Swindled: Wayne County's Turbulence, 1868-1904

By Cletis R. Ellinghouse

The turbulence of a wonderful time brought four railroads, several new towns, thousands of new residents, the first newspapers, and an untold number of other businesses to sparsely settled but timber-rich Wayne County. It commenced as logging of the countys precious virgin timber (a good part of it pine) gained momentum after arrival of the first train in 1871, but glimpses of the excitement and the heartache, integral parts of it, have been preserved in the authors recordings of the year-by-year happenings, often in the precise language used by the newspapers of that day to report them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479757176

Cletis R. Ellinghouse

Swindled is the last of five books retired weekly newspaper publisher Cletis R. Ellinghouse has written to describe historical milestones in the neighborhood that embraces the place of his birth, Wayne County. He practically grew up in the offices of his father’s newspapers at Greenville and Piedmont before earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Arkansas State University at Jonesboro in 1958. His writing career included stints on daily newspapers in three states before he returned to his home grounds to commence publishing weekly papers of his own at Bonne Terre, Jackson, Marble Hill, and Puxico, where he now resides.

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by Cletis R. Ellinghouse.

Library of Congress Control Number:             2012922493

ISBN:                   Hardcover                978-1-4797-5716-9

                             Softcover                  978-1-4797-5715-2

                             Ebook                       978-1-4797-5717-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

122218

CONTENTS

An Introduction

Chapter One

1868-1874: A Turbulent Period

Chapter Two

1875-1886: The Expansion Continues

Chapter Three

1887-1896: A Most Regrettable Period

Chapter Four

1897-1904: Front-Page Attractions

Chapter Five

Epilogue: Great Changes at Newspapers

To all who have an interest in Wayne County history.

AN INTRODUCTION

The turbulence of a wonderful time, well over one hundred years ago, brought four railroads, several new towns, thousands of new residents, the first newspapers, and an untold number of other enterprises to sparsely settled but timber-rich Wayne County. It began in the days that followed completion of the Iron Mountain Railroad, south from Pilot Knob to Piedmont, in 1871, but even then it was apparent that Wayne County, in a short time, would be the hub of an unbelievably large logging operation that would not end until the last of its magnificent stands of virgin timber had been harvested—all to meet the demands of a country desperately trying to rebuild and expand after a terrible civil war.

Growth centers developed very quickly at three of the new towns built along the Iron Mountain Railroad—Piedmont, Mill Spring, and Williamsville—where large sawmills were quickly put into operation. That was replicated some ten years later at other towns along the rails of two new roads—Louis Houck’s Cape Girardeau and Southwestern (later the St. Louis, Cape Girardeau, and Fort Smith), which cut across the southern parts of Wayne County and the Mill Spring, Current River, and Barnesville (later the Southern Missouri), inaugurated largely to serve the county’s largest milling operation built by Clarkson Sawmill Company near Mill Spring. The logging operation was expanded to practically all parts of the county following the organization of Hiram N. Holladay’s Williamsville, Greenville and Northeastern (later the Williamsville, Greenville and St. Louis) Railroad and the building of his huge mill at Greenville (to become the largest in the state with some seven hundred employees), but as the competition stiffened, quarrels among the rival companies became commonplace, many to be settled in the courtroom.

My account of this unusual period began to take shape shortly after I’d begun a study to compile a documented history of Wayne County’s pioneer newspapers. During the course of that early endeavor, I examined a great number of old newspapers, which led me to several of the railroad quarrels and so many other horrific and stunning Wayne County stories—one tells of two men killing each other in a gunfight following a dispute over an ox. I enlarged the scope of my task and began adding some of these precious reports unrelated to newspapers to my document collection. By the time I had finished the year-by-year recordings, often in the precise language employed by the newspapers of that day to report them, the number of these had grown enormously, a good many pertaining to the railroads. So what you have before you is a multifaceted history of that delightful time, 1868 to 1904, which embodies both the good and the bad, as well as a detailed account of the newspapers, all supported by these and other documents. A disappointment was my failure to learn what prompted the birth, in 1868 at Patterson, of the first newspaper, Missouri Weekly. I suspect the incessant and widespread chatter of an economic boom certain to follow the imminent arrival of the railroad had something to do with it. In any case, Missouri Weekly was one of hundreds of new businesses to open their doors before and after the arrival, in 1871, of the Iron Mountain Railroad.

