The Lynching of Greenberry Buis

   In early 1872, twenty-three-year-old Greenberry Buis and his twenty-year-old wife, Martha, moved from northwest Greene County to Cass County, where Buis promptly got into trouble for horse stealing. Convicted of grand larceny, he was sent to the Missouri State Prison for three years, while Martha returned to Greene County to live with her father’s family. Released in late April 1873 after serving less than ten months of his sentence, Buis came back to the Walnut Grove vicinity, and he and his wife got back together.
   He’d been back home only about a month when he and a brother-in-law named Wood were accused of stealing sheep in Greene and nearby counties. The two were arrested, but Buis escaped, while Wood was lodged in the Hickory County Jail at Hermitage.
   Buis was captured in Barry County in early July 1873, and a posse started back with him to Polk County, where he would face prosecution. On Sunday, July 6, his guards allowed him to stop at his widowed mother’s house near Walnut Grove to spend the night before going on to Bolivar the next day. Martha, his wife, was also at the house.
   Buis went inside the home, and at least five men were detailed to guard him. About nine o’clock that night, five or six horsemen rode up to a fence in front of the Buis property, ascertained that Buis was there, and had a heated exchange with the guards about turning Buis over to them. One of the horseman rode off and came back with at least 20 additional men. The vigilantes then forced their way into the house and dragged Buis out over the cries and protestations of his wife and mother.
   The mob took Buis about a quarter of a mile from his home and strung him up to a tree. The guards, according to the Springfield Missouri Weekly Patriot, were “powerless to prevent the terrible deed.”
   The body was left hanging until about four o’clock the next afternoon when a coroner’s jury arrived to hold an inquest. The guards were all called to testify before the jury, and all of them denied knowing any of the vigilantes.
   The Weekly Patriot reported that Buis had been lynched because he had allegedly threatened the lives of a number of men. To comment further on the “horrible deed and do justice” was a difficult task, the newspaper allowed, before proceeding to offer just such comment:

   The poor people of Missouri suffered many hardships during the war, and hoped when peace dawned on the land that it would be such a peace as would insure “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” as well as the peaceable possession...of property. That there has been a large amount of stealing, bushwhacking and hellishness generally, throughout the country, since the war, none will deny. How to abolish the outrages entirely, is not easy. It can be done by abolishing the perpetrators, but law-abiding people would prefer to suffer much indignity rather than enforce this principle. The law is able, if it was enforced. The good people of Missouri have elected a Governor who sends the horse-thieves and robbers back among them, to take their hard-earnings, or take their lives even if they seek justice through the law, and what can they do to help themselves? We oppose mobs, but have great sympathy for honest, hard-working men, who have their property stolen and their lives in peril. We also add that we have but little pity for men who make their living in this way, even if they get their necks in a rope.

   This post is condensed from a chapter in my latest book, Lynchings, Murders, and Other Nefarious Deeds: A Criminal History of Greene County, Mo. I'm having a signing for the book at ABC Books in Springfield next Saturday, June 5 from 1-3 p.m.

A Prison Mutiny

   About mid-afternoon on November 24, 1905, four prisoners at the Missouri State Penitentiary; Harry Vaughn, George Ryan, Charles Raymond, and Hiram Blake; finished their work in the prison's boot and shoe shop early and went to their mutual cell. There they procured revolvers, cartridges, and nitroglycerin from the hiding spots where they'd hidden them after they'd recently been smuggled into them. The desperate quartet then burst into Deputy Warden R. E. See's office and demanded his surrender. He resisted and was shot in the arm. The inmates then marched See as their prisoner to a big, iron, inside gate and ordered it opened. The guard on duty, John Clay, opened the gate and was promptly shot in the head and killed. The four men then marched See to a big outside gate and ordered him to open it, but he told them he couldn't without a key and said they'd have to go back to the office to get it.
   Instead of going back to the office, they marched the deputy to a smaller gate and ordered it opened. As they hurried through the gate, they shot and killed Officer Ephraim Allison, who happened to be standing nearby. They also shot and wounded See a second time. Rushing to a big outside gate, they blew it open with the nitroglycerin, making a hole three feet in diameter that they could crawl through.
   Outside, they made a dash for the railroad tracks with prison officers in close pursuit, and Jefferson City Police officers quickly joined the chase. One of the prisoners, Blake, was shot and mortally wounded soon after their escape. The other three reached the tracks and jumped in a wagon at the freight depot. They then drove the team through the streets of Jefferson City, and a running gunfight ensued. Raymond was seriously injured, Vaughn was slightly wounded, and one officer was wounded during the melee before Ryan and Vaughn were finally corralled. The fallen Raymond was also taken into custody.
   Soon after the recapture of the would-be fugitives, Ryan confessed that H. E. Spencer, who'd recently been released from the prison, had supplied the four men with their revolvers and nitroglycerin. He'd smuggled them in one night by scaling a stockade near the shoe and boot shop, where no inmates were allowed at night and where no guards were stationed, and hiding the items in a pre-arranged spot near his buddies' work stations. Spencer was nowhere to be found, though.
   Vaughn, who was in prison on a robbery charge and was implicated in the shooting of three St. Louis lawmen, was considered the ringleader of the jail break attempt, but all three of the surviving would-be escapees were charged with murder. Their first trial in early 1906 ended in a mistrial when the jury failed to agree, as two or three jurors voted to acquit. The three were retried just a month or two later, convicted, and sentenced to die in April 1906. The verdict was appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, and the sentence was stayed. The high court sustained the verdict the following year, and Vaughn, Raymond, and Ryan were hanged simultaneously in the Cole County Jail on June 27, 1907.

