Medoc, Missouri

I've lived in Joplin, Missouri, since the mid-1970s, but there are still a few places in the area I've never been. Take Medoc, for example. Located about 18 miles north of Joplin on Baseline Road, Medoc is a community I'd never visited in my life--until today.

I guess there's a good reason I'd never been to Medoc. There's not much there. Even the old Cowboy Church of Medoc sits empty, as the accompanying photo suggests.

But it hasn't always been so. Medoc was once a thriving little community in the years right after the Civil War. In fact, it was probably the third or fourth largest town in Jasper County at the time, trailing only Carthage, Sarcoxie, and possibly Minersville (i.e. Oronogo). 

Medoc started as a mere trading post in the 1840s, and the place did a lot of business with Native Americans, including the Medoc Indians, which is how the community got its name. A post office was established at Medoc in 1854. A town called Medoc was laid out in 1856 about a quarter mile west of the old trading post, and the post office was moved.

By the time the Civil War came on, Medoc was already a booming little town, but it was virtually destroyed during the war. The town was rebuilt and once again became a thriving community. Livingston's History of Jasper County says the estimated population of Medoc in 1869 was 225. 

In 1870, a correspondent to the Carthage Banner visited Medoc and described the town in a letter to the newspaper. He said the land around Medoc had some of the richest soil around, and he claimed the population of the town was almost 500 people. Among the business at Medoc were three dry goods stores, two copper shops, one bakery, two hotels, a boot and shoe shop, one harness shop, three blacksmith shops, two plow and wagon shops, one machine shop, and "one of the best flouring and saw mills in the west." (The flour mill and the saw mill were separate operations but not separate businesses.) Medoc boasted five doctors, one lawyer, four churches, and one school with over 70 students. The correspondent thought Medoc had the most inviting location in Jasper County, and he predicted that the town "will sooner or later rank among the very first for mercantile, manufacturing, and agriculture pursuits." 

Alas, it was not to be. The discovery of lead and the rapid growth of mining towns like Joplin and Webb City during the 1870s and 1880s probably hastened Medoc's decline, because some merchants did, in fact, relocate from Medoc after the mining towns sprang up. For whatever combination of reasons, Medoc experienced a slow decline in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and the Medoc Post Office was discontinued in 1927. Today, little remains to suggest that Medoc was ever even a village, much less a thriving one. 

A Lonely Hearts Club Murder

Fifty-seven-year-old Verna Coe of rural Shannon County (MO) called her attorney Thursday night, August 3, 1961, and told him she had shot and killed a man at her cabin near Winona, and her lawyer, in turn, notified authorities. The county sheriff trekked to Mrs. Coe's remote property and found a man, identified as Walter Harrow, lying beside a path that led from her cabin to a shack about a hundred feet away, where Harrow had been staying for the past two or three months. The man had been shot in the back of the neck, and the woman said she shot him during an argument. Investigation revealed that Harrow, a retired real estate agent from Omaha (NE), had been attracted to Mrs. Coe's place through a "lonely hearts" correspondence. 

Harrow was not the first man who'd come and stayed with the woman during the five years that she had lived in the remote hills of southern Shannon County, and he was not even the first one she'd shot. She'd had three or four other "lonely hearts" lovers, and in 1957 she'd shot and slightly wounded one of them. She was charged with felonious assault in that case, but the man had declined to testify against her and charges were dropped.

This time she was charged with first-degree murder and jailed at Alton in Oregon County, since the jail at Eminence had no accommodations for women. At her preliminary hearing a week or so after the shooting, the sheriff testified that Mrs. Coe told him she shot at Harrow just to try to scare him but that he dodged just as she fired, and the bullet struck him. The sheriff said the woman told him she and Harrow had been arguing because he wanted her to go back to Omaha with him but that she didn't want to go. The prosecution theorized, however, that the argument came about because Harrow was trying to leave the woman and she was trying to prevent his departure. 

