A Murder at Red Top

   A somewhat notorious murder occurred at Red Top, Missouri, in 1922. Where the heck is Red Top? you might ask. Well, it's located about halfway between Fair Grove and Buffalo on Old Highway 65. I probably should say "used to be located," because I don't think much of anything remains to suggest the place ever existed, except that the stretch of Old Highway 65 where it is/was located is now called Red Top Road. Red Top had a post office when I was growing up in Fair Grove, but that was about all it had, even then. I remember going to an auction at Red Top with my dad when I was about eight years old, but my reminiscences of Red Top have nothing to do with the brutal crime that was committed there 100 years ago.
   On the afternoon of April 19, 1922, Frank Creed, a resident of the Red Top community, grew concerned because he had not seen his elderly neighbors, John W. and Margaret Hunt, for several days and a dog they always kept tied in the front yard was nowhere to be seen. Creed decided to investigate, but he was unable to rouse anyone when he knocked at his neighbors' door. Finding the door locked, Creed went to a side window, peered inside, and saw Margaret Hunt's body lying on a bed buried beneath a heap of bed clothes. Several pieces of furniture in the room were overturned, giving the impression that a struggle had taken place.
   Creed summoned authorities, and further investigation determined that Mrs. Hunt's skull had been crushed and her throat slashed. After a lengthy search, her husband's body was found in the barn hidden beneath a stack of hay. His skull, too, had been crushed, and his body was cut and bruised in several places. Officers estimated that the couple had been dead for several days.
   On the night of the 19th, 25-year-old Ezra Davison was arrested on suspicion of having killed the Hunts. Part of the evidence that led authorities to Davison was the fact that a wagon and a team of mules were missing from the Hunt place and a man who knew Hunt and recognized his white mules had seen the suspect driving the wagon and team in Springfield. Davison, who was also a resident of the Red Top area, was lodged overnight in the Dallas County Jail at Buffalo.
   The next morning, Hunt's wagon was located on a farm ten miles north of Springfield on the Pleasant Hope road, where Davison had recently been working. The same morning, Davison was brought to the Greene County Jail at Springfield for safekeeping.
   Authorities speculated that robbery was the motive for the crime, since the Hunts were known to be fairly well off financially. On the afternoon of the 20th, Davison gave a confession to a Springfield newspaperman, however, that suggested a different motive. Two years earlier, Davison had been attacked while in his bed, beaten severely, and left disfigured and blind in one eye. Afterwards, he filed for divorce from his wife and for custody of his two children, claiming that she had played some part in the attack on him. The divorce had recently been granted after a bitter trial, but the couple's two small children had been split between them, with each parent gaining custody of one child. Davison said that on the fateful day, which he identified as April 12, he stopped by the Hunt place late in the afternoon and was going to help Hunt retrieve a load of hay from a field. Before they started, however, the two men were discussing Davison's recent problems, and Hunt supposedly said, in reference to the attack on Davison, that he got about what he deserved. Both men became angry, and, according to Davison, Hunt attacked him with a pitchfork. Davison grabbed another pitchfork and knocked Hunt off his wagon. At this point, Mrs. Hunt came outside and tried to intervene on her husband's behalf, attacking Davison with a hoe. Davison knocked the woman down with his pitchfork and then resumed hostilities with Hunt, knocking him down a second time.
   Both Mr. and Mrs. Hunt lay unconscious on the ground. Davison picked the woman up, took her to her house, and washed the blood from her face. Going back outside, he found Hunt still lying on the ground, and he struck him with a grubbing hoe to make sure he was dead. Davison carried the dead man into his barn and covered him with hay. He then left but came back a couple of days later and took Hunt's wagon and mules.
   Davison later changed his story to say that he was not alone when the fight with the Hunts occurred. He claimed another man had killed Mrs. Hunt and that he (Davison) had only killed Hunt in self-defense. Still later, he changed the story again, maintaining that he was not even present when the deadly events unfolded.
   The jury that tried Davison on a first-degree murder charge in Bolivar on a change of venue in early 1923, however, apparently gave more credence to his first confession. The defendant was found guilty and sentenced to 99 years in the state penitentiary. He was received at the Jefferson City prison on February 18 and died in the prison hospital there over 26 years later.

