OUR TARLTON STORY--PART SIX/The Murder of Alexander C. Tarlton by Southern Bushwhackers

THE MURDER OF ALEXANDER CRAIG TARLTON BY SOUTHERN BUSHWHACKERS

by KEITH WAYNE RAGAN·

Our Tarlton Story--Part Six

Foreword

In documents first rescued from Grandma Bessie Wilson’s “burning party” many years ago, Clarence Madison Wilson, JR., my uncle, saved a considerable number of “papers” mostly pertaining to Daniel Moore’s estate and passed them down to son Ronnie Lynn Wilson . Ronnie entrusted them to my care sometime back when I was in the throes of ten years research on the least known of our immediate ancestry--the Tarltons. And, as I went through each piece of paper I came upon the original enrollment records for Alexander. They are important in that the Missouri Data Base for Civil War Soldiers does not include my Great-Great Grandfather Alexander Tarlton. The state’s copies were probably among those stolen in 1866. And these records show that on September 29, 1862, Alexander C. Tarlton was enrolled in the service of the state and that he was assigned to Co. B, Regiment of the Wayne County Enrolled Missouri Militia, USA. Alexander was listed as 5’ 6’’ tall, 34 years of age, blue eyes, dark hair, dark complexion, and born in Missouri. He was probably discharged or exempted from this service at some point, because on April 30, 1864 the Office of Commissary of Exemptions for Wayne Co., Missouri in Coldwater, MO. certified that Alexander had been duly enrolled again as a militia man of the county and assigned to Company K, 68 Regiment of Enrolled Missouri Militia. Further, he was directed to report ten days from that date in Missouri or Tennessee. It is well documented that he was unarmed, not on active service or having obtained deferment the morning of his demise, and was at home with his wife and children recovering from serious illness.

The Morning of Alexander’s Death

On what was certainly a very cold winter morning on Sunday, December 18, 1864 Alexander C. Tarlton was sitting in his chair upright for the first time since he was bedridden with pneumonia. He contracted pneumonia while or shortly after a recent stock- buying trip (this from my mother’s recollections).

I can imagine the stone fireplace radiating waves of welcome heat and energy into an exhausted Alexander, lap covered with one of Mahala’s beautiful geometric designed quilts, fine china cup of coffee in hand. Though still weak, it was exactly one week until Christmas and he was home with his family and not answering the militia call to go chasing Confederate guerrillas all over the Wayne County countryside. Baby Mary was gurgling happily. The children were thinking even though times were hard, maybe there would be some sweet treat coming to them in just a few short days stuffed into their Christmas stocking hanging from their nails on the wooden mantelpiece. Elizabeth was watching mother Mahala’s every move as she scrambled eggs for the family breakfast and Susan was tugging on Alexander’s pant leg, trying to get up into that warm lap and maybe beg a sip of the rich, sweet coffee. The only milk cow remaining still provided rich cream with the assistance of Mahala’s churn and Susan’s little lips pursed with anticipation of a taste of the hot, foamy nectar.

Suddenly, three men burst through the front door, later identified as the Dave Reed band of Confederate guerrillas. One of the men points a pistol at Alexander, and oral accounts say another shouted “Alexander Tarlton, you dirty black republican, ain’t you ashamed?” In the very next instant, in front of the horrified Mahala and all the children, the man with the gun proceeds to fire shots into Alexander as he stands from his chair. Other shots follow. He falls bloody, his body in death spasms, to the warm wood floor. Screams ring out in the room and travel through the still open door and across frost hoary pastures and fields. Within moments the only sounds are of a woman screaming hysterically and children crying and the distant gallop of retreating hoofs.

Some family members have passed down the story of the Confederate Guerrillas trying to take the family cow away with them amidst the howling protests of Alexander’s wife Mahala. And this may have been the case. But, these men had ridden into a populated community, sparsely though it may have been, of Union sympathizers and fired gunshots surely heard by everyone for a half-mile or more, killing a prominent member of that populace. They would be pursued surely and quickly. It does not seem likely to me that they would or could encumber themselves with trying to pull along a milk cow as they made a hasty retreat to secure their lives. But, to be objective, a cow would be a rich prize in that time of shrunken, cramping bellies for those men in gray that day, as it would have been for almost any farm family in Wayne County in those bleak, last days of the Civil war. It seems more plausible, however, that the bushwhackers may have received a command by their Captain to kill the cow and immediate livestock as they hastened their retreat. Destroying resources that give nourishment and comfort to the enemy was a common practice by both armies.

