A Dueling Incident in Boone-Duden Country

by Bob Brail

In his book Duels and the Roots of Violence in Missouri, Dick Steward notes that Missouri's first recorded duel occurred in 1807 near Cape Girardeau. William Ogle, a merchant and tax collector, was accused of making an insulting remark to the wife of Joseph McFerron, a teacher. Ogle was then apparently slapped in the face by McFerron, so he challenged McFerron to a duel. The weapons to be used were smooth-bore pistols, and the location of the duel was Cypress Island, near Cape Girardeau. Both men missed at the first fire, but at the second fire McFerron killed Ogle. McFerron would go on to have a successful career in politics, participating in both Missouri's constitutional convention and the state's first General Assembly. Over fifty years later, St. Charles County would witness one of Missouri's last court cases involving dueling, when two young men whose families lived as neighbors on the Booneslick Road became embroiled in a dispute which possibly arose from differing attitudes toward secession.

The original cause of the feud between the Nunnelly and Bailey families in 1859 is no longer known. What is known from court records is that on January 25, 1859, twenty year old Gustavus Bailey was returning to his home in Callaway Township from Wentzville with a friend, each on horseback. As they rode east along Booneslick Road in the early evening, they approached the home of Granville Nunnelly, Sr., and his family. Two of Nunnelly's sons were in front of the house, one on each side of the road, both armed: twenty-two year old William had a double-barreled shotgun, and nineteen year old Granville Carson wielded a pistol. Both men also held rocks. As Bailey and his friend approached, Granville Carson said, “Here they are, Bill,” and then, “There he is. Shoot him, Bill, shoot him.” By this time the muzzle of the shotgun was only a few feet from Bailey's face. Bailey and his friend spurred their horses in opposite directions as the Nunnellies threw rocks and then fired one shot.

Later that day, William Nunnelly penned a note, challenging Gustavus Bailey to a duel. The note read (original grammar and spelling):

Sir

If you are any part of a gentleman if you have any honesty in your treacherous heart please do me the favor to meet me on the hill which lies between your father's house and mine and then and there I will settle all difficulty which exist between you and myself meet me in ten minutes (or prove your self a Damed Coward which every person who knows you has long been aware of – W. M. Nunnelly

The note was delivered the next day by Granville Carson Nunnelly to Lucinda Bailey, Gustavus's mother, at the nearby Bailey home with instructions to give it to Gustavus. The Baileys notified the authorities. An arrest warrant was issued by Justice of the Peace Gabriel Gosney on January 28 for both William and Granville Carson since both dueling and carrying a duel challenge were against the law. Both Nunnellys appeared before Gosney on January 31 and acknowledged what they had done. Each was ordered to paid $100 bail and told to appear in court on June 1. Besides dueling, the official charge was also “assault on the public highway with deadly weapons.”

This story would have one more episode. A few days later, on February 2, John Montgomery, a constable in Callaway Township, arrived at the Nunnelly home with a few other men and arrested and forcibly removed William, Granville Carson, and their twenty-five year old brother James, and took them to the Wentzville jail where they were held for three days. Of course, the two younger brothers were legally free on bail, and James had not committed a crime. Justice of the Peace Gosney then issued a warrant for the arrest of John Montgomery for abusing his authority as constable.

In the decade leading to the Civil War, dueling was in decline in America, although the deeply held political convictions of the era would be the cause of many duels. Perhaps the best known example of a dueling controversy caused by tension between secessionists and unionists was the 1860 dueling challenge issued by Roger Pryor, a congressman from Virginia, to J. F. Potter, a congressman from Wisconsin. Their dispute took place in open debate in the House of Representatives, and was covered in the national press. When Potter chose Bowie knives as the weapons to be used, Pryor declined to fight. Dueling in Missouri was also “swept up in a far greater conflict and, like other forms of violence across the country, it reflected the menacing stresses and strains of sectional controversy and disunion.” In the years leading up to the Civil War, dueling was more common in Roger Pryor's south than in Missouri. However, because of its status as a border state, with secessionist and unionist neighbors in strife with each other, Missouri was especially susceptible to disputes which might result in duels, even though dueling was actually in decline in the state.

