“Path for Your Success” - Two drunken youths interrupt Baptist church service in 1897, learn lesson from consequences

Rev. Robert L. Hood is pictured with his wife, Mary Belle Kneisly. Ordained as a Baptist minister in 1893, Hood was leading a worship service at Cole Spring Baptist Church near Russellville in 1897 when two intoxicated youths, Henry Dampf and George Lane, disrupted the service. Working alongside local justice of the peace John Grant, Hood pursued charges against the pair, who were fined $25 each and spent four days in jail after their parents refused to pay the penalties. Courtesy of the Moniteau County Historical Society.

In the professional paper Temperance and Prohibition in America: A Historical Overview, Paul Aaron and David Musto explained that “…as people drank more and more in places specifically and exclusively designed to cater to consumption of alcohol, and as laws governing operating hours or sales to minors were regularly ignored, public drunkenness grew to be defined as a social problem.”

This growing social concern in nineteenth-century America eventually resulted in thirteen years of Prohibition, a time during which it became illegal to manufacture, sell and transport alcohol. Yet decades before Prohibition took effect, one Mid-Missouri Baptist pastor found himself confronting the issue firsthand when intoxicated youths disrupted a church service.

“Robert Hood worked for the Missouri Pacific Railroad for 21 years,” noted the Moniteau County, Missouri Family History Book, published in 1980. “He was ordained into the ministry by the Green Ridge Baptist Church in Miller County. He began preaching on March 12, 1893.”

Although Rev. Robert L. Hood spent much of his ministry serving churches within the Concord Baptist Association, he also preached at several small Baptist congregations throughout Mid-Missouri. In January 1896, he became pastor of Cole Spring Baptist Church near Russellville. The following year, only four years into his ministry, Rev. Hood’s patience and leadership were publicly tested while delivering a sermon.

“Last Sunday night one week ago George Lane and Henry Dampf, young men living near Russellville, attended church at Cole Spring Baptist Church, near there,” reported the Jefferson City Tribune on October 5, 1897. The newspaper continued, “It appears that they had been drinking and were somewhat intoxicated. They made faces at the preacher, flourished their bottles of whisky, and made the small boys laugh. One of them threw his hat up in the aisle.”

At the time of the disturbance, Dampf was 20 years old while his companion, George Lane, was only eighteen. Reports later stated that Rev. Hood rebuked the young men and warned them he would have them prosecuted for disrupting the service.

Making good on his promise, Dampf and Lane were formally arraigned before Russellville justice of the peace John Grant. A native of Scotland, Grant immigrated to Cole County at age nineteen and initially worked for the railroad, a profession he shared with Rev. Hood. Grant later became a merchant in the now-bygone communities of Belleville and Decatur before establishing a successful mercantile business in nearby Russellville. Serving part-time as justice of the peace, Grant shocked the young men, who reportedly expected nothing more than a mild reprimand and a small fine.

“They were arrested and fined $25 each,” printed the Edina Sentinel on October 14, 1897. “Their parents, well-to-do and respectable people, refused to ‘liquidate,’ and the young men had to lie in jail for several days.”

Embarrassed by both their behavior and their parents’ refusal to pay the fines, the two young men spent four days in the county jail. The punishment appeared to have the intended effect.

“There will be no more disturbances of public worship in that community for a long time at least,” shared the Jefferson City Tribune on October 6, 1897. “There is some complaint of disturbances of the services in some of our city churches, and a few arrests and a jail sentence of the culprits would do good.”

Despite the influence of alcohol that would soon fuel temperance efforts and eventually lead to Prohibition in 1920, both Dampf and Lane appeared to learn from the experience and went on to lead productive lives.

In 1898, less than a year after his arrest, Dampf enlisted with Company L of the 2nd Missouri Infantry Regiment and served during the Spanish-American War. He later became a farmer near Russellville, married, and raised a family that included a son and two daughters. Dampf died in 1952 at the age of seventy-five and is buried in Enloe Cemetery.

Lane also married, though he and his wife had no children. Settling in the Olean area, he chose a profession connected to both the pastor whose service he had interrupted and the justice of the peace who had fined him — the railroad industry. On January 6, 1935, after more than twenty years of employment with the Missouri Pacific Railroad, the fifty-six-year-old Lane died suddenly while working as a brakeman in Blackwater.

Author and educator Dr. P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar once observed, “Wrong decisions are not part of your failure; they are, in disguise, the path for your success.”

Henry Dampf and George Lane made a poor decision as young men and endured the embarrassment and consequences that followed. Rather than allowing the incident to define them, however, they appeared to learn from the experience and move forward toward productive and respectable lives.
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Jeremy P. Amick is the author of the historical compilation Beyond the Moreau.

Scottish immigrant John Grant became a successful merchant in Russellville and served locally as justice of the peace. In 1897, Grant granted no clemency to Henry Dampf and George Lane after the pair disrupted a worship service while intoxicated. Courtesy of Jeremy P. Amick.