Springfield to Carthage Road

For the first several years after my wife and I moved to Joplin from Springfield, we frequently traveled Highway 96 (approximating Old Route 66) between Carthage and Halltown on our trips back to Springfield instead of taking I-44, because we lived on the north side of Joplin. I was always intrigued by the small towns one passes through on that route, several of them no more than wide places in the road and almost completely extinct. 

One might assume that at least a few of those little villages grew up as a result of being located on Old Route 66, and I think I probably assumed that myself at the time I was often traveling that way. If you make this assumption, though, you would be wrong, because almost all of the small hamlets located along Highway 96 between Carthage and Halltown predate the opening of Highway 66. 

Until this stretch of road was officially designated Highway 66 circa 1926, it was known as the Springfield-to-Carthage Road, and it dates at least as far back as the Civil War. Moreover, most of the small towns along the way date at least as far back as the turn of the 20th century.  

Located just over the Greene County line in eastern Lawrence County, Halltown got a post office in 1879, and the town was platted in 1887. It was a thriving little town in the early 1900s, and even today, it still has a population of about 170 people. In fact, it is one of the few villages along the stretch of Highway 96 from Greene County to Carthage that still has the appearance of anything more than a wide place in the road, but its business district, if you can call it that, is a ghostly shell of what it used to be.  

Traveling west from Halltown, the first little community you come to about three miles down the road is Paris Springs. It is actually not on present-day Highway 96, but it was on Old Route 66. Nowadays, you have to detour off 96 to get to it. Originally known as Johnson's Mill because it was the site of a mill on Clover Creek, the place was used for mill power even before the Civil War, but it never amounted to much as a town or village in its early days. The place was also the site of a natural spring that supposedly had healing waters, and its name was changed to Chalybeate Springs shortly after the Civil War when a mineral-water resort was established there. Later the name was changed to Paris Springs, and the place prospered for a while as a healing resort, but by the time the 1917 History of Lawrence County was written, "not much [was] left of Paris Springs." 

Just a mile and half west of Paris Springs lies the village of Spencer, and like the former place, Spencer is on the Old Route 66 road but not on Highway 96.  Spencer was a going little place at least as early as the 1880s, when it had a school, a flour mill, a post office, two churches, and two stores. Nowadays, there are still some store buildings in Spencer that date from its Route 66 days, and tourists often visit the place as a nostalgic curiosity. 

Another five miles west of Spencer is Heaton, more commonly called Heatonville. It was laid out in 1868 by Daniel Heaton and by the following year had ten residences, one store, one blacksmith shop, and a post office. Heatonville, however, "failed to reach the expectations of its sponsor," as the 1917 history says. By that year, Heatonville no longer had a post office and didn't have much else either. During the heyday of Route 66, it did serve as a bus stop, but, as far as I know, it never had much else other than the bus stop (which might have doubled as a store). Nowadays, I don't know whether there is anything at all left even to indicate exactly where Heatonville was located unless you're quite familiar with the area. 

Just a couple of miles farther west from Heatonville on Highway 96 one comes to Albatross, at 96's intersection with Highway 39. I'm not altogether sure, but I think Albatross is the only little village along this stretch of road that does not predate Route 66, because I think it actually started as a bus stop. I'm not sure whether it took Heaton's place as a bus stop or both villages had bus stops simultaneously for at least a while, even though they were very close together. 

The little village of Phelps lies about three and a half miles west of Albatross. Phelps sprang up shortly before 1880, and by that year it boasted a population of about 80 people. By 1890, it had a school, three churches, two general stores, a drugstore, a hotel, a post office, a wagon master, and three doctors. Like Heatonville, though, Phelps did not get "along very far in its endeavor to make a noise in the world," and by 1917 it was already in steep decline.

About eight miles west of Phelps, one comes to Rescue, which began around 1900, although it never really amounted to much more than a wide place in the road. The last time I was through that way, about the only thing remaining to mark the location of Rescue other than a road sign was a building that once served, I believe, as a garage or filling station. I haven't driven Highway 96 lately, though; so, as far as I know, there may not be anything there now. 

Lying another three miles west of Rescue is the little village of Plew. A post office was established at Plew in 1893 and remained in operation until 1904, but like Rescue, the place never amounted to much more than a wide place in the road during its early days. After Route 66 came in, a resort with cabins for travelers was located at Plew, but they closed after I-44 was constructed and most of the traffic bypassed Plew.

