Saddling the History Hobby Horse
Howard County family graveyards • We just 'pizened a baby' • Some grave remarks • Captain of the Forts of 1812 • Epitaphs • Obituaries of long ago • Race horses were his hobby • A little for the stomach's sake.
Lilburn’s interest in history began in 1939, when he was elected president of the Cooper-Howard County Historical Society. The name later became the Boonslick Historical Society.
In December 1937 Lilburn wrote to Lillian:
Dear Cousin Lillian,
I enclose a couple of clippings, one of which will enlighten you in regard to the Historical Society. I got hooked up in it the night after I was in St. Louis, and perhaps while I was “still in my cups” or something. But now I am in, and find every one I ask to serve on various committees so willing, I am encouraged and hopeful we may have an up-and-doing organization. An editor of a paper recently called to ask my opinion about some historical data which he had gathered. He had been informed that at one time my grandfather Horace Kingsbury and Billie Marshall tried to dam up the flow from the old Salt Lick [where Daniel Boone and his sons made salt] for a body of salt water in which they expected to plant salt or sea fish and oyster beds. I had not heard of it before, but father said that was Billie Marshall’s idea after he bought the land from Grandfather and those who formed the company and put down the well at the spring. Grandfather had nothing to do with that wild dream.
I have a horror of being called on for talk in public meetings and at the banquet I seated myself near an exit and planned to leave as soon as the banquet was served and the guest speaker had made his address. I feared since so few Howard Countians were present, I would be asked to say something for the county. But the order of the meeting was changed and the business session held before Dr. Violette was asked to speak. When it came time to elect a president, my name was put up, the nomination seconded, nominations closed, and I was elected by acclamation. It was done before I could set the coffee cup from which I was drinking at the moment down on the table. Roy Williams had me framed. He didn’t want it himself and he was just slick enough to plan to put it on somebody else. Instead of sneaking out the exit as I had planned, I went in response to invitation to the President’s chair, utterly dumbfounded and amazed and embarrassed beyond words. They asked Dr. Violette to speak and during that time I was trying to think of something to say for I knew my time had come. There were 60 prominent people and I couldn’t just lie down and die.
I scarcely know parliamentary rules and when called on to preside over the balance of the business matters, I had to turn to Roy for help and had a terrible struggle, but it seems the audience thought I had assumed a pose, and they thought me funny and I got by. Mrs. Chilton said she had not realized I was a natural born wit. I wasn’t. I was just a darned fool, but the Lord was kind and kept the fact concealed.
On August 22, 1938:
Dear Cousin Lillian,
It is funny how my interests change with the years. There was a time when it was music, then it was genealogy, and now it is history.
But I am terribly interested in a project which is giving me relaxation in a way, and yet I wear myself down to the nub at it, simply because when I am interested in something, I work at it like I was putting out a fire. My project started out as an effort to discover the graves of the pioneers who were the political, economic and social pillars of the Boonslick Country.
I soon discovered no one today knows where the unmarked graves of Boonslick pioneers are. Most of the private cemeteries are wrecks. It was obvious with the passing of another generation, many old graveyards would be obliterated. It occurred to me it would be a good thing if all the marked graves in the county were recorded for the benefit of posterity, and, not having done much for posterity, I decided to undertake that project. I know John Doe of the future will feel impelled by a sudden interest in genealogy, and want to find out something about his Howard County ancestors.
Some of what he found:
Howard County Family Graveyards
Old graveyards are numerous in Howard County. By the middle of the last century there was a graveyard on nearly every farm. In many instances it was within a stone’s throw of the house. More often it was farther from the dwelling, on a high point chosen because it commanded a beautiful landscape as if the spirits of the departed might be accorded the enjoyment of such a view, very lovely in early spring or in the blue haze of Indian summer.
During the past summer and fall I visited every marked grave in Howard County which comprises the heart of the Boonslick Country, seeking traces of the pioneer men and women.
