Lowry City

When I used to write for Show Me the Ozarks Magazine, I sometimes was assigned to profile doctors or other leaders in the community in what was called a "Meet the Doctors" or "Meet the Educators" feature, or whatever the case might be. Sometimes these so-called profiles were actually paid advertisements. For instance, one of the local hospitals might occasionally buy advertisement from the magazine in the form of profiles of the physicians affiliated with that particular hospital. I would interview the doctors and profile them, but I was expected to show them in the best light possible, since the hospitals were paying for the copy.

Back in the early part of the 20th century, the Springfield Leader used to do the same thing, but the subjects of their profiles were not people but rather towns that surrounded Springfield. The profiles were paid for by the town's businesses that were featured in the profiles. Even though these articles were meant to promote the town in question rather than provide an objective view of the town, they usually imparted quite a bit of interesting information about the place.

Over the next few weeks and maybe the next few months, I plan to write about some of the places profiled in the Leader during the early 20th century, although, in many cases, I'll probably consult other sources besides the Leader in order to give a more complete, well-rounded view of the town in question. First up is Lowry City, Missouri.

Lowry City was platted in March 1871 eight miles north of Osceola in northern St. Clair County in anticipation of being a stop along the C & M Branch (I think the C & M stood for Clinton and Montrose) of the Tebo and Neosho Railroad, which was being laid through the area, and the new town was named a couple of months later, even before the railroad was completed. The man who owned the land on which the town was laid out named it after a businessman for whom he'd worked in Indiana. A post office was established at Lowry City about the same time it was named, and the Osceola Herald featured an article in June of 1871 about the new town while buildings were still going up apace. The Herald declared that, due to its favorable location on the prairie and its proximity to the railroad, Lowry City would "certainly make a good town."  

The new town grew rapidly, and by the latter part of 1871, it already had two physicians, two dentists, and about twenty businesses. In 1880, Lowry City boasted a population of 195 people, and it still had about the same number of businesses that it had in late 1871. By 1899, the population had increased to about 500 people. The town had at least four churches, two newspapers, a flour mill, and a sawmill, as well as a good number of basic businesses like general stores and drugstores. 

At the time Lowry City was profiled in the Springfield Leader in 1912, its population had decreased slightly from ten years earlier to about 460 people, although the article in the Leader erroneously estimated it at about twice that figure. The town had "splendid schools and excellent churches," and its citizens had just voted a bond for a "twentieth-century high school building." Improved farmland surrounding Lowry City was going for about $40 to $50 an acre. 

Lowry City's population has held fairly steady over the past 110 years. Its current population is slightly over 600, and at no time during the past century has it dipped below 437 or above 728. 

 

Pleasant Hope and Pin Hook Again

When I was growing up in Fair Grove (MO), I often heard Pleasant Hope, our neighbor ten miles to the northwest, referred to as Pin Hook, and I used to wonder why it was called that. I always assumed it was just a nickname that came about because both Pleasant Hope and Pin Hook start with the same two letters.

In 2012, I found an 1872 article in a Springfield newspaper that seemed to contradict my childhood assumption. I concluded from the article that Pleasant Hope and Pin Hook were, in fact, two separate places, because the article reported that a new town called Pleasant Hope had recently been established a short distance away from the site of old Pin Hook, which was now (1872) nothing but a cornfield. This suggested to me that Pin Hook must have been a village that predated Pleasant Hope, and that the new town of Pleasant Hope took the name of its predecessor as a nickname. 

But I was never quite satisfied that what the Springfield newspaper seemed to be saying was the real story; so, recently I decided to dig a little deeper and see what else I could come up with about early-day Pleasant Hope/Pin Hook. As it turns out, my interpretation of what the 1872 article was saying was wrong, and my original assumption that Pin Hook was just a nickname for Pleasant Hope was closer to the truth. At least, I think, based on my recent research, that such is the case. In fact, I believe my interpretation of that 1872 article was so misleading that I have now deleted the blog entry that I posted thirteen years ago.  

According to a history on the City of Pleasant Hope's website, an academy affiliated with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church started near the town's present site in 1849, and a small settlement soon grew up around or near the academy. U. S. Postal history tells us that this community, under the name Pleasant Hope, got its first post office in 1851. This post office was discontinued in November 1855, but Pleasant Hope got a new post office in December 1860. It may have briefly had a post office between 1855 and 1860 as well. The town did for sure have a post office during the Civil War (at least during part of the war) and for several years after the war ended.

However, this is where the confusion comes in, because in 1870, C. E. Bushnell applied for a post office to be established at a new village called Pleasant Hope, which was located about a mile north of where the previous town or at least the previous post office had been located. Bushnell said the new village of Pleasant Hope had only four families at the time, and he estimated that about 78 people lived within a two-mile radius of the village. Apparently, the original Pleasant Hope, which somewhere along the line acquired the nickname Pin Hook, had died out for some reason, and a new town by the same name was created a mile or so away. And the new village of Pleasant Hope inherited the nickname of Pin Hook, the same sobriquet by which the previous village had also been known.

So, when the writer of the 1872 article in the Springfield paper referred to the new town of Pleasant Hope being located a short distance from old Pin Hook, he was not saying that Pin Hook was actually the name of the older town, but, instead, he was simply referring to the old town by its nickname.

