Now and Then – Reminiscence
By Rev. B.F. Lawler
Page 2

Reminiscence:
The first bank in Osceola was organized about 1854 and John T. McClain was its cashier. Mr. William Horn says that a Mr. Rankin of St. Louis was the principal stockholder. Its location was exactly where W.W. Lawton’s law office now is. Osceola was then a shipping point for the great Southwest reaching to Arkansas and the Indian Territory. Much pig lead from Germany, near where Joplin now is was hauled here by ox teams to be loaded onto steamboats, often seen on the river in those days. “Bank” was first a bench from “Banco”, or table on which the financier spread his money from which he paid orders somewhat like our checks.
The first bank in the United States was organized by citizens of Philadelphia in 1780. The first section of Congress looking to the establishment of a bank was in that year; and in 1781 Robert Morris, superintendent of finance, submitted to Congress a plan for the establishment of a bank for North America. New York and Massachusetts opened banks in 1791, and 1784, respectively. The plan of the National Banking system is credited to Alexander Hamilton, then secretary of state, embodied in his report to congress in 1790, the capitol of the proposed bank was fixed at $10,000,000. The bank was sold at a profit, and in 1815 was reorganized at the proposal of Secretary Dallas. But for the origin of this Banking system we must look across the Atlantic ocean.
The Bank of Venice was the first in Europe 1117, A.D., based upon a forced loan of the republic.
The Bank of Barcelona was founded in 1401, and for centuries was the principal bank of Europe.
The Bank of Amsterdam was established in 1607 and was the first institution of the kind looking to the promotion of commerce.
The Bank of Hamburg was established in 1619 and was based upon a deposit of five silver bars.
The Bank of England was established in 1649; its capital then was one million LS.
But way back of all this Our Savior in one of His parables tells a delinquent that he should have put his money in the bank so that at his Lord’s coming He might have received his own.
We realize now that a proper system of banking is a great necessity in the business of our great country and we are under great obligations to bankers who have given most of our principal laws for the circulation of our country, almost as necessary as the circulation of blood in our bodies. We are also under obligation to them for that which they avoid and that is a combine which would bring a panic in finance. B.F. Lawler

Reminiscence:
Voting and voting places as late as 1856 were very different from what we now have. Instead of being familiar with the Australian or other new system of voting many a young sovereign had not heard of Australia – a sovereign is a voter.
Instead of a ballot an oral statement was taken under oath that “you have not or will not vote at any voting precinct or voting place in this election”.
Please notice those words in quotations and some old timer may correct me if I am not right.
In 1860 the crowd was so great at Chaplinger’s Mill that the voting was done in the Mill yard the clerk having improvished tables.
A man not very well known came forward to vote when an old man who quite hilarious said: “Here comes a Douglasman, I know from his looks”.
After the man was sworn he was asked for whom he wished to vote – no secrets about it and he answered so the clerks and judges could hear, as well as every body else. Then the lively old man said: “I told you so, hurrah for Douglass, hurrah! hurrah!” how do you like that!
You who remember the great number of candidates and the many complications in politics will not be slow in thinking that some study was necessary for voting understandingly.
Douglass received thousands of votes as the only hope of a compromise of the great question then jarring the very foundations of the national government. It was a serious question – a break heart question to most serious men.
People watching an approaching cyclone do not laugh nor jeer – they watch and the state of the mind was easily read in their faces.
John T. McClain’s voice choked up as he said, “It looks like war”, Waldo P. Johnson’s voice trembled in its tenor key as he spoke to the multitudes. Ah! the men and women, too, who “had ears to hear” felt the heavy jarring of the distant storm, and it came “nearer, clearer and deadlier” as time went by.
In 1856 my oldest brother and I stood at a window in a voting place in Carthage, Mo. and cancelled each the others vote in two minutes without having spoken a word about it previously. We could vote for president anywhere in our state. We were transacting business in Carthage, eighty miles south of us, on the day of the election. So you see how divisions even in families might occur when the war began. No one has ever accounted for this.
The franchise has been studied by some master minds, but few have given much light on the subject. It remained for John H. Lucas last year to give the clearest statement of clean, clearcut politics it has been my privilege to hear and this reaching back into the foundation under consideration between Jefferson and Hamilton long ago. I do not say that other men could not, but in my hearing no man has risen above party smoke to a clear statement of clean politics as did our own townsman, John H. Lucas, last year in Osceola.
I am not surprised that even long before the war there were some questions as to how long a man ought to live in a country before voting.
At first this paper intended to speak only about voting and how they did it in antebellum days, but voting means something and that something got into the ink. B.F. Lawler

