CHAPTER XV

INTRODUCTION -- THE BENCH -- THE BAR -- THE HEGIRA OF OUR PUBLIC RECORDS (By James H. Raybourn) -- CRIMES AND CRIMINALS

Only a brief discussion of the bench and bar of Bates county is called for in a work of this kind. In the biographical sketches may be found further interesting data touching the lives of members of our local bar.

Since the retirement of Judge J. B. Gantt, who was serving this circuit at the time the old "History of Bates County" was published in 1883, we have had the following circuit judges in this circuit, composed of Bates, Henry, Saint Clair and Benton counties, no change having been made in the circuit in all the years. Judge David A. DeArmond succeeded Judge J. B. Gantt by election in 1886, and served about four years of his six-year term, resigning to take his seat in the fifty-second Congress, to which he had been elected in 1890. His resignation caused a vacancy which was filled by the appointment of Judge James H. Lay, of Benton county, made by Governor David R. Francis. At the expiration of the DeArmond term James H. Lay was elected to a full term and served the circuit until 1898, when he was succeeded by Judge Waller W. Graves, of Bates county, who served one full term, and was succeeded by Judge Charles A. Denton of Bates county in 1905. Judge Denton served one term and was succeeded by Judge Charles A. Calvird of Henry county, served one term, and was re-elected in 1916; and is the judge of this circuit at the present time. All these judges were Democrats and elected by the Democratic party, except Judge Charles A. Denton. They were all fairly representative of the bar and the people, and on the whole the circuit has been faithfully and ably served by the distinguished men who have been our circuit judges. Judges Gantt and DeArmond are now dead. Judge Graves is chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court; Judge Lay has retired from active life and still lives at Warsaw; and Judge Denton has returned to the active practice of his profession in Butler, Missouri.

Many changes have taken place in the Bates county bar during the thirty-five years, and only a hasty sketch seems necessary and appropriate. We note that with the establishment of the county seat at Butler in 1856, the attorneys were at that time, or at least prior to the Civil War: Thomas H. Starnes and Freeman Barrows were members of the bar at Papinsville. Starnes moved to Butler and died here in 1866. Barrows never came to Butler to reside and died at his home near Papinsville. West and Stratton, Miles Brown, W. Patrick Green, and Hollingsworth and Smith, were all practitioners at the Bates county bar before the war. William Page came to Butler in 1865 and now resides in Kansas City, Kansas, retired. Judge David A. McGaughey and W. H. H. Wagoner both came in 1865, both deceased many years. Stephen Horton came in 1866, and died in 1868. Alpheus M. Christian came in 1866, but left the county in 1875. Anthony Henry came in 1866 and died in Colorado while temporarily there in 1885, and his body was buried here. Samuel A. Riggs came in the sixties. Charles C. Bassett in 1866 and died at the Soldier's Home. He had moved to Kansas City in 1881. Calvin F. Boxley came in 1866, and died in Kansas City recently and his body was buried here. Phineas H. Holcomb came in 1868 and died here in 1917. His brother, Anselm T. Holcomb, came in 1868, and moved to Portsmouth, Ohio in 1877, where he still lives. Leander D. Condee came in 1869 and removed to Chicago in 1873, where he still resides and is in active practice. John L. Stanley came in the seventies and was killed by Marshal J. H. Morgan in a pistol duel in 1882. John H. Druitt came in 1872, and moved to Illinois later. J. J. Brumback also came in 1872 and afterward located in Adrian and later went elsewhere. H. C. Tutt came at an early date and died in 1882. Allen L. Betz came to Bates in 1865, and died in Texas some years ago. Charles L. Wilson came in 1869 and later removed to Texas. N. A. Wade came in 1869, and died here. S. B. Lashbrook came in 1872 and died here. John W. Abernathy came in 1875, and died here. T. W. Silvers came in 1873 and is still in active practice at the Bates county bar. Thomas J. Smith came in 1880, and is still in the active practice here. W. O. Jackson also came in 1880, and still is an active practitioner here. John T. Smith came in 1874, and afterward moved to Livingston, Montana, where he is still practicing his profession. J. S. and S. P. Francisco came to Bates county in 1880. Both are now deceased.

With the coming of the Missouri Pacific railroad in 1880. and the founding of Adrian and Rich Hill, other lawyers came to Bates county. A. J. Smith was one of the earliest to establish himself at Adrian, after having studied in the office of William Page in Butler and being admitted to the bar. He opened an office in Adrian and still resides and practices his profession in that thrifty little city. Among the attorneys who came to Rich Hill in the early eighties were M. L. Brown, C. A. Clark, C. A. Denton, Irish & Templeton, W. O. Atkeson, T. Hiler Crockett, Walter B. Reynolds, R. A. Holmes, J. F. Smith, William Marsh, and later, Silas W. Dooley, David A. DeArmond and J. R. Hales. A few years later all these attorneys found new locations, and only Templeton and Hales and C. A. Clark remain in that city. C. A. Denton, J. F. Smith, and W. O. Atkeson reside in Butler. Irish resides in Kansas City, Missouri; Dooley is in Guthrie, Oklahoma, DeArmond and Marsh are deceased and the whereabouts of the others are unknown to the author. In addition to those named. Attorney H. E. Shepherd resides in Rich Hill at this time. The younger members of the Butler bar are Silvers and Dawson, James A. DeArmond, DeWitt C. Chastain (now Somewhere in France), Probate Judge Carl J. Henry, Miles S. Horn, and H. O. Maxey. Gardner Smith, now in the army, and Elmer B. Silvers, now assistant United States district attorney for the Western District of Missouri.

