A History of Northeast Missouri, Volume I, Part 64

Author: Williams, Walter, 1864-1935, editor
Publication date: 1913
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 731

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The influence he had upon the subsequent life of his nephew by mar- riage, who bore a striking resemblance to him, both in his physical as- pect and in his whimsical personality, was emphasized and elaborated in an article by the writer appearing in the Kansas City Star during May, 1912.

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It was at the home of his uncle, Judge Quarles, which he visited each summer until a boy of twelve, that Mark Twain became saturated with the unwritten literature of his race, drinking it in from the stories told him in the slave cabins behind his uncle's house and hearing it afresh as sifted through the fine fancy of the man who was every bit his equal in the high gift of story-telling-perhaps his superior in the quality of an exquisite and. refined humor, for which he is still famed in the history of the people among whom he spent his life. The story of "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," which made two conti- nents roar, traces by the clearest sort of literary genealogy back to Judge Quarles' story of the frog he encountered while taking refuge in a de- serted Tennessee negro cabin to await the subsiding of a storm. To oc- cupy his time he began to catch flies and toss them to the frog and when there were no more flies, began to cast the shot from his ammunition pouch at the hungry amphibian. These exhausted, he caught a wandering yellow jacket, which he stripped of its wings, and tossed at the frog, and at this juncture came the climax to a story which has since gained world- wide fame. On its way down the dying yellow jacket stung the frog and with one titanic effort-for a frog-it-the frog-coughed up the flies and along with them the Judge's shot, enabling him to return home with- out violating an ancient superstition of hunters which looked on an empty ammunition pouch as a bad omen. The Judge used to describe in detail, the efforts of the frog to move with the shot weighing it down and his hearers invariably convulsed with laughter. He used the story with many another to draw custom while a merchant at Florida and many an old man in Monroe county relates it today, who never heard of "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," and with no idea that he may be infringing on copyright.

It was this same Judge Quarles who, while landlord at the old Vir- ginia House at Paris during the war, became impatient over the com- plaint of a captain of Federal cavalry anent the condition of a roller towel in the wash room and who in retort said :

"Sir, two hundred men (referring to a troop of rebels who had been in town the preceding day) have wiped on that towel and you are the first to complain."

Judge Quarles lies buried in the old cemetery at Florida, beside his first wife, and a big marble mausoleum, graven with Masonic emblems, covers them both. A short distance away, the grave covered with bram- bles and wild roses, sleeps little Margaret Clemens, the older sister of Mark Twain, who died in 1835, at the age of twelve years. Time has al- most eroded her name from the little fluted headstone

Of Judge Quarles the great humorist himself wrote: "I have never known a better man and I have never consciously used either him or his wife in a story. That was a heavenly place for a boy-that farm of his." And that is one small admission of the undoubted influence the elder man had on his life. Mark Twain passed through Monroe county on his way to Columbia in the summer of 1902 and great crowds turned out to do him honor along the route. Old men all remarked on the striking re- semblance he bore to his uncle. In this connection it might be well to state that the great humorist was not born in the house pictures of which have been circulated so widely throughout the country and which was torn down by would-be vandals and made into souvenir canes the year of the Chicago exposition, but in a little log room behind the store, then kept by his grandfather Lampton, afterwards the first church in Florida. His mother was staying there at the time, the story being vouched for by the only man who can know-Rev. Eugene Lampton, a first cousin and childhood playmate, now living at Louisiana, Missouri. Mr. Lampton

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also explains away the quaint contention of Mark Twain that the family forgot him and left him behind when his father moved to Hannibal. He was forgotten, but not on this particular occasion, it being on one of the weekly Saturday visits paid by the family of John Marshall Clemens to the home of Mr. Lampton's father, who lived in the country five miles from Florida. The mother had taken the remainder of her brood out on Saturday afternoon and left Samuel to come with his father Sunday morning. The elder Clemens, being an absent-minded man, came away and forgot the boy and was not conscious of the fact until he arrived at his destination and was confronted with the anxious inquiries of the mother of the future great. Mr. Lampton's father had to mount a horse, return to Florida, and get the boy. It was a way, says Mr. Lampton, Sam had of occupying the center of the stage.