Following the preliminary hearing, Mrs. Coe was held without bond on the first-degree murder charge. At her trial in early September, she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in a plea-bargain deal and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. 

Frank Dawson Murders His Girlfriend

Frank Dawson and Anna Hartman of Monroe County (MO) were planning to get married in the summer of 1903, but when the appointed day arrived and all arrangements for the wedding had been made, the prospective groom failed to show up. At the urging of her father, Anna broke the engagement and wouldn't have anything more to do with Dawson. 

Dawson persisted in his attentions to the young woman and pleaded with her to give him another chance, but she refused. Angry and defected, Dawson was overheard to vow that he'd kill Anna before he'd let her marry anyone else.

On Friday evening, December 4, 1903, Anna, accompanied by a young man named Obe Hughes, went to a dance near Madison at the home of George Ownby. About 7:30, Dawson showed up drunk, uninvited, and packing a revolver. He mingled with some of the other young people present and was heard to say that he meant to "kill some son of a bitch before they danced two rounds."

About 8:30, his friends succeeded in getting Dawson back on his horse and started toward home. However, he showed back up a half hour later flourishing his weapon. This time, his friends took the weapon away from him, but they handed it back to him a short time later when he promised to give it to another friend. 

Dawson started off again but reappeared at the door of the dance hall about 9:30 or 10:00. Just as a new dance was beginning, he strode across the dance floor, pointed his revolver at Anna Hartman, and fired. Anna started to run but slumped to the floor. Her dance partner tried to wrestle the assailant to the floor, but during the scuffle, Dawson got off two more shots. Of the three shots, two struck Anna, one of which passed through her chest, gravely wounding her, while her companion suffered a minor injury. Dawson, thinking he had killed both Anna and her partner, strode rapidly away.

He was arrested a short time later at his brother's house, which was located not far from the Ownby place. Taken to Paris (MO), he was lodged in the Monroe County Jail and charged with first-degree murder after Anna died of her wounds. Rumors of vigilante justice soon prompted authorities to move the defendant to the Macon County Jail, where Dawson gave a statement, saying he had no memory whatsoever of the killing. 

Dawson entered a plea of emotional insanity, but he was convicted of first-degree murder at his trial in Paris in late January of 1904 and sentenced to hang in mid-March. The sentence was stayed pending an appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court, and the high court overturned the conviction in early 1905 on the grounds that the prosecution and judge should have provided instructions for the finding of a lesser verdict. 

On retrial in mid-1905, Dawson was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to 99 years in prison. The sentence was commuted by the governor in 1918, and Dawson was released after serving only 13 years of the supposed 99-year sentence.

John Stansberry the Uxoricide

In the fall of 1885, John Stansberry (aka Stansbury) married 27-year-old Mary "Mollie" Eubank in Newton County, Missouri. In the spring of 1889, Stansberry visited the Indian Territory, rented a farm, and bought the crop that was growing there. He returned to Newton County, and in August of 1889, he and his wife, along with their one-year-old daughter, headed back to Indian Territory to make their home on the rented farm. 

They stopped for a while near Eufaula, and Mollie went to a neighboring home for a visit on September 20. When she came back to where her husband was staying, she found her baby "in a dying condition with a ghastly wound in its head, and it soon expired."  Stansberry claimed the child had fallen from a chair, but the differing statements he made regarding the incident caused some people to believe he had killed the little girl himself.  

Mollie stood by her husband, though, at least to the extent that she packed up a short time later and moved with him to the farm he had previously rented fourteen miles from Eufaula. On October 13, sometime after dark, Mollie was murdered, her skull crushed with an ax as she lay on a pallet in her room. 

Stansberry went to a nearby home and reported that someone had broken into his home, murdered his wife, and stolen $300 from him. The neighbor and others went to the Stansberry place and found the dead woman, a bloody ax nearby, and a pail of bloody water on a table. Again, Stansberry told so many conflicting stories that people's suspicions were aroused. As soon as Mollie was buried, some of the men present at the funeral took Stansberry into custody while he was still at the gravesite. He was later taken to Fort Smith, where he was lodged in jail and charged with murder.  

