Northern Howell County Under Attack

One hundred sixty-one years ago, South Central Missouri was reeling from an attack from the north. The raid, begun in Houston, reached Shannon County on November 4, 1863, swept through Texas County, and concluded on November 9, in northern Howell County. Along the way, twenty-three homes were burned, and ten men were killed by soldiers of the Union Sixth Provisional Enrolled Missouri Militia after their capture. The raid led by First Lieutenant John W. Boyd wreaked havoc upon Texas, Shannon, and northern Howell County, unequaled in this region during the war. 

 

Boyd and the men he led were expatriate locals, familiar with the course the guerrilla war was taking in the Ozarks and angry with rebel partisan depredations that drove them from home and destroyed their communities. West Plains, now abandoned, was burned to the ground a month before by a band of guerrillas. The courthouses in Houston and Alton had been destroyed by fire. County seats were the target of guerrilla bands, and destroying public buildings kept Union troops from using them when they came to town.

 

John Wesley Boyd arrived in the Ozarks in the late 1850s. I found his correspondence with land agents in Oregon County in 1859, indicating his intent to move from his home near Columbus, Ohio, to southern Missouri. He was attracted by cheap land and bought a lot of it. Born in Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, in 1822, he grew up and married there but moved frequently, pursuing building and contracting business opportunities. Boyd, as a boy, was trained as a carpenter. He served as a Pittsburg, Pennsylvania State Militia Captain during the Mexican War.

 

Though initially interested in land in Oregon County, he eventually landed north of there in the Spring Creek Township of Shannon County, buying up several large tracts of land near present-day Summersville. The 1860 census indicated his nearest post office in the Casto community, but his proximity to Houston made Boyd feel it was his hometown. 

 

Boyd must have come here with a tremendous amount of resources. His wealth on the census record is $18,000 in real estate and $4,000 in personal property in Shannon County alone. Its value far exceeded any of his neighbors, almost a million dollars in today’s money. On the census, he listed his profession as a farmer, though military records list his occupation as a carpenter when enlisting at forty-one.

 

The census record shows two sons living on his farm, Hamlet Boyd, age 13, and Lewis Boyd, age 11. No woman was present at the time of the census; his wife had died a few years before the war while living in north Missouri, and a daughter, Ophelia, was grown and married.

 

Texas and Shannon counties were a hotbed of rebel sentiment, and both had been occupied on more than one occasion by Union troops during the war. In the early part of the war, Confederate Brigadier General James McBride contested the possession of his hometown of Houston by Union troops, as did rebel chieftains William O. Coleman and Thomas R. Freeman. Houston changed hands several times between 1861 and 1863, and during that period, Boyd had been repeatedly driven from his home and robbed by the rebels.

 

Boyd's company of PEMM men was composed of fellows like himself whom the rebels had mistreated and were trying to kill. A recent murder of a Union loyalist in the Houston vicinity and the capture and murder of two of his scouts had Boyd and his troopers in a mood for revenge as they left their garrison under special verbal orders.

 

Taking twenty 6th PEMM soldiers (that’s all they had in the company) and five additional troopers on loan from the Fifth Missouri State Militia (a full-time regiment of proven guerrilla fighters), the band marched out of Houston in the direction of Lieutenant John Boyd's farm in the Spring Valley. First on their checklist was the home of Benjamin F. Carter, a deserter from Boyd's company who was implicated in the burning of Houston, along with Wilson Farrow. When they were not found at Carter's home, it was burned to the ground. 

 

On November 5, the task force split, with ten men riding down Bay Creek toward the Jack's Fork River. There, they found the home of Miles and Jack Stephens deserted, and Boyd, suspecting they were bushwhackers and having a report they were harboring and feeding bushwhackers, burned it to the ground. Marching 10 miles down the Jack's Fork for 30 miles travel, they arrived at the home of a "Widow McCormick," where the patrols rejoined and camped overnight. Having information that the widow's home was "a general rendezvous for Coleman's and Freeman's guerrillas, the home and outbuilding were burned the next morning." 

 

From the widow's son, "a young lad," Boyd learned that a neighbor, James Mahan, had sent the boy to neighboring farms to warn of the Union patrol's approach. Boyd sent a party to backtrack and arrest Mahan. While in custody, Mahan was alleged to have tried to escape and was shot to death. As the patrol turned up Mahan Creek toward Thomasville Road the following day, they spotted 20 men on a bluff overlooking them and fired at them. The observers scattered, and Boyd started a search that jumped two men from the brush who were killed, and a couple of miles later, came upon a man on a Union horse, who was also known to the troopers as a bushwhacker. He, too, was shot after capture "while attempting to escape." 

