For the urban explorer or avid photographer, it’s a tempting opportunity to be taken advantage of.
The town of Avilla, Mo is known as a “living ghost town” with a population of 125, according to a 2010 census. Avilla was founded in 1858, but it wouldn’t be long before the town would find itself splitting with tensions over the Civil War. As many know, Missouri was a border state (slaves states that had not yet joined the Confederacy) and found itself smack dab in the middle of it all.
Families were torn apart as many wanted to break away from the United States while others wanted to stay. As tensions worsened, people evacuated Avilla in fear of their families’ safety. No doubt blood was shed in the shadows of it all.
The “Avilla Phantom Bushwhacker” aka, “Rotten Johnny Reb” has been spotted multiple times around Avilla, and is said to haunt the “Death Tree” itself. The legend of the Avilla Death Tree originates from the Civil War. The skull of a Confederate Bushwhacker was found and rather than buried, was hung from a tree, as a “warning to all other bushwhackers.”
many deaths have been blamed on him over the years, and he’s said to have driven off any remaining townsfolk after the war ended, further contributing to its “ghost town” status.
The town of Avilla, Mo is known as a “living ghost town” with a population of 125, according to a 2010 census. Avilla was founded in 1858, but it wouldn’t be long before the town would find itself splitting with tensions over the Civil War. As many know, Missouri was a border state (slaves states that had not yet joined the Confederacy) and found itself smack dab in the middle of it all.
Families were torn apart as many wanted to break away from the United States while others wanted to stay. As tensions worsened, people evacuated Avilla in fear of their families’ safety. No doubt blood was shed in the shadows of it all.
The “Avilla Phantom Bushwhacker” aka, “Rotten Johnny Reb” has been spotted multiple times around Avilla, and is said to haunt the “Death Tree” itself. The legend of the Avilla Death Tree originates from the Civil War. The skull of a Confederate Bushwhacker was found and rather than buried, was hung from a tree, as a “warning to all other bushwhackers.”
many deaths have been blamed on him over the years, and he’s said to have driven off any remaining townsfolk after the war ended, further contributing to its “ghost town” status.
Avilla, Mo. is the fourth oldest town in Jasper County, Missouri today, founded in 1856 & platted and laid out for public use July 23, 1858 by Andrew L. Love and David S. Holman. Mr. Love was the Justice of the Peace, and Mr. Holman was the first merchant and Postmaster, also establishing the Post Office in 1856.
Avilla remained plagued with bushwhackers and occasionally small bands of Confederate regulars or guerrilla raiders on horseback.
Many bushwhackers were tracked down and shot, and within a short time the rest of them grew to fear the deadly Avilla "pioneer marksmen". In one account a rebel’s skeleton was found just south of town with a bullet hole in the skull and his name was never identified. He had apparently been killed during a previous skirmish with militiamen, but his remains were not found until they were in an advanced state of decomposition. The skull was then hung from the "Death Tree" in Avilla, suspended from a tree limb for over a year near the road at the Dunlap apple orchard "as a warning to all other bushwhackers".[12] Some of the earliest settlers near present day Avilla were John K. Gibson in 1831 (just across the Lawrence County line), James Blackwell in '35 and John Fishburn on White Oak creek in 1836. Nelson Knight was the first settler on the prairie north of Avilla, building a cabin & farm in 1837, and Jasper County itself was established in 1841. Thomas Buck came all the way from Indiana in a wagon drawn by a team of horses in the '40s and built a farm just east of the future town site. Arriving with his family in 1853, Dr. Jaquillian M. Stemmons was the first Physician to practice medicine in the Avilla area, doing so from his 400 acre farm. A Dr Young later came just before the Civil War and established an office within the town limits. Avilla, in the center of a rich farming district 12 miles east, northeast of Carthage contained a few stores, a hotel, 2 churches--Methodist and Baptist, and a school house. Population about 500, (1874). (--Campbell Gazetteer of Missouri, 1874, p. 275.) The first merchant was D. C. Holman, who was also the first postmaster..The post-office was established about 1868. The first hotel, the Avilla House, was erected By Justice Hall about 1868...The first physician was Dr. Young. |
Information gather from Internet:This had been the hunting grounds of the Osage Indians who were known to have camped at nearby Spring River, about 3 miles (4.8 km) to the south. Their lands to the east had been previously purchased by the government in 1808 (Treaty of Fort Clark)
and other tribes had been moved to this location as well, and then
later all were moved again to the Osage Nation areas elsewhere.
Notwithstanding, a few that possibly returned or had simply refused to
leave could still be seen trading in Avilla and the nearby towns
throughout the Antebellum Period.
1840 The first settlement in Jasper County Missouri, initially known as Centerville. The first settler was Thackeray Vivion in 1831. Founded by merchant-landowners as a business center on the edge of the frontier in the mid-1850s. The citizens of Avilla formed a town militia for defense at the beginning of the Civil War and the site later served as a Union Army garrison (Enrolled Missouri Militia), subsequently prevailing intact and undamaged after the war. The town's growth was ultimately stunted after being bypassed by the railroad in the latter 19th century and it remains a small village in the 21st century today. William T. Anderson, pro-Confederate guerrilla leader believed to have led the attack near Avilla. He was killed two years later in Ray County, Missouri, 1864. Anderson was posthumously nicknamed “Bloody Bill” for his ruthless actions. William Anderson, or Bloody Bill Anderson (ca. 1838-1864), a Confederate guerrilla in Missouri and Kansas during the Civil War. 
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