With the settlement of the county seat fight, the removal of Clemens with his restless and disturbing spirit, and the realization on the part of the people that Salt river was not navigable, Florida as a possibility began to wane, though it remained a trading point of importance until 1869, when the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad was built through the county and left it some ten miles to the south. Following that it became a prey to the slow decay that saps inland towns. Its isolation was rendered more pronounced with the advent of the rural mail route and the abolishment of the local postoffice, the route now serving it running out from Stouts- ville, its busy and modern rival located on the railroad ten miles north. Bitter hurt was added to this humiliation when Stoutsville tried a few years later to remove the historic Masonic lodge to that place, the Grand Lodge of Missouri interfering to save it the final mortification. Barring diminution in population, it is today pretty much as it was seventy-five years ago. The old Buchanan House, the pride of the town in the days of the humorist's childhood, and its social center, still stands in a fair state of preservation, and frowns seemingly on the busy little smithy nestling beneath its shadows and on its pretentious modern rival, a concrete bank building further down the roadway up which General Grant marched fifty years ago, breaking for the first time on the vision of the nation. The house is of brick, is a majestic structure, and its ivy-covered walls seem redolent, almost vocular, with the legends of the quaint hamlet of which it was once the pride. The last person living in Florida who actually knew the Clemens family was Aunt Eliza Scott-nee Violett-and she died in the early years of the present decade. With her death passed the succession of oldest persons who could tell all one wished to know and the town has given up the hopeless task of any longer furnishing first- hand information. On account of its isolation Florida has preserved its racial and community solidarity more than any other place in the county. It drowses over its delectable memories like some old hidalgo, oblivious of the ruin and dilapidation about it. The silence there is all- pervasive, the indolence infectious. It is at once the most beautiful and the most historic town in Monroe county.

Preparations are already in progress to erect the Mark Twain memo- rial shaft there, provided for by state appropriation, and it is to be lo- cated at the intersection of the two roadways leading into the hamlet.

The first resident physician in Florida was Dr. Willis, who was drowned-some supposed killed-in Salt river while paying a profes- sional visit. In the cemetery stands a handsome granite shaft to the memory of that Dr. Chowning to whose doses of medicine Mark Twain referred as being so large and so generous-castor oil in particular.

Stoutsville was laid out in 1871 and was named for Robert Stout. a wealthy Kentuckian and farmer, who lived near there. The first busi-

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ness house was erected by Dennis Thompson and the first general store opened by J. R. Nolen and Henry Dooley, the latter subsequently county judge for many years and among the historic figures of the county. The Old School Baptists erected a church there in 1840, long before the town was thought of, and the congregation, one of the few remaining in the county, still has a building at that place. Hiram Thompson, William Wilkerson, W. J. Henderson, Job Dooley and Underwood Dooley were among its charter members.

MATTERS MISCELLANEOUS

The Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad was built through Monroe county in 1871, having been commenced in the year of 1869, under the name of the Hannibal & Central Missouri. The county had voted $250,- 000 at a special bond election held in 1868 and in 1873 held another elec- tion transferring its stock to the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Company. The debt was finally discharged in 1891, after having been once refunded.

The Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad, only four miles of which runs through Monroe county, was completed to Monroe City in 1857.

The first circuit judge of Monroe county was Priestly H. McBride, who moved from Columbia to Paris, where he was elected judge of the second judicial district. He was appointed supreme judge in 1845 and prior to that, in 1830, had been secretary of state under appointment by Governor Miller.

The first circuit attorney was Ezra Hunt, who was born at Milford, Mass. The second was John Hurd.

The county's first representative in the legislature was Joseph Stevens. He was succeeded in turn by Major Penn and Jonathan Gore. Charles Flannigan-1844-46-was the first Democratic representative elected from Monroe county. The county was Whig by about two hundred until 1854, when the Know Nothings appeared. After that it was Democratic until the disfranchisement of the reconstruction period and has been Democratic ever since. T. T. Rodes, a Democrat, was elected in 1868, but was denied his seat. Among the succession of representatives are such names as William J. Howell, Waltour Robinson, James M. Bean, Samuel Drake, Samuel Rawlings, John Parsons, William Giddings, George W. Moss and James C. Fox. The county has, almost without exception, ele- vated good men to the legislature. Ebenezer McBride was the first county clerk and was followed by Major Penn, who served from 1848 .to 1859. Thomas Crutcher, one of the best loved men who ever lived in the county, served in the same office from 1873 to 1886 and was succeeded by James L. Wright, who served until 1898.