Five miles west of Plew is Avilla, in the eastern edge of Jasper County. Avilla was founded before the Civil War, and it was a going little community during the late 1800s. Even today it still has a population of about 100 people and still has the semblance of a small village, but its heyday is long gone. 

In the "old wagon days," according to a 1921 Springfield Leader article, quite a bit of through traffic passed along the Springfield to Carthage road, and the road was kept up fairly well. However, during the early 1900s, stretches of the road had been allowed to fall into disrepair, as folks were only interested in keeping up the roads that led to their own local centers of commerce. About the only attempt that was made to keep the road up was in the Halltown area. Thus, when a legislative road bill was passed in the summer of 1921 to grade and put down a new coat of gravel on the old Springfield to Carthage road, the proposal was greeted as welcome news by people living along and/or using the road on a regular basis. Cost of the project was not to exceed $6,000 per mile. 

The Leader observed at the time that the Springfield to Carthage road contained "probably the longest undeviating section of road in Southwest Missouri." From the line separating Ranges 25 and 26 (just west of Spencer) to the Jasper County line, the road was a straight shot for nineteen miles.     

Woman Owns a Town

In the summer of 1927, Ada B. Clodfelter sold her property in Springfield (MO), where she had run a boarding house, and purchased the entire town of Garber, a tiny village west of Branson in Taney County with the idea of building it up as a tourist attraction. Located in the Shepherd of the Hills country, Garger was where J. K. Ross, the real-life inspiration for Uncle Matt of the famous Harold Bell Wright book, had his post office for many years, and it was less than a mile from his cabin. 

Shortly after Ada took over the town, an official of the Missouri Pacific Railroad visited Garber to arrange for the appointment of an agent and caretaker at the village. The railroad anticipated that the little resort community, which currently had but one store and about five residences, would become a busy place, and it planned to list Garber on its map.

Already the storekeeper by virtue of having bought the town, Ada was not only appointed the railroad agent for Garber, but she was also appointed postmistress and elected mayor of the little village.

Ada Clodfelter from Springfield Press.

Not long after Ada took over Garber, she had a rustic hotel erected, and in the summer of 1929, she started a publication called the Buzzer Magazine, which she put out singlehandedly. The magazine promoted both women's concerns and the Ozarks as a resort region.

Ada had big plans for Garber. She was an aspiring figurine artist and wanted to start a toy factory. She also wanted to establish a church and women's home at Garber. Indeed, an old folks' home (which was an expansion of the women's home idea) was constructed in 1931, but old people did not flock to occupy the home. 

Moreover, the town never took off as a resort the way Ada (and the railroad) had visualized. Its development was handicapped by a lack of good roads to reach the secluded village. For instance, the road from Garber to nearby Marvel Cave, which was already an established tourist attraction, was a mere trail unsuitable for automobile traffic. So, people who visited Garber had to arrive on foot, by horseback, or via the train, which only stopped at Garber if it carried disembarking passengers or if Ada flagged it down to pick up departing passengers. 

Ada died in early 1933 at the age of 58, and her dream of turning Garber into a booming tourist attraction died with her. She was buried in the Evergreen Cemetery at nearby Notch, which was also the final resting place for "Old Matt" and "Aunt Mollie" Ross. 

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). 

