The Communist Dream in Southern Missouri

I’ve written previously on this blog about Alcander Longley and his communist settlements in Jasper County near present-day Oronogo called the Reunion Community and in Dallas County just west of Buffalo called the Friendship Community. The former Community (Longley’s capitalization) existed from early 1868 to late 1870 and the latter from the spring of 1872 until the summer of 1877. However, Longley’s dream was far from over. He was nothing if not a true believer, and he spent the rest of his life trying to establish a successful communist settlement in Missouri. The son of a Universalist minister, Longley was born in Ohio in 1832 and was exposed to liberal views at an early age. As a young man he lived in several experimental settlements based on association and sharing. In his thirties, he embraced communism and came to St. Louis in 1867 to organize the Reunion Community. Longley thought of communism outside of politics and was not a fan of Karl Marx. He was, instead, an advocate of what he called practical communism, feeling that people should join together in mutual aid to form self-sustaining communes. Longley started publishing a newspaper called the Communist to promote his effort.
After the Reunion Community and the Friendship Community collapsed, Longley helped start a commune on forty acres near Lutesville in Bollinger County in May 1879. It was also called the Friendship Community, but it was even shorter lived than its like-named predecessor.
Longley lived in St. Louis at the time of the 1880 census, but by the spring of 1881 he was back living on the Dallas County property near Buffalo. On May 21, he and a few associates started the Principia Community in Polk County near present-day Halfway. Longley briefly joined the group but became disillusioned with way the community was being run and went back to Buffalo.
In July of 1883, Longley started another commune, called the Mutual Aid Society, on 160 acres about a mile north of the Glenallen railroad depot in Bollinger County. In June 1885, a woman left her home in Ohio in answer to a circular Longley sent out promoting the place. When she got to Glenallen, she found Longley the only person living on the farm. She left in anger, accusing him of trying to take her money.
Longley left Glenallen about April of 1885 and established yet another communist group, called the Altruist Community, at Sulphur Springs in Jefferson County. Longley himself stayed at the location only two months before once again going back to St. Louis.
But he never gave up on his dream. In the early to mid-1890s, he was involved in communist communities in Arkansas and northern Missouri. In late 1898 and early 1899 he helped organize a community called Altro about four miles northwest of Williamsville in Wayne County. He visited the place a few times but maintained his residence in St. Louis.
In 1901 Longley traded his land in Wayne County for an eight-acre plot at Sulphur Springs, where he once again proposed to start a new community. He spent the last seventeen years of his life promoting the Altruist Community, but his latest venture was hardly more successful than his earlier ones. He died at Chicago in 1918.

