St. Louis Tornado

I suppose it's not surprising that Missouri, as part of what's commonly called "tornado alley," has suffered more than its share of deadly tornadoes over the years. In fact, three of the top ten deadliest tornadoes in US history happened in Missouri, and five of the top twenty. I've written previously about the Tri-State Tornado of 1925 that started around Shannon County, Missouri, swept across Illinois, and tore into Indiana before finally losing steam. It claimed the lives of 695 people and is, by far, the deadliest tornado in US history. Another tornado that makes the top 10 list is one with which I'm intimately familiar, the Joplin Tornado of 2011. It killed about 160 people, and sits 7th on the list of the ten deadliest tornadoes in US history. (I think it still ranks first in terms of property destruction, but I'm not completely sure about that.)
The third deadliest tornado in US history also happened in Missouri--the 1896 St. Louis Tornado, which claimed 255 lives. Over 1,000 people suffered injuries, and the storm did over 10 million dollars in actual damages (an estimated 4.5 billion in today's dollars). Over, 5,000 people were left homeless.
Although bad weather had been predicted for late May 1896, citizens in St. Louis weren't especially concerned until skies started darkening and temperatures rapidly dropping in the late afternoon of May 27. As the storm approached the western outskirts of the city, winds quickly increased from about 37 miles an hour to almost 80 miles an hour. About 5 p.m., a tornado cell, approaching from the southwest, touched down in the Compton Heights area southwest of the downtown area. From Compton Heights, the storm followed Mill Creek Valley toward the Mississippi River, destroying countless homes along its path. At the river, the tornado destroyed steamboats and other vessels and even badly damaged the Eads Bridge, which was considered "tornado proof," because it had been built of true steel, the first major bridge so constructed. The central portion of the city was also badly damaged, as numerous factories, mills, railroad yards, hospitals, churches, saloons, and stores were destroyed, along with the many residences. The tornado also uprooted trees and tore down electric, telegraph, and telephone wires.
The St. Louis tornado was one of a whole outbreak of violent storms across Missouri on May 27, 1896, but the St. Louis storm was by far the worst in terms of lives lost and damage done.

Bloody Affray in Aurora

I don't know the exact statistics, but I've often heard that murders and other violent crimes result more often from personal emotions like jealousy than from motives like greed. In other words, the victims of violent crimes tend to know the criminal, and my knowledge and research of violent crimes in the Ozarks region bears this idea out. The incident I'm about to describe is but one more example.
About 1894, the wife of Andrew Alexander of Aurora, Missouri, died, and the 34-year-old widower soon took up with Mrs. Sarah Owens. Described by one newspaper as a "grass widow," Sarah was separated but not yet divorced from her husband, William Owens. She had returned to the home of her father, Lewis Jones of Aurora. Jones objected to his daughter keeping company with Alexander while she was still legally married to Owens; so, about the first of October 1895, she left her parents' home and went to stay with a friend, "where she could see her lover without the molestation of her relations." The tension between Andrew Alexander and Lewis Jones became so great that each man started carrying a pistol.
On Sunday, October 13, there was an apparent reconciliation of sorts, as Jones and his wife expressed a willingness to sanction their daughter's match with Alexander as soon as her divorce, for which she had already sued, became final. They invited Sarah and her lover to come to their house to get some of Sarah's clothes and other belongings, and she and Alexander accepted the invitation of "the old folks."
While they were at the house, however, the tension flared anew, and some words were exchanged between Jones and Alexander as the younger couple was getting ready to leave. Alexander had just stepped outside, and Sarah was getting ready to follow when her mother seized her by the arm and attempted to restrain her from going with Alexander. Sarah, however, reached out her hand to her lover, and he pulled her out the door.
Sarah's 25-year-old brother, Tom Jones, ran out the back door, came around to the front, and grabbed hold of Alexander. The two men scuffled and fell to the ground. As they continued to wrestle, Alexander pulled out his pistol and shot the younger Jones in the body. By this time, Lewis Jones had come out of the house to enter the fight, and he and Alexander exchanged gunfire. Still on the ground, where he'd fallen during his tussle with Tom Jones, Alexander shot the old man in the mouth, knocking out two or three of his teeth, and the elder Jones fired three shots at Alexander, all of which took effect. One hit him in the leg, one in the neck, and one in the head.
Alexander immediately lapsed into unconsciousness and died an hour later. Tom Jones's wound was thought to be fatal, while the father's injury was deemed serious but not life-threatening.
All five shots were fired in quick succession, and testimony at the coroner's jury the next day was not consistent on who fired the first shot, although everyone agreed it happened while the two younger men were scuffling on the ground. Opinion was, therefore, divided on who was at fault, although Sarah blamed her father. She accused him of inviting her and Alexander to his house only as a ruse.
Alexander's funeral was held on Monday, October 14, the same day as the coroner's jury, and he was buried beside his dead wife in the Zion churchyard a few miles northwest of Aurora.
Lewis Jones was initially placed under guard at his home, although not officially arrested. The guard was soon dispensed with, and apparently Jones never faced charges. If he did, they must have been dropped, because he was a free man at the time of the 1900 census. What happened to his son Tom is not altogether clear.