Seventy percent of the private graveyards of which there are more than 200 now extant, are unfenced and overrun by livestock, with many tombstones on the ground. Some ten percent, though fenced, have reverted to wild vegetation. A few are so overgrown with saplings, weeds and briers as to make them almost impenetrable.
The graves of most of the Howard County pioneers who died here are lost forever, having unlettered rock or cedar tree markers, or none at all. No person living now can identify them. Many of the inscribed markers which did grace graves are flat upon the earth, some in fragments, broken off by browsing cows and horses which delight in rubbing their bodies against the sharp edges of the brittle slabs.
The marble monument which stood at the grave of Colonel Benjamin A. Cooper, leader of the first settlers who came to the Boonslick frontier in 1810, courageous protector of his people during the war with the Indians and in later years an outstanding citizen in the county, lies shattered on a hillside.
Lilburn continued adding to his files of grave data cards as new family cemeteries came to his attention.. When he died, his cemetery card files became part of the Lilburn A. Kingsbury collection in the Western Manuscript division of the Missouri State Historical Society in Columbia. There are approximately 12000 cards in these files. In his letters and newspaper columns he writes of some of his graveyard experiences. An example of this is his Boonville Daily News Column of March 27, 1972. It follows:
We Just Pizened a Baby
In making records of the tombstones in Howard County, I wondered about the infant mortality which occurred in some families during the 19th century.
Lewis cemetery near Glasgow. Original tombstone for Lewis children
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In the endowed, well-groomed Lewis family cemetery two mil es east of Glasgow, there are two small rows of tombstones, ten in one and eight in the other. They mark the graves of children fathered by two brothers. Seven of the family of ten died before they were one year old. One lived until its second year, one until its third, and the other one attained the age of four years. The stones which mark their graves are exactly alike and appear modern, as if they might have replaced old-fashioned ones erected a century ago.
Six of the babies in the other family lived but 1, 5, 9, 11, 15 days and 1 less than a month. A seventh child survived six months; the eighth, 11 months.
The deaths of the ten children extended over a period of 24 years from 1839 to 1863. Those of the eight occurred within 12 years, 1854 through 1866. The graves of the latter are marked by small obelisks alike except one is larger than the others. It marks the grave of the last child to die. Each has a little lamb as an emblem just above the name and the dates.
I was so deeply impressed by and curious about these cases of infant mortality, I went to see an elderly man in Glasgow. I thought he might remember having heard something about it.
He had seen the two rows of tombstones many times and he too had wondered about them until he talked with old Mose, an aged black man who had been a young slave owned by one of the brothers.
Mose was feeble of body but had a clear mind. With emancipation so far behind him he spoke casually of the deaths of the children. He said, “Cose I remembers. Ever time one of the Massas whupped one of us, we just pizened a baby.”
Such stories of slaves squaring scores “gettin even”, still persist.
Lilburn’s graveyard visits provided many tasty anecdotes to embellish his frequent talks to clubs and societies. A favorite title he used was:
Some Grave Remarks
One day a woman looked out of our front window toward Mt. Pleasant cemetery and saw something which excited her very much. She called me and explained she had seen no one go over to the graveyard, yet she could see what appeared to be a woman, dressed in black. She seemed to move behind tombstones as if hiding, or, she would appear to stand erect and then stumble after a step or two and fall to the ground. She was sure the woman was either intoxicated or desperately ill. Nothing would suffice but for me to investigate. There was a woman in black, a frail little thing from a distant city. She was not ill. She was not intoxicated except as one gets drunk on genealogy. She was searching for the graves of her ancestors. At times she stood up to read the inscriptions, sometimes in front, sometimes behind the tombstones. Again she would lie almost prone upon the ground to study the time-worn names and date, which accounted for the disappearing act which was visible from the window.
