The Willow Springs

As the name implies, the Willow Springs is a small group of springs emanating from a rocky wooded hillside, almost nine miles from the community that took its name in 1869. When the appropriation occurred, the town might just as well have been designated as Alsipsburg, Hickory Top, Harris, or even Hutton Valley; it had been known by all these names before. Ultimately, the United States Postal Service was responsible for naming our town at the crossroads - the junction of Highways 60 and 63, later designated the Gateway to the Ozarks.

 

Among the communities in this region, perhaps our state, Willow Springs, Missouri, has the most convoluted pathway to its name. Originally named Hickory Top, in 1861, the town was also known and noted on maps of the pre- and post-Civil War era as Alsipsburg, or Alsupsburg; it was also included as part of the Hutton Valley and often so named; and after the war, an attempt was made to name what is today Willow Springs, Harris, Missouri. 

 

There is no natural spring in present-day Willow Springs that would justify such a name, and the decades-old tradition of using a Weeping Willow tree as a town symbol misrepresents the tree that actually grows around the genuine Willow Springs. That tree is the Black Willow, commonly found along streams and swampy areas of Missouri, in fact, the most common of the Willow species found on our creeks and rivers, whose branches do not droop or "weep" and its slender silvery green papery leaves seek the sun, shimmering upright in a small irregular crown. The root of this confusion lies in the Civil War. 

 

The name Willow Springs is borrowed from a locale nine miles to the east of the community that took its name, along present-day Highway 60, near the junction of Howell County Road RA. A few hundred yards east of RA, as you look to the north, you will note the Rowe Cemetery. Out of sight, and facing away from the road, there is a series of springs emanating from the side of a hill, hidden from the roadway, producing a volume of water sufficient to create a small stream and attract attention long before the war. To quote an article researched by a student for the 1917, first edition of the Willow Springs High School yearbook, the "Willamizzou,"

 

"In the days when this country was a vast wilderness, there existed at a point nine miles east of the present site of Willow Springs, on what is now the George Rowe farm (today it is the Younger home), a spring of cool, sparkling water, which flowed incessantly into a shallow pool surrounded by a large cluster of willow trees. Because of the excellent quantities of its cool waters, this spring was a habitual watering place for the wild animals of the vicinity and a regular camping ground for the roaming bands of Indians. Later with the coming of the white man, the spring became a camping place for the scouts and explorers, and in their journeys, trappers and hunters tried to reach this spot by dusk so that, after their hard day's tramp, they might rest secure under the protecting branches of the gigantic willows and partake of the soothing nectar of which they had heard so much. Thus, this spot became an established camping ground and a distinctive landmark in an unsettled country, and as the place's popularity increased, scouts in their conversations always referred to it as Willow Springs. And the name stuck through the Civil War and the settlement of this country."

 

It had in fact stuck so well that when Oregon County was created by dividing Ripley County in 1845, the township in the Northwest corner, the political boundary created separating Oregon from neighboring Texas and Ozark Counties was named Willow Springs. As time passed and the population grew, Willow Springs Township was reduced as new townships were created to bring voters closer to polling places. There remains a Willow Springs Township - not named for the town, but for a spring. Because of a location along the ancient roadway, or perhaps more accurately because the road had been located to pass along this pleasant watering hole, it is evident that the Willow Springs was a rallying point and waypoint for travelers passing east and west, and used as public property before it could be legally owned.

 

The first legal owner of the Willow Springs was Elijah Reese, who brought his family to our part of Missouri in the mid 1850's. Born in South Carolina in 1803, Reese, his wife, Martha, also born there in 1806, and some of his twelve children immigrated to the Hutton Valley area. There, Elijah was one of three elders and eight members who founded the Mount Pisgah Baptist Church in Hutton Valley in June 1857, the first and oldest continually operating church in Howell County. 

 

Elijah purchased a total of 160 acres in two purchases from the U.S. Government Land Office in Jackson, Missouri, recorded on the 1st and 10th of September, 1859, which included the Willow Springs. There, he began to carve out a living and by 1860 was achieving some success. The census that year shows his combined value of land and personal property to be $1,000.

 

Also, on the 1860 census for Howell County's Willow Springs township, Elijah is listed as a "U.B. Clergyman." His son, John "Red" Reese, is also shown living at home, with an occupation of "U.B. (United Baptist) Clergyman." John was 24 years old. Still at home are the twin sons of Elijah: Shields and James, aged 13. A forty-year-old female slave, the only enslaved person in Willow Springs township, and one of 56 total owned by fifteen households in 1860 in all of Howell County, is recorded in the Elijah Reese home. 

 

The Reese family had come here from Illinois, where they had been living since the early 1830s. Many of the older children remained in Illinois, but several eventually immigrated to Howell County. Elijah had been involved in local and state politics in Illinois and owned a land company there. His eldest son, Benjamin Franklin Reese, served in the Third Illinois Volunteers during the Mexican War, but moved to Howell County and lived in the Mountain View area until he died in 1894. He is buried in the Mountain View City Cemetery. His eldest daughter, Rebecca, married and was living in Arkansas, died there in 1862, during the war. Another son, George Washington Reese, remained in Illinois until his death. William Cherry Reese also moved to Mountain View later in life, where he lived until he died in 1885. He is buried in the Mountain View Cemetery. There are many descendants still living in Howell and Shannon counties.

