Tag: Smoky Row

It’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood…

Posted on by brian1902

As a follow up, here’s a quaint item illustrating exactly how fragrant the vicinity of Lt. Chandler’s penultimate resting place had become by the time they moved the tomb:

“Cephus McStravick, evidently a sporting gentleman, fond of fire arms, was arrested for indulging his ruling passion in unlawful, not to say exceedingly dangerous manner. It appears that Cephus was passing through the jungles in the neighborhood of the Sulphur Spring, when his eye rested upon a woman standing at a second story window of one of the houses in that locality. Cephus expressed himself to the effect that she offered a good mark for his pistol, which he drew. The woman dodged, but defendant fired, and his ball passed through an adjoining window and into an apartment which was fortunately tenantless at that moment. The Court regarded the offence as a flagrant one, and inflicted the highest penalty in its power, $50 and costs.”

[“Police Court,” Nashville, TN Republican Banner, Apr. 23, 1857.]

So…a gambler uses a woman at a brothel window for target practice. Just another fine day in the “jungles.”

And also…”Cephus McStravick?” Really?

Tune in next time…

Something’s Afoot

Posted on by brian1902

Some of these stories defy logic. Case in point…

December 26, 1864: Nashville was hopping with holiday cheer as well as a celebratory mood. Just ten days earlier, the Union army had won an overwhelming victory over Hood’s Confederate forces outside the city. Many of the combat veterans were in a mood to blow off some steam, and headed into the “jungle” (as one editor called it) of downtown to look for trouble.

As could be imagined, they were a rough bunch and used to rough ways. It was the thankless task of the Provost Marshal’s office to run herd on the boys in blue when they got too out of hand in their fun. Drawn from the many units stationed around the city, these forerunners of the Military Police had to be prepared to deal with all manner of issues as they patrolled their beat.

However, I’m not sure anyone could be prepared to deal with (much less explain) the antics of Private William A. Davidson.

Davidson was a hardened veteran serving with Co. L, 5th Iowa Cavalry, and had just put in a grueling few days’ service chasing Hood out of Tennessee. The morning after Christmas, he was hauled into the Provost office on Cedar Street (now Charlotte Ave.) carrying three odd boots under his arms – none of which had mates.

Seems the little Irishman has a strange “mania” to collect boots that don’t belong to him, and has been arrested three times in the last few months for the same crime. On one occasion he was sentenced to a month in jail and given a stern lecture upon release. Within hours, he was back in custody, carrying another stolen boot.

Lt. Parks of the Provost had run-ins previously with him, and when he spotted Davidson with the purloined footwear, his mouth dropped open. The officer quickly recovered, and  made a shrewd bargain with his suspect. If Parks released him, could Davidson go out and steal the mates to the boots, so that they know where they came from and have all the pieces together at headquarters? Drawing himself up with as much dignity as he can, Davidson responded, “Lieutenant, if you let me off this time, if I don’t bring you the mates of these boots before night, may I be damned!”

Davidson departed on his “mission.” Like any good cop, Parks put a tail on him, apparently hoping to draw out “Mr. Big” and find out where he was getting his supply. In the meantime, the papers advertised that the owner of the three orphan boots might collect them at the Provost office. A grateful soul appeared the following day and claimed his property,  while the newspaper speculated that Davidson would be back with more stolen boots by nightfall. If he was, there was no mention of it. Apparently he ducked his tail and made it back to his unit in the field.

A glance at the records of the 5th Iowa Cavalry yields the fact that Davidson was 22, born in Ireland, and enlisted in the regiment at Ft. Heiman, KY in 1862. He served for the rest of the war and proves a reliable soldier when under arms, seeing action in several campaigns. Despite his odd obsession, he was awarded an honorable discharge at Nashville on June 9, 1865. Apparently he was a good enough trooper that his superiors overlooked his strange hobby.

So what happened to Davidson after his discharge…who knows? Perhaps some diligent researcher combing the newspapers of the Midwest from the 1860’s and ’70’s might yet uncover another chapter in what must be one of the strangest one-man crime waves of the century.

 

A Pair of Loafers

Posted on by brian1902

Difference

One of the interesting things about research is that you never know where the sources will take you.

The Nashville Union gave the following brief notice in its April 9, 1840 issue: “MURDER: James Claxton stabbed a man by the name of Moses Parks at a house of ill fame in this city on Tuesday. Parks died immediately, and Claxton made his escape.”

The New Orleans Times-Picayune shed little additional light on the case, except to take a shot at the character of both men: “They were both loafers.”

For a long time these two brief articles were all I could find on the incident. However, a little searching in the Tennessee State Penitentiary Records and the Circuit Court Minutes at the Tennessee State Library filled in the blanks. What the sources reveal provides an unusually rich slice of the world of gamblers, ladies of the evening, and – yes – “loafers” who could be found in the back alleys of pre-Civil War Nashville.

Jim Claxton was 21 at the time, born and raised in Nashville. 5’9 1/2″ tall, 167 lbs. with black hair, hazel eyes and a dark complexion, he had first been a horse jockey, “until too large.” Thereafter he “followed the River,” working as a deckhand and fireman aboard the many boats plying the Cumberland. He also seems to have been a rough customer, with scars on the left cheek, left leg, and left arm, and had at one point been “Shot in the left arm & leg.” Intriguingly, his mother is said to have kept “a house of ill-fame” on “Vinegar Hill” in Nashville (on the bank of the Cumberland, near the present-day intersection of Adams and Van Buren Streets.) Whether her establishment was the one where the fight happened is not mentioned.

On April 7, 1840 – as loafers often do – he was drinking with cronies in the brothel of Judy Young in Nashville when Moses Parks stormed into the place. Earlier, he’d had a fight with Parks and witnesses edged towards the exits as the two faced off. Parks accused Claxton of ripping his shirt earlier, then reached out and tore the ruffle off the front of Claxton’s own shirt, saying, “Now we are even!”

A “hurt and afraid” Claxton responded “[Expletive] Yes we are!” before pulling a clasp knife from his pocket with a blade “about the length of his finger,” and stabbed Parks in the chest. Parks died very shortly thereafter while Claxton made a hasty getaway. He was soon apprehended and taken to jail, charged with murder.

Tried on May 12, 1840, he was found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter, and sentenced to 5 years at hard labor in the State Penitentiary. He appealed to the Supreme Court of the state and was granted a hearing. Four days before Christmas they rendered their verdict: Even though the Judge made questionable remarks to the jury during his instructions, the high court ruled he had not actually committed an error. The verdict stood, and the same day Jim Claxton entered the prison on Church Street to start his five year sentence.

He didn’t make it. Like many another, he fell victim to the horrifying conditions within the hell hole that was “Old Red Top.” On March 18, 1844 he died of “marasmus,” or acute malnutrition. To put it another way, just three years into his sentence, the once robust young man had died of starvation.

In a sense, James Claxton and Moses Parks were both tragic nobodies, living and dying in the shadows of Jacksonian Nashville. But the their case serves as a peek into their squalid world, and allows us a more thorough view of the “have nots” as well as the “haves” of the city on the Cumberland in the 1840’s.

It’s also a lesson that not everything is out there on the net…sometimes ya just gotta dig.