While you're at the Mt. Vernon library, you might check the Peirce City Empire as well. I'm pretty sure they have it. The Empire carried a lot of Barry County news and frequently had its own sources and fresh accounts. I consider it the main source of information for Monett before the early 1900s.

I have a website on Monett and Barry County history. I've transcribed many articles from the Civil War to the early 1890s, but haven't got to 1899. If the main researcher here has done transcriptions and would cut and paste them into an email to me, I would gladly add them to this web page:

http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cappscreek/b...