Ritter School Consolidation Controversy

The last couple of weeks I've written about school consolidations, and I've written about the same subject at least a time or two in the more distant past. So, while I'm far from an expert on the subject of school consolidation, I know from my limited experience and research that school consolidations were rarely accomplished without some degree of controversy or disagreement. Often, the extent of the controversy was simply that one school district, usually a smaller one being taken in by a larger one, did not favor the consolidation while the other one did. Occasionally, though, the controversy involved two larger school districts contending over which one would take in a smaller school. The consolidation of Ritter School with the Springfield (MO) School District is one example of this phenomenon.    

In the fall of 1949, a county-wide school reorganization plan under which the rural Ritter School, located between Springfield and Willard, would be taken into the Springfield district was rejected by Greene County voters. Then on October 18,1950, a group of Ritter patrons petitioned the Ritter School Board for annexation to Willard, and an election was set for November 6. On October 20, however, the county school board approved a new reorganization plan under which Ritter would be taken into Springfield. 

One of the main problems with the proposal for Ritter to consolidate with Willard was that the two districts did not join each other. But on November 2, patrons of Schuyler School District, which lay between Ritter and Willard, voted to join Willard, and Willard agreed the next day to accept Schuyler. 

On November 4, the Ritter patrons who'd gathered the first petition filed a new petition to join Willard, because the legality of the move had been questioned when the two districts did not abut each other. At the November 6 election, Ritter residents voted overwhelmingly to approve the first petition to join Willard.  

Then in January 1951, they also voted, by an even greater margin, to approve the second petition. One of the reasons Ritter residents cited for preferring to join Willard was that they did not believe in "progressive education," which they felt was taught in the Springfield schools and instead preferred the old-fashioned 3-Rs.

Later that month, patrons of Springfield and Ritter voted, by order of the county school board, on a proposal for Ritter to consolidate with Springfield. Ritter patrons voted solidly against the proposal, but, because Springfield voted in favor of it, it passed easily, since Springfield patrons greatly outnumbered Ritter patrons.

The Greene County attorney sought the opinion of the Missouri attorney general on the matter, and the state official said the Springfield annexation was legal and that Ritter belonged to Springfield. The Ritter School Board then turned its funds over to Springfield. 

Boiling mad, some Ritter patrons filed suit in circuit court to overturn the ruling. The judge's sympathies were clearly with the Ritter patrons. He said, "Here a rural school district having at most a population of only a little more than 200 qualified voters, after having twice declared its desire to be annexed to Willard, a neighboring consolidated district with adequate schools, is gobbled up by its city neighbor which has a hundred times as many voters--a rural farming community has been absorbed in a metropolitan school system where instead of managing its own school affairs, it will be hopelessly out-numbered and out-voted, where its school children may feel out of place among strangers."

However, the judge said he had to follow the law and that the annexation of Ritter into Springfield, according to the school reorganization law in Missouri, was legal and binding. 

Hickory Barren School's Consolidation with Fair Grove

Last week I wrote in general about the school consolidation movement in Missouri and more specifically about the consolidation of the Bois D'Arc and Ash Grove Schools in Greene County. Another Greene County school consolidation that I'm personally familiar with is the consolidation of the Hickory Barren School into the Fair Grove district, because I was attending Fair Grove Elementary at the time.

Greene County began a school consolidation movement at least as early as the 1940s, probably earlier, and Hickory Barren being taken in by Fair Grove was specifically discussed at least as early as 1950. At that time, the proposal was that Hickory Barren and Liberty in Greene County and New Garden, just across the line in Dallas County, would all be consolidated with Fair Grove. Taking in Hickory Barren, however, was rejected by Fair Grove patrons. (Not sure about Liberty and New Garden. They did consolidate with Fair Grove, but I'm not sure whether it was at this time.)

What to do with the Hickory Barren district was discussed for a couple of more years, before it was once again slated to be consolidated with Fair Grove if voters of both districts approved. The vote was held in the spring of 1954, and this time it passed. 

