Slicker Wars and other Vigilante Feuds

Vigilante movements of old usually started in one particular area but often spread to neighboring communities. For instance, the Bald Knobberism that sprang up in Taney County during the mid 1880s soon spread to nearby Christian and Douglas counties. Also, sometimes a later vigilante movement would simply take the name of an earlier one. The Regulators of Greeene County shortly after the close of the Civil War were preceded by the Regulators of Missouri's territorial days fifty years earlier. The territorial Regulators were centered around the St. Louis area, notably St. Charles County, and spread to nearby counties like Lincoln. The dispute, at least initially, involved bogus bank notes. There have been other vigilante groups throughout American history who called themselves "regulators," and there may well have been others just in Missouri's history, because the term "regulators" was quite common.
The Slicker Wars of the 1840s in Benton and Hickory counties of Missouri also had some of the characteristics of a vigilante movement, although it apparently devolved into little more than a feud. It, too, seemingly spread from its point of origin to neighboring communities, but even pinning down exactly where its point of origin was is somewhat difficult. I've read at least two different accounts of the feud. One says it started south of Warsaw but still in Benton County, whereas the other places the center of the feud around Quincy in Hickory County and extending as far south as Elkton, which was a "hot bed of contention." Both accounts give Turk, Jones, and Nowell (or Newell) as some of the principal family names associated with the feud, but one account also chronicles the large role played by the Hobbs family while the other fails to even mention the Hobbses. Apparently the Slicker Wars started out as a dispute over gambling but expanded into a general feud.
As I mentioned in a previous post, researching pre-Civil War events in the Ozarks is difficult, but finding out more about the so-called Slicker Wars of the Benton/Hickory counties area is something I might like to attempt one of these days.

Silver Springs

In previous posts, I've mentioned the mineral water craze that swept through the country about 1880 and continued throughout the next decade or two. I've also mentioned specifically several towns in the Ozarks that were established during this time as mineral water resorts. Some of them were very successful and are still thriving towns today. Eureka Springs is perhaps the best example. Others flourished briefly before declining almost as rapidly as they sprang up and then receding into history to the point that little, if anything, remains to mark the spot where the town was located. Saratoga Springs, which I wrote about in a previous post, is an example.
I guess, however, there is yet another category: mineral water towns that were laid out but never actually populated. Silver Springs in McDonald County, Missouri, appears to be such a town. The place was surveyed and given the name Silver Springs in August of 1881 by a couple named William and Arzelia Harness, but that's about as far as the venture ever got. Sturgis's History of McDonald County tells the story in vivid language of what happened afterwards: "The seasons came and went. William's beard grew grizzled, and the cheeks of the fair Arzelia lost the pink tint of youth, but adversity flapped her wings over the enterprise, and their bright dreams of stocking legs filled with the shining metal vanished for aye--and the water still trickles through the gravel as of yore."
The county history places Silver Springs in Section 6, Township 22, Range 29, but I haven't found it listed on any maps and I'm not familiar enough with the townships and ranges of McDonald County to know where the place was located (or was intended to be located).

The Elusive Frank Martin

As I've mentioned previously, I often find secondary topics to write about while I'm researching a primary subject. I don't necessarily take much notice of the second topic, though, unless I encounter the same subject again later on. If I run onto the same topic more than once, I usually begin to think that maybe it's a subject worth writing about.
An example is the case of Frank Martin of Laclede County, Missouri, that occurred circa 1880. When I first read about this case it didn't strike me as particularly fascinating, even though it had an element of romantic intrigue, but I've run onto multiple items about the case in 1880s newspapers and have begun to think that, if it was followed so closely at the time, maybe it's worth writing about now.
Briefly the facts of the case are these: Martin, a young man of about 20 years old, killed a man named George Mizer in Laclede County on June 9, 1879 (one report says Mizer was Martin's uncle). In February 1880, Martin was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang, but while the case was being appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, the sheriff's niece, Maggie Wilson, who apparently had fallen in love with the jailbird, helped him escape in November of 1880. She and the fugitive absconded together, got married, and settled down together in Tennessee. Martin, though, was recaptured in Sullivan County, Tennessee, about the first of September of 1881 and brought back to Missouri aboard a train. As the train slowed for a hill near Dixon (in Pulaski County just east of Laclede), the prisoner, even though he was shackled at the wrists and ankles, leaped from the train and made his escape, as a search turned up no trace of him. He was later recaptured at his father's farm in Laclede County, but in the meantime, the Supreme Court had granted him a new trial on the murder charge. He was retried in Dallas County on a change of venue in April of 1882 and was found not guilty. His wife, meanwhile, had given birth to twin babies after having been held briefly in the Laclede County jail for aiding her husband in his first escape, and the couple was, as one newspaper worded it, "rewarded by an opportunity for them to live in peace a wedded life begun under such adverse circumstances."

