The Turnbo Manuscripts
by Silas Claiborne Turnbo
1844-1925
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SHOT TO DEATH IN A DISCUSSION OF THE WAR
By S. C. Turnbo
In the early part of the Civil War Green McDaniel an old man whose sympathies were with the Union rode to Jim McAdams black smith shop one day to have some work done. This shop was in what is known as the Three Move Prairie in Polk County, Mo. It was not long before Rube Lunsford who was a Southern sympathizer came to the shop also. McDaniels had met a friend near the shop and chatted with him and had not yet got down off of his horse and when Rube. Lunsford come up both men got into a discussion over the war news. In a few minutes the dispute waxed into hot words and Lunsford jerked his revolver from the belt and shot McDaniels the third time when he fell from his horse and died. McDaniels and his son Billy who was a feeble minded young man lived in their house alone. They owned an old weight clock that had refused to run for a number of years and when the dead body of McDaniels was brought home Billy claimed that the old clock struck 3 strokes and quit. They informed him that his father was ‘killed at 3 o’clock in the afternoon which Billy said was a warning to him that his father was dead but he did not understand the meaning of it when the clock was striking. The people told Billy that he only imagined that the clock struck and he was mistaken as to it being a reality but Billy said that it was an actual truth and that he was greatly surprised when the old clock which had been dead so long would revive itself and go to work and be busy a few seconds and die again as sudden as it had got to work. Nobody with reasonable sense could put any confidence in what he said about the clock but lie declared that it struck the 3rd time as stated. The foregoing account was narrated to me by Mr. Sam Griffin at his home near Oneta Indian Territory one day in the month of August 1906.
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