Author: Ken Steinhoff

Posted on

Jackson’s Hanging Tree in Danger

Bill Hopkins was kind enough to post a Facebook link to Brian Blackwell’s Southeast Missourian story that the Cape County commissioners are opposed to a new roundabout design in Jackson. Sounds like one of those Dull But Necessary stories real newspapers still have to cover.

Hang on for the interesting part

A point of contention is that the roundabout could endanger a tree that was used to hang people who were convicted of murder. The tree is more than 100 years old and is the last “hanging tree” in the county, Presiding Commissioner Gerald Jones said.

The proposed roundabout would come within a few feet of the tree trunk, causing possible damage.

“If these three commissioners agree to give up that much of our beautiful courthouse lawn, there would be a three-person hanging on that hanging tree,” Jones said. “And I believe that would be us.”

I had to see the Hanging Tree

I mean, after all, I WORKED for The Jackson Pioneer, right across the street from the County Courthouse. I had never HEARD of the Hanging Tree. This was embarrassing. Besides, it was lunchtime and a trip to Jackson would give me another excuse to swing by Wib’s BBQ.

After having a brown hot (with Cole slaw on it), fries and a Mr. Pibb, I was off to the courthouse. The only problem was I had no idea which of at least three trees could be the Hanging Tree. I needed expert guidance.

Let’s start at Mapping & Appraisal

The very nice woman behind the counter in the Mapping and Appraisal office didn’t even smirk when I asked if she knew anything about the Hanging Tree. She simply said, “Come over here,” leading me to a window. “It’s that one.” She pointed to a tree that I had dismissed as being too low to the ground.

“I thought that one looked like a broken-down Redbud tree. It doesn’t look like it’d be tall enough to hang anybody,” I said.

“My husband said that all of the old-time bad guys must have been four feet tall, but that’s the tree.”

A cool-looking Cape County Plat Book caught my eye, so I started to hand over my pocket plastic. “We don’t take those,” she said kindly.

“Will you take a check?”

“Sure.”

I handed her a West Palm Beach check signed with an illegible scrawl and she started to walk away. “Don’t you want to see any identification?” I asked her.

“Nah, I have your business card. I can find you.”

THAT’S how you know you’re back home. Of course, having a Hanging Tree outside your window may make you a little more sure that nobody is going to write you a bum check.

“Trust, but verify”

The Jackson Pioneer was a solidly Republican newspaper. The first major political speech I covered was Ronald Reagan stumping for Barry Goldwater in 1964. (We’ll cover that experience some other time.) That got me thinking about Reagan’s favorite saying, “Trust, but verify.”

I went up to the second floor of the courthouse to an office overlooking the purported Hanging Tree. Not only did another nice lady verify Mapping and Appraisal Lady’s tree choice, but she pointed to a big painting on the wall with the story of poor John Headrick, the last person to take a ride on the tree on June 15, 1899.

Who was John Headrick?

I’m not going to go into a lot of detail. I’m going to save myself a bunch of typing by sending you to The Southeast Missourian’s July 22, 2001, version of The Hanging of John Headrick that’s next to the picture on the wall.

Here’s a genealogy site with another  account that has slightly more and / or different details of the Headrick case.

Bottom line is that John Headrick was a 19-year-old hired hand who worked for James M. Lail. Headrick may or may not have been romancing Lail’s daughter, Jessie, but he was fired after he was arrested for stealing a buggy.

He returned to the farm, had a confrontation which resulted in Lail being shot dead. Lail’s wife, Vernie, trying to cover his body to protect him, was shot, beaten and stabbed by Headrick. While he was distracted by the daughter, Mrs. Lail ran for help. Headrick expressed a certain degree of admiration for the woman when he discovered she was alive, “By God, the old woman is gone, you can’t kill her, can you?”

Sheriff John H. Jenkins rounded up a posse of 30 to 40 men to hunt down Headrick and caught him hiding in Milt Golson’s barn.

On Nov. 19, 1898, Judge Henry C. Riley sentenced Headrick to “be hanged by the neck, between heaven and earth, until he is dead.”

The Missouri Supreme court affirmed the conviction and the execution was carried out on the Hanging Tree on the Jackson courthouse lawn.

