Officer fatally wounded while patrolling rail yards

Ray Girard, night officer for Hannibal's South Side, received a fatal wound while patrolling the Burlington Railroad yards in October 1900. Photo contributed by Archie Hayden.

A flag-raising ceremony  took place on May 30, 1898, at the Burlington Railroad yards, on South Main Street in Hannibal, Mo. The pole stood 106 feet high and carried a 15x30 foot flag. This photo is facing south, with the Mississippi River, Lover’s Leap and the roundhouse in the background. Two years later, Hannibal police officer, 29-year-old Ray Girard, was fatally wounded while patrolling these same rail yards. Photo from Steve Chou’s vast collection.

MARY LOU MONTGOMERY

Officer Ray Girard, 29, of the Hannibal Police Department, was the happiest man in the city on Sept. 17, 1900, according to a notice in the following day’s edition of the Hannibal Courier-Post. Girard was spotted by a reporter out-and-about in South Hannibal, distributing cigars among his friends and acquaintances. The cause of the celebration was the birth of his son, Raphael Fuqua Girard, who arrived at his household Sunday morning, Sept. 16, 1900.

The boy was born to Ray Girard’s wife, Frankie, and joined a sister, Valeria, born in 1898.

The family, which had moved into a stone duplex at 416 Fourth Street (in 1912 renamed and numbered 815 Sycamore), South Hannibal, the previous April, was comfortably settled into the neighborhood which consisted of Girard’s police beat.

In June 1900, Girard was officially assigned to the South Side beat, night force, by newly appointed Hannibal City Marshal, Charles G. Dreyer (1867-1936.)

Girard’s colleagues were:

Day force, Downtown, Martin Welsh and W.B. Spencer;

Day force, West Side, H.E. Venneman;

Night force, North Main Street, levee, etc., Thos. Mulhern and Joe Head;

Night force, Broadway, Fuqua;

Night force, West Side, A.E. Turner and Charles G. Dreyer.

Night force, South Side, Ray Girard.

Proud of his profession

Girard was proud to be a police officer for Hannibal, and was especially thankful to John T. Fuqua, a Hannibal alderman and South Hannibal painting contractor, who helped effect Girard’s appointment to the law enforcement post.

From the time Girard arrived in Hannibal in 1896, until his appointment to the police force, he was in John T. Fuqua’s employ, working as a painter. (Note the middle name of Ray Girard’s son is Fuqua, an apparent honorarium.)

Now with two young children to raise and a wife to support, Girard was well positioned to provide support for his family.

But all would not go according to his expectations.

Fateful evening

Exactly three weeks following his son’s birth, Girard answered a call “at 15 minutes of eight o’clock" in the evening. One report noted that a knock on the door of his home alerted him that suspicious persons were in the Burlington Railroad yards, just blocks from his house.

Together with his neighbor, William Martin, he went to investigate. “No. 78, a K line freight, had just pulled in and a switch engine was handling some of the cars,” the Bowling Green Times of October. 11, 1900, reported. Quoting the Hannibal Courier-Post: "Girard and Martin were walking beside the track, but jumped across it quickly, just before the moving engine. As they arrived on the opposite side of the track they met two men. Martin said, ‘Good evening gentlemen,’ but had hardly spoken the words when the fellows each presented two revolvers and ordered the officer and Martin to ‘Throw up your hands,’ the command being accompanied by oaths.

“The four were very close together, so close, in fact, that they could almost have touched each other.”

Girard unsuccessfully reached for the pistol, and when he did, shots rang out, hitting the officer two times, and then a third. The law breakers then fled northward into the busy railroad yards.

“The engine men were called to the assistance, and aid was summoned from up town. When the officer was in good hands and on his way home, Martin telephoned the police, and, securing a revolver, started in pursuit of the men.

His search was in vain.

Girard was conscious and able to talk to police officers, and identified his assailants, but as the men had fled, they were not soon captured.