Reminiscence:
By Rev. B.F. Lawler
A recent visit with my sister, Mrs. Higgins, on Coon creek, brought to my mind the scenes of some early days in St. Clair county. The school house in which I preached last Friday night is in the same district in which I lived and taught before the war, and Samuel and John Culbertson and Benjamin Nance were pupils. Almost the entire district has new people now, but no warmer friends meet now than they, and I love to see the very ground where I once lived and labored and studied.
Samuel Culbertson now owns the farm owned by my school mate and friend, James Gash. We were of the same age and sat upon the same bench from which our short legs dangled in tedious waiting for the master to say:
“Time to spell”,
for that was always welcome news. We often studied from the same book, permitting some one less favored than ourselves to use the other. I loved Jim Gash for his many virtues, his clean face and his clean clothes reminding me of his mother so tender and true.
School days passed and we were men, and each had found his mate for life, as we supposed, and each had a home. Sickness came, and for many weeks we watched the fever as it was destroying his fair young wife. He did not profess to be a saved man, but as we walked out to the well he told me he did not intend to be lost, but that he would attend to that important business soon. To our great relief we saw the fever abating, but our joy was gone when we saw that unnatural “pink” on his already pale face, showing us that the malignant fever was coursing through his veins. Eight long weeks, and he sank to rise no more. The last words that I heard him utter were that he was afraid he was lost. Dr. Harris stepped out to where we were and said he could do no more – that the patient was then “riming the grave”. How I missed him it is impossible for me to say. The burst of grief expressed by Anthony over the dead body of Caesar always appealed to me as the grief of a true friend.
I remember when they sold his property. I did not buy a thing, tho’ some fine horses went. His widow found another home and was gone from us.
This was in 1857-8, and in a few short years the war signals were apparent everywhere. Jim Gash heeded them not.
Why so good, so pure a life as his could not be spared, I do not pretend to ask. No one knows.
Dangers have come near me and I am acquainted with sorrow. Today I am three times our age when he died.
Last Friday night I preached in a few rods of the farm he then owned and passed close by where his house was, where I watched with him during the sickness of his wife and then saw him fade as a leaf from my side. Dear was the world to us, and our homes were palaces without glittering wealth or spacious halls.
My own brothers and sisters have all gone, save one, since then, but we were seasoned in life and cultivated in hope and the separation cannot be fore long; yet tears fill our eyes as we think of their love for us, and through them we go back to the days of father and mother. We sorrow not as those who have no hope. But the death of my young friend and school mate made a place for itself in my remains to this day. I saw him when he was courting the lady who became his wife. He was a cultivated suiter, as gallant as Chesterfield. I saw him years afterwards just as gallant and attentive. Wasn’t that fine? I was his senior in books, but in polite attention he could lead the way in language most chaste, manner above criticism.
It may be some one who reads this has lost a friend who had studied from the same book in childhood days.

