https://www.patreon.com/m2ha, https://mcneale.academia.edu/

Mid-Missouri History Associates, Boonville, MO (2025)

12/08/2025

PART III - Epilogue
The Children, the Aftermath, and the Silence of an Unsolved Death

Philip Back’s death in November 1874 left behind more than a widow and children—it left behind a mystery that would never be solved. Though the legal machinery of Cooper County moved on, handling the estate through notices, auctions, debt settlements, and final accounting, the Back family itself remained bound to Morgan Street and to the questions surrounding Philip’s final hours.

His estate was small and burdened by debts, forcing the probate court to sell his saloon, his tools, and the family’s real estate. Yet despite the sale of Lot 220, the 1880 census still shows Elizabeth Barbara Back and four of her children living on Morgan Street. How this happened is not fully recorded; perhaps friends in Boonville’s German community helped, or the family managed to rent back the property. What is certain is that the small home on Morgan Street remained the Back family’s center long after the legal title was gone.

In the years following Philip’s death, his children grew into adulthood shaped by the collapse of their father’s livelihood and the hardships of a household run by a widowed mother.

Ernst A. Back, the eldest son—and the boy who discovered his father’s body—first worked as a brewery clerk in St. Louis. But by 1910 he had returned permanently to Boonville, living once again on Lot 220, the same patch of ground where his childhood home had stood. He worked first as a potter, then as a night watchman for the Armour Packing Company. Ernst died in Boonville on March 29, 1928, and rests in Walnut Grove Cemetery, not far from his parents. More than any of the siblings, Ernst remained tied to the physical space of the family’s early life—returning to Morgan Street and living in the family home. That home is now gone, but lot 220 - behind the old F.M. Stamper building, remains - empty and filled with memory.

William J. Back, the second son, sought opportunity beyond Cooper County. By 1880 he was already working in a pottery, and later he moved to Red Wing, Minnesota, a center of river trade and manufacturing. There he built a career, raised a family, and spent the rest of his life, dying in 1939. Though he left Missouri early, he remained part of the broader Back family network found across the Midwest.

Lawrence J. Back, apprenticed as a blacksmith at age fifteen, followed the well-worn path of many German-American craftsmen into St. Louis. In the 1900 census he was recoreded as living on Franklin Avenue in a boarding house. His employment continued to be in the blacksmith trade. By the turn of the century he had settled there permanently, working in the city’s expanding industrial economy. Lawrence died in 1931, his life reflecting the migration pattern of countless sons of Missouri’s German enclaves: from river town to metropolis.

The Back daughters forged more domestic but equally enduring legacies.

Mary A. Back married into the Schleusner family and moved to the St. Louis area, settling in Clayton. She raised children—Lawrence R. Erst, Robert A. Erst, and two daughters—who carried the Back lineage into the twentieth century. Her obituary, published in 1930, remembers her as a devoted mother and a woman deeply rooted in both Boonville and St. Louis. Among her surviving relatives were cousins from notable Boonville families, reflecting the intertwining of German-American kinship networks across the state.

Emma Back, the youngest daughter, never married. She remained in Boonville for her entire life, first caring for her mother and later living quietly near the family’s longtime home. She died in 1924. Without descendants of her own, Emma became the memory-keeper - along with older brother Ernst - of the Back household, preserving continuity through her presence on Morgan Street. Ernst was the informant on her death certificate.

Through these lives—scattered between Boonville, St. Louis, and Minnesota—the Back family persisted despite the rupture of 1874. They became potters, blacksmiths, clerks, homemakers, mothers, watchmen, and wage earners. Their careers were modest but steady, reflecting the dignity and perseverance of working-class German immigrants and their children in postwar Missouri.

Yet through all these changes, no justice ever came for Philip Back.

Some whispered that he had taken his own life, yet almost none of the contemporary reporting supported that idea. Newspapers of the time were nearly unanimous in expressing suspicion. The missing $180, the intact pocketbook found empty, the door mysteriously locked from the inside, and the removed cistern board, all fueled speculation. Even the coroner’s jury—caught between insufficient evidence and public unease—left their verdict ambiguous: “Drowned or death by violence.”

