Springfield Normal School

I remember hearing, when I attended Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State University), that the school started as a normal school, but I never knew for sure exactly what a normal school was. After looking the term up, I can say that a normal school was school designed to train students to become teachers. It came from the French term "ecole normale," and such schools were meant to establish certain "norms" or standards in the teaching profession. Thus, the word "normal." The normal school, officially called the Fourth District State Normal School, was established in 1905 (first classes in 1906). It became Southwest Missouri Teachers College in 1919. The name changed again in 1945 to Southwest Missouri State College and yet again in 1972 when the "College" part of the name became "University." Finally, in 2005 the institution received its current name, Missouri State University.
So, the current university has gone through quite a few incarnations, and, actually, even the State Normal School had a forerunner, called Springfield Normal School. It was a private institution founded in 1894 and located at the corner of Cherry and Pickwick. Like most normal schools of the day, it was a two-year institution, and it offered only one degree, a master of pedagogy. Springfield Normal School merged with the Fourth District Normal School when the latter opened in 1906, and, in fact, classes for the State Normal School were held in the old Springfield Normal School building for the first couple of years (until the building that is now known on the MSU campus as Carrington Hall was completed in 1909).

The All-American Redheads

Long before the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), a women's professional basketball team called the All-American Redheads toured the United States, succesfully competing against men's teams and entertaining spectators in much the same fashion that the Harlem Globetrotters did on the men's side. The Redheads got their start in 1936 at Cassville, Missouri, where the owner and organizer of the team, Connie Mack (C. M.) Olson, lived at the time. Olson owned and played for a barnstorming men's team, and since his wife, Doyle, was also a good basketball player, he decided to start a traveling women's team that would play by men's rules, featuring five-on-five, full-court basketball rather than six-on-six, half-court basketball that girls usually played at the time. He recruited girls who were not only good basketball players but who were also tall and physical. The women regularly beat men's and boys' teams when they went on the road in 1936, but the thing that contributed to their success perhaps as much as their playing ability was a marketing gimmick that Olson came up with. His wife, Doyle, owned and operated several beauty parlors in the area, and someone suggested that all the girls who weren't already redheaded should color their hair using henna dye. The suggeston was adopted, the team became the All-American Redheads, and fans began flocking to see them play.
In the mid 1950s, Olson sold the Redheads to Orwell Moore, whom he had previously hired to coach the team, and Moore moved the team's headquarters to Caraway, Arkansas. Title IX of the Education Amendment of 1972, more than any other factor, contributed to the gradual demise of the All-American Redheads, because it opened up previously unavailable opportunities for girls and young women to compete in high school and college basketball just as boys and young men had been doing for years. Instead of aspiring to play for the Redheads, outstanding female basketball players gradually began aspiring to play for stellar college teams like the University of Tennessee. The Redheads finally disbanded in 1986, and the team played its last game ten years later when former players got together for a reunion.

Norman Baker and the Crescent Hotel

Eureka Springs, from its very beginning in 1879, has always drawn a lot of unusual characters. I don't mean this as a put-down of Eureka Springs, because I like the town. I especially like its quaint shops and its artistic leanings, and I'm sure my opening observation is not as applicable nowadays as it used to be. At least in the town's early days, though, many eccentric, adventurous, or sometimes even desperate people flocked to Eureka Springs to "take the cure" of the town's healing waters or otherwise be rejuvenated, and along with the seekers came hucksters and charlatans ready to take advantage of them.
One such faker was Norman Baker, who purchased the Crescent Hotel in 1937, at a time when the historic landmark had faded and was in disrepair and the city fathers looked to Baker to help revitalize the town. Baker had already earned a reputation as a medical quack and a political demagogue even before he landed in Eureka Springs. Despite having no medical training himself, he had started a hospital in his home state of Iowa that offered alternative cures for cancer and also started a radio station that he used to hawk his phony cancer cures and to promote a sort of right-wing populism that fostered distrust in government, science, education, and any religious tradition other than Protestant.
In Eureka Springs, Baker painted the Crescent in flamboyant colors, turned it into a hospital, and once again began hawking his dubious cancer cures. He was soon charged with mail fraud for sending literature through the mail promoting his unconventional cures, was convicted, and spent over three years from 1941 to 1944 in a Federal penitentiary at Leavenworth. He later returned to Iowa, where he tried unsuccessfully to reopen his medical facility there. He lived the last several years of his life aboard a yacht off the coast of Florida. He died in 1958, and his body was returned to Iowa for burial.

Lucille Morris Upton

To future generations of Ozarkians, Lucille Morris Upton may best be remembered as the author of a book about the Bald Knobbers, but I remember her best as editor of a column in the Springfield Daily News that she filled with poetry and stories from contributors throughout the Ozarks. Originally called the "The Wastebasket," the title of the column evolved to "The Ozarks Wastebasket" and then to "Over the Ozarks." The column ran from 1947 to 1963 under Upton's editorship (although it predated her editorship) and continued for some years after 1963 under other editorship. Some of the contributors were well known, like Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni (poet laureate of Arkansas) and Edsel Ford. Others were somewhat lesser known, such as my father, Ben L. Wood, whose poetry regularly appeared in the column, while there were no doubt some contributors who were published in "Over the Ozarks" one or two times and never again in the Springfield paper or anywhere else. The column was filled mostly with poetry, but it also included brief stories and tales.
Upton also edited a column entitled "Good Old Days" that appeared only in the Sunday edition of the Springfield newspaper. It focused on the history of Springfield. Upton would comb Springfield newspapers from 50 years earlier and then write fictitious letters from "Celia" to her aunt in St. Louis describing what was going on in Springfield at that time (50 years prior).

