The beginning of autumn signals the start of the spooky season, that time of year now rivaling Christmas in popularity among youth and adults alike, highlighted by tidings of fear.

One of the most frighting specters existing is the past suddenly revisiting us, also known as learning history. As the dying leaves decaying upon the cold ground provide sustenance for the next batch to come, so does the record of antiquity fertilize the imagination with possibilities of our own demise.

For example, in the fall of 1973 rural Verona woman Nadine Mattlage was talking on the telephone when apparently lighting came through the line striking her dead, proving your mother was right when she warned you not to be on the phone during a thunderstorm, a warning I never headed, as I took it for urban legend — but myth tends to have a kernel of truth in history.

Three strawberry pickers, Orville Hutton, Gladys Hutton, and Mrs. William Hutton, were killed when struck by lightning two miles south of Cassville in 1928. In November of 1958 teacher and former Purdy resident Lois Doyel Rader died in her Springfield home after becoming entangled with the cord of a tanktype vacuum cleaner while carrying it up the stairs, the resulting skull fracture from the fall being fatal. Her parents Isaac and Hattie Doyel were proprietors of the Commercial Hotel in Purdy.

In 1973, Springfield brick mason Lee Roy Sloan died after a fall from scaffolding during the construction of the Purdy school gymnasium. On Oct. 4, 1917, 14-year-old Francis Ruth Bloomer was killed when a runaway box car from the Cassville & Exeter Railroad struck her home. Two carloads of crushed rock coming downhill from Exeter could not be stopped after a failed coupling with the engine. Train conductor Joe Ayres jumped on the cars attempting to brake them manually, but to no avail.

Fireman Charles Weatherly phoned the home of J.C. Henry in Cassville to close the open switch, but he was too late. The runaway cars struck an empty boxcar at the mill that then shot across 7th Street into the Bloomer’s Cassville home, knocking it off its foundation and killing little Ruth.

On Christmas Eve 1933, George Thomas, my second great-uncle, died from injuries after being struck by an automobile on Highway 37 at Butterfield. A hundred years ago, back in 1915, C&E railroad (Cassville & Western Railroad at that time) engineer Arthur Hawk shot his estranged wife Alta Burks and then himself on a dark Cassville street following her return home after a picture show.

Mountain Maid Jean Wallace meet her demise when her Roaring River cabin caught fire, perhaps from a kerosene accident, in 1940. Down in Butler Hollow near Seligman, Margaret Dobbie burned to death in 1910 after trying to put out a timber fire near her farm. Her clothing became stuck on some wire fencing, and she was overtaken by the flames. Some wondered whether the fire had been intentionally set.

In 1909 Nola Henson and 10-year-old Cordie Prentice were killed when a tornado struck the town of Golden in southern Barry County. The dress that Cordie wore during the tornado is now part of the Barry County Museum collection. In 1885, Lincoln County, N.M. pioneer John Chisum died at Eureka Spring, Ark., where he had gone for treatment of cancer.

Bill Giddings, 21, drowned while swimming the Kings River fully clothed in 1951. According to news accounts, he was attempting to bait hooks on the opposite side during a fishing trip.

In 1857, Arthur Blankenship was charged in Barry County with murdering his wife Mary by poisoning her castor oil with arsenic. In 1912, James Craig, of Butterfield, was killed by “foul air” at the Shady Grove mine.

While there are many terrible ways to meet one’s end in the Ozarks, history shows that there are also a million different ways to live in the Ozarks, which I suppose is why we call it home.

lljklk. Jeremiah Buntin is a historian at the Barry County Museum. He may be reached at jbuntin@barrycomuseum.
org