In 1865, Union Army Captain Nelson Paintier returns under military orders to his boyhood home, bushwhacker-ravaged southern Missouri. His orders are to pardon or kill the raiders riding there under the black flag of “Give No Quarter”. Caught up in a bushwhacker chase, he must help them or lose the schoolteacher love of his life.

She alone understands his guilt for causing the death of a fourteen-year-old slave girl years before. Because of their love, his dedication to duty, and his desire to correct his past sins, they ride a path that leads them straight towards death on the sheer edges of the Hawksbill Crag.

WELCOME TO SNELSON-BRINKER CABIN AND THE NOVELS’ BACKGROUND

The Snelson-Brinker Cabin, located in the heart of the Missouri Ozarks region, is a place where the histories of hopeful pioneer life converged with tragic events. Levi Lane Snelson moved west from Ohio into Missouri in 1832 to help establish the new Maramec Iron Works as the largest iron production operation west of the Mississippi. He built the original cabin as his home in 1834. His log home was also the Crawford County Circuit Court meeting place in 1835 & 1836 with Levi serving as Justice of the Peace in 1836.

​Levi sold part of his farm and the cabin to John Brinker in 1837. The Brinker’s were witness to two tragedies shortly after. The first was the murder of their eldest daughter, Vienna Jane, that involved the Missouri Supreme Court in the subsequent trial and conviction. The second was the appearance of the BB Cannon detachment of Cherokee who were forced from their homes and were westward bound on the Trail of Tears. Records reveal that detachments of Cherokee camped on the property near the Snelson-Brinker cabin and nearby in the Meramec River bottom before continuing west through the Ozark hills. The harsh winter and Trail of Tears claimed lives and there were Indian burials near the cabin.

​Sadly, the Snelson-Brinker cabin was burned on July 4th, 2017. The Snelson Brinker Foundation was formed to reconstruct the cabin, repair a smokehouse/root cellar that was added in 1880, and preserve the important histories that converged on the site from 1834 to present day. Explore this website and the Snelson Brinker Facebook page to discover early Missouri history as it happened at the cabin.

​Understanding our past informs and shapes our future. The mission of the Snelson Brinker Foundation, and those who have generously provided their time, skills and funds, is restoration and preservation of this historic witness site for the benefit of Americans and visitors from abroad who seek an understanding of pioneer life in Missouri, early Missouri history, the Maramec iron trade, and the tragic Trail of Tears Cherokee displacement.

​Please join us with your support to preserve this historic site for future generations.

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Frank J. Snelson

My position on the Gemini Space Program.

The F4 Phantom test pilot expectantly waited all morning for me to finish and crawl out of his airplane’s back seat. I checked the last of four sets of wires connected to the data recorder I had installed in the rear seat of the airplane. Finished with the vibration test setup I climbed out of the cockpit and signed off for the pilot to take the bird on a test flight.

The linemen were quick to hook the tow truck to the Phantom and move it to the edge of the McDonnell’s airport ramp. It took only a few minutes for the pilot to prefight the bird and have the engines running.

I stood just outside the hanger waiting for the pilot to turn the airplane at the end of the runway. Lined up for the takeoff, I saw the airplane moving even before the wall of sound from the twin jet engines got to me. The roar of a Phantom was distinctive and always enough for me as a private pilot to think ‘Why in the hell am I not flying this airplane’. It passed the hanger with the nose of the bird climbing at a ridiculously steep path and well over a hundred miles per hour. The sound of the engines shook the hanger door behind me. The pilot would have turned on my recorder in the backseat and he darn well meant to shake the heck out of my test instruments.

There had been nothing to impress me more until this day than a McDonnell Aircraft F4 Phantom at its take off. My impression of what a takeoff could be was about to change for the rest of my life. The Gemini Space Program was upon us.

My supervisor stood waiting just past the hanger with a clipboard and some papers. After a half dozen questions about what I knew about cameras he pointed to our lab and said I was wanted in a new group that had just been formed for the Gemini Space Program.

Cameras had never contained any secrets from me. Living a lot of my youth with a famous 1890s photographer my grandfather B.F. Oliver who had kept encouraged me to use our Kodak or some other camera to take pictures or to take it apart to see how it worked.

With a sit down in the lab, the huge scope of what needed to be done to select cameras for the upcoming Gemini space flights and Edward White’s spacewalk became clear. Zero had been done and way more than zero problems faced us.

Our lab testing of cameras quickly showed clicking a camera’s shutter makes a heck of vibration and carrying it into space, a zero-gravity environment would move the camera and blur the pictures. So, our search started for just the right low vibration camera. Camera companies came out of the woodwork.

For us to fly their cameras on a Gemini flight would cement then into the history books of cameras. One of the toughest choices would be the camera Ed White would carry on his spacewalk. We tested at least a dozen well known cameras before settling on the rugged Zeiss Contarex 35 mm camera.

There were many days ahead and several cameras to select before the Gemini astronauts would be sitting down with us to inspect and learn about the cameras that we intended for them to fly and use in zero gravity. In a few months ahead watching Gus Grissom with a flight camera and his pocketknife screwdriver would keep me on a high alert. He loved to take things apart to see just how they work. It felt so much like my own desire to learn.

More later on the astronauts and space flights