HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY                      539
lived in Harrison township a man named Presley Owen, who emigrated
to southwest Missouri before the Civil war—at some time in the fifties.
While in this county Owen was regarded as a man of considerable prom-
inence, especially so in local Politics, having been at different times a
candidate for county office. In the family there were six sons, all of
whom went to Missouri. As they were on the border line of union and
disunion , two of them enlisted in the Federal and two in the Confederate
army , while the other two joined the bush whackers, in whose ranks
Joshua Owen, the eldest son became a captian. The bushwackers cared
no more nor no less for one side than for the other and committed their
depredations alike upon unionists and disunionists.They were some-
times routed and pursued by detachments from the Union forces and at
other times by detachments from the Rebel army. Once upon a time a
large number of them were corraled, including Captain Joshua Owen
and his men, and the leaders summarily dealt with by hanging. When
Elias Cooprider and Elijah Church made a trip down into that part of the
country in 1871, six years after the war closed, when lands in Tawney
and other counties in southwest Missouri were being sold hereabout by
agents, they came into association with residents on White river who
entertained them with detailed account of the bushwhacker element, and
especially of the fate of Captain Joshua Owen, who was shown no
quarters whatever, of whom a most wretched example was made by his
captors. Instead of suspending him in the usual way, an upright limb
on a jack—oak tree was cut down to a stub, the end of which was then
sharpened to a point and driven into the base of the skull from the back
of the neck to a sufficient depth to make sure of its holding the body,
and there it continued to dangle untouched by any one. They ( Coop—
rider and Church ) were told that the skull was still pinioned to the stub
of that limb, but that the bones of the body lay strewn about on the
ground under the tree, as might he seen by anyone going upon the
scene.
                The Boomlet of a Past-time Hamlet.
    As an example of the changes wrought by time and circumstance,
coupled with the fickleness of fate, in the development of the industrial.
commercial and other aspects of a given locality, may he cited that point
in the geography of Harrison township known for a time as Danville, a
mile and a quarter east of Middlebury.A townsite was platted here
alongside the grade of the Terre Haute & Southeastern (now Evans-
ville & Indianapolis ) railroad, by Daniel Shidler, in 1874, and named for
himself. At that time the terniinus of the railroad track was known
as Markland, or “The Y.’’ As the nucleus for the development of Dan—
ville a general store was established and the Shidler Brothers founded
shops for the manufacture of wagons, buggies, implements, etc. Had
the railroad been extended at that time as was anticipated, this place
would have been a formidable rival of "The Y", having the advantage
of being more accessible in location. John M.Long & Son, then doing
business at Middlebury, contemplated the erection of a brick building
and the removal of their business to this point. But the delay and un—
certainty attending the extension and operation of the railroad gave
"The Y" the advantage, resulting in its permanency and the decline of
its rival in the future geography of the “South End". The merchants
who did business at Danville were Thomas Vanhorn, William R. Kress
and Thomas Winters. By the time of the extension of the railroad, five