The Osage Murders

Another chapter in my recent book Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma https://amzn.to/3OWWt4l concerns the Osage murders, made infamous by the book Killers of the Flower Moon and the 2023 movie of the same name. 

On May 27, 1921, the body of Anna Brown was found beside a road between Fairfax and Grayhorse in Osage County, Oklahoma. Brown had been shot through the head. Initial reports mentioned that, as a member of the Osage tribe, she was receiving about $1,000 per month in “oil royalties;” but the only theory of the crime local authorities could offer was that she had been the victim of highway robbery.

As it turned out, Anna Brown was not the victim of highway robbery but of one of the most diabolical get-rich schemes in American history. Because of a series of land deals made with the federal government going back to the late 1800s, the Osage held the rights to one of the largest deposits of oil in the United States. To divide up the profits from the commonly owned mineral rights, a system was adopted by which each Osage member would receive an equal share of the revenue. This came to be called a headright. Private companies could lease the land and then pay a percentage of their profits into a trust fund managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The BIA would then distribute payments to the holders of the headrights.

During the Oklahoma oil boom of the early 1900s, the Osage people became some of the wealthiest in the world, as members of the tribe, like Anna Brown, received payments that today would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

The sudden wealth of the Osage people drew lots of swindlers looking to cheat tribal members out of their money; so, the U. S Government established a system that was supposedly designed to help the Osage protect their wealth. White guardians were assigned to manage the money of any members of the tribe who were judged incompetent. In practice, the guardianship program was a racist system under which simply being Native American was sufficient reason to be deemed “incompetent."

The guardians often paid themselves from money they were supposed to be safeguarding for the Osage, but this was not the worst of the abuses. The law allowed that headrights could not be sold but they could be inherited. This provision spawned the "Reign of Terror" during which many white people married into the Osage tribe and then killed or hired someone else to kill their spouses and/or their spouse’s relatives in order to gain their headrights.

Anna Brown was not the first victim of the scheme, but most of the murders occurred in the early 1920s, and her case was the first to receive much publicity. In total, at least 24 members of the Osage tribe were killed or died under mysterious circumstances during the "Reign of Terror," and some estimates place the number much higher. Most of the murders occurred in the Fairfax-Grayhorse area, and many of the victims were members of the same family, relatives of Anna.

Several people were arrested for questioning or as suspects in Anna's death, including Ernest Burkhart, who was married to Anna’s sister Mollie, but the coroner ultimately ruled that Anna had been killed by parties unknown. 

During the two years following Anna's death, her mother died under suspicious circumstances, her ex-husband was found dead with a gunshot to the back of the head, and a second sister (Rita) and her husband were killed when their house exploded.

The coincidence of so many members of the Osage tribe, especially members of the same family, dying so close together in time and place was too obvious to ignore, and the Bureau of Investigation (forerunner of the FBI) finally initiated an investigation. The investigative team kept encountering the names of William K. Hale and Ernest Burkhart, the same Ernest Burkhart who was married to Anna's sister Mollie and who had been arrested for questioning in Anna's death. Hale, a wealthy, prominent citizen, was Burkhart's uncle, and he was eventually identified as the mastermind behind the murders of Anna and her family. The scheme was for Burkhart to inherit all the family's wealth and then turn a large portion of it over to his uncle. 

Hale and Burkhart were arrested for conspiring to kill the family members of Burkhart's wife, Mollie. Mollie herself was found to be dying of gradual poisoning, but the scheme was uncovered in time to save her life. Hale and Burkhart were found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment, but both were paroled after twenty years or so. 

My recent book contains a considerably more detailed account of the Osage murders than I've given here, or if you really want to delve into the subject, here's a link to Killers of the Flower Moon https://amzn.to/3DeN1qJ.

The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

Another chapter in my Murder and Mayhem in NE Oklahoma book (https://amzn.to/3Zlvl3U) is about the Tulsa Race Massacre. On Monday, May 30, 1921, Dick Rowland, a 19-year-old African American, was accused of accosting Sarah Page, a 17-year-old white girl, in an elevator in downtown Tulsa. The next day, Rowland was arrested and placed in jail.

Rowland denied that he had molested the girl, but his protestations of innocence made no difference to many Tulsans when they heard of his arrest. Tension between Blacks and whites during the Ku Klux Klan era of the 1920s was high, especially in Tulsa, where many Black citizens lived in and around the thriving Greenwood business district, which was known as black Wall Street because of its economic success. Meanwhile, many poor whites just across the railroad tracks to the south were struggling financially and surely resented their prosperous neighbors.

Throughout Tuesday afternoon and early evening, rumors of a lynching were whispered from one white Tulsan to another, and by about 7:30 that evening, hundreds of angry whites had gathered outside the Tulsa County Courthouse. The mob demanded that law officers turn over Rowland, but Sheriff W.M. McCullough refused.

When a group of Black men showed up to help defend Rowland if necessary, McCullough assured them they weren't needed and they left, but their appearance alarmed and angered the white mob. By 9:30 p.m., the mob had grown to about 2,000. McCullough tried to talk to the mob into dispersing, but the crowd hooted him down.

About 10:00 p.m., a second group of armed Black men, after hearing of the growing mob, went to the courthouse to offer their help in maintaining order, but again they were turned away. As the black men were leaving, a white man accosted one of them and tried to disarm him. The black man, a World War I vet, refused to hand over his weapon. During the ensuing struggle, a shot was fired, and the riot was on.

The white mob opened fire on the African Americans, and the Black men returned fire. Greatly outnumbered, the Black men retreated toward the Greenwood district, skirmishing with a pursuing horde of whites along the way. Fighting broke out elsewhere as well.

Hundreds of whites, including some members of the mob, were deputized and told to "Get a gun, get a nigger.” In their fury, the white mob largely forgot about Dick Rowland.

Angry whites prowled the streets of downtown Tulsa looking for Blacks to exact vengeance on. They broke into stores and pawn shops to steal guns and ammunition. Some of the rioters included Tulsa policemen.

The armed Blacks were driven across the Frisco tracks that separated Greenwood from downtown Tulsa shortly after midnight. Outnumbered, the Black men made a determined stand, as the two sides exchanged gunfire for over an hour.

After the Black defenders were finally forced to retreat, a few carloads of whites conducted drive-by shootings through the Black neighborhoods while others in the white mob began setting fires to African American homes and businesses.

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, the National Guard was called out, supposedly to restore order, but they spent most of their time rounding up Blacks to hand over to police as prisoners.

With the coming of daylight, white rioters poured across the tracks into the Greenwood business district looting and burning homes and other buildings. Anyone who resisted was shot. Some policemen and even a few National Guardsmen joined the rioters.

By the time order was finally restored around noon on Wednesday, at least 60 and some say as many as 300 African Americans were dead. About 6,000 Black Tulsans had been rounded up and placed in temporary internment camps. About 10,000, almost the entire Black population of Tulsa, were left homeless. Over 1,000 businesses and homes were burned and many others looted but not burned.

Sheriff McCullough secretly whisked Dick Rowland out of town sometime during the riot. Sarah Page later declined to prosecute, and Rowland was exonerated. But, even today, Tulsa is still reckoning with a legacy of racial hatred that has stained the city for over a hundred years because of the senseless violence sparked by a casual encounter between the two young people.

Often called the Tulsa Race Riot or the Tulsa Race War in the past, this tragedy has come to be known more aptly in recent years as the Tulsa Race Massacre.

Cherokee Bill and the Bill Cook Gang

Another chapter in my Murder and Mayhem in NE OK book https://amzn.to/3B4XjJa is about Crawford Goldsby, one of the most infamous outlaws in the history of Indian Territory. He had his first run-in with the law in the fall of 1893 when he was just seventeen. He went to a dance at Fort Smith, where he got into a fight with an older man over a girl. A few days later, Goldsby went looking for the man and shot him three times, seriously wounding him.

Adopting the name Cherokee Bill, Goldsby soon joined the Bill Cook outlaw gang. In July 1894, the Cook gang held up a Frisco passenger train at Red Fork, Indian Territory. Later the same month, the gang rode into Chandler and robbed the Lincoln County Bank in broad daylight. A barber across the street from the bank was shot and killed by one of the gang members.

