Suggested headline:
Emmons escapes rebel captors
before he joined Union cavalry
By Cletis R. Ellinghouse
The first of three articles
The death of her aged cousin Edith Buehler in Oklahoma prompted my letter to the editor of this newspaper several months ago to say a few words about Grace (Emmons) Mason (1876-1974), who resided across the street from my parents’ home on the corner of Fifth and Green at the time I attended high school in Piedmont.
My comments centered on her cousin’s grandfather, German native Richard E. Buehler, whose contributions to his adopted country during the Civil War were in my opinion worthy of note. I suspected the same could be said of my old friend Grace Mason’s father, Patterson physician Daniel Deroy Emmons, whose life spanned the Civil War, but I knew nothing more of him. This is my attempt to correct that omission.
A native of New York state, Emmons was probably born in 1829 in the town of Norfolk in Saint Lawrence County, which takes its name from the celebrated river that passes between it and Canada. His name first appears there in the 1850 census. He resided within minutes of the U.S.-Canadian border in the home of his New Hampshire born father, Levi Emmons, and his Massachusetts born mother, the former Rebecca Barker, who were wed in 1825 in Vermont. Not far to the east is Mount Emmons, a mountain which takes its name from Massachusetts native Ebenezer Emmons, a famous physician and geologist who gave the Adirondack Mountains their name. He may have been a distant kinsman.
Nothing more is known of Daniel Deroy Emmons until his capture by Confederates in 1861 while engaged in the practice of medicine at West Plains, an account of which appears in a 1907 book about the wartime experiences of Union Colonel William Monks. Emmons managed to escape his captors but was recaptured in Texas County and made a prisoner again. “But being a master mason [which suggests he was a member of the Masonic order] he was paroled to the limits of the camp and on the night of the 10th of July made his escape and got through to Federal lines,” wrote Monks.
The doctor’s sentiments apparently were much the same as those of Benjamin Emmons of St. Charles, the only delegate to Missouri Territory’s constitutional convention in 1820 to oppose slavery. He was another native of New England.
D. Deroy Emmons was one of the first to volunteer at Pilot Knob to serve in the independent cavalry company organized about that time by Henry P. Hawkins, another New York native who before the war was a merchant at Patterson. One suspects the two may have been acquainted before the war, but if that is the case nothing has surfaced to prove it. Nevertheless, Emmons served exclusively under Hawkins as a lieutenant and captain until disabilities brought about his letter of resignation late in 1862.
Emmons was a lieutenant in October of 1861 when he deemed it proper to knock down the door of a Madison County store owned by Thomas J. Nifong before torching it and apparently watching as it burned to the ground. The details are not known, but Nifong owned slaves and in December of the next year paid tribute to the leader of the Confederacy by giving the name Jefferson Davis to his son, who after a long career as a widely known physician educated in St. Louis passed away in Los Angeles in 1940.
From an incident the next month in Carter County one might wish to believe Hawkins and Emmons added an unusual twist to the practice of horse swapping. While on Big Brush Creek at the home of Abraham Raymer the two are said to have led away his bay horse to others in their outfit nearby. But before the two departed the home Emmons reportedly advised a Raymer daughter he’d return the horse to her if she consented to have sex with him. According to the report, she consented and the horse indeed was returned.
In the documents available the given name of Raymer is not provided, but since Abraham headed the only family with that surname in the county it appears certain he is the one who owned the bay horse. According to descendants, Raymer disappeared one winter night during the Civil War after departing the home to try to learn what was disturbing his livestock. His body was never found. Family members believe he was killed by Southern sympathizers. His son Isaac Marion Raymer served in the Union Army’s 47th Missouri Infantry and fought in the Battle of Pilot Knob.
