Long Lane Picnic

   For many years, the Ozarks region was the butt of jokes from national media because of the supposed ignorance and lack of sophistication of the hillbillies who lived here. (This is still true, I think, but to a lesser extent than it used to be.) But the ridicule didn't always come from outsiders. Sometimes the people of a larger city in the Ozarks, such as Springfield, would joke about or make light of the country bumpkins who lived out in the isolated areas of the countryside. Understandably, people usually didn't like it when someone disparaged them for being ignorant and unsophisticated, but on the other side of the coin, methinks the offended party, to paraphrase Shakespeare, sometimes protested too much. Sometimes even the smallest of slights offered in jest could arouse indignant rebuttal. This phenomenon was apparently at work after the Springfield Leader published a letter in July 1927 about the town picnic at the Dallas County community of Long Lane that was coming up later in the month.
   I recently wrote about the small community of Charity, also in Dallas County, but I didn't mention that one of the main things Charity was known for was the annual Hogeye Picnic, so named because Hogeye is/was a nickname for Charity. The Hogeye Picnic was held for about 85 consecutive years from the late 1800s to the late 1900s. Such town picnics or reunions were common throughout the early and mid-1900s. Long Lane, located about 15 miles to the northeast, also held an annual picnic that was quite popular, although maybe not quite as much so as the one at Hogeye.
   In early July 1927, the Springfield Leader published several ads publicizing and promoting the upcoming Long Lane Picnic, but then on the 14th, the newspaper published an anonymous letter from someone who painted a sardonic picture of the annual picnic. That particular issue of the Leader apparently does not survive, but we know from later sources that the letter writer described Long Lane as "a little country village, usually quiet and dead" and that he also called it "a wide place in the road" and referred to its residents as "natives." The writer mentioned the rocky fields around Long Lane and said that the annual picnic was "an event even for the dogs." He said the picnic for many represented "the one bright spot in each year's humdrum routine of eventless existence." Describing the end of the picnic, when families began to congregate for the trip home, the letter writer said, "Torn and ragged children, with dirty faces and grimy hands, bruised bare feet and perhaps a black eye suffered in a miniature gang fight greet each mother as she rounds up her flock of tow-haired children."
   Apparently many residents of Long Lane and the surrounding territory took umbrage at the way the people in general and the picnic in particular were characterized in the Leader, and the Buffalo Reflex gave voice to their complaints. Writing to the Leader a week later, the Reflex editor called the letter published on the 14th a "vicious article" which maliciously slurred the Long Lane Picnic and the people of the Long Lane vicinity. Apparently under the impression that the letter had been written by a member of the Leader staff or some other non-Dallas Countian, the Reflex said the article had grossly misrepresented the picnic and the people
   In early August, Leo Nyberg stepped forward to claim authorship of the infamous letter. He said he himself was a longtime resident of Long Lane and that he had attended and enjoyed the Long Lane Picnic almost every year of his life. He had not meant his letter as an insult but rather as a fond but playful depiction of the event, and he thought that if readers would go back and reread his letter, knowing the writer's identity, they would see that it was not a disparaging account of the picnic. If anybody still found it distasteful, however, he sincerely apologized.