On September 17, four members of the Cook gang robbed the J. A. Parkinson store in Okmulgee at gunpoint. On October 9, three members of the Cook gang held up the Valley Depot at Claremore.
Two hours after the Claremore stickup, the same gang reportedly robbed the depot at Chouteau over twenty miles away.

In the fall of 1894, a newspaper article described Cherokee Bill as the “first lieutenant” of the Cook gang and also its "best shot and the most dangerous member.”

On November 9, 1894, Cherokee Bill and another man rode into the small village of Lenapah about ten miles north of Nowata and held up the Shufeldt store. During the robbery, Bill shot and killed a young man standing at a window in nearby restaurant.

On Saturday evening, December 22, Cherokee Bill and several partners held up the train depot in Nowata. A week later, Cherokee Bill killed his brother-in-law over the man's alleged mistreatment of Bill's sister. Two days after that, Bill paid a return visit to the Nowata train depot and single-handedly robbed it again.

Lawmen captured Bill Cook in New Mexico on January 12, 1895, and just a couple of weeks later, Cherokee Bill was captured near Nowata. Both outlaws were brought to the federal jail at Fort Smith, Arkansas. Cook was found guilty on several robbery charges and sentenced to 45 years in prison. Cherokee Bill was convicted of murdering the young man at Lenapah and sentenced by Isaac Parker, the so-called hanging judge, to die on the gallows. While awaiting the outcome of an appeal, Cherokee Bill killed a guard during an escape attempt. He was tried for that murder, too, and again sentenced to death. The fateful day finally came on March 17, 1896. According to one report, Bill seemed as indifferent to his impending death as he had been to life, and he remarked just before the lever was pulled dropping him into eternity that it was "a fine day to die."

Check out my new book for a much more detailed account of Cherokee Bill's exploits.

Henry Starr and the Murder of Deputy Marshal Floyd Wilson

Another chapter in my recent book, Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma https://amzn.to/3AZiJY7, is about Henry Starr. A nephew-by-marriage of the noted Belle Starr, Henry once boasted that he had robbed more banks “than any man in America,” but he never bragged about killing Deputy Marshal Floyd Wilson early in his criminal career near Nowata, Oklahoma.

Born near Fort Gibson in 1873 in the Cherokee Nation, Henry moved with relatives to the Nowata area in 1888. His first run-ins with the law came about three years later, when he was accused first of horse stealing and then of introducing illegal spirits into Indian Territory. Starr later claimed he was totally innocent of both charges, but he decided, if he was going to be treated like a criminal, he might as well become one.

After a railroad agent was held up at Nowata in August 1892, Starr was charged with the crime, and the railroad later sent out a special agent, accompanied by Deputy Wilson, to try to apprehend the robber. In mid-December, Starr killed Wilson in a confrontation a few miles northeast of Nowata. Starr allegedly shot Wilson several times after the deputy was already down.

After Wilson's death, authorities redoubled their efforts to capture Starr, but that didn't keep him from pulling off a number of other crimes before he was finally arrested in Colorado and brought back to Fort Smith, Arkansas, to face numerous charges, including the murder of Wilson. Convicted of the latter charge, Starr was sentenced to death, but the verdict was overturned on appeal, and Starr eventually received only fifteen years in prison in a plea-bargain deal.

Starr's sentence was commuted by President Teddy Roosevelt after only a few years, and he supposedly tried to go straight for a while but soon relapsed into his old ways. After another spree of crimes, Starr was arrested in Arizona in 1909 and brought back to Colorado to face a bank robbery charge there. He was found guilty and sentenced to a long stint in the penitentiary, but he again got out early when he was released on parole in 1913.

Starr drifted back into Oklahoma and soon went on another criminal rampage. Again convicted of bank robbery, he was sentenced to 25 years in the Oklahoma State Prison. He was paroled after serving only four years, and he briefly went into the movie business but apparently decided he liked being a criminal better than playing one in films. Starr's notorious criminal career finally came to an end when he was mortally wounding during his gang's robbery of a bank in Harrison, Arkansas, in February 1921.

This is a greatly condensed version of the chapter on Starr in my new book.

Bob Rogers: A Desperate Outlaw and a Reckless Villain

Another chapter in my new book, Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma https://amzn.to/48W8aRZ, is about Rob Rogers and his gang. Rogers is not as well-known nowadays as several other desperadoes who infested the Indian Nation in the latter part of the 19th century, such as Henry Starr, but Rogers was quite infamous in his own time.  

Born about 1873 in Arkansas, Bob, who was part Cherokee, moved to the Nowata area of Indian Territory with his father, Frank, and two younger brothers when he was still a boy. Some sources say Bob first became involved in criminal activity when he was scarcely 18, but details about these early incidents are scant.

Rogers’s first criminal exploit that can be well documented occurred on November 3, 1892, when he killed forty-year-old Jess Elliott, a lawyer from Vinita. On the fateful day, both men had been drinking when they got into an argument at a billiard parlor in Catoosa, and Rogers, going by the name Bob Talton, knocked the older man down and started beating him. Bystanders separated the combatants and put Rogers out of the parlor. Rogers waited outside, however, and when Elliott finally emerged, Rogers knocked him off his horse and slashed his throat with a knife. Elliott died before medical help could arrive.

Eight months later, the Bob Rogers gang, which now included his younger brothers, robbed the Frisco depot at Chelsea (Oklahoma) of $418 on the evening of June 30, 1889. 

About noon on July 13, Rogers and two partners in crime robbed the Mound Valley (Kansas) Bank, making off with about $800. 

On Friday evening, October 20, two men entered the depot of the D. M. & A. Railroad at Edna, Kansas, and forced the agent at the point of a revolver to open the safe. Recognized as Bob Rogers and Dick Brown of “the Wooten-Rogers gang of outlaws,” they made off with about $50. 

An outlaw gang tried to hold up a Missouri, Kansas and Texas train at the Kelso switch about six miles northeast of Vinita on December 22, 1893. The robbery attempt failed, but the escapade was later credited to the Rogers gang.

Bob Rogers and his crew struck again two nights later, Christmas Eve, when they held up an Iron Mountain Railroad train at Seminole in Indian Territory about five miles south of Coffeyville, Kansas. The gang cleaned out the mail and express cars and also went through the passenger cars "securing valuables of every description."

On the early morning of January 23, 1894, US deputy marshals surprised the Rogers gang at the home of Frank Rogers on Big Creek between Vinita and Nowata. Bob Rogers and another gang member were captured, while two members of the gang were either killed outright or mortally wounded. 

One newspaper opined that this episode would mark the end of Bob Rogers's criminal career, but Rogers wasn't ready to hang up his holster. Released on bond, he came back home and soon started organizing another gang. By very early March 1895, the new Rogers gang had already committed “several small depredations” in the area of Nowata, and just a day or two after this report circulated, the Rogers gang held up a store at Angola, Kansas. 

Rogers’s new notoriety didn’t last long. On Friday evening, March 15, a posse led by US. marshal James Mayes trapped Rogers at his father's home. Rogers killed one of the posse members before the lawmen retreated and called on Rogers to come out and surrender or else they would burn the house down. Rogers agreed to give up and was allowed to carry his gun out with him as long as kept it pointed down. When he got out onto the front porch and was ordered to drop the weapon and throw up his hand, he instead raised it and began backing toward the house. He got off just a single shot before he was riddled with bullets by the posse. 

Celebrating Rogers's demise, one newspaper said that his death would "rid the country of a desperate outlaw and reckless villain.”

Check out my new book for a much more detailed account of the Bob Rogers gang's activities.

 

Ned Christie, Hero or Villain?

Another chapter in my latest book, Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma https://amzn.to/40Azy65, chronicles the escapades of Ned Christie, a Cherokee Indian who waged a personal war against Federal authorities during the late 1800s. Much like Zeke Proctor, whom I wrote about last week, Christie was viewed in a completely different light by much of the Cherokee Nation from how he was characterized in the American press. To newspapermen, Christie was a notorious desperado who’d killed a deputy US marshal from ambush, but to many Cherokees, he was wrongly accused of murder by a repressive federal government and his resistance to arrest was nothing short of heroic.

