Samuel Benton La Force

[dmleforce]

Samuel La force Led The Way As Sigel Marched Into Battle Of Carthage; His Descendants Prominent Here

Members of a family named La Force, of French descent, played a prominent role in the history of Jasper County before, during & long after the Civil War.  Various individuals of the family have been prominent in civic, political, military & educational affairs here since about the time that Carthage was founded.  One member of the family still is a highly respected teacher at Carthage Senior HS.

The leading member of the family, around whom centered much of the early governmental organization of Carthage & Jasper County & who was largely responsible for the skill with which Franz Sigel was able to move his small Union army swiftly & effectively through the Battle of Carthage, was Samuel B. La Force.

His great grandfather came to this country from France & his descendants participated in the Revolutionary War.  His grandfather moved from VA to TN, where he died in 1834.

Rane La Force, father of Samuel, was born in 1782 in VA & was a farmer.  He served in the War of 1812.  His wife, Martha McGee La Force, was born in 1783 in Kentucky & died in 1841 in Pike County, Missouri.

Samuel B. La Force was born 5/15/1815 & was reared & educated in Pike County, where he was married 4/13/1837 to Miss Lucy Brown, who had been born in June, 1822, in Greene County Illinois.  They were the parents of several children, among whom were Martha V. La Force Jenkyn; John Benton La Force & Jehu Brown La Force, both of whom died during the Civil War.

Jasper County was three years old when, in October of 1843, Mr. & Mrs. La Force settled on a farm overlooking Spring River three miles northeast of Carthage.  At that time according to old records, Boonville, on the Missouri River, was the nearest trading point & was reached by ox team.

During the succeeding years, La Force acquired & improved some 680 acres of Jasper County farm land & became one of the most prosperous men in the area.  Active in governmental affairs, he was elected in 1847 to the office of sheriff, becoming the second man to serve in that capacity by succeeding John P. Osborn, the county’s first sheriff.

Upon the conclusion of his second consecutive term as sheriff, La Force was elected in 1851 to a 2-year term as Jasper County Representative in the Missouri General Assembly, serving during a part of the administration of Governor Austin A. King & Governor Sterling Price.

Missing chunk

went with them & was a participant in many major battles.  On Feb. 8, 1865 he was enrolled as a private in Company I (Captain Joseph Brown), 152nd Illinois Infantry.  A discharge still retained by his descendants indicates he was discharged Sept. 11, 1865 at Memphis, TN., after having completed his military service in the district of western Tennessee.

During the war, the threat of guerrilla reprisals caused Mrs. La Force to move their family, via ox team & wagon, to Jersey County, Illinois.  The family returned to the Jasper county farm near Carthage immediately following the war.

In 1866, serving as the government registrar & receiving oaths of allegiance which were required before a citizen could vote, he was elected clerk of the circuit & county courts & ex-officio recorder of deeds, serving a 4-year term.  Retaining possession of his farm holdings, La Force moved to Carthage in 1867 & became proprietor of the La Force House, a popular hotel two blocks south of the square.

He remained a resident of Carthage & during the latter years of his life was revered as an elder statesman whose advice was sought on many important matters relative to the government of both city & county.  La Force died in 1888 & was buried in Park Cemetery.

Samuel La Force was joined here in 1849 by his brother, James L. (Jim) La Force.

James La Force had been married 12/7/1843 to Miss Griselda Bethel, a native of Virginia, and came to Jasper County after working as a miner in Lafayette County, Wisconsin.  His wife died in Sept 1857 leaving six children – Rhoda B. La Force Cagle, Martha M. La Force Gray, John S. La force, Lewis B. La Force, William M. La Force & Joseph E. La Force.

The family left in 1861 to escape the dangers of war & remained until 1866 in Greene County, Illinois.   Upon his return here in 1866, James was married to Miss. Agnes A. Brumet.

Another brother, William (Will) also lived in Jasper County & in Carthage, where he had a law office.  During the decade from 1880 to 1890, he served as Carthage City Attorney for a brief time.

Both James & Jenu La Force, sons of Samuel, died while in the Union army.  Jehu, a private in Company A, 1st Missouri Cavalry, died 4/26/1865.  His grave is in the national cemetery, Little Rock, Ark.