Appalachian Decoration Day

    When I was growing up in Fair Grove in the 1950s, nobody I knew used the term “Memorial Day.” Everybody called it Decoration Day.
    I knew the holiday was a solemn occasion, but I didn’t know it was intended to honor those who had died in service to our country. In my family, that wasn’t how we observed it.
    Instead, it was a day to remember all of one’s deceased loved ones. The holiday was more a family occasion than a patriotic one, and it was especially important to my dad, because his parents were deceased.
    So, every year, on the last Sunday morning in May, my family would pile into the old ’51 Chevy and set out from Greene County headed to Bloodland Cemetery, inside Fort Leonard Wood, eighty-five miles away, where Dad’s parents were buried.
    Dad had grown up in Bloodland, but the small town had been demolished when the fort was built in 1940-1941. Bloodland and several other villages were erased from the map. About the only landmarks left were the cemeteries. People living within the fort’s boundaries had to move, but they could return to visit the graves of their loved ones. 
    Former Bloodland residents made a special effort to come back for Decoration Day, to pay their respects to their deceased loved ones but also to renew old acquaintances. Decoration Day was a time of reunion and solemn remembrance, infused with a picnic atmosphere.
   When my family reached Bloodland, it was usually mid-morning, and a makeshift table with outdoor fare like baked beans and coleslaw would already be set up at the edge of the cemetery grounds. Mom always brought along a dish or two, which she added to the buffet. By the time we decorated my grandparents’ graves and Dad paid his respects to other folks, living and dead, it was usually time to eat. There was always a prayer first and sometimes a hymn. Despite the informal air, a spiritual quality imbued the proceedings.
    About mid-afternoon, Dad would say his goodbyes, and we would load up for the trip home. I was always ready to leave, because I hardly appreciated the Decoration Day tradition at the time.
    In the summer of 1969, though, when I took basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, I found myself looking back wistfully on those boyhood trips to Bloodland Cemetery. It had been almost thirty years since anyone had lived at Bloodland, and many of the former residents were now dead themselves. The tradition of gathering there for Decoration Day was already dying out. But during that hot summer of 1969, when we trainees would march south from the barracks at Fort Leonard Wood to the firing ranges where Bloodland had once been, I would glance over at the cemetery as we passed, and I would remember.
    Dad died in 1970, and he was buried at Greenlawn Cemetery in Springfield. Afterwards, our family tradition of visiting the cemetery on Decoration Day moved to Greenlawn. Even though Dad was a World War II veteran, our trip to the cemetery was still more a personal remembrance of a loved one than a patriotic observance. But the gatherings at Greenlawn had none of the atmosphere of picnic or homecoming I’d witnessed as a boy.
    Eventually, I began to think of the holiday in late May as Memorial Day rather than Decoration Day, and I learned it was formalized shortly after the Civil War as a day for remembering those who’d lost their lives in service to the country. The change in how I referred to the late-May holiday roughly coincided with the adoption of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which established that Memorial Day and certain other holidays would always be observed on a Monday.
    The new law not only helped “Memorial Day” displace “Decoration Day” as the generally accepted term for the late-May holiday, but the three-day weekend provision of the act also gradually caused many people to view the holiday as the unofficial kickoff of summer—a time for going to the lake and having fun. Many Americans today scarcely consider the holiday as a time to honor the deceased.
    I’m not one of the lake-goers, but I’m also not among those who reserve the day for honoring our dead war heroes. Although I long ago adopted the term “Memorial Day” and have come to understand the holiday’s patriotic purpose, I still think of it as a time to remember all my deceased loved ones.
    Since I took basic training, I’ve rarely been back to Bloodland Cemetery. It’s now been almost 85 years since anyone lived in Bloodland, and the tradition of returning to the cemetery for Decoration Day is a faded memory. Yet I still occasionally think about those long-ago family trips to Bloodland, and I get even more nostalgic than I did 55 years ago marching through Missouri’s hot July sun past my grandparents’ graves.
    Only recently did I learn that celebrating “Decoration Day” as a time of reunion and remembering one’s loved ones, as we did at Bloodland, is a tradition that can be traced to Appalachia. Predating even the Civil War, Decoration Day is still practiced in many Appalachian communities today.
    Appalachian Decoration Day got carried to the Ozarks by early settlers, and it flourished here for many years. However, the ritual has melded over time with the more northern tradition of Memorial Day and has been weakened by the secular spirit of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act so that it scarcely exists as a separate, distinguishable tradition.
    But it still lives in the hearts and minds of many of us Ozarks folk who have always thought of Memorial Day not as a day for honoring our military dead but instead as a day for getting together to celebrate our families and remember our loved ones who have gone before us. That doesn’t make us unpatriotic or unappreciative of those who have died in service to America. It just means we’re following a different tradition.

P. S. Last time, I mentioned that I'd started building an author website for the first time and that it was a work-in-progress. I didn't realize just how much of a work-in-progress it was. For instance, I didn't know that you had to format the darn thing especially for mobile devices separately from how you format it for desktops. Anyway, it's still a work-in-progress, but I have made a little progress since last week. Here's a link for anybody who wants to check it out: https://www.larrywoodauthor.com/.