Page 12

THE HANGING OF JIMMY SILKWOOD 
BRISTOW - CASEY FIGHT 
KILLING OF SOUTHERN SYMPATHIZER IN CALDWELL COUNTY 
HE VOTED FOR LINCOLN - CIVIL WAR STORIES 
THE "HANGING" OF GEORGE ROGERS 
THE MORMON TEMPLE AT FAR WEST 
LIVING BY HAUN'S MILL 
HISTORIC MORMON SITES 
DR. WILLIAM EARL McLELLAN (McCLELLEN) EARLY MORMON IN CALDWELL COUNTY 
RAG CARPETS 

THE HANGING OF JIMMY SILKWOOD 
Narrator: Mrs. Kelley Brown of Far West

Mrs. Brown was reared in Davis Township and often heard her
father tell the Jimmy Silkwood story, which is another one of the
tales showing the rough treatment given the War prisoners on both
sides in the county during the Civil War. John T. Davis of Black
Oak her grandfather, was hauling supplies for Col. Mulligan at
Lexington and the Thraillkill (Confederate) raiders came into the
Black Oak Grove vicinity. Knowing John T. Davis' work they started
out to "get" him and stop the supplies. Davis hid out. Jimmy
Silkwood who was working for Davis was caught and questioned. While
he knew where Davis was, he refused to tell. They threatened to hang
him yet he would not tell. They tied him hand and foot and hanged him
to a tree and left him. They had thrown the rope over a limb and tied
the end around the trunk. He struggled, the knot slipped and he
dropped to the ground. He wormed his way down to the Davis house and
Grandma Davis cut the rope loose. To his death, Jimmy had a knot on
the side of his neck and carried his head on one side as a result of
being hanged. He is buried in Black Oak cemetery, his grave being
marked with a field stone. 

Interviewed July 1934.

~~~~~~~~~~

BRISTOW - CASEY FIGHT 
Narrator: Wm. Bristow of Hamilton, Missouri

Wm. Bristow farmer is a nephew of Judge Wm. Bristow who was a
participant in the killing at Hamilton of John Casey and son John in
1864. He tells the story thus: Judge Bristow was sitting in a
Hamilton Store (The story told by others say it was the Kemper store
located on the present picture show site). The elder Casey came in
pretty drunk. He began to swear at the Northern Army and the Federal
supporters, swinging his arms wildly. Finally they got over Bristow's
head. He held a knife. Bristow first thought he just was talking
generally but finally he said "Do you happen to mean me?" Casey
replied, "Yes, if you want to take it that way." There upon, the
Judge knocked the elder Casey down. Casey arose and went into another
store (other Narrators say it was the Buster Saloon and Grocery across
the street and across the tracks). A little later, young Casey
came in the first Store and pulled out his revolver, saying to Bristow
that he would get anyone who struck his father. Both men got on
their feet in a quarrel. The Store had two doors on east and west.
The Old Casey entered now by the east with his knife. "I reckon he'd
have cut Uncle's head off if it hadn't have been for his silk
handkerchief around his neck, " Mr. Bristow said. At the same time
both the Judge and Young Casey shot. Casey's shot went wild.
Bristow's shot killed Casey. Then Judge turned around to settle the
Elder Casey and saw him lying on the ground - shot seriously by some
bystander - he never knew exactly who it was. Old Casey died the next
day. Years after - a story goes that a stranger introduced
himself to Judge Bristow with the remark that he saved Bristow's life
on the above occasion. After the double death in the Casey
family, the Caseys moved nearer Gallatin. Judge Bristow's work often
took him to Gallatin but he always feared to go, for a Bristow-Casey
feud arose out of the killing. For a long time the Bristows carried
guns when in the Casey neighborhood; but the ill feeling gradually
disappeared and no further harm came of it. This version varies
somewhat from the version p. 194 in History of Caldwell-Livingston
Counties 1886. 

Interviewed July 1934.

~~~~~~~~~~

KILLING OF SOUTHERN SYMPATHIZER IN CALDWELL COUNTY 
Narrator: Mrs. Mahala (Jones) Smith, Hamilton, Missouri