Temperance Crusade at Walnut Shade

   I've written previously about temperance crusades in the Ozarks, such as the Murphy Movement that swept across the country and engulfed the Ozarks in the late 1870s. (See, https://ozarks-history.blogspot.com/2009/08/murphy-movement.html.) While the Murphy Movement and similar large-scale temperance crusades were national in scope, more localized crusades against alcohol were also not uncommon during the late 1800s. One such crusade took place at Walnut Shade in Taney County, Missouri, during the late 1890s.
   Walnut Shade, located at the confluence of Bear Creek and Bull Creek about 8 or 10 miles northwest of Forsyth (on present-day Highway 160/176 about halfway between Rockaway Beach and US Highway 65), got its start in 1860 when Samuel Weatherman opened a business there. A post office at Walnut Shade came into existence about the same time; so, it's likely Waterman operated the post office in conjunction with his business.
   Over 20 years later, Walnut Shade was still a very small place when an influx of residents relocated to the area from Nebraska in the mid-1890s, bolstering the community's population considerably. These recent immigrants played an important role in the temperance movement that got its start around Christmas of 1898.
   By February 1899, the Taney County crusade was making news in Springfield. In mid-February, the Springfield Leader-Democrat reported that over 200 people around Walnut Shade had "signed a pledge to abstain from the use of strong drink, and the society includes a number of 'boot-leggers,' who used to give the federal authorities at Springfield no little trouble as violators of the revenue law." At first, some of the young men of the vicinity, who "loved to break up prayer meetings" and "could not enjoy a dance without a drunken row," strongly resisted efforts to reform them, but "the good people" of the area had finally won a "sweeping victory." Several of the local whiskey dealers had even poured out their liquor and joined in the temperance cause.
   One of the converts to the "total abstinence faith" was a colorful character named "Coon" Cornelison. He wouldn't take the pledge at first until he tested himself to see whether he could last a week without taking a drop. He poured out the liquor he had on hand, which had "the potency of a fist-fight in every half-pint," and "the soil of the Bear Creek valley absorbed the white nectar." After fighting temptation for seven days and not drinking anything stronger than "the sparkling water of Bear Creek Springs," he signed a pledge at the next meeting of the temperance group and was immediately made an officer in the organization.
   Because of the success of the Walnut Shade organization, temperance advocates throughout Taney County began urging that the crusade be expanded to Forsyth, Protem, and other communities in the White River country.
   The Leader-Democrat pointed out that the new Walnut Shade temperance society was completely independent, having no connection to any other temperance group. "The members have adopted the cedar of the Ozarks as their emblem, and each one wears a sprig of this native evergreen."
   Buoyed by the success of the society's campaign against liquor, some of the group's members began trying to bring other ameliorating influences to the Bear Creek vicinity, and by the end of February, the group had secured a traveling library, consisting of 40 volumes, to come to Walnut Shade for a stay of up to four months.
   In late April 1899, the temperance society at Walnut Shade was still going strong, with over 200 members. The group met every Sunday afternoon, and not a single Sunday had passed without at least one more person putting on the cedar badge. Efforts were also underway to start a permanent library at Walnut Ridge.

 

Cutting Affray at Chestnutridge

   The Bull Creek area of southern Christian County might well be called the epicenter of Ozarks feuds. Some of the infamous Bald Knobbers of the mid and late 1880s were from that area, and some of their activities occurred in that area. Although the reign of the Bald Knobbers did not really involve a family feud so much as a political one, elements of kinship and family factored into the feud. Almost concurrent with the Bald Knobbers' reign of terror was the Matthews-Payton feud, which occurred in southern Christian County. Then came the Meadows-Bilyeu feud in late 1898, which culminated in Bud Meadows's killing of three members of the Bilyeu family, who were his in-laws. That affair had scarcely died down when another feud flared up at Chestnutridge, located about four miles southeast of Spokane on present-day Highway 176.
   On Sunday, September 29, 1901, Preacher Larkins and two of his sons, Jeff and Ben, got into a bloody encounter at a church at Chestnutridge (often spelled Chestnut Ridge at the time). It seems John Carter had married a daughter of Preacher Larkins, and the couple had a baby together. However, they had separated and the young woman had returned to her father's home with the child. On the fateful day, Carter showed up at the church with a brother of his and a friend of theirs named Charley Coates. John Carter tried to take the child away from its mother, which brought Judge Larkins and his sons to the young woman's aid. When Carter drew a pistol, Preacher Larkins knocked it out of his hand. This caused Carter's brother and Coates to enter the fray, and all hell broke loose. Larkins and his sons drew knives and "began to cut right and left." Carter and his sidekicks, who "also had sharp steel in their pockets," drew their blades and a knife fight was on in earnest, with both sides slicing every which way. When the bloody encounter ended, Charley Coates lay mortally wounded. At least that was the initial report, although the victim was misidentified as Charley Carter at the time. The other combatants had wounds of varying severity, and even one or two bystanders who were merely trying to stop the fight ended up getting cut. Seven men in all were injured. Preacher Larkins and one of his sons were said to have lost considerable blood from their stab wounds.
   The Springfield Leader-Democrat said in its initial report of the affray that Charley Carter (actually Charley Coates) was not expected to live more than a day or two. John Carter was well enough to travel to Ozark and turn himself in after the fight, and the next day the county sheriff went down to Bull Creek and arrested the other parties involved in the melee, including Judge Larkins, as the preacher was usually called. (It's not clear whether he was ever actually a judge or this was just a name or honorary title he went by. He is listed in census records as "Judge Larkins" as though that was his actual name.)
   The Leader-Democrat described Judge Larkins as "a well-known character in Christian County." He had served on "more grand juries than almost any other man south of Ozark," and he had a knack for getting involved in political disputes. In the Meadows-Bilyeu feud, Larkins had sided strongly with the Bilyeu faction and had testified against Meadows in the legal proceedings against him for killing the Bilyeus. Despite his somewhat cantankerous reputation, Larkins had "always stood for peace and good conduct in his neighborhood." He also "never lost an opportunity to defend the faith of the Christian church," although his preaching was "of a local and somewhat irregular character."
   Dr. Wade of Spokane, who treated Charley Coates, was apparently about the only man who did not believe the dire prognosis that others had issued about his patient. He performed an operation to sew up Coates' internal organs, and within a week or ten days, Coates was on the mend and was expected to make pretty much a full recovery. The young doctor received much praise for the skill and expertise that resulted in such a surprisingly good outcome.

