Carroll house razed in 1941 for A&P store

One of the things I enjoy most about my job is introducing readers to the Cape Girardeau of years past. It's icing on the cake, when I can include images of those yesterdays.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a good photograph of the house I'm writing about today: the Carroll house. The only image I can find of the house is from a pre-1941 aerial taken by G.D. Fronabarger.

The two-and-a-half-story Carroll house can be seen in the center of this aerial taken by G.D. Fronabarger prior to 1941. It faced east on Spanish Street, between the Kraft Bakery and Common Pleas Courthouse Park. (Southeast Missourian archive)

The house was on Spanish Street, north of Independence Street and the Kraft Bakery. It was torn down in the spring of 1941 to make way for what has become a downtown landmark: the A&P store. At the time of its demolition, the history of the house and the families that built and occupied it were debated, resulting in several articles in the Southeast Missourian.

The following month another article added more details about the house's long history.

Five days later, the Missourian published a clarification to the above article.

MEDLEY WRITES OF HISTORICAL ERROR

JACKSON -- Francis N. Medley, who is in the Woodmen Sanatorium in Colorado Springs, Colo., writes, under date of June 7, as follows: "I notice in The Missourian an article on the history of that place on Spanish Street at Cape. There is an error in it, and I thought it best to correct same or people might think I don't know what I am talking about. One generation was left out. As it is printed it appears that Hattie Carroll wife of Barney Carroll, was a daughter of John Curry Watson, and the mother of my mother, which is wrong. Capt. John Curry Watson was my mother's, and also Hatty Carroll's, grandfather. Capt. John Curry Watson had a daughter, Elizabeth, who married Isaac Newton Campbell. The two daughters of this marriage were Hattie Campbell who married Major Barney Carroll, and Addie Campbell, who married Joseph F. Medley. These were my parents, and were married in 1879. My mother was reared in the old Carroll house, and so long as my aunt Hattie Carroll lived I spent many days in the old place."

All of those names are a bit confusing. Apparently, the house was named for Alonzo "Barney" Carroll, who lived there with his wife, Harriet "Hattie" Campbell Carroll. Hattie was the granddaughter of John Curry Watson and Sarah Bradley Watson, who were the likely builders of the North Spanish Street house, according to Frank Medley, who is quoted above. Alonzo died in 1887 and Hattie three years later. Because their deaths are so early, I've been unable to locate obituaries for them.

Barney Carroll had a brother named Richard, who lived at 227 S. Spanish St. , in Cape Girardeau. Richard's 1924 obituary gives some interesting background on the two brothers:

"Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on March 7, 1844, (Richard) Carroll came to Cape Girardeau with his father (also Richard Carroll), who was a stock buyer, at the age of 6 years, and since that time, except for three years spent in the army during the Civil War, and a shorter period in St. Louis, has lived here.

"Shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War, a company of recruits was organized in this vicinity by Barney Carroll, a brother, and the youth (Richard Carroll Jr.), then only 16 years old, ran away from home and joined the Federal troops, participating in major engagements at Chickamauga, Murphysboro and a number of other battles in the South before he was 20 years of age. He was wounded late in the war by an explosion of a bomb, but the injury was not serious.

"Discharged from the army in 1865, (Richard) Carroll (Jr.) came back to Cape Girardeau and after a short time here went to St. Louis where he was employed in a factory. In a few months he returned here and organized a furniture factory, which he operated for a time, but later gave up.

"In later years he was affiliated with river work in Cape Girardeau and operated a ferry here for many years..."

According to online sources, John Curry Watson was born in 1796 in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, and died in Cape Girardeau in 1866. If he, indeed, was the builder of the North Spanish Street home, as Mr. Medley asserted, the house was much older than the estimated 1879 date of construction.