The Gads Hill Train Robbery

Gads Hill, Missouri, was named after Gads Hill, England, which served as the summer home of Charles Dickens and had earlier been immortalized by Shakespeare as the place where Falstaff committed a robbery in the opening scene of Henry IV. Ironically, the namesake American village was also the scene of a notorious holdup, the first train robbery in Missouri. Although it was not the same Gads Hill, the “Missouri cutthroats,” according to one account, “were quite as audacious” as the Shakespeare characters.
About 3:30 p.m. January 31, 1874, just two years after Gads Hill had been established along the Iron Mountain Railroad in northwest Wayne County, five desperadoes rode into the village and took over the place. Gads Hill consisted only of a general store, a sawmill, and a platform that served as the train depot. The gang robbed the storeowner and rounded up all the other people in the small community, amounting to about a dozen individuals. Each of the outlaws carried at least two Navy revolvers, and three had double-barreled shotguns. Flourishing their weapons, they compelled the captives to stand on the platform while they relieved them of their money. Meanwhile, one of the gang threw a switch on the railroad so that the next train would be shunted to a siding and have to stop.
The Little Rock Express from St. Louis was delayed, forcing the bandits and their hostages to wait more than an hour. To ward off the January chill, they huddled around a bonfire near the platform until the train finally came into sight about 4:45 p.m. One of the gang grabbed a red flag and started waving it as a signal for the train to stop. The train consisted of a combination express/baggage/mail car, two passenger coaches, a sleeper, and the locomotive. As the engineer slowed the train to a crawl, the conductor stepped onto the platform, and a large masked man immediately shoved a pistol in his face. One of the robbers took the conductor’s gold watch but handed it back upon orders from his “captain.”
Two outlaws jumped onto the locomotive and made the engineer and fireman get down, while two others hauled a brakeman and the baggage man out of the baggage car. Returning to the baggage car, a couple of the bandits rummaged through the mail, stealing registered letters. Then they turned their attention to the express messenger, forcing him at gunpoint to turn over his keys to the safe, from which they took over $1,000 in cash.
Next, the thieves went through the coaches accosting the passengers. They took all the money they could get but were more selective with the valuables they appropriated. Besides returning the conductor’s watch, the outlaws passed over another gold watch and several silver watches. The conductor later remarked that the bandits “didn’t seem to care for watches.”
After stealing all the money they could lay their hands on and all the valuables they took a fancy to, the outlaws mounted up and rode off toward the northwest. Initial reports put their total take anywhere from $2,000 to over $20,000. The best estimate seems to be somewhere around $3,000.
Reports also differed regarding the number of bandits. Some said seven, but most said five. The best evidence suggests the lower number is correct. The identity of the thieves was unknown at first as well, although within a day or two, a man named McCoy and two Younger brothers had been tentatively named as being with the gang. It has since been established that Frank and Jesse James, John Younger, and either Cole or Jim Younger composed four of the gang. The fifth member might have been the other Younger brother, Arthur McCoy, or one of several other men.
Pinkerton agents trailed the robbers to western Missouri, and one of the officers was found dead on March 11, just after visiting the James home in Clay County. On March 17, another Pinkerton agent and a local deputy were killed in St. Clair County by Jim and John Younger. The shootout also left John Younger dead.

Barker Gang and the Murder of Sheriff Kelly

Landlords nowadays often require folks wishing to rent a house or apartment to fill out applications so they can do background checks on the applicants before letting strangers move onto their property. Such was not the case in 1931 when an older couple, giving their names as Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Dunlop, showed up at Thayer, Missouri, about October 12 of that year and rented a farmhouse from Wellington McClelland in an out-of-the-way area about two miles east of town. The free-spending Dunlop, who let it be known that he was a retired farmer who’d made his money from oil lands in Oklahoma, just plunked down the cash and moved in. A day or two later, two young men, whom Dunlop introduced as his son and nephew, moved in with the couple. In an era before instant background checks, McClelland had no way of knowing that “Mrs. Dunlop” was actually Arizona Kate “Ma” Barker, that one of the young men was her murderous son Fred, and that the other was the notorious Alvin Karpis.
Over the next few weeks, Karpis and Fred Barker pulled off a string of crimes in the area, including the burglary of McCallon’s clothing store in West Plains on Thursday night, December 17. On Saturday morning the 19th, Karpis pulled his 1931 blue De Soto into Davidson’s garage in West Plains to have two flat tires repaired, with Fred Barker riding shotgun. The car matched the description of a vehicle seen near McCallon’s store on the night of the burglary, and garage owner Carac Davidson immediately relayed his suspicions to Howell County sheriff C.R. “Roy” Kelly. Still seated in the car when the sheriff showed up to investigate, Barker and Karpis immediately gunned the lawman down when he walked up to the driver’s side door of the De Soto. Accounts of the murder differ, but the best evidence suggests that Barker opened fire first with a .45 caliber automatic pistol and fired the fatal shots. He then jumped out of the vehicle and ran around to the other side to continue shooting as Kelly fell, while Karpis chimed in with a .38 caliber revolver.
After the shooting, Karpis roared out of the garage in the De Soto, and Barker escaped on foot through the streets of West Plains. Bloodhounds were put on Barker’s trail but to no avail. The De Soto was found later on Saturday a mile or so east of Thayer, where Karpis had abandoned it, and the gang was soon traced to the nearby McClelland farmhouse. Described as a four-room cottage on a high knoll back away from the road, the house reportedly offered a view of the surrounding countryside for miles around, and by the time authorities arrived, the birds had flown. In their haste to escape, the renters had left behind papers definitely identifying them as the Barker-Karpis gang, and photographs of most of the gang members, including Kate Barker, were also discovered. Much of the merchandise taken in the burglary of the McCallon store was recovered as well.
Funeral services for Sheriff Kelly were held on Monday, December 21. Shortly afterwards, his widow, Lulu Kelly, was selected to fill his unexpired term as sheriff of Howell County. One of her first actions was to offer, jointly with the West Plains police chief, rewards for the arrest and conviction of the Barker-Karpis gang members, including $100 for “Old Lady Arrie Barker, mother of Fred Barker.” This was apparently the first official notice by law enforcement of Ma Barker, who would go on to become infamous as a reputed leader of the gang, although she was, in fact, mostly just an overindulgent mother who felt her villainous sons could do no wrong.
Sources: FBI files, Howell County Gazette, West Plains Journal.

