JUDGE WILLIAM LITTLEBURY KUYKENDALL
A PIONEER OF THREE TERRITORIES
| Timeline of William Littlebury Kuykendall's Life | From: History of the Kuykendall Family | Frontier Days |
Timeline of W. L. Kuykendall's life:
[The following information is taken from History of the Kuykendall Family by George Benson Kuykendall, 1919.]
Judge William L. Kuykendall, late of Saratoga, Wyoming, was much interested in the past history of the Kuykendall family, and we corresponded on the subject, occasionally for years. Excerpts from this correspondence will now be given:
"My great grandfather lived in South Carolina, near the foot of King's Mountain, where my grandfather was born. The former was killed in the battle of that name, his house and household goods, and the family records were burned soon afterwards, by the Tories, followed directly afterwards by the death of my great grandmother. My grandfather, Richmond Kuykendall was, at the time, a very small boy, absolutely poverty stricken and too small to remember afterwards, whether or not he had any relatives in that part of the country. A kind neighbor cared for him, and very soon afterwards moved to Barren county, Kentucky, where my grandfather reached maturity, married, and where my father was born and grew to almost maturity, before my grandfather
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moved to Garrard county, Kentucky. By this time, 35 or 40 years had intervened since my grandfather left South Carolina. Father commenced an investigation, as soon as he could, after reaching manhood, and found that all the Kuykendalls that he could hear of in North and South Carolina, especially those living near King's Mountain, spelled the name as you and I do, and that it was pronounced by some Kikendall and by others Kirkendall, which accounts for my father and his next older brother spelling the name correctly, as you and as I do, while his two younger brothers spelled it Kirkendall. I have no doubt whatever that the King's Mountain Kuykendalls of the present time, one of whom (Dr. John C. Kuykendall), of Yorkville, S. C., are distant, if not comparatively near relatives of mine. You will notice that they have dropped one 1 from the name.
My grandfather's name was Richmond, and my father's name was James. The latter had three brothers, John, Jacob and Joseph. They are long since dead, and I know nothing of my uncle's families. My father, James Kuykendall, and mother, Celia (Thompson) Kuykendall's children were: ELIZA A., SARAH J., RICHMOND, WILLIAM L., and ROBERT G., all of whom are dead except myself. My brother James M. left only one son named John, who had a son named James M., born about 1891. My sons are John M. and Harry Lee, both of whom live in Denver, Colorado."
WILLIAM LITTLEBURY KUYKENDALL was born December 13, 1835, and after reaching maturity he was always prominent and actively connected with public affairs in every community
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in which he lived. He held numerous offices and places of trust. He was Justice of the Peace, County Clerk, Deputy Clerk of the District Court, United States Commissioner, Judge of Probate, and was a member of the legislature several times. He held the position of Grand Sire of the I. O. O. F. of the World, and was Grand Secretary of the A. F. & A. M. of Wyoming for over twenty-five years.
The Judge led a varied and active life, and all of it was in the frontier parts of the country, of which he was no small factor in the development. He was in Kansas during the stirring and stormy events preceding the Civil war.
His superabundant energy always found him "doing something." In 1870 he organized a large expedition for prospecting the Big Horn country. This expedition was stopped by the United States troops, but in 1876 he organized and led another company into that country that was successful, and that led to the opening up of the rich mines of the Black Hills country.
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Though in the Civil war he was found on the side of the South, there was no man, perhaps, that was more glad to see sectional bitterness pass away and the country united again. He was a man of great energy, strict integrity and great force of character, and wielded a potent influence in the building up of the country wherever he lived.
MR. JOHN M. KUYKENDALL, of Denver, Colorado, son of Judge W. L. Kuykendall, like his father, has been very much interested in the history of the K family.
The tragic fate of his great grandfather and mother, and the great obscurity connected with their earlier residence in South Carolina, would naturally arouse his interest and create a wish that he might know more of those worthy ancestors. His branch of the family like nearly all the others have from the beginning, been path makers for civilization. Mr. John M. inherited from his father a large measure of energy and business capacity, which he has used with marked success in life. He was born in Platte county, Missouri, April 25, 1860. He attended the public schools of Cheyenne, Wyoming, and later completed his eduction in Racine College, Wisconsin. His first experience with the business activities of life was with his father in the sheep business, during about twelve years. His first business undertaking of considerable magnitude was in 1875, when he organized the Wisconsin-Wyoming Land and Cattle Company, of the J. I. Case Threshing Machine Co., with a capital stock of $145,000, J. I. Case as President, and J. M. Kuykendall as General Manager. Ten years later he organized a cattle company operated on Medicine Bow, in the same county, which was known as the J. M. Kuykendall Company, with a capital stock of $60,000, of which he was President and General Manager. In the year 1892 he organized the Columbia Coach Company, capital stock, $60,000, which was operated in Chicago during the World's Fair. Of this company he was President and Manager. In the year 1890, he organized the Denver Omnibus and Cab Company with a capital of $100,000 and in 1910 he reorganized the Denver Omnibus and Cab Company under the laws of Wyoming, and increased the capital stock to $525,000, and since then has increased the assets of the company to over $1,000,000. The business has gone on increasing from year to year, and he still continues to be president and manager. He has besides these, business interests in other large enterprises in mining and irrigation operations.
While he has been engrossed in business he has found time to look after social amenities. He is director of the Denver Club, the Overland Park Country Club, Denver Athletic Club, Chamber of Commerce, and numerous other organizations.
He was elected in 1887 member of the Territorial Legislature of Wyoming, when he was about twenty-seven years of age. His first experience in a legislature was as page of the first Territorial Legislature of Wyoming, when he was nine years old. He saved up a little money this way, and put it into sheep with his father's business.
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He married Miss Anna Thomason, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, January 1, 1889, who was at the time an orphan, the daughter of Zechariah Thomason, one of the pioneer cattle men of Wyoming. They have never had any children.
All Mr. Kuykendall's life has been spent in the west, mostly on the frontier.
He has been successful in his business undertakings and naturally feels a great attachment to the Colorado country. He sees Denver as the fairest spot in all the earth to him, and believes in its future and the future of the great state of which it is the metropolis. Here he has put in the best energies of the prime of life, and has seen a great and beautiful city spring up from a mere village and become a charming metropolis, the center of trade of an intermountain empire. He is happy to have done his part in the great transformation.
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[Following is a beginning transcription of the book by W. L. Kuykendall, 1917.]
A True Narrative of Striking Events on the Western Frontier
By Judge W. L. Kuykendall
1917
J. M. and H. L. Kuykendall
Publishers
Copyright, 1917, by J. M. Kuykendall
DEDICATORY
TO THE MEMORY OF MY WIFE, who departed this life on the twenty-first day of December, 1898, who for more than forty years traveled along life's pathway by my side, through sunshine and through storm unwaveringly; sharing in all the grief and hardships of life on the Western Border, as a Pioneer Woman in Kansas, Colorado, Dakota and Wyoming - this book is lovingly dedicated.
William L. Kuykendall
FOREWARD
The quaint and unique style characteristic of Judge William Littlebury Kuykendall has been carefully preserved in the editing of this remarkable biography. He was a well educated, widely read, courteous gentleman of the old school and he had a vocabulary which belonged to the strenuous days and environment in which he lived. He died before the publication of his autobiography and therefore never wrote the expose of the political life to which he refers in this manuscript.
This book makes no pretense of carrying a continuous story, or of writing history in a chronological sequence. It is a group of incidents well told but hung loosely together, the only thing binding them being the sturdy character of the Judge himself.
Incidentally it deals with the dramatic story of the Kansas and Missouri Border trouble, the birth of the Civil War and the early pioneer history of Wyoming and the Dakotas, with marvelous pen sketches of western Indians, empire builders, the vultures of mining camps, and the life of new and raw communities, better than it could ever be told except by one who had lived the life and who could write in the language of those who had lived it.
He has put wonderful "splotches" of local color into the story of his adventures.
CHAPTER TITLE PAGE
III MISSOURIANS IN THE MEXICAN WAR AND INCIDENTS OF 1846 19
IV A FEW PRACTICAL JOKERS OF MY BOYHOOD 26
V EARLY RECOLLECTIONS OF THE MORMONS, THE FIRST WAR WITH THE BRULE SIOUX INDIANS 33
VI MY FIRST OFFICE AND THE SETTLEMENT OF KANSAS 39
VII RECOLLECTIONS OF EVENTS IN THE KANSAS WAR 46
VIII JOHN BROWN, THE ENGAGEMENTS AT OSAWATOMIE AND OTHER EXCITING EVENTS 52
X A FEW OF THE MANY VIVID RECOLLECTIONS OF THE CIVIL WAR OR THE WAR OF REBELLION 70
XI THE FIGHTS AT CAMDEN POINT, AT THE WIDOW CONDROW'S HOUSE AND OTHER THRILLING EVENTS 78
XIII THE INDIAN RAID ALONG THE OVERLAND STAGE ROAD 92
XIV THE LOCATION OF FORT SAUNDERS NEAR THE PRESENT CITY OF LARAMIE 99
XV THE FETTERMAN AND OTHER MASSACRES. KILLINGS AND ESCAPES 104
XVI INDIAN TROUBLES CONNECTED WITH THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD. THE BIRTH OF CHEYENNE 109
XVII JULESBURG AND THE CHILDHOOD OF CHEYENNE 114
XVIII THE VIGILANCE COMMITTEE. ORGANIZATION OF CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT AND SCHOOL DISTRICT 119
XIX LARAMIE CITY, FORT STEELE, BENTON, RAWLINS, GREEN RIVER, BEAR RIVER CITY AND FIRST REGULAR ELECTION 124
XX THE FIRST LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF WYOMING PASSES FIRST WOMAN SUFFRAGE BILL 131
XXI THE FIRST BIG HORN AND BLACK HILLS ASSOCIATION, EXPEDITION AND SOME OF THE RESULTS 137
XXII OLD COLOROW AND CAPTAIN JACK. TWO BAD UTE INDIANS. KILLING OF TWO WOMEN AT OLD CAMP BROWN 144
XXIII A CORONER'S INQUEST. THE MILLION DOLLAR COAL MINE AND OTHER PECULIAR AND COMICAL EVENTS 150
XXV THE ODD FELLOWS SOCIETY, THE KNIGHTS OF PYTHIAS AND MASONIC FRATERNITY. TWO PECULIAR ADVENTURES 162
XXVI THE FIRST RED CLOUD AGENCY AND SUPPLY DEPOT 168
XXVII SOME EARLY HISTORY CONNECTED WITH THE BLACK HILLS OF SOUTH DAKOTA 174
XXVIII DEADWOOD IN 1876 180
XXX THE INDIANS KILL THE STREET PREACHER SMITH 192
XXXI SETTLEMENT OF SPEARFISH VALLEY BEGINS. INDIAN FIGHTS AND A CAT STORY 198
XXXII ORGANIZATION OF LAWRENCE AND TWO OTHER COUNTIES IN THE HILLS. FIRST ELECTION AND MORE EXCITEMENT 204
XXXIV ROAD AGENTS AND THE KILLING OF JOHNNY SLAUGHTER, A STAGE DRIVER 219
XXXV HAPPENINGS ON THE STAGE LINE. "BIG NOSE GEORGE." THE STONEVILLE FIGHTS AND A BEAR STORY 225
XXXVI RETURN TO DEADWOOD AND OTHER EVENTS OF A STRENUOUS CHARACTER 233
XXXVIII ENGAGE IN THE CATTLE BUSINESS, CHANGE RESIDENCE AND OTHER EVENTS 241
XXXIX TO MY ASSOCIATES, THE PEOPLE GENERALLY AND MY BOY AND GIRL FRIENDS 246
APPENDIX 250
Early Recollections
In the following pages the reader will find a truthful account of the events occurring in the long and eventful life of the writer, Judge W. L. Kuykendall, a Pioneer of three Territories.
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I was born in Clay County, Missouri, on the thirteenth day of December, 1835. At that time Clay County was situated on the extreme western border of the State, and, so far as settlement was concerned, practically marked the western border of our entire country. It adjoined the Reservation of the Sac, Fox and Iowa tribes of Indians, whose agency buildings were located twelve miles south of Roubideaux's Trading Post - now the beautiful and prosperous city of Saint Joseph.
During the year 1837 the land included in the Reservation was acquired by the United States Government through a treaty with the Indians. It then became a part of the State of Missouri and was declared open for settlement.
My father, Judge James Kuykendall, moved from Clay County, when I was but four years old, and located in Platte County, opposite and across the river from Fort Leavenworth. In this county he served as one of the early County Judges, the first Judge of Probate, and was the first Sheriff elected.
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When this county first opened for settlement, it was covered with a thick growth of hardwood timber. Truly a country calling for the best of manhood - a country in which man had literally to hew his way to comfort and success.
Roads had to be cut, water-, grist- and sawmills had to be erected, land fenced, timber cleared away so land might be cultivated, school-houses, farm-houses and churches built. But the spirit of independence which filled the hearts of so many hardy, healthy Kentuckians, Virginians and Tennesseeans quickly filled up the county with a race which knew not the word "failure." The soil was the finest in the land, and in less than six years Platte County ranked second to Saint Louis in wealth and population.
The first building erected in the neighborhood into which we had moved, after suitable housing had been provided for the families and stock, was a log schoolhouse. For in those days children were numerous. Means of running short, and not long, on children had not then been discovered.
The first school I attended was in a log cabin having a great, wide fireplace at one end. The furniture consisted of a long rough board table and three benches. These benches were of split logs, hewed and smoothed on the split side, with four pegs driven into the under side for legs. On them we sat, dressed in home-made jeans and tow shirts - with our bare feet swinging clear of the floor as we worked over our problems in the three R's.
