The Rock Hill Presbyterian Church

James Collier Marshall was born on the eastern shore of Maryland in 1804, among the estuaries of the Atlantic and along a creek named for his family.  His birth occurred in the third year of the incumbency of Chief Justice John Marshall, his third cousin (twice removed).  Their common ancestor settled in Westmoreland County, Virginia, a matter of miles from the birthplaces of George Washington, James Madison and Robert E. Lee.  James Marshall’s father took his family east, settling in Maryland, 100 miles from the ancestral home.  James, though, joined the great western migration in 1838 or ‘39.  He came to rest at the intersection of Manchester Road and Rock Hill Road in St. Louis County, where he lived until he passed away in 1864.

In 1840, James married Elizabeth McCausland of St. Louis.  Over the next quarter-century, James and Elizabeth prospered in St. Louis, acquiring large tracts of land in Rock Hill and where Webster Groves is now.  They gave their name to Marshall Road in Webster, and to the Marshall Road in Kirkwood and Valley Park, where they owned land also.  They were traders and shopkeepers, and they operated a stagecoach stop on old Manchester Road when it was a major artery to the west.  In 1841, they built a home there they called “Fairfax,” which still stands (though not at its original location) on Manchester a little east of Rock Hill Road.

Elizabeth McCausland Marshall was the sister of John McCausland, after whom McCausland Avenue in St. Louis is named.  The brother was a major landholder in St. Louis, including tracts he owned downtown.  Elizabeth and John were part of an extended clan, which included the Kyles of Virginia, who were merchants in Lynchburg before they headed west to St. Louis.  John McCausland died in 1843, and his wife Harriet Kyle McCausland followed him in death a month later.  Left orphaned were St. Louis-born sons John and Robert, both under ten years of age. The McCauslands hailed originally from Scotland, but for a least a century they lived in County Tyron, Northern Ireland.  Elizabeth, who was born there, came to America about 1800 with her parents.  She and her 10 siblings were raised solidly in the Presbyterian faith.

Presbyterians were wracked by factionalism in the years before the Civil War, much of it brought on by the issue of slavery.  In 1861, the Church split into northern and southern denominations, a rift that did not heal officially until a reunification in 1983.   A story from the folks at the Fairfax house – not verified by this author – is that the Presbyterian congregation in Rock Hill split along these lines, so much so that pro-slavery people sat on one side of the church, those opposing slavery on the other.   On which side sat the Marshalls is an intriguing, but unanswerable, question.

Artemus Bullard was born in Northbridge, Massachusetts in 1802.  He attended Amherst College, as did his brother who roomed with a young man by the name of Henry Ward Beecher.  Artemus’ sister Eunice married Henry Beecher in 1837.  The Bullards and the Beechers were Congregationalists, descended from English Calvinist cousins to the Scottish Presbyterians. Artemus Bullard was ordained a minister of the Congregational Church.  In 1838 he accepted a position with the First Presbyterian Church of St. Louis, where he engaged in missionary work.  His work led him to establish one of the earliest Presbyterian churches in the “country” that surrounded St. Louis, in Rock Hill.  A church was built there in 1845, at the northeast corner of Manchester and Rock Hill Road, on land James C. Marshall donated.  Marshall’s slaves constructed the church of limestone blocks quarried on his property.  Until 2010, the Rock Hill Presbyterian Church was the oldest west of the Mississippi to operate continuously in the same structure.

In 1850, Artemus Bullard built the Webster College for Boys on land donated by James C. Marshall.  Named for Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster, the institution predated the town that grew up near it – Webster Groves was named for the school that Bullard and Marshall built.  Bullard brought Congregationalist teachers from New England to staff the College, and they in turn were some of the earliest settlers of Webster Groves. The school closed in 1859, but after the Civil War it was reopened as a home for children orphaned in the war.  The original building stands where it was built, on the grounds of today’s Edgewood Children’s Center.