The Romantic Tale of Mary Silmore

About the first of September 1849, a story about a young woman from Jasper County, Missouri, named Mary Silmore was published in the St. Louis Times and subsequently reprinted in newspapers across the country. The title of the story was "Heroic Conduct of a Missouri Girl," and it purported to be an authentic account of events that had happened in Jasper County several years earlier.
Mary's father, Lewis Silmore, was a known counterfeiter, although the rest of the family, including Mary and her sister, were well thought of and apparently had no knowledge of the father's illicit activities. Silmore had been tried for counterfeiting but, by concocting a phony alibi, had managed to get acquitted. Subsequently, a vigilante mob had formed to dispense its own brand of justice to Silmore, and the leader of the mob was one John Mays, who, as the fates would have it, had previously been in love with the beautiful Mary.
On July 4, 1840, the mob left the courthouse in Carthage and rode to the Silmore place on the south bank of Spring River. Despite Mary's pleas to her father that he resist, Lewis Silmore, accompanied by his wife and his daughter Eliza, emerged from the house and surrendered when ordered to do so. Mary, though, refused to obey and remained in the house. As the lynchers prepared to string Silmore up to a nearby magnolia tree, his wife and daughter Eliza fell to their knees pleading desperately that he be spared, but to no avail. John Mays ordered them taken away, and they were dragged away some distance. Mays looped a noose around Silmore's neck, while two other men climbed the tree to toss the other end of the rope over a large limb. Just as Mays was about to give the order for his men to pull Silmore up, shots rang out from the house, and Mays fell dead. One or two other men were wounded, and the rest scattered in wild confusion as Mary, a crack shot, continued firing with both a double-barrel shotgun and a rifle.
Mary was subsequently arrested and charged with murder, but "much interest was manifested in her favor" and she was acquitted "amidst the acclamations of five hundred spectators."
"As we are not dealing in fiction, but naked, unadorned truth," said the author of the story, "we cannot gratify the reader's curiosity by any additional particulars as to the subsequent history of Mary Silmore." The author, who had been Mary's defense counsel during her trial, said he didn't know any more about the case because he had, shortly after Mary's acquittal, moved to Texas, from where he now wrote his story and sent it to the St. Louis newspaper.
Despite the author's claim that his story was strictly factual, it has a definite romantic tone that makes it hard to believe. In addition, the so-called facts surrounding the case cannot be confirmed by any other source. Also, we know for sure that either the date of July 4, 1840, is wrong or the incident didn't happen in Jasper County, because the county was not formed until early 1841. Perhaps the actual date was July 4, 1841. Jasper County Circuit Court records do contain just the merest suggestion that at least part of the story might be based on fact. We know that a man named Elijah Skidmore (not Lewis Silmore) sued a man named John Scott (not John Mays) and others for trespass during the fall 1843 term of Jasper County Circuit Court. Could this have been related to their attempt to lynch him?

