Charity, Missouri, located just off Highway 38 in southern Dallas County, is a place I'm somewhat familiar with, since it's not too far out of my old stomping grounds around Fair Grove. Yet, I don't think I've ever actually been to Charity. I've been along the stretch of Highway 38 that passes by Charity, but the town proper lies slightly to the east of 38. I say town proper, but the town really doesn't amount to much. A church or two, a couple of businesses, and a few residences. That's about it, except for the elementary school, which I think is still going as part of the Dallas County R-1 (Buffalo) School District. Even when I was a teenager and young man running around Fair Grove, Charity was not much more than a wide place in the road, just as it is today, but that has not always been so. At one time in the early 1900s, it was a going little community with a high school. (The high school consolidated somewhere around the late 1940s with Elkland and Buffalo, and Elkland, in turn, consolidated with Buffalo, Fair Grove, and Marshfield in the late 1950s.) Charity even had a bank during the early 1920s, and the bank's short-lived history forms one of the more interesting and colorful parts of the town's past.
In October 1919, Reuben "R. E." Melton, a former mail carrier and postmaster at Ozark, Missouri, moved from Christian County to Charity to help organize and start the Charity State Bank. The bank opened about the first of November 1919 with John Graves as president and Melton as cashier. About June of 1921, Melton resigned his position with the bank after less than two years, and in early July, he and his family returned to Christian County and took up residence in Ozark.
In the wee hours of the morning of Monday, August 1, just a month or two after Melton's resignation, one or more bandits broke into the bank and blew up the safe. Initial reports said the burglars used so much explosive that the door of the safe blew through the front of the building, the rest of the safe blew through the rear of the building, and the explosion set the building on fire. The blaze was so intense that it caused the bricks partially encasing a vault to crumble, allowing all the banks papers inside to catch fire and be destroyed. Townspeople were awakened by the explosion, and a bucket brigade was quickly organized to fight the fire. However, the flames were so hot and had gained such headway, that nothing could be done to save the structure. Burned to the ground, the building was such a total loss that it could not be determined how much money, if any, the crooks had obtained, although the bank was capitalized at only about $10,000. Authorities initially had no clue as to who the robbers might be.
When Melton received a phone call at Ozark on Monday morning informing him of the crime, he and another Christian County man headed to Charity to investigate. But was Melton returning to the scene of his own crime?
In late September, Melton and a young man named Jesse Stevers, whom Melton employed in a garage he owned at Charity, were arrested on suspicion of having committed the bank job after incriminating evidence was reportedly discovered at the garage. Both denied all involvement in the crime, and both were released on bond. Melton said he would have no trouble establishing an alibi, because he was attending church in Ozark on the night the bank was blown up almost 50 miles away. Dallas County investigators said they had turned up no evidence that Melton's resignation from the bank was anything but voluntary, but a contrary report suggested that some residents of the Charity area had ill feelings toward the cashier, which partially accounted for his quitting. Ralph Cavin, Melton successor as cashier of the bank, was later arrested as a third suspect in the crime.
Melton's case was moved to Hickory County on a change of venue, and he was found not guilty in November 1922. Many of his friends in Christian County, where he enjoyed a good reputation, said they had felt confident all along that he was not guilty. The cases of both Stevers and Cavin were moved to Webster County on venue changes, and the charges against them ended up being dropped for lack of evidence. So, as far as I've been able to learn, no one was ever convicted of blowing up the Charity State Bank. The process of liquidating the bank began almost immediately after the crime, and no other bank took its place in the small Dallas County community.
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