The Cost of Hanging a Man

I occasionally hear politicians as well as everyday citizens gripe about the slow turning of the wheels of justice in our modern legal system, and often the critics point to how much more swiftly punishment was meted out in the old days. There's some truth to this contention, of course, and in some cases nowadays the wheels have ground almost to a halt. However, complaints about the slow pace of justice are nothing new. In early 1895, the Missouri state auditor issued a report stating that the costs of prosecuting criminals in the state were increasing at the rate of $50,000 to $75,000 a year without a proportionate increase in crime, and the Jefferson City Tribune editorialized on the subject, claiming that most of the increase was a result of "unnecessary delays" occasioned by continuances and changes of venue. The case of Wils Howard, who had recently been hanged at Lebanon, was cited as an example. "There was never any question as to Howard's guilt," said the newspaper, "and yet it required two years and cost the state some $6,000 to hang him."
On the night of April 27, 1889, Thomas McMichael, whom newspapers identified as a deaf mute peddler, was murdered near Vienna, Missouri, presumably for his money. The Missouri governor promptly offered a $350 reward leading to the arrest of the guilty party or parties. Wilson ""Wils" Howard was soon identified as the assailant, but by then he had returned to his home state of Kentucky, where he had previously been involved in the notorious Howard-Turner feud of Harlan County and had earned a reputation as a desperate character. The feud dated back to 1882 when Bob Turner was shot to death by Wilks Howard, uncle of Wils. After Wilks was acquitted, the feud escalated over the next few years, and Wils Howard killed at least three Turner allies before absconding to Missouri in 1886.
But after killing Thomas McMichael, Wils was back in Harlan County, and he promptly took up leadership of the Howard faction as the feud continued to rage, reportedly involving almost everybody in the whole county. On October 19, 1889, John Howard, brother of Wils, was shot and badly wounded at Harlan Courthouse, the county seat. In response, Wils organized a party of about forty men and threatened to ride in and take over the town, which was held by the Turner faction under the leadership of a local judge named Lewis. On October 22, the Lewis group, numbering about 50, attacked the Howard faction about a mile outside town, killing one instantly and wounding six others, including Wils Howard. A few days later, the Howard bunch retaliated, killing two men of the Turner faction.
In the spring of 1890. Judge Lewis asked for and received state troops to help preserve order, and the Howard faction clashed briefly with the troops. When the state troops went out to try to arrest Wils Howard and some of the other leaders of the Howard faction, Wils again fled the territory, this time going to California.
In California, Wils Howard was promptly arrested under the name of John Brooks for robbing a Wells Fargo stage and sentenced to eight years in San Quentin. Detective Imboden of Missouri tracked him down there and, with permission from the California governor, brought him back here in December of 1890 to stand trial for murdering McMichael.
After four continuances and a change of venue from Maries to Laclede County, Howard was finally convicted of murder in early 1893 and sentenced to hang on April 7. In the meantime, he was taken to St. Louis for safekeeping. Appeals to the Missouri Supreme Court and to the governor delayed the carrying out of the sentence, but Howard finally reached the end of his rope, both figuratively and literally, on January 19, 1894, at Lebanon. Before he was hanged, Howard admitted killing several men in Kentucky, but he proclaimed his innocence in the McMichael murder. Thus ended the long ordeal of bringing a desperado to justice.