Sheriff Bernard Gockel reported to the court, “I hereby certify that I served the within and attached Death Warrant, at the County of Cape Girardeau, State of Missouri, on the 15th day of June A.D. 1899, by reading the same to the within named John Headrick, and on the same day between the hours of six o’clock and seven o’clock, A.M., and at the same County and State, and within the Jail Yard of said County, within an inclosure surrounded by a fence higher than the gallows and sufficiently closed to exclude the view of persons on the outside, I did inflict the death penalty by hanging the said John Headrick by the neck until he was dead.”


Posted on

Cape Girardeau Then & Now

Some time between graduating from Central High School in 1965 and leaving for Ohio University in 1967, I hopped on a train in Cape Girardeau to go to a National Press Photographers Association Flying Short Course. I heard two things at that seminar that influenced my photography from then on.

Ken Heyman and This America

A photographer named Ken Heyman illustrated This America, A Portrait of a Nation, by President Lyndon B. Johnson. At that stage in my career, I thought any photograph that was published in a book had to be great. Looking back at it now, I know that some of the photos WERE iconic, some were solid images and some were merely pedestrian, at best.

Two photographers were sitting in front of me. One turned to the other and whispered, “I could shoot pictures better than that.”

His buddy responded, “Yeah, but the difference between him and you is that HE actually did it.”

Tom Neumeyer actually did it

I’ve never forgotten that lesson.

When I got back to Cape a couple of weeks ago, those the words I heard at that seminar 40-plus years ago came flooding back at me when I heard that some guy named Tom Neumeyer was holding a book signing for his new photo documentary book, Cape Girardeau Then & Now.

It’s a collection of 120 vintage photographs paired with what you would find at those locations today.

I COULD HAVE done that book. TOM did it.

When we went to Cape’s new public library (which is really nice, by the way) and I saw framed photos from the book hanging on the wall, I knew I had to have a copy.

Small world department

The person who took my money was Carolyn Penzel, another member of the Class of 65.

When I got up to Tom to have my book signed, he recognized my name and asked how [Family nickname my wife has been trying to leave behind for almost half a century] was.

Just about that time, Don and Marty (Perry) Riley, my in-laws walked in.

Life’s like a pinball game

I’ve always admired folks who know what they are going to do and go after goals in a straight line. My career path has been more like a pinball game where outside influences bounced me all over the place. I was reminded of that when I ran into a some people who had a major part in my life as a newspaper photographer.

I saw my Mother, Mary Steinhoff, (left) talking with Jo Ann Bock, who is a multifaceted writer and former teacher who was married to Howard Bock. When I came to Central High School as a freshman, Mr. Bock knew I had an interest in photography. He invited me to join The Tiger and Girardot photo staffs and taught me how to process film and make prints. When he died in May 2009, I discovered many things I never knew about the man.

I was admiring Tom’s photos on the wall when a man walked up and said, “I used to be Gary Rust.”

“I used to be Ken Steinhoff,” I countered.

Gary Rust, now a newspaper magnate, got me my first newspaper job. John Hoffman, the editor and publisher of The Jackson Pioneer had been in an auto accident that severely injured him and and killed his wife. Gary knew he needed help in the office, so he recommended me.

I think the recommendation was more because I had been dating the granddaughter of the local head of the Republican Party, and I was a rabid Barry Goldwater supporter, than it was for any journalistic prowess.

By the time I left the paper, I learned how to be a reporter, photographer, typesetter, layout editor, photo engraver… all for the munificent sum of $75 every two weeks.

There IS a market for photo books

Years ago, I helped illustrate a book, New Burlington: The Life and Death of an American Village. The writer encouraged me to turn my photos into a book of its own, but I was told “picture books don’t sell.”

I’m glad to see that Tom is proving an exception to that rule. So many people bought his books that they had to scurry out to the car to bring in extra boxes.

Where to find Then & Now

I see copies of his book all over Cape. Here’s a note he sent me with a list of places to find it.