The railroad story begins with Thomas Allen’s purchase of the Iron Mountain in 1867 and the struggle that ensued following its seizure in 1868 by Thomas Clement Fletcher, Missouri’s Radical Republican governor (whose tactics so enraged Wayne County’s representative in the U.S. Congress, Thomas E. Noell, that he arranged a meeting at the White House with President Andrew Johnson to apprise him of the chaos and lawlessness in Missouri). It continues with the election in 1869 of Mill Spring attorney William T. Leeper to a seat in the Missouri General Assembly, which turned out to be the first in a chain of events that forever changed Wayne County—the extension of the Iron Mountain Railroad south from Pilot Knob down the Black River valley to the site of the town Allen called Piedmont.

1-B.jpg

Thomas Allen, president of what became the St. Louis, Iron Mountain, and Southern Railroad, was responsible for the birth of Piedmont and several other southeast Missouri towns.

The narrative continues with the building of the road to the south, the Poplar Bluff editor’s note to nervous citizens to prepare themselves for the shock of the screaming engine, the heartache endured before construction reached Little Rock, the official opening of the road, the scandalous Gads Hill train robbery (that came to pass not long after Leeper unwittingly had shared a meal with the outlaws at Mill Spring), and two botched attempts to rob the Iron Mountain a second time. The roads, in the beginning, generated a feeling of buoyancy, friendship, and good times as the economic boom unfolded more or less magnanimously. But a good part of that changed after railroad mogul Jay Gould acquired the Thomas Allen Road and made no secret of his intent to gobble up the other major Wayne County carrier, the Cape Girardeau Road, which infuriated owner Louis Houck. It set the stage for Houck’s bitter courtroom fight with Eli Klotz, a wealthy Piedmont lumber merchant, after he agreed to accept a court appointment to serve as the receiver of Houck’s troubled road. Houck, who saw Klotz as a stooge for the Gould empire, opposed his appointment with all the vigor he possessed, then commenced a tumultuous three-year court fight to quash it.

Among the other stories—a good many of which were found in papers published elsewhere but first appeared in Wayne County newspapers no longer available to us—is one that tells of the fatal injuries sustained by nine-year-old James R. Koons while playing on the Iron Mountain turntable in Piedmont. Another tells of the town’s angry protest of the decision to establish Southeast Missouri Normal School at Cape Girardeau rather than at Arcadia. Others pertain to a horse race at Greenwood Valley that ended in a brawl, the widespread fear engendered across the county by the lawlessness of the New Madrid desperadoes, and a report that literally dozens of Wayne County deer were found dead of black tongue disease.

The testy struggle by Missouri’s political parties to conduct primary elections to nominate their candidates for public office (and say adios to the traditional convention) began in earnest well before August 1, 1890, the date of the first one held in Wayne County, but the hassle didn’t come to an end until early in August of 1900. It was in March of that year that a primary was scheduled in each of the counties within the Thirteenth Congressional District to nominate the Democratic Party’s candidate for the seat in the U.S. Congress and, at the same time, to abolish the convention that traditionally handled the task. It didn’t set well with Piedmont Banner editor J. N. Holmes, who served on the congressional district’s central committee along with party leader William T. Leeper, but neither his ascendancy to the committee’s chairmanship in April of that year nor his headline-grabbing campaign to save the convention was sufficient to reverse the established course. Voters in each of the counties went to the polls that year in August to decide the issue themselves.

Other accounts tell of a costly flood in 1883 that left McKenzie Creek island nearly desolate, sensational murders, horrific fires—several in Piedmont (two in 1888), Williamsville, and Greenville—the missing funds that brought about Wayne County collector William Warmack’s departure, the scandal that brought down Wayne County circuit court clerk George Franklin, his unintended but pivotal role in the political implosion that led to the sale of the Democratic Greenville Sun and the beginning of its long run as Wayne County’s Republican newspaper, the Greenville postmaster who’d been cowhided by a widow who didn’t like his remark that reflected poorly on her character, the failure of an old suspension bridge at Piedmont, an example or two of the unbridled outrage exhibited at times by the pioneer editors, and numerous other accounts that should be enlightening to curious researchers. The narrative ends in 1904 with a report of the death of nine-year-old Ashby Toney, whose fatal injuries were sustained while trying to climb on board a moving railroad car near the Piedmont depot. It was not unusual. Several others, mostly boys, had suffered the same fate over the years. He was a son of Piedmont druggist William P. Toney.