Shortly after the Civil War, Samuel B. La Force contributed one acre of his farm northeast of Carthage for use for school purposes, with the provision that if the need for a school should ever disappear the land would revert to him or his heirs.  A log school building, one of the few in this area, was already in use on that plot.

The La Grange school has been a constant educational institution, however, since that time.  The original log structure was replaced in 1868 by a handsome stone building, which still stands & is probably the oldest school building still being used for school purposes in Jasper County.

The framing was made of native walnut & the students walked on a floor of native lumber planks.  The basic building material however was “cottonwood rock”, a soft stone quarried about one mile northwest of the school site.  The builders were Israel & Wash Logsdon & Mr. Campbell.

Hannah Griffith, who later became Mrs. G. D. Stone & lived many years at Webb City, was a student there in 1869, the year she came to Jasper County with her parents.  Their farm was one mile west of the school.

Some insight into events which transpired during the earliest days of the school was noted 10/5/1956 in a letter to the press by L. O. Cagle, Yucaipa, Calif.  Cagle wrote:

“My paternal grandparents, Leonard & Elizabeth Cagle, came from Bowling Green, KY., & settled on what is known as the Kellogg farm across Spring River from town in the year 1845.  They had a large family, the youngest of whom, Willis, then 15 years of age, became an early day school teacher there & later became

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August, 1864, a company
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Do not know but the
Dead in his dooryard.

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La Force & some of
In the war.  His brother
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eldest child, Rhoda
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keeper of the family

‘About July 1, 1861, a
bushwhackers rode up
called him to the door
him down & left him
He revived & lived un

‘A few days after
of Carthage, July 5, 1861, when the Southern forces occupied that country a company of them came to his place & loaded up his feed while the officer in charge went to the house & engaged him in conversation.  Something he said evidently angered the officer & he reached for his pistol.  His daughter, Rhoda, who afterward married Willis Cagle & became my mother, saw what was about to happen & stepped up beside her father.

The Officer took his hand off his pistol & said, ‘I’ll give you just 48 hours to get out of this country.’

They loaded up what they could & together with Samuel B.’s family drove to Greene County, Illinois.

Now concerning the La Grange schoolhouse:

The site of this building was occupied by a log structure - my mother & her sister (Martha M. Gray) & her brothers went to school there & Willis Cagle, who afterward became my father, taught the school.  In 1868 the log building burned, together with all the books.  It was then replaced by the old stone structure.

I went to school there to George Frazier in the term of 1884-1885 & 1886-1887 to May Bonsill.  Then again in 1889 & 1890 to William Scantlin; in 1890 & 1891 to Agnes McCarthy & in 1891 & 1892 to Silas Rigby.

The stone building was over-hauled in 1938, when members of the board were Roy Underwood, Ed Stricker & William Alson.  Miss Loma Sheldon, Carthage, was the teacher that year.  The school, with a capacity for 32 pupils, had an enrollment of 10.  The building was reported as measuring 20 by 40 feet.

The school structure was expanded in 1956 with a $16,000 concrete block addition.  The staff at that time, Mrs. Neva Winter, principal & upper grades, & Mrs. Shirley Evans, lower grades, served 39 pupils.  Members of the board of education were Earl Potter, Glen M. Carter & Arthur Standhardt.

Thomas Jenkyn, who had been born in 1833 in Wales, was employed in 1859 as teacher of the LaGrange school.  He had come to America in his teens, attended Oberlin college, obtained his citizenship papers in 1854 & studied law in the former office of Andrew Jackson at Nashville, TN.  After teaching two terms at the little log school, Jenkyn married his oldest pupil, Martha La Force, daughter of Mr. & Mrs. Samuel B. La Force.

Their only child, Arria Jenkyn, was born during the wartime exile, Dec. 11, 1861, at Jerseyville, Ill.  After their return to Jasper County in 1862, Thomas Jenkyn left his wife & daughter here while he went on a fortune-seeking trip to California.  He died there in 1863 of an illness contracted during the trip.  Arria therefore was reared in the home of her grandparents.

She attended the first public school of Carthage.  Previously there had been a log school house, built in 1846 in Carthage & operated as a subscription school.  The first public school was held in one room of the frame courthouse building erected in 1867 on the west side of the square, where Andrew J. Shepard & Miss Clemmie Shepard were teachers.  In 1868, when Arria Jenkyn was seven years old, the school was moved to a building on the south side of the square.  The first building erected exclusively for use as a public school, a 2-story 8-room brick structure, was completed in 1870 at a cost of $30,000 south of the square.  The first principal there was W. J. Sieber.

