County Names

In an entry I posted a year or so ago, I remarked that certain towns in the Ozarks were once known by a previous name, such as Dadeville having first been called Melville. The same is true about some of the counties in the region. For instance, Texas County was first called Ashley County, and McDonald County was first named Seneca County (after the Seneca Indians who lived in the region). What was originally Kinderhook County is now Camden county, and Dallas County was supposedly given its present name because its original name, Niangua, was considered too hard to spell and pronounce. One of the more interesting name changes pertains to Ozark County. It was originally given that name when it was first formed but changed its name to Decatur County and was known as such for a couple of years during the 1840s before changing its name back to Ozark.
I'm not sure whether there is an equivalent town in the Ozarks--one that briefly flirted with a different name before changing its name back to its original.

Jesse James Was My Great Uncle

Yesterday, I was looking through some books in the local history room of the Joplin Public Library about Joplin's early history. Some of the stories chronicled in a couple of the books appear to be based mainly on oral legend and after-the-fact exaggeration rather than contemporaneous evidence. One such story that caught my eye was the oft-repeated assertion that the infamous outlaw Jesse James spent considerable time in and around Joplin. For instance, Jesse, using an assumed name, was supposedly introduced to a Joplin banker during the 1870s, and when the banker found out Jesse''s real name, he worried that the James gang would rob his bank. Jesse, though, upon learning of the man's concern, assured the banker that he would never rob a bank around Joplin because he considered it his hometown.
From what I've been able to discern from first-hand sources, this story and those like it are, at best, exaggeration. It's true that Jesse James was known to have passed through the Joplin area at least a time or two, but there's no documentation that he ever spent any considerable amount of time here. Same goes for the Younger brothers, who, like Jesse, are sometimes reported to have been denizens of Joplin. The Youngers' half-uncle Bruce Younger did frequent the town during its early days, and Fletch Taylor (Quantrill lieutenant and the James boys' immediate commander during the Civil War) did move to Joplin during the early lead-mining days and became a leading citizen of the town. Jesse's sister was even reported in a local newspaper as having visited Taylor in Joplin. But the Younger gang and the James boys mainly spent their time (when they weren't actively on the run) farther north around Jackson County, St. Clair County, and so forth, or else in Texas.
The exaggerated stories about Jesse James's exploits in and around Joplin, though, are hardly unique. Nearly every county in the Ozarks (or the Midwest for that matter), it seems, lays claim to some connection to the notorious outlaw. And if you get to talking about family history with the people you meet, it seems that about half of them claim kinship to Jesse, as though it were some badge of honor.

Old-time Newspaper Editors

I do a lot of perusing of old newspapers, and I am often amused by the sardonic wit that editors of the nineteenth century exhibited, a sense of humor that is often missing in today's more matter-of-fact approach to journalism. Another thing that characterized reporting from the 1800s that is largely absent today was a keen competition between rival newspapers. (Perhaps the main reason it's missing today is the simple fact that there are not nearly as many papers as there used to be.)
Often these two traits of nineteenth century reporting (humor and competition)were combined when the editor of one newspaper would snipe at the editor of a rival paper. If the rival papers happened to be situated in rival towns (as opposed to being located in the same town), the sniping was often accompanied by bragging on one's own town while poking fun at the rival town. It's amusing today to look back at some of these editorial jabs.
Here, for instance, is a brief comment from the editor of the Springfield Times that appeared in his November 7, 1877 edition: "Blessed is Granby! She only has 37 dogs within her corporate limits. Our marshal sees to it that more than that number are killed every week." This little item was no doubt in response to a complaint about dogs that had recently appeared in the Granby Miner. Another item from a later edition of the same Springfield paper gives a hint of the rivalry that existed between Springfield and Joplin: "The following, from the Joplin Herald, is cool and refreshing in a village like ours: 'Main street presented its old-time appearance last night. The gambling halls and saloons were crowded and money seems to be plenty.'" The editor may have been a bit smug about Springfield's superior morality, but many Springfieldians couldn't resist the lure of the money that flowed in Joplin during the mining boom and moved 70 miles west to get in on the riches.