The first circuit clerk was Edward M. Holden and the second Thomas S. Miller.

The first county judges were Andrew Rogers, John Curry and William P. Stephenson.

The first sheriff was William Runkle, the second Pleasant Ford and the most famous, Joel Maupin.

There has been but one legal execution in Monroe county and but one lynching. The execution was that of Thomas Blue, a negro, who was hanged June 21, 1867, for the murder of Wm. Vandeventer and wife, an aged couple living near Florida. The execution occurred beneath a huge elm tree near the bridge on North Main street at Paris, and was witnessed by thousands of people. It was afterwards discovered that Blue was the tool used. by two white men, the object being robbery, and for forty years it was impossible to convict a man of capital offense in Monroe Vol. 1-31

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· county. So lax did the courts and juries become that in June, 1905, a mob, which nobody considered at all dangerous, broke into the old rock jail at Paris, took out Abraham Witherup and hanged him from the bridge fifty yards north of where Blue had been hung forty years before. Witherup had murdered a young man named Grow, with whom he had been cropping on a rented farm near old Clinton, and in order to hide his crime had placed the body in a sack and thrown it into North Fork river four miles away, hauling it there after night. A special jury was summoned, but no indictments were found.

In 1831 the county court of Monroe ordered roads to be laid off from Paris to Columbia, from Paris to the Fayette road and from Paris to Florida. The first license for the sale of liquor was also issued by this court and the county tax rate was fixed at seventy-five cents. Edward M. Holden was granted a license to conduct a ferry over Salt river at Paris near where the Palmyra bridge now spans that historic stream. The old covered wagon bridge near the woolen factory, still used, was built in 1834. The court at its second session appropriated $500 to "clear out" Salt river before the forks, presumably to gratify Florida navigators.

The first murder case tried in the county was against Burgess Oglesby, John J. Callison, et al, charged with killing Robert Donaldson. They were defended by Austin King and were acquitted.

James H. Smith and Rosey Ann McKeammy were the first couple to be married in the new county. The date was May 12, 1831, and Elder Alfred Wright officiated.

The first court house was built in 1831 and was of brick, fifty feet square and two stories high. It burned in 1866 and a new structure of brick was erected in 1867 at a cost of $45,000. This was torn down and a modern stone structure, one of the finest in the West, built in 1912 at a cost of $100,000. Three years prior to this the county spent $25,000 erecting a modern infirmary to care for the weak and helpless.

The Paris fair association was first organized in 1838 and the first fair held on a lot adjacent to the home of J. C. Fox. Among those who exhibited stock and who are still living is Uncle John Curtright, one of the biggest land owners in the county. He still has the silver cup, which, as a boy, he won on his fine horse.

In 1860 Monroe county had a population of 11,772 white people and 3,063 slaves. In 1910 it had a population of 18,304. In 1848 it had 6,691 white people and 1,826 slaves. The population of Paris was 502.

As early as 1845, Samuel & Haines, Hannibal packers, who handled most of the stock from this county, began to ship Monroe county beef abroad and even at that time the county had taken front rank among Missouri fine stock counties. The credit was given to men like Pleasant McCann, breeder and importer of short-horn cattle, and to others among those early farmers whose names have already been given as being associated with the development of the county's live stock interests. In 1876 David McKamey fed and shipped one hundred head of short- horn cattle for export use that averaged over 2,200 pounds in Chicago. and they were the heaviest cattle, so far as known, at least in such numbers, ever placed on the market in this country. He fed them for three years and they were known as the Centennial drove.

In 1868 Jefferson Bridgford, then owning a fine pack of hounds, found the track of a lynx near his home south of Paris and though it was twenty-four hours old, followed the trail to the Missouri river opposite Jefferson City, ninety miles away, and captured the lynx, the longest chase in the history of the state.