Murder of Sheriff Cranmer and Hanging of John Turlington

On the evening of March 21, 1890, after a brakeman on the Missouri Pacific Railroad ejected John Oscar Turlington and another man from a train near Otterville, Missouri, Turlington took a pot shot at the brakeman. He was later arrested in Pettis County for carrying a concealed weapon and was jailed at Sedalia under the name of William West, but he was also charged in Cooper County for felonious assault and was scheduled to be transferred there on the more serious charge. While still in the Sedalia jail, Turlington met a young man named West Hensley, who was soon to be released, and he convinced Hensley to sneak a gun into him at the Cooper County jail in Boonville once he was transferred there. Hensley agreed to the desperate plan, and, after he was released and Turlington had been transferred and sentenced to six months in jail on the assault charge, he climbed a ladder at the Boonville jail on the night of June 13 and handed Turlington a pistol through the bars.
The next evening, June 14, Cooper County sheriff Thomas Cranmer and a trusty entered the jail to gather up the inmates' dinner dishes. When Cranmer opened Turlington's cell door, the prisoner walked up to the lawman, shot him point-blank with a .44 revolver, and made his escape out a rear door of the jail. The mortally wounded Cranmer managed to get the cell-block locked down so that others prisoners could not escape before staggering into his living quarters and collapsing. A large posse immediately formed, and Turlington, still going by the name William West, was recaptured later the same night.
After he was brought back to jail, there was much talk of lynching Turlington, but the sheriff had requested, before he died, that the people of Cooper County not take the law into their own hands, and a Baptist minister and other influential citizens were able to convince the mob that formed to honor the sheriff's wishes. A few days after his re-arrest, Turlington confessed his real identity and also admitted that he and man named Temple had held up a train at Pryor Creek, Indian Territory, the previous fall. In late July, Turlington was convicted in Cooper County Court of murdering Sheriff Cranmer, and his execution was set for September, later rescheduled for mid November.
The case was appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, but before the judges made a ruling, Turlington escaped on November 1, 1890, from the jail at Boonville by putting a dummy in his bed and tricking the jailer on duty into thinking he had retired for the night. He was able to sneak out and make his getaway before his absence was noticed. The fugitive was recaptured less than two weeks later in Caseyville, Kentucky, where, it was learned, he had killed two men about two years earlier. In fact, Turlington turned out to be a much more desperate character than Missouri authorities had at first realized, because he also had killed a man in Tennessee prior to the Kentucky killings.
Turlington was brought back to Boonville, where he again escaped on the evening of December 20 by soaping his body and slipping through a hole at the top of his cell and then rappelling to the ground using a rope fashioned from a blanket. He was recaptured the next afternoon.
In late January of 1891, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling, and Turlington was hanged in the jail yard at Boonville on March 6, 1891. Sources: Cooper County history, Sedalia Weekly Bazoo, and various other newspapers.

