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.