  • Arts Council of Southeast Missouri
  • Annie Laurie’s Antiques
  • Back Porch Antiques
  • Broadway Books and Roasting
  • Convention & Visitors Bureau
  • Crisp Museum
  • Cup’N’Cork
  • Grassroots BMW
  • Lang’s Jewelry
  • Mississippi Mud House
  • Neumeyer Photography
  • Old Town Cape
  • Renaissance
  • SEMO University Bookstore
  • Somewhere in Time Antiques
  • Stev-Mark

Tom said Dr. Frank Nickell’s website has an order form to download.

What was that second thing?

I mentioned that I came away from that seminar in Peoria with two life-defining messages.

The second was from Louisville Courier-Journal photographer Bill Strode who talked about photo ethics. “If I set up a photograph and there are only two people in the room – me and the subject – then that’s two too many people in the world who know that I’m a damned liar.”

Gallery of book signing photos

One of the nice things about doing this as a blog instead of as a newspaper story is that I won’t get in trouble if I don’t identify all of the people in the pictures. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to step through the gallery.

Posted on

Nighttime Old Town Cape from the Common Pleas Courthouse

I have a favorite night shot of the Common Pleas Courthouse and Port Cape Girardeau taken from the Themis St. floodgate looking west, so I thought I’d see what it looked like from the other side.

This is shooting down the courthouse hill looking east down Themis St. The floodgate at the end of the street is closed because the Mississippi River is at about 36 feet.

Loose shot or tight shot?

I couldn’t decide whether or not I liked it as a wideangle or a slightly tighter photo. Electrons are cheap, so you get both.

There are some tiny smudges in the tight shot in the middle of the sky. You can calls them puffs of smoke if you like, but I think they are specular highlights from the street lights bouncing around between the lens elements. What the heck, let’s go back to calling them puffs of smoke. That sounds more interesting.

Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge from the Courthouse

While putzing around trying to get this shot composed, (for the record, I don’t care much for it) a young woman materialized from the shadows. We exchanged some pleasantries and she disappeared. There was an elderly gentleman sitting on a park bench nearby and he said, “Do you reckon we scared her off?”

Shana Gemoules, stairclimber supreme

About five minutes later, she showed up again.

“Did you just run up those courthouse stairs? Twice? On purpose?”

“Yes. It was three times.Yes. I’m training for a triathlon in Florida in April.”

When she disappeared down the hill again, the man on the park bench said, “Tell her there are 55 steps, not counting the landings.”

When she got back to the top, she was barely breathing hard and her heart rate was in the low 170s (resting is usually 52 BPM, she said.) A stint of working in a downtown restaurant where she had to hump meals up three floors prepared her for running up and down the courthouse steps, she said.

Getting ready to go car-free

Shana, who grew up in Perryville, graduated from Southeast Missouri State University and has worked at a variety of local resturaunts. She’s at Imo’s Pizza now, a place she rates highly for its employee-friendly management and good food.

Right now, she’s working to get debt-free and to sell her car to cut expenses. Cape is small enough that she feels like she can get around on foot or or her bike. Her boyfriend lives in a house with three other guys. The four of them make do with one car for those times when they go a long distance or need to carry something bulky.

When she finished her fifth climb up the hill, she said she was going to call it a night. All of the talk about food and restaurants had made her hungry.

I waited until she had run out of sight before I headed to my car. I wasn’t going to insult her or embarrass me by offering her a ride.

Posted on

Dutchtown’s Beechwood Club

My mother and I stopped for lunch at the three-year-old Gordonville Grill (great catfish for lunch and an excellent steak for dinner, by the way), then we decided to cruise by our property in Dutchtown to see how the river was doing. About half a mile north of Dutchtown on Highway 25, there’s a set of stone gate posts with the name Beechwood on them.

I’ve been by there scores of times – and I may have even been back there once – but I never knew any more about it than it was a private club. It was combination sporting club, retreat and getaway; it’s pretty far out in the sticks even today. My mother didn’t know much more about it.

Google News Archives paint a portrait of Beechwood

The Beechwood Club’s heyday was during the mid-30s to the mid-50s. During that period, there were frequent brief mentions in the local paper of church groups, service clubs, Scout groups and local movers and shakers playing bridge, pinochle, swimming, holding parties and an annual rabbit supper for the men employees of The Southeast Missourian.

The first reference I spotted was July 20, 1933: Members of the 1933 Club of the Eastern Star were entertained Wednesday night by Mrs. Herbert Boeller and Mrs. M.E. Sanders at the latter’s cottage at Beechwood Club.