And how we did our very best to get our lessons thoroughly! In those days the switch was a part of the teacher's paraphernalia and it was used to good advantage. A little "essense of hickory" would work wonders. It is my honest belief that we learned more, in a shorter period of time, in those little rustic school-houses
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under what is now termed an erroneous system of teaching than do the children of the present generation.
It was on one of my trips of a mile and a half, through the heavy forest, to school, that I had my first Indian experience. I had often listened to my mother relate the troubles the settlers in Kentucky had with the Indians, until all the Indians were the same to us. As I was walking along, barefooted, making the dust of the road squdge up in litle puff clouds between my toes, I happened to glance toward the top of the hill. There came the advance of two or three hundred Indians riding peacefully along. My little heart seemed at first to go up into my throat, but flight was useless and so I screwed my courage up to its highest pitch and marched boldly past them. Many times since that day I have met hostile Indians upon the warpath, but never have I been so badly frightened as upon that occasion.1
In those early days the children aided the parents in every way possible. It was a matter of necessity. There was but little money in circulation and times were very hard. With all that, happy home scenes are all well remembered.
From the time I was six years until I had reached ten, my time was well occupied, in going to school, helping around the farm, and each Saturday fastening a large sack of grain upon the back of a gentle horse and climbing aboard for an eight-mile ride to the water-mill.
Then it was good fun to help mother with the handloom in preparing to weave the cloth and other material for our clothing - or hauling lumber and firewood with
1 These Indians were doubtless traveling peacefully into the Indian Territory, the area in which in 1854 embraced 68,991 square miles west of Missouri. The Shawnees were the first Indians to journey into the new Indian territory to live on the lands given them by the U. S. government. They were peaceful enough then, as they had no anticipation of the injustice which was later meted out to them.
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a yoke of oxen. Once because we ran over and stirred up a nest of yellow jackets, the oxen ran away with me. The yellow jackets made it mighty warm for us in our ludicrous flight. I always believed my brother steered me that way purposely.
Years afterward that scene was vividly recalled when, in forming a line of battle under heavy fire, one company was completely routed for the time being by yellow jackets. This rendered the regiment useless for a few minutes because of the cheering of the "circus performances" by other comrades.
When I was ten years of age my father was elected Sheriff and we moved to the county seat. It was there I first saw a gunsmith making the famous Squirrel rifle - so named because it was used at that time for killing the squirrels which were very destructive to the crops. Nearly every Saturday parties of young men would congregate and soon the crack of their rifles would be heard all over the country. In these shooting matches since squirrels shot through the head would count in the scores, heads were always hit. Jim Denver, after whom the City of Denver was named, was one of the most expert shots.
James Whitcomb Riley's "The Ole Swimmin' Hole" could not compare with our Millpond, with its fine sandy bottom - and the sawlog rafts along its banks which were just the thing for our spring boards after we learned to swim.
There was much grief among us boys in the earlier stages of our attempts to master the water. The fear of our drowning so worked upon our mothers as to impel them to use the rod generously and lavishly, and to adopt plans for catching us "red-handed." For instance, my mother - and no boy ever had a better one - hit upon the plan of sewing up the collars and wristbands of our shirts instead of using buttons. We pro-
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cured the same kind of thread and after a swim sewed up each other's shirts, dried our hair, and appeared at home looking as innocent as lambs and passing inspection without question. But when mother accidentally heard we could swim the Missouri River, the embargo was removed and the buttons were restored. Whilst I have never been much of a believer in deception, I have always felt that we were justified in practicing it in that case.
One of the features of our school life was the Friday afternoon exercises. We always looked forward to this with much acclaim for it meant a cessation from hard study, an opportunity to forget the birch and an early dismissal for the day. These exercises would usually close with two of the larger pupils making choice alternately of the others until all were chosen. Then would come the spelling-match, the teacher pronouncing the words from Webster's old spelling book.
I was generally among the last, and often the last left standing. One occasion, when I was but a little tyke, all had gone down but a beautiful girl of fifteen years, whom I dearly loved, and myself. After rattling ahead for some time, amid subdued excitement, she missed a word. She looked at me appealingly. The teacher knew I could spell it. Duty, pity and my boyish love with an innate chivalrous feeling for the sex struggled for mastery. Duty triumphed. I spelled the word. She cried and I followed suit. That was my first heart-breaking experience.
In the country, I had, though small for my age, been rated well up in running, jumping and wrestling. But I had never seen men or boys fight. I was not in the county seat long before I was initiated in how it was done.
One Christmas vacation, being with a party of boys, I laid my knife down for a moment. Some one pocketed
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it. A much heavier boy than I was pointed out as the one having it. I accused him, he denied it, and I jumped on him and threw him but could not hold him. As ill-luck would have it I rolled into a little washout just fitting my body. Then he sailed in to give me a good thrashing. Although underneath, and helpless as far as turning him was concerned, I managed to keep him from hurting me very much until a young man came along and pulled him off with a jerk, saying he should be ashamed of himself to jump on such a little boy. The joke was, I did the jumping and when thus released was on my feet in an instant and made a spring for my adversary. But the young man caught me and held us both. He made the other boy go home and then released me.
I afterwards found that a young fellow, nearly grown, had taken the knife, and that was my first lesson in the methods of deceit, for the one who had pointed out the boy with whom I fought was the culprit.
Among the first notable events of my boyhood recollections was the congregating of a large party of men, women and children of our county together with other Missourians for a great overland journey to the Oregon country. Some of these were restless spirits who had failed to secure a tract of land or did not feel like clearing off the heavy timber for a farm. As Congress had passed an act assuring a liberal gift of land in the Oregon Territory for every new settler, these people loaded their worldly goods into wagons and started on the long journey across the Great American Desert and the Rocky Mountains, thus marking out the Oregon Trail up the Platte, North Platte and Sweetwater Rivers.
This trail had been plainly marked by other Missourians, hastening to Oregon to get good homes in 1844 and 8145, and by the first party of Mormons in 1848
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and 1850 and during the following years by the wonderful migration of gold seekers to California.
Many of those who left our county for the long journey to Oregon, and whose wagons broke down the sage brush in making that trail, are well remembered, particularly one man named Dougherty who carried with him the first charter for a Masonic Lodge ever taken across the Plains. That lodge still exists in Portland.
The descendants of many of these Missourians are located in the valley of the Willamette and are enjoying the fine homes provided them by their forefathers - homes won through hardship, toil and danger, by men who accomplished one of the greatest feats of pioneering in the history of our country.
While they were not the first white people to cross the Plains, it was their wagons that first passed over the dim trails of the trappers who had penetrated the Mountain wilderness.
When we consider that they went with all kinds of domestic animals, and household utensils sufficient to commence life in a new settlement in a wilderness two thousand miles from American civilization, that the country into which they were going was at that time but little known, that it was through a trackless desert beset by Indians and many other dangers all the way, that they had to open up farms and wait for crops to grow, that they had to erect houses and mills and make other necessary improvements, far from the base of supplies - then we must realize and admit the achievement to be truly wonderful.
It is true that they had the promise of the Government that at the end of their journey, they, and each member of their respective families, could enter upon and acquire title to a large body of land as a free gift. The promise was fulfilled - and was a just compensation
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for the bravery displayed by this hardy clan of pioneers, for the dangers and privations, for the many weary miles of slow-going travel. But it was not the promise alone that buoyed them up and held them fast to their course and their resolve. It was the spirit of indomitable will and the independent homing instinct which possessed them.
When the promise which was made to these people by the Government - and splendidly kept - is contrasted with the present attempted conservation of public lands suitable for agriculture, by which settlers are to be handicapped through rules, the latter become odious. Such reservations are certainly not in keeping with the reward clearly due every settler on the public domain - the reward which is his due for the hardships and privations he and his family have to undergo in the attempt to make two blades of grass grow where one existed before.
When in Portland, Oregon, a few years ago I visited the collection of relics in the old City Hall. There were ancient wooden churns, tin lanterns, spinning wheels, flax-hackles, antiquated firearms and many things which reminded me of the pioneer days of my boyhood in what was then the western border of our country. These old relics had formed a part of the equipment of those who established the Oregon Trail.
The Custodian said I was one in a thousand who was able to point out and name the flax-hackle, and was therefore entitled to be enrolled as an honorary member of the Pioneer Association. This fact alone shows the wonderful change from the primitive manner of living in the West fifty or sixty years ago and now.
Prior to the lcoation of the Oregon Trail, which I have just described, and between 1820 and 1830, if not earlier, the Chouteau, St. Vrain, the Bents and Sublettes, of St. Louis, Missouri, and others occupied the mountain
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streams from Canada to Mexico by locating trappers everywhere.
The love of adventure and the call of the wild caused Kit Carson and Jim Bridger, both Missourians, Jim Beckworth, Jim Baker and many others of lesser note, to locate in and along the Rocky Mountains, thereby becoming familiar with the whole country now comprised in the States of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah and other extreme Western States. This especially fitted them in after years to be guides for emigrant and military expeditiions. Carson and Bridger were specially famous for such work. Most of the old roads on the Plains and through the mountains were marked by one or the other of those two great men, and it was the Missourians' wagons that made such marking definite.
Many of those who now travel in luxurious Pullman cars to Oregon and California over the Union Pacific and the Oregon Short Line do not know, or even think, that they are traveling near the Oregon and California trails all the way, through a country made historic by the dangers, privations and hardships encountered by those brave pioneers. It was certainly these early emigrants who paved the way for others to follow - who laid permanently the foundation for our mountain commonwealth - who fell victim to the scalping knives of the Indians that contested the effort, for many years, to settle and reclaim the country from its wild state.
After the establishment of the settlements in Oregon, the United States Government proceeded to establish connecting links between that Territory and the Missouri River. This is did by having a battalion of volunteers Missourians erect Forts Kearney and Hall on the Oregon Trail, and to secure from Laramie and Bridger the fortified trading posts bearing their names, which
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were located at about equal distance between the other two thus forming a chain of military forts between Leavenworth and the settlements in Oregon.
There is good reason to believe that this was mainly accomplished through the efforts of Tom Benton, Missouri's great senator. It was his son-in-law, Fremont, sho, with an exploring expedition following the trail of the Sublettes and other trappers, demonstrated the feasibility of, not only a wagon-road, but a railroad as well across the supposed desert to the Pacific Ocean. in the early forties Benton, with prophetic eye advocated the exploration and settlement of the far West and was opposed by Webster and other public men, who ridiculed the idea that anything existed or ever would exist west of the Missouri River justifying any attempt at occupancy by white people.
It is said that Fremont, in his report to the War Department, mentioned the presence of a honey-bee on top of Fremont's Peak - now in Fremont County, Wyoming - when they ascended it. As it is not probable that one isolated bee came hundreds of miles to grace that occasion, it is believed that the Presidential Bee then and there entered his bonnet, and that the real insect was a case of imagination.1
1Strange to relate, the story of the "lonely bee" is substantiated by historians who can be relied upon. It is related that swarms of bees were found in Wyoming at a time and in places where it seemed impossible for them to live.
EARLY PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF PROMINENT MISSOURIANS WHO SETTLED IN OREGON AND CALIFORNIA. OLD MOUNTAINEERS
During the year 1843 a number of men from the western border of Missouri, afflicted with asthma and tuberculosis, accompanied the Sublettes to the Rocky Mountains. Many of them were wonderfully helped by the pure light air of the mountains - some were entirely cured - but some had suffered the ravages of disease too long and never returned to tell wonderful tales of the great country across the Plains.
There was one young lawyer who came back and had many stories to relate. One was of an encounter with a grizzly bear which he claimed to have met on a trail. He was unarmed, but fortunately he remembered having heard that a steady gaze in the eyes would cause wild animals to run away. He tried it successfully on the bear, and thus escaped.
Almost every third year a wiry little mountaineer would return to spend the winter and would stop for several days in our town. His name is now forgotten but the memory of his tales is not. His face was badly disfigured. This was caused by a fight with a bear afterward found dead a few feet from the plucky little fighter, who lay there unconscious for hours and afterward hovered between life and death for many days.
During one of his stops the town jokers, who had become tired of his oft repeated, miraculous stories of the lawyer, steered him up against the little fellow. The
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little mountaineer listened for some time to the lawyer's recitations of wonderful deeds and then remarked that he, too, had met with a number of thrilling experiences, the most remarkable one being a time when he was lost on the plains. After wandering about until both he and his horse had become exhausted and famished for water, he was several times deceived by mirage forests. Finally, in the distance he saw a forest which was not a mirage to which he wound his way. But upon reaching it he discovered it to be petrified, with petrified birds sitting on the limbs of petrified trees, singing petrified songs.
Without a word our lawyer friend got up and walked out. That was the last we ever heard of his mountain stories. They, too, had become petrified.
Among the more prominent men, who emigrated from our section of the country to Oregon in 1842 or 1843, were two who reached high up on the ladder of fame. Not satisfied with the country in the north they went to California, then a Mexican State, where they secured grants of land.
One of them, Peter S. Burnett, who had been a resident of our country, and Circuit Attorney of our Judicial Circuit, was the first civil Governor of California after it became United States territory. He followed General Riley, the Military Governor of that country after the Mexican War.
The other was Sutter, who went from the hamlet of what is now Kansas City. He acquired fame through the discovery of placer gold while excavating a ditch for his mill in California. This was the cause of the wonderful stampede of men to that country in 1849-1850 and the following years, thereby changing it in reality from a Mexican to an American country.
The far-reaching effect of Sutter's discovery can be readily seen when it is remembered that the influx of
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white men into California was immediately followed by the establishment of the Pony-express, the Overland Stage Line and finally by the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad, a combination of fast succeeding events which rapidly changed the face of nature, of political activities and of religious, social, financial, business and educational conditions from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean.
