Waldensians Come to the Ozarks

The Waldensian religious tradition began in France and Italy as an ascetic movement within Western Christianity long before the Protestant Reformation. Like nearly all ascetics, Waldensians emphasized living a simple life of poverty, isolated from the mainstream of society. The Waldensians clashed with the Catholic Church in the 13th century for their refusal to recognize the prerogative of bishops to dictate what should be preached or who was fit to preach. 

The Waldensians were ostracized by the Catholic Church and were declared heretics. Because of their emphasis on the priesthood of all believers (which essentially meant they thought any believer was fit to preach) and similar reasons, the Waldensians more or less foreshadowed the Protestant Reformation, and they were, indeed, absorbed into the Protestant movement in the 16th century.

In the late 1850s, a French-speaking colony of Waldensians immigrated from the Piedmont region of northern Italy, which was under French control at the time, to South America seeking a place to practice their religion free from persecution and discrimination. After enduring hardship for about 18 years, the small group returned to Europe briefly before setting out for the United States. 

Under the leadership of the Rev. J. P. Solomon, a party of 49 Waldensians arrived at Verona, Missouri, on the evening of July 12, 1875, with a view of settling in the Verona vicinity. Accordingly, they proceeded to establish a colony about three miles south of present-day Monett (which did not yet exist) on forty acres of land granted to them by the St. Louis and San Francisco (Frisco) Railroad to be used for "the glory of God."

The first year must have been consumed largely just by efforts to survive, because Solomon did not get around to actually establishing a Waldensian church until over a year later.  On the fifth Sunday in July 1876, the Waldensians and their friends gathered on the colony grounds near Solomon's residence, and he organized the first Waldensian church in the United States, following "the time-honored customs of the Waldensian synod." The church's bylaws or guidelines were written in French, but after a break for a basket dinner, Solomon conducted the first Waldensian service under a nearby arbor in the English language for the benefit of friends of the group who did not speak French. Although the church had few members at first, more Waldensian immigrants were expected during the next few yea

Apparently, the Waldensians were received rather well by their neighbors if editorial comment from a Mount Vernon newspaper can be taken as an indication. The Mt. Vernon Fountain and Journal remarked at the time of the church's organization, "These people will no doubt make the best of citizens, and we should extend to them a hearty welcome."

 In 1877, the Waldensian colony south of present-day Lamar apparently receive an influx of new members. At any rate, several families, including five from France, two from the valleys of northern Italy and one from New York State, expressed their intention of joining the colony.

In the summer of 1879, when a correspondent of the Canton (MO) Press News visited the southwest Missouri Waldensians, the colony consisted of about 20 families. Most had come during the original migration in 1875, but a few families had arrived the previous year. 

Today, the Waldensian Presbyterian Church of Barry County is still going strong, The current church building, erected on a part of the original forty acres, was constructed in 1909. In the summer of 2025, the church celebrated its 150th anniversary, and it is still one of the very few Waldensian churches in the United States.

Urbanette, Arkansas

I've always been fascinated by little towns that flourished back in the old days but that have virtually disappeared or have become little more than wide places in the road in modern times, and the Ozarks seems to have at least its share of them. One that I was not really aware of until recently is Urbanette, located in Carroll County, Arkansas, about five miles northeast of Berryville on Highway 21.

The reason I was not previously aware of it is because I've never been there, or at least I don't think I have. Highway 21 north of Berryville is one of those roads that a person would almost never have cause to traverse unless you lived in the area or had some specific site you wanted to visit. And there aren't many sites in the area that would attract the average traveler (maybe Cosmic Caverns, which is about three miles northeast of Urbanette or four miles southwest of Oak Grove on Highway 21 and which I've also never been to).

Anyway, Urbanette was founded in 1902 by a man named Urban and a man named Bennett, and the town was named Urbanette as portmanteau of the two men's names. Urbanette came into being more or less as a railroad town, because Urban and Bennett built a store, a hotel, a livery, and a restaurant at the location to service workers on the railroad, which had been laid across Carroll County the previous year. Stock pens were built near the train depot, and Urbanette soon became an important shipping center for cattle.

The Urbanette Post Office opened in 1902, and a school was established in the community in 1907. The school consolidated with Berryville in 1948, and the town lost its post office in 1971. Today, not much remains of the once-booming little town of Urbanette but a few residences and a couple of businesses.