The lack of recovered money became the centerpiece of public doubt. Nearly every editorial emphasized it. “Where is the money?” became the unspoken question hanging over Main Street. No suspect was arrested. No evidence emerged. And no confession ever surfaced.

In the end, the Back children grew to adulthood with the knowledge that their father’s death—violent, sudden, and deeply suspicious—was a mystery that Boonville never solved. The town moved on. Their mother raised her children. Their lives branched outward. But the unanswered questions remained part of the family’s inheritance.

Today, only the graves of the Philip and Barbara Back rest at Walnut Grove Cemetery and are all that remain to tell the story.

The Back family endured. The mystery simply lingered, unanswered, until time carried it quietly into history. And more than 150 years later, the unanswered question still echoes from the edge of that long-vanished cistern:

What really happened to Philip Back?

12/07/2025

PART II — “The Mysterious Death of Philip Back (1865–1874)

The years following the Civil War were a period of rebuilding for Missouri’s German communities, and for Philip Back they brought both opportunity and challenge. His transition from cooper to brewer had proven successful; by the early 1870s he operated a small brewery near the railroad depot and a saloon on Main Street that served both his own beer and St. Louis brews. His home on West Morgan Street stood only a short walk away, where he lived with his wife, Elizabeth Barbara, and their children—Ernst, William, Lawrence, Mary, and baby Emma. A reporter for the Boonville Weekly Eagle praised his diligence, calling him a man who “manufactures a very good article of beer” and who “gives his personal attention to the business.” Philip Back had earned the reputation of an honest, industrious German tradesman.

Yet even in these years of apparent stability, he faced the pressures common to small brewers. Brewing in the era before refrigeration was difficult and seasonal; the business required constant attention, a steady supply of barley, hops, and clean water, and the perpetual headache of competition. Philip advertised heavily in 1874—one line read, “If you want a cool glass of good St. Louis beer, go to Phillip Back’s saloon on Main Street”—suggesting a man working to keep customers and revenues flowing.

By late November 1874, Philip had gathered a modest sum of money—$180—which he intended to use for business purposes. On Sunday, November 29, he asked his wife to hold it for safekeeping overnight. Early the next morning, Monday, November 30, Philip rose at about five o’clock. He woke his teenage son, Ernst, telling him to stay home to help his mother with chores while he went ahead to prepare the saloon for the day’s work. Before he stepped out, he returned to Elizabeth Barbara and asked for the money. She gave it to him in bills tucked inside a leather pocketbook along with a small city warrant. Philip appeared cheerful. No one suspected this would be the last time she would see him alive.

Philip walked up Morgan Street toward Main, unlocked his saloon, and entered. A few minutes later he went next door to Joseph Holtzman’s saloon to repay a dime he owed. Holtzman later testified that Philip seemed in good spirits and spoke briefly about routine matters before returning to his own establishment. It was the final confirmed sighting of him alive.

When young Ernst approached the saloon around six o’clock, intending to help his father with cleaning, he noticed that the front door was locked from the inside. The key remained in the keyhole on the interior side. Using a technique familiar to 19th-century boys, he pushed his own key into the lock, forcing the interior key to drop out, and then let himself inside. The room was quiet and dim, but Ernst immediately sensed something was wrong. One of the wooden boards covering the cistern behind the saloon had been pulled aside. His father’s hat lay nearby on the ground.

Ernst walked to the edge of the cistern and looked down. In the darkness he saw the unmistakable outline of a body floating face down in the water. With a cry, he fled the saloon and dashed into the street to summon help. Within minutes a crowd formed as neighbors and shopkeepers rushed in. A ladder was lowered, and several men climbed down into the deep cistern to retrieve the body. Philip Back was lifted out and laid across a large barrel. In desperation the men rolled him back and forth, trying to force water from his lungs. His wife arrived in hysterics, crying out over the lifeless form of her husband as water streamed from his mouth and nose. Doctors F. D. Johns and P. Johns soon arrived, but the efforts were futile. Philip had been dead for some time.