The defendant was tried in Federal Court in late February 1890 and found guilty of first-degree murder. Although the evidence was all circumstantial, it was so strong that the jury was out only a short time before reaching its unanimous verdict. The prosecution said Stansberry's motive was that he had met a Native-American woman during his earlier stay in the Territory and that he wanted to marry her in order to inherit some land she was entitled to. 

A couple of months after the trial, Judge Isaac Parker, the so-called "hanging judge," pronounced sentence. After giving Stansberry a harsh lecture and then asking God to have mercy on his soul, Parker ordered that the convict be hanged by the neck on July 9, 1890, until he was dead.

Refusing all spiritual aid and still proclaiming his innocence, Stansberry went to the gallows as scheduled on July 9 and "died game." 

Trouble Getting Married Because She Was "Sized Up as a White Girl"

Most of the United States had anti-miscegenation laws (laws prohibiting interracial marriage) at one time. Most of these racist laws were meant especially to prevent black people from marrying white people, but sometimes other types of interracial marriage were also targeted. Often it was up to the recorder of deeds in each county to enforce the law by refusing to issue a marriage license to couples of mixed race. Ministers and other officials could also get into trouble for performing a marriage ceremony involving a mixed-race couple. Missouri was one such state.

On December 21, 1899, a black man and a young woman named Lucy Griffin, who appeared to be white, called at the recorder's office in Jackson County, Missouri, and asked for a marriage license. I. B. Marlatt, a clerk in the recorder's office, told the couple that it was against the law for whites and blacks to intermarry and that he could be fined for issuing a license to them. 

The young woman, whose skin was "as fair as any white woman's and who had blue eyes and brown hair that was straight and long, told the recorder that she was not a white woman "except in looks. I am of African extraction."  

Lucy, who was described as "very handsome," told Marlatt that he was not the only person who had taken her for a white woman. "There have been a great many mistakes made as to my race and nationality." 

Gossett asked the woman, "Are you willing to make oath that you are a Negro?" 

She said "yes" and signed an addendum to the application swearing that she was of "African descent and African affiliation." Only then did the recorder issue the license. 

 But the resistance to their marriage wasn't quite over for Lucy and her betrothed, a "mulatto" named S. H. Harris. When the couple presented themselves before a judge to be joined in matrimony, Lucy had to convince him, just as she had the recorder's clerk, that she was indeed a black woman. Harris became angry at this point, but Lucy calmed him down, asking him to restrain his temper. He did, and the marriage finally took place.  

Back in Sedalia, where Lucy was from, the local newspaper, upon learning of the marriage, got a chuckle out of the fact that Lucy, the daughter of a matron at the Sedalia train depot, had gotten mistakenly 'sized up as a white girl who wanted to marry a negro." 

Missouri's law against interracial marriage was finally repealed in 1969, two years after the U. S. Supreme Court ruled such laws unconstitutional. 

The Case of the Missing Bride

On February 14, 1904, the Sunday morning Joplin (MO) Globe contained an announcement in the society section of the newspaper informing readers that William F. Gray and Bessie F. McCombs would be united in marriage at 11 o'clock that morning by Justice of the Peace J. L. Potter. The 18-year-old Miss McCombs, the Globe told its readers, was very popular and had scores of friends among the younger set, even though she had only resided in Joplin a short while. Her parents were well respected citizens of Kansas City. The prospective groom was an interior decorator by trade, a prominent young man in Joplin, and a world traveler who'd "twice circumnavigated the globe."

The next day, though, readers of the Globe learned that the wedding hadn't come off as planned "on account of the sudden disappearance of the bride." The couple had called on Friday at Potter's office and applied for a marriage license. Gray had gone back on Saturday and, learning that the license had arrived, arranged for the marriage to take place on Sunday morning at his home. The young couple parted on Saturday evening with the understanding that they would wed the next day at 11:00 a.m. Bessie went to the home of her aunt, Mrs. Gardner, on Joplin Street, where she had been staying. There she would dress for the wedding the next morning and appear for the wedding at the appointed time.  

