A Young Confederate Soldier Visits His Sister!

	This incident happened in the year 1865.  The boy was a son of
William and Sarah Jones Scott.  His name was William (called Billy) aged 15
years.  Billy has enlisted in Price's Army.  Billy a Southern sympathizer,
was captured at aged 16 years and sent to a Federal Prison in Alton,
Illlinois.  A short time later he was paroled provided he would not re-
enlist in the Southern Army.  Young and homesick, he decided to travel on
foot ot visit his sister (Betty Scott Dickson) who lived North of
Wainwright, Mo., in Callaway County.  He arrived at the home of his sister
one November night after dark, much to the surprise of his Sister and her
husband (John Dickson).
	Now the "Bushwhacker Gang" was a group of sympathizers with the Union
Army instead of the Confederate Army which was the state of Missouri in the
Civil War.  These Bushwhackers, by name: Dave Finley, Noah Sneathen, Hab
Moore, and Jim Daniel Branch heard that Billy was in the neighborhood and
had some information he would reveal, so the group went to the Dickson home
and captured Billy.  They promised not to harm him but did otherwise.  A
man named "Johnson" and the leader of the "gang" carried Billy by horseback
down a country road near the Rocky Branch Church and hanged him in a tree.
There could have been others involved in this incident but when Johnson was
captured later and was up for killing, he used the Masonic sign of
distress, and because some of the "gang" were Masons, he was turned loose
(Some accounts differ.)
	These Bushwhackers were a group that caused border trouble and never
really settled any problems of the War.  They stole, plundered, and roamed
the countryside spying.
	When Billy was killed, his parents lived on the Lige Phillips farm
and his Sister and Brother (Colie Boyd) lived on the Elbie Rice farm. Of
course this caused dissention among relatives.  When one of Colie Boyd's
daughters died (Evie), this Dave Finley who lived across the road from and
had never spoken to the Boyd family came over and entered the house.  The
Boyd's thought of killing him in retaliation for the heinous incident of
years past but took time to reconsider.  This was all family trouble but
never forgotten.
	Sneathen went blind, Moore died of cancer, and Jim Daniel Branch went
blind.
	Billy's body was hauled to the Link Cemetery (formerly Wainwright
Cemetery) by a man named Bill Jordon.  A small white monument stands at the
head of the grave with "MURDERED" inscribed.  Also the date of death.  It
has been retold by several that no grass grows under the tree where Billy
was hanged.

This information was told to Clay Link
by Bill Hart (both lived in the Wainwright Community, story conveyed and 
recorded in approx. 1954.)

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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Wayne E. Johnson <johnsonwe@earthlink.net>
(© 2003 Wayne E. Johnson)  http://www.rootsweb.com/~mocallaw/

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