An inquest was convened the same morning. The testimony painted a picture filled with troubling inconsistencies. Elizabeth Barbara testified that Philip had been in good spirits and had shown no signs of despair. She confirmed that he carried $180 that morning but that the pocketbook was not recovered on his body. Ernst recounted how he had found the saloon locked from within, the cistern board pried loose, and the hat lying by the opening. Holtzman stated that Philip was sober and cheerful when he spoke with him shortly before his disappearance. A barkeeper from a nearby establishment described the frantic attempts to resuscitate him and noted that the pockets had been checked with no trace of the money. Dr. F. D. Johns testified that Philip had a bruise on his nose, fresh enough to suggest violence or a fall, though he told the jury that the cause of death was “drowning or death by violence.”

When the jury rendered its verdict, it reflected the ambiguity of the evidence. They concluded that Philip Back came to his death by drowning or by violence “at the hands of some unknown person.” Almost immediately the newspapers dispensed with the caution of official language. The Boonville Daily News and Advertiser, the State Times of Jefferson City, and the Sedalia Democrat all hinted—some boldly, some subtly—that Philip had likely been murdered for the money he carried. The missing pocketbook, the removed cistern board, the locked saloon door, and the bruise on his face all strengthened that suspicion. Few in Boonville believed he had taken his own life, and fewer still believed the events were accidental.

But no suspect was ever identified. No one was arrested. The case went cold as quickly as it had erupted into public attention.

In life, Philip Back had risen from immigrant child to respected German-American tradesman. In death, he became the center of one of Boonville’s most haunting and unresolved tragedies.

12/06/2025

The Life of Philip Back
PART I — “From Saarland to Saloonkeeper:

Philip Peter Back’s life began far from the Missouri River, in the old German principality of Nassau–Saarbrücken, a borderland of wooded hills and mining villages near today’s Saarland. Born in 1821, he entered the world at a time when Europe was still reshaped by the upheavals of the Napoleonic wars. Like thousands of German families caught between poor harvests, crowded farmland, and limited opportunity, the Back family looked to America for a new beginning.

In the summer of 1829, when Philip was only eight years old, his parents gathered their children and boarded the packet ship Edward Bonaffé at Le Havre, France. The voyage ended in New York on July 30, and from there the family joined the westward tide of German immigrants bound for the fertile valleys of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. By the mid-nineteenth century, German-speaking families were firmly established throughout central Missouri—including Cooper County—bringing with them their language, their trades, and their brewing traditions.

By the time Philip reached adulthood, he had already become part of Boonville’s growing German-American community. Like many German craftsmen, he entered a skilled trade, working first as a cooper—a maker of barrels and casks. The trade suited him, and later it would provide the foundation for his move into the beer business. On May 4, 1853, in Boonville, he married Elizabeth Barbara Stegner, a recent immigrant from Saxony-Coburg who had arrived in America in 1849. The couple established a home among Boonville’s German settlers and soon welcomed children into their growing family.

Philip Back’s earliest years of marriage were marked by hard work and tragedy. He and Elizabeth lost their young daughter, Magdalena “Lena” Back, in February 1862, when she was just four years old. Her memory stands as the first sorrow recorded in the family’s American story.

Even as he raised a family and built his trade, Philip moved steadily toward becoming a full participant in American civic life. In March 1860, he completed the process of naturalization in the Cooper County Circuit Court, with fellow German-Americans George William Sahm and Adam Zimmerman serving as his witnesses. Philip Back was now legally an American citizen.

