Grand Opening of Monte Ne

   I have written previously about Monte Ne, a health resort and planned community developed by William Hope "Coin" Harvey at Silver Springs just east of Rogers, Arkansas, in the early 1900s. (See my Dec. 17, 2014 post entitled "Monte Ne."), but that post was just a broad overview of the place and the man behind it. Today's post pertains just to the grand opening of the place.
   The grand opening occurred on Saturday, May 4, 1901. About 1,000 invitations had been seen out, and about 200 couples from various parts of the Ozarks showed up for the festivities. These included well-known citizens from Rogers, Fayetteville, Bentonville, and Springfield. A few people came from other places, like Fort Smith, St. Louis, and even one person from as far away as Chicago.
   A newspaper correspondent on the grounds during the festivities reported, "Monte Ne, Ark. is a blaze of glory tonight.... All day hundreds have visited the picturesque place and have been royally entertained by Mr. W. H. Harvey, the lord of the manor, and Mrs. Burgess and Miss Hicks, his cultured assistants.
   "The ball being given tonight is the most brilliant social event that has ever occurred in this section, and marks the beginning of a new era in the social world of Northwest Arkansas."
   Monte Ne remained popular as a resort and spa until the 1920s, when it began to decline. In the 1930s, part of it was sold off in lots, and what remained was given over to other uses. The whole area was virtually submerged in water when Beaver Lake was filled in the 1960s. Remnants of Monte Ne are still visible during low water.

Dispute Over Greene County Courthouse Location

   Last time I wrote about a dispute in Jasper County in the late 1890s over whether the county seat should remain in Carthage or be moved to Joplin or Webb City. Just a few years earlier, Greene County had a similar dispute, although the dispute wasn't between two different towns. It was between two different sections of the same town--Springfield.

   North Springfield sprang up as a separate town in 1870 when Springfield was trying to get a railroad and the depot was located north of town rather than in the heart of the city. The new town grew up around the depot, located on Commercial Street, and a rivalry quickly developed between Springfield and its upstart neighbor to the north. The two towns finally merged in the spring of 1887, when North Springfield became part of Springfield, but the rivalry wasn't quite over.

   Within months a controversy arose over the location of a proposed new jail. Some of Springfield's wealthy citizens and a number of county commissioners and county judges wanted to build it on Center Street (now Central Street), about halfway between the old town and North Springfield, and a lot of North Springfieldians, of course, favored this idea. However, most of Springfield's rank and file citizens and a majority of the people in outlying parts of the county thought the new jail should be built on or near the square, close to the courthouse. (Located at the northwest corner of College Street and the square, the old courthouse is pictured below.)

   To circumvent the argument that the jail should be near the courthouse, those favoring the Center Street location soon proposed that a new courthouse might also be built on Center Street. This caused the dispute to heat up even more.

   One argument put forth by those proposing to move the courthouse and jail was that Greene County did not own the land where the square was, because it was part of the original 50 acres donated to the City of Springfield by John P, Campbell in the 1830s. Moving the courthouse and jail to Center Street would place it outside the original 50 acres and, thus, on county land. Those opposed to the move countered that, if such a legal argument was correct, then nearly all the courthouses in southwest Missouri, such as the Christian County courthouse at Ozark, were not located on county property but on city property instead. Those who wanted to keep the courthouse and jail on the square said the plan to move them was just a scheme to line the pockets of some wealthy investors who had purchased lots on Center Street. "It is nothing but legal robbery," said one farmer from rural Greene County, "and the judges deserve hanging more than George Graham." (This was a reference to a wife-murderer who had been lynched near present-day Grant Beach Park about a year earlier. See my book Bigamy and Bloodshed: The Scandal of Emma Molloy and the Murder of Sarah Graham.)

   Those favoring the Center Street location soon won out on the question of where to build the new jail. It was constructed in 1889 in the northeast quadrant of Center and Boonville. The disagreement over building a new courthouse, though, continued for a quite a few years, before a new structure was finally built next to the jail between 1910 and 1912.