Wheelerville, Missouri

   Often when I'm writing about one topic, I'll run across a tidbit of information that gives me an idea for a different topic. Something similar happened today except that the different topic I discovered wasn't really different. It and the first topic were very closely related, and the new bit of information I discovered didn't suggest a new topic so much as it expanded and changed the focus of the original topic. Specifically, I started out to write about the crossroads community of Wheelerville in eastern Barry County, but I discovered that the man after whom the community was named was a more interesting subject than the community itself, or at least I discovered there's more information about the man than there is about the community.
   Austin Wheeler was born about 1895 near Jenkins in Barry County to a country doctor, Granville Wheeler, and his wife. Austin attended elementary school at Scholten, which is located about seven miles northeast of Jenkins on present-day Route D about a mile north of Highway 248, but he never went to high school. About 1927, he opened a general store at Scholten, which he operated with the help of his wife, Ada. Four years later, he moved his business a mile south to where Route D intersects with Highway 248, and the crossroads community became known as Wheelerville, since Austin Wheeler's store was about the only thing there.
   In late November 1937, a bank robbery in Springfield resulting in a pell-mell chase after the robbers south of Springfield caused quite an excitement in northern Stone County, according to the Stone County News-Oracle, and the excitement spilled over into Wheelerville just across the line in Barry County. When the two male bank robbers roared through Wheelerville in their getaway vehicle, Austin Wheeler, having been alerted to the robbers' flight, jumped into his auto and gave chase. He "hit 'er up to 65 or 70 miles per hour, but never got within sight of them." (The bandits were later apprehended near Rogers, Arkansas, where they were from.)
   In the spring of 1938, Wheeler added a room to his store because the business was enjoying such good patronage that "he was compelled to have more room for his stock of merchandise." In the mid-1930s, Austin's son, Clarence, joined his father working in the store at Wheelerville, and in 1937, the younger Wheeler opened his own store south of Aurora. Then, in August 1939, Clarence and his wife moved to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, to open a store there.
   A new community church was built at Wheelerville in late 1942 and dedicated on January 31, 1943. It soon became the main gathering spot for the Wheelerville area. Not only were regular church services held there, but the church also became a sort of social gathering place. The church is still there today, and it remains one of the few structures in Wheelerville. So, the community of Wheelerville is not much more than a wide spot in the road and never has been.
   In 1946, Austin Wheeler moved to Springfield and opened a grocery store at 1212 North Broadway. Meanwhile, his son, Clarence, returning from World War II, also came to Springfield and bought a former Kroger store at 1131 East Central. In 1948, both the father son sold their stores and went into business together to found the first Consumers market at 1854 North Glenstone, with Clarence as the senior partner and his father mainly just helping out. By 1957, they had expanded Consumers into a supermarket chain that included five stores in the Springfield area, plus a headquarters and warehouse on East Bennett. In 1957, it was estimated that Consumers conducted between 40 and 50 percent of the grocery business in all of Greene County. The chain went on to establish additional stores not only in the immediate Springfield area but also in surrounding towns as far away as Joplin. At its high point, the chain had 38 stores.
   In 1991, Clarence Wheeler retired after a lifetime in the grocery store business, and Fleming Foods bought the Consumers Supermarket chain a few years later. In the late 1990s, Fleming began selling and/or closing the Consumers stores until they were soon completely dissolved. Austin Wheeler died in 1996 at the age of 100, and Clarence died the next year at the age of 79.
   I knew before I started researching this story that the Consumers Supermarket chain was founded by the Wheeler family, but I didn't know the family was originally from the Wheelerville, Missouri, area and that the tiny community was named for them. Even when I encountered the information that Austin Wheeler was the storekeeper at Wheelerville, I didn't make the connection at first. So, that's what I meant when I said at the beginning of the post that one thing in my research led to another and changed the focus of what I was going to write about.