Some of the men who were in the van in all this rapid change became men of national reputation - others died with their boots on - others weakened owing to the strenuous life and returned to more peaceful conditions in States east of the Missouri River - while others of the real great empire builders, although often hampered by the Government, especially in Wyoming, went quietly about the business of settling the country.
These men and their descendants have a right to be proud of their achievements. The people who have been the beneficiaries of their labors, sacrifices, dangers, hardships and privations should not forget to honor them for the great work they have accomplished. It is said, however, that republics are ungrateful, and experience teaches that many people are forgetful.
Among the many young men who went from our town in the first rush to the gold fields of California was a young lawyer, the editor of our town newspaper, namely, James W. Denver, generally known as "Jim" Denver. Denver had enlisted and commanded a company of infantry from our country in the Mexican War, going with General Scott from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico, then being attached to General Riley's Brigade and participating in all the battles of that campaign.
On his trip to the gold fields of California, whenever opportunity afforded, he would send back letters to friends in our town, describing items of interest along
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the route. Descriptions of Court House and Chimney Rocks near the present Wyoming and Nebraska line, Independence Rock, Forts Laramie and Bridger, and Salt Lake were among them. In describing the latter, he truthfully stated the water was so salty that a person could not sink in it.
When his old friends read that, many of them shook their heads and all agreed that some of his other stories appeared fishy but the last one was too salty for belief. One of them, who seemed to be more seriously effected than the rest, said, "What could have happened to Jim Denver in so short a time? When he left here his word was good and now he has turned out to be a famous liar - for who would believe that story? It is too bad that Jim's reputation for truth and veracity is forever ruined."
Upon the arrival of Denver in California, Governor Burnett made him a Commissioner and he was sent with a wagon loaded with provisions to relieve a stranded train of emigrants on the Humboldt desert. They had lost their stock and were nearly starved. Denver reached them in the nick of time, and helped them into California. At that time political feeling between Whigs and Democrats often reached the fighting and boiling points. Upon his return from the relief expedition he was attacked in the Whig paper by one of its editors or writers. He made a reply in the same spirit, the result being that he was challenged to fight a duel. This he honorably tried to avoid but could not. Then he chose the dead center Squirrel rifle for weapons - distance, sixty paces.
Denver was a large, fine looking, young man overburdened with fighting sand. It is related that as soon as the parties were on the ground, Denver tried to settle the matter. His efforts were unavailing. At the command "Fire" Denver fired into the air. His opponent missed
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him and demanded another shot. Denver, seeing that the other man would continue to demand another shot until he had scored a hit, said he would not throw another bullet away. The other man was killed on the second shot, Denver remaining untouched.
Later, Denver was elected to Congress from California. Next, he was appointed Governor of Kansas during the latter days of its Territorial existence. At this time Kansas extended to the summit of the Rocky Mountains, and all of what is now Colorado east of the summit was known as Arapahoe County, with Kansas designated as "unorganized."
Therefore when the original townsite of the present city of Denver was being staked the question of a name was canvassed. The suggestion was made to name it "Denver," in honor of the Governor of Kansas, and it was so ordered. When the war between the States broke out, Denver was made a Brigadier General, but, as I now recall, he was stationed in the North and never went to the front. As a man of national reputation, Jim Denver is an example of what a combination of circumstances will often do in turning the tide of a man's affairs and changing his life's work. In his case, the fact of his having been defeated for Judge of Probate in our county by my father, on the eve of the discovery of gold in California, was the real cause of his being among the first to depart for that new Eldorado, never to renew his citizenship anywhere in Missouri.
F. X. Aubrey was another Missourian who became famous. His first fame was based upon a remarkable horse-back ride made between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Independence, Missouri - a distance of eight hundred miles - in five days and thirteen hours. For speed and endurance this feat has probably never been equaled in this or any other country. Later one of the finest steamboats on the Missouri River was named in his honor
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Aubrey was killed in Santa Fe by Captain Weightman, who commanded the Battery under Doniphan at the Battle of Sacramento in the Mexican War. Weightman was killed in the Battle of Wilson's Creek during the Civil War while acting as Chief of Artillery under General Price.
Among the many stories in which Jim Bridger was a character, there are two or three worth relating herein.
During one of his early trips to his home near Independence, Missouri, he gave the editor of the paper at that place a description of the country now comprised in the Yellowstone National Park. He described in detail Yellowstone Lake, the geysers, Obsidian Hill and all the other marvels of that wonderland. The editor wrote it up, intending to publish it, but happened to read it to several of his old farmer friends. They ridiculed the idea, asserting that he was an easy victim of Jim's imagination, that the whole story was simply one of his big lies and that the editor would be the laughing stock of the country round if he published it. He listened to their advice and thus lost one of the biggest "scoops" falling to the lot of a newspaper man.
When the Surveyor General of Montana and his party visited the Park in 1877 and published the seemingly miraculous account of the geysers, the Independence editor pulled the old Bridger story of thirty-five or forty years priority from a pigeon-hole and found it was nearly a duplicate of the published account. Thus, after many years, was Jim's veracity as a story teller vindicated.
Obsidian Hill was, no doubt, the foundation of Bridger's glass mountain story. In this one he claimed that on one of his trips he camped in a section he had never seen before. The next morning, being out of meat for breakfast, he approached within easy range of a band of antelope and shot at a fine buck. He was very much surprised when they kept right on feeding. So care-
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fully loading his gun, he fired again, with the same result. Then he walked towards them - and ran right up against a glass mountain, so pure and clear that he could see the antelope feeding on the other side. Upon investigation he found it was three miles through that glassy crystal mountain.
On another occasion nearly all his comrades complained that the cooking and other camp utensils were becoming leaky. Bridger said he knew where there were great chunks of copper in a creek which would be the very thing for mending everything, and that he would bring some in. He brought them in, but for some reason the mending was put off and finally the chunks were thrown out behind the stage station. Some time afterwards they were discovered by a passenger on the coach who declared them to be gold nuggets! Such a yarn is on a par with the California story of the man who found a nugget so large that he could not lift it out of the hole and carry it away. He was loath to leave it for fear others would find it before his return, so he just sat down on it and starved to death.
Such stories account for stampedes to reported new diggings which often had as much foundation in fact as Jim's chunks of copper and the California nugget. Their widespread publicity kept the gold excitement of those days at fever heat, and the ever alluring hope of quick riches uppermost in the minds of the pioneer gold hunters and others. For the fever was contagious and spread like wild-fire.
About the last of Bridger's attempted road making for civilian and not for military expeditions was in 1863 or 1864, when he and Bozeman competed for new trails from Fort Laramie into Montana. The latter, with a large number of people and many wagons made the trail north to Powder River, thence along the east base of the Big Horn Mountains to and up the Yellowstone River
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and on to the town of Bozeman, which placed them in touch with the scattered settlements and mines of the rest of Montana.
On this trail were afterward located Forts Reno, Phil Kearney and C. F. Smith. On account of the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians, whose hearts and medicine were both bad at that time and for many years after, that route was impracticable, or nearly so, for emigrants. It was virtually abandoned until after the Indian difficulties were settled by placing Sitting Bull and all the Indians with him on a reservation.
Bridger, with his large party of emigrants, left the Oregon Trail near where Casper is located, moved through the Big Horn Mountains northeast of the present town of Shoshone and a few miles east of the Hot Springs where Thermopolis now is, crossing the Big Horn River not far from the present town of Basin. He passed through the center of the Big Horn Basin and not far from the present site of Cody, finally winding up in the town of Bozeman, very soon after the man for whom it was named had reached it with his party.
Whilst his trail was much the safest, and probably somewhat shorter, it never was used to any extent. The removal of the Overland Stage line from the Oregon Trail to the road up the South Platte to Denver and thence west over a new route, marked out by Bridger years before, had turned the tide of emigration to the west and northwest, because of additional factors of safety. So, Bridger's and Bozeman's attempt to divert the travel away from the route through Denver was a failure.
MISSOURIANS IN THE MEXICAN WAR AND INCIDENTS OF 1846
When the call for volunteers for the Mexican War of 1846 reached Missouri a regiment of cavalry was quickly raised and mustered in at Fort Leavenworth. A brilliant Clay County lawyer, A. W. Doniphan, was named as its Colonel. The mustering in of the second Cavalry regiment with Sterling Price as Colonel immediately followed, together with a battalion of cavalry consisting of four companies under Major Willock.
Our county furnished one of the four companies, consisting of one hundred and ten men, under Captain Jesse Morin. Of this company there were twenty-eight who fell in action and never returned to us. In those days it was a common expression that "a Missiourian would walk two miles for a horse to ride a mile."e; In many cases this was undoubtedly true and in some measure accounts for the speedy mustering in of the Cavalry mentioned. Companies of Artillery and Infantry were rapidly mustered in, soon filling Missouri's quota of troops for the war.
It is doubtful if any soldiers of like number ever accomplished as much in the way of marching and fighting as Doniphan's Regiment. It marched eight hundred miles, across the then so-called Great American Desert, and captured Santa Fe; thereby placing New Mexico under the United States flag, where it has ever since remained.
Upon arrival of Price's regiment, Colonel Doniphan
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was ordered to move his troops south along the Rio Grande and form a junction with General Wool in Chihuahua. The plan was to capture and hold the estates of Chihuahua and Sonora - both of which have again come prominently into the limelight during the recent revolutionary fighting in Mexico. Before reaching El Paso the regiment was attacked by a large force of Mexican Lancers, who were quickly whipped, in what was afterward named the Battle of Brazito.
At El Paso a priest tried to dissuade the Colonel from crossing the river, truthfully representing that twenty miles north of Chihuahua breastworks had been constructed across the only road. This breastwork was defended, he said, by twenty-five hundred Mexican soldiers and twenty pieces of artillery. The warning of the priest was of no avail, for the gallant Colonel with six hundred men crossed the river and resumed the march toward Chihuahua.
Arriving at a point outside of the range of the Mexican artillery, the baggage and merchant train of Sam Owens, of Independence, Missouri, an old Santa Fe and Chihuahua trader, were parked. Captain Weightman with his battery of six-pounders was ordered to take a position. This he did, on the run and in a cloud of dust, until he was within three hundred yards of the enemy. With "grape and canister," in a very few minutes he created a panic which turned into a rout. Then that "Rough, Ready and Ragged Regiment" charged and captured the works, the artillery and several hundred Mexicans. This was known as the Battle of Sacramento. One "twelve-pounder" captured there was one of the guns in Bledsoe's Confederate Battery during the Civil War. The Mexican loss in killed and wounded in that battle was heavy. The regiment lost but few men. Owens, although not a soldier, led the charge, because he was better mounted. He was one of the first to be killed.
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Chihuahua was captured and held without opposition for some time until thirty picked men scouted through the heart of Old Mexico to General Taylor at Buena Vista. Upon the return of the scouting expedition the regiment marched to that famous battle ground, thence to the Gulf of Mexico and back home again.
To get some idea of this achievement - an idea that will serve to show its immensity - the reader should trace the route of the regiment from Fort Leavenworth back to its starting point. This is but a condensed account - with many details not enumerated - gathered from several members of the regiment after their return. Colonel John T. Hughes, Regimental Adjutant, has also contributed to the historical records of the event.
One of the survivors, in describing the battery going into action, said it looked to him as though guns and all were going over the works before commencing business. No doubt this impression and the apparently headlong flight of the battery toward the enemies' works had much to do with the creation of the panic among the Mexicans.
Another survivor told the tale of his being one of the first to get into a church in Chihuahua, in which were a number of small, pure gold images and two large ones. He and a comrade seized the larger one but it fell to the floor, and before they could escape with it the Provost Guard captured them. In the meantime, the others had escaped with the tall image. In telling this story, he always closed with the words, "It is bad policy to be a human hog," which is very true and often exemplified.
While this regiment was making history for our country, Price was busy with Indian Marauders and unruly Mexicans in New Mexico. These marauding bands finally started an insurrection by assassinating Governor Bent - of the fur trading Bent family of St. Louis, Missouri - as well as other Americans; and also by a general
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uprising and concentration of a large armed force between Santa Fe and Taos. This concentration Price quickly attacked and routed at Canyada. They were finally finally driven into Taos, where they made use of the adobe convent or church and other adobe buildings, from which they kept up an incessant fire through small port holes. Finally Price placed a squirrel-hunter opposite each hole, with instructions that he was to fire a bullet into that hole every time it was darkened by a human shadow.
Finally the artillery made a sufficient breach and the charge was hastened through a bullet striking the Colonel in the foot as he rode to and fro directing affairs. The convent was taken and the survivors surrendered. After the surrender, three or four dead Mexicans were found lying opposite each port hole, all shot through the head.
It became evident after the surrender that many of the prisoners had knowledge of the identity of the ringleaders and instigators of the insurrection and of the turbulent lawlessness which had over-run that portion of the country. A general court-martial was convened, which, after full investigation, found twenty-eight Mexicans and Indians guilty and they hung on a long pole. Thereafter peace and quiet was the rule.
This account, shorn of many details, was obtained first hand from a relative who was Sergeant Major of Willock's Battalion. Many of the survivors, of this battalion, and of the regiment, became famous soldiers during the Civil War - nearly all of them serving in the Confederate Army.
It was my most earnest desire to go with the battalion of Colonel Denver as a drummer boy. This my father vetoed on the ground that he was raising a company and I could go with him. However, this company never materialized, for when the number was completed
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and ready for mustering in, orders came not to accept any more volunteers from Missouri, as the State had furnished more than its quota of troops. Thus, for the time being, my ambition to become a soldier was suppressed.