Henry Ward Beecher was a famous, fiery orator and abolitionist preacher in New York whose sister Harriet Beecher Stowe authored Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  There is in the historic record one brief, early mention of Artemus Bullard’s apathy towards the slavery question.  All in all though, particularly considering his lineage, one cannot escape the conclusion that Bullard was firmly in the anti-slavery camp of the Presbyterian Church by the 1850s.

James Marshall owned slaves.  According to the 1850 census, James held eight men and women in bondage.  The oldest slave he owned was 75 years of age at that time, and the youngest, 14.  Marshall had been in Missouri 12 years in 1850.  He continued to own slaves, seven by the count taken in 1860.

Why then this alliance between the slave-owner Marshall and the Massachusetts-bred minister? The book North Webster: A Photographic History of a Black Community (published by the Webster Groves Historical Society in 1993) points out that James Marshall freed some of his slaves in 1863.  Property he gave to them laid the foundation of the historic African American community in Webster Groves.  The book claims that Marshall’s slaves asked to help in the construction of the Rock Hill church, and attended services there along with whites after it was built.  The answer probably lies with Elizabeth.  The Presbyterian McCauslands, of the merchant class, transplanted from Ireland just a generation before, likely were neither slave-owners nor slavery supporters. It was Elizabeth, one suspects, who sought to bring religion to the wilds of Rock Hill and who enlisted a minister of her own faith to do so.

What is possible is that Rock Hill holds a story of two southern families growing in their appreciation of human freedom during the years before the Civil War.  Certainly, important African American history is rooted here.  Presbyterians should consider their old church a shrine.

If there is not enough history for you at the corner of Manchester and Rock Hill Roads, consider John McCausland, the orphaned nephew of Elizabeth Marshall.  Most certainly he visited Fairfax in Rock Hill many times as a boy.  The house was brand-new when John was five years old. He lived with his grandmother in St. Louis for several years after his parents died in 1843.  Then, John and his brother went to live with an uncle in Virginia.  He attended the Virginia

Tiger John McCausland

Military Institute, and upon graduation became an instructor of artillery reporting to Thomas J. Jackson.  He entered the service of the Confederate Army at the beginning the Civil War.  Known as “Tiger John” McCausland, he is vilified for the burning of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and revered by the people of Lynchburg, Virginia, which he defended in 1864.  When he passed away in 1927, he was the second-oldest surviving General of the Confederate Army.  McCausland died in his home “Grape Hill,” standing today near Henderson, West Virginia, on an estate he started with the fortune his father made in St. Louis.

1920 View of Henderson's Castle

Near Meridian Hill Park in Washington, DC, at Florida Avenue and 16^th Street, stands a stone gate, a remnant of a structure razed in 1949.  It is a reminder of the time when this neighborhood was Washington’s Embassy Row, a brainchild of Washington grande dame Mary Foote Henderson.  Henderson built a number of palatial residences in the 1910s and ‘20s that she rented to socialites and to foreign governments.  The Polish Embassy, at 2640 Sixteenth Street, NW, survives from this era.

Mary Henderson lived where the stone gate stands at Florida Avenue, in a mansion known as Henderson’s Castle.  The Castle was built in 1888 by Mary and her husband, former U. S. Senator John Brooks Henderson.  The Castle’s history stretches back in time, to the early days of Missouri’s Civil War.

John Brooks Henderson moved to Missouri from Danville, Virginia, when a boy.  In 1861 Henderson was appointed a general in the Missouri militia, having been active in local politics in Pike County, Missouri.  Henderson’s military career was distinguished by a decision he made to negotiate with Missouri rebels in Callaway County.  At Wellsville, Montgomery County, Henderson agreed to terms offered by Col. Jefferson Jones to diffuse a confrontation there.  Jones would disband several hundred men he had assembled in defense of Callaway County if Henderson would agree not to invade the county with the Union troops at his disposal.  This incident in October, 1861, gave Callaway County its modern nickname, the “Kingdom” of Callaway.  Callawegians still revel in their short-lived sovereignty.