Arria Jenkyn graduated from Carthage high school with the class of 1880, the third graduating class in the history of the school.

The class, according to Livingston’s Jasper County history, included eight girls.

In 1884 Arria Jenkyn took examinations & received teaching certificates in both Barton & Jasper Counties.  She began her teaching career in 1880 at the Tower of Light school, three miles northeast of Oronogo.

She taught in 1881-1883 at Webb City, working in Webb City’s first school building, a 4-room frame structure.  Webb City was five years old when she began her work there.

In 1884 she was elected principal of the Golden City school in Barton County.  The following year a new building was completed there & Miss. Jenkyn headed a staff composed of Miss Ella Frankum, Miss Emma Beggeman, Miss Anna Williamson & Miss Cora Casey.  The enrollment totaled 350 in 1885.

After three years at Golden City, Miss Jenkyn taught one year, the 1886-87 term, at Jerseyville, Ill., before returning to this area to wed James Murto of Golden City.  Her teaching career ended with their marriage in Sept, 1887.  The wedding was held at the La Force farm home there.

The couple lived for a short time at Galena, MO., where he operated a hardware store, spent two years at the La Force farm, lived from 1890 until 1899 at Aurora & moved to Carthage to spend the remainder of their lives.  She died 1/21/1933, & her husband passed away in July 1944.  They had three sons & one daughter.

Miss Arria Murto, Dwight P. Murto & Samuel La Force Murto, great-grandchildren of Mr. & Mrs. Samuel B. La Force, grandchildren of Mr. & Mrs. Thomas Jenkyn & Children of Mr. & Mrs. James Murto, now make their home at 914 Howard.  Miss Arria Murto, veteran & beloved mathematics teacher at Carthage Senior High School, has followed closely in the steps of her mother.

[dmleforce]

Evidently in their library or historical society they have an article on Samuel Benton La Force.  Our friend Nancy took pics of it & I've retyped it from the pics.

I've read they had 6 kids but I can only find mention of 4: Martha, William, John & James.  I found John Brown in Arkansas.  I found James Benton in MO. 

They say Jehu Brown (in the article) but acc'd to the census plus his headstone it's John Brown.

Help finding Samuel's wife Lucy & their children Martha & William would be much appreciated.

[dmleforce]

La Grange, The Old Stone School - by Gary Baird

Common School District #1 is the oldest tax supported school in Jasper County, MO.  It was called La Grange School, perhaps for the famed French scientist, Joseph L. La Grangem who died in 1813.  Certainly La Grange's achievements were fresh in the mind of one Samuel B. La Force, a young man whose ancestral roots traced to France.  Having moved to Jasper County from Pike County, MO., La Force & his family settled on a plot northeast of Carthage in 1843.  The histories of La Grange School & Samuel B. La Force are as intertwined as they can be.

La Force was born 5/15/1815 in either Pike County, MO or Scott County, ILL.; historical records disagree.  His parents, Rane (from VA) & Martha McGee La Force (from KY), appear to have settled in Pike County about the time of Samuel's birth.  Young Samuel developed a deep appreciation for life's higher virtues, prizing education & personal integrity.  Details of his early life are lacking, but on 4/13/1837, he married Lucy Brown, & shortly thereafter the young couple (he, 22 years old, she, 15) visited the extreme southwest corner of the state.  They staked a claim to over 600 acres of land just north of Spring River, about three miles northeast of the center of present day Carthage.  Circumstances delayed their move to that homestead, & it was not until 1843 that they took up permanent residence there.

Samuel La Force, the pioneer, proved to be very civic minded.  He no sooner had completed construction on his own little log home when he turned his attention to encouraging the education of his own children & those of his few neighbors.  Built just a few hundred feet from his own modest log cabin, the schoolhouse was erected in 1843 or 1844 from laboriously hand hewn logs.  History does not record who the first teacher was, only that classes were held three or four months out of the year.  Many of the area's schools were subscription schools, with parents paying for their child's education directly.  This was apparently true of La Grange, too.