The close proximity of Fort Leavenworth was of financial benefit to the farmers and traders of our County at all times, most especially during that war. Ben Holladay, of our County, reaped a harvest by furnishing the Government with cattle, horses and mules. These contracts laid the foundation for his ownership and operation of the famous Overland Stage line from Atchison, Kansas, to San Francisco, California, during the 60's - a more particular account of which will appear under another heading.
Nearly all of the Missouri Volunteers marched through our town to be mustered in, and most of them came through there when they returned. They furnished us boys in the town many details, which were not forgotten in after years when we became soldiers in the Civil War. We were captivated with the new dark blue and in some cases gray uniforms they wore, nearly all of which were hurriedly made by the hands of the mothers, wives, sisters and sweethearts of men so proudly wearing them.
I have heard it claimed by members of the Doniphan Regiment that they all furnished their own horses, uniforms and most of their own camp equipment, for which the Government never allowed them anything, nor reimbursed them for transportation from Vera Cruz to their homes. Such the reward of patriotism seldom - if ever - equaled! I believe that the same claims may be applied to the Price Regiment and the Willock Battalion, who generally furnished in like manner their own horses, uniforms and camp equipage, and only in recent years have the survivors drawn a pension.
One of our farmers was a successful horse trader. A
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regular Army Officer, who remained during the Mexican War at the Fort, fancied one of his horses and offered a big price for him and a mate of the same size, color and gait. Our trader had such a horse at home, except he had white hind feet, which he dyed black - being the color to match. The officer paid him a fancy price therefor and he was not long in getting across the river and home; but it was a year before he dared to visit the Fort, as the dye came off the first time the horse was taken to the river to water.
The same farmer was an enthusiastic Whig, and with others of the faithful of our county, chartered a steamboat to take them to a great Whig convention in Jefferson City, the Capitol of the State. In those days oratory and whiskey flowed in about equal measure at such political gatherings. Our friend, having a strong inclination in both directions, was soon tuned up to the proper gait to loosen his tongue and was - through the aid of a few jokers - placed on the head of a whiskey barrel where he made one of the most notable speeches ever heard at a political meeting. It was a little bit of everything under the sun, outside of any direct political point. Cheers were nearly incessant, which urged him to greater efforts and being in the open air, his voice finally fell to a whisper. He was lifted to the shoulders of a burly negro and in that position was carried around through the great gathering of excited and enthusiastic men and women. His voice failed entirely, but he had thus created more excitement than all the real spell-binders who had congregated on that occasion.
Very soon after this instance, he became a Whig candidate for the legislature in our County. In one of his oratorical efforts, held in the southern part of the County, he declared himself to be in favor of a law creating common schools. A man in the audience asked him to define what kind of a common school he favored.
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For a wonder and as quick as though he had it all planned beforehand, he replied by saying, "My friend, I am in favor of just such common schools as your father and mine failed to send us to." He never made a chance to show what he could do in the Legislature for he was badly defeated.
A FEW PRACTICAL JOKERS OF MY BOYHOOD
During my boyhood one of the best men and citizens whom I ever knew kept a hotel in our town. He was known far and wide as General Dicky Gaines. He was kind and often too good hearted. There was also another citizen, an impecunious lawyer, known as the Colonel, in some respects a brilliant man, who enjoyed a joke on himself as well as those he perpetrated on others. He was a guest at the hotel until his bill became quite large. After frequent reminders and finally threats to shut him out, he managed to square the account; and while our old friend, Gaines, was feeling good over getting the money, the lawyer proposed that for all meals he ate he was to be charged a certain amount, but when absent from any meal he should be credited at the same rate. An agreement was accordingly drawn and signed. In due course of time one bill after another was presented to the Colonel, until he knew the limit was about reached. He then sprung a set-off under the agreement, and as he had been absent at Court and elsewhere more than half the time, the General appeared to be in his debt. On that basis they settled, the General paying the balance, but the Colonel ceased to dine at that hotel. A year or two afterwards, the Colonel eloped with and married an heiress, then squared himself with the General by paying what he honestly owed and with a few congenial friends they celebrated the joke.
There was another old joker in our town. He kept
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the other hotel, but made his home on a farm near "the narrows," between our Platte and the Missouri River. His nearesst neighbor was an Irishman, who also dearly loved to joke. They were great friends but were victims of many jokes, perpetrated by each other..
EARLY RECOLLECTIONS OF THE MORMONS, THE FIRST WAR WITH THE BRULE SIOUX INDIANS
About the time of my birth, a great many - if not all - of the Mormon faith, congregated and took up residence in the several counties adjoining Price.
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MY FIRST OFFICE AND THE SETTLEMENT OF KANSAS
The day I reached the age of seventeen years, I was appointed Deputy Clerk for the Circuit Court and Deputy Recorder of Peace for Platte County, Missouri. In this capacity I served for more than two years or until Kansas was made a territory in 1854.
During the time of tenure of this office, I devoted every spare moment to the reading of law and pursuing other studies generally. This study, coupled with the advantages which I secured in the office, enabled me to become very well educated in mathematics and other English branches without continuing to attend school. Being in this office also brought me in close contact with many attorneys and politicians, a number of whom were of national reputation. Others became famous in after years as soldiers and statesmen.
Early in 1854, what is known in the history of the country as The Kansas-Nebraska Act, passed Congress. At that time Arkansas, Missouri and Iowa were the border states, hence the word "border ruffians" as applied to Missourians during the Kansas struggles which were precipitated immediately after the settlement of Kansas began.1
For a long time prior to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Government had been removing
1The wild and vicious fight growing out of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise after years of passionate quarreling and murderous action resulted in the birth of Kansas and later the terrible Civil War.
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Indian tribes from the States east of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers and allotting them reservations west of the Missouri and Arkansas, south of Kansas City. None of these reservations extended further west than sixty miles of the boundaries mentioned, all beyond being then considered and called the "Great American Desert."
The Government had treated with some of the tribes of Indians for the whole of their reservation, with others for a portion only, the Indians retaining part and remaining therein. After these settlements were negotiated, what is now Kansas, Nebraska and a part of Colorado and Wyoming was opened for settlement to the whites.
When it became evident that the Kansas-Nebraska Act would become a law, I accompanied my father on a trip into Kansas, where we visited the homestead of Louis Pappan. Pappan, who was married to a half-breed Kaw or Kansas Indian woman, was the owner of a section of land in what is now North Topeka and he operated a ferry on the road from Fort Leavenworth to Santa Fe, at the crossing of the Kaw River at his place.1
1A. C. Dodge of Iowa offered a bill for the organization of Nebraska, accompanied by an elaborate disquisition upon the status of slavery in the public domain. This was considered by the Senate in January under the vigilant eye of Stephen A. Douglas. By the terms of this adjustment Missouri came into the Union as a slave state, except north of parallel 36o30'. Thus it was that Judge Kuykendall and his family - people of brilliant minds and keen observation of the national questions so volcanic at that time, became fairly saturated with patriotism and the spirit of state pride.
This bit of history is told merely to show the early influences of his life and the passions of the hour and to explain a little more fully the exact mental condition of the country in which he lived. It must be borne in mind that the beginning of his
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He had one child, a daughter then eighteen years of age, who was attending school at the Pottawatomie Mission, a few miles away. Upon our arrival he sent for her and offered to sign for the land, his cattle, horses and surrey if I would marry her. She was a good girl with a fair education and I was a boy then with no matrimonial intentions and not at all inclined, any more than I am at the present time, to inter-marriage between people of well defined and different races. So I regretfully declined the proposition and two or three years afterwards the young lady married a man named Curtis, father of Senator Curtis of Kansas.
Early in August, 1854, immediately after my father and I had returned from this excursion, our entire family - consisting of my father, mother, younger brother and myself moved into Kansas and settled four miles east of Topeka, on the north bank of the Kaw or Kansas River.
I was then about nineteen years of age and there was my first experience in hard manual labor. Houses, barns and other out-houses had to be erected before winter, and rails had to be split to fence in the farm. There was not a saw or grist mill within sixty miles and not a neighbor within twenty miles. All supplies had to be hauled from the Missouri River.
Realizing if all this was to be accomplished, with no one to perform it save my younger brother, then about sixteen years old, and myself, all idea of hunting the shady side of trees and logs had to be abandoned, we proceeded to map out the work. I chopped the logs, and my brother hauled them, with some assistance from
eventful manhood - that is in 1854, the territories of Kansas and Nebraska were created and human slavery was legalized north of latitude 36o30' opening to that institution 500,000 square miles east of the Rocky Mountains which had previously been shielded by the compromise of 1820.
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father. We hewed enough for a large two story house, which we erected and completed in time for winter. The barn and other out-houses we built out of round black jack logs. During the winter we split and hauled the rails for fencing the farm, becoming expert rail splitters before the spring.
During the two years which we spent developing this homestead, my experiences with the actual hardships of life first became apparent to myself. As I say, I had become an expert in breaking prairie and general farm work, as well as with the ax. These duties, together with taking part in the Kansas troubles with the militiamen, and acting as the first county clerk of Calhoun, now Jackson County, kept me very well occupied. I was also Deputy Clerk of the District Court of that county, as can be determined by old records at Holton.
As we had to haul our supplies about seventy miles, we contemplated the establishment of a ferry across the river, the second spring following the occupation of our place. I was sent to Parkville, Missouri, near Kansas City, to get a flat or ferry boat. This I secured and loaded it too heavily with lumber and other supplies and came near being wrecked on a sand bar before entering the mouth of the Kaw River at Kansas City.
After two days of towing and pulling up that river, I found a bar over which it was impossible to force the boat and owing to that factor and the cold November weather, I returned to Wyandotte and induced a Delaware Indian to let me have teams to haul the supplies home. Thus ended my first adventure as Captain of a boat. I succeeded better with the Indian wagons and the cattle.
In the spring of 1855 we broke the sod and put in cultivation forty acres of land. During this year the first Legislature met and passed the first code of laws
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and provided for the organization of Counties. At the age of twenty, I was made County Clerk of Calhoun County and all the first records in that office were opened by me.
At the close of this year it became evident that a collision was imminent between the Pro-slavery and the Free State men in that territory. The latter had positively refused to participate in the election of members to the Legislature when the laws were promulgated and the machinery of the territorial and the County Government thereunder, were put in motion. Hundreds of rifles and much ammunition was shipped from New York, and the New England States, being marked "Teachers Bibles," through which we of the pro-slavery persuasion were to be converted.1
After some delay and with nothing save Squatter law in effect, the Governor, A. H. Reeder, arrived and with him came a number of office seekers and land and townsite speculators. 2 In the absence of any laws it was expected the Governor would immediately call an election for members of the Legislature. For several months he was too busy in town-site and other speculations and in political maneuvers to do so and during this time Squatter Law had full play. Under the leadership of ex-Governor Robinson, Jim Lane, "Old Pomeroy" and a few others, a rough Legislature and government was set up, as against the legal one that had been established in accordance with the organic acts of the territory.
1Eli Thayer organized a $5,000,000 company to assist in settling Kansas. The New York Tribune spent millions in Emigrant Aid Societies.
2By means of Squatter Sovereignty, Kansas could have slavery or not as she pleased. Therefore it is easy to see that this borderland in which the Judge spent his young manhood was of vital importance. It was the battlefield on which the North and South started to fight each for its own principles.
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Then the real trouble began. Counties were legally organized, but officials were handicapped in many ways, for it early developed that a part of the population was composed of obstructioners who refused to participate in elections or aid in enforcing the laws, and claimed to hold allegiance to the rough Government.1
This rough Government, which had never had a legal leg to stand upon, defied the regularly constituted territorial and United States authorities. Lawrence was the hot bed and seat of the trouble and at this point large bodies of armed men began to concentrate during the early part of the winter of 1855. 2 The lawful Governor, the acting Governor of the territory, called out the militia to suppress the insurrection and enable the United States Marshal to arrest certain law-breakers.
I raised a small Company under the call for militia and marched to the town of Franklin, three miles below and in view of Lawrence, where one or two companies of militia was camped in the timber along Waukarusha Creek, three miles back. Here we camped, playing soldier for several days, expecting every night the enemy would sally out and attack our small force in Franklin, as we were evidently stationed there to draw them out, the idea being that an attack would be an overt act of war.
However, it was believed that with the sod and log houses and other natural advantages for defense, we could hold them in check until the main body with the
1A writer of the period said, "You will find a Yankee, a Tennesseean and a Missourian living together in one cabin as harmoniously as a prairie dog, a rattlesnake and an owl."
2Mingled with intellectual, hospitable, courteous and high-minded southerners of the best type were "white trash," demoralized veterans of the Mexican War, thoughtless passionate adventurers coming back from the mining camps of the Pacific coast and from the mountains and plains of Colorado, whiskey guzzlers and ugly fighters, traders, gold-hunters and Mormons.
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artillery could come to our relief. Our orders were to hold the town at all hazards if attacked. Every day we expected orders to advance, but they never came and finally some kind of a treaty was patched up, it being stated that the obstructionists had agreed to disband and submit to the laws.
They disbanded, but never submitted to the laws in any appreciable extent. We were then ordered home. This was the first open out-break and forerunner of the Civil War. That campaign, in which I took part, ended in the arrest of two or three of the pretended officials and in the hiding or flight from the territory of others.
RECOLLECTIONS OF EVENTS IN THE KANSAS WAR
Early in 1856 it became evident that regular fighting would ensue. Jim Lane marched in from Iowa with about eight hundred armed men, making a fairly well beaten road across the Prairie through Holton in our county, crossing the Kaw River at Topeka, then a very small village, and thence to Lawrence. This brought armed Missourians or :Border Ruffians," as they were called by the "Free State Men," into the Territory in large numbers.