Gray, Justice Potter, and a number of wedding guests all gathered for the event on Sunday morning. A wedding dinner was prepared, and everything was in readiness. But Miss McCombs didn't show up. Gray waited in vain for some time before undertaking a search for his missing bride. He went to Mrs. Gardner's house, where he was told that Bessie had left an hour earlier to go to another aunt's house, where she was supposed to make final preparations for the wedding. Gray raced to the other aunt's house, only to be told that Bessie hadn't been there at all. 

In vain, he searched the entire city, aided by the police. Justice Potter said that, when he'd seen the girl on Friday, she'd been in the best of spirits, and he never would have suspected the young woman, whom he described as "good looking," wouldn't go through with the marriage. However, police did not suspect foul play. Potter said he was dumbfounded by what had transpired. 

On Monday night, Bessie phoned Gray after reading in the newspaper about the sensation her supposed disappearance had caused and expressed regret over the "misunderstanding." She said she'd gone from her aunt's house on Sunday morning to the residence of R. J. Gardner at 1618 Wall Street, where she'd taken a job as a domestic and immediately gone to work there. Gray rushed to where he thought Bessie had said she was, but in his haste, he went by mistake to the wrong address, 1619 Wall. When he returned from his fruitless mission, he was downhearted and thought Bessie was "trying to make sport of him." 

But the next morning, when Bessie called again, Gray answered the second summons as promptly as he had the first, and the couple had a happy reunion. That same Tuesday evening, the two went together to Justice Potter's office and got married quietly with very few in attendance. 

Bessie, whom a Globe reporter described as "really beautiful, even more so than the regulation heroine," remarked that there was a "slight misunderstanding" between her and Gray but that she did not care to go into detail since everything had ended happily.

 

An Age-Gap Romance Turns Deadly

About 6:30 Friday evening, November 20, 1942, 50-year-old Cliff Moore got into an argument with his "very attractive" 22-year-old wife, Sylvia, at Kidd's Place, a combination service station/tavern and dance hall about four miles west of Rolla on Route 66, which the couple had been operating for a few weeks. Initial reports said only that the two were struggling for possession of 12-guage shotgun when the gun went off, gravely wounding Cliff Moore. He died at a hospital a couple of hours later. 

Investigators apparently did not consider it purely an accident, however, because they promptly arrested Sylvia at her parents' home in Vichy. Lodged in the Phelps County Jail at Rolla, she was charged with second-degree murder.

At Sylvia's trial a month or two later, the state contended that she grabbed the gun first. Testifying in her own defense, Sylvia told a different story. She said the quarrel began when she returned to Kidd's Place after visiting her parents in Vichy and her husband accused her of having been drinking with another man.

Moore ordered her out of the tavern, and, when the argument continued outside the building, he went to a telephone to call the state patrol. She convinced him not to call, saying that they could settle their dispute without the intervention of the officers. She followed him back to the tavern's front door, where, she said, Moore threatened to kill her. Nevertheless, she followed him inside, and they walked behind the bar to the kitchen, where a shotgun was kept.

Sylvia said Cliff picked up the gun and pointed it toward her. When she pushed the barrel out of the way, he grabbed her around the waist and shoved her onto a back porch. Opening the back door to the screened-in porch, he tried to throw her outside. He had his right arm around her, and his left arm was holding the gun. Sylvia said she used her right hand to prevent being thrown out, and when she bent over, the gun discharged. 

The trial ended in a hung jury. Sylvia then asked for and was granted a change of venue for her next trial. It was held in neighboring Texas County in July of 1943. At the end of testimony and closing arguments on July 13, the jury deliberated for only 25 minutes before coming back with a verdict of not guilty.