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.