It seems likely that the problem between the Baileys and Nunnellys was caused by the families' differing political loyalties. Granville Nunnelly, who farmed in Callaway Township, was an ardent secessionist who owned slaves. He and his wife Elizabeth were both born in Virginia, as were his three older sons, James (1834), William (1838), and Granville Carson (1841), so the family brought a heritage of Southern values when they came to St. Charles County. The Bailey family was equally committed to its political loyalties. For example, in July, 1861, Robert Bailey, Sr., the forty-seven year old father of Gustavus Bailey, would join the New Melle Home Guards as his way of serving the Union cause. His commanding officer would be his son, Robert Bailey, Jr., and his other adult sons, Gustavus and Arthur would also enlist in the same unit. Later that year, Captain Robert Bailey would lead his Home Guards to Jonesburg where, according to one account written twenty-five years later, they “plundered the people of the neighborhood indiscriminately” and made arrests of Southern sympathizers. In the fall of 1862 Gustavus Bailey would enlist in the 75^th Enrolled Missouri Militia as a second lieutenant. It hardly seems possible that the incident which resulted in a challenge to duel could have taken place outside the context of politics.

Both families would eventually pay a heavy price for their political views. Captain Robert Bailey, Jr., according to his tombstone, died in the service of his country at Port Hudson, Louisiana, in 1864, probably of disease. Granville Nunnelly, the father of the young men involved in the dueling incident, also paid with his life for his devotion to his cause. He and his family had left St. Charles County for Montgomery County shortly after the dueling incident to run a hotel in Danville. On July 18, 1861, secessionists in Montgomery County murdered two Federal soldiers. When Nunnelly heard the news, he had reportedly said that one man deserved to be killed and if the other had stayed home, he wouldn't have been hurt. When word of this reach a Union colonel from Montgomery City, he sent a company of soldiers to Danville to arrest Nunnelly and a few other secessionists, including a lawyer named Robert Terrill. Terril, Nunnelly, and a few other men were arrested in the middle of the night and taken in the direction of Montgomery City, Nunnelly being allowed to drive his buggy since he was too obese to walk. Just before daylight on July 22, about a mile from Montgomery City, the captain in charge of the soldiers halted the group and oradered Nunnelly, Terrill, and two others out of the carriage. They were made to kneel and then shot dead by the soldiers. Granville Nunnelly was fifty years old. His wife was left to care for their children still at home and operate the hotel.

Although it might be correct to conclude that the Bailey-Nunnelly feud sprang from differing political views, it is important to clarify that slavery probably was not the issue. Robert Bailey, Sr., though he had been born in Ohio, owned several slaves at least until the census in 1860. The fact that Robert Bailey, Sr., was a slave owner who fought for the Union cause may suprise someone today, but it certainly did not make Bailey an oddity in Missouri at the dawn of the Civil War. As the Civil War began, “a majority of Missouri voters supported the institution of slavery, but this attitude did not automatically translate into support for secession.” This was true of many slaveowners, at least at the beginning of the war, when many were hoping “to guarantee both slavery and the Union.” Unfortunately for slave owning supporters of the Union, they would incur the wrath of both abolitionists and, in the case of the Baileys, slaveowning secessionists like the Nunnellys.

It is not difficult to imagine neighbors in 1859 Missouri at odds with each other if one family supported secession and the other supported the Union, even if both families owned slaves. It seems possible that the problem between the Baileys and Nunnellys, which nearly caused a duel to be fought, was caused by their deeply felt political views.

Sources: Agriculture and Slavery in Missouri's Little Dixie (R. Douglas Hurt); “Crack of the Pistol: Dueling in 19^th Century Missouri” (sos.mo.gov); “Duel!” (smithsonianmag.com); Duels and the Roots of Violence in Missouri (Dick Steward); Federal Population Censuses; Federal Slave Censuses; Findagrave.com; History of St. Charles, Montgomery, and Warren Counties, Missouri (1885); Missouri's War: The Civil War in Documents (Ed. Silvana Siddali); St. Charles County (MO) Circuit Court Records (St. Charles County Historical Society); Soldiers Records (sos.mo.gov).