The Hanging Of Maston Gregg by M. H. Hudson

Perhaps the most terrifying ordeal of the Civil War years for the civilian residents of Northwest Arkansas was not the raging battles fought there, nor the foraging and plundering of the opposing armies, nor the hunger and hardship and sickness and pestilence that was all about, but a much more malevolent menace known by the whispered name of Bushwhackers.

These human vultures ran in packs, robbing, murdering, maiming, abusing, and there was no authority to stop them.  All guns and ammunition of the civilian population had been confiscated by the armies of both sides, as first the North and then the South, Union and Confederate occupied the land.  The people were defenseless against the marauding bands of deserters and slackers ("scalawags"), and the armies were so thoroughly engaged in fighting each other they had no time for police duty.

Boys and old men left at home or wantonly shot down or beaten to death senselessly, and women and children were tortured and made to give up all their food and other necessities to these outlaws.

News that a band of bushwhackers was in a community spread quickly and struck terror to the hearts of the residents.  Their frantic efforts to hide their horses, cows, and food usually proved fruitless.  If a bushwhackers spy had not watched as the items were hidden, a sizzling coal of fire held against her baby's body quickly brought a mother to provide everything asked of her, if she had it to give. Or the grandfather might be tortured instead.  Nothing, not a single thing, was sacred to these jackals.

Such was the plight of the people of Northwest Arkansas and 1864, on the day a gang of bushwhackers surprised Maston Gregg in his apple orchard on White River near Butler Ford in Washington County, and hanged him to one of his own carefully nurtured apple trees.

In time, Maston Gregg was to become the father in law of Martha Carolyn ("Mattie") Quillin, youngest daughter of John Quillin when she married Maston's son John Henry.  But he didn't know it then.  In fact, he never had a chance to know it.

On this day in 1864, Springdale, Arkansas, did not exist.  The crossroads there had not yet taken on the name of Shiloh, its first name.  The main center of gravity then was out east, on White River at Butler Ford and Gregg Store and post office.  The latter was owned by Maston's brother, Albert.

On the day the bushwhackers caught Maston, they had come especially to see him.  He was not yet 50, but in ill health.  He was fairly prosperous and it had been rumored he had some money hidden near his home.  Federal money.  This was what the bushwhackers were after.  And when Maston did not produce it in spite of their tortures, they hanged him and rode away to let him die.  Without a doubt, they thought him dead when they left.

From his hiding place in the house, Maston's 12 year old son, John Henry, watched in horror as the bandits abused his father, then hanged him to die.  As they rode away, John Henry rushed out, frantic and heedless of his own safety, climbed the tree and cut his father's limp body down.

Then his mother and sisters came out to help and they worked to revive the tortured man.  His breathing started up again, and even before he was fully conscious they were struggling toward the house with him.  Once inside, they hid him under a folding table and made him as comfortable as possible.  Terror gripped them all, because they expected the bushwhackers gang back at any time, and they knew the thieves would demand to see the body.

But the day of terror wore on and passed, and Maston lived through it and into the night.  Next day he moved his family nearer to Fayetteville, where the presence of the occupying army discouraged the bushwhackers.  Though there were almost weekly skirmishes in the vicinity of that village, it was safer there than out on the river.  Housing was scarce, so he rented a room in a log house, now known as the Old Hale House.  It was located on the Old Wire Road to Fayetteville.

Like John Quillin and others, he then joined the army and remained there for safety until the end of the war.  After it was safe to do so, he moved his family back to the farm on the river, but nothing was ever right again in his life.  Toward the close of the war, his son Wesley 20 and died.  Then Cynthia, the mother of his 10 children, sickened and died.  Three years after the war was over, Maston Gregg himself was dead.  By natural causes.

When the war ended and civilian authority was restored, the things called bushwhackers disbanded and slunk into anonymity.  Most of them probably survived and raised offspring, and even now, on a dark night in an old apple orchard on White River, if you think about it for a while, you can get the feeling it could happen again.