An election to select a new school board for the consolidated district was set for the summer of 1954, and a controversy arose when the names of seven women from the Hickory Barren district were placed on the ballot, apparently without their knowledge or consent. The women included Mrs. Sue Kesterson, Mrs. Mary Kesterson, Mrs. James Roberts, Mrs. Paul Stafford, Mrs. Vivian Weber, Mrs. Evelyn Israel, and Mrs. John R. Wood. Sue Kesterson told a Springfield newspaper at the time that she and the other women did not want to serve as board members and that she thought they had been nominated by "enemies of Hickory Barren" just to stir up trouble by making Fair Grove patrons think that the people of the old Hickory Barren district were trying to take over the Fair Grove School Board. She said this was most definitely not the case.

Fair Grove superintendent Wensey Marsh went to the county superintendent, Paul Alan Hale, to try to get the names of the women removed from the ballot, but Hale said he couldn't do it even if he wanted to because it was too late. 

The dispute resolved itself when the top six vote-getters in the election, held in early July, were all men. When the 1954-55 school year started a month or so later, the former Hickory Barren kids came to Fair Grove. I was in third grade at the time.

Consolidation of Ash Grove and Bois D'Arc

I've mentioned the school consolidation movement of the 20th century on this blog two or three times in the past. In Missouri at least, the movement started in the early part of the century, picked up steam during the middle part of the century, and then tailed off near the end of the century. In the 1800s and very early 1900s, public educators sought to provide a school within walking distance of every child in the rural sections of the state. However, as roads and methods of transportation improved, the emphasis changed from locating schools close to every child to finding the best way to provide a quality education to the most students in the most efficient and economic fashion possible. 

School consolidation was more or less a two-pronged movement: 1) incorporating small, rural, elementary schools into nearby K-12 school districts and 2) combining two or more k-12 school districts into one. One instance of two K-12 districts going together to form a single school district that I remember was the Ash Grove-Bois D'Arc consolidation in Greene County during the late 1950s. I was not personally affected by it, but I remember when it happened because I went to Fair Grove Schools, and all three schools (Fair Grove, Ash Grove, and Bois D'Arc) were members of the Greene County League when it came to sports competition. I was in grade school at the time, but I recall that, during my early elementary years, we used to play Bois D'Arc in basketball and then, all of a sudden, we didn't, because there was no longer a Bois D'Arc High School.      

Consolidation of Bois D'Arc and Ash Grove was first proposed in the fall of 1956, but it was another year before the school boards from the two districts and the Greene County School Board all got together to seriously discuss such a consolidation. The county school board was pushing for the consolidation, because its members, including the county superintendent, thought combining the two school would provide for a better education for a larger number of students. An example cited was the fact that Ash Grove Schools, with an enrollment of 424, had a band and offered agriculture classes while Bois D'Arc, with only 225 students in grades 1-12, did not. Putting the two schools together would give kids from Bois D'Arc an opportunity to participate in those activities as well. 

In mid-December 1957, the school boards from Ash Grove and Bois D'Arc met in a joint session and agreed to move forward with consolidation. Plans called for an elementary school to be retained in Bois D'Arc while all high school students would go to Ash Grove. It was also mentioned that a few students from the two districts might end up going to either Willard or Republic because the school district boundaries would likely be redrawn to make them more uniform. If the consolidation plan was approved, election of a new, six-member school board for the consolidated district would be held immediately. The county superintendent announced that the consolidated district would probably not be called either Ash Grove or Bois D'Arc. 

That, however, turned out not to be the case. The proposal for consolidation was presented to voters in March of 1958, and it was overwhelmingly approved by patrons of both school districts, although the ratio of "yes" to "no" votes was understandably somewhat greater among Ash Grove voters than among Bois D'Arc voters, since Ash Grove patrons were not in line to lose their high school. Where school consolidations are concerned, however, this particular one came off with relatively little dissent or dispute, even after it was learned that the high school would still be called Ash Grove rather than being assigned a new name. 

An interesting footnote to this story is that, when school started in the fall of 1958, the Ash Grove High School basketball coach learned that he had eight players returning who had been varsity starters the previous year. Despite this fact, the coach said he anticipated only an average season.

Mysterious Disappearance of Sadie Nave

On May 3, 1893, twenty-year-old Sadie Nave arose early, "arrayed herself in her best clothes," and told the woman she was boarding with in Springfield (MO) that she was going out to "seek a situation." She left her trunk, wardrobe, and other belongings at the woman's house, but she never came back.

