Camdenton Bank Robbery

On Tuesday, May 5, 1931, three men held up the Bank of Camden County at Camdenton, escaping with an estimated $6,000-$7,000. At this time Camdenton was a new town that had recently replaced Linn Creek as the county seat after construction of Lake of the Ozarks had inundated Linn Creek, and the bank robbery, according to one newspaper report, gave the new town its "first taste of excitement." 

Two of the men who pulled off the robbery were white, and one was black. Two of the men entered the bank while the third stayed outside in the getaway car, but it's not clear whether the black man was one of those who entered the bank or the one who stayed outside. 

The two men who entered the bank held the cashier and assistant cashier at gunpoint, forced the assistant to open the vault, scooped up all the cash they could lay their hands on, and locked the two bank officers in the vault, along with a customer who wandered into the bank during the holdup. The bandits then took off, heading north in a small coupe. 

The Camdenton heist was just one of a whole rash of bank robberies that had recently occurred in the Ozarks. A Springfield newspaper reported that it was the sixteenth such robbery within the past six months. 

In mid-May, three men and a young woman were arrested in Bristow, Oklahoma, in connection with the Camdenton bank robbery. Buell Webb was one of the men arrested, and he was later identified as the ringleader of the gang. 

Webb was brought back to Missouri in late May, and he was lodged int he Laclede County Jail at Lebanon, because Camdenton did not yet have a jail. In late June, however, Webb and two companions escaped from the Lebanon jail by overpowering the sheriff and taking him with them as they made their getaway in his vehicle. The sheriff was released about eight miles east of Lebanon.

In mid-September Buell was recaptured near Sapulpa, Oklahoma. At the time, he was suspected of participating in a bank robbery in Oklahoma since his escape, but he was nonetheless returned to Missouri to face charges in the Camdenton job. 

At the October term of Camden County court, Buell's case was continued. In January 1932, he was brought to Camdenton for trial from the state prison where he had been held for safe keeping since his recapture. He pleaded not guilty, but he was convicted and sentenced to a 25-year term in the state prison. 

I have not tried to research what happened to Buell's two sidekicks in the Camdenton holdup.

Devil's Promenade

My latest book is about the famous Joplin or Tri-State Spook Light. Actually, Hornet Spook Light is probably the most accurate descriptor, since Hornet is the closest community to where the light appears, but it's known by various names, including the Quapaw Spook Light and others. For the purposes of my book, I called it the Ozarks Spook Light, because interest in the light reaches beyond the tri-state area, and even beyond the Ozarks for that matter. 

One of the chapters in my book relates some of the many supernatural legends about the Spook Light that have sprung up over the years as supposed explanations for it. One of the oldest legends, perhaps the very first, concerns the Devil's Promenade. 

According to this story, superstition held that if the old, wooden bridge across Spring River, about 3 1/2 miles east-southeast of Quapaw, was crossed a certain number of times or too many times, the Devil would appear. Thus, the bridge became known as the Devil's Promenade. 

Even though the old bridge has been replaced by a modern one, the current bridge still bears the name Devil's Promenade. The large rock located along the river near the bridge is sometimes also called Devil's Promenade, although it is more commonly known as Lover's Leap (because of another legend surrounding the Spook Light). In fact, the Devil's Promenade has lent its name to the entire Spook Light area. In particular, Spook Light Road, which runs west toward Quapaw from the Missouri-Oklahoma line is often referred to as the Devil's Promenade.  

    

Mary Jane Duncan: Sam Hildebrand’s “Sister"

   Even in the late winter and early spring of 1865, as it became increasingly obvious that a Union victory in the Civil War was just a matter of time, Missouri women with Southern sympathies continued to come into the clutches of Union justice. Mary Jane Duncan of Madison County was just one example. Although Mary had been outspoken in her support of the Confederacy for a long time, no one turned her in for her disloyalty until some of her neighbors were robbed by guerrillas in early 1865, and the neighbors suspected that Mary might have somehow abetted the bushwhackers.
   Victims of the mid-February raid included Mary’s neighbors Andrew Bray and James Duncan. (It’s not clear whether James Duncan was related to Mary’s husband, Jonathan.) The bushwhackers held up Bray and his family at gunpoint and threatened to blow their brains out. Duncan was away from the house when they came to his place, but they robbed his wife, Elizabeth, and told her they’d kill her husband if they could find him.
   Based on statements Mary had previously made in support of guerrillas, she quickly came under suspicion of having somehow aided or encouraged the guerrillas in the raid. On March 1, several of her neighbors gave statements to W. C. Shattuck, assistant provost marshal at Fredericktown, swearing to Mary’s disloyalty. One of them even claimed she’d heard Mary say that she was Sam Hildebrand’s “sister,” which the woman took to mean “friend.” Hildebrand was a notorious guerrilla leader in southeast Missouri, but it’s not certain whether his band carried out the mid-February 1865 raid in the Duncan neighborhood west of Fredericktown.
   On March 9, General Grenville Dodge ordered that Mary Duncan be brought to St. Louis and then banished to the South. Arrested on the 17th, she was taken to Pilot Knob and forwarded to St. Louis the next day, where she was committed to the Gratiot Street Female Prison.
   The officer who sent Mary to St. Louis asked General Dodge that, if she were banned, her husband and children be allowed to go with her so that the children would not experience a hardship in her absence. The officer was hardly the only person who petitioned for special consideration in her case. Mary herself wrote a letter asking for a speedy trial so that she might return to her children, and a number of citizens of Madison County swore out affidavits vindicating her loyalty.
   On May 1, General Dodge finally revoked Mary’s banishment order, 
and she was allowed to to home.
   This is a considerably shortened version of a chapter in my Lady Rebels of Civil War Missouri book.