In running our ferry we had to be armed, and established a rule not to cross any one after twilight. One night hearing loud and persistent calling from the opposite side of the river, I went to the ferry and after parleying a while took the chance of being shot by going over and ferrying the man across the river. His name was Cleveland. Some of Jim Lane's men in fleeing back to Iowa had stolen his horse to aid them in their flight, notwithstanding the fact that he was a leading Free State man and Lieutenant of one of their companies.
Soon after this his company appeared at our house really to arrest us boys and get our horses, and other personal property, of which purpose we had notice in ample time to get out of the way. They robbed the house, although Cleveland protested. That night the whole company except one man and the Captain, voted him in as Captain. He was afterward killed by United
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States soldiers near Ft. Leavenworth, for stealing mules - it was claimed.
My sister-in-law having become hysterical, it was necessary to get her away from such daily scenes of excitement. My father insisted I should go with the others and take her to Missouri, as I was the man of the family the Free Soil men wanted. Much against my will we started the next morning - myself, my brother, and his wife - with our guns under the bed in the wagon, the team being the match span of horses they had drawn lots for the day before, but did not get (as we had been warned).
On nearing the Military road a few miles from home we were halted by a squad of men soon joined by the remainder of the company. When they galloped up, Cleveland appeared as the Captain. I said: "You have the best of us; we surrender because we have to. Here are the horses and here am I." He replied that there would be no surrender for me, as he had not forgotten the favor I had shown him at a great risk only a few nights before. Many times since then men supposed to be better than he, have failed to respond in like manner for favors granted in a personal, political or financial way.
When we reached Missouri where the property we conveyed was safe, I shouldered my musket and started on the seventy mile walk for home, for my old father and mother were there and alone. Directly after crossing the Missouri River the booming of a cannon was heard. Upon reaching Hickory Point, on the Military Road from Fort Leavenworth to Fort Riley, near the present town of Winchester, I found the Road house and the badly battered blacksmith shop of Charley Hardt, a settler there from our county in Missouri. Jim Lane, in fleeing from Lawrence for Iowa with several hundred men, had the second day before appeared
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before and demanded the surrender of the twenty or thirty Pro-Slavery Militiamen on their way to Lecompton. He had caught them in camp.1
A fight lasting several hours ensued, when Lane pulled out and continued his flight to Iowa. The next morning a large force under Colonel Harvey with Major Bickerton having charge of the Cannon who were either following Lane out of the Territory or had left Lawrence to keep from being captured by the Militia and Missourians, closed in on that place and the second day's fighting occurred, resulting in the battered up appearance of the place, especially the Black Jack logs of the shop which were full of cannon ball holes. Harvey withdrew to a creek five miles away and camped where he and many of his men were captured that night by a force of regular Cavalry under Colonel Philip St. George Cook.
I reached home safely by following Indian trails away from the military road which was infested with roving bands of armed men who, at a distance, could not be distinguished one from the other. I found father and mother both safe and well.
About this time the Acting Governor, aided by the Militia, and the regular soldiers, the United States Marshal and courts, had the insurrection so far as fighting was concerned, well in hand, for most of those not prisoners were fugitives.
The arrival of the new Governor (Geary) also had some effect in quieting affairs. Upon his arrival at Kansas City, the boat was boarded by a large delegation of so-called Border Ruffians (as all Missourians, especially those of the border counties were termed), who escorted him and his party to a banquet and reception provided
1The St. Louis Intelligencer said, at this time, "If they continue Missouri will soon be aflame. It will spread to the South and the Union itself will perish like a burnt scroll."
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for their entertainment, where everything passed off pleasantly. After the banquet they were escorted back to the boat which soon landed them on Kansas soil at Leavenworth. Guion, his private secretary, in relating the story of that reception described the several hundred "Border Ruffians" as wearing gray, blue and red flannel shirts, wide brimmed felt hats of different shades, pants stuck in high top boots, each armed with a Bowie knife, or a revolver or two.
In giving this vivid description with the statement that he, for one, did not feel very safe while accepting their bounteous hospitality, he drew a wide and true contrast showing the other and versatile side of the same real border Missourians of that day. This is the contrasting picture he drew: In Washington, the following winter he met a man on Pennsylvania Avenue dressed in the height of fashion, even to a silk hat and gold headed cane, who greeted him by extending his hand with the salutation, "Well, Mr. Guion, it seems you have forgotten me. I was one of the red shirted Border Ruffians that entertained you at Kansas City."
Many of those men were at home anywhere, either in peace or war. Besides their scholastic education they were well schooled in everything pertaining to our western border, whilst many of them had received additional training in various capacities on the plains. Being descendants mainly of the Kentucky pioneers they were generally men of honor and ability and free from ruffianism.
Hundreds of killings, house burnings, stealing and pressing of horses by Pro-Slavery as well as Free State men and of the flight of men of both sides to places of safety, could be related here, but it is not my purpose to go into all details of such herein. Many bloody engagements would have occured but for the intervention of the regular army.
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To give some idea of the conditions during the warmest period, it is sufficient to say that companies on both sides marched along the main roads and woe to the man they met. One new comer who did not understand the situation met a company who halted him and enquired as to his politics. He said he was a Free State Man. They said he was the very man they were looking for, took his horse, and let him go. A few miles farther on he was halted by another company and declared himself a Pro Slavery man. He had made a bad guess and was relieved of money and valuables and all clothing except his shirt and drawers. After traveling a few miles in that condition he met another company and without delay declared they would have to tell him which side he was on as he had forgotten and related what had happened. It seemed such a good joke to them they fitted him out the best they could and he went on his way rejoicing that his life had been spared. This will give the reader a slight idea of the chaotic conditions.1
There was a company of Pro Slavery men at Kickapoo, having a six pounder cannon which they named the "Kickapoo Baby." A young lawyer of doubtful politi-
1An apprehensive, uneasy feverish state of affairs existed at this time in Missouri. The Kansas-Missouri border fairly sizzled with indignation and explosive materials. Western Missouri contained 50,000 slaves worth about $25,000,000. "The enforcement of the restriction in settlement in Kansas was virtually the abolition of slavery in Missouri." This famous declaration was made at a pro-slavery convention in Lexington.
This was the situation in a very few words: in 1820 the adoption of the Missouri Compromise and the establishment of the Mason and Dixon line north of which there were no slaves gave birth to an intense feeling which later made the borderland of Missouri and Kansas reek with blood. California admitted as a free State fed the flame and brought about wonderful bursts of oratory from some of the most famous Americans who ever sat in Congress.
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cal proclivities from those of the "Rangers" and other citizens of the town had made himself disliked, and one night, Thompson Word congregated a few convivial spirits, wheeled the "Baby" near the lawyer's office, where he slept, loaded it with nails and spikes and fired through his office, luckily missing him and his bed. A few jumps and he was in the Missouri River and being a good swimmer, made the Missouri shore and escaped. Under existing conditions that was considered a great joke.
Many men on both sides, as we had done, moved to Kansas as real honest settlers to secure homes in a new country for themselves and families. But both factions shipped in men as colonists who were in many cases simply birds of passage, absolutely lawless, and whose action kept certain sections of the territory in nearly continuous turmoil and fighting all through the summer of 1856.1 This was the forerunner of the Civil War and laid the foundation for the later frightful destruction of life and property and desolation of the country along the border between Kansas and Missouri.
It would fill a book to relate the devastation and fighting on both sides of the line during that awful four years. Happily that is part of the long ago in which the young men of my generation were actors. May such conditions never again exist in this, our great united country.
1A writer of that period states: "But not only were the principles of these great factions tested in fire starvation and blood, but as in the case with all pioneer counties there were all kinds of struggles - a medley of humanity fighting for love of adventure, - hirelings, fanatics, reformers, philanthropists, and patriots mingled together with varying shades of love and hatred. Such emotional conditions and such drastic and vigorous situations breed great men."
JOHN BROWN, THE ENGAGEMENTS AT OSAWATOMIE AND OTHER EXCITING EVENTS
John Brown, of Harper's Ferry fame, was located at Osawatomie and had gathered around him a goodly number of fanatical agitators who were determined to create a war between the free or Northern and pro-slavery or Southern States. It was claimed by Pro-Slavery men who had honestly settled in his neighborhood before he appeared on the scene that they were not allowed to live in peace through the outlawry of that man and his gang whom they charged with stealing or as they termed it "pressing" horses and other property, burning houses, and terrorizing settlers thereby causing them to flee from their homes and making forays into Missouri running off negroes and horses.1
Naturally such a condition could not last and resulted in a few settlers from other localities and a force of Missourians making a night march on Osawatomie during the summer of 1856, where they soon whipped and ran Brown and his mauraders out of the county - at least for the time being. Directly after the arrival of Governor Geary, peace was restored generally all over the Territory except in the neighborhood of Osawatomie, where there continued to be periodical outbreaks by Brown and his followers until he left the Territory. He and a few others, who, it is believed, had agreed to go with him and become martyrs so-called in that fanatical attack upon a State or the National government gathered a few negroes and horses from Missouri and moved out
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of the Territory by way of Topeka and the "Jim Lane" road.
The United States marshal getting word of this, directed his deputy at Lecompton to summon a posse to intercept and arrest him and his party. The deputy, on the way to head him off, summoned a posse of twenty or thirty men and finding them in two or three houses in Holton, the county seat of our county, surrounded the houses and demanded their surrender. Brown, having the protection of the buildings and ample time to prepare for resistance refused to surrender. Two of the posse who were well known to me, were ordered by the deputy to take a heavy rail off the fence and batter down the door. This they prepared to do, when for some inexplicable reason the deputy changed his mind and withdrew from the town leaving the way open for Brown to get word to Topeka, from whence a large reinforcement hurried to his relief.
The deputy hesitated at the critical moment and was lost. In withdrawing, he said it was for the purpose of drawing Brown out on the road where they would have him in the open and where he would no doubt surrender to a superior force, and accordingly posted himself and posse at the crossing of a creek not far from town. As soon as Brown received the reinforcements he renewed his journey to Iowa, and the Deputy seeing that he was greatly outnumbered and had made a mistake, led the disgraceful flight which ensued, leaving the way open for Brown to reach Iowa without further interruption - never to return to Kansas - thus leaving him free to make his raid on Harper's Ferry (which he did soon afterwards) a full account of which is or should be familiar to everybody.
Colonel Titus from Florida had settled on a fine tract of land a mile or two south of Lecompton, then the capital of the Territory. He was an active and leading Pro-
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Slavery man and a fine looking person with a military bearing which would attract attention anywhere. Directly after Lane's arrival from Iowa a force was detailed to go out from Lawrence to attack and destroy the Colonel and his house. Fortunately he got word of the movement, managed to get a few of his men in the house in time, and there resulted a warm engagement in which Titus lost a man or two and was seriously wounded himself but managed to beat off the Laneites and save his house although it was badly peppered with bullet holes.
He was to some extent a soldier of fortune not unlike Walker of Nicaragua fame. He afterwards engaged with Walker in a raid on that republic in which it was reported that he and Major Henningsen, both prominent officers in the Confederate Army, were detailed to ascend a river on a boat and take a certain fort. When near it, Titus and most of the men were landed and attacked from the land side with small arms, failing to make any impression. Titus finally retired to the boat where an altercation occurred between him and Henningsen, whom he charged with having failed to support him from the water side with the artillery on the boat. Henningsen retorted by charging Titus with cowardice and the latter seized and threw him overboard. That settled the squabble as friends of both intervened and choked off further belligerency.
The fight at the house of the Colonel so near the Capitol of the Territory caused the Acting Governor to call out the militia again, which as rapidly as possible, congregated at Lecompton. General Frank Marshall, a brigadier general of the militia, who then resided at Marysville, on the Blue River, and afterwards a prominent citizen of Colorado, with a small force and a six-pounder hurriedly marched past our place ten miles from the capitol. Very soon after his arrival, Jim
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Lane with six or eight hundred invaders suddenly appeared on the ridge south of and overlooking the town, where about four hundred militia under Marshall were drawn up. Deputy United States Marshal Sam Cramer having warrants for the arrest of Lane and others of his command, mounted his horse and as they were going into line rode up to Lane and attempted to arrest him. They quickly arrested and discounted Sam amidst laughter and cheering and tore up his warrants. After his release we joked him over the incident, at the same time admiring his nerve, which I saw tested more than once afterwards when he was in close and dangerous quarters.
Marshall ordered out a company as skirmishers. Lane did likewise and the bark was soon flying from the Black Jack trees on the slope of the hill between the opposing forces, but the real battle did not materialize, for Lane had delayed his attack in force too long, enabling Colonel Philip St. George Crooke, camped nearby with a regiment of United States Cavalry, to hurry his regiment to the scene thus preventing a serious battle, as neither side would risk firing upon regular soldiers of the Government at that time.
Lane hurriedly fell back to Lawrence and realizing that it would soon be invested and taken by the militia and enraged border Missourians, he fled for Iowa with a good part of his invading force.
A short time before Governor Geary arrived in the territory, Sam Jones, who was Sheriff of the county in which Lecompton and Lawrence were located, was shot and badly wounded while in the performance of his duty and it is doubtful he ever entirely recovered. About the beginning of the session of the Second Legislature he tendered his resignation and the county commissioners appointed a young Virginian named Sherrod to fill the vacancy. Under the law he had to be commis-
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sioned by the Governor, which was mandatory however that he should commission in all cases. He refused to issue the commission on what seemed to be good grounds and the appointee spit in his face and challenged him to fight a duel.
Of course this was foolish and uncalled for, but the Governor's household friends whom he had brought to the Territory made matters worse by calling an open air meeting to be held on the grounds where the Capitol building was being erected to adopt resolutions of censure, and fearing they would be outvoted, imported a number of men with side arms from Lawrence. The meeting developed quickly into a warm one, and while Sherrod was speaking, a man named Shepard drew his revolver and called him a liar, starting a general shooting. Sherrod shot Shepard three times and his other shots hit other men. He then rushed upon, and grabbed Shepard who was about to fall and commenced beating him over the head with his empty revolver. The Sheriff (Jones), caught and pulled him away and in doing so, had his watch chain broken by a bullet.