Alexander’s son George Washington Tarlton would recall to friends in his later years that he was in the front yard that day when the guerrillas galloped onto the property of Alexander Tarlton. At least one account states that George and Alexander were in the front yard together. I am more inclined to believe the story that Granny Susan Tarlton Moore repeated to my mother on so many occasions that Alexander was in the house at the time of his murder. Family stories are well handed down that George, however, was smart enough to run and hide in the hayloft as the “bushwackers” entered the home. Certainly, George felt his life was in danger, as must have his mother, Mahala. since he made his departure from Wayne County after his father’s murder.

The men who murdered Alexander were recalled by both Elizabeth and her half-brother George as being masked, and this has led to speculation that at least one or more of the assassins were local and known by the family. Gary Peterson, a descendant of Elizabeth, says oral history had the location of this murder at his home near Wappapello, Wayne County, Missouri. I find this plausible, yet puzzling. Alexander did purchase lands in this location, part of the original Tarlton Plantation just prior to the war. But, as stated previously in this narrative, the 1860 census, shortly before the war broke out, had Alexander living in his home in St Francois Township with family. This may, in fact, have been in the Lost Creek area of future census enumerations and seems to be another logical choice for the murder scene to this researcher at this point in time.

Of the properties owned by Alexander and Mahala at the time of the Civil War, which were those used for agriculture, and which represented the family’s home? It is still a mystery .

The motive for Alexander’s death is not known conclusively, but was certainly viewed as a despicable act of murder committed by guerrilla “bushwhackers” by the local community in particular and Union sympathizers in general. The guerrillas under Captain David Reed, C.S.A., were greatly feared and were known to be cruel and merciless with those from whom they “extracted justice.” Just as surely the act would have been viewed as a justifiable and retaliatory act of war against those who sympathized with the Union cause by the Southern partisans.

In those last days of 1864, the Confederate guerrillas operating in Wayne, Stoddard, Butler, Bollinger and surrounding counties were certainly aware that their days were numbered, but this probably only gave more urgency to settle all scores, target Union militia and partisans, and stay alive themselves as long as was humanly possible. After all, they held little hope for clemency or pardon after the war was over. They became less soldier and more assassin and outlaw. Some of the deeds of the Dave Reed band, Captain Reed himself a friend of the infamous Sam S. Hildebrand, were of the most horrible nature of men turned savage.

The Aftermath

Mahala went to live in her parent’s home, probably out of fear and to protect her family, after Alexander’s death. To be sure, Wayne County was a dangerous place during and for many years after the Civil War. She sold the only remaining portion of the original Tarlton Plantation, 15.5 acres north of Wappapello, to James Smith in 1867. She was still in Meshack Ward's, her father's home on the 1870 census. In the mid-1870’s the entire Ward/Tarlton household made a trip “out west” to the wild and wooly Kansas territories and were enumerated in Texas County, Missouri on the special Missouri census of 1875. Daughter Elizabeth as well as Susan’s recollections were vivid of a trip in covered wagon until “there were no more towns.” In all likelihood, this trip was designed around a reunion with the family of Alexander’s brother, John Tarlton JR that had left Wayne County at the close of the Civil War. It may be that the family knew that John was in ill health, since John died near Alton in Oregon County, Missouri in 1879.

In 1900 Mahala was living with brother Francis Marion Ward in Black River Township in the home of their now deceased parents.. Living with them on the old Ward properties was Mahala and Alexander’s son, John Meshack Tarlton and family. She lived at this home until 1906. She left the land in Black River Township to son John, and his family. She then lived with daughter Susan Tarlton Moore and husband Daniel in their home in the old Moore Community until her death on January 5, 1926. She obviously was an extraordinary woman. She was so loved by daughter Elizabeth, according to Elizabeth’s memoirs, that on their westward journey through Kansas, Elizabeth turned down a marriage proposal by her first love “because she couldn’t bear to be parted from her mother.” Her grave, as previously noted, is in Rucker Cemetery. She is a grandmother of whom every descendant should be proud.

Conclusion

It is apparent that our Tarlton families, their properties and fortunes were much diminished by the Civil War in Wayne County. But, as brutal as the act of murder upon Alexander Tarlton may seem in our eyes, the horrific nature of the war itself reduced almost all men to atrocities they would not have imagined themselves capable of before the eye for an eye retaliations, ambushes, battles and feuds that those years would produce. While the events of the war years I have provided may seem tedious and too wordy, they are but the tiniest of scraps of all that went on during those turbulent times, and this rendering represents only a minute offering of the details, names, and dates accumulated over the years.

