Kruse Gold Mine

I have remarked several times on the fact that the late 1880s were a time of great social experimentation. The Civil War had not only split the country geographically, but it had also torn apart the social and moral fabric of its people. Many folks were looking for something they could believe in, and the era gave rise to Utopian or idealistic religious and social movements. The medicinal water craze of the late nineteenth century was a somewhat tangible manifestation of this "searching for a cure" mentality. During this time, there was great tolerance for new ideas. Many people were chasing pipe dreams, and some of the ideas and movements that arose were downright whacky. An example is the gold mine started by William Henry Kruse at his father's Rogers, Arkansas, farm in 1905. The idea that great deposits of gold lay beneath the soil of his father's farm near a wild apple sapling had first come to him in a "vision" during the late 1800s. Family members looked but could not find such a sapling. Kruse's visualizations and psychic revelations, however, became so persistent and strong that he finally traveled from his home in Minnesota to his father's farm in 1902 and located the sapling himself. He had a sample of soil assayed. Although it revealed only faint traces of gold, as any sample might have, that was enough to confirm for Kruse that he was on to something. Mining operations officially began at the site on September 15, 1905, to considerable fanfare, when thirty men and seven teams of horses were employed and a procession of people marched from downtown Rogers to the farm at the edge of town to watch. Eventually several mine shafts were dug and smelters were built, but no rich vein of gold was discovered. Still, Kruse was undeterred. The operation finally stalled about 1912 but did not die out altogether until his death in 1925. The remarkable thing about the Kruse Gold Mine, as it relates to my previous comments about Utopian movements, is that Kruse was not motivated by greed or a desire for wealth. Rather his vision was that he would share the immense wealth buried on the farm to help alleviate world poverty. Instead, he succeeded only in leaving himself and his family impoverished.

Ponce de Leon

I've written several times before on this blog about mineral water towns that sprang up in the Ozarks during the medicinal water craze that began in the area about 1879. (Eureka Springs, perhaps the most successful of all the mineral water towns started in July of that year.) However, a few medicinal water towns in the Ozarks actually predated the so-called craze of the 1880s that I have mentioned several times. One ssuch town was Monegaw Springs, located in St. Clair County, Missouri, that actually predated the Civil War. Another medicinal town that predated the craze of the eighties was Ponce de Leon, located in northeast Stone County where three springs converged. Named for the Spanish explorer, it was established during the mid 1870s by two Springfield businessmen, Fountain "Fount" T. Welch and a Mr. Stetson. Within a few years, Poncie or Poncy, as it was often called (and still is), boasted a population of almost a thousand people, making it the largest town in Stone County. By the mid 1880s, however, when other mineral water towns were just getting started, Ponce de Leon had already dwindled considerably, and by about 1890 only ten to fifteen families lived in Poncy. Some of the buildings from the town's glory days were moved when the place started to peter out as resort, while others were simply allowed to deteriorate. Today, the town is little more than a wide place in the road.

John S. Phelps--Missouri Governor

During my college days at Missouri State University (then Southwest Missouri State College) in Springfield, I lived very close to Phelps Grove Park a few blocks south of the college. I knew that the park was named after John S. Phelps, who had once owned the land where the park was, and I had a vague knowledge that he had been a well-known person, but I really didn't know much about him. A lawyer by trade, Phelps came to Springfield in the late 1830s and was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives in 1840. In 1845, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and served there until 1863. At the outbreak of the Civil War, while still a member of Congress, Phelps joined the Union army as a private but was quickly promoted to lieutenant colonel and then colonel. During the winter of 1861-62, he raised a regiment, called simply Phelps's regiment, at Rolla, and the unit joined the Federal army in early 1862 as it marched into southwest Missouri and drove the occupying Confederates into northwest Arkansas. Phelps led his regiment at the Battle of Pea Ridge in March of 1862 but then shortly afterwards was mustered out of the service. In 1876, Phelps was elected governor of Missouri and served one term from 1877 to 1881.

Skirmish at Humansville

On March 26, 1862, a minor action occurred at Humansville, Missouri, when a party of about 300-400 irregular Confederate soldiers skirmished with two companies of McClurg's Batallion Missouri State Militia (later the 8th Cavalry Missouri State Militia) on the southern outskirts of the town. Losses on both sides were minimal, although one of those killed was the rebel leader, Colonel Frazier. The skirmish is, therefore, considered a Union victory, since the Southerners retired after Frazier was killed. Several accounts of this affair identify the rebel leader who was killed as Colonel Julian Frazier of Wright County, the same man who commanded the Southern force at Springfield at the time of Zagonyi's charge in the fall of 1861. However, this is an error. The man who was fatally wounded at Humansville was Colonel James M. Frazier, a prominent citizen of Cedar County prior to the war. The definite proof of this appears in a Union Provost Marshal's file in which a man named German P. Bacon of Cedar County is charged with violating the laws of war for participating in the skirmish as part of James M. Frazier's guerrilla band. A separate Provost Marshal's file charges a second Cedar County man with the same offense, although Frazier's last name is not given in this second file. A contemporaneous newspaper account of this skirmish identifies the rebel leader as "Polk" Frazier. This, of course, does not prove that his name was actually James instead of Julian, but it's probably more likely that a man named James who grew up during the 1840s would be called "Polk" than a man named Julian, since James K. Polk was president during that time. In addition, nearly all the men under Frazier were recruits from the Cedar and Vernon County areas (including Henry Taylor and his men). It's unlikely Julian Frazier from Wright County would have been recruiting in the Cedar and Vernon County area. Missouri guerrillas and former Missouri State Guard leaders who were recruiting for the Confederacy almost always operated in the general area where they lived or had grown up.