Robert Taylor and Alice Kingsbury's Monument
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In Howard County, the D.A.R. and Real Daughters of 1812 have placed bronze plaques on granite stones in the Court House Yard at Fayette, in memory of all of the Soldiers and Real Daughters of the Revolution and all the Soldiers and Real Daughters of 1812, known to have been buried in Howard County. These plaques bear 100 names but only 31 of these citizens have marked graves. The History of Howard and Cooper Counties lists 230 names of men who were in the forts of 1812, but only 13 of these names appear in my survey of marked graves.
When deaths occurred, the early settler buried his loved ones on his own land, or if some kinsman or good neighbor had already started a God’s acre, he opted to use it. Often the plat was close to the flower garden or within a stone’s throw of the house. Sometimes a more distant site was chosen because of elevation.
Clark’s Chapel, in the south part of the county, commands a magnificent view of the Missouri River valley with the rolling hills of Cooper County in the distance. I once heard a man say he would like to have his last sleep there, so that on the Resurrection, when Gabriel blows his horn, he might arise and enjoy the view the first thing in the morning.
In the family cemeteries, cedar trees were planted, sometimes in lieu of markers at the graves, more often to outline the boundaries of the plot, but always as symbols of memories to be kept green forever. Some of these old cedar trees, as old as the graveyards themselves and nourished by the bones of men buried beneath them, are keeping faith with the dead, but hold their skirts of evergreen boughs high as if to keep them from the desolation under foot. But they, like rock retaining walls, massive box tombs, marble shafts and iron fences, all designed by men for permanency, are being humbled into the dust by time.
In some cases the condition reflected indifference on the part of surviving relatives, but generally the direct descendants of those buried there have passed on or else removed to parts so far distant that feeling of responsibility has disappeared, or if they do remember, procrastination sees that there is no material manifestation of the thought.
Judge Owen Rawlins was a prominent man of the county and first Commissioner of Schools. He was buried on his farm in one of the more pretentious private graveyards of its day. Hogs from a wallow had lolled against a handsome square marble shaft, flat upon the ground, from which I scraped the mud to read:
“This monument shades the remains of Judge Owen Rawlins, a native of Kentucky, long a resident of Missouri, and State Senator for 20 years.”
Upon an impressive shaft, ten feet high, still standing erect in memory of Elder Thomas Fristoe, early and powerful minister of the Gospel in Howard County, who served Chariton Church for 30 years, is inscribed under a victor’s wreath:
“In all the relations of life he was faithful and true. He was distinguished by an unaffected humility, unswerving candor and inflexibility of purpose, over all of which was thrown the charm of unquestionable piety, a religious spirit pervades the whole character. Though dead he yet speaks.”
But not with such vehemence as one who hacked his way through the thicket of brambles and saplings higher than the monument itself and fell into the vine covered burrow of a groundhog searching to discover the identity of the gentleman who merited such a splendid monument.
The ashes of one of the Daughters of the American Revolution whose name appears on one of the plaques in Fayette, lies under an unusual box tomb of rectangular blocks of sandstone, a massive flat stone for a cover.
There was another tombstone with the inscription turned down doing duty as a doorstep. The tenant farmer said I might examine it but if his wife appeared I should say nothing which would indicate to her what the step really was. We had copied the name and dates and were putting it back in place when his wife stepped out on the porch. Pointing an accusing finger at her husband, and in a voice more severe than I was accustomed to hear, she said: “Abner Jones, you’ve been lying to me all the time about that doorstep!”
Tombstones had been removed from their places of dignity to be put under down-spouts. Others were used as flagstones, and at one place they propped up the walls of a sagging house.
Not many graveyards, comparatively speaking, have been entirely obliterated. It is probable when the river was washing the Franklin town site away, the bodies interred there were removed to a spot a short distance north. There was such a cemetery there with tombstones until twenty or thirty years ago. At that time, the owner of the land, tired of plowing around the graveyard, dug a hole, buried the tombstones and plowed his furrows straight.
A fine barn covered most of one cemetery and the monuments which had not been in the way of the building were broken off and lay shattered in the mule lot. A lady who lived nearby looked upon this act as desecration and told me with significant emphasis that no sooner had he finished his barn than he hung himself.