Sherrod was merely scratched when one of the Governor's household who was standing behind a large casting shot him in the head at close range causing his death three days later. Sherrod, when shot, was defenseless as his revolver was empty and his killing was a cold blooded murder for which the murderer was never punished or even tried, being spirited out of the Territory at the earliest moment. The whole affair involved both parties in blame, but such was the rule and not the exception at that time.
During the autumn of 1856, I, for the first time, left the family homestead for a protracted stay, going to Lecompton to act as Deputy Clerk of the District Court of the First Judicial District composed of several of the
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largest and most populous counties, the court being held and all business transacted at one place.
The clerk of the court from his arrival with the Judge (Lecompte), in 1854, had failed to open up any of the records except one book similar to the docket of a Justice of the Peace which showed more than a thousand civil and criminal cases then pending or which had been disposed of in some manner. He resigned and J. R. Whitehead, afterwards quite prominent as a member of the first Legislature of Wyoming, was appointed to fill the vacancy.
He knew nothing about how to open up the records in proper form, and sent for me wanting to know if I could open the fine set of books the other clerk had procured but never opened, and properly make up the record in each case. On being assured that it was a large contract in connection with the other office work, but I could accomplish it if the entries in the docket were correct as to dates and procedure in each case, I was employed and made Deputy, and he went home, returning and staying for a day or two once or twice during the winter.
By the following spring everything was in the record in each case up to date with all necessary papers out for the next term of court when I moved the office to Leavenworth city, where those records in my handwriting can probably be seen in the clerk's office.
Directly after the office removed to Leavenworth and on the 14th day of July, 1857, I was married to Miss Eliza A. Montgomery, daughter of John and Elizabeth Montgomery of Buchanan County, Missouri. They were both of Scotch descent, Virginians by birth and education, Kentuckians and Missourians by adoption. She and I traveled life's pathway together for more than forty years through sorrow and sunshine until 1898,
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when she was taken away, leaving me a lonely man indeed.
Bad men have always existed who upon occasion and generally with little or no provocation, become for the time being lunatics. Here is an example of this. A young lawyer who boarded in the same hotel with me in Lecompton, visited for a few days at the winter quarters of Captain Newby, who was stationed with his company of regular cavalry in the timber just across the river. On his return from a visit, the hotel man requested back pay for board, telling him that was the last meal he would get at his table until his bill was paid.
The lawyer at once unexpectedly developed into a "bad man" by throwing a plate at the other. The rest of us who did not run out, were kept busy dodging flying tableware with which they were trying to pelt each other. When they finally clinched, I caught the hotel man firmly from behind and another boarder did likewise by the other whom he forced out into my office to wash up. The hotel man went up stairs, got his revolver and demanded that he be let out at the front door which his wife had locked and was standing against. At the same time the lawyer who had discovered that he was marked, was raging on the outside to get in. I positively refused to let one in or the other out, then the hotel man went through the kitchen to his saloon nearby.
On such occasions trouble breeders are always on hand to aid in causing a tragedy if possible. One of that class who was in the saloon, told the wild lawyer where the other man was and a bystander was foolish enough to loan him his revolver. He walked to the saloon door and blazed away, the bullet clipping off part of one of the hotel man's eyebrows and stunning him. Before he could fire again, the door was shut and he proceeded to
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walk up and down daring the other man to come out, that he could walk ten steps turn and have the first shot. The man who shut the door finally called to him that he had shot the hotel man and to go away. This infuriated him and he dared that man, although a near friend, to come out and try his hand at ten paces, which establishes the fact that for the time being he was crazy on the subject of shooting somebody or getting shot. That was the first case of that kind to come under my notice, but it was by no means the last.
My father was chairman of the Board of County Commisioners of our county at and for some time after its organization. He was also a member of the second Legislative Assembly and a member of the constitutional convention which framed what was known as the Lecompton Constitution, the opposition to which on the part of Stephen A. Douglas was the main cause of estranging the Democrats of the South and causing the split in that party and the election of Mr. Lincoln in 1860.
It will thus be seen that I, although but a boy, and my family were makers of history in Kansas during the first six strenuous years of its existence as my ancestors had been pioneers in Kentucky and Missouri. Many prominent men and able lawyers were my friends or acquaintances among whom is well remembered General Sherman, General Tom Ewing, Colonel Dan McCook, Jim Lane, Wheat and Stanley, all attorneys in Leavenworth, who became famous as army officers on one side or the other in the Civil War. While officiating in Leavenworth, I became acquainted with Slade and knew many of the men who assisted him in putting the Hockaday or first stage line across the Plains on the Oregon trail.
My family always remembered Tom Ewing with gratitude for the part he played at our house one day where
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he and two other men stopped to get dinner while on their way to Topeka. We had fine tracts of Delaware Trust lands which others desired if possible to obtain, and as the sale of same was very near at hand, they hatched up a plot over a trivial matter and concluded to run a bluff and place us in a position to prevent our presence at the sale to bid in the land. In pursuance to this, they had appeared and we had bluffed them off the hill only an hour or two before Ewing's arrival. While Ewing and his friends were at dinner, the gang returned with reinforcements and renewed their bluff, the two leaders standing out of harm's way behind the corner of the main building.
There is no doubt that I and my father and two or three of the other party would have been killed, but for Ewing and his friends coming out of the dining room at the critical moment disconcerting the other party. He asked my father if the house belonged to him and being answered in the affirmative, he said that "under the law the gang were trespassers, had no right there and he and his friends would assist in their immediate departure." They left in a hurry, hastened by the appearance of the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun through the door behind Ewing with one of my brothers behind the breech and no doubt leading them to believe we had also been reinforced.
During the war Ewing issued the famous order number eleven which depopulated the border counties in Missouri and destroyed the homes of many of Shelby's, Marmaduke's and Jackman's men from the Missouri River to the Arkansas line. When the battle of Pilot Knob in Southeast Missouri was fought during General Price's great raid in the fall of 1864, Ewing escaped with his forces in the night, fighting us all the next day on his retreat, with me really hoping he would escape,
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which he did by reaching the Southwest Missouri Railroad. I feared that some of the men made desperate through that order, who did not then know where their families were, would kill him if he were captured.
THE GREAT GOVERNMENT FREIGHTERS, MAJORS, RUSSELL AND WADDELL - THE PONY EXPRESS AND OVERLAND STAGE LINE
The Mexican War had demonstrated that it was the better plan for the Government to contract for the transportation of supplies and munitions of war from Fort Leavenworth to army posts on the Plains than to attempt the freighting of its own supplies. Alexander Majors, William Russell and Waddell, residents of Jackson and Lafayette counties, Missouri, formed a company or co-partnership and contracted to handle all army freight delivered to them for transportation.1 To
The occupancy of Fort Laramie by the United States troops made it necessary to send valuable mail to the West. This brought about the establishment of a stage line to carry mail and express packages, John M. Hockaday and William Liggett making a contract with the government for this purpose. The stage carried passengers and made the journey from St. Joseph, MO., to Salt Lake and back in forty-two days - if all went well. The horses were watered at any watering place handy, were fed on grasses of the prairie and were changed at Fort Kearney, Fort Laramie, Fort Hall and Salt Lake.
This continued until 1858 when Russell, Majors and Waddell, government freighters, purchased the Hockaday-Liggett line, which was then making semi-monthly trips. The new company built stables and stations every ten or fifteen miles. Stages left Atchison and Salt Lake every day and made the 1200 miles in ten days. Kentucky mules were hitched to Concord coaches for these trips. Freight trains teams were in the road all the time with hay, grain and provisions for the relay posts.
The same firm ran a line from Leavenworth to Denver. Previous to this all mail for Denver and other Colorado points was carried by Salt Lake stages and dropped at Fort Laramie and mail matter was often three months old when it reached Colorado.
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properly handle the contract there was required the employment of hundreds of big Murphy and Espenschied wagons made in St. Louis, each with a capacity of ten thousand pounds, hundreds of Bullwhackers and thousands of work oxen.
A train consisted of twenty-five or thirty wagons, each train having a wagon master nearly all of whom as well as the Bullwhackers were Missourians, they being nearest the starting point and well versed in handling work cattle. It was often stated that when a train was ready to move on its long journey, Alexander Majors presented each Bullwhacker with a new pocket Testament. As to how many of them were ever opened and read, there has never been any information received. It is doubtful if any of them are heirlooms as they should be among the descendants of the men who were factors in making the roads across the Plains broad and plain for the settlers and pioneers of nearly all the present States on what was then termed on the maps the Great American desert.
At the shops of the Company in Leavenworth, I have seen acres of ground covered with their wagons closely parked waiting repairs. During the spring, summer and fall months, their trains going to or returning from forts Laramie, Bridger, Union, Kearney and other military posts were seldom out of sight. Some idea of the great volume of freight transported each year can be formed when in addition to that destined for and delivered at each fort they made possible Harney's successful expedition of thirty-five hundred men for which they had to transport everything necessary for a condition of war twelve hundred miles and
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sufficient to keep the troops in the field at Salt Lake after their arrival there. In doing this they lost one or two of their trains near Big Sandy between Pacific Springs and Green River, Wyoming, the same being captured and burned by a large party of Mormon Danites who came out from Salt Lake for that purpose.
A military escort was seldom if ever furnished for any train and the men expected to have Indians to contend with in one way or another on every trip. A loaded train would move fifteen or twenty miles a day, which to many of the speed crazed people of the present time would have seemed an inducement to commit suicide. Many stories of the experiences of the men engaged in that hard, and hazardous work could be written if greater attention had been given to the details at the time, but stirring events were so common, that something unusual had to be recounted to attract and hold attention long enough for it to be noted down or to be impressed upon the memory for future use. Thus many happenings to the men in those trains, of a humorous, tragic, and also of a pathetic character have been lost.
Majors, Russell and Waddell also established the Pony Express between St. Joseph, Missouri, and the Golden Gate at San Francisco, in part under the management and supervision of Captain A. B. Miller, an ex-Missouri River steamboat captain. By this route, a limited quantity of mail was conveyed, thus greatly aiding correspondence of vital importance.
It is an historical fact often published, that Bill Cody or "Buffalo Bill," was one of the most daring boys among all those who rode on that line and helped to make its short but eventful history. I well remember seeing him at his father's house in the Salt Creek Valley near Leavenworth. No doubt the environment, the every day sight of soldiers passing along, bound for forts
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on the plains and those of the Harney and Johnston expeditions and the white covered wagons of the bull trains had a great bearing upon his career as a Pony Express rider, soldier, scout and buffalo hunter, bringing him fame as a foundation for the great enterprise for many years linked with his name.
Jim Marsh, one of my schoolmates, was one of the pony riders who sleeps in a Confederate soldier's grave and it was the same environment surrounding Cody as a boy, which was ever calling him and also me to the wild.
The Overland Stage line was started originally by Hockaday and not Holladay, the route being by way of the Oregon Trail through forts Kearney, Laramie and Bridger. For the first station or two from the Missouri River, the six horses were gentle and fine, moving out and returning in fine style. Then came the broncos with a driver on the seat, the coach loaded with passengers and an outrider on a horse using a black snake whip freely. Sometimes a horse would be in and then out of the traces with the coach in and out of the road as they swiftly passed through the scenery which the passengers were too busy keeping their seats to gaze upon with any degree of joy.
The drivers were men of nerve, in fact they had to be to stay with the job. One of them driving out of Atchison, the Missouri River starting point, had a thrilling experience with a bad man. In all border lands a certain class of men have to be killed to insure the welfare and safety of the peaceably inclined. One of the boys from our county in Missouri, when sixteen years of age carved up a wagonmaster from our county at Fort Leavenworth when they were preparing to move out with a train. Afterward, when Kansas was opened for settlement, he went with an uncle and other men to take up claims. While cleaning his gun in a tent he
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claimed it was fired accidentally, but the muzzle had been against the head of his sleeping uncle, the only man in camp at the time with whom he had had trouble. He managed to get out of both scrapes, but went from bad to worse, became a confirmed drunkard and a very dangerous man. In Atchison he became a nuisance, stopping people on the street until he was ready to let them and their teams pass.
One day after the mail had been taken on the Overland Coach, it was driven to a hotel for passengers. When they were on board and seated, the driver mounted the boot and found the bad man holding his leaders, saying he would let them go when he got ready. The driver wrapped the lines around the brake lever, dismounted, walked around the team, killed the bad man with his bowie knife, resumed the lines, drove off, and it was said he was never arrested for the killing, although he continued as a driver. Evidently, the people thought him a public benefactor, deserving a medal rather than prosecution for the killing.
After Ben Holladay became owner of the line, the importance of better facilities for settlement in Colorado and especially in Denver, becoming apparent, the route was changed to take in that place continuing north and then west near and around the base of the mountains, to a junction with the Oregon trail or old line near the Hams Fork of Green River. Under the supervision of Slade, the change was made. H. B. Kelly, who afterwards served in the Legislature with me in Cheyenne, and Al Huston, were prominent factors in making the change. Holladay secured the services of General Bela M. Hughes of St. Joseph, Missouri, as manager and attorney with headquarters in Denver.
It was a wise selection and based on the fact that they had worked together in laying the foundation and promoting the upbuilding of the Town of Weston in our
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county, a town which, until St. Joseph forged ahead, was the main Missouri River trading point for a large scope of country in the northwest section of the State. Both of those men were prominent as pioneers in our county, which General Hughes represented in the Legislature directly after he became twenty-one years of age. After the change to the new route and the erection of necessary buildings for stations ten to fifteen miles apart where the horses were changed, the line of eighteen hundred miles became famous for its large fine coaches and good horses and regularity in the time of reaching stations, as systematic as railroad time except in cases of Indian raids, heavy snow storms or blizzards. Besides the mail, coaches were generally loaded both ways to their full capacity with passengers and express matter. The transit occupied eighteen days from the Missouri River to San Francisco.
