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.