 

On the night of November 7, the patrol camped on "Birch Prairie," the present-day site of Birch Tree. On November 8, Boyd and his men arrived at the home of James Ward Harris (future founder of the town of Willow Springs) and captured three men and a boy. The men were killed, but the boy was spared on account of his age. 

 

According to Boyd, a return to the Spring Valley and Houston was accomplished without further incident, arriving on the evening of November 9. Suspiciously, the homes or stores housing the post offices of Chapel (Near Mountain View), Hickory Top (Willow Springs), and Hutton Valley were destroyed this same week. One of the men Boyd's patrol killed was running rebel mail from Arkansas north in the direction of Rolla, and stopping mail running or routine mail delivery seems to have been a priority. 

 

Following the raid, Boyd was called on the carpet by his superiors in St. Louis, asking by what authority he had burned 23 homes, killed ten men (the majority after they were captured), and only brought back one prisoner, a 15-year-old boy. Boyd's Company K didn't seem too high on the discipline list when inspected two days before leaving Houston. The Captain who looked the men over noted their discipline was low, instruction poor, and out of 91 men who were supposed to be with the company, only 21 were available for duty. Twelve men were absent without leave, and one object of Boyd's expedition was to find at least one of the deserters from his company. What they lacked in military demeanor they made up in willingness to fight, and Boyd, at 41 years of age, standing 5-11, with blue eyes, light hair, and sandy complexion, cut an impressive figure as a cavalry leader. He and his men were there with a purpose - revenge.

 

Approximately a week after Boyd's report went up channels to Union headquarters in St. Louis, a terse reply was returned to Rolla headquarters for a "report as to whether the conduct of this officer in killing prisoners and burning houses was in accordance with his instructions." The orders involved were retrieved and revealed that Captain Richard Murphy, in command of the Houston Post, had required Boyd to come by his office for special instructions before leaving. Boyd, in a follow-up statement, advised that "upon making report to Captain Murphy for 'special instructions" he ordered me to 'clean them out.'"

Two days later, a further order from Rolla sent a team of 6 men escorting an assistant adjutant general to go to Houston and further investigate the conduct of Boyd.

 

The investigator reported back on November 25 that "Lieutenant Boyd failed in making his report clear." He suggested that Boyd's amended report would clear up the matter and that he thought that Boyd "acted correctly, and for the good of the service."

 

Boyd's amended report reworded the accounts of the killings to indicate the men killed were not shot after capture but killed in their efforts to escape arrest when initially encountered by the patrols. The buildings burned were "vacant huts or cabins, used as camping places and quarters for bushwhackers." Boyd stated he had evidence from one of the dying men that the other places he burned had been "the houses and rendezvous of the men actually engaged in burning West Plains and Houston."

 

The final paragraph of his report summed things up. Boyd wrote, "In conclusion, I take the liberty to say that these things were done by my sanction and order and that I have acted throughout as I felt it my duty to do under the circumstances, being an officer of the United States, and knowing, as I do, that these men (with others) have murdered loyal citizens at their own homes." He went on to state that the men he killed were responsible for the murder of his two scouts. With no apology, he concluded on a personal note by saying, "also that whilst I was endeavoring to live a peaceable citizen of the county, they have hunted me like a wild beast and tried to kill me for my principles, and that were I again placed in similar circumstances I would do as I have done."

 

And that was the end of it. Later in the year, Boyd and his men were pulled into federal service, ensuring regular pay and complete Union army resources retroactive to the 1st of November 1863. The following year, Boyd's company became part of the Union 16th Missouri Cavalry, Company K, commanded by Captain William Monks. Boyd also entered special service in August 1864 as a scout, earning five dollars a day. He had remarried during the war and had an additional two children. His wife and children left together for Ohio in an ox-drawn wagon one day before the Price Invasion engulfed Missouri in September 1864. They were robbed of most of their possessions along the way in a trip that took 35 days to complete. 

 

John remained here to fight through the war's end, part of Monk's company of guerrilla fighters. He was discharged from service in 1865 and moved back to be with his family now in Franklin County, Ohio. In the post-war period, the Boyds could not safely live in Texas or Shannon County, Missouri. In 1881, John Boyd received a government pension for his service and died peacefully on March 4, 1896. His obituary read in part, "he was a staunch Republican in politics, and from early youth was a devoted member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. His loyalty as a soldier was simply an index to his character in every relation of life, and his trustworthiness, kindliness, and many excellent qualities won him the respect and high regard of all." 

 

John and his second wife are buried in the Little Pennsylvania Cemetery in Franklin County, Ohio.