Another man, tired of a small graveyard in the corner of his pasture, stacked the tombstones neatly under a tree and planted a potato patch. An old Negro woman living near it told me, “He raised a good crop an’ the potatoes wuz fine to look at. But when I tried to cook ‘em, they wuz such funny doin’s in de skillet, I throwed ‘em all out.”
In one cemetery the entire space was covered with a wilderness of fragrant, blooming honeysuckle which almost concealed the gravestones. On one of them I found the name of a man which recalled to my mind his obituary which I had read in one of the early Fayette newspapers. It had been written by one of his daughters.
There was another cemetery which fairly shone with care. Not a weed or a bramble in sight! A genial farmer sat with me on an old box tomb and talked of it. “The old graveyard looked so bad it was just a disgrace,” he said, “and I just had to do something about it. So I cleared off all the brush, built this new fence around it and planted me this watermelon patch. And melons! I bet I’ve picked a dozen fine ones just between here and Uncle John’s tombstone over yonder.”
Presently he moved away, thumped and picked a big melon, carried it back to where we were sitting. As he dropped it lightly on the marble slab, it popped open with a sweet sound we all like to hear. As we regaled ourselves with the delectable heart of that melon, I was moved to say, “Mr. Bill, I do believe you have the best kept cemetery in the county.” But even so I felt a little melancholic!
In running the files of the Missouri Intelligencer of 1822, I came across this unusual notice of a wedding:
“Married, in this county on the 21st day of October, Rev. Thomas Campbell to Mrs. Pembroke Paul. This reverend gentleman in the morning attended the preaching of a funeral sermon on the death of his late beloved wife and in the evening walked over to the dwelling of his intended, and the marriage ceremony being performed, took his lady by the hand and returned together with the invited guests, to his own house, where all parties partook of a supper which had been prepared for this joyfully, solemn occasion.”
Now I knew Jerusha Campbell’s tomb was a short distance from New Franklin and the marker at her grave bore the second earliest date in existence in the county.
It was quite usual to have the burial service and defer the funeral sermon as was done in the case of Jerusha Campbell. If a death occurred during cold weather, or if some favorite preacher could not come at the time to preach the funeral, it was in order to postpone the service until a more propitious time.
Before the present building at Clark’s Chapel was built, there was another church on the same site, but it faced east. One of the young daughters of Zion (Sarah Jane) who had been reared to know better, went to a dance in a neighboring community without her flannels, caught cold, contracted consumption and died in 1863. But not before she had talked earnestly with her relatives and friends admonishing them to be less worldly and to turn their minds toward spiritual things. It was her last request that she be buried beneath the big walnut tree by the front door of the church so that all who passed in or out might see her grave and be reminded of her untimely end. There she was buried. Eighty-three years have passed, the church has been turned around, the old walnut tree is dead, only a bit of the stump remains near the marble shaft erected in memory of Sarah Jane, with this epitaph: “Forget not dear friends that it is here I lie. But remember that you too must die.”
My presence in private cemeteries naturally excited the curiosity of people who came out to see what I was doing. Sometimes they lingered awhile, telling of the history of the place or of the people buried there. It was often very revealing and interesting. I shall never forget the frail old lady who walked with a cane and followed me around, and said when I was studying one tombstone:
“An old bachelor’s buried there, and if ever there was a cranky piece it was him. Why, his dyin’ request was to be buried in his overcoat, and in mid-August!” I assured her I never heard of anybody so queer. “If you think he was queer you ought to have knowed his Ma. She must have marked him. Why it was her dyin’ request to be buried in nothin’ but her nightgown, the one her niece sent her from Kentucky. You see she come from Kentucky herself. It was embroidered nice and looked very pretty, but it seemed to me like something was lackin’.”
As for epitaphs, most of them fall into two classes. In one, the sentiment would appear to be expressed by the departed. Here is one: “Affliction sore for a year I bore Physicians were in vain. At length God pleased to give me ease and free me from my pain.”