Joplin's Memorial Hall

   The citizens of Joplin (MO) recently voted down a proposal to renovate Memorial Hall, located at the corner of 8th and Wall. I no longer live inside the city limits and was, therefore, ineligible to vote on the issue. Had I been able to vote, I probably would have voted for the proposal. The folks who were pushing the proposal to renovate the old building are now left to contemplate their next step, and the structure might even have to end up being torn down. If so, I would hate to see it go, not just because of the fact that it was built as a patriotic tribute to veterans of the region, both living and dead, but also because of a certain sentimental attachment I have to the place. I've attended a number of events there over the years, including quite a few music concerts featuring performers like Willie Nelson, Chicago, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and B.J. Thomas. Most recently my wife and I saw Rhonda Vincent there four or five years ago, but I guess the place has deteriorated now to the point that it is not being used for much of anything.
   The idea of a building to memorialize Joplin's veterans was first bandied about shortly after World War I. With the local American Legion spearheading the effort, the idea was finally adopted by the city and plans to build the structure put into action in 1924. Local architect Alfred S. Michaelis designed the hall, and contractor A. S. Greenwell was engaged to built it at a cost of $250,000. An old school building on the site, encompassing almost the entire block between Joplin and Wall streets and Eight and Ninth streets, was torn down to make way for the project, and construction work on the new building began on August 4, 1924. Plans called for the auditorium of the two-and-a-half story structure to seat slightly over 4,000 people.
   The building was completed in the fall of 1925, but not before Michaelis, the architect, was ironically killed in a fall from the structure a few weeks before it was finished. Dedication ceremonies for Memorial Hall were held on October 18. About two thousand people turned out for the occasion. Speakers at the event included the Missouri state American Legion commander; Mercer Arnold, a prominent Joplin attorney who was also a veteran of the Spanish-American War; and A. J. P. Barnes, a Civil War veteran.

Insane on Religion

   A case of mistaken identity that caused a lot of excitement at Halltown, Missouri, in February of 1901 turned out to be almost comical, at least in retrospect.
   Someone burglarized the post office at Lawrenceburg, a small village in northeast Lawrence County, on the night of Friday, February 8, and the next day word was sent to Springfield that a man, thought to have been involved in the crime, was "lurking" around Yeakley in western Greene County and neighboring Halltown in eastern Lawrence. An officer from Springfield was dispatched immediately to bring the culprit in, but by the time he arrived, the suspect had fled.
   The officer sent word back to Springfield, and the police chief and a third officer left Springfield to join the hunt. Upon reaching Nichols Junction in the wee hours of Sunday morning, February 10, the chief learned that a "demented man" had jumped from a train at that place Saturday morning and had gone in the direction of Halltown. The chief decided that the man who'd jumped from the train was probably the same man who'd been seen lurking around Yeakley and Halltown, and he and the third officer returned to Springfield.
   Not privy to the intelligence gained by the chief, the citizens around Halltown, meanwhile, determined to rise up in arms and capture the desperado they thought to be in their midst. A report reached Halltown that a "suspicious character" had been given dinner at a farmhouse a few miles outside town, but the excitement did not reach a fever pitch until the supposed culprit was spotted near the town hall, where a public meeting was taking place. A horse was hitched to a rail outside the building, and it was thought the villain was planning to steal the horse.
   The meeting broke up about the same time that word of the man's suspicious activity was being sent around to townspeople, and a crowd of vigilantes quickly formed and went in "hot pursuit" of the suspect, according to the Springfield Leader-Democrat. The mob, numbering ten to fifteen men, found their prey in the horse lot of a local townsman, which they took as proof of the man's criminal intent. Upon seeing the mob approach as if to apprehend him, the man took off running, and some in the crowd took a few shots at him. "Fortunately, whose aim (was) good "had only loaded their guns with bird shot, which did the man no serious harm."
   At this point, the Springfield officer who'd been involved in the chase since Saturday appeared on the scene and persuaded some in the crowd to help him capture the unarmed fugitive without firing their weapons. However, in the excitement of the affair, some of the other men, not being acquainted with the Springfield officer, mistook him for the wanted man. One local leveled his gun at the officer and was about to pull the trigger, when the lawman finally succeeded in making his identity known.
   The man the mob had been hunting was quickly taken into custody, and he proved to be the "crazy man" who'd jumped off the train at Nichols, not the post office robber. He was soon identified as J. M. Cross, "a demented preacher and teacher" from Tennessee. He and his family were on their way to Ezburn, Kansas, when Cross, convinced that the train was going the wrong way, bailed out on his wife and children at Nichols. He was taken back to Springfield, where he was examined by a doctor. He was considerably bruised from his jump, and a few of the bird shot had taken effect in the back of his head, but he was not seriously hurt.
   Concluded the Leader-Democrat, "Cross seemed to be insane on religion, and while in custody kept up a continual conversation on religion."