  

Murder-Suicide or Double Murder? (The Sensational Story of Lillie Colcord)

About 1:15 p.m. on Saturday, August 17, 1878, a woman's scream issued from Room 4 of the Girard House in downtown St. Louis, and then four shots rang out. The hotel clerk, occupants of the place, and officers who were nearby on the street rushed to Room 4 and found the door locked. Breaking it down, they entered and found a young woman, initially identified as Lillie Smith, lying dead on the floor and Josiah Colcord, a 34-year-old St. Louis lawyer, lying mortally wounded beside her. By the time a doctor arrived, Colcord was also dead.

Colcord had his jacket off and his vest unbuttoned but was otherwise fully clothed, while the young woman was clad only in a chemise and a short, loose-fitting gown, with "no stockings, even, covering her feet." 

Investigators quickly concluded that Colcord had shot the woman three times and then turned the weapon, a .38 caliber revolver, on himself, and that's how St. Louis newspapers would report the incident later that day and the next morning. From the very beginning, however, there were those who questioned the official version of events, suggesting instead that the couple had been the victims of a double homicide.   

Josiah Colcord at one time had been an up-and-coming attorney with a bright future. He had even served a term in the Missouri legislature. He had married "an estimable young lady" from Greenville, Illinois, and had three children, but according to the St. Louis papers, he had fallen prey to the demon alcohol and had lost his way. The couple had separated about 1875, and Colcord had taken up with Lillie. In recent months, he had reportedly tried to straighten out his life but had relapsed in recent days. 

Reporters who hurried to the scene of the double fatality remarked that, despite the bloody circumstances now attending Lillie's death, she was a woman of uncommon beauty. She had a face that could only be described as "of exceeding attractiveness." She had "large brown, dreamy eyes, an oval face, nose slightly retroussé but delicately chiseled, large mouth, fine teeth and a figure voluptuous in the extreme."  

Little was known in St. Louis about Lillie, except that she had a reputation as a "woman of the town" who often drank to excess. She had claimed to be married to Colcord, and the couple had registered at the hotel as man and wife. In addition, love notes that the couple had written to each other in which they addressed each other as husband and wife were found in the hotel room. At an inquest held later the same day of the deaths, contradictory testimony was given as to whether the couple was actually married and as to whether they had argued in recent days. The St. Louis newspapers sided with those who believed Lillie to be Colcord's mistress, as they could find no record of the supposed marriage. They seemed to blame the whole unfortunate affair on the "seductive wiles" of the "cyprian" who had led Colcord astray. 

It was left to the Bloomington Pantagraph of McLean County, Illinois, where the 24-year-old Lillie was originally from, "to cast light upon her history," as the Pantagraph itself phrased it. Lilah "Lillie" Gibbons was the daughter of a well-known citizen of Heyworth, McLean County. When she was "a growing girl," she attracted "universal attention" with her "rare, rich beauty and grace." When she was only about 16 years old, Lillie, who was said to have a passionate nature, ran away with a young man from Heyworth named John Harrold and lived in New Orleans with Harrold for a year or more as his mistress. 

After her time in New Orleans, Lillie returned home and stayed with her parents for a while. Then, in 1872, she met and married a man named Davis from Bunker Hill, Illinois, but they divorced after just a short period. In fact, she and Colcord first met when he represented her in the divorce proceeding, and they became infatuated with each other at that time, while he was still married to his first wife. After her divorce from Davis was final, Lillie once again returned home for a while before moving to St. Louis. When she next returned to Heyworth about 1876, she brought Colcord with her and introduced him as her husband. In fact, she and Colcord, who was now divorced from his first wife, were living together without the benefit of matrimony at this time. However, they did wed in the spring of 1877, with a St. Louis justice performing the ceremony, and the couple had a child together.

Around the first of July 1878, just weeks prior to her death, Lillie came back to Heyworth and stayed there throughout July and into August, but she also spent time in Bloomington. Colcord occasionally visited her, coming and going as his business dictated. 

Just a couple of weeks before the tragedy in St. Louis, Colcord went to Bloomington while Lillie was not there to investigate rumors he had heard of her unfaithfulness. He confronted several men "whose names had been connected dishonorably with the name of his wife," but he supposedly became convinced of his wife's honesty and fidelity and vowed to a friend that he was going to make the rumormongers face Lillie and the men who had been dishonorably connected to her. Yet, it was apparent to the people Colcord talked to in Bloomington that he was not only angry but also consumed with jealousy. The Pantagraph allowed that it was not uncharitable to the dead to say that there were some grounds for Colcord's jealousy.

Despite the fact authorities were able to establish jealousy as a strong motive for Colcord's alleged crime, there were still those who doubted that he had killed his wife and himself. Foremost among these were members of Colcord's family. 

Then, in 1887, a man named Henry Morrison walked into a St. Louis police station and asked to be locked up for murdering the Colcords nine years earlier. He said he'd killed them because he was in love with Lillie and that he fled the hotel before anybody saw him. All the evidence, though, still pointed to a murder-suicide, and Morrison's claim was dismissed as the ravings of a lunatic. Thus, he was sent on his way. 

A few days later, authorities in St. Louis received a letter from Colcord's sister in Illinois saying that Morrison should have been held because the Colcord family had found letters among Josiah's personal things that seemed to point toward Morrison as a bitter enemy of Josiah and a rival for the affections of his wife.
According to the sister and her father, Morrison was one of the men whose name had been "disagreeably connected" to Lillie in the weeks leading up to her death. 

St. Louis authorities, however, placed little stock in either the opinion of the Colcord family or the confession of Henry Morrison, and the case was not re-opened.