Reminiscence:
In 1844 the boys and girls could go to school, perhaps sixty days in a year – now many of them can go one hundred and twenty days in a year and many of them one hundred and eighty. There is a difference.
Many boys then rode in an Ox wagon to town if they went at all, or maybe on a horse with some other boy, and many a fine girl hardly knew what it was to enjoy a pleasure ride. Now there are few children of school age who have not ridden in the cars – many of them have taken buggy rides for pleasure alone.
“Bits” and picayunes” were the largest coins boys could handle at all – a whole dollar was out of their reach and I do not remember to have seen even one girl who had money of her own, and they did not expect to have any money, now it is quite common for boys and girls to have money.
As I think of it now, many girls were well dressed in their father’s money but seldom one would see a boy “Togged out” for a society occasion.
In those days there were not many rooms in a house so that a boy or girl could say “my room”. I sat by to warm myself in the home of William Cox, the eldest of the Cox brothers and heard him tell his carpenter where he wanted his boys room in a house-plan he was showing him which he had drawn on a slate. That same place is now known as the Sheperd place on the hill above the railroad trestle one mile south of Osceola. That was the first time I heard of boys having a room all to themselves though I was then a small boy – indeed I was a small boy a long time.
In those days most school children had one pair of shoes in a year – now - !!! then shoes were made at home and never appeared fine.
The “spare bed” could be found in many homes in the early fifties, for geese and ducks were common and a cotton patch and a flax patch and a small flock of sheep could be seen on many little farms. Where are the flax and the cotton now?
Girls were in society at much earlier age than boys. I do not know why? The first recognition of gallantry recognized in a boy was when he would lead a lady’s horse up to the “stile block” and hold the animal steady till the lady was safe in her saddle, she would say “thank you”, and he would feel quite honored, for some as excellent ladies in Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee ever sent out found homes in St. Clair County in those early days.
In the years immediately preceding the war there were fine folks, fine horses and many excellent homes, and some people could send their children away to school, in fact there was a fine school in Osceola the building being not far from where Mr. Thomas Moore’s residence is at this time.
Even then many wealthy people wore homespun clothing and many ladies in the beginning of the war resolved to leave off the fine clothing and turn to the homespun dress; so much was this talked of that in time of the war a song commemorated their action, the chorus being “Hurrah hurrah for the homespun dress the Southern ladies wear”.
Traffic was confined to slow going Ox teams mainly till 1846 and even in 1849 many yokes of oxen drew emigrant wagons to the Great West from St. Clair County. But the two-horse wagon came in common use several years before the war.
But the plows, dear men, the plows we broke ground with and with which we cultivated our corn, and the hoes, dear boys, the kind of hoes we hoed our cotton and potatoes with – you have no conception of how heavy and dull they were. As for rakes and forks they were of wood and of the most primitive make. A modern hardware store was not known, but tinshop and hardware and cutlery came before 1850.
Most men’s saddles for horseback riding were old fashioned leather saddles or saddle trees only, made by some mechanic and covered with sheepskin and not many in use until a few years before the war when fine saddles were in common use. B.F. Lawler

Reminiscence:
Sixty-two years ago Zachary Burris was a prosperous farmer living on King’s Prairie in St. Clair county.
W.E. Swearenger, James Culbertson, Edward Fentress and Marion Richey, had all married daughters out of this excellent home, leaving the youngest daughter, Susan M. and two sons, George and James, both young boys at that time.
In December 1852 it was my fortune to lead the youngest daughter to the marriage alter in the presence of a vast throng of guests and Rev. J.T. Wheeler solemnizing the sacred rite.
Mr. Burris sold his farm to a Mr. Pennington and made a new home in Cedar county five or more miles east of Eldorado Springs.
The Burris home at the time of my marriage on King’s Prairie had a number of rooms and a long porch on the south. From this porch I led my bride into the west room where the minister and guests as many as could get in the house and near the door waited. My “best man” was Freeman Evans, an elegant young man who lived with S.S. Stearns on the farm now owned by Mr. Graham living in Osceola at this time.
I lived with this beautiful young woman nearly eleven years when she faded out of my sight under the blighting touch of typhoid fever, leaving five little children to the uncertain chances of a raging war. I chiseled the initial letters of her name and the date of her death on a sand stone so that the children could find their mother’s grave in case the father, too, should go away to come no more. Years past and tombstones were placed; for in one short month her beautiful babe was resting by her side. Two others of that little flock went later. Two remain, W.E. Lawler of Trinidad, Colo., and Mrs. M.G. Jones of Peru, Nebraska.
Now I come to the occasion for my writing about myself, and, if anybody wishes to scold me for writing it, I refer them to the neighbors now living on King’s Prairie who ask me to tell the people.
The old building that witnessed my first marriage, after long service became a tool house and was neglected for many years, but stood mainly intact till a short time ago a strong south wind carried it to the ground – so falls many a frail house when it has served its time. No wonder the neighbors noticed its fall and asked a farewell word to be said about it.
Since coming to Osceola I visited the dear spot once, I had the south door opened and stepped inside again to feel a thrill of long ago when a youthful joy throbbed in a youthful breast.
Now, Rubie, I have written as you asked me to do, and if the editors will print it, thank them. B.F. Lawler