Mrs. Smith belonged to the Billy Jones family near Kingston.
Southern sympathizers; but they were very careful of what they did and
said for several of their friends were killed because of their
attitude. Mrs. Smith was thirteen when in 1864 Richard Lancaster
and Stump Breckenridge, two southern soldiers were killed, right in
her own neighborhood. These Thraillkill men were killed by the Home
Guard, hut no one knows exactly by whom. At the time Captain Edward
Johnson seemed to be blamed somewhat because the men were shot on his
farm but he always disclaimed the shooting. They were shot one
evening and the next morning about 8 o'clock Captain Johnson who was
the big military man there ordered out the Southern neighbors to bury
"their men" in the near by Morris cemetery. Among the men called out
were Mrs. Smith's father Billy Jones and Chris Kerr. She saw the
burial. They were not allowed to make coffins but were forced to dig
shallow graves and pitch the men in, covering their faces with their
hats. The graves were so shallow that for days the files gathered
there. While the work went on Captain Johnson stood reared back, gun
in belt. She also recalled the killing of Absolam Harpold of that
vicinity. He had come home from the Southern army. The militia were
determined to get him. He got wind of it and took a train at Kidder
for the west. Some personal foe of his reported this and the militia
rode to Cameron and took him off the train. They hanged him there at
once in an old mill. She recalls the day he was brought home in a
wagon. They buried him in their own Harpold cemetery and it is only a
few years ago that they removed him to the Kingston cemetery. She
also was a friend of the McBeath family another Southern family which
lost a member in this drive of the county militia on southern
sympathizers. Robert McBeath was shot to death having been taken away
from home because he would not turn over the gun, according to county
orders. 

Interviewed July 1934.

~~~~~~~~~~

HE VOTED FOR LINCOLN - CIVIL WAR STORIES 
Narrator: William Shephard, 87, of Hamilton, Missouri

Wm. Shepard was born 1847 in Williams County Ohio. His parents
were Alfred Shepard and Jane Peddicord. They moved from Ohio to Iowa
and from there to Grundy County, whence Wm. moved to Caldwell County
where he has lived nearly fifty years. He served three years in
the Union Army and he cast his first presidential vote for Abraham
Lincoln at the latters second term. He said he voted for him because
his family already were Republicans. He told some Civil War stories
of his own expense. He said the common soldiers carried a musket, two
navy revolvers in his belt, a belt with shot and shell and a knap sack
on his back. This contained emergency food and a canteen which held a
gallon of water. The knap sack was on a strap around his neck and a
soldier could easily move it and get a drink while on a march. It was
his duty to fill the canteen when near water. Among other
Missouri engagements he was in the battle of Independence (Westport).
After this battle the soldiers looted the town. He and his comrade
went into a saloon and drove out the bartender. One of them had a
dime. He stood outside the bar and the second went behind the bar and
gave him a drink and took the pay. That gave him the dime and he now
played the customer on the outside of the bar and paid the dime to his
friend now behind the bar. This buying drinks with one dime went till
both had all the whiskey they wanted, and every drop had been paid for
somehow. In his part of the country, bush whackers on both sides
were common, boldly enloving homes to take food, taking farm supplies
and even breaking up dances and parties. Women would hide their
victuals and men would drive their horses and wagons into cornfields
to hide them. Soldiers of both sides visited his wife's people in
Saline and Cooper counties, one army after another took stuff away,
giving orders for payment which often were worthless. 

Interviewed June 21, 1934.

~~~~~~~~~~

THE "HANGING" OF GEORGE ROGERS 
Narrator: S.R. Guffey of New York Township

George Rogers was in business in Gallatin during the Civil War.
Some brought the accusation that he was buying horses from the Home
Guards and selling them back to the United States Government. A
company of Militia was sent to Gallatin to arrest him and bring him
back to Hamilton for trial, because Gallatin sentiment was in his
favor. After they got about three miles from Hamilton close to
the place he afterwards owned, they saw a cloud of dust up Gallatin
way. Fearing lest Rogers be taken from them, they decided to hang him
right there on the spot. Accordingly they strung him up on a cotton
wood tree on the east side of the road (this tree stood until about
eight years ago) and then rode toward Hamilton. The cloud of dust
developed into a detachment of State Cavalry sent from Gallatin to be
assured that Rogers got safely to Hamilton, knowing the disposition of
his captors. The cavalry to which Mr. S.R. Guffey belonged cut
him down and brought him alive to Hamilton where they confined him in
a box car used as a guard house. Mr. Guffey said that Mr. Rogers was
told the name of his accuser who afterwards was put in the car with
him. It was necessary to carry out the accuser in about fifteen
minutes. The trial next day freed Rogers of the charge. Mr.
Rogers never told this story to his children; but when asked by the
interviewer, he admitted it was true. The story was verified by
the victim, by one of the band who hanged him and by one of the men
who cut him down.

~~~~~~~~~~

THE MORMON TEMPLE AT FAR WEST 
Narrator: Mr. and Mrs. Robert Morris Hamilton, Missouri

In 1884 and 1885 Mr. and Mrs. Robert Morris began their married
life in a little home just south of the old Mormon Temple excavation
at Far West. Their farm of fifty acres was apparently part of the
once populous Mormon capital city Far West, for Mr. Morris found
several rock foundations on his farm. The excavation was deeper
fifty years ago than now and the rocks were larger for Mrs. Morris
recalls how sight seers would come over to their home to borrow an ax
or hammer to knock off a piece of rock as a souvenir. Visitors both
Mormons and Gentiles were frequent, some getting off the train at
Cameron and driving over to see the excavation and cornerstone of the
Mormon Temple which was never finished. The gaps in the rocks then
probably were just as they were left when the Gentiles drove the
Mormons away 1838 after the battle of Far West. The temple lot
belonged then to John Whitmer one of the original witnesses of the
Mormon revelation. (Since then it has passed into the possession of
the Latter Day Saints of the Utah Church) Just east of the temple lot
was Jacob Whitmer's home and father east was the home of his father
John Whitmer. All these were still adherents of the Latter Day Saints
faith. Not far off was Mrs. Chris Kerr a daughter who possessed the
historic golden plates which Joseph Smith dug up. The Morrises knew
the location of the old Mormon cemetery but no stones were left 1885.
They knew nothing of the story that those monuments had been taken to
form the foundation of some house in that community--the inscriptions
being turned in. 

Interview taken August 5, 1934.