In 1846, La Force was elected to the first of two consecutive terms as sheriff of Jasper County (1846-1850), that making him only the second man to serve in that position.  After four years as sheriff, he was then elected as state representative for Jasper County, serving two years (1850-1852) in the sixteenth General Assembly.

In all that time, La Grange continued as a center for learning.  We do not know the names of those early students, not for sure.  And we can only speculate as to their curriculum & textbooks.  It is reported that much emphasis was given to the basics of reading, writing & arithmetic.

At the beginning of the 1860's, political tensions ran high throughout the United States, & especially so in Missouri.  Jasper County citizens were overwhelmingly sympathetic to the rebel cause, but La Force & a handful of others were the exception, being staunch supporters of the Federal Government.  By the early summer days of 1861, Missouri's Governor Claiborne Jackson, a Southern supporter, had recruited a force of about 6,000 mounted infantry.  Their determination was to march south to join up with Confederate forces, there to receive real military training.  That march was to bring them directly through Carthage.  Various other forces were arrayed in & around southwest Missouri.  Confederate General Ben McCullough was encamped on the Arkansas line with about 22,000 troops.  Confederate General Sterling Price had passed through Carthage in late June, along with over 1,200 mounted infantrymen, intending to join with McCullough.  Union General Nathaniel Lyon, with about 10,000 troops, was moving from Jefferson City toward Springfield, but was too far distant to thwart Jackson's move.  Union Colonel Franz Sigel, with a contingent of about 1,100 volunteers & eight artillery pieces, had arrived in Neosho about June 26.  If the rebel forces under Governor Jackson were to be stopped from joining up with the Confederacy, then Colonel Sigel had to be the one to stop them.  His force alone stood in their path, & no other aid was available.

On the evening of 7/4/1861, Colonel Sigel arrived in Carthage, camping near the springs at the city's east boundary.  He knew Jackson's location & strength, as Jackson also knew his.  Governor Jackson was encamped that same night along the banks of Coon Creek, 12 miles north of Carthage.  On that evening, Samuel La Force met with Colonel Sigel at his headquarters.  La Force's 18 years residence in Jasper County & two terms as county sheriff had made him thoroughly familiar with the terrain around Carthage.  His offer to serve as guide for Sigel was accepted.

At daybreak, July 5, La Force reported to Colonel Sigel.  The Union force broke camp, advancing to the northwest of Carthage.  About five miles north of town, along Buck Branch, the opposing forces first met.  Advance guards for both armies drew blood in this skirmish, one man being killed on each side of the battle.  Sigel advanced, crossing Buck Branch, moving north, crossing Dry Fork Creek about nine miles north of Carthage.  And there the real battle commenced.

Sigel's plan had been to attack with suddenness with his already well trained troops.  He hoped the ragtag rebel force would scatter when the real fighting & dying began.  It was soon apparent that the hoped for outcome would not materialize.  Cannon fire thundered from both sides, the air sizzled with rifle bullets, but the rebels did not retreat.  Badly outnumbered, the Union forces had to withdraw.  Sigel, a seasoned military man, knew how to withdraw his forces in an orderly fashion, & did so, while inflicting casualties on Jackson's forces.  The battle raged all day, with Sigel finally withdrawing through his previous night's campsite, making good his escape by evening.  Forty-three men died that day in the first Civil War battle west of the Mississippi River.  It preceded the better-known first Battle of Bull Run by 16 days & Missouri's biggest battle at Wilson's Creek by more then a month.

We can only imagine the effect that the battle sounds had on La Force's family.  The family home & the La Grange School were only two miles east of the battle line.  The thunder of cannonfire & the continuous roar of thousands of rifles must have filled the family with dread for Samuel's safety.  But Samuel survived that battle, going on to eventually enlist in the Hundred & Fifty-Second Illinois Infantry.  Two of La Force's sons also enlisted in the Union cause.