   

Jasper County Seat Dispute

   Carthage, Missouri, was named the county seat of Jasper County within a year or so after the county was formed in 1841. Joplin and Webb City did not come into existence until the 1870s, after lead and zinc were discovered in the western part of the county. However, Joplin and Webb City, especially Joplin, grew quickly, and a rivalry soon developed between the old town of Carthage and its upstart neighbors to the west. At the same time, Webb City, Carterville, and some of the other smaller towns of the mining district also resented the fact that Joplin, its larger neighbor, hogged all the publicity relative to the mining district. Often the region was even called the Joplin Mining District, and some folks especially resented this, because Webb City and Carterville, which were so close to each other as to be virtually the same town, and Galena, just across the state line in Kansas, had almost as much mining output as Joplin. Not to mention the fact that there was a plethora of other, smaller mining camps in western Jasper County, like Zincite. They preferred to call the region the Missouri-Kansas Mining District. (Lead had yet to be discovered in large quantities in northeast Oklahoma. After that happened, the region was usually known as the Tri-State Mining District.)
   The people of western Jasper County did not like having to travel to Carthage to file mining deeds and to transact other legal business, and as the area continued to grow, they began to push for a second county seat to be located in the western part of the county, or else to have the western half split off into a whole separate county. The citizens of Joplin petitioned to have a second county seat located in Joplin, which was by far the largest of the towns in the western section. Webb City and the other smaller mining communities opposed this, but the people of Carthage forged an unlikely partnership with Joplin to get the proposal passed in 1891. It called for a large new courthouse (the current building) to be constructed in Carthage and a smaller one in Joplin. In effect, Joplin became a satellite of the main county seat in Carthage, although it was sometimes referred to as a separate county seat.
   Webb City, though, did not give up on its efforts to have a county seat located there. In 1898, a movement formed to have the main county seat moved from Carthage to Webb City, and this time Joplin allied with Webb City. In fact, most observers said that Joplin was really the driving force behind the movement. A Carthage correspondent to a Springfield newspaper called the whole thing a "scheme...hatched at Joplin," because the citizens of western Jasper County were unhappy that the region wasn't getting as many bridges and other road improvements as they thought it should. "A deal seems to have been made between Joplin and Webb City," continued the correspondent, "whereby they will vote together and 'do' Carthage."
  Although I have not learned the exact outcome of any vote of the people or vote of the legislature that might have been taken on this 1898 proposal, the effort to move the county seat to Webb City obviously failed, since Carthage is still today the main county seat of Jasper County, with a satellite court building at Joplin. 

Unable to Work but First Class at Kicking Up Rows

   I recently ran onto a few brief news items in Springfield newspapers during the fall of 1893 about a character named Tim Heath that I found interesting, not because the incidents were particularly important but mainly because of the colorful phraseology the reporters used in describing Heath and his misadventures.
   In early September 1893, Heath appeared before a Springfield judge on a charge of disturbing the peace of one of his neighbors, Mary E. Duke for "cussing her and threshing her son." Heath had only recently been released from jail for beating his wife, and now he was convicted on the new charge and sent back to the lockup for three days. Heath, according to the Springfield Leader, seemed disappointed that he got off with such a light sentence. Heath, who was described as "crippled," was "unable to work but (was) first class at kicking up rows and constituting himself the leader and star performer thereof."
   About the middle of September, Heath and his wife, Cordell, were arrested on complaint from another neighbor, Effie Mitchell. Ms. Mitchell, "being especially ornate in her objurgations," claimed the Heaths "exhausted their vocabulary of foul words upon her." The defendants pleaded guilty and were fined $1.00 each. Tim Heath was also sentenced to a unspecified jail term. The Leader observed at the time that Heath "breaks into jail with the regularity of clockwork and seems to prefer the retirement of the county hotel to that domestic felicity which he should find within the purview of his personal vine and fig tree." In this case, however, a stay of execution was granted so that Mr. Heath was "temporarily foiled in his attempt to force himself upon the hospitality of the people." While he was waiting for the sentence to be imposed, Heath had both Mary Duke and Effie Mitchell arrested on charges of "keeping a bawdy house and being guilty of lewd and lascivious conduct." The case against the women was continued, and, meanwhile, all parties were "getting hotter under the collar...boiling over with venom against one another."
   The final disposition of the two mid-September cases is not clear, but in mid-November Heath was once again arrested for beating his wife. He was released from jail on November 21 "to search for more trouble." Presumably he found it, but maybe not, since there seems to be no trace of him after this.