By Susan Redden
sredden@joplinglobe.com
SARCOXIE, Mo. — A project in the works will create a memorial for more than 40 area residents who were Union soldiers and defenders of the Cave Spring and Bowers Mill area during the Civil War.
Stone has been donated for a monument to bear the names of those who died. The memorial will be erected between the Cave Spring school and cemetery, according to Helen Hunter, a member of the Eastern Jasper County Historic Sites Association.
The association two years ago completed a project to restore the Cave Spring school. The one-room, brick schoolhouse was built in the early 1840s to educate children of the Cave Spring community near Sarcoxie. During the Civil War, it served as a federal militia garrison. After the war, it was the seat of county government after the Jasper County Courthouse burned down.
The memorial will honor members of the 76th Regiment Enrolled Missouri Militia who served out of Cave Spring and Bowers Mill, and civilians from that area who were killed during the war.
Getting recognition
Research to gather the names for the monument was done by Hunter, who also does research as a volunteer at the Jasper County Records Center, which preserves county records and archives.
“It’s really exciting to work on,” she said. “Maybe they can get some recognition. They’ve gone unremembered all these years. It’s like some of them have ceased to exist, and if we can change that with a monument, we want to.”
Hunter said the idea grew from research she did after hearing stories about Stephen and Jasper Crawford, two brothers from the area who were killed by guerrillas during the war.
“I knew from the headstones at the cemetery that they didn’t have marked graves, so I started working on getting headstones for them,” she said. “And the more I worked, the more I discovered how many were killed serving out of that school and Bowers Mill.”
She counted 44 from that area who died between 1881 and 1865, as a result of the war.
More than 40 deaths “from such a rural, sparsely populated area — that needs to be recognized,” Hunter said. “Some died of wounds. Some died of disease due to being stationed there. Their military records say the majority were killed by guerrillas.”
That means Confederate partisans, said Steve Weldon, county archivist, since the Cave Spring and Bowers Mill area was a Union stronghold.
Hunter said the group has done its “very best” to verify the information that will go on the monument. Some mistaken lore also has been cleared up along the way.
A suggestion that the Crawford brothers were very young was discounted, she said. They were in their 20s, and Stephen Crawford served out of the Cave Spring school with their father, J.R. Crawford. The association has arranged for headstones from the Department of Veterans Affairs for the Crawford brothers to be placed in the Cave Spring cemetery.
The monument “will be for more than those people who died,” Weldon said. “It will be a memorial to the Cave Spring and Bowers Mill families and the Union militia stationed there.”
There was a strong Union presence in that area, so other people from the outside would move there for protection.
Horrors of war
Hunter said she learned that one soldier, Levy Sly, had come home to the Cave Spring area to recuperate from the measles. She said Southern guerrillas dragged him from his bed and shot him, and his brother managed to sneak his body away so it could be buried.
“They never knew when guerrilla attacks would come,” she said.
Weldon said the Civil War “was particularly horrible in Missouri.”
“There were acts of beheading,” he said. “Black soldiers were clubbed to death. And one method of killing was to pour gunpowder in the ear canal and light it to explode.”
Conditions also were terrible for civilians at home, Hunter said.
“They fought for what they believed in and paid the ultimate sacrifice,” she said. “That’s why we want to recognize them.”
Stone for the monument was donated by Locarni Marble of Carthage. Association members are working to raise the approximately $2,500 it will take to carve the 44 names into the stone.
Hunter said the association will accept donations, and residents also may “adopt” the name of a soldier whose name will appear on the monument.
“We’ll have a book out there with their name behind that of the soldier, so they will have some ownership of the site,” she said. “And a family or more than one person could adopt a name.”
She said some residents may sponsor the names of their ancestors who moved to the area just after Jasper County became a county.
The association will have a dedication ceremony to set the stone. That probably will be in the fall, after the carving is complete.
Want to help?
Donations will be accepted, and names on the monument may be “adopted” for $60 each. Information is available by contacting Helen Hunter or Marjorie Bull at the Jasper County Records Center, (417) 359-1100.
