Tag Archives: Battle of Westport

Rumors of Murder at the Wornall House

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Frank C. Wornall's memoir of the Wornall House is missing a few pages. Do the missing pages point to murder? (photo by bethanywearsphotography.com)

Frank C. Wornall’s memoir of the Wornall House is missing a few pages. Do the missing pages point to murder? (photo by bethanywearsphotography.com)

By Tony Lawson

When I first became familiar with the Wornall House history, one of the stories I heard was the tale of wounded Confederate soldiers recuperating in the second floor children’s bedroom.  When the Union troops moved in and pushed Shelby’s troops back south they found the Wornall House being used as a regimental field hospital and the wounded Confederate soldiers inside.  Local lore claims Union troops came into the bedroom and bludgeoned to death several wounded Confederate soldiers to make way for their own comrades wounded in the Battle of Westport.  I was told that that plaster on the first floor ceilings had to be replaced from the blood that had oozed through from this event and that there still remained blood stains on the bedroom floor. Someone suggested we call in the police department forensics team to spray Luminol and whip out the black lights.

As I dig through the primary source material I have yet to find hard evidence that these murders occurred at the Wornall House.  I did find that all the floorboards in the home were replaced sometime in the early twentieth century when plumbing, gas and electricity were installed.  So, cancel that call for Luminol.  There is nothing in Frank C. Wornall’s papers that explicitly tells this story, however, he does cryptically say that after the battle the Missouri State Militia officers had to use their sabers and other means to prevent the less disciplined troops of the Enrolled Missouri Militia “from killing them all.”

Frank apparently repeated this story several times in speeches that he gave over his long lifetime.  In those cases, Inflection and tone would have been provided, however, in text form, that statement is perfectly vague.  Does he mean some were killed and others were not?  Or, does it mean, the EMM troops wanted to kill them all.  It hints at the story of murder, but it is not conclusive of anything other than there was a confrontation between MSM officers and EMM troops over the handling of wounded Confederate prisoners at Wornall House. The confrontation nearly became violent at the least and at most it was the violent and cold blooded murder of wounded prisoners that has been obscured and forgotten by the general tumult of the war and its aftermath.

Additional evidence of this event is hinted at in the Wornall’s recounting of the battle.  Both Frank and his father, John, mention the presence of seven dead Confederate soldiers on the southwest lawn.  One of these was a colonel and a makeshift rail fence had been constructed around his body.  There were surely lots of Confederate dead lying around the Wornall farm; why do they both mention those seven? Were these the Confederates bludgeoned to death in the bedroom?

(As an interesting side note, I discovered that the officer left in charge of the Confederate prisoners at Wornall House was Colonel John F. Richards who later headed up the firm of Richards and Conover Hardware Co.  The building they built still stands as prime loft space in River Market area of KC.  http://www.kcloftspace.com/richardsconoverlofts/)

Adding to the frustration of getting to the bottom of this story are several pages missing from Frank C. Wornall’s typed manuscripts at both the Wornall House and the Jackson County Historical Society.  On top of that, the memoirs are the recollections of a nine-year-old boy writing some 70 years after the event.  Everything should be taken with a small grain of salt.

Despite the paucity of hard evidence, my research tells me this story is completely believable.  Troops under the Enrolled Missouri Militia were often locals with long standing scores to settle with Missourians.  This region was the scene of the bloodiest most violent civilian insurrection in American history.  Bushwhackers and Union troops regularly tortured, hung, scalped and defaced one another’s corpses and neither side was known for taking live prisoners.  Regular army troops in pitched battles were different though.  At least they were supposed to be.

I did find evidence of Confederate prisoners being executed at the Battle of Westport, but that event did not occur at the Wornall House.  That happened after McGhee’s charge to capture Union cannons in what is now north Loose Park.  That charge marked the high point of the battle and Price’s 1863 Missouri “expedition.”  (During that charge there occurred an event rarely recorded in Civil War battles; two opposing officers shot and wounded one another with their sidearms.)  The first charge initially failed, a later second charge captured the Union position and Confederates discovered the bodies of comrades who had been captured and then executed in the first charge.  Were these the seven dead on the Wornall lawn and the source of the story of murder at Wornall?  Are there motivations for stories such as this, true of not, to be propagated after the war?

I do not know the answers to these questions.  I do know I will keep researching to learn what I can with the knowledge that a true mystery can never be solved…it can only be made a better mystery.

Ars Moriendi — The Good Death

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By Tony Lawson

.44 caliber lead ball found at the Wornall House archaeological excavation, summer 2013. (Photo by bethanywearsphotography.com)

.44 caliber lead ball found at the Wornall House archaeological excavation, summer 2013. (Photo by bethanywearsphotography.com)

I had the opportunity to attend a planning meeting for the upcoming museum exhibits at the Wornall House Museum.  At the meeting were the director of the Wornall-Majors House museums, the director of Clendening Medical Library,  and the CEO of the Metropolitan Medical Society of Greater Kansas City.  It was one of the first times in my life that all my reading and research paid off a bit in a professional manner and I could speak as an authority on a historical matter.  In this case the topic was death in the Civil War.  I was able to relate the following primary and secondary evidence to make a clear and concise case about Victorian notions of death and dying and tie it directly to the historical narrative we are constructing at Wornall House.

Once again in the Wornall House stories and histories, I have found two different versions of a single tale.  This one involves 9-year old Frank Wornall and his reminisces of the Battle of Westport.  According to Frank’s stories of the Wornall House, at some point a lone wounded Confederate soldier appeared at the back door of the home.  The man had been shot through the jaw and it was nearly removed.  He could not speak, only make wild gestures with his hands and eyes.  Somehow it was communicated to Frank that the man was refused admission at the regimental hospital because he was not a member of the regiment.

Frank had ” the run of the house” to take care of the wounded man and led him to the cistern where he bathed and bandaged the man’s wounds.  The man was most grateful and soon recovered enough to be on his way toward home and family where he could be nursed back to health.  That’s one version of the story.

The other version of this story begins the same, but ends with young Frank Wornall cradling the wounded soldier in his arms on the families lawn near the cistern.  In this version the event occurred as the Battle of Westport was ending and Confederate troops were in retreat from Union troops approaching the Wornall House, which had been converted to a Confederate field hospital.  A Confederate cavalry soldier rode up on his horse and looked down at the scene with Frank comforting the wounded soldier on the lawn.  The mounted soldier removed his pistol from its holster and shot the wounded man dead.

When Frank asked the soldier why he had shot the wounded man in seeming cold-blood, the soldier replied that it was much better for the man to die in the arms and warm comfort of friends than in the hands of the enemy.

While this version of the story shocks modern sensibilities and conflicts with contemporary morals in its violence, it actually epitomizes Victorian Era notions of the ars moriendi–The Art of Dying.  The societies that brought forth the Civil War witnessed death and dying on an unprecedented scale and had to find ways to deal with the unimaginable losses of so many men in the prime of their lives, so very far from their homes.  Hospitals were places for indigents and the homeless in which to die; people in good standing with their God, communities and families spent their last hours and died at home surrounded by loved ones recounting the deeds of a life well lived. That was the concept of a good death and the Civil War destroyed it.

Being blown to atoms by modern artillery was nearly incomprehensible to the Victorian Era mindset.  Inglorious death from camp diseases cheated would be heroes from their deeds. Dying away from home while surrounded by your enemy or strangers flew in the face of the concept of a good death.  That was not cold-blooded murder on the Wornall’s lawn; it was has hot-blooded mercy.  That cavalry soldiers lead ball was a gift; the gift of a good death.