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‘Insane Sisters’ resonates 25 years after publication



MARY LOU MONTGOMERY


It has been 25 years since historian and author Gregg Andrews, a native of the Monkey Run region of Ralls County, introduced a generation of readers to Mary Alice (Molly) Heinbach and her sister, Euphemia B. Koller.


Their story, profiled in his book: “Insane Sisters; or the Price Paid for Challenging a Company Town,” was published on the last day of September, 1999.


Since that time, Andrews has amassed a collection of books under his byline, most of which, like “Insane Sisters,” focus on the plight of the poor.


The sisters, Molly and Euphemia, waged a long and onerous battle for legal rights to 26 acres of property on which much of the town of Ilasco was built. The land was left to Molly in a will written by her late husband, Sam Heinbach.


Heinbach’s death was gently mentioned in the Friday, Jan. 14, 1910, edition of the Ralls County Record:


“Mr. Sam Heinbach, of Ilasco, died Tuesday. Sam had been sick for quite a while.”


But Heinbach’s life story contained much more depth than the newspaper revealed.


“Sam Heinbach and Theodore Johnson were wood choppers along the Sny,” in Illinois, Andrews said. “They moved across the river and were business partners. They bought 52 acres, what would become Ilasco.


“When the cement plant began construction, working people needed a place to live, cheap. The Atlas company recruited immigrant workers and built barracks on company land,” Andrews said.


Heinbach and Johnson leased their ground to individuals and businesses, for maybe $1 a month, or if a business, maybe $2. Just the ground. The business men put up their own buildings.


“That turned out to be a pretty good deal for these men. They had an annual income of $1,100.  Sam hired an administrator to collect rent; he went to the saloons.”


Ultimately, Heinbach and Johnson divided the land, each taking 26 acres.


“Molly set her sights on Sam when she was in her mid 50s. You know how gossip works. She had been married four times before.  He was in final stage of alcoholism when Molly married him. He lived in a little log cabin when they married, then they bought a house on a hill. He bought her a player piano. She moved into the house and cared for him during the final stages of his life.”


Sam, it seems, had left a wife and children back in Indiana when he moved westward. J.O. Allison, a Ralls County attorney, “had done work for Sam and knew he had gotten a divorce from a previous wife. Allison located those children, and basically said to them,” that he would try to break the will.


“J.O. Allison was known as the political boss of Ilasco,” Andrews said, and his brother was probate judge. “When Molly went over to New London to file the will in probate, they refused to accept it. All hell broke loose,” he said.


Molly contacted her sister, Euphemia, and told her what happened. They  made an agreement between them. The women became joint owners of the land. Euphemia acted as an attorney, acquiring  depositions from people. They didn’t trust their lawyers, Frederick W. Neeper and Charles E. Rendlen.


“Opposing attorneys painted Molly as a schemer, getting this old man on his death bed, appealing to jurors to go against Molly.”


When reviewing the court transactions, Andrews made note that when hearings were held in Ralls County, the sisters lost. When they were held in Marion or Pike County, Mo., the sisters won.


But ultimately, the sisters paid a very large personal price for their small victories.


“I’ll never forget the day I wrote to the state archives, and was able to get their death certificates. I was in my office, I opened (the package) and saw that Mary Alice (Molly) had died in a house fire, struck by tragedy. Her sister died in the State Hospital in Fulton.


“This is the wildest story I ever came across,” Andrews said.


Andrews, the writer

“I’m particularly interested in the common people,” Andrews said. “So little is written about average people in Hannibal: Their culture, community, working class, the role that they played in it.


“In the public’s mind, there is a very negative image of working class people. It is more complicated than that.” He is hoping to reverse that image through his books.


“I remember when Jim and Fran Mitchell had their book store at 212 Broadway. It was great. ‘The City of Dust’ came out not too long after they opened their store. When I got into town, they said ‘let’s go to the radio station, Dave Lee has program,’ But then Jim said,  ‘I want to tell you something first; someone trying to keep you off the radio.’ So when I got there, I was prepared for that.


“Dave Lee brought it up, that the word out there was that the book is an expose. That book rattled a few cages, but the people of Hannibal and Ilasco loved it. During the book signing at Mitchell’s store, “The line for that book snaked out doors, up Broadway. People in their 80s drove down from Michigan. It was real humbling.”


Andrews, a Hannibal High School graduate, earned a bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies, and in 1979 earned a master’s degree in history from Northeast Missouri State University, now Truman State.

He earned a Ph.D. from Northern Illinois University.

He moved to Texas in 1988. He taught at Texas State until his retirement in 2009. He and his wife, Victoria, live in Seguin, Texas, about 25 miles from San Marcos.


“I was at Texas State University 21 years. I love teaching, there always is an ongoing need for education. I feel that I do it in different ways, through music, the songs I write, through the books that I write. 


“I’m still loyal to the people I come from back home. Fairly poor roots, I learned to love to read at an early age. My uncle  (Gordon Sanders) spent his career in education and was one of smartest people I knew. He influenced me a lot. He would tell me stories. Before he went to Germany, he’d stay with us; I’d look for his car on Friday nights. I was 4 or 5 at the time. He helped encourage me to read.


“A lot of that background, maybe I still feel I have something to prove to people. I enjoy the process. I love the research. I don’t really feel bound in the University, never felt I really fit in the whole academic world because of my background. I love to teach, but when it came to going to scholarly conferences, I hated those. There was a lot of snobbery in the academic circles.


“My best friends and most likable people are the ones I met who were from working class  backgrounds and went on to be professors.”


In his family, “We were first generation college students. My sister Cheryl got two years of college at Hannibal LaGrange, and my brother and I both got bachelor’s degrees. I was 15 and Kevin 11 when our father died.



Looking back

Andrews remembers a  book signing in October 1999, at the Saverton Ilasco Methodist Church, in conjunction with the dedication of the new Ilasco monuments.


Of those who signed the registry that day, “about 8 out of 10 are gone, including my mother, Virginia, and my bother, Kevin” he said.


When you write about history, “you become part of the history and the way it’s told. There is a lot of truth to that. You shape it and it shapes you in return.”


He intends to keep writing, as long as he is able.


Newest book


“Hard Times in an American Work House” will be released in November 2024.


“It is a St. Louis-based study of the St. Louis work house, 1853-1920,” he said.  LSU Press is the publisher.


“I believe it is the first study in the United States of an American Workhouse. I assumed people had written about workhouses. I found in United States, that’s not the case.”


People were incarcerated “basically for being poor and being black in St. Louis. If they couldn’t pay a fine, or let their weeds take over. If you had money to pay, good, but if not, off to the work house for six months.


“I’m excited about that book.”


Other books include:

“Shanty Boats and Roustabouts” which was published less than two years ago.

“Thyra J. Edwards, A Black Activist in the Global Freedom Struggle,” was published in 2011.

“My Daddy’s Blues: A Childhood A Memory from the land of Huck and Jim”  was released in 2019.


Mary Lou Montgomery retired as editor of the Hannibal (Mo.) Courier-Post in 2014. She researches and writes narrative-style stories about the people who served as building blocks for this region’s foundation. Books available on Amazon.com by this author include but are not limited to: "The Notorious Madam Shaw," "Pioneers in Medicine from Northeast Missouri,” “Hannibal’s ‘West End,’” “Oakwood: West of Hannibal,”  and “St. Mary’s Avenue District.” Montgomery can be reached at Montgomery.editor@yahoo.com Her collective works can be found at www.maryloumontgomery.com

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