And another: “My heart once heavy is now at rest, My groans are no more heard, my race is run, my grave you see, prepare for death and follow me.”
One seems to depict great travail and then sweet peace:
“This languishing head is at rest, It’s thinking and aching are o’er. This quiet, immovable breast, is heaved by emotion no more.”
The other class included those which express the sentiment of those bereft. There are those which pay tributes such as I have already given. And then this type: “May heaven’s most tender lay, fall gently on his ear, and sweetly charm his thoughts away, from all he suffered here.”
Or: “Tread lightly o’er these hallowed grounds. A kind lamented one lies here. You who have felt misfortune’s frown come pause and drop a tear.”
And some are in a class by themselves. Here is one which depicts a contest in which the already departed members of the family are victorious over those still living: “In manhood’s prime from promise bright thy spirit fled to endless light. Father, brothers, sisters, babes three cried ‘we could not give thee up, no, no.’ But Mother, Wife, stronger than we with God prevails. Thou dids’t go.”
But in what class would you put this one?: “Here lies Eliza Jane, the beloved daughter of Mary and Joseph Brown and Henry Brown.”
The Clark’s Chapel Cemetery stone with the earliest date—Mark Arnold, 1819. Nancy Snell and Jesse Walker were the only centenarians.
Captain of the Forts of 1812
Sarschel Cooper was one of Boonslick’s heroes. He was Captain of all of the men of the Forts of 1812. You will recall how, one stormy night in 1815, he was shot by an assassin through a chink hole in the wall of his cabin at Cooper’s Fort as he sat by the fireplace with his baby on his knee. He was buried in the graveyard near the fort. Years passed, his children prospered, and they planned to erect a fitting monument at his grave. A handsome white marble stone was chosen and inscribed. It was about to be set at his grave when the mighty flood of 1844 covered the Missouri River valley from bluff to bluff. When the water subsided, a deep covering of silt had obliterated every trace of the graveyard. No one could identify the site of Sarschel Cooper’s grave. The stone was set in a slave cabin at the Joseph Cooper home, and it remained there for many years, even after the land had passed out of the possession of the family. The late parents of Robert Clarke of Fayette bought the farm. Robert and his sister, Mrs. Henry Black, reminisce of how as little children, they played in the cabin and the strange stone which leaned against the wall filled them with misgivings. One day Nestor Cooper learned of its presence at the Clarke’s farm and asked that it be given to him. He took it to his home west of Fayette and set it under a walnut tree in the front yard. Here it remained several years until it passed into the possession of Central College for its museum.
In 1903, another flood, second only to that of 1844, covered the Missouri River valley. Strangely, where the first flood had buried the site of the cemetery of the Fort, the second one swept all of that cover away and even swirled the earth out of the graves, leaving the bones of those buried there exposed to view.
Col. Stephen Cooper, learning of what had happened, visited the scene. He and others, noted the spade marks in the gumbo soil on the sides and ends of each grave were as clearly discernible as if they had been made that day.
Now it was tradition in the Cooper family that Sarschel Cooper, though 44 years of age at the time of his death, had a perfect set of teeth. Examination disclosed that one grave contained a skull which complied with this condition. This proved to Col. Cooper conclusively that it was the grave of his great-grandfather.
He removed the bones from the grave and interred them in the Joseph Cooper graveyard on the bluff above the house where his tombstone had set for so many years. From this high point is a sweeping view of all the land which the Coopers possessed. The grave of Sarschel Cooper is still unmarked. His monument stands futilely against a wall in the basement of the Library at Central College, or it did the last time I saw it.
Epitaphs
Epitaphs have interested me ever since I began to prowl through cemeteries. Some are so unusual they are beyond belief until one sees them or sees pictures of them.
Some of the earliest were published in the Missouri Intelligencer in 1824:
Here lies my wife who killed herself.
All of her own accord,
The Lord that gave have taken away
And blessed be the Lord.
• • •
Here lies, thank God, a woman who
Quarreled and stormed her whole life through.