The Cobbites of White County

I have mentioned previously that the late 1880s were a time a great social and religious experimentation. After the turmoil of the Civil War, people were looking for some meaning in their lives and were willing to try new things they might not otherwise have tried in times of more stability. Some of the experimental groups were mere fads that lasted only a short time, while others enjoyed a period of popularity before dying out slowly, but a few morphed into the mainstream and are still going relatively strong today (e.g. Christian Science).
Perhaps the most bizarre religious group to settle in the Ozarks during this time was the one that took up residence in a house a few miles south of Searcy in White County, Arkansas, in 1876 under the Rev. Cobb. Known as the "walking preacher," the leader of the group reportedly came from Tennessee and held outlandish beliefs, but little else was known about him. His "atrocious doctrines," as the New York Times called them, included the belief that he himself was God or Jesus Christ and that he could perform miracles, such as commanding the sun to rise or set by wielding a sycamore pole.
His followers, called Cobbites, were just as strange and fanatical as he was. One of their peculiar behaviors was walking back and forth on the housetop with their eyes closed, supposedly to prove that they were chosen and protected by God. They believed that the only way they could become Christ-like was to be "sanctified" and that "sanctification" could only come to the women through Rev. Cobb and then to the rest of the group through the women.
The group's antics soon aroused the alarm and curiosity of local people, and several who ventured out to investigate reported being dragged inside the house and forced to pray with the group. In the late summer of 1876, only a few months after the group arrived in White County, two local men went out to see what all the uproar was about, and the Cobbites went out to greet them with entreaties to come inside and "see God." When one of the men made a sarcastic remark, the group started shouting "Kill him!", dragged him from his wagon, and chopped off his head with an ax. The other man fled and reported what happened. A mob quickly formed, went to the Cobbite settlement, killed two of the men, and arrested a few of the other "murderous Cobbites," as the Times later called them. However, Cobb himself managed to escape and was never captured.

Cane Hill Murders of 1839

There have been a handful of notorious mass murder cases in the Ozarks over the years. Bill Cook's murder of the Mosser family at Joplin in the early 1950s and Jodie Hamilton's killing of the Parsons family in Texas County in 1906, both of which I've mentioned previously on this blog, come readily to mind, for instance.
One of the earliest, if not the earliest, mass murder that occurred in the Ozarks after the area was settled by whites happened at Cane Hill, Arkansas, in 1839. On the night of June 15, at least three men came to the cabin of William Wright, and one of them called out, asking if the men could spend the night. When Wright went to the door, the men immediately killed him. Aroused by the commotion, Wright's wife, Nancy (or Frances as some sources identify her), ran outside and hurried to a neighbor's cabin to tell what had happened. Her oldest daughter was also able to flee, but after Mrs. Wright and the daughter were gone, the intruders entered their house and killed four of the remaining Wright children: a baby, two young girls, and a boy. Another boy was also badly injured. The murderers stole what money they could find and then set fire to the cabin and fled. Three Wright children who were still alive pulled the bodies of their father and two of their siblings out of the fire.
Speculation in the immediate wake of the tragedy suggested that the perpetrators of the crime had been Cherokee Indians, but suspicion quickly turned to some local white men, who, it was thought, had committed the crime for money. A "Regulating Company" of prominent local men was quickly formed to investigate the matter, and seven men were soon arrested as persons of interest in the crime. They were released after furnishing alibis, but one of them, Asbury Richmond, was later overheard supposedly accusing his brother and some other men of having killed the Wrights and damaging his (Asbury's) reputation. John Richmond and two other men were arrested and, after a hearing conducted by the Regulating Company, were hanged on July 29, 1839. A fourth suspect was later apprehended and also hanged in December of 1839. Later critics have claimed that the executions amounted to little more than lynchings and that the men who were hanged were innocent. Such, however, was the justice system on the early frontier--swift and severe but often lacking in due process.

Annie Baxter

Annie (White) Baxter caused quite a stir in southwest Missouri and elsewhere when she was elected in the November 1890 election to become Jasper County's first female county clerk, approximately thirty years before women could even vote. The election of Annie Baxter made the New York Times, which reported on the Jasper County result as a "peculiar feature of Tuesday's contest in Missouri." Apparently there were some people in Jasper County who did not want to accept the result as valid, claiming that Annie had to be a citizen and that, since she couldn't vote, she wasn't a full-fledged citizen. Annie had scored a fairly overwhelming victory, though, and she was not to be denied. She became the first woman ever elected to a county-wide office in the state of Missouri. Some have claimed she was the first woman elected to a county-wide office in the entire United States, but this is apparently not true.
Despite running as a Democrat in heavily Republican Jasper County, Annie won the election by a majority of almost 700 votes. Her opponent had apparently taken her candidacy lightly and had not campaigned heavily. Annie, though, had formerly worked for several years in the office of a previous county clerk, and she was considered amply qualified. She campaigned tirelessly for the position, while her opponent regarded her candidacy as a joke. In addition, Jasper County miners got behind her candidacy and canvassed for her, going from one house to another shouting and singing "Annie Rooney," their nickname for Ms. Baxter. Annie served as Jasper County Clerk for four years before losing the 1894 in a Republican landslide. Today, a street in Joplin is named for Annie Baxter.