Harry Truman Returns to Lamar Again

Last time, I wrote about Harry S Truman returning to Lamar, the town of his birth, on the occasion of his nomination for vice president under FDR in 1944. In 1959, Truman, who was now a 74-year-old ex-president, came back to Lamar again for the dedication of his birthplace as a Missouri state historic site.

Truman arrived in Lamar at mid-morning on April 19, 1959, for the festivities. The town was decked out in colorful bunting and signs welcoming the former president, and over 7,000 people turned out for the occasion. After driving around the town visiting old landmarks, Truman had lunch with a Lamar attorney. Later, he dropped in on a reception held in his honor at Memorial Hall by his old World World I outfit, Battery D of the 129th Field Artillery. Truman who had been captain of the battery, joked that he'd never had more than 250 men in the outfit but that, after he became president, the ranks had ballooned to 35,000 men who claimed service in the unit. 

From Memorial Hall, Truman and his old battery mates joined a parade to the little house where he was born about four blocks east of the public square in Lamar. The structure was built in 1867, and Truman's parents purchased it in 1882 for $915. Harry was born there in 1884, and his parents sold the house for $1600 and moved away in 1885. Truman admitted he had no recollection of the house, since he was just eleven months old when the family left Lamar. The home had been in the Earp family for years, but the United Auto Workers purchased it in 1957 with an eye toward developing it as a historic site. Now the UAW was gifting it to Missouri to operate as an official state historic site.

After an invocation and other preliminaries, Leonard Woodcock, vice-president of the UAW, officially presented the house to Missouri, with Governor James T. Blair accepting on behalf of the state. Seventeen-year-old Donald Braker, Lamar High School student body president, then presented Truman with a plaque on behalf of the city of Lamar honoring the former US president, which was to be permanently mounted in the room where he was born. Stuart Symington, US senator from Missouri, took the podium to give the official dedicatory address in which he praised Truman profusely. Harry responded briefly to both Braker's and Symington's speeches. Among his remarks, Truman said he greatly appreciated the honor that was being bestowed upon him. He said he felt as if he'd been buried and dug up while he was still alive. "They usually don't do this to former Presidents until they've been dead 50 years." He also said, after being lauded as a statesman, that he didn't consider himself a statesman because a statesman was nothing but a "dead politician." He said he was a politician and expected to stay one the rest of his life. The crowd roared its approval and shouted for him to "pour it on, Harry."

After the dedication ceremony was over, Truman and other dignitaries retired to the Traveler's Hotel for a dinner to close out the events of the day.

  

Harry Truman Returns to Lamar

As most readers familiar with Missouri history probably know, President Harry S Truman was born in Lamar. He was born on May 8, 1884, in a one and a half story frame house located at what is now 1009 Truman Street in Lamar. The family moved away, however, when Truman was just eleven months old, before he was old enough to have any recollection of the place.

Except for a brief stopover in 1924 when his car broke down near Lamar while on a trip from Kansas City to Joplin, Truman didn't come back until sixty years later, on the eve of his official nomination as FDR's vice presidential running mate. Senator Truman reached Joplin about 1:45 p.m. on August 30, 1944, by motorcade from Kansas City. He was greeted with cheers when he arrived at the Connor Hotel, where the Joplin Democratic Women's Club held an informal reception for him during which he met hundreds of well-wishers.

Later that afternoon, he was driven to the Camp Crowder army post near Neosho, where he was the guest of post commander Major General Walter E. Prosser. That evening, he returned to Joplin, where he spent the night at the Connor. The next morning he and the Democratic National Committee hosted a breakfast at the hotel for a congressional delegation of at least sixteen US senators and representatives. Later he held a press conference at 11:00 a.m., but a planned luncheon was canceled so as not to further delay his expected appearance in Lamar. During his stay in Joplin, Truman declared that he expected the Roosevelt ticket to carry Missouri by 100,000 votes in November. (The Democrats actually ended up winning the state by less than half that margin.)