Emmons’ horse swapping disposition led to another notable incident. It is recorded he was ordered to Pilot Knob by Colonel W.P. Carlin, the post commander, but refused to give up four horses that belonged to Wayne County native William McFadden until the latter delivered to him one corral mare said to have a value of $100, “which said William McFadden was induced to do solely by false and fraudulent representations then and there made to him by said Lieutenant Emmons.” Among the children of McFadden, who later served in the 47th Missouri Infantry, were Adolphus, born at Ironton after the war and known as Bernarr when he ran for the presidency of the U.S. in 1936 (of which much was written in Cramer’s history of Wayne County), and Blanch Alma, who became the wife of Thomas William Mabrey, a Doniphan newspaperman who served as speaker of the Missouri House of Representatives in 1893.
The document on which these three incidents were reported, dated Feb. 14, 1862, carries the signature of Robert L. Lindsay, apparently the one who assumed responsibility for the allegations. It appears to have been his last ditch effort to discredit Hawkins and Emmons as it was on that very day their company was merged with two other outfits to form the 6th Missouri Cavalry. Hawkins, whose unit was enlarged to a battalion, became the 6th Cavalry’s first major. Emmons two days later was elevated to captain in command of the men Hawkins previously had led, in newly designated Company F.
Lindsay was an acting lieutenant in Hawkins’ original cavalry, but his service ended the previous month after suffering a disability in a fall from his horse during combat; so one wonders why he, no longer attached to the company, would have been involved. Since nothing came of them one suspects the allegations were based on something less than the whole truth. Lindsay’s younger brother, Joseph Fremont Lindsay, practiced law and engaged in banking in Piedmont in the early 1900s. Their father was a well known Union Army colonel, James Lindsay.
Of the number who served with Hawkins and Emmons two are known to have come from Wayne County, John Alexander Randall and Jefferson M. Randall, brothers, who served for a time in the bodyguard of Ulysses S. Grant after he was promoted to rank of brigadier general while in command of the post at Pilot Knob August 7, 1861. Another brother, Thomas J. Randall, was the grandfather of Charles Murray Randall (1892-1956), who for many years was county superintendent of schools.
Suggested headline:
Captain gives abusive reb spanking
but his own soldiers didn’t like him
By Cletis R. Ellinghouse
The second of three articles
It was during Captain D. Deroy Emmons’ service in the 6th Missouri Cavalry in the early part of 1862 that he returned to West Plains to even the score with a rebel named Lusk who had abused him during his captivity the previous year.
Lusk had approached him in braggadocio fashion, with a big knife belted around himself, to advise he was the equal “to ten lop-eared Dutch” and intended to take ten Dutch scalps before he returned to his home.
With that chilling incident yet burning in his mind, Emmons upon his arrival at the Lusk farm house with a detachment of ten scouts, all German natives, shouted out his name, which prompted his old nemesis to emerge and quickly greet him, “O! Doctor! Is that you? I am proud to see you.” Emmons at once informed him of what he had said to him while he was a prisoner and wanted to know if he got the scalps before he came home. Lusk replied that if he killed a single Dutchman he didn’t know it, that he got all of the fighting he wanted, and that he didn’t want to fight any more.
Emmons, whose regiment included a great number of German immigrants, then asked Lusk if he’d ever seen any lop-eared Dutch, to which Lusk replied he didn’t know that he had. Emmons then ordered his men to dismount and form a line so that Lusk could better view them and thereby come to appreciate the physical qualities of a Dutchman. Stated Emmons: “If you didn’t get the chance to fight ten of them, and you say you didn’t get any scalps, I have brought these ten down and intend that you shall fight them.”
Lusk pleaded with the doctor that he didn’t want to fight them and for God’s sake not to let them hurt him. At the command of Emmons, four of his men seized Lusk by the arms, led him to a big log, bucked him over it, two holding him by the arms and two by the legs. The six others, now armed with 4-foot clapboards, were ordered to advance, one at a time, strike three licks with the flat side of the board and march on a few paces to give room for the next to do the same. Lusk’s screams could be heard a mile distant every time the clapboard hit him, Emmons later told Colonel William Monks, who stated Lusk rode back to West Plains with Emmons and his men to take the oath, which included a promise that he would never fight another lop-eared Dutchman.