~~~~~~~~~~

LIVING BY HAUN'S MILL 
Narrator: Mrs. Zelma Filson, Hamilton, Mo.

Mrs. Filson is the widow of Thomas Filson and the step-daughter
of John Owens who came west in the late sixties in the influx of New
York families into what is now New York township and Fairview
township. Mr. Owens needed a woodlot, having no timber on his
place. So by chance he bought a woody place which contained a site
important in early Caldwell County history - Haun's Mill in Fairview
Township. After he had purchased it, he heard its history from the
older settlers. Jacob Haun was a Mormon settler and started a mill
along Shoal Creek. Oct 30 1838, the Gentile Militia fell upon the
Mormon settlers gathered at the mill and blacksmith shop and they
killed eighteen. For lack of time to dig graves, the Mormons
survivors placed their dead in an old well and covered them up. Among
the Mormon dead was a Revolutionary Soldier Thomas McBride. Mrs.
Filson said in her day the Well was marked by a round sunken place.
She lived there about twelve years and said there was nothing to
report that vegetation grew more densely over the grave because of the
bodies there. She said that there was no way now of finding the spot
accurately since it had been turned into corn and plowed level.
However, in the summer of 1933 two elderly Saints from Salt Lake City
told the Interviewer that it could be determined accurately by the
depression and by bits of iron scattered from the old blacksmith shop.
Mrs. Filson says that in her day the Saints had already begun to
make pilgrimages to the spot as a Scared place and they still do. The
old Haun's Mill stones are set up in Breckenridge. The Haun's Mill
site is on the farm of J.M. Hill. 

Interview taken July 1934.

~~~~~~~~~~

HISTORIC MORMON SITES 
Narrator: Wm. Stinson, 73, Hamilton, Missouri

Fifty years ago Mr. Stinson used to be very familiar with the
historic Haun's Mill site in Fairview township, for his fathers home
north west of the present city of Braymer gave him a riding range over
the county where the ill-fated mill once stood. He said that Shoal
Creek where he played was about a town block's distance from the mill
site. Old timers told him there had been a store, a blacksmith shop
and a few houses there once. About thirty feet from the shop was
supposed to be the well into which the eighteen (18) dead Mormons were
buried by their people after the Gentile attack in the Mormon War.
This attack was made on this place 1838. All these things were still
matters of talk as the boys swam in the Shoal swimming hole nearly
sixty years ago. The well then was covered with split timbers and
crossed with others. It was in a wood lot and the pile of wood was
pointed out to him as the spot of the well. There seemed to be no
doubt of the site then. He used to hear that the first burials in
the White Cemetery (an old graveyard) were made by the Mormons down in
that section near the Mill. He also had the idea that they had graves
in a graveyard (perhaps without stones) on the Mud Creek in Davis
Township. The Mormon ford was south and a little west of the Mill.
Fifty years ago in that section people still nursed hatred for the
Mormons and when they wished to threaten a person they would say:
"I'll send you where the other Mormons are buried." 

Interviewed July 1934.