The Bates county bar has always been one of the strongest in the circuit. Many of the original members of the Bates county bar have passed to their reward. Litigation has greatly lessened and its character greatly changed. Our present bar is probably as able and faithful as any membership in the past. We have probably overlooked some who ought to have a place in this brief account.

by James H. Raybourn

Before the Civil War and until 1870, one man or one official held and performed the duties of county clerk and probate clerk, as the county court had jurisdiction over probate business. The same official was also circuit clerk and ex-officio recorder of deeds. Robert L. Duncan held these offices at the beginning of the war. Owing to conditions in the county in 1862, he removed the public records from Butler to the home of Oliver Lutsenhizer in Deepwater township. Some time afterward they were taken to Clinton, Henry county, as William Duncan, a brother of Robert L. Duncan, was an official of that county; and thence they were sent by John D. Myers to John B. Newberry at Jefferson City who was down there making settlement as county collector. The records remained in Jefferson City until an election was held at Johnstown in 1864, at which election John A. Devinny was elected to the Legislature, John Atkison sheriff, Van Buren Van Dyke assessor, and John D. Myers county clerk; C. I. Robards, H. H. Pipemeier and John Griggs as members of the county court. In the fall of 1865, the records which had been returned to John D. Myers at Dresden, Pettis county, Missouri, were taken by him to Pleasant Gap as a temporary place of public business, as Butler was almost entirely wiped out by one party or the other during the Civil War; and public business conducted at Pleasant Gap was afterward legalized and validated by act of the Legislature, and the village of Pleasant Gap recognized as the county seat of Bates county, during the time the courts were held there. The court house and clerk's office was a box structure of native lumber about 16 x 32 feet, of two rooms, and was situate in the west part of the village. The clerk's office was in the south room and the court house in the north. During the winter of 1865-66 the county court employed F. M. Steele to erect a frame building 16 x 20 feet on the northeast corner of the court house square in Butler for the use of the sheriff and the courts; and another one on the southeast corner of the square for the county records and the county clerk. As deputy circuit clerk and recorder, accompanied by Dr. N. L. Whipple, in March 1866, I hauled the public records from Pleasant Gap in a farm wagon and placed them in said building. The county court and circuit court held two terms each at Pleasant Gap.

There was an election held in Johnstown in 1862, at which Thomas Starnes was elected to the Legislature, John B. Newberry sheriff and collector, John D. Myers county clerk. Van Buren Van Dyke assessor, Jacob Wright, J. L. Porter, and Joshua N. Durand members of the county court.

My understanding is, as stated in the old "History of Bates County," that the early court records beginning in 1841, at the house of Col. Robert Allen at Harmony Mission and covering the period down to 1852 of the county clerk and of the circuit clerk down to 1859, have been lost or destroyed; but so far as I know all the records which came into the hands of John D. Myers from Jefferson City, as above related, are still preserved and among the records in the proper office in the court house at Butler now.

I also understand that all marriage records prior to 1860 are lost or destroyed. From 1852 to 1856 the courts were held in Papinsville. which was the county seat. A brick court house was erected there, completed in 1855.

No good can come of chronicling the crimes in a community, and brief historical mention of some of the principal crimes and criminals is all that is attempted here. Bates county, comparatively speaking, has had few murders. Quite a number of homicides have been committed and some suicides. But we use the term "crimes and criminals" in the limited sense of those convicted and executed for their crimes. There will be no more "hangings" to be chronicled by the historian in Bates county, as the recent Legislature abolished that ancient and brutal method of punishment in this state.

The first man legally executed -- hanged by the neck till he was dead -- was Dr. Samuel Nottingham, who was hanged at Papinsville about 1851, for killing his wife down on Clear creek, in what is now Vernon county; but as all the circuit court records prior to 1859 were destroyed during the war, no very accurate information of the trial or the date of the hanging can now be had. In fact, the best information we have leaves the inference that he was convicted on circumstantial evidence; and as the crime was not committed within the present limits of Bates county, it calls for no further mention here.

For nearly fifty years thereafter no one was legally executed in Bates county -- not until Noah (Bunk) McGinnis was hanged at the jail in Butler on December 30, 1900, for murder for the purpose of robbery. He was hanged by Sheriff Shelt Mudd as his last official act before retiring from office.

Dr. Gartrell was hanged by Sheriff Joe T. Smith at the jail in Butler for the murder of a traveling companion, near Amoret, Missouri. Bates county, as at present bounded, has been organized since 1855, or a period of sixty-three years, and in all that time only two legal executions have taken place in the county, McGinnis and Dr. Gartrell. During that period at least three men have been hanged by mobs, and many homicides have been committed, but the perpetrators thereof were only sentenced to the penitentiary or wholly escaped punishment for their acts upon regular trials according to law. These pages need not be encumbered with accounts of other harrowing deeds; and the sooner they are forgotten by people now living, the better.