Officer Girard was carried to his home at 416 Fourth Street, South Hannibal, and was treated by Hannibal physicians, including Parks L. Kabler, Robert H. Goodier, Henry L. Banks, Thomas Chowning and John N. Baskett.

Girard’s mother-in-law, Mary Louise Montgomery, was a professional nurse, and was summoned from her home in Moberly to help care for the patient at his bedside in Hannibal.

Mrs. Montgomery wrote to Mrs. Olive Sneider, her friend in Moberly, and the Moberly Evening Democrat published the scenario of Girard’s condition in its Oct. 18, 1900 edition.

“She writes that Mr. Girard’s wounds are healing nicely but that his body is paralyzed from his waist down, and the attending physicians think that his spinal chord is affected and that an operation may be necessary before he finally recovers.”

Ironically, while Girard was at home recovering, the Marion County Herald reported in its Nov. 21, 1900 edition, that, William Martin, a Hannibal switchman, who was the witness to Girard’s shooting, was  killed when caught between the cars in the Burlington yards.

Note: It was reported in the July 25, 1901 edition of the Hannibal Courier-Post that Martin’s widow, Goldie Ethel Martin (1881-1961), gave birth to a son in July 1901. Mrs. Martin was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Walter J. Bridgewater, who formerly lived on Hannibal’s South Side, and at the time were living in Kinderhook, Ill. Goldie Ethel Martin was later married to Charles Frederick Bennett (1867-1941.) At the time of her death, Goldie was living in Audrain County, Missouri.

Death follows

On Sunday, Dec. 16, 1900 - 10 weeks after Officer Girard was shot and 13 weeks after his son was born - Ray Girard died.

Services were conducted at the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Sixth and Lyon, and Girard’s remains were taken at 11:20 o’clock on the MK&T train to Moberly where the interment took place at Oakland Cemetery.

At his request, he was buried in his officer’s uniform.

Mrs. Girard moved her young children to Moberly, in order to live with her mother. After a stay of a few years in Moberly, Mrs. Girard and her two children returned to Hannibal. The children attended South School, and the family lived on the South Side.

In 1912, Frankie Girard was living at 911 Bluff Street, South Hannibal

In 1916, Frankie, Raphael and Valeria Girard were all working for the International Shoe Company.

Valeria Girard and Guy P. Bell were married Nov. 27, 1916, at the home of the bride’s mother on Bluff Street. 

Guests at the wedding reception and luncheon were: Mesdames H.J. Nolin, F. Huffman, Jacob Binder, J. Null, Frankie Girard; Messrs. and Mesdames Will Carenen and J.M. Rouse.

Mr. and Mrs. Bell left at midnight for a bridal trip. After their return, they made their home at 816 Lindell avenue.

Frankie Girard never remarried. She died Oct. 5, 1959, at Hannibal, and was buried beside her husband at the Oakland Cemetery in Moberly. Her son, Raphael Fuqua Girard, moved to Manhattan, N.Y., and died in 1938. Her daughter, Valeria May Bell, died in 1968, and is buried at Oakland Cemetery with her parents. Valeria’s husband, Guy Paxton Bell, died in 1976. 

Patrolman Raphael A. (Ray) Girard is memoralized in the United States Officer Down Memorials, 1791-2022.

“Patrolman Girard succumbed to gunshot wounds received two months earlier when he attempted to arrest two trespassers in the Burlington Railroad Yards. Both suspects escaped. The wound caused him to become paralyzed and he died two months later. It was later discovered that the two suspects had escaped from the Bowling Green Jail where they were awaiting trial for the murder of Policeman Lowell Pew of the Louisiana, Missouri, police department, on Feb. 14, 1900. Patrolman Girard was survived by his wife; two small children; his parents, (Theophilus, a Civil War veteran, and Josephine Girard), of Detroit, Michigan, and six siblings.”

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