A well-respected member of the Cherokee tribe, Christie first ran into trouble when he killed a man with whom he was hunting after the man supposedly called him an S.O.B. Charged with manslaughter and tried in a Cherokee court, Christie was acquitted in 1885 and went on to serve on the tribe's Executive Council.

Around the first of May 1887, US deputy marshal Daniel Maples was killed at Tahlequah while Christie was there for a tribal meeting, and he and three other men were eventually charged with the crime, partly because they were known to oppose federal authority in Indian Territory. The other three men were arrested, and one of them accused Christie of being the trigger man in the shooting of Maples. Christie said he was innocent and was willing to be tried in a Cherokee court, but he refused to surrender to federal authorities.

Thus began a years-long "war" between Christie and his allies on one side and deputy marshals on the other, as Christie, from his so-called fort east of Tahlequah, defied attempt after attempt to arrest him. After numerous futile attempts to kill or capture Christie, deputy marshals finally surrounded his home/fort in early November 1892 and killed him during a day-long siege and a furious exchange of gunfire.

Christie’s body was taken to Fort Smith for identification and then released to his father for burial in the family cemetery at Wauhillau, Oklahoma. Since his death, Christie has often been sensationally depicted in books and articles as a violent, bloodthirsty desperado. On the other hand, at least one story emerged in the early 1900s purporting to exonerate Christie completely of the Maples murder, the crime that catapulted him into outlawry, and many Cherokees today honor him as a hero for standing against US government encroachment on tribal properties and rights.

This is just a brief summary of the chapter about Christie in my new book. Check out the book for a much more extensive version of Christie's story.

Goingsnake Gunfight

Like the Boudinot and Ridge murders I wrote about last week, the Goingsnake gunfight that left eleven people dead near Christie, Oklahoma, in April of 1872, is something I've previously written about on this blog. However, since one of the chapters in my new book, Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma https://amzn.to/4fbdFhZ, is devoted to the gunfight, I'm going to summarize the event again. 

Exactly what happened is a matter of dispute to this day, because the two sides involved in the gunfight, Cherokee tribal members and the US Marshals Service, told markedly different stories. What we know for sure is that Ezekial "Zeke" Proctor, a member of the Cherokee tribe, was scheduled for trial in the Goingsnake District of the Cherokee Nation on April 15 on a charge of having killed Polly Beck two months earlier.

Polly, who was married to a white man named Kesterson, was also a member of the Cherokee tribe, but a combination of family and tribal resentments had cast her and Proctor on opposite sides. Polly's family had sided with the Treaty Party (see last week's post) over thirty years earlier when the tribal members were removed from their homelands in the Southeast to present-day Oklahoma, whereas Proctor's family had sided with the Anti-Treaty Party. Also, Kesterson had previously been married to Proctor's sister, and Proctor reportedly blamed him for the breakup of the marriage.  

Most important, perhaps, was a jurisdictional dispute between Proctor and his allies on one side and Polly's family and friends on the other. After Proctor killed Polly and wounded Kesterson, Kesterson had journeyed to Fort Smith to enlist U.S. authorities in the matter, while Proctor and his allies felt strongly that the matter should be left to Cherokee tribal authority. The US Marshals Service now claimed jurisdiction in the assault on Kesterson, but the Cherokee Nation considered Kesterson an adopted citizen and resented any interference in the matter by the US government.

On the day of Proctor's trial for the murder of Polly Beck, a party of deputy marshals, along with some of Polly's kinsmen, showed up with the avowed intention of arresting Proctor on the assault charge, should he be acquitted on the murder charge. As I say, exactly what happened next is a matter of dispute, but a gunfight broke out almost immediately, and when the shooting ceased, nine men lay dead, two mortally wounded, and several others suffering wounds of varying severity. Most of the fatalities (seven or eight) were deputy marshals. 

Even what to call this incident has been a matter of disagreement over the years. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, reports from the deputy marshals called it a massacre, and the white press adopted that terminology. So, for many years, the incident was known in popular culture as the Goingsnake Massacre. More recently, the term Goingsnake Tragedy has been suggested as a more objective term. 

Check out my new book for a much more detailed account of the Goingsnake Tragedy. https://amzn.to/4fbdFhZ

The Murder of Elias Boudinot and the Ridges

I've previously written on this blog about the feud that developed in the early 1800s between the Treaty Party and the Anti-Treaty Party factions of the Cherokee Nation over the tribe's removal from its ancestral homelands in the southeast United States to what is now Oklahoma. One of the chapters in my book Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma https://amzn.to/3Urovbn (scheduled for release on Monday) touches on the same subject. Specifically, the book chapter deals with the murders of Treaty Party leaders Elias Boudinot, Major Ridge, and his son John Ridge by members of the Anti-Treaty Party.

The murders, which took place in June of 1839, occurred in present-day Oklahoma, but they grew out of a feud that dated back several years to a time prior to removal of the Cherokees from the Southeast. When the federal government began pressing the Cherokees in the early 1800s to sign treaties ceding their lands in Georgia and other southeastern states in exchange for land west of the Mississippi, Boudinot and the Ridges were among the leaders who aligned with the Treaty Party, which favored removal. The Treaty Party was mainly composed of mixed-race Cherokees, who had intermarried with whites and largely adopted American and European culture. The much larger Anti-Treaty Party, led by tribal chief John Ross, was composed mainly of purebred Cherokees, who eschewed the ways of the white man and wanted to preserve tribal culture.

Even Boudinot and the Ridges had initially opposed removal. In fact, Major Ridge was among the tribal leaders who had adopted a resolution in 1829 calling for any member of the tribe who signed further treaties ceding Cherokee lands to be subject to the death penalty. However, he and other mixed-race members of the tribe had gradually come to see removal as the only practical step. 

Because they cooperated with the federal government, members of the Treaty Party received support and transportation when they removed to Oklahoma in 1837. The Anti-Treaty Party, on the other hand, had to be rounded up and removed forcibly in the fall of 1838, an infamous trek that came to be known as the "Trail of Tears." The ordeal the purebred Cherokees underwent during the trip further embittered them against Treaty Party members.

After the Anti-Treaty Party arrived in their new land, they, the Treaty Party, and the Old Settlers (i.e. Cherokees who had come west years earlier), met to try to reach a consensus government, but the meeting ended in impasse, as the Treaty Party insisted on retaining the government they had already established in the new land. 

After the meeting, held on June 21, 1839, broke up, some members of the Anti-Treaty Party met secretly and invoked the old "blood" law that Major Ridge himself had once espoused, calling for the deaths of Ridge, his son, and Elias Boudinot. A few of those present were appointed as executioners by drawing lots. 

The killings were carried out the next day. John Ridge was killed at his home on Honey Creek in the northeast part of Indian Territory near present-day Southwest City, Missouri. His father, who had left for Arkansas earlier on the 22nd, was overtaken along the road and killed near the state line. Meanwhile, a different party of executioners killed Elias Boudinot on the same day near his home at Park Hill, a Cherokee settlement in the Tahlequah area.

In the aftermath of the slaughter, John Ross was accused of authorizing it, but the best evidence seems to suggest that the killings were carried out in secret without the tribal chief’s knowledge. Stand Watie, who was Boudinot’s brother, and other Treaty Party members swore revenge, and federal troops were summoned from Fort Gibson to help keep the peace for a brief time. 

A tentative truce was fashioned, but the resentments left over from the feud between the Treaty Party and the Anti-Treaty Party continued for many years. During the Civil War, for instance, most former Treaty Party members sided with the Confederacy, while most Anti-Treaty Party members joined the Union forces, and both sides used the cover of war to discharge old grudges. Confederate general Stand Watie or troops under his command, for instance, are reported to have burned the John Ross home during the war.

The sketch above is a very condensed version of the events chronicled in my new book.

The Murder of Carl Steidle and the Hanging of the Hamiltons

Late Sunday night, March 30, 1884, the bloodied, mangled remains of a man were discovered lying across the tracks of the Missouri Pacific Railroad just east of the train depot in Warrensburg, Missouri. Although the man had been run over by a train, it was quickly ascertained that his death was no accident, as a bloody wrench with which the man had been bashed in the head and other incriminating evidence was found nearby.

