Gasconade County, Missouri Genealogy Trails

Newspaper Articles

The Quincy Daily Whig, Saturday, August 06, 1853, Page 2, [transcribed by Debbie Gibson]

[From the Jefferson Inquirer of the 30th]

A most desperate and deliberate murder was committed in Gasconade county on Tuesday night last by Stephen Howser, on the person of William Farris.
The murderer and the deceased and others were at Mr. Luster's store a greater part of the day on Tuesday, when some difficulty arose between them.

On the way home, Howser had to pass the residence of Farris, and when they got that far, Howser persuaded Farris to accompany him home. When he arrived at the house of an aunt of Howser, they stopped. After supper, Howser told his aunt to go into another room. While in the room she heard a noise,
and thought she heard something fall on the floor.

As soon as the noise had ceased, Howser came to the door of the room where she was, and ordered her to come out. She then went into the room where Farris was, and seeing him murdered, she ran to the bed and caught up a little child in her arms, when Howser ordered her to walk before him to his grandmother's, Mrs. Wyatt's, some half mile distant, where he armed himself, and after exacting a pledge from the woman not to tell as long as they could avoid it, left on horseback.

Farris was most brutally murdered – his throat was cut from ear to ear, and stabbed in eleven places, either of which wounds, it is supposed, would have caused death.

The Governor offers a reward of $200 for the apprehension and delivery of Howser to the Sheriff of Gasconade, and $200 more will be raised by the citizens.