Jasper County Democrat, Volume 18, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 May 1915 — YANKEES ANNIHILATED TOWN. [ARTICLE]

YANKEES ANNIHILATED TOWN.

It Didn’t Require Fire Nor Artillery, But the Method Was Just as Effective as Either. I have been reading a good deal in the' papers about how the Germans treated Louvain and the other towns in Belgium, and people talk like it w r as something terrible, but it wasn’t a' bit worse than the Yankees did for my town,” remarked Isaiah Lewis, a pioneer citizen of Macon county. Mr. Lewis was in the county capital recently trading at the stores. “And they did it without the shadow of law!" the old gentleman went on vehemently. “You don't mean they shot up the houses, Uncle Ike?” said a friend in the store. •' “No! They ’nihilated ’em! Didn’t leave hide or hair of the town. I'm talking of old Bloomington. Guess you young fellers never heard of the place. Used to be the county seat. And what is it now? A cornfield ♦ Nothing left but ground. And it’s been that way over 50 years. I know,, ’cause I lived there. So did Ame, my brother, and sister Jane. The Yankees just come and tore the placa up by the roots and carried it off — that’s what they did. There’s something left to tell where Louvain is. There's not even a sign-post to mark where old Bloomington stood, and before the^Yankees come it had a courthouse, a big school, two hotels, newspapers, stores all 'round the square, a blacksmith shop, feed barns, tobacco factories and just lots of houses.”

/‘And the Yankees burned ’em up?” remarked a listener. "I never heard of that.” "I didn’t say they burned ’em up,’’ retorted Mr. Lewis; “I say they ’nihilated ’em- —swept 'em off the earth. “When the war started the ‘rebels’ raised several companies there. Everybody in town was ‘Secesh,’ as they called ’em. The day the boys left to join ‘Pap’ Price r several thousand people drove in to attend the ceremonies. It was just like what happened in the shire towns of England the other day when the volunteers were cutting the home ties. There were banners and music and speeches and a general good time; Bloomington was sending off her best and bravest sons to die for her. And the Yankees didn’t dare stop ’em, you bet! ' “Bloomington kept its ‘rebel’ flag floating from the staff on the court house till 1 862. Then the Yankee, General Merrill, over at Macon, had 'em elect one of his majors to the state legislature, and the first thing he done was to get an act through abolishing Bloomington as the county seat. You couldn't have killed the old town deader with a flash of lightning. All the county officers took their books under their arms and came over here. People left the place

in swarms. It was like a mining | camp when the ore's played out. The frame stores were put on wheels and rolled over. Some were taken out in the country and used for barns. The brick court house was wrecked and the brick fetched “Old Bloomington just simply wasn’t any more. It was a perfect clean-up by law, they said. But they didn’t let the ‘rebels’ vote. They came over here and mixed up friend-ly-like with the Yanks, and seemed to feel all right about it. “Only Jane and me and Ame stayed. We’d been there ever siince the county was organized, in 1837, and we didn’t intend that any Yankee legislature should tell us where to get off. Now, Jane and Arne's dead, but I’m still holding on. Since the war stopped I tried two or three times to get lawyers to go down to Jeff city with a bill and make ’em put the county seat back where it belongs. Old Bloomington was in the center of the county, just where the law says it ought to be. I supposed when we got a democrat in as president he’d make it all right, but I guess he thinks this so so far away he can’t bother about it. And I voted for him, too!” In the year 1862 Major Thomas Moody, of the national forces, was ordered by his superior officer to go over to Bloonrington and burn up that ‘rebel nest.’ Major Moody knew many of the people of Bloomington, and he suggested to his chief that instead of burning up the town he would run for the legislature, and if elected introduce a bid to remove the county seat from Bloomington as “a military necessity.” The program was carried out without a hitch. Of all the Missouri counties which have been plagued by factional fights over the removal of a county seat from one town to another, Macon stands alone as the one in which no strife was engendered. It was a military move and when the war was overthere were not enough people left Jn Bloomington to make a fight. As Mr. Lewis remarked, it was almost the same as if the once noted town had been "struck by lightning.”— Kansas City Star.