Murder of Sawyer Family and Hanging of Edward Perry

On Saturday morning, May 23, 1896, some people were passing the Sawyer residence about a mile east of Ava, Missouri, when they noticed an unusual number of flies swarming around the house's windows. Stepping closer to the dwelling, they smelled a terrible odor emanating from the home. Continuing on to Ava, they reported their findings, and the town constable and a deputy went out to the Sawyer home to investigate. Going inside, the two men were almost overcome by the smell of decaying human flesh, and they discovered the bodies of Lafayette Sawyer, his wife, and their grown son, Ernest E. Sawyer, stuffed under a bed and covered with bed clothing and a carpet.
Ernest Sawyer had been stabbed several times and had a broken jaw. It was determined that he had been killed in the barn after putting up a terrific struggle. It was thought the murderer had then gone to the house and killed the father with a blow to the head with an ax and a "second blow scattered the brains of Mrs. Sawyer over the bed." Ernest Sawyer's body was dragged to the house, and all three were placed under the bed. A note was found on the front window of the house saying that the family had gone to Ozark and would be back the following Monday or Tuesday. It was signed "E.E. Sawyer," but the theory was that the killer had probably written the note to try to allay the suspicions of anybody who might come to the door. Based on when the Sawyers had last been seen, it was thought the murders had probably taken place the previous Wednesday evening. The only motive anyone could come up with for the crime was robbery, although the Sawyers were not thought to have much money or other possessions. In reporting the story, newspapermen compared the crime in heinousness to the notorious murder of the Meeks family that had occurred in northern Missouri about two years earlier.
A young man named Edward W. Perry was immediately suspected of killing the Sawyers, because he had been seen late Wednesday in company with Ernest Sawyer and had not been seen since. "A worthless fellow," according to newspaper reports, Perry was originally from Bellville, Kansas, but he had an uncle who lived in the Douglas County area and he had "been loafing about Ava for several months."
On Sunday, May 24, the day after the bodies were found, Perry was arrested at his uncle's farm north of Ava. He was brought to Ava late that night and made a confession upon a promise of protection from the mob that was gathering and threatening vigilante justice. He admitted participating in the murders but also implicated two other young men, Louis Douglas and Jack Baker. He claimed Douglas killed the old man, that Baker killed the old lady, and that his only direct participation in the crime was in helping the other two gang up on and kill Ernest Sawyer. He said they had killed the family for their money, which amounted to about $80. They also stole the family wagon and team, according to Perry, and drove to Springfield, where they sold the wagon and horses for $45 and divided the proceeds.
Almost no one believed Perry's story, which one newspaper called a "bogus confession." Douglas was briefly arrested but was soon released when it was learned that he and Perry had only gotten together in Springfield after Perry had gone there following the crime, and Douglas had accompanied him back to Douglas County. There was still a lot of talk of lynching Perry, and on the morning of May 26, as talk mounted, Perry broke down and gave another confession, saying he might as well tell the whole truth, since it looked as if he was going to he hanged anyway. He said that he and his uncle had done the killings by themselves. However, when the uncle, Bill Yost, was arrested, he put up a convincing defense, and authorities felt that the second confession was just as bogus as the first and that both were just attempts on Perry's part to shift part of the blame for the heinous murders away from himself.
Perry and Perry alone was convicted of murder, and he was hanged about 2 p.m. on January 30, 1897, at Ava. According to one contemporaneous report, "The murderer's neck was broken by the fall," and "the execution was a success in every particular." At the time, this was the only legal hanging ever in Douglas County. I'm not sure whether there were any more legal hangings in Douglas County after this one, but I don't know of any.

Murder of Conductor Percy

On Monday evening, October 21, 1872, a young man about 18 years old boarded the night express of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad at Springfield. When the conductor, identified only as B. Percy, passed through the passenger car collecting fares, the young man had no ticket and no money to pay for one but said he would be able to obtain some money at Marshfield. The conductor allowed the lad to ride to Marshfield, but when the train arrived there, the young man still showed no disposition to pay. The conductor then took the young man's hat and left it with the ticket agent, telling the lad he could get the hat back when he came up with the money for his ticket. A few moments later, Conductor Percy announced "all aboard" and stepped onto the platform of one of the rear cars as the train started up. The young man scaled the platform from the opposite direction, immediately pulled out a pistol, and shot the conductor through the head. The desperado then jumped from the train and disappeared into the darkness. Because of the noise created by the train starting up, the shooting was not discovered until the train had traveled from the passenger depot to the freight depot about a hundred yards distant. The confusion and excitement caused by the discovery further aided in the shooter's escape. Percy died within twenty minutes, and the next morning his body was taken to Springfield, where he had lived, and turned over to his family.
Although the murderer fled into the night without being immediately pursued, a posse soon started after him and trailed him to a residence about seven miles east of Springfield, where he had stopped and been allowed to rest. The posse found the young man sound asleep inside the home about midday on Tuesday, tied him with a rope, and started back to Marshfield with their prisoner, who identified himself as V.T. Cornwell of Illinois. The editor of the Springfield Missouri Weekly Patriot expressed satisfaction that the man who had killed Percy was taken back to Marshfield rather than brought to Springfield because "our people are slow to punish such heinous crimes" whereas "the people of Webster have had some experience in this line." The newspaperman said he looked to Webster County to give Cornwell justice and that he thought it could best be dispensed at the end of a rope. What ultimately happened to the young killer, however, is not known.