Norovirus and the flu

I've been suffering for the past few days with what I assume to be norovirus, sometimes called the stomach flu. As I understand it, norovirus is a completely separate disease from the regular flu. The main symptoms are vomiting, diarrhea, and general weakness. However, you don't usually run a fever with norovirus as you do with the regular flu or at least not as much, and you tend to get over it quite a bit quicker. Even though the two maladies are unrelated, being sick with the stomach flu, got me to thinking about the regular flu, and I did a little combing through newspapers during the time of the great flu epidemic of 1918-1919. I've already written about this pandemic a couple of years ago; so I won't repeat the basic history of the outbreak. However, I wanted to share a couple of interesting items I found in Springfield newspapers pertaining to the flu epidemic.
By February 1919, the great flu epidemic was beginning to subside, but concern over the disease was still very much on people's minds. Scientists and medical professionals were trying to come up with ways to prevent the disease or lessen its effects, and even editorial observers sometimes offered their opinions as to how best to control the disease. For instance, the Wichita Beacon published a list of tips on how to prevent or minimize the flu, and the Springfield Republican reprinted the article. The list was really just a list of tips for maintaining overall health, since the Beacon prefaced the list with the observation that people who were in overall good health tended to be less susceptible to the flu than those who were already in a weakened condition. The newspaper advised:
"Let us sleep with the windows open."
"Drink a glass of water for every waking hour."
"Eat less of concentrated foods and more of fruits and vegetables, and keep on the hungry side of our appetites."
"Let us walk a part way to and from work, and keep in the open on Sundays."
"Practice deep breathing in the open."
"Do not get frightened at the first symptoms.... The fear of the disease weakens the resistance."
"Do not get angry nor entertain resentments toward anyone, for anger and hate create poisonous toxins in the body."
Some of these bits of advice, the author admitted, might be foolish, but then again, he reminded readers, scientists often conducted experiments on "the vaguest possible theory."
Some of these tips many health professionals would probably still endorse today, such as eating fruits and vegetables. Others maybe not so much, like sleeping with the windows open.
Even a year later, in February 1920, the flu was still very much a public concern, in Springfield as well as throughout the rest of the country. Early that month a group of university student leaders in Springfield adopted a resolution calling upon the city to close all schools, churches, and places of amusement until the danger of another flu epidemic had passed.

Northview

The Ozarks, like nearly every other area of the country, I imagine, has a lot of small towns that enjoyed prosperity many years ago but have since become almost ghost towns. Once such community is Northview, Missouri, located in Webster County along I-44 about halfway between Strafford and Marshfield. Actually, it sits off I-44 a short distance to the south on a hill and is not even visible from the highway. In fact, the construction of I-44, which bypassed the town, was one of several factors that contributed to Northview's decline.

I think I've only been to Northview once in my life, about fifty years ago, and even then there wasn't much left of the town. But once upon a time, it was a booming little community. When Northview first came into existence, about the time of the Civil War, it was called Bunker Hill, and there is still a road at Northview called Bunker Hill Road. Around 1870, the name was changed to Northview, when the railroad came through and railroad workers said the spot offered a good north view.

A library society was organized at Northview in January 1881, and the first Sunday school was organized in June of the same year. An influx of Germans settled near Northview in 1883. In the late 1880s, the town sported one general store, a blacksmith shop, and several residences.

A mining boom spurred the growth of Northview after lead, zinc, and perhaps other ores were discovered just south of the town in 1891. The community enjoyed its greatest prosperity, however, from about the beginning until about the middle of the twentieth century. During the early 1900s, Northview had a school and a number of businesses, including a bank and a canning factory. It also had a town baseball team that competed against surrounding towns, like Niangua and Strafford. In 1930, the Northview bank closed, as did a lot of small-town banks during the Depression. The bank failure was perhaps the beginning of Northview's downward arc. With the coming of automobiles, the number of passengers arriving and departing Northview by rail declined drastically, and many people started driving to larger surrounding towns to do their shopping. The construction of I-44 was one of the last nails in the coffin, as automobiles no longer passed through the town along Route 66, as they had in the past.