Tread softly o’er her moldering form
Or else you’ll rouse another storm.
• • •
Jane, to her spouse could not bestow
One tear of sorrow when he died
His life had made so many flow
That the briny fount had dried.
• • •
In Dedham, Mass. at the Inn I inquired if any Kingsburys had ever lived there. The hostess replied: “If you had looked out the window of your room you would have seen a graveyard full of them.”
Around the corner I found them. I read on Abigail Kingsbury’s tombstone, “She lived in the state of single blessedness 18 years, in the married state 20 years and in that of widowhood 25 years during all of which her conduct was amiable and exemplary.” I felt proud of her but left the place wondering about my great-great uncle Henry beside whose tombstone there were two others, one for his wife and the other for his consort, both of whom died the same year.
In one of Howard County’s cemeteries stand two monuments side by side. One was erected in memory of Lee Cloyd’s Right Arm Amputated Aug. 7, 1875. The other in memory of Lee Cloyd who died Nov. 17, 1876, aged 13 years.
One wonders as he reads:
“My Dear Husband, May He Rest In Peace Until We Meet Again.”
“My Wife Lies Here, All My Tears Cannot Bring Her Back, Therefore I Weep.”
Someone was telling me of Miss Mary Goodblood, a spinster who was concerned about her epitaph. Among her effects was found a memorandum which advised: “Don’t put MISS on my tombstone. I haven’t missed near as much as you think I have. Mary.”
Obituaries of Long Ago
Lilburn’s interest in cemeteries and epitaphs led him to search out obituaries. This quest resulted in the following excerpted column.
Today, newspaper obituaries are concise. Generally they give us what an old issue of a newspaper mentioned as “the principal events in chronological order in the life of the deceased. Outside the circle of relatives and friends these facts might suffice but among them they supply but the meager knowledge of the life and character of this truly good and noble man (or woman).”
The editors of newspapers 70, 80, 90 years ago undoubtedly wished to please the friends and relatives of the deceased. They published obituaries written at length by preachers, relatives or themselves. And one who reads them today feels that nothing was omitted.
People have changed. Few people today would wish an obituary of a loved one written in the phraseology of those earlier years. Sorrow may be just as keen but he does not wish his personal thoughts or feelings hung out in the newspaper like garments on a clothes line. For instance, of Mrs. Wilsy Buckshire (that was not her real name) it was written:
“Her sun is gone down while it was yet day. She has been summoned to join the inhabitants of another and better world. The appropriate words of the sermon were tender and touching in extreme and were as effective as the cool dew of evening to the drooping flower. After the most touching sermon the pallbearers conveyed the body to the hearse which waited at the door and the sad procession filed slowly and sadly to the cemetery where, with all possible tenderness, the body was laid to rest.
“She faded from our sight like a flower beneath the early frost. She daily grew thinner and weaker, the conviction forced itself upon her that there was no hope of life. Yet there was no repining, no shudder on the verge of the dark valley. She was a patient sufferer, perfectly resigned to her fate and passed away without a struggle.
“It was only when we stood by her coffin and gazed upon her closed eyes and silent lips and forehead so white and cold that we realized we should have her with us no more. We laid her to rest on a sunny hillside, looking to the south, at the home of her childhood, beneath the cedars whose branches seemed to weep for her.
“Possessed of a lovely character she was revered and honored by all who knew her. And when the boatman stood with beckoning hand, bidding her to come, her spirit departed for that haven of rest to meet her loved ones who had gone before.”
Perhaps old obituaries enabled the bereaved who read them to relive their grief as long as they lived. In none of them was there a request that flowers be omitted. There were none except in an occasional case as described in a letter written in 1870 about a funeral at Clark’s Chapel, “The Porters were over from Boonville and laid a wreath of geranium leaves and white flowers on the coffin. It looked so pretty.”
Obituaries in the long ago were usually published on the front page. Today if you are not somebody superspecial, I’ll read of your demise on the back page.
