Old Bill Pease
by Bob Brail

            Many Americans are familiar with Andy Griffith’s old televion show, either because they watched it in the sixties or they have seen its reruns.  Set in the fictional town of Mayberry, the plots always seemed to include one of the town’s unusual residents, folks like Goober, Floyd the barber, or Barney Fife.  These people, because of their unusual qualities, are long remembered.

            Back in the woods a short distance from New Melle, a person can still find traces left by an interesting “character” from New Melle’s past., the remnants of an old shack.  It is all that is left of the home of Bill Pease, an old root digger who lived in the New Melle area until the late sixties.   Pease is a person remembered by many for his unusual life.

            William H. Pease was born on July 11, 1873,  in Ohio, and attended school only through fourth grade.  By 1920, he and his wife Izzetta had lived near New Melle for over a decade with their family of five children.  Pease worked as a laborer and tie maker for the railroad.  It was also true that by 1920 Pease had a reputation making trouble when he had too much to drink.  He had twice been arrested for disturbing the peace in New Melle, once because he had thrown rocks through the windows of a local tavern.  For that offense he was sentenced to a year in the county jail and paroled upon the condition that he stay away from alcohol.

            However, in 1923 it was alcohol that caused the tragedy of Bill Pease’s life.  In June of that year he was convicted of assaulting his oldest daughter at their home near New Melle.  A local newspaper called it “one of the most unthinkable and most revolting crimes every accomplished in St. Charles County.”  Years later he would still maintain his innocence, but at his trial he admitted that he had been too drunk to remember what had happened.  Pease was sentenced to twenty-five years hard labor in the state penitentiary at Jefferson City.  Later that fall his wife divorced him.

            In July of 1931, Pease was paroled by the governor of Missouri.  A local woman, now in her late eighties, remembers her father receiving a phone call from Pease at that time, asking for a ride to New Melle.  Later, Pease must have violated parole or been convicted of another crime, for he was again incarcerated in Jefferson City at the time of the 1940 census.

            When Pease was paroled from prison for the second time, he again returned to the New Melle area by the late 1940’s and squatted on land owned by the Heil family.  There he built a ten feet by ten feet shack and lean-to in a small valley surrounded by hills.  The shack had a bed, table, and stove on its dirt floor.  Pease supported himself mainly by digging roots, such as snakeroot and ginseng, and collecting herbs, which he then sold, sometimes in New Melle and sometimes to an individual who came to his place.  Often, though, Pease would fill a gunny sack with the fruits of his labor and then walk all the way to Wentzville, dragging his sack behind him, where he would sell his roots and then walk back to Wentzville.  He did this into the middle 1950’s when he would have been over eighty years old. 

            Pease also grew tobacco and strawberries for sale to local residents.  New Melle resident Donnie Kops remembers going with his father to buy strawberries from Pease when Kops was just a youngster: “When we arrived, he was nowhere to be seen.  So my Dad hollered, “Oh, Bill, where are you” several times.  Shortly he appeared out of the brush and weeds and scared me.”

            In the 1950’s local lore had it that Pease was part Native American.  When he hunted squirrels and rabbits, he always wore a hat.  One longtime area resident remembers once finding Bill Pease asleep in the middle of a field where he had decided to take a nap.

            Folks who remember Bill Pease now say that he was a man who never caused problems, although he did apparently continue drinking.  He was just an “ordinary guy” who had very little to do with people.  He was a very quiet man who didn’t say much and certainly didn’t talk more than he had to.  Generally, he kept to himself.

            When the Heils sold their property around 1960, Pease moved off their place and relocated to the old Cooper place on Foristell Road, now the location of the Fiddlestix Subdivison.  One of Pease’s neighbors was a young girl, now in her sixties.  She remembers many wonderful walks with Poese, who showed her how to dig roots and find mushrooms.  Pease lived there until his death on May 11, 1968, and was buried in Linn Cemetery, Wentzville.

            In describing his own experience of living by himself in the woods, the early nineteenth century American author, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.”  When Bill Pease returned to New Melle, he seems to have sought the woods for a different reason.  Pease had problems in his past he wanted to forget and found the solitude he needed in his shack in the woods.  He is remembered today by several area residents as an interesting character from New Melle’s past.

Sources: This article was primarily based on interviews with several New Melle area residents.  Special thanks goes to Donnie Kops for his assistance with these interviews. Other sources utilized were federal census records and Daily St. Charles Cosmos-Monitor (newspaperarchive.com).