Lens & Pen Press

Like the pioneer newspaperwoman’s prose, this is well researched and very readable. It’s in the Ozarks Studies Series, edited by Prof. Brooks Blevins. It is footnoted and indexed but does not have an academic tone. The author credits Dr. Blevins encouragement and acknowledges Lynn Morrow for “setting me straight innumerable times.” Morrow also knew and admired Lucile. Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks: The Life and Times of Lucile Morris Upton. Susan Croce Kelly. University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville. 2023.

by Leland Payton

The Life and Times of Lucile Morris Upton reads the subtitle of Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks, a new book by Susan Croce Kelly. The author knew the pioneering woman journalist. Lucile was her great aunt. It’s much more than a genealogical tribute, though, familiarity with her “bookish family” and small-town background gave insight into Lucille’s rare ability to champion modern technology and at the same time accept the unenlightened behavior of the legendary Ozark hill folk.

Way back when someone was bitten by a dog suspected of having rabies, they would borrow the Morris family’s “madstone”—a small, calcified object found in the gut of a white deer. Backwoods folk believed when this rare object was soaked in warm milk it would draw the “pi-zen” out of the wound. Her literate family knew better but they played along with the superstition. Decades later, when the Springfield business community lit into “hillbilliness” she supported a folk festival which celebrated the old-time ways in her column. The belief Ozark hills and hollows sheltered communities living like our ancestors made good copy and attracted tourists.

Lucile Morris not only wrote hundreds of features covering the atavistic Ozarks, but she also wrote a column for the Springfield News and Leader, “Over the Ozarks,” inviting readers to submit folk songs, legends, and poems. This recognition of the vernacular gave her a large following.

As a child she was enthralled by old timers’ tales of the Civil War and its turbulent aftermath. An outbreak of unsettled scores in the region was covered nationally. Lucile is best known today for her study of the Baldknobbers, the Ozarks’ bloodthirsty post-Civil War vigilantes.

All aspects of the past interested her. The fact that the home of Daniel Boone’s son, Nathan, is a state park and Wilson’s Creek Civil War Battlefield was incorporated into the National Park System is due in large part to her persistent advocacy for their preservation.

Journalists today are often accused of political bias and advocacy in their reporting. Lucile Upton distanced herself from politics or social movements. Susan Kelly notes that although women were once discouraged as newspaper reporters, she was not an active feminist. That her family were all Democrats in a Republican stronghold perhaps made her wary of partisanship. She acknowledged issues had two sides and vigorously pursued objectivity and fairness.

The writer of this biography shares this interest in stories that connect the past with the present. Susan Croce Kelly was once, like Lucile, employed as a reporter by the Springfield News-Leader.  Her book Father of Route 66: The Story of Cy Avery was praised for connecting its subject’s personality and the times in which he lived. That gift of portraying people against a historical backdrop connects the two related writers.

Lucile Morris Upton grasped that the hillbilly was derived from observations of authentic Ozark folk culture. If a pop culture cliché, she didn’t blame the cartoonist, Hollywood, or the media for exploiting this rustic’s popularity. “The public, however, is entitled to know the difference between the genuine and the synthetic,” she believed.

Bald Knobbers, published by Claxton Printers, Caldwell, Idaho. 1939, is a stirring account of vigilante violence in the aftermath of the Civil War. This first edition with graphic dust jacket can go for hundreds of dollars. Lucile interviewed old timers with memories of the night riders who terrorized the White River hills until three Bald Knobbers were hung on the courthouse square in Ozark Missouri in 1889.

Her well-researched book on the Baldknobbers was the first to cover the violent post-Civil War Ozark vigilante. Since that time, numerous accounts have been published, both fiction and nonfiction. Hollywood was interested in making her version into a movie, but World War II redirected their priorities. A recent locally produced movie has been released on DVD. A well-known musical group, The Baldknobbers, have entertained Branson visitors for 60 years.

Lucile worked for years on two unpublished novels. Her characters and locations were praised by editors, but they thought the plots lacked excitement. This is surprising given her vivid account of post-Civil War violence.

On Sept. 7, 2023 Susan Croce Kelly gave a lecture on her new book at the Springfield-Greene County library Center. it was a cut-to-the -chase presentation. Kelly, like her great aunt Lucile Upton, been a journalist of the old school—terse, factual prose without an agenda.

As a native, Lucile had a feeling for the landscape and the people who settled it. She didn’t always share their attachment to primitive ways, but she understood it was a component of their identity.  She disagreed with the modernist, progressive beliefs of Springfield Chamber of Commerce president, John T. Woodruff who underestimated the commerciality of hillbilly-ness as a tourist draw.

Through the many years as a News-Leader reporter, she produced countless features covering every aspect of Ozark folk culture. She covered Thomas Hart Benton, the Herschends, Rose Wilder Lane, the Lynches, Rose O’Neill, Otto Earnest Rayburn, and Harold Bell Wright. She reviewed Vance Randolph’s books but they had an “on again, off again” relationship as Susan Kelly put it.

                                     Susan Croce Kelly signs a book for
Crystal Payton after her Springfield Library talk.

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