Elder George Ellis Gaddy

Captain George Ellis Gaddy's Grave

Road to Clover Creek Today!

From Behind Those Ozark Hills by Jesse Lewis Russell

George Gaddy is the Sister's Great Great Grandfather

He Preached a Literally Free Gospel

Elder George E. Gaddy, a stalwart Baptist minister during the old days, was closely associated with our family, not only in his capacity as a minister, but more especially because of the fact that he was a comrade-in-arms of my father during the Civil War, this association having drawn them together in a common cause. There had been some irregularity concerning the organization with which they were identified in that it was never formally mustered into the service. At least records failed to show that it had been. As a consequence, the men constituting the unit were not in line for pensions and other benefits accorded those who had formally taken up arms in defense of the Union.

It was during their efforts to get this matter straightened out that Captain Gaddy and my father were in huddles frequently for several years. Father was adept at "drawing papers" and had some knowledge of how to assemble evidence in war claims in order to get action, He helped collect scores of claims in order to get action. He helped collect scores of claims for "lost horses." But as ardently as they worked on the matter of securing the lost Company, they never got the job finished. There was always something lacking--a little more knotty red tape to be unwound, until the claim finally wore itself out.

Elder Gaddy was one of the most self-sacrificing of men. He was a member of an early species of the Baptist church who believed in a free gospel in the liberal sense, and he practiced what he preached, extending his liberality in every act as an exponent of the faith he professed. I think he must have prayed with more sick and dying people than any other preacher in the hills. His service in preaching funerals was in constant demand.

In those days it was the custom to set aside some Sunday following the demise of a departed brother, sister, or friend for a memorial service to pay tribute in sermon upon their lives. The custom has long since become a memory, but I am certain it was not without beneficial results. Anyhow, it served in those years of constantly recurring bitterness over the Civil War to allay prejudices and bring people to a better emotional understanding.

I recall that it was Elder Gaddy who officiated at a funeral, after this fashion, for Grandfather William Goforth in 1886, and it seemed to me that a lot of bitterness was dissipated on that day. The spectacle of a veteran of the Union cause pronouncing a eulogy on the life of one of the most unregenerated rebels of the community was not without wholesome effect.

It was only a short time after this incident that Elder Gaddy was induced to some former neighbors to follow them to their new homes in Idaho. Jeff and Bass Butler and their families had joined a colony on Clover Creek in Lincoln County, and the little community wanted a preacher. There were only a half dozen or so families in the little irrigated valley, but they felt their spiritual needs were becoming great after several years of never having heard a preacher's voice. Elder Gaddy, then bent with age and infirmities, decided to answer the call, and, accordingly, he and his aged wife and the one daughter who had remained in the home to attain considerable age moved out to the sagebrush country for the elder to take up his new charge in what was then the deepest of the wild and woolly west.

On the Sunday following their arrival at their strange new home the handful of people on Clover Creek, possibly as many as a dozen, assembled at the little schoolhouse there to hear the first sermon probably any of them had heard in years. Elder Gaddy had delightfully filled the stand and after doxology and felicitations, the elder proceeded with other members of the congregation to walk back toward his improvised new home along the sagebrush fringed path, and while yet almost in the shadow of the house in which worship had been held, he suddenly fell in his tracks, the victim of the fatal heart attack.

Shocked and grieved, his little congregation made such arrangements as were possible and laid his body to rest on an eminence not far removed from the scene. With much informality the good old Baptist minister and veteran captain of the Civil War was laid to rest, to forever occupy a "Home on the Range".

When the word got back to Old Salem, which had been his former charge, and the brothers and sisters there came to talk the distressing incident over, they allowed, some of them that Elder Gaddy had departed from his teachings; that the gospel should be literally free; that he had accepted a call to be paid for his labor;' and that God had struck him dead because he had accepted a purse made up for his support.

Be that matter as it may, good Brother Gaddy did not leave this world without leaving some footprints on the sands of time. In making search for data for this story I found, to my very great delight, a grandson of his, John P. McNeil, of Springfield, Missouri, in who the spirit of the grandfather lives on. He is also a pillar of the Baptist Church in his city and a man of great worth to the community. This grandson is a son of Manley McNeil, who married Elder Gaddy's daughter more than a half century ago. With his parents, John P. left the old stomping ground while in his swaddling clothes, and my research has brought to him information he had been eagerly seeking for several years concerning his grandfather. Mr. McNeil is quite well known to business people of Harrison, not only because of his connection with the Great Southern Loan and Savings Associations of Springfield, but as one of the city;'s greatest benefactors, in that it was he and his associates who gave Harrison its boasted Seville Hotel.

The name Gaddy is a precious one to me. One of my fondest memories is that it was my privilege, while sowing my wild oats in the West in 1891, to visit the desolate scene where my father's old army captain, and the veteran Baptist minister of my youth, is resting. I love to think of him and the simple faith and devotion that characterized his life until he was called to the everlasting home he loved so well to preach about!