Volume 5, Number 1 - Fall 1973
THE EDITOR SPEAKS
by Jewell Ross Mehus
Mrs. Lucille Crawford Parks, Mountain Home, Ark, wrote: "I must say I was thrilled when my copy of the Quarterly came, for it contained so much about a branch of my Kimberling family. I have been collecting data on Kimberling— Birchfield, Kimberling—Pinnell lines for a long time.
"It was 19 Nov 1900 that mid-wife Nancy Jane Kimberling delivered a son named Melvin Henry Jewell Crawford to Samuel Henry and Effie Leona Jane (Stone) Crawford. The son married Almedia Kimberling 25 Nov 1920 and they were my parents."
Just now we find many books written by Missourians, books about their Ozarks and sometimes we find books written by Missourians about other Missourians. Some of the writers just tell good yarns; some do research, but never know why other than they like to "do" research and to write words. Some like to search for ideas and to find the answers to the "why". Dr. Hardy Kemp belongs to the latter group.
In this issue Dr. Kemp, an Ozarker who lives in Kansas City, but who never forgets his beginnings, ferrets out a reason for the Battle of Forsyth.
Dr. Kemp, a Civil War buff, gave this paper at the Dec. 9 meeting. Perhaps some "new" materials tucked away in this area will come to light.
"Son of Pioneers" or "Recollections of an Ozark Lawyer", by Omer E. Brown came out this month. Mr. Brown was preparing the book at the time of his death. His wife, Lucille Welch Brown, completed the manuscript.
It is published by his family in tribute to him, of whom one of his children has said: "None of us has ever started out with so little and accomplished so much."
Brown describes the country store until any old timer reading the picture will see again the storekeeper of his area behind the counter, and likely will grow a bit sentimental. Brown won his first teaching certificate as did many of us. He studied law in the office of the judge, not at a university. Perhaps he, too, shot a man at Chadwick. He became the first Democrat to hold office in his county. The many homey stories come straight from the heart of a man who helped write the Missouri Constitution of 1943, who became a man, but continued at heart a boy, just grown tall and portly.
The next issue will carry a section of James B. Inmon’s new book. You read his first book, perhaps, because James, a local boy, wrote it. This one you will read to the end, because you cannot put it down. James’s Doctor said to him, "You must keep busy, you must get something to think about." James had the letters and diary his grandfather wrote long ago. James got busy. He has pulled himself from the depths of a "Cancer case" and given to us the story of a man of our midst.
The story of the grandfather going to California during the gold rush tells of the only Missourian I ever heard of who brought back gold, much of it, eighty-five thousand dollars of it. He brought it around by New Orleans and up the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. He put the old in copper boxes inside wooden boxes, each marked "nails" or such. There was a bank in Springfield, but banks were new and not to be trusted too far. Inman put a bit in the bank, then buried the remainder beneath his house in Stone County deep enough that if the house burned the gold would not melt.
Too, I found in Wyoming, "The Ranch on the Oxhide" by Henry Inman. You will recall Henry Inman’s "Sante Fe Trail". "The Ranch on the Oxhide" tells of a family in Kansas, coming here from Vermont, by way of Fort Leavenworth. Since most of us had a relative on the Sante Fe Trail or in early Kansas we like the book. You will note that many of the articles in the Quarterly about early settlers in our Ozarks mention that the family or part of it lived in early Kansas.
Henry Inman is a relative of our society member, James B. Inmon. I know, for James B. Inmon collects books written by Henry Inman. Just what brought about the change of spelling, I know not. Often some Recorder of Deeds, who did not learn the lessons of the Old Blue Back speller, made a mistake in recording a deed or sale, so the name took a change of spelling. This spelling continued, for changing a name by court order costs twenty-five dollars.
Jewell Ross Mehus
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