The Alleged Murder of Gus Leftwich

   When Gus Leftwich, editor of the Gallatin (MO) Democrat, and his wife, Bertha, were poisoned on Saturday morning, February 12, 1898, by arsenic in their coffee, it was thought at first that both victims would recover, and the poisoning was considered an accident. But after Gus Leftwich took a turn for the worse and died the next day, rumors began to circulate that the poisonings were by design, and a coroner's inquest into Leftwich's death on Monday found that he had come to his death by arsenic poisoning "administered by some party or parties unknown."
   The complete findings of the inquest were not revealed until a day or two later. Those findings revealed that, according to one of the rumors, Gus had called Maria, his fourteen-year-old daughter by his first marriage, to his bedside shortly before his death and accused her of having put poison in the coffee, and the girl ran crying from the room.
   According to the rumor, Leftwich did not want this fact known publicly, and he asked that no investigation into his death be made. However, after he, in fact, died, the supposed confrontation with his daughter leaked out, and it was brought out at the inquest. Maria herself was called as a witness at the inquest. She admitted that her father had questioned her about putting poison in the coffee, but she was not grilled on whether or not she had actually done so, probably because of Leftwich's request that his death not be investigated, thus accounting for the indefinite finding of the coroner's jury.
   Suspicion, though, quickly settled on the daughter. It was thought, however, that she had meant only to poison her stepmother and that Leftwich's poisoning was accidental. Mrs. Leftwich was in the habit of arising early and eating breakfast and drinking her coffee alone, but on the fateful morning, her husband had taken breakfast with her and had drunk more of the coffee than Bertha. "Unhappy family conditions" had apparently existed in the Leftwich home for some time, as Maria and one or more of her siblings did not get along with their stepmother. Maria, in particular, was considered a "wild and willful" girl, and her relations with Bertha were "not at all cordial."
   Many people around Gallatin demanded a more thorough investigation of the matter and suggested that a grand jury look into Leftwich's death. Shortly after Gus died, his brother Dr. Morris Leftwich, superintendent of the masonic home in St. Louis, visited in the Leftwich home. Unswayed by the rumors, Dr. Leftwich came away convinced that Gus's death had been nothing but an accident, pure and simple. He said the accusation that Gus had accused Maria of giving him poison was a canard. Morris took Maria and her 18-year-old brother, Austin, back to St. Louis to live with him.
   In April, a Daviess County grand jury indicted Maria and Austin for the murder of their father, but they were allowed bail of $2,000 each. When their case finally came up in December 1898, the prosecutor decided to drop the charges, saying that there was insufficient evidence even to say for sure that Mr. and Mrs. Leftwich had been poisoned on purpose, much less evidence to prove who did it. The prosecutor said the case had been investigated thoroughly, and that any one of the Leftwich household members might have poisoned the coffee but that there was almost no evidence to suggest that a particular family member actually did so.

The Murder of Wilfred Gerald Brown

On Wednesday morning, November 25, 1964, Mountain View (MO) resident Joseph Brown, after not hearing from his father for several days, went to check on the older man, who lived alone in an expensive home in a secluded area a few miles north of town. Joseph found the body of his father, Wilfred Gerald Brown, lying on a bedroom floor and clad only in underwear, with his feet bound and his hands tied behind his back. 

Authorities who investigated the murder estimated that Wilfred Brown had been dead about a week, not just because of the state of the body but also because all the days of a wall calendar had been marked off up until November 18. Investigators found that about $2,000 worth of guns were missing from the home. Also missing was Brown's billfold, which was thought to have contained about $500. Investigators theorized that whoever had killed the man was familiar with the area, because the Brown home sat at the end of a dead-end road and was not visible to casual passers-by on the main road. 

Because of the body's advanced state of decomposition, a cause of death was not immediately determined. However, after an autopsy on Friday, a coroner's jury ruled that Brown had died of shock, brought on by a blow to the head while he was struggling to free his trussed body. Authorities announced, also, that they were seeking four teenage boys who were suspected of having stolen some property from Brown about two weeks before the murder. It was thought that they might have returned to rob him again and ended up killing him. 

A break came in the case when the Mountain View marshal received an anonymous letter with the names of several of the suspects pasted on a plain sheet of paper, and six youths were arrested in connection with the robbery/murder. A crude diagram was drawn on the paper indicating that George Montgomery had struck the fatal blow. Montgomery, David Holly, and Wayne Conley, all of whom were from Belleville, Illinois, and all of whom were 18 years old, were charged with murder, while another 18-year-old and two 17-year-olds were charged with burglary in the case. One of the 17-year-olds, James Davis, had reportedly gone to school at Mountain View the previous year.   

At his first-degree murder trial in September 1965 in Carter County on a change of venue, Montgomery pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of robbery in a plea-bargain deal and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Conley also took a change of venue to Carter County, where he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in another plea-bargain deal and was also given 25 years in prison. Montgomery's conviction was later overturned by the Missouri Supreme Court on the grounds that he could not be convicted of robbery when he had not been charged with robbery. In other words, the prosecutor had put the cart before the horse.

I have not traced what happened at Montgomery's second trial or even whether he had a second trial. Nor have I found any information about Holly's case except a reference to his having filed a motion to vacate the sentence he received (whatever that sentence was).