Murder at Grovespring

   My wife got a call yesterday from Grovespring, Missouri, which her phone identified as spam. So, she didn't answer the call, but she mentioned that she didn't even know where Grovespring was. I told her it was a few miles north of Hartville on Highway 5 and that I'd even been through there once upon a time. And that's how I arrived at the topic for my blog this week. I decided to write about Grovespring.
   A post office was established at the location in 1872, and it was called Grove Spring for the obvious reason that it was situated in a grove near a spring. By 1885, the community also included a general store, a flour mill, and a saw mill, all run by the same man. The name of the place was changed to Grovespring in the 1890s. Apparently Grovespring never amounted to much more than a wide place in the road, because, other than this scant information, I didn't find much about it. With one exception: at Christmastime 1913, a somewhat infamous murder occurred near the tiny village.
   About one o'clock in the afternoon on Monday, December 28, 1913, a young man named Samuel Henderson shot and killed an older man named Henry Johns at or near the home of Alex Weaver about three miles west of Grovespring. The twenty-year-old Henderson, who'd recently married Weaver's daughter, was at his father-in-law's house on the morning of the 28th when Johns, a local farmer and blacksmith, came riding by the Weaver place on a horse. He stopped, and he and Henderson exchanged heated words. Later in the day, Johns rode by the Weaver place again, and he and Henderson, who was carrying a shotgun, renewed their dispute. When Johns started to ride away, Henderson allegedly shot him in the back of the head, killing him instantly. As Johns fell from the horse, his foot caught in the stirrup, and he was dragged some distance before the horse halted. Henderson promptly sent word to the Wright County sheriff that he'd killed a man, and a deputy was dispatched to the scene to bring Henderson back to Hartville, where he was lodged in the county jail. Although the victim had been shot in the back of the head, Henderson disputed accusations of cold-blooded murder, claiming self-defense. He said he saw Johns reaching toward his pocket for what he thought was a gun, but the only weapon found on the dead man was a pocket knife.
   Details of what actually happened, including the cause of the argument that led to the shooting, were sketchy, because only Henderson and his kinfolk witnessed the affair. However, one initial report said the affray came about because of an "old trouble" between the two men. Specifically, "the name of Mrs. Henderson" (the shooter's 18-year-old wife) was said to have figured in the argument. Johns had allegedly made the remark sometime earlier that Henderson and his new bride "could not live together," which Henderson construed to mean that Johns himself would be the cause of the breakup.
   At Henderson's trial at Hartville in mid-April 1914, more details about the nature of the enmity between the two men came out. At least according to the defense, "improper relations" had existed between Johns and Henderson's young wife prior to her marriage to the defendant and Johns had suggested that he might renew those relations. The prosecution admitted that jealousy was a factor but denied the specific allegation that improper relations had existed between the victim and the young woman. The prosecution argued for a first-degree murder conviction, claiming that the defendant had shot the victim in the back without provocation as he was riding away. The defense, on the other hand, said the shot entered the victim's body as it did only because Johns turned or dodged just as Henderson fired his gun.
   Henderson was convicted but on a lesser charge of second-degree murder, and he was assessed 10 years in the state pen. He arrived at the Jefferson City facility on April 28, 1914, but his sentence was commuted by the governor four and a half years later and he was released on October 16, 1918.