There was no stopping night or day except to change horses and for meals at home stations. Passengers could lay over at Denver, Salt Lake City and other places. When gold was discovered in Montana, Slade was superseded as superintendent by Bob Spotswood, who upon taking over the line, found Al Huston, a famous hunter from Missouri, until recently a resident of Wyoming, and now of Santa Monica, California, hunting for the line and made a contract with him at a certain price per pound for all the bear, deer and antelope he could furnish at stations. That section of the country was at the time alive with game and Huston found no difficulty in reaching bands of elk. He was equally successful with deer and antelope. Bob returned to Denver, where a few days afterwards he received a telegram to hurry back to the Laramie Plains as Huston was hanging game on all buildings, shrubs and trees around stations. Spotswood lost no time in changing the contract entered into with the over-zealous hunter.
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The stage line was superseded gradually by the Union and Central Pacific railroads. When the romantic stage coach finally went out of existence, and when the railroads were completed in 1869, Huston left Denver and became a resident not far from Saratoga, where he was guide for a party of Englishmen for several years in their annual pilgrimage to this country for the purpose of finding new and wild fields for hunting and fishing. In doing this, he stipulated that when it came to an encounter with a silver tip or grizzly bear, he would personally run the risk of such an encounter. Finally at the close of one hunting season when moving out of camp one morning, the Englishmen insisted and he agreed that is such a bear were routed out that day, he would keep back and let them show what they could do.
Soon the dogs and a fine bear came out of the brush on one side of an open, narrow, grassy glade. The Englishmen turned their guns loose and with the bear and dogs rushed into the thicket on the other side. Huston, who had remained well behind, yelled to them to keep out of the brush, but they paid no attention. Seeing that some Englishman would get hurt, Huston started on a run and was just in time as the bear turned on one of them. The Englishman wheeled to run and fell headlong down the hill, just as a bullet from Huston's gun killed the bear which came near falling on the prostrated and badly frightened Englishman.
This is a reminder of a similar and more tragic case that happened near the stage station at the crossing of Rock Creek, where a man seeing a bear crossing on the ice, shot him. Knowing it was dangerous to follow him into the brush on the island, he reported the incident at the station and a German new to the country, and to bears, seized an axe and rushing ahead of several with guns hurried across the ice and into the brush.
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The bear raised up from behind a log and no Huston being there, slapped and broke the German's neck, killing him instantly, before he could use his axe and before the guns could be brought into play.
A FEW OF THE MANY VIVID RECOLLECTIONS OF THE CIVIL WAR OR THE WAR OF REBELLION
In the presidential campaign of 1860, it became evident to close observers in Missouri, to which State we had just returned from Kansas, that the election of Mr. Lincoln meant war between the North and South.
Our county was mainly composed of former Kentuckians, Virginians and Tennesseeans, the former largely predominating. Environment, therefore in great measure caused two thousand of our young men, myself among the number, to enlist from the first to last in the Confederate Army during the war.
It is not my purpose herein to discuss any of the causes leading up to that bloody fratricidal strife, as it has been thrashed over time and time again from the viewpoint of each side. Nor shall I allude in the way of criticism to any of the present histories of the war, all of which will pass under the critical unprejudiced eye of the future historians, who will, after all of the men who wore the Blue and the Gray have passed over on the other side, write an absolutely impartial history of the cause of that war and of the war itself. When it was over, I accepted its result in good faith and as a loyal citizen of the re-united country for which my great grandfather fell in battle. I was ready any time to defend our flag against a foreign foe.
Short of a great mass of details which would make another book of personal recollections of people and events during the war, I will only incorporate herein a
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few of the most striking events coupled with only two or three of the many personal hairbreadth escapes.
Under the proclamation and call for troops by Governor Jackson during the spring of 1861, the first company of so-called cavalry from our county, of which I was second lieutenant, marched to Lexington, where we found probably twelve or fifteen hundred men congregated under Generals Slack and Raines. We very soon moved South and the first morning out, the captain, who had been defeated for major of a regiment (nearly altogether on paper), with about forty of the company, went home, leaving me with about thirty men or boys like myself to continue the march south.
Governor Jackson had, in the meantime, with about three hundred men marched south from Jefferson City, and while in camp about twenty miles north of Carthage, on the first day of July, he was visited by a man who was profuse in his loyalty to the Southern cause, but known by the Governor to be a spy from the camp of Sigel, who with two regiments of infantry and two batteries was at Neosho, about forty miles south. The spy after seeing Jackson's small force, was allowed to depart and a courier was at once dispatched to hurry Slack and Raines to his relief before Siegel could reach him.
We marched all night of the third, reaching his camp during the afternoon of July 4th. The spy evidently went directly to Sigel, who moved at once to capture the Governor, leaving one company to prepare a dinner in celebration of the capture. Upon our arrival, Shelby with his company, was sent forward and during the night encountered Sigel a short distance north of Carthage. Our whole force with the cavalry in front, moved directly after daylight to meet him. We went into line on a ridge in the open prairie with him doing the same at the foot of the hill. We thus masked our infantry
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and artillery until they were in line, when we moved to the right and left flanks and the first battle of the war was on!
No doubt this was to the great surprise of Sigel, who from the long line confronting him must have thought the spy had intentionally deceived him and like Santa Ana in the Mexican War, he "prepared to commence" running, which was hastened by our cavalry moving and quickly flanking him on the right and left, where we hung to him in his flight all day and into the night. He was forced through Carthage and out on the Springfield road, leaving his company in Neosho to its fate. That company however, which had been busy preparing the celebration dinner, had been captured the day before by a regiment of Arkansas cavalry who ate with hearty appetites. His troops were well drilled and well armed, while most of our men knew nothing of drilling and were very poorly armed, or he never would have reached Carthage without surrendering. His ability was demonstrated for retreating and was displayed on other occasions before and afterwards.
The next and a very severe battle for the numbers engaged was fought at Wilson's Creek, ten miles from Springfield, on the 10th day of the following August, followed by the three days' battle of Lexington fought on the 18th, 19th, and 20th days of September, 1861, resulting in the surrender of General Mulligan and thirty-five hundred men to General Price. Our retreat south as it was reported by the Ordnance Department, was due to the fact at the close of the battle there were only five rounds of ammunition to the man in our army and besides, there was great danger of being intercepted by Fremont's army in St. Louis and a large force from Kansas.
Our reaching Cassville, near the Arkansas line without molestation, with two railroads from St. Louis
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extending well out to the West in the State, has always seemed to me as one of the many great military blunders of somebody on the Union side. In this battle my company and regiment first supported Guibor's battery in the cross street near the jail and in the afternoon of the first day, when the Anderson house or hospital was retaken by the Union soldiers, we were ordered over to help retake it. After doing so, and finding ourselves placed at the spring and on the river side and within one hundred yards of the breastworks (the cotton bales at the battle of New Orleans being remembered), we rolled many hemp bales up the steep hill with which we formed a line of breastworks on the south side of the hospital and along the garden fence, being thereby aided in holding that position and keeping the enemy from water until the close of the battle.
A matter of business at home connected with my father's estate, who had died the year before, directly after our removal from Kansas, required my presence there and the enlistment of my company having expired, it was mustered out and I went home for a few days' stay. On the eve of returning to the Army an old schoolmate named Romulus (or Black) Triplett, whose father's farm adjoined mine and another young man named Gabriel Close, who were two of Si Gordon's men and had left with him for the army, returned and stopped at my house after nightfall. It was surrounded during the night and we were made prisoners and taken to the county seat one mile away and quarded in the Court House, the finest in the State outside of St. Louis, where I had officiated in the Circuit Clerk's office.
That night the business part of the town opposite the Court House and the latter were set on fire by the soldiers and destroyed. We were taken out on the street just as the roof fell in. Here we found the greater part of a regiment of infantry and Rabbe's Indiana battery
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drawn up, with Colonel mounted and greatly excited as though he was seeing and was about to engage an army of "Johnnies." An order from him in his excited state to shoot us would not have surprised me in the least. The next day he marched out through the country a few miles and back through the town, camping at a farm nearby on the road to Weston.
During that day's march, while realizing that we were in the power of a man who imagined he saw an enemy behind every tree in the woods and on the spur of the moment was liable to have us shot, we could not help being amused when at short intervals the roll of the drums would be heard drawing the attention of the women and children at farmhouses to the Colonel and his staff, as Gordon and his men and several other companies had left the county and were then nearing Price's army. The idea of that brilliant military genius in attempting to accomplish anything with infantry, and a battery of artillery against the men who had marched away and who could have easily kept out of his way if they so desired, was afterwards repeated by the Government in dealing with the Indians. This took place in what is now Wyoming, after the volunteer regiments of cavalry were mustered out in 1865 and 1866, when infantry only could be found at military posts with the Indians in possession of all the surrounding country.
Directly after nightfall, while we were seated on a log of wood at a camp fire, an armed squad appeared stating they wanted two of us. Not being certain as to which two, they called for an officer who came and placing his hand on Triplett and Close, said they were the two and they were marched away and taken down the road about a mile and a half to the Bee Creek battleground, where Major Josephs and the boys who had just left for the army had had fight a few weeks before. There Triplett was shot and killed and close would evidently have
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escaped had he not been hampered by mud. He jumped into the creek and was coolly bayoneted to death. The next morning, when I was taken to where Triplett was lying with his head against a large sycamore tree, I noticed that he was but a few feet from the road which had been struck by a cannon ball from Joseph's battery in the fight mentioned in which Triplett and Close had been engaged.
Upon reaching Weston I was paroled by the Major of the regiment with the privilege of the town limits. A friend having a good swift horse begged me to mount and escape and I could have easily done so, but I had given my word. That night when the Colonel arrived, he ordered me into the Guard House with a number of farmer prisoners who had never been near the Southern Army. He threatened to have me shot unless I was exchanged for Captain Rabbe of Rabbe's Indiana battery, telling my wife this when she came to see me two or three days afterwards. Lieutenant Rabbe then in command of the battery being ordered back to Fort Leavenworth, demanded that I be turned over to him and I was taken over there and paroled by him not to leave his quarters.
After our supper his father, the paroled captain, came in and while shaking my hand, said, "You are not the man I expected to see. He is a tall auburn-haired boy who saved my life very recently when Si Gordon captured Captains Moonlight, White and myself on the train at Weston and sent us with Black Triplett, your brother and two or three others as guards to the camp of Captain Carr several miles in the country. On the way Triplett, while riding by my side with his revolver in hand, raised it and would have killed me for I saw murder in his eye, if your brother had not knocked the pistol up, the bullet going through my hat." He said, "You can not shoot a prisoner if I can help it." In relating
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this, tears stood in his eyes and he said if you and I are exchanged, when you reach the army you tell him, if he should become a prisoner to let me know that I may aid him.
Then I knew what in part had caused the killing of Triplett and Close and why I did not share the same fate. In contrast with Captain Rabbe's honoring his parole, Moonlight, who was Governor of Wyoming during Cleveland's first administration, broke his and thereby came near getting Major Morin, a prominent farmer and a neighbor of ours killed by Triplett and Gordon.
Next morning Lieutenant Rabbe, in reporting to General Hunter, was asked if he did not have a prisoner from across the river in his quarters, and upon getting a reply in the affirmative, he was directed to place me in the dirty guard house or take me back and turn me over to the tender mercies of the valiant Colonel, who by his course was driving many men to the Southern Army who never would have left home. That day I was escorted back where I remained four weeks in the guard house with bricks being thrown through the windows nearly every night. One guard who died with smallpox a few days afterwards, attempted to bayonet me. He would have accomplished this too, if I had not seized and turned the bayonet aside and then held on until one of the prisoners called another guard.
During that time the Major was placed under arrest, and the Colonel placed the Lieutenant Colonel under arrest for refusing to obey his order to burn all farmhouses for three miles in one section of the country. Then the Colonel was removed and soon after died on Island Number Ten, and the Captain of Company A was in command of the regiment until Colonel Madison Miller of St. Louis assumed command. Before his arrival, however, Captain Rabbe came over to see me about
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the exchange and finding that I had never been paroled as he had been and that I was still in the guard house, he threatened to resign if I were not paroled at once.
My parole was ordered and I went home with bitter feeling in my heart, to await the exchange papers which finally came. I was placed in the list of recruiting officers who worked through many parts of the State during the war, keeping with others, thirty or forty thousand militia and home guards busy who, however, could not prevent our recruiting for the Southern Army.
THE FIGHTS AT CAMDEN POINT, AT THE WIDOW CONDROW'S HOUSE AND OTHER THRILLING EVENTS
In the fall of 1863, I was joined by Colonel John H. Winston and John C. C. (or Coon) Thornton, who insisted upon attempting to recruit a regiment in my county and three or four other adjoining counties.
In view of this, couriers were dispatched to Price's army, then in Southern Arkansas, four hundred miles away to ascertain if he intended to make a raid through Missouri during the following year. Two or three of them returned the following spring (one or two being killed), with word that the raid would be made late in the summer or early in the fall of 1864, if conditions at that time were favorable. Men were quietly enlisted and instructed to attend to their business until the proper time for action.