Catawissa Mass Murderer

Another notorious incident in the state of Missouri that I considered including in my forthcoming book tentatively entitled Murder and Mayhem in Missouri but decided not to include is the story of Bertha Gifford, a mass murderer at Catawissa, Missouri, in the early part of the 20th century. Catawissa is a small community in Franklin County a few miles south of I-44 near Pacific. Bertha was a 53-year-old farmer's wife who was known in the Catawissa community for caring for and feeding the sick. She was also said to be a regular visitor at funerals. In August of 1928, it was discovered that she had been doing more than feeding and caring for some of her patients. She was arrested for having poisoned a boy and a man with arsenic by putting it in their food. She admitted to the deeds after being arrested and also admitted to killing a third victim, another child, by the same method. She said she did it to try and comfort them. Although indicted for the murders of only the man and the first child, she was, after further investigation, suspected of 18 or 19 murders in all, beginning in 1911. Bertha was tried for murder at Union in the fall of 1928 and found not guilty by reason of insanity. She was committed to the mental instituion at Farmington and spent the rest of her life there, dying in 1951.

Midway

I've written at least a couple of times before about the phenomenon of towns that changed their names. Another such town is the current town of Jasper, Missouri, which started out as Midway. Located in northern Jasper County near the Barton County border, the town was founded in 1868 and took the place of an earlier settlement by the same name on the other side of the border in Barton County. Both communities got their names because of the fact that they were approximately halfway between the established towns of Carthage and Lamar. In 1876, a post office was established at Midway and called Jasper, supposedly so that it could utilize the equipment of a defunct post office named Jasper that had previously existed for a short while southeast of Carthage. (In the 1870s, a community named Knights existed at or near the same location southeast of Carthage where the first Jasper had been, but I'm not sure whether they were the same place.) After Midway changed its name to Jasper, it was often called Jasper City to distinguish it from the county in which it was located, but nowadays it is just called Jasper.

Lula Noel: The Knoxville Girl

I'm currently working on a new book, tentatively entitled Murder and Mayhem in Missouri. Like my Ozarks Gunfights book and my Desperadoes of the Ozarks book, this one will be about an assortment of notorious incidents. Whereas the first two books concentrated on the Ozarks, including portions of Arkansas, Kansas, and Oklahoma, the new one will concentrate only on Missouri but will include the whole state. One of the incidents I debated about including in the new book was the murder of Mary Lula Noel in McDonald County in December of 1892. I decided against including it for a couple of reasons, but the incident is still a fairly interesting story. The basic facts of the case are as follows: Lula Noel was staying with her sister near Lanagan, Missouri, when a young man from Joplin named William Simmons, who had been courting her for several months, came down to visit on December 7, 1892. On Saturday the 10th, the sister and her husband left to visit relatives with the understanding that Simmons would return to Joplin and Lula would go to her parents' house on the other side of nearby Cowskin Creek. Simmons returned to Joplin as planned, but Lula didn't show up at her parents' home. Alarm for her safety grew throughout the following week as she remained missing. On Saturday, December 17, exactly one week after her disappearance, her body was found floating in Cowskin Creek just a quarter mile or so from the crossing she would have used to go to her parents' house. A coroner's examination of the body revealed that she had not drowned but instead been killed before being placed in the water, having been choked and also struck with a blunt instrument. Simmons was immediately suspected of the crime, and he was arrested on the evening of the 19th in Joplin and taken to the Newton County jail at Neosho the next day. He was indicted for first degree murder in McDonald County at the February 1893 term but got a change of venue to Newton County. The trial there in May resulted in a hung jury. At his retrial in November, the jury was given an option of finding him guilty of second degree murder, and that is what they did. He was sentenced to ten years in prison. His appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court was allowed, but the court refused to hear the case because he and his lawyers were one day late in filing their bill of exceptions. The sentence of the Newton County court was, therefore, confirmed. Part of what makes this case interesting is that it was supposedly the inspiration for the American version of "Knoxville Girl," which became a popular and well-known folk song. The original version of the song dates back to England many years earlier, but Lula Noel was supposedly America's Knoxville girl.