Highway 63 and Marked Tree

I just came back from Sunday's Talladega Superspeedway NASCAR race. On the way home, we drove to Memphis and then took Highway 63 thru Jonesboro, Ark. to West Plains, Mo. It's a stretch of road I had never been on before. Considering that I have lived in the Ozarks virtually my entire life of over 60 years, it sometimes amazes me that there are still a lot of places in this region that I've never been. I've probably been to most of them but not nearly all.
One of the towns I had never been to that we passed through was Marked Tree, Arkansas. The name caught my attention because it just so happens that I've been doing a little research on a notorious character named Robbie Camden, sometimes called the Robin Hood of the Ozarks, who was a terror to south central Missouri during the 1920s and 1930s. He was from the Reynolds County area, but one time, when he was on the run from the law after a shootout with the Dent County, Missouri, sheriff, he got into a second gun battle with police near Marked Tree. He was seriously injured, and it was thought his wounds might prove fatal, but he recovered and, after getting out of prison, went on to pull off other crimes, including at least one murder.

Missouri Counties during the Civil War

Recently I was reading excerpts from William Monks's book entitled A History of Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas, and I was struck by an observation the author made about the differing political makeup of Howell County, where he lived, and that of neighboring Oregon County. Monks was a former Union officer who had made a name for himself fighting Confederate bushwhackers during the war. After the war, he went home to West Plains. Although his family and those of many other Union men had been forced out of Howell County during the war, Union sentiment soon dominated in the county once they returned. Not so in neighboring Oregon County, where lawless bands under former Confederate guerrillas like Dick Kitchen and Jim Jamison held sway. Monks was called upon by Missouri Governor Thomas Fletcher to help eradicate the lawless bands from Oregon County.
What struck me as interesting was the fact that two adjoining counties could be dominated by such diametrically opposed political sentiments. During the Civil War, the state of Missouri was very divided, but generally speaking Union sentiment dominated in the urban areas (especially St. Louis), while Confederate sympathies were more prominent in the rural areas. The general rule, though, did not always apply. For instance, in the southwest corner of the state (the part of Missouri I am most familiar with), Vernon County was about as Southern in sentiment as a county could be. Yet, Cedar County, right next door to the east, tended to be dominated by Union sentiment. This clash in sentiment between neighboring counties led indirectly to the murder of Augustus Baker by John Frizzell in May of 1863 and more directly to the subsequent burning of Nevada later the same month.

Hudspeth-Watkins Murder Case

The Andrew Hudspeth-George Watkins murder case that occurred in Marion County, Arkansas, in the late 1880s is one of the most interesting in the history of the Ozarks. The families of the two men were living together on the same farm west of Yellville, and apparently the intimate living arrangements proved too much temptation for Hudspeth and Watkins's wife. One day Hudspeth and Watkins came to Yellville together in Watkins's wagon, and that night Hudspeth came home alone driving the wagon. After the disappearance came to light, Rebecca Watkins admitted that she and Hudspeth were lovers, that they had plotted her husband's murder together, and that she was sure Andy had carried it out, although she wasn't present at the time and didn't know what he had done with the body. Much of her story was supported by the testimony of her and George's eleven-year-old son.
Andy Hudspeth was convicted of the murder, and, after considerable delay caused by his escape from jail and by numerous appeals on his behalf, he was eventually hanged in late 1892. In the meantime, Rebecca, awaiting indictment on a charge of being an accessory to the crime, died while in custody. The case took a strange twist in the summer of 1893 when George Watkins was supposedly found alive living on a farm in Kansas. The report was soon followed by a second story claiming the first one was a hoax, but the idea that George Watkins was found alive after Andy Hudspeth was executed for his murder is repeated as gospel even today on certain websites dedicated to exposing abuse in the American justice system. Obviously, if the story were true, it would be an extreme miscarriage of justice, but there is considerable evidence to suggest that Hudspeth did, in fact, kill George Watkins. 

More Weather: 11-11-11

Last time I mentioned a few memorable weather events that have occurred in the Ozarks over the years. I forgot to mention perhaps the most spectacular one of all, though, "the Great Blue Norther" that happened on November 11, 1911. It was then that many areas in the Midwest, including towns like Springfield, Missouri, recorded their record high and record low on the same day. The morning and early afternoon of 11-11-11 was unusually mild. In Springfield, for instance, the temperature was in the low 80s in the early afternoon before the storm hit. By midnight it had dropped to around 13 degrees. Both extremes set records for the date, and I believe that one or both records still stand. I, of course, don't remember this weather event. I'm old but not quite that old. I do, however, remember old-timers from my youth occasionally talking about it. My grandmother, for instance, recalled that the temperature dropped so rapidly that most of her family's potato crop, which had been stored in a shed, froze before she and her siblings could move the potatoes to the cellar.