CROW’S NEST
About
twenty-five years after the events of the TNT story, local historian and Boone
family genealogist Lilian Hays Oliver (1898-1984) wrote down the tales her
mother had told her about the history and heritage of the Howell’s Prairie
region.
Her
book, Crow’s Nest, is perhaps the
earliest published document written by a witness to the 1940 Weldon Spring
Ordnance Works evictions. It has been used as a source by later historians of
the period, most notably Donald K. Muschany (The Rape of Howell and Hamburg, Missouri: An American Tragedy, which
can be read in its entirety elsewhere on this website).
Reproduced
in the following pages is the full text of Part 2 of Crow’s Nest, “Howell’s Prairie 1800-1940” (pp. 127-187).
The
narrative describes 52 properties in and near the town of Howell, all but one
of which were taken by eminent domain for the Weldon Spring Ordnance Works.
Many of the displaced owners belonged to families had lived and worked on the
land from the earliest days of European settlement north of the Missouri
River.
Photos
and additional information about these homes and farms can be found in the
“Maps and Properties” section of this website.
The
term “Crow’s Nest” is said to derive from the Native American name for the
Howell area—the highest point of land for miles around.
Crow’s Nest was
copyrighted in 1969 by Chedwato Service of Burlington, Vermont, a
now-defunct specialty publisher of genealogical and family history books, and
has long been out of print. The text as presented here has been divided into
sections for ease of web access. The book’s original table of contents has been
modified to include not only the names of the early property owners identified
by Ms. Oliver, but also the names of the owners from whom the land was optioned
by the United States government in 1940 and the numbers by which the confiscated
properties were identified on the 1940 Weldon Springs Ordnance Works maps. The two
maps reproduced on the Table of Contents page are scanned from the book’s
Plates 8 and 9.
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Ms.
Oliver, a direct descendent of Daniel Boone and Col. Francis Howell, ended Part
I of Crow’s Nest with a moving
evocation of the catastrophe that came so unexpectedly to the good people of
this small rural community (pp.125-126):
“After
Grandfather’s death, Grandmother continued to live on the farm with the
children though from then on it seemed that changes began to occur which made
life different for all . . .
“Automobiles
and airplanes soon became too common to cause the residents of Howell to rush
to doors and windows. Roads were graveled, and the main street in Howell was
black-topped. Electric lights gleamed in the houses. As one walked along the
streets in the village, he could hear the radios broadcasting baseball games.
Residents drove to St. Charles to shop or to
attend a movie, or they went to St. Louis to the
Municipal Opera or to Sportsman’s Park to a baseball game.
“The
villagers were hardly aware of the gradual transition—until October, 1940. Then
they were stunned by the headlines appearing in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Globe-Democrat.
‘War Department Needs 18,000 Acres for TNT Plant,’ ‘Village of Howell to Be Wiped
from Map for Huge War Plant,’ ‘Lives of 200 Families Upset in TNT Plant Area.’
As the days and weeks passed, the headlines continued to tell the story: ‘TNT
Site Landowners Petition Roosevelt for Pay Under Options Army Canceled,’ ‘Roadside
Auction to Make Way for TNT Plant Like Many County Fairs in One,’ ‘TNT Plant
Options to be Attacked,’ ‘Unpaid Landowners Ask House Committee to Hold Public
Hearing Here,’ ‘Condemnation for TNT Plant Pushed Despite Protests,’ ‘Fraud
Charged in TNT Options,’ ‘Landowners Seek Help of the President,’ ‘Court Voids
120 Weldon Spring Option Contracts,’ ‘Weldon Spring Landowners in Appeal.’
“So
in 1940, the land where Francis Howell had settled in 1800 and where his
descendants had lived for almost a century and a half again became Government
property—this time the property of the United
States, not of Spain. Again on
Howell’s Prairie an explosive was being produced—not gunpowder at a grist mill,
but trinitrotoluene at one of the world’s largest ordnance plants.
“However,
the destruction of the little village of Howell and the exodus of the farm
families from Crow’s Nest was not one of Mother’s stories, for Mother, having
died in April, 1936, did not see this little village which she had loved wiped
from the map of Missouri nor the countryside criss-crossed by roads and
railroads and dotted by igloos until even old-timers could not find their
former homes and boy-hood hunting grounds.
“Now
in winter occasional snows cover what was once Howell’s Prairie, hiding for a
short time some of the scars left by the war plant. Wild flowers still bloom.
Birds sing. Squirrels chatter in the woods. Deer again roam there. Rabbits
scurry across the uninhabited acres. Frogs croak in the ponds and marshes. And
from the top of a lightning-split tree, a lone crow calls.”
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The image at
the top of this page depicts a farm field in the TNT area south of the former
site of Howell. The old road that once led to Howell winds between the hills in
the far distance.
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This work is published online as of September 16, 2013.