The man was identified as Carl Steidle of Sedalia, and suspicion for his death quickly settled on Charles Hamilton, who had abruptly quit his job at a Warrensburg hotel earlier that same day and was now nowhere to be found. A couple of days later, however, the Johnson County sheriff located him in Sedalia in company with W. H. "Billy" Hamilton. Under questioning, both men confessed to participating in the murder, and the sheriff took them back to Warrensburg. where they testified before a coroner's jury.

The stories told by the two Hamiltons, who were not related, generally agreed, except that each tried to place most of the blame for the crime on the other. Billy Hamilton had made the acquaintance of Steidle at Sedalia, had come up with idea of robbing him, and had recruited his pal Charles Hamilton, whom he'd met when they were both prisoners in the Missouri State Penitentiary a year or two earlier, to help out in the crime. 

Billy talked Steidle into leaving Sedalia with him, supposedly on their way to California or Colorado. When they got near Warrensburg, Billy left Steidle near the train depot with instructions to stay put while he went into town on the evening of the 30th. He returned after a while with Charles Hamilton, his partner in crime. Charles hit Steidle over the head from behind with a metal wrench. Billy grabbed Steidle as he started to fall and choked him, then laid him across the railroad tracks to let the next passing train finish the job if he wasn't already dead.

At their respective trials in May of 1884, Charles claimed he didn't hit Steidle hard enough to kill him and that it was Billy who had killed the victim by choking him and placing him on the tracks. Billy, on the other hand, said the only reason he choked Steidle and placed him on the tracks was because Charles was brandishing a revolver and he was afraid Charles would kill him, too, if he didn't finish Steidle off. 

Both men were convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to hang on July 11. On the fateful day, a crowd estimated at about 10,000 people gathered to witness the double execution. The killers dropped to their deaths simultaneously shortly before noon.   

 

The Murder of Jerry White

I lived in Houston (MO) for a year in the 1970s, and my mother's family was originally from the Houston area. I always thought of the place as quiet, law-abiding community, but I guess even a quiet community can occasionally be disrupted by violence. Such was the case for Houston in the wee hours of the morning of October 30, 1874.

On Thursday night, October 29, Jerry White, John Hubbard, and two or three other men were playing cards in an upstairs room above White's saloon in downtown Houston. Sometime after midnight, Hubbard left the game to go after liquor as Oliver Kirkman took his place at the card table. When Hubbard returned, he shared the liquor with the others but did not resume playing cards. Instead, he just watched. 

After a while a shot suddenly rang out without warning, and White cried out that he had been shot. Hubbard dashed downstairs proclaiming, "I have shot Jerry White." He ran to a horse that was hitched to the courthouse fence, cut the rope by which it was tied, and sprang into the saddle to make his getaway, proclaiming once again as he rode through town that he'd shot Jerry White.

The gunshot hit White in the chest, just above the left nipple, and ranged downward toward the spine. He lived just a few hours before dying, but he was fully conscious during this time. He made final preparations for the disposition of his property and arranged other details surrounding his impending death. He even said he forgave his assassin. 

It appeared there had been no quarrel between the two men, and nobody seemed able to assign a motive for the crime, except that Hubbard had been drinking heavily. A son of the local doctor, Hubbard was said to have had a good reputation and a mild disposition except when he was drinking. 

A large posse went out in pursuit of the fugitive but without success. Nothing more was heard from Hubbard until about a year later when he and two other "rough characters" showed in the Houston area, where they laid low for a while, until lawmen from Newton County came to the Houston area in search of them for allegedly having killed a man at Newtonia. The three fugitives left Houston headed south, and one of them was overtaken and captured on the Eleven Points River. 

The captured man said Hubbard had mostly been in Arkansas since the White murder, and he acknowledged the killing the three of them had committed in Newton County. He said they killed the man for his money but found only 25 cents on his person. 

Apparently, Hubbard was never captured, or at least I have been unable to find any evidence to suggest that he was. 

 

The "Lynching" of Henry Duncan

Probably the most prevalent reason why black men were lynched during the late 1800s and early 1900s in America was for supposedly molesting white women. And often it didn't take very much to be considered molestation. For a black man even to associate with a white woman was seen as a blatant threat to white, male authority. Take the example of Henry Duncan of Webb City (MO). 

On Saturday, August 20, 1904, Henry sent an unsigned note to Mrs. Minerva Owens, a forty-two-year-old widow, stating that he would come by the Owens place on Sunday evening and asking her to meet him at the back fence. The letter was not actually addressed to Mrs. Owens but to "the woman in the hammock who smiled and nodded" at him. He said that he had "an important message" for her. 

According to newspaper reports, Minerva was "greatly shocked and unnerved at the receipt of such an epistle," and she notified the Webb City police. Two officers were dispatched to lie in wait at the Owens residence on Sunday evening. When Duncan showed up, Mrs. Owens asked him whether he was the person who had sent the note, and, when he replied that he was, the officers sprang from their hiding places and took him into custody.

Charged with disturbing the peace and of "low offensive conduct and indecent utterances against Mrs. Owens," Duncan appeared in police court on Monday morning, August 22, and pleaded not guilty. His employer, H. W. Currey, put up his bond, and Duncan was released with the stipulation that he return for trial at 7 p.m. that evening.

However, Currey, who was a lawyer, assumed he'd be able to get the case continued until Tuesday morning and told Duncan that he need not appear on Monday evening. The judge had other ideas, though, and when the case was called at 7 p.m., he denied Currey's request for a continuance, partly because angry sentiment against the defendant had been building throughout the day in Webb City and a mob of about 100 men jammed the courtroom demanding "justice." An equal number were milling around outside.

Two officers, in company with Currey, were dispatched to the Currey residence to bring Duncan back to court. Some of the mob made threats of what might happen if Duncan wasn't brought back pronto. 

After a half hour or so had elapsed and the officers still had not returned with Duncan, some of the mob traipsed to the Currey residence and learned that Currey had convinced one of the officers to take Duncan to Joplin for safekeeping. 

The mob found the officer and Duncan at a nearby streetcar stop waiting for the next streetcar to take them to Joplin. The crowd started making threats that Duncan should be taken back to police court or else they would take the law into their own hands, and the officer decided that it would "be best to yield to the wish" of the mob and take the prisoner back to court rather than risk inciting them further. The officer managed to get Duncan back to the police station by holding the crowd at bay with a drawn handgun.

By the time they got back, however, the judge had tired of waiting and postponed the hearing until the next morning. The mob dispersed, but in the wee hours of August 22, a smaller, less boisterous but more determined crowd formed and took Duncan out of the unattended city jail. They whipped him severely with a bull whip and drove him out of town with orders not to come back. 

So, in titling this post "The 'Lynching' of Henry Duncan," I am using the word "lynch" in its strict meaning of any extralegal punishment, not in its popular sense of being hanged to death. 

 

 

Murder of A. L. Smith and Hanging of Dr. Harbin

On the Fourth of July 1888, a crowd of people gathered to celebrate the holiday at Potter's Grove on the banks of the Black River near Poplar Bluff (MO). Between eight and nine o'clock in the evening, a shot rang out a half mile or so from the picnic grounds, followed by a yell. Then a second and a third shot rang out. A few people suspected trouble, but most didn't think much about the incident, figuring it was just some boys shooting off fireworks. So, nobody bothered to investigate.

A couple of days later, however, a man's body was discovered lodged at the edge of the river in the area where the shots had come from. The dead person was identified as A. L. Smith, and an autopsy revealed that he had received at least two mortal gunshot wounds.  

One man was arrested and released after being cleared, but the investigation continued. About a month later, in August, a Dr. William Harbin was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Harbin had not lived in the Poplar Bluff area long, but he had already earned a reputation as a bad man. According to one report, "He claimed to be a doctor and succeeded in filling the minds of many ignorant people with whom he associated with the belief that he had some supernatural power." Apparently, Smith, who also had a less-than-spotless reputation around Poplar Bluff, had sold some land to Harbin, but Harbin had paid only part of the price, while Smith carried a note for the rest. Supposedly, an argument broke out between the two men when Smith demanded a payment on the land. 

Later facts revealed that the Harbin had been in the company of John Hinderlighter and his wife at the time of the crime. Hinderlighter "bore a fair reputation, but...his wife, it seems, did not deserve a good reputation." Shortly after Harbin's arrest, Hinderlighter's wife began visiting the accused man in the Butler County Jail. This seemed to irritate Hinderlighter, who made "some serious charges" against Harbin. However, neither Hinderlighter or his wife were willing to testify against the prisoner. About this same time, Harbin gave a confession, admitting he had killed Smith, but some people suspected that he was just trying to protect the Hinderlighter woman. A few weeks after Harbin's arrest, Hinderlighter and his wife disappeared, and the case against Harbin was continued.

Several months later, Hinderlighter was located and arrested in Arkansas, but his wife had died in the meantime. Hinderlighter was brought back to Missouri, where he gave a statement incriminating Harbin. By the time Harbin's trial finally rolled around in November of 1889, however, both Hinderlighter and Harbin had repudiated their previous statements. Many people felt Hinderlighter retracted his statement out of fear of Harbin. 

Even without the statements, there was still enough other evidence that had been uncovered to convict Harbin of first-degree murder. A couple of days later, the judge sentenced him to hang. The sentence was postponed pending an appeal to the state supreme court. After some delay, the high court upheld the verdict, and Harbin's date with death was reset for August 21, 1891. The governor granted three different stays in order to give himself more time to consider Harbin's case, but he finally announced in early January 1892 that he would interfere in the case no more. The execution date was then set for January 15.

On the fateful day, Harbin calmly smoked a cigar as he was led to the gallows. Still proclaiming his innocence, he was dropped through the trap at 11:27 a.m. and pronounced dead six minutes later.

The Murder of Belle Lucas and Hanging of Howard Underwood

When an African American named Howard Underwood killed one of his neighbors, a black woman named Belle Lucas, in Mississippi County, Missouri, in early August 1881, the crime was scarcely noted in the white press, but when he was hanged in Charleston twenty months later, the event was a spectacle that drew over 5,000 curious onlookers. The murder of a black person by another black person, it seems, was little cause for excitement, but the chance to see a man launched into eternity from the gallows was a festive occasion not to be missed.

On Saturday, August 6, the 48-year-old Underwood, a married man with five kids, was walking along the road with Belle, the 36-year-old wife of Ike Lucas, in the Lucas neighborhood near Belmont. When they drew near the Lucas home, Underwood turned and shot Belle in the head with a shotgun. According to the next week's issue of the Charleston Enterprise, Underwood then "beat her over the head until he broke the gun to pieces..., knocking her brains out." In its brief report of the crime, the Enterprise said it was unknown why the deed was committed. 

Underwood took off to parts unknown, and a reward of $150 for his capture was offered. Nothing was heard from the fugitive until almost a year later, when Underwood was taken into custody near Champaign, Illinois, in mid to late June 1882. A week or so later, the Mississippi County prosecutor traveled to Illinois and brought Underwood back to face a first-degree murder charge.

It was revealed at that time that Underwood had been "criminally intimate" with his neighbor's wife, who "preferred the caresses" of her paramour to those of her husband. Everything went along swimmingly for some considerable time, it seems, until an African American man named Phillips, who was a minister of the Baptist persuasion, arrived on the scene, and "Belle transferred her affections to the minister." Angry at having to play second fiddle to the preacher, Underwood lay in wait on the fateful day near the Lucas home for Belle and her new lover. When Belle appeared alone, he confronted her, demanding that she quit paying attention to the minister. When Belle refused to take Underwood's advice, he killed her in a fit of passion.

Tried at the August 1882 term of court in Mississippi County, Underwood was found guilty and sentenced to hang in late September 1882. The verdict was appealed, and the sentenced was stayed, pending the outcome of the appeal. The Missouri Supreme Court affirmed the verdict in late 1882 and reset the execution for December 29. However, the court granted Underwood a rehearing, and the sentence was again postponed. In early March 1883, the sentence was once again affirmed and the execution date set for April 6.

On the appointed day, an estimated 5,250 people flooded the streets of Charleston to witness the hanging. After walking up the stairs with a "firm step," Underwood made a short speech to the horde of spectators and then was joined in singing "Take the Name of Jesus with You," by two fellow prisoners, who'd been allowed to accompany him on his death walk. After the song, the condemned man's spiritual advisor offered a prayer, and then a hood was slipped over his head. The trap was sprung, and Underwood dropped through the trap at exactly one p.m.  

Crime on the Increase?

The record of crime in this country is without parallel. There is scarcely a newspaper from the most quiet retreats of the country to the most crowded and bustling thoroughfare of the city but is filled with sensational accounts of bloodshed and murder. No age, sex or condition are excepted. The bludgeon of the assassin falls alike on the innocent babe and the infirm octogenarian--the gentle and confiding maiden, wife or mother and the man of strong muscle and manhood.

...In Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Louisville, Cincinnati and almost every other city of the United States...assassins are on the warpath. The daily papers have each day reports of "Horrible Outrages," "Horrible Tragedies" and "Brutal Murders" until the heart sickens....

We are almost ready to believe that ninety-nine men out of a hundred are prepared to take human life. And whilst crime is so rampant in the land, its punishment is inadequate and uncertain. It is hard to convict a man with money and friends of the crime of murder, no matter how plain the proof. The courts furnish so many dodges such as emotional insanity, so that it is impossible to convict the most cold-blooded assassin.

No, the above opinion is not mine, and it's not even recent. It's from the Iron County (MO) Register in June of 1873. I've been saying for a long time that the rate of crime per capita is not that much worse nowadays than it was 100 or 150 years ago, and this editorial is just one more suggestion that I might be right. The one thing that is different I think, is that today's crimes sometimes involve multiple victims, whereas 100 years ago, it was rare for a killer to take the lives of more than one or two people at the same time.  

The immediate impetus for the Register's righteous indignation was an attempted murder that had recently happened in St. Louis. A man named Joseph Fore had tried to kill his wife, not out of rage or because he was drunk, but out of coldblooded, diabolical malice. 

It seems Fore had been acquitted of killing his brother-in-law a year earlier on the grounds of insanity. His wife stood by him during the trial, and, after his acquittal, she tried to reclaim him and their marriage. They moved to Kansas to start fresh, but Fore neglected his wife and spent most of his time in a saloon near their farm. Finally, she returned to St Louis, and he followed her. They met, and she told him she would go back to him and not carry through with the divorce she was seeking if he would promise to reform and give up intoxicating drinks. 

Instead, he took off for Mississippi, and Mrs. Fore took a job to support herself, since her husband would not. When he came back to St. Louis, he went to her place of employment, apparently angered by her independence, and struck her three times in the head with a hatchet. She fell to the ground insensible and bathed in blood. She was alive at the time of the Register's editorial, but her condition was critical. Fore was locked in the Four Corners Jail, where he was again "attempting the insanity dodge."  

The Death of Earl Anderson: Murder or Suicide?

On the evening of September 15, 1932, neighbors of 54-year-old Earl Williamson, a retired naval officer who lived on a farm near Silva in Wayne County, Missouri, heard the sound of a shotgun blast come from the direction of his home and immediately afterward heard a woman screaming. 

When neighbor Sheldon Ward arrived to investigate, he found Williamson lying on the ground in the back yard in critical condition from a shotgun wound. A shotgun and a hatchet were on the ground some distance away. Williamsson's 34-year-old wife, a "comely Ozarks woman," was in hysterics, saying that Earl had shot himself, and the injured man told neighbors that, yes, he alone was to blame. 

On the way to the hospital, however, Williamson told a local undertaker who was riding in the vehicle with him that "Sonny Boy," Williamson's nickname for his wife, did it but that he didn't want anyone to blame her. In addition, investigating authorities concluded that, taking into consideration the trajectory of the shot that wounded Williamson and the location of the shotgun, it would have been  impossible for him to have shot himself. 

After Williamson died the next day, a coroner's jury ruled that the death was not a suicide but rather a murder, and his wife, Edna, was indicted for first degree murder. 

A few weeks after Edna's arrest, an investigation into the background of Mr. and Mrs. Williamson determined that it was highly unlikely that they were legally married. Edna had produced a marriage certificate showing the couple had been married in West Virginia in 1930, but no record could be found of such a marriage in West Virginia records. In addition, the names of the minister and the witnesses listed on the certificate seemed to be made up, as no one by those names could be located. 

 

At Edna's trial at Greenville in February of 1933, the undertaker who accompanied Williamson to the hospital repeated his claim that the dying man said his wife had shot him, and the undertaker's assistant backed up the story. Edna, however, took the stand in her own defense to vehemently deny the charge against her. She said she was inside the house when she heard the shotgun blast, went to the door and hurried out to her husband when she saw him lying on the ground, and picked up the shotgun and heaved it as far as she could.  A neighbor of the Williamsons took the stand to bolster Edna's story, saying that Earl had told him when he first arrived on the scene that he shot himself. 

After a brief trial and a short deliberation, the jury came back with a verdict of not guilty. Upon hearing the verdict, Mrs. Williamson jumped up and shouted, "Glory to God!"

MURDER AND MAYHEM IN NORTHEAST OKLAHOMA

My next book is Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma, which will be released in late October by The History Press, the same publisher that has also published several of my other books. Two of those previous books were Murder and Mayhem in Missouri and Murder and Mayhem in Southeast Kansas. So, the upcoming book is part of the Murder and Mayhem series.

I will be posting condensed accounts on this blog of some of the notorious characters and incidents covered in the book after it comes out. For now, though, I'll just mention some of the subjects covered without going into detail about any of them.

Among those subjects are the pre-Civil War feud between the Treaty Party of the Cherokee tribe and the Anti-Treaty Party of the same tribe that led to the murder of three members of the Treaty Party in 1839. Another chapter chronicles the Goingsnake Tragedy of 1872 that left 11 people dead. There's a chapter on notorious outlaw Henry Starr and a chapter on the infamous Tulsa Race Riot, more accurately called the Tulsa Race Massacre. Another chapter covers the Osage Murders, made infamous by the book Killers of the Flower Moon and the movie of the same name. There's a chapter about Pretty Boy Floyd and another about Bonnie and Clyde's killing of a law officer in Commerce, Oklahoma. The two most recent subjects covered in the book are the Girl Scout murders of the late 1970s and the Freeman-Bible murder case over twenty years later.

There a few others I did not mention above, but this will give you a taste of what the book is about. The book is available for pre-order directly from the publisher (Arcadia Publishing/The History Press) or from your favorite online super-duper bookstore https://amzn.to/4cPL3ZZ.

The Cole Younger-Frank James Wild West Show

In early 1903, shortly after Cole Younger had been pardoned by Minnesota authorities for his part in the 1876 Northfield bank robbery, a report leaked that he and Frank James were going into partnership to purchase an interest in Buckskin Bill's Wild West Show. Contacted in Kansas City in mid-February, James confirmed the purchase. 

James said the exhibition would be renamed the James-Younger Wild West Show, and he gave a few details about his and Younger's agreement with the previous owners. Val Hoffman, a wealthy brewer from Chicago, would retain part ownership in the show and H. E. Allott, the other seller, would be retained as general manager. 

James said he would act in certain parts of the show, such as rescuing a stagecoach, but he made it clear that the show would not depict any of his or Younger's outlaw escapades of yesteryear. He said that, after twenty years as an upstanding citizen, he was sick of being portrayed as an outlaw. However, he didn't see anything wrong with his being associated with a wild west show as such. He was only trying to provide for himself and his wife.

Contacted later the same day at his Lee's Summit home, Cole Younger confirmed that he had bought part interest in Buckskin Bill's Wild West Show, but he denied that Frank James was his partner. Instead, he said James's role would be merely that of a salaried employee. Specifically, James would be hired as the show's arena manager. 

Younger said that his role, in addition to being a co-owner with Hoffman, would be to serve as treasurer and to help manage the show. He would not be an actor in the show but would remain instead in the background. He would not appear in the arena at all.

The reason Younger emphasized that he would not have an acting role in the show was that one of the conditions of his Minnesota pardon was that he not "put himself on exhibition." He said he had agreed to such a stipulation but that he had not promised not to own or manage a show. 

Younger wanted it known that he planned to run a "clean" show, and that he would not allow gambling or drinking. "We will have the best show on the road," he bragged.

When Frank James was told what Cole Younger had said, he reiterated that he was indeed part owner of the wild west show, and he produced a legal document attesting to that fact. Apparently, James had met with the previous owners after Younger did and had agreed to his role as part owner at that time. 

There was some sentiment against James and Younger's wild west venture among their friends and acquaintances. They thought the two men should not remind the public of their outlaw days by associating themselves with a wild west show. 

Despite the second guessing, the James-Younger Wild West Show took to the road in early May 1903. Although it drew "good crowds of the morbidly curious" in the West, it was a failure in the East, "so much so that it got back west in a hurry." 

By September, Cole Younger was considering leaving the show because it was making no money. About the same time, he and James filed a suit against Hoffman for failing to properly equip the show and for refusing to drive away grifters and other riffraff. Hoffman countered by charging Younger with embezzlement in Vernon County, Missouri. 

Cole claimed there was no basis for the embezzlement charge and that it was brought only in retaliation for the suit he and James had filed. Indeed, the embezzlement charge was soon dismissed, and the two former outlaws severed ties with the wild west show. 

The Franklin Township War

In the early 1890s, all voters in Franklin Township of Greene County (MO) cast their ballots at John Sharp's general store in Hickory Barren. This changed in 1896, when a panel of county judges divided the township into two voting districts, with the residence of J. S. Palmer serving as the polling place in the southern part of the township and the residence of a man named Marks serving as the polling place in the northern part of the district.

The people around Hickory Barren did not like the change, but their resentment festered until about the first of June 1900, when Sharp and over 270 other residents of the Hickory Barren neighborhood signed a petition requesting that voting in Franklin Township once again be consolidated at Sharp's store. 

Why the township was divided into two voting districts in the first place is a matter of dispute. According to Sharp and his allies, the change resulted from a squabble within the Republican Party. Sharp claimed that the people of the township, with overwhelming support from the Hickory Barren area, had rejected the rule of the party bosses when F. M. Donnell (who hailed from the Hickory Barren area) was elected Greene County sheriff in 1895. However, Donnell was defeated in the Republican primary the following year, and the old party bosses, in an act of revenge, succeeded in splitting up the district and taking the polling place away from Hickory Barren. On the other hand, Judge A. B. Appleby, one of the men involved in the decision to split the township in two, claimed the decision was made merely to make it easier for citizens of the township to vote. Because Franklin was a large township, some citizens had to travel as far as 15 to 18 miles to vote when the only polling place was at Hickory Barren. 

The "Franklin Township war," as one Springfield newspaper called the dispute, came to a head on June 5, 1896, when the county court convened to consider the petition that Sharp and his allies had gathered. At the same time, a second group of voters, who opposed the petition and wanted to keep the two polling places as they had been for the past four years, filed a remonstrance that was signed by about 100 citizens of the township.

Some of the prominent signers of Sharp's petition were Gabe Alsup, H. L. Falin, J. A. Berry, and P. F. Headlee. 

Among those who signed the remonstrance opposing the petition were Judge Appleby, J. S. Palmer, W. P. Cook, Ben Alsup, and James Flannery. This opposition group suggested that Sharp had a monetary motive. They said he was actually more interested in securing customers for his store than in providing for the convenience of voters. They said that when the polling place was at Hickory Barren,  some people didn't get a chance to vote because Sharp had only enough room in his store for three voting booths. Sharp countered that the only reason some people might not have gotten a chance to vote was that too many of them waited until late in the day to attempt to vote, even though they were loafing at the store all day. If each man had voted as soon as he arrived at the polling place, there would have been no problem, Sharp said. He denied that he had a commercial motive in wanting the polling place returned to his store.

After a week's recess, the county court resumed the hearing on the dispute on June 12. Some of those who had filed the remonstrance against the petition testified before the judges, claiming that the petition did not represent the actual will of the people of the township. Anybody could take a sheet of paper and get a lot of people to sign their names to it. In fact, the remonstrators said, a number of men who had signed the petition had since stated that they wanted the voting places to stay unchanged, and they presented the judges with signed statements to that effect. 