Barely a year later, Missouri found itself caught in the storm of the Civil War, and Boonville, strategically located on the Missouri River, became one of the first flashpoints. On June 17, 1861, the First Battle of Boonville was fought, with Union forces under the command of Nathaniel Lyon prevailed. Philip, along with numerous other immigrants, enlisted on June 20, 1861, in the Boonville Reserve Corps, part of the Union Home Guard commanded by fellow German, Joseph Eppstein. These units were overwhelmingly German-American and fiercely loyal to the Union cause. Their early months of service were chaotic and poorly supplied, and tensions between volunteer soldiers and their commanders ran high.

Philip was mustered into the Home Guard alongside several other members of the Back family—Anthony Back, Gottfried Back, and Peter Back—all from the Boonville Township. Their service soon became entangled in controversy. By September 1861, many of the three-month volunteers were close to the end of their service. On September 13, they fought in the Second Battle of Boonville - suffering two killed and a handful wounded.

On September 30, many believed their enlistments had expired and demanded discharge; several, including Anthony and Gottfried Back, were arrested on September 27 for formally requesting release. The men were transported to Old Capitol Prison in St. Louis and petitioned Maj. Gen. John C. Frémont for justice, complaining that they had not been paid for their service and were held illegally past their terms. It was a turbulent, uncertain moment for Missouri Unionists, especially for those who had enlisted early in good faith.

Philip Back never reached such extremes. His military service ended on October 31, 1861, when he was discharged for disability, likely the result of illness or injury sustained during the strenuous early campaigns. But the war left its mark on him, as it did on every German-American household in Boonville.

When peace slowly returned to central Missouri, Philip Back returned to civilian life with the same diligence that had defined his earlier years. His skill as a cooper—and his familiarity with barrels, fermentation, and storage—naturally pulled him into a new occupation: brewing. By the late 1850s he was already known as a cooper; by the early 1860s and certainly by the end of the war, he had fully transitioned into the beer trade.

By 1863, draft enrollment records identified him explicitly as a brewer, signaling a clear change in profession. Over the next decade he would expand that work into a modest brewing operation near the railroad depot and later a saloon on Main Street, embedding himself deeply into Boonville’s German commercial life.

From immigrant child to naturalized citizen, from cooper to brewer, from Home Guard volunteer to respected Main Street tradesman—Philip Back’s early life was one of steady labor, family devotion, and upward progress. No one in Boonville could have foreseen how suddenly and violently that life would end.

12/04/2025

I'll be there. For the first time in years I won't have to worry about being at a wrestling tournament. I'm very much looking forward to this?

12/04/2025

Is there a site or structure in your community in need of saving, preservation, etc.?

On this page, I frequently bring you stories from the past. I love telling them and it's worth noting that many times... I am learning myself. I don't claim an endless supply of historical knowledge.

My posts are a little fewer during the school because I'm fairly busy with my job. So, while between stories, I thought I would try something different - my background is in historic preservation. After my last post about the murder at the old Haas Brewery I got to thinking about those old ruins (on private property) and I wondered...

What sites or structures in your community are in need of saving and preservation? I'd love to hear from my followers about the areas in central Missouri area in need of preservation and care.

Let me know your thoughts! What's out there that needs saving?

11/27/2025

May all of you have a blessed Thanksgiving with friends and family. Thank you for your support, follows, and shares. I truly am blessed and thankful for my fellow history enthusiasts!

11/22/2025

The Murder at Haas’ Brewery: A Reconstruction of the White Case (1864–1865)

By Eric McNeal / Mid-Missouri History Associates

On a humid July night in 1864, as the Civil War ground through its fourth exhausting summer, an aging fisherman known only as White met a violent and mysterious end on the grounds of Haas’ Brewery, a mile west of Boonville. Though he had lived near the town for many years, making his living along the shifting waters of the Missouri River, his murder would slip into shadow—recorded only in brief, fragmentary notices scattered across the newspapers of the time.

A Fisherman Known Only by His Trade

White was a familiar figure about Boonville. He and his son-in-law, a man surnamed Rowden, supported themselves through fishing and hunting, bringing their catch to market each spring and fall. The two men had recently traveled upriver to Providence in Boone County, working the river there. For reasons lost to time, White returned to Boonville alone in mid-July 1864.

