Our Oklahoma Heritage: A late -19th century feud in northern Arkansas rivaled the Hatfield's and McCoy's
- Dennis McCaslin
- 7 hours ago
- 4 min read
While the Hatfield-McCoy feud has long dominated American memory as the archetype of Appalachian blood feuds, a lesser-known but equally violent and protracted conflict raged along the Arkansas-Missouri border in the late nineteenth century.
The Ambrose-Terry-Waggoner Feud, centered in the Ozarks of Carroll County and spilling across the state line into Stone County, Missouri, produced multiple killings, repeated arrests, lengthy court battles, and national newspaper coverage that at times rivaled the attention given to the more famous West Virginia-Kentucky quarrel.
Its origins remain obscure. Some suggested lingering Civil War resentments, yet the participants’ wartime allegiances did not divide cleanly along Union and Confederate lines. Henry Clark Ambrose, father of the Ambrose brothers, had returned to Kentucky to fight for the Union, while their ally Randolph Grant Waggoner was the son of a Confederate soldier.
Alvin Culloden “Cul” Garrett, killed in the feud’s central gunfight, was the son of a Confederate veteran, but several of his Terry allies had served the Union.
Others linked the violence to the region’s Bald Knobber vigilance committees, though the Ambrose brothers do not appear to have been active members. What is certain is that personal grievances, charges of horse theft, robbery, and murder, and the ease of crossing the state line created a cycle of ambush, indictment, and retaliation that lasted more than a decade.
The feud broke into open violence in the fall of 1887. In early November, John Meek was ambushed and shot to death near his home in Carroll Count. Local accounts held that Meek had earlier wounded one of the Terry brothers and that the killing was revenge. Miles and John Terry were later indicted for the murder.
Weeks later, on or about November 30, a fatal roadside confrontation erupted near the Missouri-Arkansas line in Stone County. Grant Waggoner and William Ambrose concealed themselves and opened fire on Cul Garrett as he passed. Garrett returned fire and mortally wounded Waggoner.
Frank Ambrose, hearing the shots, arrived and fatally shot Garrett. Garrett, before dying, slightly wounded Frank Ambrose across the cheek. Contemporary reports placed the death toll from the broader conflict at roughly ten men.
Grant Waggoner was buried in Blackjack Cemetery near Berryville in Carroll County. His original marker has been replaced by descendants; it records his birth as September 22, 1867, and his death as September 1, 1887, though period newspaper accounts consistently place the killing at the end of November.
The Terry brothers, Isaac Jackson, Joseph Joel, Miles Monroe, John Richard, and Napoleon Bonaparte “Bone,” had already gained a reputation as outlaws in Stone County. Accused of horse stealing, robbery, and murder, they were driven out by a local vigilance committee after the Garrett-Waggoner shootout.
They retreated first into Boone County and then into Carroll County, where Isaac Terry purchased land across Indian Creek from the Ambrose farm. Within days of that purchase, Frank and William Ambrose, along with others, were indicted for burning Isaac Terry’s barn.
The Ambroses posted bond, obtained changes of venue, and contested the charges through repeated trials. Frank Ambrose’s first arson trial ended in a hung jury. In February 1890 he was convicted and sentenced to two years in the Arkansas State Penitentiary.
William Ambrose later entered a guilty plea to the same charge and received an identical sentence; he was released early under the three-quarters law in 1892.
Missouri authorities simultaneously pursued the Ambroses for Garrett’s death. Miles Terry filed an affidavit charging Frank and William with the murder. Both were indicted for first-degree murder in Stone County, held for a time in the Christian County jail, and released on substantial bonds.
William Ambrose stood trial in March 1890, secured a severance, and was acquitted. Frank Ambrose, already imprisoned in Arkansas on the arson conviction, failed to appear; his bond was declared forfeit. In September 1892 the murder charge against him was dismissed by nolle prosequi, and the bond-forfeiture action was likewise dropped.
Other legal proceedings continued. Miles Terry was acquitted of John Meek’s murder in 1889; John Terry was acquitted of the same charge a decade later. Bone and Sam Terry faced robbery charges in Carroll County in 1892. John Ambrose, another of Henry Clark Ambrose’s sons, served a five-year sentence in the Missouri penitentiary for a separate arson in Barry County and was released in 1893.
In 1894 William Ambrose was finally tried in Madison County, Arkansas, on a long-standing charge of assault with intent to kill stemming from a 1887 shooting; he was convicted, fined two hundred dollars, and sentenced to thirty days in jail.
The last recorded killing linked to the feud occurred on July 4, 1895. John Ambrose was shot and killed by F. S. Helt near Carr Lane, Missouri, after a dispute involving Helt’s daughters. Ambrose fired first; Helt returned fire in what a preliminary examination later ruled self-defense.
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John Ambrose was buried in Jones Cemetery at Urbanette in Carroll County, the same burial ground that would later receive his brothers. Frank Barton Ambrose died on January 3, 1943, and was interred in Jones Cemetery. William J. Ambrose died on June 14, 1938, and rests there as well.
Throughout the conflict the state line served as both refuge and complication. Defendants crossed from Arkansas into Missouri and back again, posted bonds in one jurisdiction while facing charges in another, and used changes of venue to seek more favorable juries.
Newspapers in Springfield, Ozark, Little Rock, and New York chronicled the arrests, the jail escapes, the bond forfeitures, and the threats of further bloodshed. Vigilance committees on both sides of the border mobilized, and at one point reports circulated that the Terrys had fortified themselves and armed with Winchester rifles while facing a larger force of regulators. In the end the courts, rather than continued ambushes, largely exhausted the principal combatants.
The Ambrose-Terry-Waggoner Feud never achieved the lasting folklore status of the Hatfield-McCoy conflict, yet for more than a dozen years it left a trail of graves, prison records, and court dockets across the Arkansas Ozarks and the Missouri border counties that shared its hills and its hard history.