In 2005, 96-year-old Eva Lena Cruise, who'd grown up in Northview during the 1920s, remembered the place as a "bustling little town," but by the time I made my one and only visit to Northview in the late 1960s, its heyday was already long past. Today, there are still a few residences at Northview but not much else, as far as I can tell without actually visiting the place.    

Aldridge-Crawford Shooting

On Wednesday, April 20, 1892, neighbors 44-year-old John Crawford and 47-year-old Nathaniel Aldridge of Ozark County, Missouri, got into a dispute over what one report at the time called "family matters." The argument led to a "shooting scrape" in which Aldridge (name given as Aldrich in some reports) was killed instantly and Crawford was wounded. The latter retreated to his house, and Aldridge's twenty-three-year-old son, Joe, who'd taken a part in the confrontation, went after him. Joe Aldridge tried to gain admission at the Crawford residence but was denied entrance. As he was being put out, though, he fired at random, and the bullet found "a resting place in Crawford's eye, killing him instantly." Young Aldridge, who was slightly wounded in the melee, was arrested for his part in the deadly affray, along with two of his brothers who had no part in the incident.
Another contemporaneous report stated that the disagreement grew out of a disturbance that Joe Aldridge had caused at the church Crawford attended, but a grandson of Crawford said many years later that the Aldridges came to the Crawford place angry over a disputed fence. The second contemporaneous report, unlike the first, claimed that Joe Aldridge suffered serious injuries, so serious that it was doubtful whether he would ever be able to testify.
Both dead men, according to contemporaneous reports, were well thought of in the community, and excitement ran high in the immediate aftermath of the double tragedy. Nat Aldridge, a "well-known stockman and cattle dealer," was buried in the Mammouth Cemetery a few miles south of Gainesville, near where both men lived, while Crawford was buried at the Gainesville Cemetery in Gainesville.
Apparently the first report was more accurate than the second, at least as far as Joe Aldridge's injuries were concerned, because he did recover and go on to marry and have kids. The outcome of the legal proceedings against him for the killing of Crawford, if indeed there were any, has not been determined, however.

Murder of Betty Tapp

I usually prefer to write about things that happened many years ago, as in fifty years ago or more. Things that happened during my lifetime, at least things that happened since I've been old enough to remember them, don't seem quite as much like history to me. But then I stop and realize that, when I first starting writing about historical topics, my adult lifetime had only spanned about 25 years. Now it has spanned over 50 years. So, I guess what I'm saying is that I need to redefine my concept of  what constitutes history. With that in mind, I'm going to write today about something that happened a little over 30 years ago and that I well remember: the murder of Betty Tapp of Joplin.

On the early morning of Saturday, February 15, 1986, Jerry Tapp came home from work to discover the dead body of his 42-year-old wife Betty in the floor of their home on College View Drive in Joplin. She had suffered multiple stab wounds. The couple's Down's Syndrome daughter told her father that "Doc" had committed the crime.
The Tapps had formerly employed a man named Clendell Sanders (aka Sandles) in their janitorial service business, and they knew him as Doc. Acting on this lead and others, police located the 32-year-old Sanders driving near Wichita, Kansas, late Saturday morning, pulled him over, and arrested him. When apprehended, Sanders admitted killing Betty Tapp. He said that when he got off work late Friday night from his job as an aide at Oak Hill Hospital, he drank several alcoholic drinks and then went to the Tapp residence in the wee hours of Saturday morning. He claimed that he and Betty had consensual sex at first but then for some reason unknown even to himself he ended up stabbing her, although he admitted to stabbing her only once. An examination of Betty Tapp's body revealed that she had indeed had sex shortly before her death, but the police felt it was a case of rape, not consensual sex.
Sanders was brought back to Joplin and went on trial there in October 1986. He was convicted of first-degree murder, but the jury could not agree on the punishment. Eleven favored the death penalty, but one held out for life imprisonment. The decision was then put in the hands of the judge, who sentenced Sanders to death.
The defense appealed the case to the Missouri Supreme Court on the grounds that Sanders should have been granted a new trial and various other exceptions. In early 1988, the high court affirmed the lower court's verdict, but Sanders died of a heart attack in prison before his execution could be carried out.