With no certain lodging, he sought permission to sleep at Haas’ Brewery, operated by the influential German Haas family. The brewery, like many such businesses in the era, included small frame houses for laborers and transient workers. White bedded down in one of these modest structures—a simple outbuilding separated from the main brewery by a branch of water crossed by a narrow plank bridge.

A Quiet Footstep, a Brief Word, a Gunshot

Sometime between nine and ten o’clock on Sunday night, July 17, 1864, a resident of another small house nearby—a woman identified in the press only as “Mrs. Buch”—heard someone cross the plank bridge toward the little dwelling where White slept. She heard the door open, followed by the low murmur of a few exchanged words.

Then came the fatal sound:
A pistol shot, so faint she described it as scarcely louder than “the bursting of a cap.”

Moments later, she heard the unknown figure re-cross the bridge, retreating into darkness.

At dawn, White was found in his bed, shot through the body at close range, powder burns marking the wound. A Coroner’s jury convened immediately, but their investigation produced nothing beyond what had already been observed. The killer’s identity—and motive—remained entirely unknown.

A Speculative Shadow: Who Was “Mrs. Buch”?

One curious wrinkle lingers in this otherwise stark account. The witness’s name—“Buch”—may be a typesetter’s approximation of one of several similar German surnames common in wartime Boonville.

It is speculative, but circumstantially possible, that she could have been Barbara Back (Bach/Buch/Bock), wife of Philip Peter Back, a cooper and brewer who served in the Boonville Reserve Corps (Home Guards) and fought in the Second Battle of Boonville in 1861 before being discharged for disability. His trade as a cooper, and possible work in local brewing circles, would have placed the Back family within the orbit of the Haas Brewery and the German-American community that sustained it.

There is no direct evidence that Philip and Barbara Back lived on the brewery grounds, nor any document naming Barbara as the witness. But the combination of surname similarity, occupational overlap, and geographic proximity creates a thread of circumstantial possibility—one of the few human links left dangling in this fading tragedy. They would have their own tragedy nearly ten years later when Philip was found murdered outside his own business - but that is a tale for another time.

The Arrest and Trial of Steiner

Months passed before a suspect emerged. A man named Steiner—first name unknown—was eventually apprehended and charged with White’s murder. The surviving newspapers do not explain what tied him to the crime, but by late summer 1865, in the Circuit Court at Boonville, Steiner stood trial.

On Saturday, August 26, 1865, the jury returned a verdict of guilty. Talk circulated that his counsel would seek a new trial based on “additional important testimony,” but no motion succeeded. On September 1, 1865, the court sentenced Steiner to be hanged on Friday, October 20th.

An Act of Desperation in the Boonville Jail

Steiner did not await ex*****on quietly. On the night of September 8, 1865, he set a fire inside his jail cell—using scraps of combustible material, perhaps hoping to suffocate himself, or to escape amid the confusion a fire might create. Another prisoner raised the alarm, and the flames were extinguished before serious damage occurred.

Steiner’s grim attempt failed. The rope still awaited.

A Vanishing Ending

Yet here the trail disintegrates.
Despite searches through every available digital archive, no account of Steiner’s ex*****on has surfaced. No newspaper mentions the hanging. No court record describes his final hours. No obituary marks his burial.

Just as White’s first name, family ties, and origins have eluded discovery, so too has Steiner’s fate slipped into obscurity—leaving only a judge’s sentence and the date of a scheduled ex*****on that may or may not have taken place.

Ghosts in the Records

What remains today is a story assembled from fragments:

➣A murdered fisherman known only by a last name.
➣A widowed or married daughter, likewise known only as Rowden’s wife.
➣A son-in-law whose presence is noted but whose given name is lost.
➣A witness whose identity is blurred by inconsistent German spellings.
➣A killer sentenced to die but whose death was never recorded.