2.jpg

George P. Rowell’s innovative national newspaper directory, introduced in 1869, was a tool immediately prized by marketing executives to aid them in the placement of advertisements in the nation’s newspapers.

To accomplish my original goal, I first compiled a list of the newspapers, as their names appeared chronologically in the nation’s newspaper directories, which were comprehensive in scope and published annually without cost to the newspaper. The birth in 1869 of the first of these, published by George P. Rowell & Company, was heartily endorsed and warmly welcomed by the nation’s publishers. It would be used primarily by marketing executives to aid them in the placement of advertisements in the nation’s newspapers to promote the sale of their clients’ products. It was something radically new, but the weekly publisher saw the use of it as a boon to increased profitability of his newspaper, hence his eagerness to supply the information required. The Ste. Genevieve Fair Play editor, in writing of the sale and the changing of the name of Poplar Bluff’s newspaper in 1874, ended his report by stating so many such changes had been made among southeast Missouri papers that he’d considered keeping a record of them with the thought, George P. Rowell & Company would pay a good price for it every year, solid evidence that Rowell had become widely known among the editors in a very short time. The use of these directories to achieve my goal was an option available to me only because most of them, in recent years, have been made accessible to all who have an Internet provider. It was nevertheless a time-consuming study, which preceded my review of a number of histories, most noticeably Goodspeed’s History of Southeast Missouri (1888), Robert S. Douglass’s History of Southeast Missouri (1912), and several newspapers, particularly issues of the Fair Play (some of which are available online), to try to account for what transpired in the months between the yearly listings in the directories. Wayne County’s newspapers changed hands a number of times in the late 1890s and the early 1900s, making that the most troublesome period to document. The result is likely not a perfect accounting, but I do believe it is much closer to it than any of the earlier attempts, some of which were littered with egregious errors.

3.jpg

Bristol French, the editor and publisher of the Piedmont Banner, who in 1911 published a daily newspaper in the town, is shown here in his shop with his two female type compositors, his sisters-in-law, Mss. Docia and Grace Williams. Notice the drawers of type on the left. French not only was skilled in the printing end of the business but also had a wealth of experience in reporting, having been a reporter in Nashville and Memphis before coming to Missouri.

Today’s Wayne County Journal-Banner traces its roots to a consolidation of the Weekly Journal (later renamed the Wayne County Journal) founded in 1877 at Greenville by J. N. Morrison and the Banner founded in 1892 at Piedmont by J. N. Holmes. Morrison, an attorney, and Holmes, a physician, were, by any measurement, the best educated of the pioneer editors. But that’s not to put down the other very able editors, particularly Seneca B. Sproule and Theodule L. Roussin. They had the distinction of having served together in the same company of the Confederacy’s Fourth Missouri Infantry during the Civil War (Sproule being his company’s first sergeant and Roussin serving under him as a corporal). They obviously were well acquainted before entering the newspaper business in Wayne County, though Sproule had sold his Piedmont Times to Morrison and departed shortly before Roussin arrived to found the Piedmont Vindicator. The two had begun their military service in the Missouri State Guard, Sproule enlisting from Wayne County, Roussin from Ste. Genevieve County, before entering the Confederate military. The newspapers founded by Morrison and Holmes were dominant during their years of ownership, but both struggled under subsequent owners until they were consolidated by Greenville Journal publisher George W. Stivers a few years after he’d acquired the Piedmont Banner in 1918. He and kinsman William B. Kennedy had acquired the Journal in October of 1907 from D. N. Holladay, who, a short time earlier, acquired it from M. C. Harty, who later published the Index in Puxico.

4.jpg

George W. Stivers came to Greenville from Kansas in 1907 and, in barely more than ten years, owned two of the county’s newspapers, which he eventually consolidated to create what for many years has been the Wayne County Journal-Banner.