In 1862, Henderson was appointed to fill the unexpired term of a Missourian who was expelled by the U. S. Senate.  Henderson served in the Senate of the United States until 1869.  He is most remembered, when he is remembered at all, as the author and sponsor of the first draft of what would become the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery, which he introduced as a Joint Resolution of Congress in 1864.  In 1868, Henderson was one of seven Republicans in the Senate to vote against impeachment of President Andrew Johnson.  For this, Henderson earned mention in John Kennedy’s 1956 work, Profiles in Courage.  Like the other six, Henderson’s political future was ruined by this vote.

John Henderson met Mary Foote in Washington and they married in 1868, before he left the Senate.  They returned to Missouri, and lived there for twenty years, first in Louisiana, Missouri and later in St. Louis.  Although the Henderson’s were very successful during those years, the story that is told in Washington is that their wealth exploded when Missouri county bonds issued during the Civil War – thought to be worthless when the Hendersons purchased them at a deep discount – were redeemed by the federal government at face value.  Whatever the case, the Hendersons moved to Washington, D.C. in 1888, and built the magnificent castle on Sixteenth Street.

John Henderson died in Washington in 1913.  Mary passed away in 1931.

Mary Foote Henderson was born in Seneca Falls, New York, into a Connecticut family that included that state’s Governor Samuel Foote.  Samuel Foote’s son – Mary’s first cousin – was Civil War Admiral Andrew Foote.

WHEN:  April 13, 2011, 5:30 p.m.

The Missouri Athletic Club is hosting a dinner and book signing to commemorate the beginning of the Civil War sesquicentennial.  Highlights of the evening include a menu based upon the old Planter’s House Hotel and an appearance by U. S. Grant impersonator Scott Whitney.  A copy of Friend and Foe Alike will be supplied to all attendees, and the author will autograph books before the dinner begins at 6:30 p.m.  Cost, including dinner, gratuity, entertainment and book, is $50.  Proceeds benefit Missouri’s Civil War Heritage Foundation.

The Fairfax House, Rock Hill

This Spring, Missouri is celebrating its favorite military son, Ulysses Grant.  As the sesquicentennial of the Civil War begins, let us use the term “celebrate” carefully.  We commemorate the men and women who fought honorably and suffered horribly during our nation’s most defining conflict.  But, there is time to celebrate one unassuming man, who during our Civil War rose from personal failure to worldwide acclaim.

On April 13, 2011, the Missouri Athletic Club in St. Louis is hosting a visit by Ulysses Grant.  Grant in this case arrives in the guise of Scott Whitney of Winnebago, Illinois.  Scott is a history teacher in his home town, which is a few miles west of Rockford.  His passion: portraying the life of Ulysses Grant.  Scott portrayal at the Missouri Athletic Club event will focus on Grant’s many ties to the St. Louis area.   Attendees will receive a complementary copy of Friend and Foe Alike: A Tour Guide to Missouri’s Civil War, and I will be signing copies of the book.  Click on “Book Events” for full details.

Grant’s strengths and his faults have been debated for well over a century.  I can relate two little known incidents that illustrate what was, simultaneously, his most disarming and undoing personal trait.  Grant was fiercely loyal to people who befriended him.

Grant spent some his most challenging years in St. Louis, 1854-1860, moving about in the Southern society of his wife’s family, centered in Southwest St. Louis County.  This was then a very rural world; he counted as his “neighbors” people who lived many miles from his Hardscrabble Farm.