Killings in Butler

Recently I visited the Oak Hill Cemetery at Butler, Mo. to take pictures of the tombstones of J. H. Morgan and John P. Willis. The two men killed each other in 1889 while Morgan was serving as the city marshal of Butler and Willis was a deputy U. S. marshal. The incident will be one of the subjects covered in my next book; so more about them later. While I was at the cemetery, though, the sexton told me about another Butler lawmen, A. J. Aleshire, who also lost his life in the line of duty. A little research revealed that Aleshire was a night watchman and was killed by a man named Summer Holcomb when the two got into a dispute. Holcomb was eventually found not guilty of murder, something that seemed to happen with regularity in the Wild West days. If two men got mad at each other and one or both went for their weapons, the killer was often not convicted of any crime. Murder, it seems, almost had to be premeditated and cold-blooded in order to result in conviction of a crime. Aleshire's tombstone says that he died in March of 1893. However, a genealogy website that I found says the incident happened in March of 1883. I think the 1893 date is right, but I'll have to do a little more research to find out for sure. Interestingly, Aleshire's oldest son was killed in Butler just a little over a year after Aleshire was killed. Again the assailant was found not guilty.
I'm scheduled to give a presentation at the Grove (Oklahoma) Public Library at noon on November 18. I'll be talking about both my Ozarks gunfights book and my book on the two battles of Newtonia.

Two Blacks Lynched By Burning at Carthage

Last time I promised to give a brief account of the burning of two black men at Carthage that occurred in 1853, as the event was chronicled in the Springfield Advertiser (and later reprinted in the Liberty Tribune). The newspaper account largely agrees with the account written years later that appears in Livingston's History of Jasper County. Indeed, Livingston, who no doubt was privvy to details not available to the newspaper, gives a more thorough account than the Advertiser. The county history, though, was wrong in at least one important detail. Livingston says the event occurred in August of 1853 when the actual date was July 30, 1853. A slave named Colley, who belonged to a man named Dale, apparently decided to rob a Dr. Fisk after Dale paid Fisk a fairly large sum of money in a business transaction, and he recruited a slave who belonged to a neighboring farmer named Scott to help in the scheme. A few nights after the business transaction, Colley went to the Fisk house and said that his master, Mr. Dale, needed the doctor's services. Dr. Fisk grabbed his doctor's bag and headed toward the Dale farm. He had gone but a little distance when he was accosted by the Scott slave, who was lying in wait. Trailing behind Dr. Fisk, Colley came up and joined his partner in crime, and together the two killed the doctor by knocking him in the head with an ax. Not finding any money on the doctor, they returned to Fisk's house, where they killed his wife and child. (They reportedly also outraged the wife, but this report probably needs to be taken with a grain of salt, as it may have been an embellishment that was added to the tale simply to inflame opinion against the murderous pair.) Colley was quickly apprehended and made a confession, but the other slave made a run for it and was caught a couple of days later several miles north of Carthage. He was brought back to town, where the townspeople held an impromptu "trial" and convicted the pair of killing the Fisk family. A vote was taken on whether to hang the men or burn them, and burning won on an almost-two-to-one vote. On Saturday, July 30, the two were chained to stakes and burned to death in downtown Carthage with a large gathering of spectators in attendance.

Pre-Civil War Southwest Missouri Records

Most of my historical writing has been about either the Civil War or events (often notorious events) that have occurred since the Civil War. One reason for this is simply that the Civil War provides a natural dividing point, but the main reason that I haven't written much, if anything, about pre-Civil War events is that there is a dearth of primary sources pertaining to those events, particularly if the events occurred in the southwest Missouri area, my primary area of interest. For instance, almost no southwest Missouri newspapers from the pre-Civil War era survive, mainly because they were burned during the war by bushwhackers or other raiding parties. Most county records were likewise destroyed when courthouses were burned. (Many county records were also destroyed by accidental fire after the war during the late 1800s.) There are a few scattered issues of Springfield newspapers from the pre-Civil War era that are extant, but that's about the extent of antebellum newspapers from southwest Missouri.
So, it's unusual to find a newspaper account of something that happened in southwest Missouri during the 1840s, 1850s, or early 1860s. Occasionally, however, if an event was newsworthy enough, other newspapers in Missouri or elsewhere might publish an account of the event from a special correspondent, or more likely they would reprint an account of the event that had originally appeared in a southwest Missouri newspaper. That is what happened in the case of the burning of two slaves at Carthage by a vigilante mob in late July of 1853. A brief story of the event was published in the Springfield Advertiser but then was reprinted in the Liberty (Mo.) Tribune. So, thanks to the Tribune, we do have at least a brief contemporaneous account of this event. (The event is also described in Jasper County histories written years after the fact.) I'll describe what the Tribune (i.e. the Advertiser) said about the event next time.

Cora Hubbard Addendum

My book on Ozarks Gunfights and Other Notorious Incidents contains a chapter on Cora Hubbard, the female bandit who helped rob the Pineville, Missouri, bank in 1897. Cora was convicted of robbery and sentenced to twelve years in prison, but, as I say at the end of the chapter, the sentence was commuted by the governor and she was released on January 1, 1905. I still don't know what happened to her after her release, but I do have a little more information (that I didn't have at the time I wrote the book) about Cora's time in prison. According to an article in a Jefferson City newspaper at the time of her release, she had been employed as a seamstress during her incarceration and had been a model prisoner. Now proficient at sewing, she planned to seek employment in that line of work.