My search of the old newspapers led to a most surprising discovery—that David Porter of Wayne County was an elected delegate to the state constitutional convention in 1845. I was shocked to learn of it, since neither Goodspeed, Douglass, nor Rose Cramer had reported it in their widely circulated histories of Wayne County. How the omission could have occurred in all three histories, I do not know, but I’m certain it was not the result of intent or design. I had written of Porter in Old Wayne (pages 116 and 117), so I recognized the name as soon as I saw it in the June 7, 1845, issue of Boon’s Lick Times of Fayette, which stated Porter, a Wayne County Democrat, was a convention candidate. Some time later, I came upon the issue of August 23, 1845, of the same newspaper, which stated Porter and Franklin Cannon of Cape Girardeau County (who earlier had been elected and served a term as Missouri’s lieutenant governor) had been elected the delegates from Missouri’s Eighteenth District. Claiborne Fox Jackson, Missouri’s pro-Confederate governor chased from the state at the outbreak of the Civil War, was among Porter’s fellow delegates, ample evidence that only the most accomplished of the state’s public servants were chosen for the convention seats.

5.jpg

Claiborne F. Jackson, Missouri’s pro-Confederate governor chased from the state by Union soldiers at the outbreak of the Civil War, served with Wayne County’s David Porter at the state constitutional convention held in 1845.

As stated in Old Wayne, Porter, a Pennsylvania native, was the father of Nancy Jane (Porter) Black, the wife of John Letcher Black, and resided, at age sixty-six, in their Wayne County home at the time of the 1850 census. He was described as a widower and a surveyor. Porter, in earlier times, resided near the Wabash River in the far eastern part of Illinois in Crawford County, which he helped organize in 1816, two years before Illinois gained statehood (the county at that time encompassed about one-third of the state), and where his daughter was born in 1827. He had served on the county court and as a justice of the peace in territorial days, before statehood, and as the county’s authorized agent, he sold the lots for the county-seat town of Palestine and provided the hewn timber required to erect the courthouse there. He had the distinction to be chosen that county’s first representative in the Illinois legislature, which suggests he truly was a man of unusual talent and accomplishment. The high esteem to which he was held in the family was made apparent in the name chosen for J. L. Black’s eldest son, David Porter Black. Shortly after the convention, Wayne County sent John Letcher Black’s brother, Samuel Black III, to Jefferson City to serve in the state legislature (where he joined others to wage a tough fight—and even voted for a Whig—to end the long and illustrious career of Missouri’s first U.S. senator, Thomas H. Benton, whose unpopular stand on issues related to slavery had caused a ruckus). J. L. Black spent the greater part of his life in Saline County, where his descendants continue to reside today. As recently as December 22, 2010, a newspaper there, the Marshall Democrat-News, referred to Nancy Jane (Porter) Black as a daughter of one of the members of the constitutional convention. It likely was a great disappointment to Porter, but the revisions to the state’s constitution he and his fellow delegates proposed were rejected by voters in 1846.

6.jpg

His stance on slavery made renowned U.S. senator Thomas Hart Old Bullion Benton (above) so unpopular in 1850 that Samuel Black, Wayne County’s representative, joined with others in the Missouri legislature to oust him from his office.

Shortly thereafter, the talk in Wayne County centered on a court fight to recover the value of a missing female slave known as Hannah. No record of it was found in the old newspapers, but from extant handwritten court records, one learns the case was undertaken by Pinckney Mabrey shortly after he was made administrator of the estate of William Smith Criddle, who had passed away in May of 1852 in the Black River settlement that later would be known as Williamsville. Hannah had accompanied Criddle and his wife, Elvira, at the time they moved from Cape Girardeau County to Wayne County early in 1851, but after his death, a kinsman came to the home, claimed Hannah did not belong to the deceased, and took her away. In response to the court action initiated by Mabrey to protect the estate’s assets, a number of Criddle’s Wayne County neighbors who had visited often in his home and mill—William Williams, Thomas D. Morrison, Richard A. Shoat, John S. Hastings, Edward Burgett, as well as Mabrey himself—testified before justice of the peace David Ramsey and circuit court clerk George W. Creath that the slave belonged to the deceased to the best of their knowledge. The Greenville hearing was conducted in the Creath Store building, one suspects because the courthouse had been destroyed by fire in 1854. The case moved on to a common pleas court in Cape Girardeau County, where a number of others were called to testify, several contending the owner of the slave was Criddle’s father, Jesse Criddle, a widely known planter whose shipping leaf tobacco, for years, had been judged best in Missouri. My great-great-grandfather Ezekiel Mabrey, Pinckney Mabrey’s uncle, was one of the Cape Girardeau County residents who testified for the plaintiff. He had known William S. Criddle since the fall of 1844, when the latter moved