 

 

Flemington, Missouri

   I've previously said on this blog that, having lived in southwest Missouri my whole life, I've traveled through nearly every part of it at one time or another. I have to admit, however, that there are a lot of out-of-the-way villages in the region that I've never been to. If a community is located on a county road or even a state highway that is not considered a main route, there's a good chance I might never have been there. I've mentioned one or two such places on this blog in recent weeks. Flemington, a small town in northwest Polk County at the intersection of Route O and Route V, is another such place. It's the sort of place that you're not likely to pass through on your way to somewhere else unless you live in the immediate vicinity. If you live over a hundred miles away from Flemington, as I do, it's not likely you'd ever go there unless it was your specific destination.
   Flemington got its start as a railroad town, as did a good number of other towns in the Ozarks (and elsewhere). Flemington was founded in 1898 when an extension of the Frisco Railroad was built between Bolivar, the Polk County seat, and Kansas City. The place was named after Robert L. Fleming, a longtime resident of the area who donated the town site.
   Flemington grew pretty rapidly at first, and it had a population of about 200 and a good number of businesses by 1905, when the Springfield Leader published a profile of the town. A that time, Flemington had a bank, a post office, a school, a hotel, a lumber yard, a livery, a large poultry dealer, an insurance and real estate agency, and several groceries and general stores.
   The population of Flemington gradually declined throughout the mid and late-twentieth century. It reached a low of 124 in 2000 but rebounded to 148 in the 2010 census. Today it is still a going little town with a post office, a private elementary school, several businesses, and a considerable number of residences.

Sensational Shooting at Monett

   In Monett, Missouri, on Tuesday evening, May 7, 1895, a young woman initially identified as Mrs. Frank Collins armed herself with a .38 caliber pistol and went looking for Anna Johnson, "a young woman of doubtful reputation" to whom Frank Collins had been paying much attention of late. Insanely jealous, the young wife decided to take matters into her own hands. Meeting Anna Johnson on one of the main streets of Monett, Mrs. Collins immediately opened fire. One bullet struck Miss Johnson in the left side just below the lower rib and went clear through her body. Mrs. Collins immediately turned over her weapon to a bystander and was soon placed under arrest. The victim was carried to a room over the nearby Silver Moon Restaurant and attended by physicians, who gave her almost no chance of surviving.

    Initial reports identified Frank Collins, the assailant's husband, as a noted gambler around Springfield. He was said to be one of the few men who could actually make a living gambling. He'd recently moved to Monett with his wife, although most parties in Springfield did not know he was married until after the shooting. Later reports said Collins's real name was Snodgrass, but that he often went by Collins because his mother had remarried a man named Collins when Frank was very young. Mrs. Collins (i.e. Mrs. Snodgrass) was also from Springfield, and her maiden name was Stella Kirkham. Her sister had eloped with a Chinaman a few years earlier, and their father had committed suicide shortly afterwards, supposedly because of the behavior of his wayward daughters.
   As for Anna Johnson, her real name was Anna Nave, and she had recently come to Monett from Fort Smith, Arkansas, where she was considered a "disreputable woman." After she was shot, word was immediately sent to Fort Smith, and two "fallen women" took the first train from Fort Smith to Monett to be by her side. One of the Fort Smith women was Pearl Starr, daughter of the infamous Belle Starr and the keeper of a bordello in Fort Smith. The two women wanted to take Anna back to Fort Smith, but her doctors would not allow it. Anna died on Wednesday evening, about 24 hours after she was shot, and the Fort Smith women reportedly vowed revenge.
   After Anna died, Stella Snodgrass was transported to Mt. Vernon and held without bail to await a preliminary hearing. Her husband hightailed it out of Monett but was thought to be hanging around Pierce City. However, I have thus far been unable to learn what the ultimate disposition of Stella's case was.