It was almost two weeks later before the Springfield Leader got wind of the girl's disappearance and reported on the story. It was feared Sadie had either been abducted or had committed suicide, said the Leader. "She was rendered desperate on account of the seductive wiles of a man who has promised to marry her and then refused to do so after he accomplished her ruin." It was the "old, old story of loving not wisely but too well," and, according to the newspaper, it had left her despondent and friendless. 

Sadie had left her home in Douglas County in late 1892 and went to Seymour, where she worked at the Castor Hotel for about five weeks before coming to Springfield in early 1893. She had stayed with and worked for a number of different families since her arrival in Springfield. 

The name of the young man who'd deserted Sadie was Will Hampton, and it turned out that he had been previously married and had never gotten a divorce. The husband of one of the women Sadie had stayed with consulted an attorney about suing Will Hampton for breach of promise, but the attorney advised the man that he should contact Sadie's father in Douglas County, because he was the proper person to bring such a suit. 

A Leader reporter called on one of the women with whom Sadie had stayed, and the woman told him that Sadie had often threatened suicide and had tried in vain to purchase morphine and laudanum. "She cried nearly all the time she was with me," the woman said, because Will Hampton had "gone back on her." At one point a month or so earlier, Hampton had promised to meet Sadie at the woman's house and "make it all right with the girl," but he never showed up. Sadie told the woman she'd rather die than face the shame of returning home to Douglas County. 

The newspaperman thought Sadie had most likely carried through with her repeated threats to kill herself, but whether that is the case, I have not been able to learn. The lack of any follow-up stories to that effect suggests that maybe she did not commit suicide. Or at least that no body was ever found. 

I mentioned several weeks ago that newspapers in the late 1800s and early 1900s often made headline stories out of incidents that nowadays would scarcely warrant a mention. The story of Sadie Nave seems to fall into that category. Nowadays, such a sad, personal story would probably be considered by most legitimate newspapers to be nobody else's business. Only in the gossip sheets would you likely find a story like this one.  

A Dead Man Turns Up Alive

On August 31, 1891, two masked men held up the American Bank of Corder in Lafayette County, Missouri, carrying away about $600. The men retreated through a rear door, mounted their horses, and started north. 

An alarm was given quickly, and a posse started in close pursuit of the bandits. One of the robbers' horses tired, and its rider dismounted and darted into the shelter of a cornfield but not before he was spotted by one of the posse members. The man was soon found inside the cornfield, captured, and brought back to Corder. The captive, who gave his name as Andrew Murrell, had about half of the stolen loot on his person. 

Two law officers were getting ready to take the robber to the county seat at Lexington when a mob formed, overpowered them, and took the prisoner away. He was strung up to a nearby thorn tree and, according to at least one report, his body was riddled with bullets. The body was left hanging until the next morning, when the county coroner arrived to cut it down. 

Although the man who was lynched had given his name as Andrew Murrell, circumstantial evidence suggested that he might really be Jesse Messer, who had disappeared from neighboring Pettis County a few days earlier. Relatives of Messer traveled to Lafayette County and identified some of the personal effects of the dead man as having belonged to Messer. The body was then dug up and the identity of the man confirmed as Jesse Messer. 

Everyone thought that was the end of the story, but it took a strange twist when Messer showed up at his home near Houstonia (Pettis County) in June of 1892, ten months after he had disappeared. He said he'd gone to Saline County when he left home and had been working there ever since. He had heard about his supposed lynching, had got a good laugh out of it, and, thinking it was an insignificant matter, had neglected to inform his family that he was not dead. He asked their forgiveness for not telling them. 

The question that now arose, as one newspaper asked, was, "Who was the man lynched?" It was suggested that perhaps the dead man's name was indeed Andrew Murrell, just as he had told officers, but, as far as I've been able to learn, the mystery was never solved with certainty. 

 

Fooling with the Wrong Daughter

On May 6,1896, Sealous Grugin, a farmer living near Atlanta in Macon County (MO), took a double-barreled shotgun and went to the neighboring farm of his son-in-law, Walter Jefferson Hadley, where he found Hadley and his wife (Grugin's daughter) working in the field. Only a few words were spoken (and what those words were was later a matter of disagreement) before Grugin raised the gun and shot his unarmed son-in-law. Hadley fell at first fire, and his wife, Luella, cried out, "Oh, Pa, why have you killed Jeff?"

