Setting the Scene

In 1861, before the onset of the Civil War, Arkansas held a vote on whether to secede from the Union.  Madison County sent Isaac Murphy, overseer of Huntsville’s two Masonic colleges, as its delegate to vote in favor of remaining in the Union, and this vote passed.  However, with the firing on Fort Sumter, S. C., and the start of the Civil War, delegates were recalled to Little Rock and asked to vote again.  This time the majority favored secession – with Murphy’s being the solitary dissenting vote.

For a time, Huntsville citizens were not unhappy with Murphy’s action, but gradually, after he left to fight on the Union side, opinion changed.  By the fall of 1863, people had begun harassing Murphy’s daughters.  Frightened, they fled to where their father was camped at Pea Ridge.  In November, with the Battle of Prairie Grove soon to start, he sent them home, protected by an escort of 25 Union soldiers.

The girls made it back to Huntsville unharmed, but the soldiers there not so lucky.  As they returned to camp, they were surprised by guerilla fighters just west of Huntsville; 18 soldiers were killed.

After the Battle of Prairie Grove, half of the Union troops, en route to join Gen. Grant’s army, passed through Huntsville and camped a mile north of town.

“It was time for payback”, Hatfield said, giving proof that Union officers knew about the attack on the Murphy daughters’ escort.

Although many families had left Huntsville, men in the area were told to return to take an oath of allegiance to the Union.  Some of those who returned were put under arrest.

Hatfield believes Isaac Murphy, E. D. Ham, and Col. James Johnson chose those who were arrested on suspicion of having taken part in the attack on the escort.  Of the men arrested, four were Masons.  Their names were Chesley Boatright, William Martin Berry, Hugh Samuel Berry, John William Moody, Askin Hughes, John Hughes, Watson Stevens and Robert Coleman Young.  Bill Parks, who survived the massacre, is believed to be the ninth man.

At 4 a.m. on January 10, 1863, these nine were taken from the guardhouse to the edge of little creek bordering the field where the troops camped.  There they were shot.  Parks, badly injured, survived and crawled to a nearby house, where he was nursed until well enough to escape the area; one man lived a day – long enough to tell what had happened.

“Who did this?” asked a woman in a letter to a friend who lived on a nearby farm, “Men of the 8th Missouri Regiment,” was the reply.   “But Johnson, Ham and Murphy had it done.”

Keeping Secrets

It’s not that the massacre was never commemorated.  After the killings a wooden fence – now long vanished – was placed around the spot, and the site’s last owner was able to lead local historians to where he remembered it having been.

“For the next 80 years, no one talked,” Hatfield said, “but every year, school kids decorated the site with wildflowers and mussel shells, and until recently, some of the shells were still there.

Hatfield remembers the local interest – and conversations – that ensued in 1974 after historian John I. Smith published a series of articles about the massacre in the Northwest Arkansas Times.   Smith ran across the story while researching a biography of Isaac Murphy – who later became the eighth governor of Arkansas, retired to Huntsville, and is buried in the same cemetery as at least two of the massacre victims.

Not only did Murphy go on to have an illustrious career, no one responsible for the massacre was ever punished.  Court martial proceedings against the officer in charge were halted, for lack of testimony.  Johnson was later elected to Congress and served as Arkansas’ lieutenant governor and secretary of state, while lawyer E. D. Ham went on to become a state senator, district attorney and circuit judge.  (Hatfield speculates Ham’s motive might have stemmed from being black-balled by the town’s Odeon Masonic Lodge.)

Hatfield was serious when he said the massacre changed the course of the county’s history.  Huntsville’s two colleges – founded by the Masons in 1854 – closed during the war, as did the Odeon Lodge after three members were expelled, the lodge “torn apart” and its charter revoked.

Furthermore, Hatfield said, it was Johnson who eventually picked the site of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Had the two Masonic colleges remained intact, Hatfield believes, Huntsville would have been an obvious choice for the location of the new university.

Honoring The Dead

At the dedication of the monument, nine grapevine wreaths, each draped in a ribbon bearing the name of one of the victims, ringed the marker. Members of Huntsville Masonic Lodge 364, Free and Accepted Masons, provided a ceremony to honor these men.

"We knew them not, but they were our brothers," intoned Doug Dobbyn, explaining the significance of the lambskin apron and sprig of evergreen ceremoniously placed atop the marker.

"A Master Mason must request a Masonic funeral," Dobbyn explained after the ceremony, noting the executed Masons could not have made their wishes known. "This is not a full-blown funeral service, but we wanted to honor them."

They also were saluted with three rifle volleys, carried out by members of the First Arkansas Light Artillery. This group of Civil War re-enactors includes members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and both groups attend events honoring Confederate veterans.

"We don't always realize that we're standing where history happened," said historian Joy Russell, president of the county's Genealogical and Historical Society. "Four to six thousand troops camped in these fields, here. We're standing where history occurred for Madison County."

Re-enactor Luella Wood, attired in a hoop-skirted mourning outfit, read aloud a poem by Civil War-era poet Henry Timrod. Titled "Ode at Magnolia Cemetery," the poem concludes with this verse: