Fort Ancient or the Old Spanish Fort

I'm not sure whether I've ever mentioned the old fortification located in Lawrence County (MO) on this blog, but if so, I'm pretty sure I've never previously gone into much detail about it. So, I thought I'd write about it today.

The place is located about two miles southeast of the village of Hoberg or about four to five miles almost due south of Mount Vernon. The original fortification consisted of a ditch or moat surrounding about an acre of flat land with a wall of earthworks just inside the moat. The wall is estimated to have originally been about five feet high but has been worn away by time. It is presumed the ancient builders of the fort chose the site partially because Spring River runs along one side, and its bluff is so steep that, according to a 1904 correspondent to a St. Louis newspaper, even a trained mountain climber could not scale it. The flat land in the other directions was treeless when the first white settlers arrived in the area and is presumed to have been so when the fort was built, giving occupants of the earthworks a clear view of any approaching enemies.

The first white settlers theorized that the fort had been constructed by early Spanish explorers, and, thus, they named the place the Old Spanish Fort. However, archeological and geological study during the early 1900s suggested that the fortification was very likely built by the same Native American tribe who built the similar but much larger Fort Ancient in Ohio. The old fortification in Lawrence County was, therefore, redesignated as Fort Ancient, although it is still known locally as Spanish Fort. The Mound Builders who constructed the fort predated the Osage Indians, who lived in Missouri during the 1600s, 1700s, and early 1800s. 

Around 1880, a cemetery was laid out on the flat land that had once been part of the fort, and many early settlers of Lawrence County are buried there. In 1930, a historic marker commemorating Fort Ancient was placed at the cemetery site and dedicated in a ceremony held on October 12 of that year. 

Entertaining the Soldier Boys

I've heard local lore about how soldiers from Camp Crowder in Neosho would trek to Joplin on weekends during World War II to patronize prostitutes. I've never found much about this in written documents, but the local lore is so prevalent that I'm pretty sure it was true.

Springfield, too, apparently served as a sexual resort for soldiers during WW II. In fact, there's more written evidence of this in the case of Springfield than that of Joplin. In Springfield's case, though, the soldiers mainly came from Fort Leonard Wood. 

For example, a 45-year-old woman named Jessie Dixon Wilson was charged in July 1942 with operating a bawdy house under the guise of a legitimate business, and her preliminary hearing on the 17th turned into "an exciting and dramatic" affair when eight soldiers, five from Fort Leonard Wood and three from the O'Reilly Hospital in Springfield, testified for the prosecution.

The procedure got off to a sensational start when the attorney for the defense brought a woman who looked a lot like the defendant into the room and succeeded in tricking one of the first soldiers who testified into identifying the look-alike as the woman who'd provided a "date" for him at the Van Nuys Hotel instead of Mrs. Wilson, the actual proprietor of the Van Nuys. 

When order was restored and the real defendant was brought into the room, the same soldier and seven additional soldiers all identified Mrs. Wilson as the person who had set them up with "dates" at her hotel between April 3 and June 28. She had charged them $2 each, and all of them had contracted venereal disease as a result of their "dates." 

Jessie Wilson was bound over for trial, but the defense lawyer did succeed in getting the charge against her husband and co-defendant, Hubert Wilson, dismissed by showing that Jessie had full ownership and management of the hotel and that Hubert only lived there. Originally charged with a felony, Jesse later pleaded guilty to a reduced charge in a plea-bargain deal and got off with only a fine of $200.

Nathaniel Borders

In early June 1898, Nathaniel Borders, a crosstie rafter from Big Piney (MO), suffered a "fearful accident" when a charge of dynamite exploded near him, bursting his right eye and tearing off one of his arms. The Rolla Herald reported that the injury was very severe and that Borders's chances of recovery were "discouraging." 

A month later, though, the same newspaper reported that, although Borders had to have part of one of his feet amputated, he was now making a rapid recovery. In fact, Borders went on to live a number of years after the accident, long enough to kill a man and be charged with murder.   

Borders and his wife divorced in 1900, and apparently he became a rather disreputable character after that, if he had not already been so. In early 1903, he was charged in Pulaski County with "camping on highway with female." He was convicted of "camping for sexual intercourse" and sentenced to two years in prison. He was released after a year and half under the three-fourths rule.  

By 1916, Borders had remarried (to the woman he camped on the highway with, do you suppose??) and was living in northern Texas County. On the night of August 16 of that year, Borders was hosting a party at his place when Ike Heflin showed up looking for trouble with Borders, according to the Houston Herald. Borders's wife tried to warn Heflin away, but he insulted and slapped her. Borders got his shotgun and fired a shot, and some of the pellets struck Heflin. This only served to infuriate him, and he advanced toward Borders, who then retrieved a revolver and fired several shots into Heflin's body, killing him almost instantly. 

The Herald said that both men had bad reputations for being quarrelsome and getting into trouble and that too much alcohol no doubt played a part in the tragedy. A coroner's jury initially ruled the shooting justifiable, but Borders was nonetheless placed in jail to await investigation by a grand jury. 

The grand jury apparently disagreed with the coroner's jury, because Borders was charged with second-degree murder and found guilty at the November term of the Texas County Circuit Court. He was sentenced to ten years in prison but served only about six before having the sentence commuted by the governor. 

Phelps County School Consolidation

In late October and early November, I wrote three different posts about school consolidation in Greene County, but the school consolidation movement in Missouri of the 1940s and 1950s was not limited to just one county or even a few counties. It was a statewide phenomenon.

For instance, the Phelps County School Board proposed a consolidation plan in August of 1951 to reorganize seventy-eight rural school districts into eight large administrative units. The only districts not affected by the proposed plan would be Rolla, Newburg, and St. James, which were the only three districts in the county that had high schools. A similar proposal had been soundly defeated by voters in 1949, but educators wanted to try again, because they felt there were numerous advantages to the consolidation.

Among the advantages cited by proponents of the plan were better buildings, more qualified teachers, better library facilities, and better instructional equipment that would be available to students by consolidating into fewer schools. 

The consolidation plan was put to a vote of patrons in mid-September, and it, like the previous proposal, was voted down overwhelmingly. Countywide, the margin of defeat was approximately nine no votes to every yes vote, and in many of the smaller districts the vote was even more lopsided. In a few districts, not a single "yes" vote was cast. In the Clinton Bank district, for instance, the tally was 65 votes against the proposal and zero votes for it. 

Many, if not most, of these rural school districts were eventually consolidated into larger districts, but as this vote in Phelps County in September of 1951 illustrates, the consolidation movement in Missouri usually had to overcome a lot of initial opposition from voters.