Case 1:  Dr. James A. Barrett

Dr. Barrett (some times spelled Barret) was a member of a prominent Virginia/Kentucky clan that emigrated to St. Louis before the Civil War.  In 1864, he along with a cousin (pre-War U. S. Congressman John Richard Barrett) became embroiled in a national controversy.   An investigation got underway into the activities of a clandestine group of Southern supporters known as the Sons of Liberty.  James Barrett was targeted as a member of the “Northwest Conspiracy,” alleged to be a massive operation to aid the Confederate war effort and overthrow the government of the United States.  The investigation, centered on the Son of Liberty’s activities in Missouri and Indiana, snared Indiana copperhead congressman Clement L. Vallandigham and others.  Later in the year, one Lambdin P. Milligan and four others were tried by a military tribunal in Indianapolis – the trial timed to precede the national elections in November, 1864. Milligan was sentenced to hang.  He was freed when the U. S. Supreme Court in 1866 issued a landmark Opinion, Ex Parte Milligan, which held that military courts had no jurisdiction to try civilians where civil courts were operating.

Dr. James Barrett of St. Louis was an unindicted conspirator in the trial of Lambdin Milligan. His activities were prominently noted in the testimony of witnesses.  But Barrett was not brought to trial.

On June 25, 1864, Ulysses Grant sent a telegram from headquarters in City Point, Virginia, to the Secretary of War.

“I will feel obliged to you if you will order General Rosecrans to release Dr. J. A. Barrett [on bail],. . . or to give him an immediate trial. The doctor is a copperhead, but I have no idea that he has done anything more than that class of people are constantly doing, and not so much.  He was a neighbor of mine, a clever man, and has a practice in the neighborhood which it will be very inconvenient to other people than himself to have interrupted.”

Grant arrived in City Point ten days before he paused to write his telegram to Secretary Stanton.  He had just completed another of his master strokes, outflanking Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia after Cold Harbor and landing in Lee’s rear at Petersburg.  Grant had on his mind the plight of a country doctor who once supported him in his bid to become County Engineer in St. Louis.

Stanton relented. Rosecrans fumed.  The matter reached the desk of Abraham Lincoln, who wrote to Rosecrans: “When did the Sec. of War telegraph you to release Dr.

Barrett? If it is an old thing, let it stand till you hear further.”

Case 2:  General John McCausland

“Tiger John” McCausland graduated first in the VMI class of 1857.  When the Civil War began, McCausland organized Virginia’s Rockbridge Artillery, then served in successively more important command positions in the Confederate army.  He famously escaped from Ft. Donelson in 1862, before Grant captured the place and most of the army that defended it.  As a Brigadier General of cavalry in 1865, he even escaped Grant at Appomattox.

McCausland’s military reputation, otherwise distinguished, was stained by the burning of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in July, 1864.  Under orders of his superiors, McCausland entered the town and demanded payment of reparations for Union depradations in the Shenandoah Valley.  When his demand was refused, he burned the town.  At the close of the War, McCausland was indicted by a Pennsylvania grand jury for arson; He lived in Mexico and in Europe for a time, finally returning to the United States in 1867 after Ulysses Grant intervened to quash the Pennsylvania indictment.

Tiger John McCausland was born in St. Louis in 1836, son of a John McCausland who gave the name to McCausland Avenue.  The elder McCausland owned large tracts of land in downtown St. Louis, and devised St. Louis’ first system of taxation.  He died the same year his wife died, 1843, leaving John and his brother orphans.  In 1847, John moved to what is now West Virginia to be raised by an uncle.  He had lived with his paternal grandmother in St. Louis County before leaving for the east, but no doubt often visited his aunt Elizabeth Marshall at her home “Fairfax,” restored and standing in Rock Hill on Manchester Road.

The National Register application for McCausland’s post-war home near Henderson, West Virginia states that Ulysses Grant was “an old family friend of the McCauslands.”  Enough said.

Where:  Kansas City Public Libary – Plaza Branch.  4801 Main Street in Kansas City

When: April 20, 2011 6:30 p.m.

Books are available for purchase during the event.  Author will also sign books purchased at any location before the event.