Success, Missouri

   In the December 31, 1880, issue of the Houston Herald, a brief news item appeared announcing the formation of a new town in Texas County to be known as Success. George H. Bender, owner of the land, had platted a town of forty acres to be located along a proposed route of the Fort Scott and Memphis Railroad through western Texas County. As far as I've been able to ascertain, the railroad project was diverted or never completed, but the town came into being nevertheless.
   Actually, there was a community in the general vicinity of Success prior to 1880. It was first called Ebbing Spring. The name was changed to Hastings, after the principal storeowner. Later, Bender and Hastings became business partners and proposed to make a resort of the springs. They changed the name to Success as an apparent advertising ploy, but if the name was an effort to attract visitors, it didn't work, and Bender moved the town to the proposed railroad location in 1880. Success was a flourishing little community for a while during the late 1800s and early 1900s. It got a post office in 1883, and, at one time or another, it had a public square, a general store, a blacksmith shop, a hotel, a drugstore, a telephone office, and other businesses.
   About 1939, the town was moved again, this time a mile or so south to the junction of Highways 17 and 32. The new place was named Wye Junction because of the shape of the intersection, but the name didn't stick, and it became known once again as Success, while the town site to the north became known as Old Success.
   Today, Success still has a post office. It also has a convenience store but not much else. The community's main asset is its school district, although the school is actually located a mile and half or so south of town on Highway 17. The district formed in 1959 when Success and the schools of a number of other small communities in the area consolidated into one larger elementary school district. High school students living in the Success district attend either Houston, Licking, or Plato.
   Old Success is now little more than a ghost town. One of its remaining landmarks is a cemetery, where, by the way, one of my great great grandmothers is buried. I visited the place one time, about 30 years ago when my genealogy activity was at its peak.

