Bollinger County Archives

October 16, 2021

Cooking Up a Birthday Post

With Mother’s Birthday Season coming up, it was appropriate that I was standing on a step ladder looking at the very back of a closet in the corner bedroom.

I didn’t find what I was looking for, but I ran across this box of recipes she had collected. Unlike her green metal file box with handwritten food ideas I started scanning a few years back (and got distracted before finishing it), most of these were stories clipped from magazines.

Braunschweiger Ball Snack

I mentioned once that I have a craving for Braunschweiger about twice a year. I pull out the Ritz crackers, some sour cream and, maybe, some cheese, and eat enough that I belch it for the rest of the week.

If you have a special occasion coming up, you should whip up some Braunschweiger Balls to impress all your friends. It will be a dish that will be talked about for a long, long time. Maybe not in your presence, though.

The Ellis Family Favorite Recipes

Back in the days before you could share your cooking concoctions electronically, families, clubs, churches and others would collect and publish cook books.

This one must have been printed in the early 1990s, because many of the illustrations are dated 1992.

Ellis Family History

It all started in the spring of 1865….

A lot of Mother’s friends

I probably wouldn’t have looked twice at the book if I hadn’t seen this list of family members. I recognize names I heard (or overheard) Mother talking about. Some of them were her closest friends.

Flatwood Church Reunions

Family members would come together at the old Flatwoods Church the first Sunday of each June. I don’t think I ever heard of the church, but I’d love to see if it’s still standing.

Just before pushing the Publish button, I did a little more checking. It looks like Flatwoods is near Glenallen in Bollinger County. As soon as the mosquitoes and ticks take their seasonal nap, I might poke around a bit.

I’d love to spend time looking for good things to cook, but if any Ellis family members would like the book, reach out to me and let’s see what we can work out.

January 27, 2015

Cato Cemetery Near Arab

While wandering and wondering around Bollinger County looking for the Bootheel’s once wild and wooly Dark Cypress and the cemetery containing the mass grave of Confederates killed in the Battle of Mingo Swamp, Mother, my cemetery-spotter extraordinaire, saw this sign for Cato Cemetery.

The Battle of Mingo Swamp was fought on the plantation of Simeon “Slim” Cato, who died in what some historians have called a “massacre.”

Peaceful today

I don’t know how far this is from the battlefield, but it’s a quiet place today. Large stumps show that it must have been dotted with big trees that have fallen to disease and old age over the years. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

Lots of Catos buried here

There are lots of stones marking the final resting places of Catos. I didn’t find one for “Slim.” I don’t know if his body was ever moved from the mass grave.

Burial records

I couldn’t find much history of the cemetery, but here are some partial listings of those interred there.

Narman E. Borders

Narman E. Borders, who is “at rest, ” died at only “8 years, 10 mos and 21ds.”

The UsGenNet site says the cemetery is located in the southern end of Bollinger County, section 10, township 28, range 9, one mile east of Arab off highway C.

January 10, 2015February 4, 2015

Battle of Mingo Swamp

The Civil War that was fought in our region wasn’t one of epic battles involving tens of thousands of massed troops. It was more like guerrilla warfare, bushwhackings and massacres, labels that differed depending on which side you were on.

One of our rambles took us to the Greenbrier/Zephyr Cemetery in southern Bollinger County. It’s not particularly easy to find, and the road leading to it isn’t all that easy to hit. You pretty much have to drive past it, turn around the first opportunity and head back in order to get the right angle. It’s one-way in, so be prepared to back up.

Mass grave for Confederate dead

Mother and I went looking for it because I had read about the Battle of Mingo Swamp and the mass grave in the cemetery. Here’s a version of what happened from Cletis R. Ellinghouse’s book, Mingo: Southeast Missouri’s Ancient Swamp and the Countryside Surrounding It:

The Battle of Mingo Swamp was fought February 4, 1863, on the south Bollinger County plantation of Simeon “Slim” Cato, a 58-year-old South Carolina native who died in the bloodbath with 28 others, all Confederate soldiers. It was the bloodiest single incident in the war in Southeast Missouri. Among the other slain were Confederate Capt. Daniel McGee and his first sergeant James A. Logan, who at the time resided at what later became Puxico. McGee was Cato’s nephew.

Confederates caught unawares

The Confederates, surrounded by Union soldiers, were completely unaware of what was about to happen to them. They were not within reach of their weapons when soldiers from the Twelfth Missouri State Militia Cavalry pounced on them in a vicious assault that left all of them dead or mortally wounded. “All but four too seriously wounded to be removed,” according to an account published in a St. Louis newspaper, which referred to McGee as “the notorious guerrilla chief.” In fact, all of them were killed outright or died of wounds without a single casualty on the Union side, which has prompted some to call the operation “a massacre.”

The remains of the Confederates, routinely called outlaws and guerrillas by Union officers, were carried by wagons and buried by kinsmen and neighbors at what is known today as the Greenbrier/Zephyr Cemetery, a few miles from where they were slain. Their mass grave was discovered many years ago. Uniforms, coats and button were found along with the remains of several bodies.

Other references

Depending on whose account you read, Sam Hildebrand was just a guy who wanted to be left alone and stay out of “the rich man’s war being fought by poor men,” or he was “The Big River Bushwhacker, Southeast Missouri’s notorious outlaw.” Others put him in the camp of those men who used the war as an excuse to settle personal affronts. His exploits rival any movie you’ve seen.

Most of us grew up hearing about Forts A, B C and D, but I was never taught about the major battle that was fought in the town. This is an account worth reading.

As always, you can click on the photos to make them larger.

October 2, 2014

The End of Summer

These rope swings at the Dark Cypress Access Area boat ramp near Greenbrier aren’t going to see a lot of use until next summer.

The Missouri Department of Conservation says the Greenbrier Unit of Duck Creek Conservation Area is in southeastern Bollinger county.

The Conservation Department purchased this 460-acre lowland swamp to preserve a small portion of the 2.4 million acres of hardwood bottomland swamps that once covered the southeastern part of the state.

Situated between Crowleys Ridge and the Ozark Plateau, the swamp formed after the Mississippi River abandoned its channel through the region and shifted east toward Cape Girardeau. Runoff from the Ozark hills, heavy rainfall and overflow flooding from the Castor River floods the surrounding swamp.

Dark Cypress Tales

I grew up hearing tales of the Dark Cypress. It was an area where hunters would go in and never come out. While we were down there, Mother told me that my grandfather had been shot accidentally while hunting in the Dark Cypress and the bullet remained in his neck until he died decades later.