Meanwhile, the town of Lamar had been busy all day on the 30th preparing for Truman's visit. When he finally arrived about four o'clock in the afternoon of the 31st, he was met at the edge of town by a reception committee of several hundred people. Some of them had been simmering about the Democratic Committee allowing Joplin to eclipse Lamar's big day, but at the sight of their favorite son, they put aside their pique and welcomed Truman as a conquering hero. His car halted frequently to let Truman, who was sitting in the backseat of the open automobile, greet well-wishers as he was escorted downtown. At the square, Truman, "smiling like a schoolboy," waved to spectators as his automobile circled the courthouse in a parade led by high-stepping school bands from Lamar and surrounding larger towns like Joplin, Carthage, and Springfield. 

Truman was then taken to the Traveler's Hotel, where he pressed through a crowd and made his way to the dining room for an informal reception. About a thousand people came through the reception line to shake his hand. 

After the reception, Truman was driven to the home of his birth at 1009 Kentucky Street. He and other visitors were shown around by the 86-year-old owner of the house, W. S. Earp, a collateral descendant of the Wyatt Earp family. 

That evening, Truman was taken back to the square for his speech officially accepting the vice-presidential nomination of the Democratic Party. Among the spectators was his 92-year-old mother, Martha, who had arrived in Lamar about sunset.

During his time in Lamar, Truman was asked about the middle initial "S" in his name. He said it stood for his two grandfathers, both of whose names began with "S." "Therefore," he explained, "to please everybody, they just gave me the initial." 

After 1944, Truman came back to Lamar one more time, in 1959, for the dedication of his birthplace as a Missouri state historic site, but that's a subject for another post, perhaps next time. 

Bibliographical note: I took most of the information for this article from Joplin and Springfield newspapers, but for a more thorough examination of Truman's ties to Lamar, I recommend Joplin author Randy Turner's The Buck Starts Here.

A "Murderous Assault" in Springfield: Tom Brown's Killing of William Weir

Shortly after midnight on the morning of October 27, 1903, Tom Brown entered the Queen City Restaurant just off the public square on College Street, took a seat in the black section of the restaurant and ordered a plate of oysters. Sometime later, near one o'clock, William Weir, the establishment's "one-legged dishwasher," who was seated on a stool not far away, had a coughing spell. When he stopped coughing, Brown, who was reportedly drunk, asked Weir what the hell was the matter with him, and Weir told him to mind his own business. As the argument escalated, Weir told Brown to stop his cussing, called him a nigger, and told him to get out of the restaurant. Instead of obeying Weir's order, Brown made a threatening move toward the dishwasher. Weir picked up one of his crutches and raised it between him and Brown to ward off the threatened attack. When Brown got close enough, Weir poked him with the crutch. Brown immediately drew his pistol, shot Weir in the stomach, and fled the scene. 

After the police were notified of the shooting, they located Brown in a room along Kirby's Arcade, a walkway that led from the southwest corner of the square to South Alley (now McDaniel Street), but Brown made his escape out a back door before they could apprehend him. He was taken into custody on the afternoon of the 27th after a woman notified two black Springfield policemen of his whereabouts in a house near the corner of Phelps and Washington. 

Since Weir was not expected to live, the Springfield Leader called the shooting a "murderous assault," and the newspaper labeled the forty-two-year-old Brown "a vicious and dangerous negro." Often called "Cherokee Bill" because he "had some Indian blood in his veins," Brown belonged to "the worst type of bad negroes" and had seemingly "inherited the depraved instincts of both races." He allegedly was wanted for a murder committed in Indian Teritory. Weir, on the other hand, was an inoffensive and helpless old white man whose only vice was his ravenous thirst for beer. Weir lived at the restaurant and took his meals there as a perk of his job. He spent almost his entire $3 a week in wages on beer, said the Leader.

After the fifty-seven-year-old Weir died on the afternoon of the 28th, Brown was charged with murder, and there was much talk of mob action on the streets of Springfield. In response, authorities promptly whisked Brown away from Springfield to a jail in a neighboring county for safekeeping. He was brought back to Greene County for arraignment in late November. Brown pleaded not guilty. 