After hearing all the testimony, the judges denied Sharp's petition, ruling instead that the voting places would remain where they currently were. Interviewed by a Springfield newspaper, Sharp complained that almost all the men testifying before the court were from the southern half of Franklin Township, whereas Hickory Barren was in the northern half. He also denied a claim made by the remonstrators that many of the prominent men of the Hickory Barren neighborhood, such as Captain Samuel W. Headlee, were present at the meeting in 1896 when the decision to divide the township was made.

Early Postal Route in Missouri

In researching my post about Pasco a couple of weeks ago, I ran onto several interesting items about early postal routes in Missouri. Because I was looking for information about Pasco at the time, the item that first caught my attention was an article in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat in March 1854 that detailed, among other routes, the route between Lebanon and Springfield. 

The mail left Lebanon every Monday morning at 8:00 a.m. and traveled to Springfield by way of Long Lane, Buffalo, Shady Grove, Pasco, and Hickory Barren, arriving in Springfield by 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday and covering a distance of 58 miles. Obviously, the mailman stayed overnight somewhere along the line, but the article did not say where.

After spending Tuesday night in Springfield, the mailman started back for Lebanon at 7:00 a.m. Wednesday morning, stopping at the same places he stopped on the way down. He arrived in Lebanon by 4:00 p.m. on Thursday. What he did and where he stayed during his three-day hiatus between Thursday and Monday would be interesting to know, but the article also did not provide that tidbit. 

One of the things I find fascinating about this mail route is the fact that most of the towns where the mailman stopped have long ago faded into oblivion. Pasco, which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, is just one example. In fact, Lebanon, Buffalo, and Springfield are about the only ones that haven't disappeared, or nearly so. 

Four years earlier, in February 1850, the mail route that ran northeast from Springfield was somewhat different. For one thing, Pasco did not yet have a post office, but the main difference was that the other terminus (besides Springfield) was Tuscumbia, not Lebanon. Another important difference was that the Tuscumbia route was considerably longer than the Lebanon route.

The mailman started from Tuscumbia in Miller County at 6:00 a.m. each Monday and traveled to Springfield by way of West Glaize, Dry Glaize, Wiota, Buffalo, Shady Grove, and Hickory Barren, arriving in Springfield by 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday and covering a distance of 103 miles. Notice that the mailman spent two nights on the road, instead of only one night that he would have to spend on the road four years later. 

After laying over in Springfield, the 1850 mailman started back for Tuscumbia at 6:00 a.m. Thursday morning and arrived at his destination by 6:00 p.m. Saturday. Presumably, he had to start all over again after just one day's rest. Not a job I would have enjoyed. 

J. E. Yandell and His Perpetual Motion Machine

Even as far back as the Middle Ages, would-be inventors started trying to come up with and claiming to have come up with a perpetual motion machine. Perpetual motion is motion that continues forever without any outside force to keep it going. So, a perpetual motion machine would be a machine that generates its own power and keeps going infinitely. Such a machine, of course, is impossible, since it would violate the laws of thermodynamics, but that fact hasn't kept people from trying to invent such a device. One such individual was J. E. Yandell of Hickory Barren in Greene County, Missouri. 

The December 4, 1894, issue of the Springfield Democrat declared: "Perpetual motion has been accomplished at last, and in the next few months J. E. Yandell, a substantial farmer of Hickory Barrens, will rattle into Washington on a perpetual motion machine at the rate of 100 miles a minute and demand a patent from the government authorities." 

It seems Yandell had gone into the Greene County recorder of deeds office the day before requesting that some action be taken to protect his invention until he could get a patent on it from the federal government, because he feared that "someone might jump ahead of him and beat him to his patent." 

When the recorder informed Yandell that his office had no power in the matter, Yandell pulled out "a small infernal machine looking instrument made of clock wheels, etc." and sat it down on the table "under the recorder's nose." The recorder, "thinking his last days had come, calmly turned his eyes to heaven." 

Yandell rubbed one of the wheels hard against the table, and "the whole thing began action and sputtered around like a kettle of cod fish." 

That was all it did, however, and Yandell declined to explain any more details about his machine. Instead, he went to the county court and held a consultation with a judge who was said to be seriously considering giving Yandell the "necessary financial backing to bring the matter to a focus." 

Afterwards, Yandell submitted to a brief interview by the Democrat reporter. The newsman described Yandell as "an intelligent man of about 55 who does not appear to be a dreamer." 

Yandell said he could not give the details of his invention until he obtained the patent, but he said he had been studying mechanics for several years but had only recently perfected perpetual motion. He had taken one or two close friends into his confidence, and they were "certain that he had hit the bull's eye and would soon be a millionaire." 

Yandell claimed the device he'd shown the recorder was only a part of his machine and was, in fact, not even the most essential feature. He declared that his invention could indeed generate its own power and that it would revolutionize the world. He thought the machine would be able to run mills, factories, railroad or anything that required power, and he predicted it would take the place of steam and electricity. His only problem, he said, was that he was "handicapped for want of funds." 

The would-be inventor said that he would have an "iron model" completed within a couple of months and that it would weigh about 200 pounds. This machine would carry Yandell to Washington at a high rate of speed. It would have to have a track to run on, but he felt sure that arrangements could be made with the railroad companies to let him pass over their tracks. "The first power in my machine generates two other powers," Yandell declared, "and can bring into action still another if necessary."

Not surprisingly, Yandell's dream apparently didn't pan out, as the Springfield newspapers published no follow-up stories about it. 

Pasco, Dallas County

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Elixir Springs, a mineral-water resort in northern Dallas County that spawned the adjacent village of Elixir in the 1880s. The resort petered out within two or three years, and little, if any, trace of the village now remains. Let's look this week at another defunct community of Dallas County: Pasco.

Little is known about Pasco. Moser's Directory of Missouri Places says only that it was located in southern Jackson Township slightly southwest of Elkland (which is in Webster County). In other words, it was located in the panhandle of Dallas County, the little square or rectangle of land at the southwest edge of the county that extends farther south than the rest of the county.  

In her master thesis on Place Names of Five Central Southern Counties of Missouri Counties, which was completed in 1939 for the University of Missouri-Columbia, Anna O'Brien said that no one she talked to had any recollection of Pasco. So, the place had obviously been gone for a long time in 1939. 

In addition, I have found no mention of Pasco in early-day Missouri newspapers. However, I did do some digging and was able to come up with a little more information about the place.

First off, by studying Campbell's 1873 atlas of Missouri, one can pinpoint more precisely where Pasco was. It was about five miles approximately due north of Fair Grove, just slightly west of due north. It was on or very near present-day Garden Road or about a mile south of current-day Highway 215.  

Pasco was an early settlement. Postal records tell us that Pasco applied for and received a post office in February of 1850. It was located on the main road that ran from Springfield to Tuscumbia (in Miller County). To be more precise, the proposed location of the new post office was forty rods west of the main road. The mail already ran on this main road twice a week, so the proposed new post office would be out of the way almost not at all. The nearest already-existing post offices on the main road were Hickory Barren eight miles to the south and Shady Grove four miles to the north. One can get a general idea of the size of Pasco by the fact that its application for a post office stated that the proposed office would service 22 families. The application was filled out by H. L. Trantham (not sure of the initials), who, one would assume, was the would-be postmaster. 

During the Civil War, the area in and around Pasco was a Southern-sympathizing region. In May of 1863, W. R. Martin, who was then postmaster at Pasco, turned in a list to Union authorities of men in the neighborhood whom he knew to be subscribers to a Rebel newspaper. Earlier in the war, noted guerrilla hunter John R. Kelso, a Union officer, had led a raid through the Pasco territory and arrested a number of Southern sympathizers. 

In 1864, Pasco lost its post office. The closure might have had something to do with the prevailing disloyal sentiment of its citizens. At any rate, the community went downhill fast after that, and within ten years or so it was virtually a ghost town, or maybe I should say a "ghost village," because it was never much of a town to begin with.