The Withers-Max Feud of Southeast Missouri

   In the late 1890s, a series of contentious and ultimately deadly events in the Piedmont (MO) area, involving a local banker and two brothers, came to be known, at least in newspaper headlines, as the Withers-Max feud. When all was said and done, the banker, a fifty-six-year-old man named George A. Withers, was dead; one of the brothers, Kirk Max, had been shot and killed from ambush, allegedly by friends of Withers; and the other brother, Henry Max, had been tried for Withers's murder and found not guilty. 
   The whole thing started in the fall of 1896 when Henry Max was accused of raping a thirteen-year-old girl named Lizzie Harness. Max was married and had three daughters, but his family was still in Ohio, where he had previously lived. He was currently living alone in a house in Piedmont and had more room than he needed. So, he rented out part of the house to another family, who had taken in Lizzie, an orphan girl. It was suggested that Lizzie could help earn her keep by doing housework for Max, and he finally agreed. In exchange for her work, Max bought the girl some clothes and other items for her personal use.
   In late November, just a few weeks after Lizzie had started working for Max, she accused him of "having carnal knowledge" with her. She said he had "accomplished his purpose" through "persuasion and force" and had afterward threatened her if she told anyone. But she broke down and told anyway just a week or two after the incident.
   Max was promptly arrested, and at his preliminary hearing in early December, he was bound over to the circuit court without bail on a charge of rape. It appears Withers actively aided the prosecution of the case against Max and lobbied for his conviction. Despite these efforts, the jury could not agree on Max's guilt, and his trial in the spring of 1897 ended in a mistrial. Max was then released on $6,000 bond. Withers, however, continued to advocate for the prosecution, earning Max's ire. At one point, Max even threatened to kill Withers if he didn't mind his own business.
   On the early morning of September 8, 1897, Withers's dead body was found lying face-down beside the railroad tracks in Piedmont with the back of his head bashed in. Withers had been to Ironton on the 7th and had returned to Piedmont in the wee hours of the 8th. A few people thought he had fallen or jumped from the train and crushed his head in that manner, but most thought he had been murdered and his body positioned by the track for effect.
   Circumstantial evidence pointed to the involvement of Henry Max and his brother Kirk, and they were arrested on suspicion of murder on the evening of September 9. Supporting the idea that the scene had been staged, investigators found buggy tracks leading to the railroad tracks from elsewhere in town and away from the tracks toward a nearby river. It was, therefore, theorized that Withers had been killed elsewhere, his body hauled to the tracks and dumped, and the buggy driven to the river to wash off the bloodstains. One of the wheels on Henry Max's buggy was found to have blood on it, and the wheels also made a unusual track matching the track made by the buggy that had been driven away from Withers's body. In addition, a couple of witnesses turned up who claimed to have seen the Max buggy in the vicinity of the railroad tracks on the night in question. Also, Kirk Max and George Withers had supposedly had some strained business relations of late. After their arrest Henry and Kirk made no statement except to declare their innocence.
   In mid-September, a coroner's jury found that the Max brothers were responsible for Withers's death, and they were officially charged with murder. In December, a grand jury brought a true bill against the brothers, and they were bound over for trial in the circuit court.
   In early 1898, the brothers were granted a severance, and E. K. "Kirk" Max was tried first. It came out at trial that some of the evidence against him and his brother was dubious. For instance, at least one of the witnesses who claimed to have seen Henry's buggy in the vicinity of the tracks where the victim's body turned out to be "an irresponsible tramp." The blood on Henry Max's buggy was shown to be that of an animal rather than a human. Still, when Kirk's trial ended on April 1 with an acquittal, many people were reportedly surprised. The so-called tramp later went before a justice of the peace and swore out an affidavit that the testimony he'd given against the Max brothers was false, that he'd been bribed to give the testimony, but that he'd never received the promised payment.
   On the night of September 9, the one-year anniversary of George Withers's death, Kirk Max was shot in the back from ambush on a street in Piedmont, Riddled with buckshot, he was taken by train to St. Louis, where he died on the morning of the 11th.
   Henry Max's trial for the murder of Withers finally came up in August 1899. After hearing the case, the jury deliberated for only a short while before acquitting him of the charge.
   After the verdict, Henry Max removed to Ohio, from where he wrote a detailed account of his side of the story, which was published in a St. Louis newspaper in mid-September. He said he had returned to Ohio because of death threats he had received in southeast Missouri. He claimed he was totally innocent of the charges against him, both the charge of raping Lizzie Harness and the charge of killing George Withers. Max said that Lizzie, like the tramp who'd implicated him in the Withers case, had later recanted her story, saying she had been bribed to falsely accuse Max. Henry said he'd only taken Lizzie as a housekeeper at the insistence of her foster parents, who could not afford to send her to school or buy her personal items. He finally agreed and soon came to see the girl almost as one of his daughters, until she turned against him. Henry said the girl had apologized to him for her betrayal after recanting her story.
   Max said the only real evidence against him was his threat to kill Withers. He readily admitted to making such a threat but said he'd done so in anger with no intention whatsoever of carrying through with it. In fact, Max claimed that he and Withers had somewhat settled their differences prior to Withers's death and that he had even done business with Withers at the bank during the weeks leading up to his death. Max said he was as shocked as anyone else when he heard of the banker's death.

 

Rolla During the Civil War

   The folks around Rolla (MO) were decidedly Southern in sentiment when the Civil War broke out in the spring of 1861. Southern sympathizers held several mass meetings and demonstrations in Rolla. In April, an outfit calling itself the "Phelps County Minutemen" was organized, and in early May a group of women presented the citizens of Rolla a Confederate flag, which was hoisted over the town to great hurrahing.
   The Confederate reign in Rolla, however, was short-lived. In mid-June, over a thousand Federal troops from St. Louis under Colonel Franz Sigel arrived to take over the town. Rolla's would-be Confederates quietly vanished into the background, as the Union soldiers took down the Rebel flag and replaced it with the Stars and Stripes. Sigel soon marched to Springfield, but an occupying Federal force remained in Rolla. More troops soon arrived, and the town was held by the Union throughout the remainder of the war. As the western terminus of the railroad and situated in central Missouri, it was a strategic site.
   At least one Union battalion was organized at Rolla, and numerous area residents joined other Federal units. No doubt at least a few of these men had previously been wanna-be Confederates, but a large number of local men did, indeed, join the Confederate-allied Missouri State Guard, while others took to the bush as guerrillas. The town of Rolla itself, however, was never seriously threatened by Confederate forces, as it was always heavily garrisoned. A post-war report in a Rolla newspaper estimated that between five thousand and fifty thousand troops were camped in and around Rolla during most of the war, although the fifty thousand figure seems a little high. Two forts were constructed, one called Fort Detty on the north side of town on what is now the campus of the University of Missouri-Rolla and the other called Fort Wyman located just south of town along present-day US Highway 63. In addition, a network of earthworks and trenches surrounded the town, the courthouse was fortified with rifle pits, and a strong headquarters encampment was located west of town.
   Although Rolla was never seriously threatened by Rebel forces during the war, it was a fairly busy place because of its strategic location. Notably, after the Federal defeat at the Battle of Wilson's Creek in mid-August 1861, thousands of Union soldiers evacuated to Rolla, and the Federal forces at Pilot Knob also retreated to Rolla after blowing up the magazine at Fort Davidson in the face of a threat from General Sterling Price's Confederate forces in the fall of 1864. In addition, thousands of Union refugees made their way to Rolla during the Civil War, fleeing from privation and depredations in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas.