In Search of Colonel Caskie

By Gene Bauman

Board member, Friends of Rocheport

Roland Smyth was an eccentric Sullivan County, Indiana, resident knows as the Hermit of the Wabash by local journalists. He was well known and, because of this love for nature, was often compared to John Muir and Henry David Thoreau. But no one knew how he happened to arrive in this remote southwestern corner of Indiana, in a small cabin high above the Wabash River, which separates the Hoosier State from Illinois.

We’ll trace his path from nearly a half century earlier as a young colonel under General Robert E. Lee in the Civil War. His name was Robert Alexander Caskie, the son of an immigrant from Scotland, one of the richest men in Virginia, President of the Richmond Tobacco exchange and the Bank of Virginia. Robert was a friend of Governor Henry A. Wise, and was destined to marry the daughter of a former governor.

To prepare for the battle between the states, Caskie organized and commanded the Caskie Rangers, a troop of guerillas with the 10thVirginia Cavalry Regiment under the command of General Lee. They were involved in a great number of campaigns, including the defense of Richmond and Petersburg, and the Appomattox Courthouse operations. General Lee surrendered the unit at Gettysburg with three officers and 19 men remaining from a unit of 236.

Shortly before his marriage to Amanda Gregory, daughter of Gov. John Junford Gregory, Caskie had an experience that really stuck in his mind. I’m sure you have heard of the infamous abolitionist, John Brown. Remember the song about his “body lies a-mouldering in the grave.?”

Brown tried to spark and arm a massive slave revolt by raiding the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry. The attempt failed, and Brown was imprisoned and doomed to hang.

The governor organized several militia companies, one of them being the “Richmond Greys,” of which Caskie was a member. He went to Charlestown to beef up security at the prison where Brown was being held. He became acquainted with Brown, bringing him newspapers, and even sent a telegram to Brown’s wife.

On December 2, 1859, Caskie watched as Brown stepped up to the gallows, and described it this way: “The wagon was driven through the line and up close to the gallows. John Brown jumped to the ground and skipped up the steps to the platform as though he were a mere boy.”

Another watching the hanging was John Wilkes Booth.

Caskie and his brother and daughter were interested in the theatre, with the brother and sister both pursuing performance careers. It may have been this interest that developed a friendship with John Wilkes Booth, an actor of some renown at the time.

Caskie appointed Booth as his Quartermaster Sergeant. Booth had abandoned his job at a local theater to enter the service, and when his tour was over, the theater owner would not hire him back. Caskie and his men appealed to the owner, who then did take Booth back. INTERESTNG QUESTION: What if Booth had not returned to his life in the theater? Would history have been changed regarding President Lincoln?

Following the war, with Virginia in ruins, Colonel Caskie and his two brothers revived the family’s lucrative tobacco business. After a few years, Robert Moved west to Rocheport, Missouri, in 1870, where he would become the largest tobacco exporter in Little Dixie, Boone County. Was it the southern sympathy in this are that attracted him? Remember, Rocheport had been Bloody Bill Anderson’s self-claimed headquarters. Or was it that the area was know as a prime tobacco growing area?

As the more financially successful of the brothers, Robert would become the “deep pockets” to pursue to settle a judgment against the family in Virginia in 1874. After exhausting all appeals in 1884, Caskie would abandon his wife and children, moving them to St. Lous, and they later went back to Richmond, likely supported by his wife’s money.

Caskie was reported to have drowned in the Mississippi River. His body was never found. He moved to Indiana, changed his name to Captain Roland Smythe, and became the Hermit of the Wabash. His wife’s obituary in 1902 described her as the widow of the late Col. Robert A. Caskie.

He would spend the next 35 years there, until his daughter (some sources say it was a son) came and took him back to Philadelphia, where he lived with his son until he died of a heat stroke in 1928 at age 98. Remember, his wife’s obituary had announced him dead before 1902. The disappearance ruse had worked.

He was buried in Philadelphia, but later brought back to Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery and buried next to his wife.

So, what have we found about his life in Rocheport?

Among other properties, Caskie once owned the western half of Section 7 just up the bluff from Rocheport – from the top of the hill south to I-70 on the bluff side of Route BB.

He once lived in the Dr. Wilcox Mansion (later Richard Saunders’ shop) in November 1881. He also lived in the W. R. Spence house, purchased in October 1870, and Mrs. R. S. Miller’s late residence, occupied in 1881. Rev. P. R. Ridgley moved into Caskie’s place on April 4, 1884.

Hundreds of Columbia Statesmen News items catalogued at the State Historical Society, indicate his presence as a leader in the community. His visiting or just passing through Columbia was worthy of a report in the newspaper. Here are a few samples from news reports of his activities:

• Rented large warehouse to store tobacco, January 1870
• Passed through Columbia on way east, July 1875
• Opened a tobacco factory in Boonville, February 1877
• Daughter born late March 1878
• Bought building, March 23, 1878
• Went to Boonville to organize Murphy Movement, a local chapter of a national temperance movement, April 1878
• Elected officer of Rocheport temperance group, May 1878
• Shipped tobacco to England, August 1878
• Left for Europe, November 1878
• Returned from Europe, December 1878
• Delegate to Democratic Convention, July 1880

Here’s a story from The Jefferson City, MO State Journal, April 3, 1874: “Col. Caskie & Col, of Rocheport, are paying from $3 to $4.50 per hundred for tobacco.  They have paid out $25,000 for the article thus far this season.”

William Switzler’s 1882 “Bible” of Boone County history, in reporting n the period following the Civil War, includes a paragraph bout the Colonel, although it misspells his name to “Caskil.” Here’s that paragraph: “Until quite recently Rocheport has been an extensive shipping point for leaf tobacco. In 1870, Co. R. A. Caskil established himself in the tobacco trade, and for some years shipped annually from two hundred to one thousand hogsheads of leaf tobacco to Liverpool and Bristol, England, and to Glasgow, Scotland. The shipments were increased or diminished as the crops were large or moderate. Mr. Caskil has a factory capable of handling 1,500,000 pounds of tobacco annually.”

Tom Ladwig, a columnist for the Missourian a number of years ago, wrote: “After r1850, a great expansion of Missouri’s tobacco industry came about. Growers and manufacturers prospered. Rocheport and Glasgow grew rich as shipping points. Farmers from as far away as 30 miles brought cured tobacco to Rocheport factories in the late winter months.”

St. Louis, during the civil War, was the largest tobacco manufacturing city in the United States.

We are learning more about Colonel Caskie, but there is much more to learn. The search continues, and any help you can give would be appreciated.