I have never considered myself a history buff, but for a few hours on June 7, my wife, daughter and I sent ourselves on a wild goose chase to learn every single thing we could about Lot 114 in the city of Cassville.
Earlier that afternoon, we purchased the lot from Barry County Properties, putting our names in the records as owners of a property dating back to the 40-acre original Town of Cassville in the 1850s.
After finishing the paperwork and becoming official owners, we had a slew of questions with answers that were hard to come by.
When was our Cassville Democrat office on 600 Main Street actually built? What other businesses had occupied it? What more can we find out about Lot 114?
We started our research at the Barry County Assessor’s Office, where they supplied the answer to our first question — the building went up in 1900, or at least as far back as records remember. We also learned the first floor is 1,763 square feet, and the total square footage is 5,043, but more later on that extra 3,000-plus square feet.
Also on the hand-written note was some abstract of title information; the section, township and range; the value of the acreage; full market value of the property; and the assessed valuation, which gave us an estimated property tax liability.
That was great information to have, and we wanted more. We crossed the hall to the Barry County Recorder’s Office, where we could see the physical abstract, but due to time and the fact we already had most of that information, we moved on.
Where to next? Unsure how much it would have on our lot, I reached out to Historian Jeremiah Buntin at the Barry County Museum.
Jackpot.
Within a week, Buntin had forwarded a trove of information, 69 PDFs of the abstract of title, telling a story exceptionally complicated to interpret, including quit claim deeds, warranty deeds, mortgage deeds, lease agreements, probate court records and so on.
I’ve cherry-picked as much as I can out of the file, but the language is, shall we say, dense.
A week after the purchase, Buntin was still on the hunt. The building, he surmised the building was actually erected in 1894, part of the Rodgers & Barcus block of West Main Street, where it was originally a meat market and restaurant.
Through the 1900s, the building housed, among other businesses, the Cassville Post Office, Turner’s Tire & Supply and Doc’s Cafe, as well as Skelly Oil Company next door to the original structure.
In the 1960s, the building received an addition and facelift, covering the loft windows on the front with the metal siding still on the facade today.
Buntin sent dozens of photos of the building, mostly when inhabited by Doc’s Cafe and the 1962 addition. I joked with Jordan, the artists’ rendering and circular lettering on the building made it look like a bowling alley was moving in.
Most things have stayed the same on the property since then, especially on the second floor. More than 3,000 square feet of space has been abandoned for 60 years, and as we look at our past, we also have an eye on the future.
We’ve spent many days (and long nights) discussing what we could do to bring the building to a new heyday. Of course, no plans are set in stone, but we have no shortage of ideas encompassing short-term or long-term rentals and possibly a commercial space.
Through all of our talks, we agreed wholeheartedly on the goal — to improve our outside corner of the courthouse square as much as possible for the betterment of the city and the community.
Just a month after buying the building, I learned I had even more connection to Cassville than I had ever thought.
My mother came in for Independence Day and showed me her ancestry.com family tree. According to her research, I have many distant relatives who came through Cassville along the Trail of Tears, including some who were the first settlers in Pea Ridge.
There is even one distant relative who lived in the original town of Cassville.
As I find the time, that research will be my next wild goose chase. I may be writing this column right now in a place where my family once bought groceries or had lunch, maybe even mailed a letter.
That connection gives an even greater sense of purpose to our plans. What will history say in another 170 years, and how can we improve it?
Kyle Troutman has served as the editor of the Cassville Democrat since 2014 and became Publisher in 2023. He was named William E. James/ Missouri Outstanding Young Journalist for daily newspapers in 2017, and he won a Golden Dozen Award from ISWINE in 2022. He may be reached at 417-847-2610 or ktroutman@cassville-democrat. com.