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THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD

As stated before, Monroe county, from the very beginning of the Civil war, was a hot-bed of sedition, and for the greater portion of the time that bloody struggle continued, was an armed camp. The Union forces had it under heel practically after the first year, but there was a constant going and coming of Confederates. As a result there were murder and arson, hatred and assassination. The spy flourished and the informer lurked in every household.

The first Confederate company in Monroe county was organized at Paris by Capt. John Drake, a Virginian, sojourning in the town at the time. This was on June 17, 1861, and shortly after the news of the cap- ture of Jefferson City by the Federals, had reached Paris. The com- pany was organized in front of the old Virginia House, where the Dooley House now stands, and the crowd was summoned by drum beat, the drummer being Uncle Billie Stevens, the most noted performer in that line in Monroe county at the time. A Confederate flag was un-

JEFF BRIDGFORD'

furled to the breeze and enlistments called for, but responses were slow owing to the fact that the excitement and enthusiasm afterwards prev- alent had not yet been aroused. The first man to enlist was Richard Trussel, driver of the Wyman stage between Paris and Shelbina, and who, on his way up the street, encountered the crowd and asked what it meant. On being told he immediately jumped from his seat, signed his name, and in short order was followed by 125 others. Drake was elected captain and Thos. B. Wilson, of New York, another sojourner, first lieutenant. This company, headed by the Paris brass band, and bubbling over with patriotism, started for Boonville with colors flying, war then being looked on as a holiday, and the inglorious annals record that it returned in a few days singly or in small groups, each soldier appearing at his place of business following that memorable battle as if he had never experienced martial ardor or known the smell of powder. The Drake company was disbanded and no more of war was heard until a month later when a rider came galloping into town with the news that "the Federals were coming." Though Federal troops had been

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quartered in various parts of north Missouri, following the capture of Camp Jackson, none had yet set foot in Monroe county and the excitement the news occasioned can be imagined. A chronicler, B. C. M. Farthing, records in the Paris Mercury of June 2, 1901, that it was bawled from one end of Main street to the other and that men, women and children, along with negroes, quit everything and gathered in an excited and rebellious crowd, talk calculated to hurt being quieted by James R. Abbernathey and Henry M. Fields, the latter famous for his Union proclivities though Kentuckian and slave-owner. Women carried Confederate flags and the crowd finally assembled around the Mercury office, where heralds riding in from various sources, brought the news of the rumored approach of an invading force, the Mercury, then edited by Bean and Mason, being a radical secession sheet. As night came on great bonfires were kindled and old men, mounting hastily improvised stands, spoke eloquently beseeching the younger men to stand fast in repelling alien invasion. Men and boys carrying guns and clubs paraded up and down the street in companies awaiting attack, but no Federals came, though that night the "rebel yell" was born. The excitement was not confined to Paris but was prevalent throughout the county. Mounted and armed men in a few days were to be encountered everywhere and strange troopers in groups or pairs, riding from the north, drifted into town every day and out again to join the Confeder- ates south of the river.

Odd incidents occurred, and romantic ones, as the real war spirit grew. One day there rode into town from the north over the flinty hill leading down to the old covered bridge a strange company of horsemen, halting in front of the courthouse. Riding at the head of the grim troopers who composed this weird cavalcade was a slender and beauti- ful boy of fourteen, who sat in his saddle with the grace of a Centaur. He was garbed in the uniform of a Confederate lieutenant, wore a pair of high-topped cavalry boots, and a cap with a jaunty feather curling from the side. His face was pallid, says the chronicler, his hair long, black and curly, and his eyes brown and pensive. Curiosity was rampant until the men dismounted, tied their horses to the courthouse fence and the boy captain, doing the same, ran to a box in front of the Mercury office, leaped upon it, and began to sing a rebel song in clear sweet tones. Finishing he began a raging rebel speech and in a half an hour the flame of war, real war, which it required four years of blood and suf- fering to quench, was lighted in the town and county. This strange company, its purpose accomplished, remained a day or so, giving little account of itself, and finally rode away, the boy at its head, as myste- riously as it came. A few weeks later Marshall's Illinois command rode into town from the east and a slip of a girl, Mildred Donan, standing in the doorway of the home of Martin Bodine, sang "Dixie" as they passed. Miss Donan, sister of the famous Peter Donan and afterwards Mrs. Reavis, had a beautiful voice and every soldier tipped his cap as he rode by. A year later she was the sweetheart and interceder for the famous Monroe county Confederate captain. Elliott Major, and the act would have cost her her life. The war began quite differently from the manner in which it ended.

