OLD WAYNE

About the Book

The ordeal of twenty-year-old schoolteacher Sarah Pauline White, sentenced in 1864 to confinement at hard labor in the state penitentiary for the duration of the Civil War for writing a letter to a rebel soldier, was one of several painful experiences endured by Wayne County families that are described in Old Wayne. Why her impassioned quest for a pardon failed was never fully explained; but it gained the enthusiastic support of Missouri governor Thomas C. Fletcher, formerly a Union army general, and appears to have been a casualty of President Andrew Johnson’s acrimonious relationship with the Missouri commander General John Pope who, at a later time, was fired by Johnson.

About the Author

Swindled is the last of five books retired weekly newspaper publisher Cletis R. Ellinghouse has written to describe historical milestones in the neighborhood that embraces the place of his birth, Wayne County. He practically grew up in the offices of his father’s newspapers at Greenville and Piedmont before earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Arkansas State University at Jonesboro in 1958. His writing career included stints on daily newspapers in three states before he returned to his home grounds to commence publishing weekly papers of his own at Bonne Terre, Jackson, Marble Hill, and Puxico, where he now resides.