out riding in an automobile, he "insistently solicited sexual intercourse," urging that, being engaged, they were already married in the sight of God. She demurred, pointing out that they were not yet married in the sight of man, but when he persisted, she finally gave in and "lent herself to his embraces." The couple again had sexual relations in November, and as a result of the intercourse, Viola became pregnant. According to later evidence, Stemmons didn't believe Viola when she first told him she was pregnant, and later he began backing off his promise of marriage and trying to arrange an abortion for her. When that failed, he made arrangements for her to go to Kansas City to have the baby. He met her in Kansas City and paid for her maternity care. Her parents, having learned of their daughter's condition, showed up, and the mother demanded to know of Stemmons whether he was the father of the unborn child. He admitted that he was, saying he knew that Viola had not had sex with anyone other than himself. When the mother wanted to know whether he planned to marry her daughter, he relied, "I didn't say I wouldn't."
But he didn't marry Viola, either before the child was born on July 31, 1916, or after, because he had fallen in love with another girl, Mary Leah Preston. He married her in August of 1916, just weeks after Viola gave birth to her child.
Viola and her family filed a charge of seduction and breach of promise against Stemmons in Jasper County Circuit Court. Stemmons, who had been a standout member of the debate team at Carthage High School, was described by a Webb City newspaper at the time he was arrested as "a clean, gentlemanly looking young man of splendid parentage." At his trial in the fall of 1916, Stemmons denied ever having sexual relations with Viola or ever having more than a casual relationship with her. He admitted making maternity arrangements for Viola but claimed he only did so in response to her threats. He said she came to the drug store where he worked and wanted him to provide something that would abort the baby. When he was unable to do so, she threatened to name him as the father of her unborn child if he did not provide for her relief. The jury didn't buy Stemmons' unlikely story, and he was convicted of seduction and sentenced to two years in the state penitentiary. His lawyers appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, postponing imposition of sentence, but the high court ruled in late July 1918 that the judgment of the lower court should stand.
Stemmons was transported to the state prison in Jefferson City on July 30, 1918, but he didn't stay there long. Just a month later, he was pardoned by acting governor Crossley after serving just a month in prison. In issuing his order, Crossley said he did not believe Stemmons was guilty of the crime of which he had been convicted. He said it was clear from the court record that the jury itself had doubts as to his guilt and had only convicted him with a recommendation of parole. The trial judge, however, had gone ahead and pronounced the two-year sentence, saying he would rather the state parole board act on the recommendation.
On August 31, 1918, Stemmons walked out of prison a free man, and he went on to lead a long and productive life, dying in 1977 at the age of 88. What happened to Viola and her child I have been so far unable to trace.

Church in a Saloon and a Dance Hall in Church

Joplin earned a well-deserved reputation during its early mining days as a wide-open place where whiskey flowed freely and other forms of vice abounded. Saloons sat on nearly every block, and gambling parlors were almost as prevalent. The gambling halls often adjoined the saloons but not always. "Amusement emporiums" like Johnson's Vaudeville Variety Theatre, which I discussed in my previous two posts, offered ribald entertainment, and, for a price, female companionship could be had there and at other houses of ill fame in the downtown area. Almost from the town’s infancy, however, religion thrived alongside the revelry.

In fact, Joplin’s very first church service was held in a saloon. One day in early 1872, several men were discussing the need for a church when Kit Bullock, co-owner of Bullock and Boucher’s saloon on Main Street, offered his business as a sanctuary. Unknown to Bullock, one of the men among the group was an itinerant Methodist minister, and he promptly took the saloonkeeper up on his offer, saying he would hold services the very next day if Bullock meant what he said. True to his word, Bullock cleaned up his saloon, replaced the whiskey bottles with candles, and laid planks across his beer kegs to serve as makeshift pews. The next day, the preacher showed up and delivered a sermon to several solemn and presumably sober worshipers.

Not only was Joplin’s first church service held in a saloon, but the town’s early houses of worship were also often given over to secular use, a practice that some observers found just as unseemly as holding church in a barroom. The Tabernacle, erected at the corner of Fourth and Virginia in 1876, served not only as one of the town’s principal places of worship but also as a sort of town hall that played host to numerous public gatherings, including many that were offered purely for entertainment. For instance, when a roller skating craze swept across the country in 1877, the Tabernacle was turned into a skating rink, and large groups of “Holy Rollers,” as the skaters were often called, would gather each night to participate in their newfound recreation.

Such mixing of religion and merrymaking earned Joplin frequent criticism from its neighbors as an evil and irreverent place. In January of 1880, the Neosho Miner and Mechanic waxed indignant over the indecorous fundraising activities of a Joplin congregation that hoped to build a new church. Calling Joplin a “queer place,” the editor continued,

   The ladies belonging to the church are working with vim. During the holidays they had a festival, at which there  was music and dancing, and several articles of value were raffled off, the whole thing  realizing about a hundred dollars for the cause of religion. To-night they give a grand leap year ball, at  which a magnificent diamond ring is to be drawn, lottery fashion. Some of the most prominent lady members of the church are floor managers, and doubtless they will waltz a good amount of money out of those who attend. We presume the minister will be the beau of the ball, and all the ladies will vie with each other as to who shall have the honor of dancing with him. Thus do Christians in Joplin renounce the devil and all his work, and the vain pomp and glory of this world.

Joplin, though, did not meekly abide such criticism. Responding to the Miner and Mechanic, the editor of the Joplin Herald accused his counterpart at Neosho of being “pious and sanctimonious.”
This story, like my previous two blog entries, is condensed from my book Wicked Joplin.