There is one more epitaph which I have for you, and I believe when you have heard it, there will not be a man in the audience who would not aspire to have it on his tombstone. It is short, only five words, the tribute of a wife on the modest stone at the grave of John Stapp. Here it is: “He always rendered home happy.”
Racehorses were his Hobby
Lilburn’s history hobby horse rides led him to interesting discoveries about his family and the Boonslick Country. These culminated in his two part article “Boonslick Heritage,” which appeared in the January and April, 1966 issues of the Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society. The following excerpts are about his Grandfather Gearhart and his race track and his Grandfather Smith’s distillery.
Grandfather Isaac Gearhart was renowned for his agility and strength. He was a chunky man, not powerful in appearance, but he could pick up an anvil in each hand, strike them together above his head, and hurl them some distance from him. For that matter, he could lift a whiskey barrel and drink from the bunghole.
Grandfather was a fighter. A scar on his face, clearly discernible in an old photograph, was put there with a corn knife by his neighbor John Yowell Smith, and he bore this mark like a sabercut with pride. More than once he was hailed into court on charges of assault and battery. On one occasion he pleaded guilty and was fined $5 and costs. On another, he and Thomas Barnes, after two bitter fights, sued each other for damages.
Isaac charged that Barnes “beat, bruised, wounded and ill-treated him with sticks, fists, hands and a certain knife, thereby greatly injuring him until he was weak and distempered for three months.” Barnes admitted that he “did necessarily and unavoidably, a little, beat, wound, and ill-treat the said Isaac Gearhart, but in self defense only.” The wheels of justice had moved too slowly for Isaac, and on the twelfth day of the three months in which he claimed to have been incapacitated by the first fight, he had sought out Barnes, and “licked the stuffing out of him.” Barnes now countercharged that Isaac “with great violence laid hold of him by the nose and greatly pulled the same; plucked and pulled large quantities of hair from and off his head; struck him many violent blows with a stick and gave him many severe cuts with a knife; shook him violently, threw him on the ground and rent and tore his clothing.”
In each trial the jury found for the plaintiff, but Barnes got only $25 instead of the $6,000 for which he had sued, and Isaac Gearhart had nothing but the satisfaction of having whipped his opponent, for the jury awarded him one cent damages, though he had sued for $5,000.
Isaac Gearhart bought the Franklin Race Track and the farm on which it was situated in 1829. He gloried in its possession, but it was a source of great distress to his wife. She was one of those women who wept often over “disappointed hopes in her companion,” imploring Isaac to give up the track. But Isaac owned White Stockings, a fine sorrel mare for which he had paid the highest price ever known in those parts, and she had earned him a lot of money. He had hopes for at least one more successful season. Touched by his wife’s tearful pleas, however, he made her a promise: “Now Sally, if White Stockings loses the next race, I will give up the track. If she wins, I won’t.”
The season came on, and the first race was called. The odds on White Stockings were large, and from the first she took the lead. Sarah Gearhart listened tearfully as the crowd roared, and then suddenly there was silence. White Stockings had fallen, and was injured so severely that she had to be shot. This was a devastating blow to Grandfather Gearhart. He had lost a beautiful and valuable mare, and he had lost the large sums he had bet on her, but worst of all was the matter of his promise to Sarah.
He had given his word, however, and kept it. When spring came, the Franklin Race Track was plowed and planted to corn.
A Little for the Stomach's Sake
Among Missouri pioneers, the use of whiskey was fairly common. The records of early travelers indicate that with few exceptions the taverns and inns all had bars. Aside from its social uses, whiskey was highly regarded for its medicinal value. Since intermittent fevers were universal in the newly settled areas, it was common practice to administer large doses of whiskey and black pepper to ward off chills. It was noted that those in the habit of drinking large quantities of malt spirits were seldom seized with typhus or other low fevers, whatever other effects such imbibing might have.
Every well-established community in Boonslick Country had its distillery, and it was not unusual for farmers to operate private stills at their homes with their own grain, just as they made sorghum from their cane and lard from the fat of their hogs.