They exist now as ghosts drifting across 150-year-old newspaper columns, flickering names without first names, without graves, without memories—save for the few lines of print that preserve their passing connection to the old brewery west of Boonville.

Some of the remains of that brewery still stand; perhaps the ground still remembers.

The records, however, do not.

Sources

➣Boonville Weekly Monitor, July 23, 1864
➣Weekly California News, July 30, 1864
➣Boonville Daily News and Advertiser, September 2, 1865
➣The Howard Union (Glasgow, MO), September 28, 1865

11/18/2025

Coming soon.

Some know it as the Gantner House. In my most recent series it was the residence of C.E. Chrane and family.

I've been studying the history of the two families that lived there before the Chrane's. I'll post what I find in the coming days.

11/16/2025

It's been a bit since I've done a book review. So - I'll throw this one up there.

I re-listened to this one after rewatching the documentary which was based upon the book. Candice Millard does an excellent job taking us down the road of a forgotten president, the political civil service system and insanity, as well as medical malpractice that killed him.

President James Garfield's life is laid out for all to see - and frankly - to admire. Born in poverty, he rose to the height of American power - even if it was unwillingly. Highly capable and very human, he was a man who was principled and strong-willed. He loved his family. He sought reform - not only in the civil service, but in the trying situation that African Americans found themselves in during the Reconstruction Era of the South. The attempt on his life by an insane office seeker is a drama that a Hollywood Director would have trouble writing.

The work takes us into a world so very different from our own. America is on the cusp of another industrial revolution. Even as men like Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the capabilities of the telephone, our medical practices lingered far behind the antiseptic practices of Joseph Lister in Britain. The book is certain to note that while Charles Giteau shot Garfield - he might have lived had he just been left along and not repeatedly probed with unsterile fingers and instruments.

This story truly leaves one wondering what might have been had Garfield had a chance to be President. Few men more capable have held the office. He believed the racial tensions in the south were fixable with education - indeed - it seems as though the attempt on his life and subsequent death did a significant amount to reunite the nation in the aftermath of the American Civil War and the failure of Reconstruction.

This is a story worth reading. It is a glimpse into what could have been, and in reality - what we should all strive to be.

11/15/2025

Epilogue: The Story of Curtis E. Chrane

The greatest burden of Superintendent Curtis E. Chrane’s murder fell upon his family.

His widow, Irmah (Griffith) Chrane, whom he had married in 1910 while serving in Windsor, was only forty-two when she lost her husband. Born in Creighton in February 1888 to Dr. Charles Edgar Griffith and Harriet Poague Griffith, Irmah was known throughout every community she lived in for her refinement, education, civic engagement, and musical talent. Her name appeared frequently in society columns as a hostess, a clubwoman, and an accomplished violinist.

Only a month after Curtis’s death, she gave birth to their third child, Curtis E. Chrane Jr.

By 1935, Irmah made the difficult decision to leave Boonville. She and her children moved to Columbia, and by the 1940 census they were living at 1323 Wilson Avenue. Irmah and Curtis Jr. remained in Columbia through the 1950 census before she later relocated to Osage Beach. In her later years she battled breast cancer and heart disease, passing away on October 20, 1969, at Boone County Hospital in Columbia.

The Chrane children each followed distinct paths shaped, in many ways, by the loss of their father.

Barbara Jeane Chrane, the eldest, married Jack Carleton Po***ck in June 1939. The couple eventually settled in Speedway, Marion County, Indiana, where Jack worked as an investigator for the FBI. They raised two daughters, Marsha and Deborah, and spent their later years in Florida. Jack died in 1982; Barbara in 1984. Both rest at Walnut Grove Cemetery in Boonville in the Chrane family plot.

Jacqueline Ann Chrane married Edward Bihr in Columbia in December 1938. They lived for a time in Marshall, where he owned a shoe store, and later returned to Columbia, where he continued managing in the shoe business. Their son, Robert, was born around 1948. Jacqueline completed her degree at the University of Missouri in 1956, later earning a master’s in education. She became a well-respected kindergarten teacher in the Columbia Public Schools and taught in both the University of Missouri Lab School and the university’s early childhood education program. She died in 2006 at the age of 89; Edward had preceded her in 1996. Their son died in 1997. The family is buried in Columbia.

