Civil War strife often ravaged Montevallo

Friday, June 17, 2011
One of many interesting gravestones in the Montevallo Cemetery is that of Confederate Capt. James M. Gatewood of the Missouri State Guard, who became a casualty of the war in 1862.

During the Civil War, death and destruction came without warning to eastern Vernon County.

On the main road from Fort Scott, Kan., to Springfield from 1861 to '65, Montevallo rivaled Nevada in importance with 250-350 citizens, most backing the Confederacy.

It was a stronghold of the Missourians known as "Bushwhackers" and its thick woods and rolling hills were the setting of repeated bloody skirmishes.

There are stories in books and then stories that are part of people's lives.

Eldon Steward of El Dorado Springs grew up playing at his granddad's farm three miles southeast of here, where he returned in 2003 to help dedicate a restored marble vault over the grave of five Confederates waylaid by the Federal 6th Missouri Cavalry on Aug. 7, 1862.

"All the boys had plowed around the monument and I played on it," said Steward, 79. "Thirteen recruits riding from Balltown to Coffee's Camp on Horse Creek were intercepted by young Maj. Bacon Montgomery. Four or five escaped and the rest were captured.

"Those killed were shot out of the saddle. They might have been unarmed."

As commemorated on the vault, the slain were John A. Camp, A. Baker, G.W. Champion, J.W. Crenshaw and Erasmus Tucker.

Recounting the worst day in Montevallo's history, Steward said 22 men with Col. Charles E. Moss' 1st Iowa Cavalry arrived here on April 3, 1862, and checked into the Scobey Hotel. "Bob Bayles and Dr. John Dade of Schell City attacked the hotel with 25 men," said Steward, a board member of the Bushwhacker Museum in Nevada.

"People were asking them not to do it, but they went ahead. Two men were killed on each side. The next morning, Moss said Montevallo was a Bushwhacker hideout and burned it all down" -- three stores, three hotels, a blacksmith shop, a sawmill and corn cracker, a dram shop, or pharmacy, a livery stable, 50 houses and the Old Academy school, according to references.

One reason Montevallo was such a hot spot was the proximity of Confederate Col. John T. Coffee's Camp with more than 250 men four miles southeast of here. The original townsite is a mile west of the current day village.

The Battle of the Church in the Woods took place in early August 1862 when the 3rd Wisconsin Cavalry under Col. William A. Barstow rode from Fort Scott to hit the Rebels at a Dunnegan Grove church.

The late Vernon County historian Patrick Brophy wrote in his book "Fire and Sword" that Coffee and Barstow met southeast of town. "Barstow and company left it by the Lamar Road, going south nearly to Hog-Eye, a settlement just over the Barton County line," Brophy wrote.

"The retreat became a rout with the Federals littering the road with weapons. It may have been on this occasion that the nine unknown Union soldiers at rest in Dunnegan Grove lost their lives."

Montevallo took another heavy blow May 25, 1863, when William "Old Man" Gabbert's band burned nine homes of Union militiamen in Cedar County. "The weary Bushwhackers stopped to rest at the Gabbert house, most falling asleep in the front yard," Brophy said in his 2008 book.

"Meanwhile, the militia under Capt. Anderson Morton, withdrawing from the burning Nevada toward burnt-out Montevallo, cut the Bushwhackers' trail and surrounded the house.

"The sleepy guerillas were totally surprised, though some escaped into the brush. Old Man Gabbert got away on a fresh but unbridled, unsaddled horse, but seven Bushwhackers lay dead -- William Bridgman, John Evarts, John and William Campbell, William and John Crockett and Frank Mushaney."

Laclede County historian Joe Jeffery wrote in the magazine "Bittersweet" in 1978 that Montevallo, for "mountain valley, was on the east edge of the great prairies in a well-watered area full of raccoons, deer, wildcats and panthers.

"It was founded in 1850 by William Withers, who built and operated the first store," said Jeffery, noting the Old Academy had 200 students and two teachers.

"In 1860, Montevallo was the first community in Missouri to organize a company at the call of Gov. Claiborne Fox Jackson, who later led a Missouri state government in exile in Mexico. More than half of this company was killed the next year at the Battle of Wilson's Creek.

Montevallo native Mike Lasley shows where Old Montevallo stood until burned to the ground by Union cavalry in 1862. He is in the historic Montevallo Cemetery, which lies in deep woods south of E Highway. The cemetery is the only remaining feature of the original town.

"Montevallo furnished two other companies to the Confederacy. From beginning to end, it provided more men than the township had votes."

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