The Franklin Mill and Distillery was established by John Smith Yowell, husband of Grandfather Smith’s sister Jincy, and Mark Finks Garr. The mill was powered by an oxen on a treadmill, for which a man named McCleverty made cogwheels of hickory wood.
In 1850 Grandfather William J. Smith and his brother-in-law Jonas Finks Blankenbanker bought the mill and distillery. They paid $3,000 for the plant and a slave named Alfred, and an additional $600 for a Negro boy named Thorton. Another asset, acquired for $335, was a herd of hogs, considered a necessary adjunct, since they fed on the mash from the distillery and fattened rapidly.
Jonas Blankenbaker died of cholera in 1851, but Grandfather Smith continued to operate the distillery, enlarging the plant and modernizing its facilities. The prices of their whiskey varied. A single gallon retailed at 35 to 40 cents; a single barrel ranged from 20 to 28 cents per gallon. In lots of several barrels, the price might be as low as 15 to 20 cents the gallon. The chief purchasers were local merchants from New Franklin and the neighboring towns of Glasgow, Fayette, and Boonville, who bought from one to thirty gallons at a time, and retailed it mostly in grocery stores. Selling it by the individual drink was prohibited, but there was no law against dispensing it gratis to a substantial customer as a token of appreciation, or against permitting a customer to buy a quart or a gallon and drink it on the place.
Economically, the mill and distillery were tremendous assets to the community. They bought enormous quantities of grain, rye bringing 35 to 40 cents per bushel, wheat 50 to 60 cents, and corn $1 to $1.25 per barrel. They provided an outlet for thousands of loads of wood to fire their boilers, a boon to settlers who were continually clearing land for cultivation, and equally constantly in need of the $1.25 per load which the mill paid for wood. They employed a group of expert coopers to make whiskey barrels at 50 cents each, and flour barrels at 20 cents. They bought hoop poles for flour barrels at 50 cents the hundred. At times they rented storage space for their whiskey. They hired teams to transport materials to the mill from the steamboat landing at “Old Town.” They paid large sums in ferry fees to deliver whiskey and flour to Boonville. They acted as a clearing house where patrons could settle accounts with business concerns in nearby towns. They were willing to barter for wood or supplies, thus obviating any cash outlay. For grinding corn, they charged 10 cents per bushel; a pound of wheat could be traded for a half pound of flour.
Grandmother Elizabeth Gearhart Smith was as vigorously opposed to her husband’s connection with the distillery as her mother had been to Grandfather Gearhart’s racing activities. In vain he argued that the distillery made money and provided them with everything they wanted. She knew no good would come of it. “A man’s hopes can easily be blighted,” was her dire prediction. And events proved her correct. On a summer night in 1853, lightning struck the mill, and it burned to the ground, a total loss. There were 300 barrels of whiskey in the storeroom, and the noise of the bursting hoops and exploding barrels was like a cannonade above the roar of the flames. Tradition has it that whiskey ran down the road “clean to ‘Old Town.’” Uncle William Wallace Smith was a little boy at the time, but years later he used to tell how Grandfather Smith awoke to see the blazing light of the fire, and silently turned his back; and how Grandmother Smith cried and shouted for joy. The plant was never rebuilt.
Grandmother Smith was not the only one averse to whiskey and its traffic. There were many teetotalers among the settlers.
In New Franklin the Sons of Temperance met in the Seminary, a large two story building used as a school and a meeting place for the Masonic and Odd Fellows lodges. The subject of morality as it applied to liquor was brought into open discussion. Many of the men and women from Clark’s Chapel attended regularly. Each member pledged himself against the use of liquor in any form. At each session the Grand Patriarch asked the solemn question, “Who has violated his oath since last we met?” Each faithful member placed his hand over his heart and responded, “Not I.” Anyone who had broken his pledge was asked to retire from the meeting until his conduct could be investigated and his status established.
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