After a continuance, Brown went to trial in Springfield in early April 1904. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to hang on May 20. A defense appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court automatically stayed the execution. In the spring of 1905, the high court overruled the lower court's verdict and remanded the case to Greene County for retrial. The justices ruled that testimony alleging that Brown had pulled his pistol on another man earlier on the same night that Weir was shot should not have been allowed, since it had no direct relation to the Weir case. They also said that at least one or two of the jurors probably should have been excluded because they were known to be prejudiced against the defendant. 

When Brown's case came up for retrial in July 1905, the prosecution waived the first-degree murder charge in exchange for the defendant's guilty plea to second-degree murder. Brown was sentenced to 99 years in the state prison. He was transferred to the Jefferson City facility in October of 1905, and he was discharged in late July 1916 under commutation by the governor.  

John Smoote Kills His Wife's Father

I've heard it said many times that murders involving friends or family members are much more common than murders in which the victim and perpetrator are strangers. My research tends to bear out this statistic. I recently wrote on this blog about a man who murdered his brother-in-law in Webster County in 1893. A similar incident happened just a few years later in nearby Springfield when a man killed his father-in-law in what the Springfield-Leader Democrat called  "an explosion of rage."

On May 29, 1897, twenty-five-year-old John Smoote married Cynthia Keeling in Greene County when she was only seventeen. Cynthia's father, William Keeling, objected to the marriage, as he had always disliked Smoote, and the relationship between the two men continued to be anything but cordial after the marriage. The antipathy between the two finally came to head a little over a year later on June 27, 1898.

Cynthia and her husband lived in north Springfield near the junction of the Zoo Park and the Doling Park streetcar lines, and her father lived nearby. All three went to a barn together in the late afternoon of the 27th to milk a cow. As they started back to their respective homes, Keeling asked his daughter why she hadn't been to visit him recently. When she explained that she had been very busy, Keeling gave an angry reply, which caused her husband to confront the older man. The two argued until finally Keeling struck Smoote with the milk bucket he was carrying, spilling milk on both men. Smoote immediately drew a pocket knife and began stabbing Keeling, who soon fell to the ground. The younger man straddled Keeling and continued stabbing him after he was down, until he had delivered a total of eleven wounds.

A neighbor, Daniel Blount, heard the commotion and hurried to the scene on horseback in time to hear Cynthia yell to her husband, "Don't cut him anymore!" Blount also heard Smoote threaten to "cut your damned heart out," although the testimony conflicts on whether these words were directed at his father-in-law or at his wife when she tried to intervene. In either case, Smoote also threatened Blount in the same manner when Cynthia asked him to get off his horse and help out. In the face of Smoote's threat, Blount, instead of dismounting, turned around and left.

When Smoote's anger finally subsided, he tried to pick his father-in-law up and said, "Let's go home," but Keeling couldn't stand and fell back to the ground dead or dying. Later that evening, Smoote went to the sheriff's office, where he turned himself in and handed over the murder weapon. Two deputies, followed by the sheriff, went out to the scene of the crime and brought Keeling's body back to an undertaking establishment, where the coroner conducted an inquest the next morning. The jury concluded that Keeling came to his death by knife wounds inflicted by John Smoote.

At Smoote's preliminary examination in early July, Blount testified that he arrived on the scene in time to see Smoote strike Keeling with the last knife blow and that, when Smoote withdrew the knife, blood spurted as high as the assailant's head. Blount said he did not comply with Mrs. Smoote's request to get down and help because he was scared. Instead, he left to try to get additional help, but by the time he returned Keeling was already dead. Another neighbor, Miss Cordie Carter, also said she arrived on the scene while Smoote was still straddling his victim with the knife in an upraised fist as though getting ready to strike Keeling again. Miss Carter called for Smoote to get up and not stab Keeling again. He obeyed but, as he did so, he told her that he didn't think it was any of her business. 

Smoote was held pending the action of a grand jury. On August 1, he was arraigned on a first-degree murder charge, to which he pleaded not guilty.