Long Lane Picnic

   For many years, the Ozarks region was the butt of jokes from national media because of the supposed ignorance and lack of sophistication of the hillbillies who lived here. (This is still true, I think, but to a lesser extent than it used to be.) But the ridicule didn't always come from outsiders. Sometimes the people of a larger city in the Ozarks, such as Springfield, would joke about or make light of the country bumpkins who lived out in the isolated areas of the countryside. Understandably, people usually didn't like it when someone disparaged them for being ignorant and unsophisticated, but on the other side of the coin, methinks the offended party, to paraphrase Shakespeare, sometimes protested too much. Sometimes even the smallest of slights offered in jest could arouse indignant rebuttal. This phenomenon was apparently at work after the Springfield Leader published a letter in July 1927 about the town picnic at the Dallas County community of Long Lane that was coming up later in the month.
   I recently wrote about the small community of Charity, also in Dallas County, but I didn't mention that one of the main things Charity was known for was the annual Hogeye Picnic, so named because Hogeye is/was a nickname for Charity. The Hogeye Picnic was held for about 85 consecutive years from the late 1800s to the late 1900s. Such town picnics or reunions were common throughout the early and mid-1900s. Long Lane, located about 15 miles to the northeast, also held an annual picnic that was quite popular, although maybe not quite as much so as the one at Hogeye.
   In early July 1927, the Springfield Leader published several ads publicizing and promoting the upcoming Long Lane Picnic, but then on the 14th, the newspaper published an anonymous letter from someone who painted a sardonic picture of the annual picnic. That particular issue of the Leader apparently does not survive, but we know from later sources that the letter writer described Long Lane as "a little country village, usually quiet and dead" and that he also called it "a wide place in the road" and referred to its residents as "natives." The writer mentioned the rocky fields around Long Lane and said that the annual picnic was "an event even for the dogs." He said the picnic for many represented "the one bright spot in each year's humdrum routine of eventless existence." Describing the end of the picnic, when families began to congregate for the trip home, the letter writer said, "Torn and ragged children, with dirty faces and grimy hands, bruised bare feet and perhaps a black eye suffered in a miniature gang fight greet each mother as she rounds up her flock of tow-haired children."
   Apparently many residents of Long Lane and the surrounding territory took umbrage at the way the people in general and the picnic in particular were characterized in the Leader, and the Buffalo Reflex gave voice to their complaints. Writing to the Leader a week later, the Reflex editor called the letter published on the 14th a "vicious article" which maliciously slurred the Long Lane Picnic and the people of the Long Lane vicinity. Apparently under the impression that the letter had been written by a member of the Leader staff or some other non-Dallas Countian, the Reflex said the article had grossly misrepresented the picnic and the people
   In early August, Leo Nyberg stepped forward to claim authorship of the infamous letter. He said he himself was a longtime resident of Long Lane and that he had attended and enjoyed the Long Lane Picnic almost every year of his life. He had not meant his letter as an insult but rather as a fond but playful depiction of the event, and he thought that if readers would go back and reread his letter, knowing the writer's identity, they would see that it was not a disparaging account of the picnic. If anybody still found it distasteful, however, he sincerely apologized.

Temperance Crusade at Walnut Shade

   I've written previously about temperance crusades in the Ozarks, such as the Murphy Movement that swept across the country and engulfed the Ozarks in the late 1870s. (See, https://ozarks-history.blogspot.com/2009/08/murphy-movement.html.) While the Murphy Movement and similar large-scale temperance crusades were national in scope, more localized crusades against alcohol were also not uncommon during the late 1800s. One such crusade took place at Walnut Shade in Taney County, Missouri, during the late 1890s.
   Walnut Shade, located at the confluence of Bear Creek and Bull Creek about 8 or 10 miles northwest of Forsyth (on present-day Highway 160/176 about halfway between Rockaway Beach and US Highway 65), got its start in 1860 when Samuel Weatherman opened a business there. A post office at Walnut Shade came into existence about the same time; so, it's likely Waterman operated the post office in conjunction with his business.
   Over 20 years later, Walnut Shade was still a very small place when an influx of residents relocated to the area from Nebraska in the mid-1890s, bolstering the community's population considerably. These recent immigrants played an important role in the temperance movement that got its start around Christmas of 1898.
   By February 1899, the Taney County crusade was making news in Springfield. In mid-February, the Springfield Leader-Democrat reported that over 200 people around Walnut Shade had "signed a pledge to abstain from the use of strong drink, and the society includes a number of 'boot-leggers,' who used to give the federal authorities at Springfield no little trouble as violators of the revenue law." At first, some of the young men of the vicinity, who "loved to break up prayer meetings" and "could not enjoy a dance without a drunken row," strongly resisted efforts to reform them, but "the good people" of the area had finally won a "sweeping victory." Several of the local whiskey dealers had even poured out their liquor and joined in the temperance cause.
   One of the converts to the "total abstinence faith" was a colorful character named "Coon" Cornelison. He wouldn't take the pledge at first until he tested himself to see whether he could last a week without taking a drop. He poured out the liquor he had on hand, which had "the potency of a fist-fight in every half-pint," and "the soil of the Bear Creek valley absorbed the white nectar." After fighting temptation for seven days and not drinking anything stronger than "the sparkling water of Bear Creek Springs," he signed a pledge at the next meeting of the temperance group and was immediately made an officer in the organization.
   Because of the success of the Walnut Shade organization, temperance advocates throughout Taney County began urging that the crusade be expanded to Forsyth, Protem, and other communities in the White River country.
   The Leader-Democrat pointed out that the new Walnut Shade temperance society was completely independent, having no connection to any other temperance group. "The members have adopted the cedar of the Ozarks as their emblem, and each one wears a sprig of this native evergreen."
   Buoyed by the success of the society's campaign against liquor, some of the group's members began trying to bring other ameliorating influences to the Bear Creek vicinity, and by the end of February, the group had secured a traveling library, consisting of 40 volumes, to come to Walnut Shade for a stay of up to four months.
   In late April 1899, the temperance society at Walnut Shade was still going strong, with over 200 members. The group met every Sunday afternoon, and not a single Sunday had passed without at least one more person putting on the cedar badge. Efforts were also underway to start a permanent library at Walnut Ridge.