Ancestor Story: Willard, Amanda Barnes, and Alma Smith Survive Haun's Mill

With my two younger brothers, I was at the blacksmith shop with Father when without warning a large body of mounted men with faces blackened or painted like Indians rode up yelling and commenced shooting into the group.  The men at the shop called for “quarters” but the mob paid no attention—continuing to shoot.  The men then shouted to their wives to take the children and run for their lives.

We were surrounded on three sides by the mob, and the old mill and the millpond were on the other.  The men ran for the shop taking the little boys with them.  My two little brothers ran in with Father.  But when I tried to enter the shop my arms flew up and braced themselves against each side of the door, preventing my entrance.  In my frenzy of fear I again tried to enter the shop, and again my arms were braced to prevent my going in.  After a third futile attempt, I ran around the corner of the shop and crawled into a pile of lumber, hiding as best I could.  Immediately the mob began shooting at me and the splintered lumber flew all around.  I crawled out and ran into an empty house on the slope near the pond.  Here I found an old Revolutionary Soldier, Father McBride, who had been wounded and had crawled into a potato cellar under the floor of the house.  He begged for a drink of water and to be helped out of the cellar, although I warned that the mob would find and kill him.  I went to the millpond to get him some water and was deliberately fired upon, the bullets splattering in the water like hail.  I escaped without a scratch.  (The mob did find this aged Veteran and as he raised his hands in supplication for mercy, they were hacked and the fingers split down by a dull corn cutter.)  I made the old gentleman as comfortable as possible and as the bullets were flying thickly around us, I ran from this house into another one close by.  Here I heard sobs and whispered comfortings and lifting the valance around the bed, I found six little girls huddled in fear.  As the bullets had followed me into this house also, I said to the little girls: ‘Come, we must get out of here or we will all be killed’.  So we ran to the millrace which we crossed on a board reaching the woods on the other side of the pond—with the mob shooting at us all the way.

After our race for life, the little girls scurried off like prairie chickens into the brush and tall corn.  Knowing that my father and two brothers were in the shop with the mob still firing, I took shelter behind a large tree where I could watch the activities of the mob with comparative safety.  Finally they ceased firing, dismounted and went into all the cabins and tents destroying or taking groceries and furnishings.  Then after taking all the horses belonging to their victims, they rode off howling like Indians.

As soon as I was sure they had gone, I started for the shop and was the first person to enter this holocaust, stepping over the dead body of my father in doing so.  I looked around and found my brother Sardius, dead, with the entire top of his head shot away and my brother, Alma, almost lifeless lying among a pile of dead where he had been thrown by the mobsters who, evidently, thought him dead.  I picked Alma up from the dirt and was carrying him from the shop when I met my mother who screamed, ‘They have killed my little Alma.’  I replied, ‘No, Mother, but Father and Sardius are dead.’  I begged her not to enter the shop but to help me with Alma.

Our tent had been looted, even the ticking cut and straw strewn about.  Mother leveled the straw and covered it with some clothing and on this awful bed we placed Alma, cutting off his pants to determine the extent of his injury.  After placing Alma on this improvised bed, my mother, Amanda Barnes Smith, a woman of dauntless courage and implicit faith in her Heavenly Father, found that the entire ball and socket of the left hip had been shot away leaving the bones about three or four inches apart.  As soon as Alma was conscious, Mother asked him if he thought the Lord could make him another new hip, and he replied that if she thought he could, then he, too believed it could be done.  Then she called her remaining three children around the bed and they knelt and supplicated the Lord for faith and guidance.  Mother dedicated Alma to the Lord, praying that he be restored and made well and strong, but if this were not possible, to take him in his innocence.  This picture of my mother’s implicit faith in her Heavenly Father remained as a living testimony to her children through their lives.  In her terrible sorrow and bereavement, her only help could come from divine guidance.  By inspiration her prayers were answered and she knew what to do.  First, she was directed to take the ashes from a fireplace and make a mild lye solution with which she bathed the gaping wound until it was as white as the breast of a chicken, with all the mangled flesh and bone gone.  Then she prayed for further guidance and was prompted to take the roots from the slippery elm tree and make poultices for application.  She asked me if I had seen any elm trees and I replied that there were some on the banks of the stream feeding the millpond.

By this time dark had descended upon this tragic scene and when my mother asked if I could take a shovel and get some of the roots, you can appreciate the terror which gripped my heart as an eleven-year old child.  However, Mother assured me that the Lord would protect me and with a lighted torch of Shag-bark Hickory, I began my search.

Women and children were lamenting the loss of husbands, fathers and children; dogs were howling and the cattle smelling fresh blood were bellowing and no one could know how many mobicrats lurked in the menacing shadows.  It required all the courage I could summon to take the shovel and with the aid of a dim torch follow the stream and secure the roots from which Mother made a soothing poultice.  The story of the miraculous healing of Alma’s hip has been related many times, but few realize the constant terror of the stricken family, unable to leave the State as Alma could not be moved because of his injured hip, yet they were repeatedly warned that if they did not leave they would all be killed.  They were forbidden to call the family together for prayers or even to pray vocally alone.  This Godless silence, Mother said, she could not stand, so one day she went down into a cornfield and crawled into a shock of the corn which had been cut.  After carefully ascertaining that no one was within hearing distance, she said she ‘Prayed till her soul felt satisfied’.  As she left the shock of corn, although there was no one in sight, she plainly heard a voice repeating these words:

                        That soul who on Jesus hath leaned for repose

                        I cannot—I will not desert to its foes.

                        That soul, ‘though all hell should endeavor to shake,

                        I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.

From that moment Mother said she had no further fear of the mob and she inspired us children with faith that if we conscientiously did right, the Lord would shelter us from harm.  Although Alma lay in the same position for five weeks while the wound was healing, strength seemed to come to the limb suddenly.  One day when Mother was carrying a bucket of water from the spring, she was alarmed to hear the children screaming in the house.  She rushed through the door to see them all running about the room with Alma in lead crying ‘I’m well, Ma, I’m well!!’  Something had grown in to take the place of the missing ball and socket and he was able to use the limb with no inconvenience.  Although it was necessary in later years to pad the side of his trousers, he never suffered any pain or discomfort although he filled a mission in the Sandwich Islands where he did a great deal of walking.

As soon as Alma was well enough that we could plan to leave Missouri, great difficulties presented themselves, one being that our horses had been confiscated by the mob.  Finally, I went with Mother to Captain Comstock, leader of the mob, and she demanded the horses, one of which was in his field.  He said we might have the animal by paying $5.00 for its feed bill.  This Mother could not do as all her money had been stolen by the mob.  I admired her courage when she walked into the field and tying her apron around the horse’s neck, led it home with no further objections.