I don’t know if Alexander Tarlton was a kind man, or even a good man. I have imagined he was, though. He may have been a bit formal and stiff from his fine English upbringing, but a decent man bound by duty and family and certainly an ambitious man as becomes apparent in his many agricultural and real estate transactions. He must have had the eye of the ladies. Though a small man, he must have been very persuasive and cut a handsome figure to attract and secure the hands of two such wealthy young Missouri Belles, one the daughter of an enormously wealthy slave and land owner from New Madrid and the other the daughter of the County Circuit Court Judge in Wayne County.

The gravesite of Alexander is not known. Gary Peterson, a descendant of Elizabeth, says it may be in Rucker. In the Wayne County Archives while researching in 2011 with my brother, Ken, I came across Volume 1 of the old cemetery interments and it listed as buried in Rucker, Alexander O. (correctly C.) Tarlton. There is no gravestone to verify this though. Mahala is buried there, but so are her father and mother, and Mahala died much later. And interestingly enough, the plot beside Mahala has been left bare, almost certainly indicating an unmarked grave. Records say that Elizabeth Wilson Ward, wife of Meshack, was the first person buried there. That was in 1885, well after Alexander’s death in 1864. And that leaves the matter as problematical. Is the history book wrong? This cemetery was originally known as the Ward Cemetery and owned by Mahala’s father, Meshack Ward. Did he purchase this land to ensure not only a final resting place for he and wife Elizabeth, but also for Alexander and Mahala?

Regardless of place of final repose, I find it hard to imagine that Alexander would be buried anywhere other than in Wayne County. There is an old cemetery mentioned in Cletis R. Ellington’s book, MINGO referred to as General Tarlton’s Cemetery, location unfortunately now unknown. I believe it likely that not only the resting place of Zion (General Azion) Tarlton, his grandfather is there--my 4 times great grandfather, but that of Alexander’s father, George as well and probably many of the early Tarlton mothers and wives. If Ursula Phillips Tarlton, Alexander’s first wife is there, so possibly this may be another consideration for the final resting place for Alexander.

Maybe Alexander lies under the cool waters of today’s Lake Wappapello or close to it’s shores. Maybe the gravestone has fallen over and is buried under several inches of composted leaves and topsoil in a cemetery in the Lost Creek area, or even in old Greenville. Or his remains may lie undiscovered amid briars and undergrowth on some portion of the old General Tarlton Cemetery on the original Tarlton plantation northeast of Wappapello. Since the cemetery records for Rucker include his name, I am of the opinion he rests there right beside Mahala.

Wherever his remains reside, it is easy to imagine on cold winter mornings, heavy with frost in the middle of December -- if you are close enough to his place of murder and listen in total silence --  you may yet hear muted gunshots, screams of women and children, and the crescendo of galloping hoofs. And in the ensuing moments, the murmurs of soft weeping may yet weave their way delicately through the mists of Wayne County.

Footnote on Captain Dave Reed

David Reed was a blacksmith in Lowndes, east-central Wayne County prior to the war. He was very much a “Son of the South.” He joined the 2nd Cavalry Battalion, 1st Division, Missouri State Guard, Confederate Army, was elected Captain, and served east of the Mississippi River in 1862 and 1863. He and most of his men deserted June 1, 1863 to return to defend their homes, families, and personal interests in Southeast Missouri in the manner they saw fit (personal correspondence with Bruce Nichols). This was a common occurrence in the regular Confederate Army as the war expanded and took many of the men far from their families and homes. Captain David Reed would raise a second company of men in and around Wayne County and they would attempt to attach themselves to the 7th Missouri Cavalry Regiment. Evidently the attachment was never approved, but the company continued to operate in Southeast Missouri and Northeast Arkansas. They eventually become a part of the 15th Missouri Cavalry, CSA. To the Union citizens of Wayne and surrounding counties, he would become leader of one of the most feared Guerilla Bushwhacker cells in the area. He was known to be responsible for several very gruesome killings during the war years.

I also found great interest in Mr. Ellinghouse’s recording of the lynching by David Reed and his gang of an Ash Hill Justice of the Peace, Thomas “Squire” Duffy probably in 1861. This was a gruesome murder, hanging him with hickory bark to a dogwood bush. This further served as “character reference” to the men that also murdered Alexander C. Tarlton. Further details are provided by Mr Ellinghouse on page 21 of his book “Mingo”.

Copyright Keith Wayne Ragan, August 1, 2009 and no reproduction in any form is permitted without the express written permission of the author. It may be reproduced for family collections for family use and reference, which is its intended purpose.