Location of Massacre Site

The backstory not only makes for an interesting bit of research, but one that I would come to find out decades later perhaps had a bit more importance to my family since a family member was in the same regiment that the executed men belonged to. The 1st Northeast Regiment, Missouri Cavalry was a Confederate Army regiment that formed in 1861 under the leadership of Colonel Joseph C. Porter. While this regiment does not have an extremely well-documented story, the list includes a number of important battles and events, with the Palmyra Massacre being among them.

On October 18, 1862 ten Confederate prisoners of war were executed as punishment by order of Colonel John McNeil, who was later known as the “Butcher of Palmyra”, for the abduction of a local Union supporter, Andrew Alsman. There was much controversy surrounding the executions including that at the time of their capture the men had not yet sworn oaths of service to the Confederacy and many believed them to be guerillas with no formal allegiance to the Confederate Army.

The missing Andrew Alsman was a carpenter, sixty years old, and a Union patriot in a mostly pro-Confederate area. A Union source describes him as highly respected and conscientious, a man who did his duty by leading Union forces to arrest local Confederate sympathizers.

Alsman was taken prisoner by Colonel Porter’s forces when Porter raided Palmyra on September 12, 1862. After several skirmishes, Porter decided that Alsman was a liability and granted his freedom. Alsman hesitated to leave the Confederate camp as there were several men who had family members he had informed on. To ensure safety, Porter allowed him to choose a detail that would accompany him to the city limits of Palmyra or to the nearest Union lines.

After departing from camp, Alsman was never seen again. Speculation and therefore tradition states that he was taken into the woods in northern Marion County or southern Lewis County and shot.

On October 8, Provost Marshal William R. Strachan, a former deputy U. S. Marshal in Missouri, acting for Colonel McNeil, published a notice in the local Union newspaper, the Palmyra Courier to Confederate Colonel Joseph C. Porter. McNeil threatened that unless Alsman was returned within ten days, ten of Porter’s men held as prisoners in Palmyra and Hannibal would be executed.

Porter may never have seen the notice, and most writers agree that Alsman had already been targeted by personal enemies within Porter’s ranks. As a result, the Confederate colonel was unable to return him. Nonetheless, Alsman’s presumed murder was perceived as part of a pattern of extralegal actions that Porter’s enemies viewed as characteristic of his command, tolerated, if not encouraged, by the Rebel leader.

On the evening of October 17, ten prisoners were selected, five from the jail in Hannibal, Missouri, and five from the jail in Palmyra. None of the men had any connection with the disappearance of Alsman. For example, Willis Baker was in the Palmyra jail because his sons were said to be riding with Colonel Porter and was also reported to have killed a Union supporting neighbor in the previous year. All ten were executed on October 18 by a firing squad of thirty soldiers from the Second Missouri State Militia.

We journeyed to the location on a warm, pleasant, sunny day in Fall. There was a light breeze and our travel mates consisted of my father, mother, my two-year younger sister, and myself. Being an avid photographer, my father decided to try out his newest Polaroid instant camera at the site. He told me that it had previously been the old fairgrounds. I thought it such a grim backstory to a place that would bring joy to so many people before being retired to life as a hay-producing pasture.

As I stood there in front of the fencerow, breeze blowing lightly against me, the sun in my eyes, my dad snapped a photo of me standing in front of what appeared to be just another empty field barely outside of the town of Palmyra. It was, after all, daylight, bright, and we saw nothing around us except grass and the fence at the edge of the road. The photo turned out fine and we went about our day.

I stowed the photo to take to class on Monday and made sure to grab it that morning. I showed the photo to my teacher proudly, as I had gone above and beyond the assignment and proved that I not only learned something, but immersed myself in it. Almost as soon as she inspected the photo, she noticed a shadow beside me and mentioned that she thought it looked like a soldier standing with a long gun beside him. I looked and said that I didn’t remember it being there when we took the photo, to which she simply said that it must be a ghost.

I showed my parents when I returned home from school and we all did not recall the shadow while there, but largely dismissed it. I put the photo in my desk drawer and didn’t look it for a number of years. The next time I looked, the shadow was not visible on the photo which I showed my sister and she thought it was odd. I put it back and didn’t think about it for awhile. A number of years later I ran across the photo and the shadow was back! I started randomly checking and it seemed that every few months or longer the status of if the shadow was there or not would change, flipping from visible, to not there.