Reminiscence:
The picnic at Collins last week afforded a great field for reminiscence. Among the great crowds of people only a few old people were present – none of the older set in that community.
It is due to pioneers to name at least a few who made it possible to enjoy some of the great things in that part of St. Clair county.
John Wyatt settled on the ground where Collins now is – I can find where his house was built. Mr. Largent and then Mr. Choice owned the farm afterward. In that part of the county I recall Isaac Culbertson, John Sims, grandfather to J.I. Sims, Mathew Boswell, Rily Cauthon, Erastus Eades, Powell Rogers, Frank Yost, Sam Martin, William Allen, Sen. Richard DeShazo, Peter France, Tillman Thompson, James Dudley, Burdett Sams, William Tillery, John Wright, Sanders Nance, Robert Gardner, Garner Phillips, Clem Strickland, James Pace, J.W. Beck Clerk of St. Clair county, William Culbertson and many others whom I shall see no more. King Pace was among the younger and he is an old man now, Hartwell Pace was father and lived on a rich farm on Brush Creek. I called there once when the country was new to ask how to cross the creek going north. King Pace was a big boy then and told me the way. I do not remember to have seen him since that time till last Friday. Changed! how changed! but I knew his father well and the son is a true copy of the sire.
Nancy Page is his wife and was my pupil before the war, when she was a little girl. She was Nancy Allen, daughter of King and Martha Allen.
“Silver Threads among the Gold”, when I saw how gray she and her husband had grown, I had no means of seeing my own gray hairs and wondered how children should be so old. Hartwell Pace came to my father’s house once when I was a boy. My father asked him his name. He said: My name is Pace, but “I trot a heap, sir”. Mathew Boswell and Isaac Culbertson were sedate men and would have been good jurors in a superior court. Frank Yost and Powell Rogers looked well to finance. Tellman Thompson was a good deacon in the Baptist church. William Allen, sen., controlled large property including many slaves. Sam Martin talked more about the Bible than any man in his neighborhood, often mentioning Joshua, the son of Nun. John Wright was among the younger set at that time, but was shrewd in business affairs. Largent was the first man to run a subsoil plow in the furrows of his two horse plow. Among the farmers of small fields Lem Oaks was the best. King Allen rode the finest horse of any young man in his neighborhood. James Sims came later – he handled a great train of horses with great skill. Of all I have in mind now Holsapple and DeShazo only were preachers of the gospel.
The pastors of Coon Creek church were Wheeler from Hickory county, Senter from Pike county and Ashworth from the west part of St. Clair county south of Osage opposite Monegaw Springs, those were able ministers of the gospel. Wheeler was the only wealthy man I knew who preached the gospel. Among the ministers Ashworth was, by far, the most literary. How do I know? I seem them now as they impressed me then. B.F. Lawler

Submitted by Stacy Kelly
 

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