  

The Buckfoot Gang

I'm currently reading Kimberly Harper's new book about the Buckfoot Gang entitled Men of No Reputation. (https://amzn.to/3yq81J0) I haven't read enough of the book yet to know a whole lot about the gang, but it was headed by Robert Boatwright, who ran a big confidence game out of Webb City during the late 1800s and early 1900s in cahoots, more or less, with powerful businessmen and political figures. Or at least the movers and shakers turned a blind eye to Boatwright's activities. In researching local history, I had previously run onto one or two references to the Buckfoot Gang, but I'd never really paid much attention to them or tried to learn exactly what the Buckfoot Gang was. 

As I suggested, I still don't much about the Buckfoot Gang or the nature of the con, but basically it involved cheating people out of their money by taking wagers on rigged foot races. The runner that the mark had bet on, as I understand it, would usually jump out to a lead in the race but then "buck" his foot by tripping over a rock, stumping his toe, etc. so that another runner would win. Thus, Boatwright and his cohorts came to be known as the Buckfoot Gang. They raked in huge sums of money using this con, as foot races (and betting on them) were quite popular at the time. 

Ms. Harper will be speaking about her book at the Joplin Public Library on August 8, and I plan to attend. It will be interesting to hear her talk about the Buckfoot Gang. Some of you may be familiar with another of her books entitled White Man's Heaven, about the expulsion of African Americans from the Ozarks during the late 1800s and early 1900s.  

Elixir Springs, Dallas County

Recently, I've been writing about small communities that flourished briefly in the late 1800s or early 1900s but that no longer exist (or barely so). A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Chalybeate Springs in Lawrence County (MO). Another community that was founded because of the supposed healing waters of its springs but is now defunct was Elixir Springs in northern Dallas County. (Not to be confused with a resort by the same name that was planned in Miller County but never really got off the ground.)

The first mention of Elixir Springs I found was in a July 1881 issue of the Buffalo Reflex. According to this report, Elixir Springs was "fast becoming a popular resort." Two or three hundred people had visited the springs on the previous Sunday. The Reflex ventured that most of the visitors were there out of mere curiosity but that some of them claimed the water of the springs had healing or "medicinal qualities of a high order" and were there for the purpose of "partaking of its life-giving properties."

A month later, the Reflex reported that Elixir Springs was continuing to boom with a lot of buildings being constructed and "a great number of people camped on the ground. Hundreds visit it daily."

A post office called Elixir was established at the site in 1882. That summer, a "grand picnic" was held at Elixir Springs to celebrate the place's one-year anniversary, and it proved to be "a very pleasant affair."

Again, in the summer of 1883, Elixir Springs held a big picnic to celebrate its two-year anniversary. In the lead-up to the event, the Reflex predicted that it would be the biggest gathering of the season in Dallas County.  

By the summer of 1884, however, the springs of Elixir had become a laughingstock. Apparently, the people had begun to realize that the waters actually contained no medicinal or healing powers. At a big picnic held elsewhere in Dallas County that summer, when one speechmaker suggested with tongue-in-cheek that he thought the picnic was being held to commemorate the discovery of the Elixir Springs, the crowd burst out laughing because the springs were already "things of the past."

Despite the demise of the springs at Elixir, the little community itself, which was located about six miles northeast of Urbana, hung on quite a while longer and did not lose its post office until 1906.

I think Linda Crawford of the Dallas County Historical Society has done a lot or research about Elixir Springs and the community of Elixir and maybe even written a book about them.

A Christmas Day Murder

The 1883 History of Greene County (Missouri) gives a brief account of Charles Leighton's murder of Bion Mason in Springfield, which happened, according to the county history, somewhere around the first of January 1877. The incident actually happened on Christmas Day of 1876, and there's quite a bit more to the story than the county history provides.

On the afternoon of December 25, 1876, 18-year-old Charles Leighton was on his way into Springfield from his home three or four miles east of town when he happened to meet a neighbor named George McFarland. The two men were nursing a grudge toward each other, and the dispute was renewed. "Words led to blows, when McFarland struck (Leighton) with a gun which he carried in his hand. Leighton then drew a knife and stabbed his opponent several times in the side and back." 

Leighton then hurried on to town, leaving McFarland with serious wounds. (The injuries were at first thought fatal, but McFarland was on the road to recovery by the time the incident was reported in newspapers.) 

Upon reaching Springfield, Leighton, "having grown desperate from the excitement of the struggle in which he had just before been engaged, imbibed freely of intoxicating drinks, until he became a terror to all with whom he came in contact."

Early in the evening, he snapped a pistol at a young man named Weldon at the St. James Hotel. Later, he proceeded to a dance party at the home of a Mrs. Mills on St. Louis Street. (This was the same house where Mary Willis was killed by a Union soldier during the Civil War.)

Already in a "staggering condition" when he arrived, Leighton went upstairs, and 19-year-old Bion Mason, son of a prominent Springfield citizen, soon joined him on the second floor, where the two got into a dispute over some trivial matter. Leighton seized Mason, choked him against the wall, and drew his pistol.

The two young men were separated by others present, and Mason went back downstairs, where his companions tried to settle him down and told him to pay no further attention to Leighton. However, Leighton soon followed Mason downstairs, pulled his weapon again, and shot him in the heart without preliminary. Mason died within two or three minutes.

Leighton fled the scene but was quickly apprehended and placed under arrest. Charged with first-degree murder, he was lodged in jail and later officially indicted for murder. At his trial in January 1878, he withdrew his previous plea of not guilty and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. 

He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but in July 1885 the governor commuted the sentence to ten years and Leighton was discharged under the three-fourths rule, which required prisoners to serve only three-fourths of their sentence. He returned to Springfield, where he was fined $20 in 1887 for disturbing the peace. Apparently, he did not get into any more trouble after that, because his name does not appear in later Springfield newspapers in connection with any wrongdoing. Or perhaps he moved away.

Chalybeate Springs

I've written on this blog several times in the past about communities throughout Missouri and the Ozarks that sprang up as mineral water resorts during the late 1800s. One such place that I was not familiar with until recently, however, was Chalybeate Springs, in northeastern Lawrence County, Missouri. 

Located about four miles west of Halltown and about a half-mile north of Old Route 66, the place was originally called Johnson's Mill after a mill that was built on nearby Clover Creek (now Turnback Creek) about 1855. The name was soon changed to Chalybeate Springs after the supposed healing properties of a spring just east of the creek were discovered. The name derived from the fact that the water contained and was flavored with iron salts.

Chalybeate Springs was established as a resort by D. C. Allen about 1867, making it one of the earliest mineral-water resorts in the Ozarks. The fame of the springs, however, predated establishment of the resort, as the place was known for its supposed healing waters even before the Civil War. 

The resort became even more popular in 1872, when E. G. Paris opened a large hotel at the site. A post office called Chalybeate Springs was established at the site about the same time that the hotel was completed. The name of the post office and the community was changed to Paris Springs in 1874, although the springs themselves were still often referred to as the Chalybeate Springs. The springs were advertised in the newspapers of Springfield and other regional towns, and the place thrived throughout the late 1800s and into the early 1900s under Paris's promoting hand. In addition to the hotel, Paris Springs also boasted a general store, a wagon-maker, a shoemaker, a blacksmith, a livery stable, a livestock dealer, and an attorney-at-law. 

Advertisement from a 1870s Springfield newspaper.

Paris Springs reached a peak in popularity as a mineral-water resort about 1906, but it soon began to decline after that. The hotel closed around 1914 or shortly afterwards, and the abandoned hotel burned in 1917. The final death knell for the community sounded when its post office was discontinued in 1920.

When Route 66 was constructed in 1926, it bypassed Paris Springs by a half-mile or so to the south, and a new community called Paris Springs Junction sprang up at the Route 66 turnoff in order to cater to passing motorists. Among the businesses erected at the turnoff was a Sinclair service station. In 1961, Route 66 was realigned, bypassing both Paris Springs and Paris Springs Junction. Then, when I-44 was built in the mid-1960s, it bypassed the entire section of Route 66 from Halltown to Joplin by several miles.  

The service station at Paris Springs Junction burned in 1955. However, a replica of the station was built across the road many years later, and it is now about the only thing that remains at Paris Springs Junction. As for Paris Springs, nothing remains there to suggest the place was ever a booming resort.