 

The most prominent of the children, Sherwood Reese, appears to be most affected by the war. Twenty-one years old at the start of the Civil War, Sherwood appears on the draft rolls in Illinois, but family lore indicates he joined the Missouri State Guard early enough to participate in the Battle of Wilson's Creek in August 1861. Initially believing it was his duty to take a position to defend Missouri, Sherwood and his brother Benjamin Franklin left the guard five days after the battle and went to Arkansas to hide. It was no safer there, and Benjamin Franklin determined to go to Illinois and enlist in the Union Army; Sherwood left for Missouri. In July 1863, he enlisted in the Union Sixth Provisional Enrolled Missouri Militia at Lebanon, Missouri, and served as the company bugler in active service until fall 1863. From there, he joined the Union Second Missouri Light Artillery as a private, rising to the rank of First Sergeant in 1864. He served for the remainder of several months after the war had ended until November 1865.

 

Sherwood's service included the Battles of the Little and Big Blue Rivers during the Price Raid of 1864, and his company was sent west to fight in the Indian Wars, including the Powder River Expedition, until September 1865. After the war, Sherwood, determined to enter the medical profession, returned to Illinois and studied medicine. He married and had two sons with his first wife, who died, and Sherwood left Illinois for Missouri in 1870. In 1871, he remarried at Mountain View, Missouri, where he became the town's first physician. Doctor Sherwood Ray Reese rose to prominence in the community and was a charter member and instrumental in establishing the Baptist Church of Mountain View. He donated land for the Old Mountain View Cemetery with the stipulation that the lots not be charged to local citizens. The Reese Subdivision is named after him; the property today includes Wayside Park and community centers. 

 

The elder Elijah Reese and wife survived the war, but Martha died shortly thereafter in 1867. Elijah sold the spring to the Hood family, fellow members of the church in Hutton Valley. Elijah died in 1868 and is buried in the Rowe Cemetery next to the spring. Also buried nearby is John Hood, the first civilian killed in Howell County by Union troops during the war. 

 

The Willow Springs was an active place for the duration of the Civil War. In 1863, a cavalry contingent of General Davidson's Army of the Southeast camped there, several hundred men strong. Both sides and guerrilla bands used the spring as they passed through the area. Several skirmishes are recorded throughout the valley between the spring and the location of today's town of Willow Springs, which is the rest of the story.

 

On the same 1860 census sheet, we find the family of Ezekiel Jones, living near what is today Main Street, Willow Springs, a block east of the 4-way stop, and home of today’s Italian restaurant. Jones, just before the start of the war in January 1861, had received permission to establish a post office at his home, which he named "Hickory Top." As a southern sympathizer with a son in the Confederate Army, Jones was targeted in the fall of 1863 by Union troops who destroyed his home and improvements, including the post office. A friend living near Birch Tree (Birch Prairie during the war), James Ward Harris, a Union soldier, had suffered the same fate and lost his home during the same raid. At war's end, the two men were living in areas unfriendly to them, and they swapped properties. James Ward Harris established a site farther down the valley, on what is now First Street in downtown Willow Springs, near the MFA Farmers' Exchange. He, too, wanted a post office and, in 1869, applied, asking for the name Harris. The postal authorities informed him that the name was already taken. Since the war disrupted mail routes, mail destined for Thomasville in this area was being delivered to “the Willow Springs.” The post office recommended that Harris accept that as the name of his new office, and the town of Willow Springs was so named.

 

During the late 1870s, the community never had a population exceeding 150 and still appears to have experienced an identity crisis. Following the war, merchant Benjamin B. Carter kept a store south of Willow Springs near the present-day junction of Highways 60 and 63, and for a short period, mail was also left there. That was the domain of Ben Alsup, former County Judge, and well-known Unionist during the Civil War. Some maps show a community named Alsipburg in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Ben Alsup operated a steam-driven sawmill near what is today the south junction of highways 60-63.

 

That convention appears to have died out when Carter closed his store here and relocated to West Plains, and for almost five years, Willow Springs was also known by its former postal name. An advertisement by the postal service seeking contractors to deliver mail to Willow Springs continued to list our stop in the State Journal as "Hickory Top-Willow Springs" as late as November 1874.

 

Of course, the hijacking of its name left a dilemma for the genuine Willow Springs. It also required a new name. In 1865, George W. Rowe married Mehala Hood and moved to the Willow Springs to live. He recalled that at the time, there were only 72 voters in the entire northern half of Howell County, and that an oxen trail passed the spring where the highway now stands. He and Mehala lived at the spring for over half a century, and over time, it became known as Rowe Spring.

 

The arrival of the Kansas City, Fort Scott, and Memphis Railroad on Christmas Day, 1882, appears to have solidified matters sufficiently for the printers to place the name Willow Springs on the map at its present location. The population of Willow Springs rose almost immediately to its present-day level, and rural postal routes solidified things further. However, the old Willow Springs itself is now part of a Mountain View rural mail route – I suppose a final insult to the springs’ identity.