After the 6th Cavalry departed Missouri for service in the area around Searcy and Helena in Arkansas, Emmons was pestered repeatedly by soldiers of his own who railed against his leadership. It appears to have been a letter dated July 10, 1862, from two of them, Francis Wilson Bowen and Elijah Collard II, to the Missouri commander, Brig. Gen. John M. Schofield, that almost brought about his court-martial and did prompt his arrest.
The two privates, citing instances of poor leadership, advised Schofield dissatisfaction among the men was so great 18 or 19 had deserted in recent weeks and that an investigation “would hold him up to the scorn and contempt of all good men, civil and military.” It was Emmons’ view his frequent accusers were prompted by others “to make me trouble and if possible to break up the company that they might return home to their friends.” But these two appear to have been acting on their own convictions. Collard was born in Lincoln County near Troy but left for Texas in an early day with his parents. Four of his older brothers were engaged in the fight for Texas independence and his father, the senior Elijah Collard, was a member of the provisional government that convened at San Felipe de Austin in 1835. What brought the younger son back to Missouri and the 6th Cavalry is a mystery. Bowen, whose name is also spelled Boan, resided in Madison County at the outbreak of the war and later saw combat in the Battle of Pilot Knob while serving in the 47th Missouri Infantry.
Schofield is remembered as the general who on July 12, 1862, issued General Order No. 19, which required all able-bodied Missourians to report for service in the Federal army within six days, thus effectively forcing any neutral Missourians to choose between the Union and the Confederacy.
Suggested headline:
Emmons escapes a court-martial;
his resignation put end to ordeal
By Cletis R. Ellinghouse
The last of three articles
In compliance with an order to place him under arrest, Captain D. Deroy Emmons was taken into custody by Colonel Albert Jackson, the recently installed commanding officer of the post at Pilot Knob whose troubled life is explored in great detail in my “Old Wayne” book.
Shortly thereafter Emmons was ordered to command headquarters in St. Louis, but after five days there trying to arrange a hearing to learn the nature of the charges against him he was still in the dark.
His immediate superior, Major Henry P. Hawkins, referred to his troubles as “insinuations of his enemies” and asked in a letter to Major General S.R. Curtis, commanding the Army of the West, that the property taken from Emmons be retained in the custody of a proper officer without cost or loss to the captain “until he is relieved from the charges or has been given an opportunity to vindicate himself.”
Oddly, it was General John M. Schofield, to whom soldiers Collard and Bowen had written, who suspended Emmons’ arrest and cleared the way for his resignation with Special Order No. 59, dated July 24, 1862: “Capt. Emmons, Company F, 6th Missouri Cavalry, will immediately proceed to Pilot Knob and from thence with the men of his regiment now at Pilot Knob to Helena, Arkansas, by way of St. Louis. Upon his arrival at Helena he will report to Major General Curtis. The arrest of Captain Emmons is hereby suspended.”
In his last days in the 6th Cavalry at Helena, Emmons was awarded a certificate of disability following an examination by an army surgeon who stated his problem stemmed from being thrown from a horse, which apparently alludes to a recorded but undescribed accidental wound Emmons reported September 29, 1861. His examiner added: “I further declare it is my belief that he will not be able to resume his duties in any reasonable time and therefore recommend his resignation be accepted.”
Two letters of resignation are found in his records. The first one cites his disability, which he said made it impossible for him to perform the duties of a cavalry officer, but this one also describes his desire to serve in the medical department, “where I believe I can be of more service to my country.” He stated its requirements were “more congenial to my deposition and health.” He added he had done the greater part of the surgery of the command for some time, “as we have the greater part of the time been without a surgeon.” In his second letter, probably written at the request of a superior to replace the first one, he merely tendered what he called “my immediate and unconditional resignation.”