~~~~~~~~~~

DR. WILLIAM EARL McLELLAN (McCLELLEN) EARLY MORMON IN CALDWELL COUNTY 
Narrator: Mrs. Nellie Scott, Kansas City, Missouri

From the church records at Independence Missouri I found the
following: "In 1831, Wm. E. McLellan heard the gospel preached by the
elders of the church (then at Kirkland Ohio) on their way to Missouri
and followed them as soon as he could arrange his business." Some of
his business may have been getting married for he married my mother's
sister, Emeline Miller, the April of the next year. The year
following Dr. McLellan and his wife made a wagon trip to Illinois and
then to Independence, but stayed there only a few months, for Gentile
antagonism was growing very strong there to rid that country of this
new sect. In July 1833 the citizens of Jackson County adopted a
resolution to expel the Mormons. The Saints committee (of which
McLellan was one) agreed to urge their elders to leave by January 1st
1834 and to urge the others to leave by spring. While many Mormons
refused to agree to this Dr. and Mrs. McLellan left. They went
probably to Ohio and later returned to Missouri; this time to Clay
County where many of the Saints had fled. On July 3, 1834 McLellan
was elected to the High Council of the Church in Clay County. He was
also made Traveling Council or Apostle. By this time he had advanced
so far in the church that he was in a position capable of receiving
revelations. At one time he had a revelation suggesting a plural wife
but Aunt Emeline showed him the revelation was not divine. They were
in Kirkland Ohio now and stayed there till Joseph Smith and his
followers were driven out. This time they went to Far West, Caldwell
County having been set apart by the legislature as a home for the
Mormons. Accordingly the county seat was established at Far West
and a log school house was erected in which court was held. The
McLellans came to Far West in 1837. By this time, Uncle William began
to have doubts and questions about some of those working with Joseph
Smith. At all events, he was tried for Apostacy and expelled from the
church May 11 1838 at Far West. Ever after, he was called a
Dissenter, altho he never entirely severed his connection, in spirit
at least, with the followers of the "Great Prophet, Joseph Smith."
Uncle William left Far West before his trial. He lived awhile in
Davenport Iowa where he practised medicine (he was in part an old
fashioned herb doctor) but in 1845 he and my Aunt went back to
Kirkland Ohio trying to re-organize the Church on the earlier plans.
Somewhere about this time, he returned to Far West trying to
reassemble the Saints who had stayed in Caldwell County when the
general Exodus of Mormons occurred after the fall of Far West 1838.
Eventually after many years of being on the move, the McLellans
returned to Independence where they lived the remainder of his life
and where he is buried. He had six children and none embraced their
father's faith.

~~~~~~~~~~

RAG CARPETS 
Narrator: Kate Crawford, 66, of Hamilton, Missouri

Rag carpets are now almost out of style, but there was a time
when they were in every woman's plan of living in these parts. You
either had rag carpets or bare floors. As time went on rag carpets
served for bed rooms and perhaps one could afford in ingrain for the
front room or maybe trade two rag carpets for an ingrain at the store.
Miss Crawford was reared in the Dort home and they used rag
carpets entirely up till about 1890 when they got in ingrain from the
old Tilley store with Asa Thompson as salesman. Sewing carpet
rags was a regular spare time occupation for the women of the
seventies and to some degress in the eighties. Women prided
themselves on even rags and on getting a yard of carpet out of a pound
of rags. The coarser the rags the thicker the carpet and fewer yards
in weaving. Many women were content with hit and miss (mixed
colors) sewed but for front rooms it was nice to have the carpet woven
in stripes. This meant they would dye bunches of rags different
colors. They could buy dye powder or use bark, or polk berries. Some
used chamber dye to make copper; indigo made blue. You could make
shaded rags by the tie and dye method. When the rags were balled,
there was the cost of the carpey warp and the weaving to be paid for.
Among the old carpet weavers in this community some are yet well
remembered. Aunt Lizzy Butts (colored, Mother of Jim Butts) had a
loom and wove in the seventies. When she began, she had a hard time
with turns so Mrs. Van Note a white neighbor taught her how to do it.
Later Mrs. Horseback wove many carpets and had people on the waiting
list. Later came Mrs. Ogburn in the north end of town, and still
later Mrs. John Banks who still plies the old trade in weaving rag
rugs. Looms might be erected in the front room or even in a clean
barn. The old carpet weavers not only helped support the family but
contributed their part to the community comfort. The Interviewer
was amused at a story told by another old timer. A new rag carpet had
just been put down in a parlor in the early eighties and a neighbor
had come in to admire it. The daughter of the house objected to a rag
carpet in their parlor. The neighbor said "You must not be proud or
you can't marry my son." (They did go together) The young woman
straightway said "Well I don't want to marry him any way" and she did
not. 

Interviewed January 1934.

Back

This page was last updated September 24, 2006.