The school remained closed during the war years; after all, what Rebel would have wanted his child attending a Yankee school?  And because Missouri had remained with the Union, many residents fled south.  The Carthage are was a hotbed of military action throughout the war, culminating in its virtually complete destruction.  Though the war finally ended in 1865, the deep division it caused was slow to mend.  The 1860 census showed 6,883 county residents.  By the end of 1865, only about 30 remained.  Samuel returned home, but neither of his sons survived the war.  Losses touched every family, resulting in much bitterness, hatred & suspicion.  As evidence of this lingering animosity, consider the loyalty oath imposed by state law upon anyone who sought public office, & even upon teachers & ministers.  All had to swear allegiance to the Federal Gov't.  Even to vote one must have taken the "test oath" or "iron clad oath" of loyalty.  To enforce this oath, the state appointed registrars for the counties, whose job it was to ascertain that the oath requirements were met.  Samuel La Force was the apointed Registrar for Jasper County.  In 1866, he was elected to the job of County & Circuit Clerk & Recorder of Deeds, where he served until 1871.

La Grange School survived the war, one of the few buildings in Jasper County to do so, only to burn in 1868.  It was replaced that year with a more durable native stone structure.  About this time tax support of the school began, & La Grange became Common School District #1 in Jasper County.  La Force entered into a contract with the county, agreeing that the land on which La Grange stood could be used for free, so long as a public shool operated there.  Afterwards, the agreement said, that land would revert back to La Force or his heirs.  So began public education in Jasper County.

Many of the school's records have been lost over the years.  Once I found, a report from 1/15/1894, listed the teacher as Pearl Blake, her monthly salary was $32.50, & enrollment consisted of 20 boys & 25 girls.  The board of directors was Jacson Leidy, prsident, J. M. Grundy, clerk, & J. G. Blake.  The school term was then eight months per year.

Some other early teachers were George Frazier (1884), May Bonsill (1886), William Scantlin (1889), Agnes McCarthy (1890), Silas Rigby (1891), Lulu Stanley (1903), Pearl Yocham (1918), Florence McKillips (1919), & Ruth Dennis (1920).

La Force lived on for many years after the war, eventually moving his family from the farm into the town of Carthage, which had grown rapidly because of the mining activity.  There he died on 4/17/1899.  His burial chamber is easily found in Carthage's Park Cemetery, its inscriptions still clear & legible.

La Grange School lived on, acquiring the nickname "The Old Stone School."  This is the structure I knew when, on 9/8/1953, I began my very first day of first grade there.  We had moved into a house that Dad had constructed the previous November, just a quarter mile west of La Grange.  I remember well that first day of school.  Mom walked me to school that day.  A painfully shy boy, I wanted nothing to do with school.  Being away from home, having to mingle with a mass of strangers, being presided over by an adult stranger - none of that was for me.  Mom tells me I did not speak a word to my teacher, Mrs. Matthews, for three weeks!

La Grange, the "old stone school", had existed active as a working school, for 110 years already.  Not that I thought about such things back then, but I knew the school was old, as old, it seemed, as the hills & rivers, older then memory.  Even in 1956, with a concrete block addition & when the native rockwork was stuccoed over to "modernize" the building, it still seemed old.

Mrs. Clara Matthews was my first grade teacher.  Mrs. Neva Winter taught me at grades two, three, & give through eight.  Mrs. Shirley Evans was my fourth grade teacher.  in 1956, just before my fourth grade year began, a large addition to La Grange was completed.  A substantial concrete block room with basement & indoor toilets was aded on.  Finally, no more outhouses!  All five of us Baird kids eventually attended La Grange, each for eight years, 40 years of accrued education according to my La Grange math instruction!  The youngest of my siblings, sister Charon, was graduated from the eighth grade in 1970.  By then we knew that La Grange was nearly finished.  Reorganization of the entire state school system had been in planning for some time.

The old stone school finally closed after the 1973 class graduated, its students absorbed into the Carthage R-9 School District.

The old stone school still stands today.  More then 25 years have passed since it was filled with the voices of happy children.  The old building probably will not last much longer.  The pressures of upkeep & land taxes & lost productivity of its site all work against the old place.  Some day, all too soon, the old stone school will be torn down.  What the Civil War did not accomplish, time will.  La Grange will cease to be, except in the memory of those who knew it.  A mark on some old maps, a few crumbling paper pages in county history, some scattered student yearbooks with "La Grange School" imprinted on their covers - these will be all that remain.  Of over 20 one room school houses that operated at one time or another in Jasper County, virtually all are gone, vanished into history.

Reflecting on its history & on the quality of education then & now, one of the old timers, who knew the school well remarked, "That's progress, I guess".

[dmleforce]

Both the above stories & a few images in the gallery were given to us by Ms. Nancy Brewer.  Thanks for your help.