Plans to expand Beechwood Club fell through in 1935: Dr. C.W. Kinsey, secretary of the Beechwood Club, which owns property near Dutchtown, said today that that the club has abandoned a projected plan to buy about 35 acres of additional land adjoining the present premises…The club has about three acres now, on which are located a clubhouse and six cabins.

Right next to the story was an advertisement from Missouri Utilities encouraging you to buy an Emerson ventilating fan to make your kitchen “ALL ELECTRIC.” For information, you were to call 72. The largest town on the Mississippi River between St. Louis and Memphis had two-digit phone numbers.

Nocturnal swimmers not welcome

For the record, I didn’t go past the locked gate to shoot these pictures. It’s a good thing. The club put out the word July 13, 1934, that trespassers, particularly “nocturnal swimmers” weren’t going to be tolerated.

Nocturnal swimmers who find the pool at secluded Beechwood Club near Dutchtown a choice site for midnight parties may find their entertainment rudely interrupted.

Aroused by reports that the privacy of the club pool has been invaded during the night hours, members of the club have adopted a policy that will result in the prosecution of any trespassers caught, and the catching should be easy.

The club, located just off Highway 25 one-half mile north of Dutchtown, is owned by 25 members, who supplied the money to build the swimming pool, a club house and a number of cottages on the property. It was formerly known as the JJJ Fishing Club.

The club was still cranky in May 28, 1954, when it ran a Notice of Reward: A reward of $25.00 will be paid to any person furnishing information which leads to the arrest and conviction of any person or persons who shall willfully or wrongfully damage, injure, deface or in any way disfigure any property or who shall trespass on property of the Beechwood Club located near Dutchtown, Mo.

Big doin’s at the Beechwood

The Missourian reported on Dec. 10, 1935 that the men employees of The Missourian held their annual rabbit supper at the Beechwood Club near Dutchtown, with 25 being present. There were plenty of “eats” to go around. The affair was directed by Alvin Macke.

Some Central High School names you’ll recognize: Sept. 26, 1942 – The first in a series of four parties for the year by a standing committee of Miss Frieda Rieck, Mrs. Oscar Findley and Miss Mary Reed for the Central High School faculty was held Friday night in the form of a supper at Beechwood Club….The group assisting included Misses Naomi Pott, Alene Sadler, Flora Burton, Mrs. Nita Stout, E.G. Rudert and Wm.A. Shivelbine.

Aug. 22, 1950: It was family night for the Rotary Club…when the organization…held a picnic at Beechwood Club…Rotary wives had an opportunity to show their skill with a rolling pin on Herman, a satin-faced dummy. The winner of the throwing contest was kept a club secret.

There were a few negative stories:

  • Dec. 20, 1939: A field fire invaded the Beechwood Club…and badly damaged a brick cabin owned by Al Brinkopf. The building, including two rooms and a porch, was razed except for the walls…The Brinkopf cottage was built about five years ago and was adequately furnished.
  • Oct. 31, 1938: Five youngsters who had been attending a Halloween party at Beechwood Club were injured, none seriously, when two cars collided near the club.

By the 60s, the stories slowed

  • June 23, 1962:  Brownie Troop 141 recently held an overnight campout at Beechwood to complete their fly-up requirements. The fun started with an afternoon swim supervised by Mrs. G.L. Kaiser, Mrs. E.L. Dye and Michael Rogers.
  • June 28, 1967, a member ran a classified ad to sell his membership and cabin.
  • Jan. 8, 1971, Dr. C.W. Kinsey, a founding member of Beechwood Club, died.

Arson suspected in Beechwood fire

The biggest story in the past three decades was a fire March 18, 1979: Arson has been blamed for Sunday afternoon fires which destroyed or heavily damaged five cabins and a mobile home at the Beechwood Club…

Destroyed were cabins owned by Van Sander, Jack Burris and Harold C. Kasten, and the mobile home owned by John Bernard. Cabins owned by Gilbert Winchell and John and Fred Bernard were damaged.

Assistant Fire chief Roy Brown said there was also a fire beneath a club house which was extinguished before it caused any damage.

About Proudly powered by WordPress