But Grugin wasn't finished. He took a step or two closer to Hadley and shot him again while he was down. Hadley died almost instantly. Grugin promptly headed toward town to turn himself in to authorities. On the way, he told a person he met that Hadley had raped one of his daughters but that he would never rape another one. 

Grugin's trial on a first-degree murder charge was held in Macon County Circuit Court in the spring of 1897. Grugin freely admitted killing Hadley, but he felt he was justified in doing so because Hadley had allegedly raped Luella's sixteen-year-old sister, Alma, a few weeks before the murder while she was staying overnight with the Hadleys. Grugin had only learned of the assault on the day of the murder. Grugin took the stand in his own defense, and Alma testified that Hadley had indeed raped her. Luella, on the other hand, testified for the prosecution that the murder was a cold-blooded execution.

It had been revealed in the aftermath of the shooting that bad blood existed between Grugin and Hadley long before the killing. Grugin didn't like Hadley even before he married Luella, and he had strongly opposed the marriage. Many people thought Grugin had acted impulsively and that Hadley was not guilty of raping Alma. Some thought instead that her fiance had criminally assaulted her and that she had tried to shift the blame to Hadley. Alma insisted this was not the case and that she had told the truth. 

The trial ended in a hung jury, with eleven reportedly for acquittal and only one for conviction. At his second trial in December of 1897, though, Grugin was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to fifteen years in the penitentiary. He was released on bond pending the outcome of an appeal, and the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the conviction in late 1898 and remanded the case to Macon County for a new trial. The third trial was held in October of 1899, and the jury acquitted Grugin after a brief deliberation on the grounds of the "unwritten law" that a man had the right to defend the sanctity of his home and family. 

 

 

The Murder of Frank Wade

On Tuesday, July 28, 1897, the neighborhood between Relfe and Spring Creek in southwest Phelps County (MO) was thrown into excitement when the nude body of 11-year-old Frank Wade was found in a pond on the Hamilton Lawson property, his throat having been slashed. Hamilton Lawson's wife and at least one of their sons were suspected of the murder, a mob formed, and the only thing that prevented a lynching was the lack of "a hot-headed leader."

Frank and his 14-year-old brother, Millard, had gone over to the Lawson place on Sunday the 26th to play with Hamilton's 15-year-old son Johnny and his 11-year-old grandson, Rack. The four boys spent the morning playing together before Frank and Rack separated from the other two shortly before noon and went into a pasture. 

When the boys were called to dinner (i.e. lunch), all of them showed up except Frank. When questioned, Rack said that Frank had "gone up the ravine singing and laughing." 

Later in the day, Millard went home, thinking he'd find his younger brother there, but he wasn't there. Frank's parents became greatly worried and gave an alarm. Search parties failed to turn up any sign of the missing boy until his body was found two days later.

Based on the testimony of witness Martin Harris, Mrs. Lawson and two of her sons, 30-year-old Jake and Rack's father, Andy, were arrested on suspicion of murder. 

Andy's trial was held first, in March of 1897. Although the case against Lawson was largely circumstantial, it was considered a strong case for the prosecution. Among the evidence presented was the fact that the defendant had gone to his mother and father's house and secured a razor on the fateful day, supposedly to shave with, but he still had a full beard several days later. To the chagrin of many observers, however, Lawson's trial ended in a hung jury.

His mother was then tried in the summer of 1897 and found not guilty. Again, many observers thought she was guilty, but many also conceded that the state had not presented a strong case against her. 

Jake was tried and Andy was re-tried at the same time, in December of 1897, and they, too, were acquitted. Many people in the Phelps County area remained convinced, however, that they were guilty.

One possible motive for the crime that was put forward was the fact that William Wade, Frank's father, had shot and killed a brother of Jake and Andy several years earlier after the brother was arrested on a robbery charge and tried to escape while Wade, who had been deputized to guard him, was on duty. Some folks, on the other hand, conjectured that the boys had gotten into a fight, that one or both of the Lawson boys had killed the Wade boy, and that the Lawson adults tried to shield their kids.