By July permanent companies were being organized all over the county and only the briefest mention can be given each.

The first company was that of Capt. Theo Brace and the second that of Gen. Tom Harris. Elliott Major was first lieutenant of Brace's company. being subsequently captured. reprieved and ex- changed, fighting to the Gulf and dying in California, as mayor of a country town, and Benjamin Welsh was second lieutenant. Abe Ed-

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wards was third lieutenant, John Hanger first sergeant, both being wounded at Franklin, and John Smizer second sergeant. John Vaughn was commissary and Frank Pitts, Jack Bower, James Bower, G. M. Bower, Chas Hanger, Wm. Giddings, Wm. Bassett, Joe Clapper and John Maupin were among the privates. Of this company, at the close of the war, twenty-one had been killed and wounded and eleven made prisoners. Brace himself being made prisoner at Pea Ridge and the company subsequently joining other commands east of the river and west.

The next company to be organized was that of Gen. Tom Harris, which did most of its drilling up and down Main street and which was whipped into military shape by Dr. Bower, before mentioned, and Lieut- tenant Kelly of Canton, afterwards killed in battle. Shortly afterwards several other companies were organized throughout the county, among them that of Capt. Elisha Grigsby, Capt. W. G. Hastings, Capt. Preston Adams, a veteran of the Mexican war, and Capt. John Murray. Mur- ray's company was organized in South Fork and G. W. Edmondston was first lieutenant, Henry Gillespie second lieutenant, and Jas. B. Davis second sergeant. This company afterwards joined Brace's battalion and when Brace was made colonel, Murray was chosen major.

The Grigsby company was organized at Florida with Ben F. White as first lieutenant, and had a fateful career, most of its members before the war closed being killed, wounded or missing. Even its organization was accompanied by treachery, the recruiting officer deserting to the Federals and leading his new command of 1,100 men back to Florida to annihilate his former comrades in arms only to find them gone. It was this same valiant soldier, a veteran of the Mexican war, noted for his looting proclivities, who captured two of the most beautiful young women in Monroe county, girls of its foremost families, and sent them in irons to Hannibal on charge of being Confederate spies, finally ban- ishing them from the state. The young women, Misses Creath and Power, were alone in a carriage at the time with no escort save a negro boy, and were found with arms and ammunition which they were taking to the recently organized Confederate company in the southeastern part of the county. His name is withheld by the chronicler to whom the writer is indebted for these facts. Grigsby's company was also a part of Brace's battalion and with its captain afterwards found service under Captain Pindle, Grigsby being made quartermaster of that famous command.

Hastings was a northern man by birth, a native of Indiana, but espoused the cause of the people among whom he lived. He was a refined and cultured man, being at that time a teacher at Strother, and was a brave man and gallant soldier. This company was organized at McKamey schoolhouse and numbered 125 men and was made up of some of the best blood of Monroe county-the McGees, Sprouls, Beauchamps, Bridgfords, C'oppages, McBrides, Snells, Cruthers, Millers, and others. John Ewing Nevins, a Cumberland Presbyterian minister, was chaplain. Hastings was not the only Northerner to cast his lot with the South in this county, John Carter, "Captain John," son of ex-Governor Carter of Illinois, at the head of a dozen adventurous comrades, coming over and going south with local commands.

Other companies organized during the summer and fall of 1861-62 were those of Capt. Frank Davis at Madison, and Captain Preston Adams of Washington township, later Worden Willis and James Crow at Paris. All these companies saw hard service, but little is known of their muster-roll. Thos. Sidner, who lost his life in the McNeil massacre at Palmyra, one of the bravest and handsomest of Monroe county's fighters, was first lieutenant of the Davis company and among its privates were .J. R. Chowning, afterwards of Bledsoe's battery, W. L. Noel, Jim

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A History of Northeast Missouri, Volume I, Part 64

Author: Williams, Walter, 1864-1935, editor Publication date: 1913 Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis Publishing Company Number of Pages: 731

Author: Williams, Walter, 1864-1935, editor
Publication date: 1913
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 731