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A few months ago, I read a terrific book by @gangrey called "A Shot in the Moonlight." Ben pored over old court records, letters, and newspaper accounts to piece together the life of George Dinning, a man nearly killed by a white mob in the late 1890s. https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/ben-montgomery/a-shot-in-the-moonlight/9780316535540/
His book inspired me to take another look at the case of Milly Sawyers. Milly was an enslaved woman who won her freedom in court in southwest Missouri in the 1830s. A hearing was set to figure out how much money she was owed, but a mob dragged her out of a home and beat her.
Thanks to archivist Connie Yen ( @BooksabtBooks), Milly's story was not lost, and I got to tell Milly's story for the first time in 2018 for the Springfield News-Leader. The founders of Springfield were among the crowd of men who beat Milly near downtown. https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/crime/2018/03/21/springfields-founder-incited-1836-mob-beat-free-black-woman-ransacked-governors-ho-court-records-sho/732398001/
Unfortunately, very little is known about Milly except what is contained in court documents from Springfield and St. Louis. What happened after the beating is a mystery. After reading Ben's book about George Dinning, I became convinced I had missed some part of Milly's story.
After all, a Black woman winning her freedom in southwestern, rural 1830s had to be newsworthy, right? And the prosecution of some of most well-known men in that area for attacking a Black woman must have been even more newsworthy, no?
I thought there was a chance that bigger papers, perhaps in St. Louis, would have taken an interest in the case. Dinning's case made headlines around the country. I did much more extensive searches of old newspapers. I followed Ben's advice and looked through the papers of...
Missouri's governor at the time, Lilburn Boggs, but there was nothing about Milly or her case. Milly's case was six decades prior to Dinning's. Perhaps it didn't get any attention from media or politicians. The life of Milly and her possible descendants remains a mystery.
Along the way, however, I did find an early history of the founding of Springfield, published in the Springfield Leader in 1877 and titled "Our Pioneers." The series has a lot of information about John Polk Campbell, Springfield's founder.
Campbell was one of Milly's attackers. According to "Our Pioneers," when Campbell came to settle Springfield, he brought along "six darkies." Campbell's family lived in a log cabin and...
"the negroes (had) a good cloth tent to live in." There was an old Kickapoo Indian village in the southwest part of town, "built of bark and small hickory poles bent over." On that spot, an early settler made a "large field, for he had a pretty large force of sons and darkies..."
"The Kickapoos having moved Northwest in 1828. By the way, what has ever become of the Kickapoos? The writer of this being along with those first settlers had fine fun burning up the old decayed Indian houses." According to the author, life in early Springfield was tough.
"Bread was scarce and what little crops there was made were liberally divided so as all could have a little bread," though there was lots of hunting. "Everybody was friendly and willing to divide the last mouthful." The first newspaper, The Ozark Standard, was started in 1837.
There's much more about early Springfield in the five-part series, which can be found here: …https://0-thelibrary-newspapers-com.coolcat.org/image/671306096/. A new column was published every week or so. The series makes mention of notable events, like weddings, shootings, or the construction of certain buildings.
There's no mention of Milly, the mob that surrounded her home, and the sprawling criminal prosecution that ensnared several leading men. I love Springfield and loved my time in the Ozarks, which is why it felt especially important to finally tell Milly's story.
The city's founding coincides with the introduction of slavery to the area as well as the mass exodus of people who originally lived here. I wish I had found more about Milly's story. I would have loved to read that she continued to live in Springfield as a free woman.
But I doubt that she did. I'm just glad her story wasn't completely erased. I hope we don't lose her story again.