The youngest, Curtis E. Chrane Jr., grew up without ever knowing his father. He attended Hickman High School in Columbia, where he was active in Spanish Club, Library Club, Creative Art Club, Drama Club, and the National Honor Society. His yearbook photos display an active and happy student. After high school he studied drawing and painting at the University of Missouri before enlisting in the Naval Air Corps in 1950. That endeavor did not last. Churtis received a medical discharge for high blood pressure. In 1951 he began display work for Einbender’s Department Store in St. Joseph, and in January 1952 moved to New Orleans in search of new opportunities. He lived in an apartment with two roommates. Only a few weeks later, he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His roommates told investigators that he had been despondent throughout the previoius week. He left a note for his mother and a friend back in St. Joseph. Curtis Jr. was brought home to Boonville and buried beside his father. Beneath the smiling images, a young man who grew up without a father had inner struggles that revisited tragedy on the family some twenty years after the death of his father.

In October 1930, roughly one month after Superintendent Chrane’s murder, the Boonville Board of Education announced his successor: Professor L. E. Ziegler.

Ziegler, a respected educator from Maryville, had taught since 1919, rising from teacher to principal, superintendent, and eventually Supervisor of the High School Department at the State Teachers College in Maryville. His appointment in Boonville brought him closer to his wife’s family near Fayette, and his brother, Dr. W. H. Ziegler, already practiced medicine at the Ravenswaay Clinic.

Ziegler assumed leadership of the Boonville Public Schools on November 1, 1930, guiding the system steadily through the next eleven years until he was hired by the Columbia schools. His tenure helped stabilize the district after a period of deep trauma and uncertainty.

The man responsible for the murder, Tony Vriski, spent the remainder of his life in state custody. Though he served many years in the Missouri State Penitentiary, the 1950 federal census recorded him as a prisoner-patient at the State Mental Hospital in Fulton.

Vriski died on May 16, 1966, the official causes listed as coronary thrombosis and syphilitic meningo-encephalitis. His death certificate gives his birthdate as September 17, 1910, and his parents as John Vriski and Anna Cherwriski, yet no verifiable information about his origins has ever surfaced. With no relatives to claim his remains, his body was turned over to the Anatomical Board — a quiet, anonymous end to a life that had brought so much violence and sorrow.

Author's Conclusion

The story of Professor Curtis Chrane is a tragic one, yet also one from which we can draw inspiration. His dedication to his profession—one in which he sought constantly to encourage and expand educational opportunities for students in Windsor and Boonville—is what we should always expect from our public schools. His civic involvement set an example for his students, demonstrating leadership, engagement, and a belief in the value of community life.

Even more importantly, as a family man, he was a devoted husband, father, and son. The creation of a warm home, the close ties he maintained with extended family, and the frequent visits—despite distances—reflected a deep devotion that sustained those he loved during unimaginable hardship. Irmah held the family together through the trial and the aftermath, giving her children stability, purpose, and the means to move forward. Barbara and Jacqueline lived successful, meaningful lives, raising families of their own and building legacies of service, education, and commitment reflective of the values their parents instilled. Though tragedy revisited the family with the untimely death of Curtis Jr., the Chrane family endured, carrying forward both the memory and the quiet strength of the man whose life was cut short but whose influence was felt by his children and continues to echo through the history of Boonville.

The Links to the Curtis E. Chrane Story can be found below:
🔸Part 1: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1AYuKBV53w/
🔸Part 2: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1A3b9htiZ2/
🔸Part 3: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/163UJo998K/
🔸Part 4: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17RSke5LSc/
🔸Part 5: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17mFgSGrhS/
🔸Part 6: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BUvC6LGJs/

Mid-Missouri History Associates

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