Colorful pasts: Area mayors dealt with everything

Three hundred unemployed men threatened to kill one of Cape Girardeau's past mayors and blow up the town unless they were fed. One of Jackson's mayors railed against bootleggers from Bollinger County. A former mayor of Illmo, one of the towns that eventually became Scott City, operated a saloon and mail-order whiskey business.

The history of these area towns in many ways can be told through their mayors: Scott City's railroad men, the German background of flour mill operator G.C. Thilenius in Cape Girardeau, and the law-and-order background of Jackson's one-time acting mayor Ben Gockel, who served for many years as county sheriff.

Gockel, who had the city's first horse-drawn hearse, supervised Cape Girardeau County's last legal hanging. On June 15, 1899, 20-year-old John Headrick was hung from a mulberry tree on the courthouse lawn in Jackson for murdering Jackson-area farmer James Lail.

The names of Gockel and other long-ago mayors have been largely forgotten, relegated to yellowed newspaper clippings and in some cases street signs. But some were colorful community leaders who sometimes garnered more attention outside city hall.

Thilenius, who emigrated from Germany in 1848 and settled in Southeast Missouri in the late 1850s, served as Cape Girardeau's mayor from 1867 to 1873. As mayor, he convened a public meeting at the fairgrounds in October 1871 to solicit donations to assist the city of Chicago after its devastation by fire.

Thilenius was known locally for the flour he milled. His flour was judged the best in the world at the Vienna Exposition in Austria in 1873.

In 1894, Mayor Harlan Pieronnet had to face an "army" of angry, unemployed Americans in who stopped in Cape Girardeau on their journey to Washington to demand the government finance a massive public works program. A group of about 300 men led by Charles Kelly of San Francisco descended on Cape Girardeau in a makeshift armada traveling down the Mississippi River.

As Kelly's group approached Cape Girardeau, they reportedly threatened to kill the mayor and "blow up the town" if they weren't provided with food, according to a newspaper account published in 1951.

Cape Girardeau residents provided food, and the city was spared, according to an account by Edward Blomeyer, a local railroad superintendent and member of the city council at the time of the march.

William Coerver, who served as mayor from 1895 to 1901 and again from 1905 to 1907, was a local banker who had the first telephone installed in a home in Cape Girardeau and the first gas range.

Sawmill operator M.E Leming headed up the city government from 1909 to 1911. In October 1909, he paraded through town with President William Howard Taft and a band of cowboys from a Wild West show as part of ceremonies associated with the president's Mississippi River trip. During his administration, the city moved from a volunteer to a city fire department.

1,000 marriages

Fred Kage, who lead Cape Girardeau's government from 1911 to 1917, was a deputy sheriff, justice of the peace, Common Pleas court clerk, deputy U.S. marshal, coroner, public administrator and president of the school board during his work life. As a judge, he performed nearly 1,000 marriages.

A bugler in the Second Missouri Cavalry during the Civil War, Kage preferred boots to shoes. He recalled exchanging a bottle of whiskey for a pair of boots while serving in the cavalry and continued wearing boots the rest of his life.

Jackson's mayors included William Paar, who led the city from 1889 to 1891 and again from 1893 to 1903. He was better known for his role as a judge on the county court.

The Southeast Missourian reported his death on its front page in 1920. "He was an official who could distinguish between penury and economy, consequently was always ready to sanction any movement that meant progress and better and better conditions for the people of his county," the newspaper said.

Ben Gockel was known more for his years as county sheriff than as acting mayor of Jackson in 1893. He also operated a livery stable.

"He kept a glass carriage for weddings and special occasions, and personally conducted governors and other notables on their campaign tours in this county," the Southeast Missourian reported when he died in 1939.

During Prohibition, Mayor Sam Vandivort had no use for bootleggers he believed to be from Bollinger County. "Mayor Sam Vandivort has become incensed by rumors and reports that bootlegging is going on in Jackson and has called upon the police force to be on the lookout for those who bring the firewater to Jackson," the Southeast Missourian reported in 1922.

Edward Hays, who served as Jackson mayor from 1903 to 1907, later served two terms in Congress.

Longtime Jackson school superintendent Russell O. Hawkins, for whom the junior high school was named, served as mayor from 1969 to 1971. Hawkins was a teacher and administrator in the Jackson schools for 39 years, retiring in 1968.

In Scott City, retired riverboat captain Jefferson P. Lightner was legendary. Beginning in 1908, he served 14 years as mayor of Illmo. He died in 1931.

Lightner built and opened the town's opera house and donated the land for the city cemetery named after him. He built the Jefferson Hotel in 1905 and later two more hotels and at least 24 other buildings.

He also had a saloon and conducted a mail-order whiskey business.

Many of Scott City's mayors were railroad men. The industry was the major employer in the early 1900s and still plays an important role.

The Hoppy locomotive at Arena Park in Cape Girardeau is named for Virgil Hopkins, a mayor who drove the train for the cement plant.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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