Emmons (often spelled Emons in the record) apparently was known by his middle name, Deroy. In extant documents bearing his signature he consistently recorded it as “D. Deroy Emmons,” which suggests he likely had an ancestor from one of the Deroy families. The surname has come to be associated with the families that first settled in Acadia, now Nova Scotia, Canada. During the Great Expulsion of 1755-1763 several were deported by British colonial officers and ended up in Louisiana, where they came to be known as Cajuns. Others fled south to the New England states.
The former captain resumed the practice of medicine in Pilot Knob. He posted a $2,000 bond at that place Nov. 26, 1864, for provost marshal permission to sell medicines, wine and liquor. On May 2, 1867, he was wed there to Josephine “Josie” Hall, a native of Ohio. It was that same year he was chosen at Greenville the first worshipful master of Wayne County’s first Masonic Lodge, known as Johnson Lodge No. 158, which surrendered its charter in 1885. The couple eventually moved to Allenville in Cape Girardeau County and then to Patterson in Wayne County, the place of birth Jan. 8, 1871, of daughter Nellie Josephine. A short time later, on March 17, 1871, his 21-year-old wife died of pneumonia in Ironton, which is where they and her parents resided. The date of his second marriage to Mariah English is not known, but following his death Sept. 12, 1878, she and her daughter, Ida Grace Emmons, moved to the home of her mother, the widow Temperance English, in Wayne County.
The Union Army captain was buried at Masonic Cemetery in Ironton, apparently his place of residence at the time of his passing. Cemetery records state he was born June 18, 1831, but records in his first wife’s family state he was born in 1845. Neither of these dates correspond to his age given in the 1850 and 1870 censuses. He was 21 in 1850 and 41 in 1870.
Emmons’ older daughter, Nellie Josephine, passed away Dec. 31, 1950, in San Diego. She and her husband, Charles J. Free, wed in 1889 in Springfield, owned a hotel there in 1900. They and their son, Emmons Free (1892-1945), were in St. Louis by 1910. The doctor’s younger daughter, Grace, was wed at age 19 to Charles T. Mason in Butler County Feb. 5, 1894. A Frisco railroad superintendent, Mason and his wife resided in DeSoto in 1900, in Springfield in 1920, and by 1930 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The couple’s only child, Marjorie, a stenographer at that time employed by the Tulsa board of education, resided for many years in retirement in the Piedmont home first occupied by her grandmother, Mariah (Engliah) (Emmons) Blaine, who died in 1943, and her second husband, Piedmont druggist Albert Blaine, who died in 1926.
-----
This letter to the editor of the Piedmont newspaper was published the week after the first article appeared:
Emmons the first
worshipful master
of Masonic lodge
To the editor:
It was a pleasant surprise to learn from a letter directed to me by David N. Bollinger that Dr. Daniel Deroy Emmons, the subject of my articles now being published in the Journal-Banner, was the first worshipful master of Wayne County’s first Masonic Lodge in 1867.
David advises me the original was known as Johnson Lodge No. 158, which surrendered its charter in 1885 and was followed by another in 1886 with the name Greenville-Williamsville Lodge No. 107, now Greenville Lodge No. 107.
Until reading my article he was unaware of Emmons’ ties to the Union Army. “I must say that bit of information raised my curiosity. The list of fellow Master Masons that followed him as Master of the Lodge are as follows: Joel Yancey, Franklin C. Neely, Lafayette Rubottom, John Hunter, Alexander McBryde, Elijah J. Dalton, Oliver D. Dalton, Albert T. Smith, James Clark, Clayton A. Bennett and Charles W. Milster. The majority held ties to the Confederacy.”
The former Union Army captain’s fellowship just two years after the war with the former Rebels in a lodge organized largely by one of the county’s largest slave owners, Zenas Smith, prompted David’s observation that the ties of brotherhood clearly had not been overlooked by the clouds of war. I would add it also says a lot about the character if not the magnanimity of the lodge’s membership.
Thanks so much for the letter, David.
Cletis R. Ellinghouse