Amanda Cranwill: A Fair and Buxom Widow of the South

   Born in Georgia about 1827, Amanda Winchester married Samuel Cranwill in New Orleans in 1846. By 1850 the couple was living in St. Louis, where Cranwill was a merchant. In 1861, the couple separated because of “unfortunate difficulties between them.” Amanda remained in St. Louis for a short while before returning to her native Georgia. She also spent time in New Orleans and Florida before teaching school for a year in Alabama.
   In August 1864, Amanda determined to come back to St. Louis, because, according to her story, she’d heard that Cranwill was dead and she wanted to check on any inheritance she might be entitled to. She crossed into Federal territory without a Union pass, laid over in Memphis a while, and arrived in St. Louis in mid to late October.
   During her five-week sojourn in St. Louis, Amanda stayed first in the Planter’s Hotel and later at a boarding house. She rented a piano and practiced playing it, and she took voice lessons from Madame Carlotta Pozzoni, a nationally known operatic performer, who was a St. Louis resident. She also found time to go shopping and purchased a number of articles, including a pistol.
   Sometime in early November, Amanda hired a St. Louis carpenter to make a secret compartment in the bottom of her trunk. After doing the work, the shopkeeper reported the suspicious job to Union authorities, and they began keeping an eye on Amanda. On November 28, Amanda went to see Judge John Crumm and learned, according to her story, that she had no settlement forthcoming from her husband’s estate. About the same time as her visit to the judge, she attempted to obtain a pass to return south, but Colonel Joseph Darr, Jr. was “very busy and excited” when she called at the provost marshal general’s office. She also went to General William Rosecrans’s office but was unable to see him. Nevertheless, on November 30, she had her luggage sent to the steamboat Graham. When she boarded later the same day, US policeman Augustus Coring was there waiting for her.
   Coring searched Amanda’s trunk and discovered the false bottom containing the pistol, some Confederate money, and other items of contraband. Considering the circumstances of her arrest, Union authorities obviously did not believe her story that she’d come to St. Louis only to check on property she might be entitled to from her husband, and she was immediately lodged in the Gratiot Street Female Prison on suspicion of smuggling.
   In describing Amanda’s arrest the next day, the Daily Missouri Democrat called her “a fair and buxom widow of the South.”
   Amanda was examined on November 30 and again on December 19. During the first interview, she told her examiner she had lost her husband, letting him assume that she was a widow but, when pressed, finally admitted that her husband had sued her for divorce and she’d gone to Judge Crumm to see whether the divorce was final. She’d heard her estranged husband was dead, but she didn’t know for sure. Amanda said she could not take an oath of allegiance to the United States because it would mean “forswearing the country of my birth.” During the second examination, Amanda explained that she’d bought the gun so that she would have it for personal protection when she got to the South and gave somewhat plausible explanations for the other suspicious circumstances of her stay in St. Louis and her arrest.
   On December 19, Amanda’s estranged husband, who was very much alive, wrote to Judge Crumm from Canada offering to help Amanda in any way he could, despite the “disgrace” she’d brought on him, because he thought she might truly be innocent of the charges against her.
   Amanda didn’t help her case, however, by her actions on January 14, 1865, when she knocked down a US flag that had been suspended from the window of her cell at the female prison.
   The star witness against Amanda at her trial by military commission on December 23 was Augustus Coring, the policeman who’d searched her belongings aboard the steamboat. The defense argued that Amanda had not been uncooperative, as Coring suggested, and that she had tried repeatedly to get a pass and only decided to start south without one because she was running low on money. Little swayed by her arguments, the commission found her guilty and sentenced her to imprisonment for the duration of the war. In mid-January 1865, however, General Grenville Dodge disapproved the sentence and banished her to Dixie.
   Once the war ended, Amanda Cranwill promptly resumed her artistic pursuits, performing in concert and teaching music throughout the South. In the late 1800s, she wrote a book of poetry entitled Scattered Leaves.

   This is a condensed version of a chapter in my book Lady Rebels of Civil War Missouri.