Blount and Miss Carter were again two of the primary prosecution witnesses at Smoote's trial in early September. They repeated essentially what they'd said at the preliminary hearing. Cynthia Smoote was the main witness for the defense. She said her husband and her father had never gotten along and had often argued. On the day of the murder, her father had called her husband "a damned liar," struck him with the milk pail, and seized him by the collar prior to her husband pulling out his knife. Other defense witnesses confirmed that Keeling was hostile toward Smoote and at least one or two said they thought Keeling was probably drunk on the day of the confrontation between him and his son-in-law. After a two-day trial, the jury came back with a verdict of second-degree murder and a sentence of three and a half years in the state prison. The jury had some difficulty in agreeing, because several jurors wanted a much longer sentence, but they finally relented in order to get any kind of conviction. 

Smoote was transferred to the penitentiary in Jefferson City on September 19, 1998. He was discharged in late April of 1901 on the state's three-fourths law. He returned to Springfield, but Cynthia apparently divorced him either during his incarceration or sometime not very long after his release, because in 1910 he was living with a new wife, the couple's newborn baby, and the new wife's kids by a previous marriage. 

Ash Grove Farmer Kills a Jailhouse Lawyer

If the folks around Ash Grove, Missouri, had been thoroughly acquainted with attorney Jefferson Brock's background when he set up residence and hung out his shingle there in 1890, they probably would not have been surprised when he ended up the victim of deadly gunplay on the streets of their small town four years later. To say Brock had a shady past is almost an understatement.

Born in Illinois about 1851, he moved with his family to Linn County, Kansas, prior to 1870. In October 1874, a man named Jefferson Brock stole a wagon and a team of horses from a farmer in Scott County, Iowa, and drove them into Illinois, not far from the area where Brock grew up. Although it's not certain this was the same Jefferson Brock, the circumstances suggest that he might well have been. Brock was apprehended in Illinois a couple of months later and taken back to Iowa to face charges, but the charges were soon dropped for lack of sufficient evidence.

Back in Kansas, Jefferson Brock got into a fight at a dance in Linn County in October 1876, and the other man was charged with assault. Around the beginning of 1878, Brock was charged in Linn County with highway robbery after sticking a man up at gunpoint, and he was lodged in jail at Mound City. In March of the same year, he escaped but was soon recaptured and taken back to the county jail. In April, soon after he was brought back, he and his girlfriend were united in marriage at the jailhouse. 

Brock was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years in the state prison at Lansing. Admitted on May 1, 1878, he soon took up the study of law as he whiled away the hours during his incarceration. By the mid-1880s, some of his friends were circulating a petition to be given to the governor urging a pardon for Brock. The pardon finally came through in August of 1889. Brock came back to the Mound City area, promptly took the bar exam, and passed it. One of his first acts as an attorney was to sue the estate of his deceased father, seeking a bigger piece of the inheritance than he'd previously been given.

In the spring of 1890, Brock moved to Forsyth in Taney County, Missouri. He stayed there just a short while before relocating to Ash Grove. In January 1891, he was arrested on a charge of slander after a complaint from another Ash Grove resident, but apparently nothing came of the matter. Brock's first wife must have divorced him after he went to prison because, in January 1892, he married an Ash Grove girl, Miss Allie Swinney. In March of 1894, Brock was charged with perjury during a legal case, but he was acquitted. 

Sometime around late 1895, a man named James Gilmore borrowed some money from Brock, who was operating not just as a lawyer but also a small-time financier. Gilmore gave Brock some farm animals as collateral, but after Gilmore paid off the loan, Brock wouldn't give back the animals, claiming Gilmore also owed him for lawyer's fees. Gilmore hired a man to go the Brock's home, take back the animals, and run them off. 

The dispute between the two men escalated from there, with each accusing the other of making threats. Finally on February 22, 1896, Gilmore came into Ash Grove, where he and Brock got into another heated argument on the streets. Gilmore pulled out a gun and shot and killed Brock.

Gilmore was tried for murder in July of 1896, but the trial ended in a hung jury. The retrial took place in December of the same year. The prosecution argued that Gilmore was the aggressor in the dispute between the two men and that he drew his gun and shot Brock almost in cold blood. The defense maintained just the opposite--that Brock was the aggressor and that Gilmore only drew his gun because Brock was reaching for a weapon. This time, Gilmore was acquitted.