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.