During the spring of 1864, the fact of our presence in the country became known to Paw Paw militia and to troops in St. Joseph and a troop of cavalry was sent from there to capture us if possible as the militia had failed to do so. Realizing the danger, I had seldom appeared at home during all my recruiting work, often being out of the county and on the south side of the Missouri River. At one particular time, however, having reached home after leaving my horse at Winston's, my wife sent an old colored man to a neighbor's on an errand and she went to town a mile away. While writing a communication with my uniform coat, revolvers and hat on a table the colored man came in and said
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he had met two men in the road who were dressed as citizens and who inquired if he knew me and the two colonels. He thought I had better get out of the house as it had no back door.
In a few minutes a large faithful colored woman came in badly frightened and said the fence in front of the house was lined with soldiers dismounting. My coat, hat and revolvers were on in an instant and she was directed to lead the way out on the side porch in full view of about sixty of the enemy. When she turned I was at her side with two soldiers sneaking up on the house and not more than thirty yards away. When she reached the side of the porch I stepped down and slipped along the side of the house and was immediately running with my revolvers in hand down the hill into the timber believing that death was near, and expecting every second to hear the familiar whistle of bullets. Strange to relate, not a soldier saw me while I saw every one of them and the two so near the house never knew how close they were to death. They closely searched the house even to the attic, but I was again safe and attempting to get word to Winston, my old Colonel. Unfortunately my courier reached him a few minutes too late as they charged the house, capturing him and he was kept a prisoner at Alton, Illinois, until some time after the close of the war.
Not long after this, Captain Feltch Taylor with twenty-five or thirty men appeared in Clay and Platte counties and a number of young men who felt unsafe at home began to congregate in squads, thus endangering our plans for reaching the raid in force when near enough. Taylor was induced to keep as quiet as possible, which he did and everything went well until some of the old obnoxious militia, who made life a burden to many of the oldest and best citizens, and who for that and other reasons had been mustered out, took it upon
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themselves to hunt and find Taylor. It was to their sorrow as he charged and cut them to pieces.
This was soon followed by a Company from St. Joseph, catching three of the young men in the house of Major Bradley, one of my nearest neighbors, three of whose boys were then with us because it was unsafe to stay at home. The boys whose names are now forgotten fought their way out and nearly through an open woods pasture before two of them were killed, the other escaping. Two others coming upon the scene accidentally as the firing commenced, were also killed. This caused Thornton, who was in an adjoining county, to concentrate the small force we had and against my protest and that of one prominent old farmer, prepare to take our county seat, which we did, remaining there two or three days and then marching to Camden Point, eight miles north with about three hundred men we had recruited, to wait for another company.
Being Acting Adjutant and close to him I urged an immediate attempt to cross the river and reach the army if possible, as unforseen circumstances had brought about our precarious condition and there would be several weeks before the raid if undertaken could reach striking distance. The second night after reaching Camden Point, it being the 16th day of July, 1864, a courier from near Kansas City, a small village at that time, came into camp and reported a large force of the enemy crossing the river, instead of which they were coming up the river on boats to attack our camp. He detailed and ordered all of our men except about one hundred to go down after them.
To this I again protested, urging that the command be kept together, but they marched on in a light rain and were many miles away in the afternoon of the next day when we (with the horses belonging to about 20 of our men, loose in the pasture) were surprised by the
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Second Colorado Cavalry, the Colorado Battery and Jennison's regiment of Kansas Cavalry. We were soon routed, losing several men killed and wounded by fighting long enough to enable all of the men on foot to escape.
Mrs. Vina Whitlaw, Mrs. Doctor Hollingsworth, Mrs. Polly Marsh, Mrs. Sallie Calvert, Miss Jennie Spratt and my wife made as near a Confederate flag as they could with the material at hand, at the house of William Spratt and presented it to us while we were in Platte City. Most of the material was fine white flannel taken from the lining of my wife's wedding dress, the two red bars being simply red borders on each side, as red material of sufficient width could not be procured. The field or "Battle" flag part was all white. In the fight the color bearer and his horse were killed and fell on the flag within a few feet of me and it was lost, being captured by Captain West's company "F" of the Second Colorado and returned to and presented by him to me personally in Lincoln Hall, Denver, Colorado, in the presence of a large number of Union and Confederate veterans November 11th, 1905, forty-one years after its capture.1
1November 11, 1905, at a meeting of the "Blue and the Grey, Forty-nine Years After," at Old Lincoln Hall, Denver, Colorado, Major W. L. Kuykendall gave an interesting history of Col. J. C. Thornton's command during the Civil War, and incidents leading up to the loss of the Confederate flag. Major Kuykendall was late adjutant of Colonel Thornton's battalion of Missouri troops. The Blue and the Grey meeting was characteristic of the broad vision of the old soldiers whose frontier lives in the wild days of the early West, had made them tolerant and magnanimous.
The Confederate flag was returned to its former defenders at this unique meeting, over which Col. Robert S. Roe presided, by Captain George West, who gave a history of the campaign and incidents leading up to the capture of the flag. Captain West was captain of F Troop, 2nd Colorado Cavalry, in
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It is said that the first Confederate monument ever dedicated was the one erected over the graves of the men or boys we lost in that engagement. The next day the command was reunited and we moved into Clay County. Near the line between it and Ray County at the house of the widow Condrow we came upon Captain Moses and his company of the Second Colorado. Captain Taylor being our advance guard, charged and routed them at once before our main body reached the ground, capturing more than half their horses and Carbines, which more than evened up the Camden Point affair, so far as fighting was concerned. The details of the marching and fighting through several counties and final crossing of the Missouri River I will not relate here.
Having early tasted of the bitter fruit of imprisonment as a prisoner of war twice, I had determined never to undergo it again if it could be helped, even unto death. The risks run and my miraculous escapes on many occasions will be better understood by relating one as an example. Four of us after securing breakfast at a house in Jackson County on our way from the South one morning were surprised by a regiment of cavalry, and to get away had to run three or four hundred yards across a wheat stubble field and parallel with the regiment in line which opened fire and kept it up even after all of us save one had gained the timber. Hundreds of shots were fired, one striking Billy Fossen in the
the early sixties. He actually presented Major Kuykendall with the Confederate flag which had been defended so valiantly and loyally forty-nine years before in a losing fight.
At this meeting C. S. Thomas, who was then Governor of Colorado, made an address in behalf of the Confederate veterans, and Lieutenant William Wise of the 2nd Colorado responded for the Federal veterans. Another interesting feature was the rendering of both the Federal and Confederate airs by Colonel Wallace's G. A. R. Veteran Drum Corps.
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back of the head as he jumped the fence, killing him instantly. No doubt bullets can be plowed up in that field to this day.
With all the tragedy, there was some comedy. For instance, one of the jokes of that strenuous time was on some officers of the 16th Illinois Cavalry stationed in my county during the fall and winter of 1864. In some manner they got it into their heads to guard my house all through the cold nights of that winter, supposedly for the purpose of catching and killing me. When I heard of this after the war had closed I certainly would have written, thanking them, if I had known who they were, for the protection they afforded my family from forays of Kansas Redlegs and other pretended Home guards who had plundered the house several times during war.
Should this meet the eyes of an of that regiment who frosted their toes in their meritorious service, I here express to them my sincerest and most profound thanks for a duty well performed and yet it is to laugh even to this day to think that any veteran officer would guard a Confederate officer's house during a cold winter while the latter was sleeping cozily between his blankets far away. If the Confederate officer had been in the county anywhere he could have easily communicated with his family at all times and arranged to meet them if necessary without going near his home and the whole regiment could not have prevented it.
The people were nearly altogether Southern in their sympathies and had known me from the time I was a small boy and I knew them and their farms and the roads all over the county and I also knew every man who was looked upon with doubt even on farms, several of the latter having been saved by me from death. Under all circumstances it was certainly a great joke on those officers who thought they could catch me in that
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way after my narrow escape from the house only a few months before.
The patience, enthusiasm, loyalty and heroism of the women, girls and boys of the North and South during the awful trying four years of that war is probably unparalleled in the annals of history. Some of the latter became old enough to get in as soldiers during its closing scenes, while Southern women aided materially in many ways. Numbers of them were imprisoned by the Militia in the Border States, my old mother being arrested and taken to St. Joseph, where she requested to be booked as a prisoner of war, and my wife only escaped imprisonment by getting out of the county temporarily on one occasion.
A few women and girls bought revolvers, ammunition and other supplies for us. My wife, who had a sister living in Leavenworth, would visit her and procure revolvers and ammunition and sometimes get valuable information. It took nerve to do such work but she and others engaged in it did not seem to think it at all out of the way, as they coolly performed such and other risky work which, if caught, meant imprisonment and possible deportation through the lines South, especially towards the close of the war.
After the war, Thornton went to Montana, hwere he died a few years ago and I came to Colorado in 1865 nearly penniless and virtually in rags. For a short time I labored with my hands to get a financial start under adverse conditions, as business in every branch was very quiet. In looking back over that and the preceding four years of wild adventures and hairbreadth escapes, I am impressed with the belief that the protecting arm of the Supreme Ruler of the Universe preserved my life for some useful purpose. This may have been for the purpose of making additional history and assisting as a pioneer in laying the foundation of two more States
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(Dakota and Wyoming), located on the then Great American Desert, which Webster, it is said, declared was absolutely valueless. Tom Benton, the great Missourian, through expeditions of his son-in-law (Fremont) and his advocacy of a great trans-continental railway demonstrated his abounding faith in the future of the supposed desert country now comprised within the boundaries of several of the best and grandest States of our country.
SNOWBOUND IN SOUTHWESTERN DAKOTA. HOW TO CATCH TROUT. RANGE TAXES AND THE PLAGUE OF THE FLYING GRASSHOPPERS
In November, 1865, I went to Fort Collins, Colorado, then a large military post where part of two or three volunteer cavalry regiments were stationed.
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THE INDIAN RAID ALONG THE OVERLAND STAGE ROAD
During the summer of 1865 a large force of Indians appeared on the Overland Stage road at the crossing of Foote Creek about twenty miles southeast of Fort Halleck.
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THE LOCATION OF FORT SAUNDERS NEAR THE PRESENT CITY OF LARAMIE
During the early spring of 1866, while our camp was at Mandel's, the Fort Saunders military reservation was surveyed and Colonel Howard, chief quartermaster at Denver, advertised for bids for the delivery of wood at each of the military Posts in the District.
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THE FETTERMAN AND OTHER MASSACRES. KILLINGS AND ESCAPES
Prior to the Indian raid on the Overland Stage road a military cantonment was established on the old Oregon trail or Emigrant road near where it crossed the North Platte River for the last time and near the present town of Casper.
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INDIAN TROUBLES CONNECTED WITH THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD. THE BIRTH OF CHEYENNE
About the time of the Fetterman massacre the Union Pacific Railroad was completed to North Platte City in Nebraska and it became evident that construction would be rapidly pushed on westward.
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JULESBURG AND THE CHILDHOOD OF CHEYENNE
The Union Pacific Railroad was completed to Julesburg, Nebraska, in the spring of 1867.
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THE VIGILANCE COMMITTEE. ORGANIZATION OF CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT AND SCHOOL DISTRICT
An attempt was made to have Hinman and Hopkins meet with me in time to organize the county and provide for the election of county officers at the regular time as provided by the laws of Dakota.
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LARAMIE CITY, FORT STEELE, BENTON, RAWLINS, GREEN RIVER, BEAR RIVER CITY AND FIRST REGULAR ELECTION
Laramie City was staked off early in 1868 and was soon a thriving place, a number of people going there from Cheyenne and the population of Dale City moving there en masse.
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THE FIRST LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF WYOMING PASSES FIRST WOMAN SUFFRAGE BILL
Congress segregated the geographical territory now comprised in the State of Wyoming, by passing a special enabling act for a body politic under that name, in which the laws of Dakota were continued in force until a Legislature could be convened and adopt a code of laws.
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THE FIRST BIG HORN AND BLACK HILLS ASSOCIATION, EXPEDITION AND SOME OF THE RESULTS
One night during the winter of 1869-1870, three men including myself, were seated in my office in Cheyenne, discussing plans for getting the Sioux Indians out of the country north of the North Platte River in which no white man was allowed to travel or settle, and from which forays were made by young bucks, stock run off and men killed.
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OLD COLOROW AND CAPTAIN JACK. TWO BAD UTE INDIANS. KILLING OF TWO WOMEN AT OLD CAMP BROWN
In June or July, 1870, a number of miners congregated at Independence Mountain, located near where the Hunter's Big Creek Ranch is now situated and near the extreme southern border of the upper Platte Valley.
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A CORONER'S INQUEST. THE MILLION DOLLAR COAL MINE AND OTHER PECULIAR AND COMICAL EVENTS
During a session of the Grand Lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows in Laramie, a few of us at the Kuster Hotel were sent for to witness a coroner's inquest.
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ORGANIZATION OF THE LARAMIE COUNTY STOCK ASSOCIATION. THE INTRODUCTION OF SHEEP INTO THE TERRITORY. CHARACTER SKETCHES
Early in the seventies the stock industry had increased to such an extent in Laramie County and the cattle drifted to such great distances across the open range during the winter, with seldom a fence as an obstruction, that it became absolutely necessary to organize a protective association of some kind.
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THE ODD FELLOWS SOCIETY, THE KNIGHTS OF PYTHIAS AND MASONIC FRATERNITY. TWO PECULIAR ADVENTURES
Along with the erection of the first church and school building in Cheyenne, a Masonic Lodge and then an Odd Fellows Lodge were organized and instituted, and they are both known as Cheyenne Number One on the roll of each order.
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THE FIRST RED CLOUD AGENCY AND SUPPLY DEPOT
After the treaty with the Sioux Indians in 1868, Red Cloud with many of the Ogallala Sioux were induced to desert the war path and settle down with Spotted Tail and his Brules at the Agency erected on the North Platte River, not far from where the town of Torrington is now located.
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SOME EARLY HISTORY CONNECTED WITH THE BLACK HILLS OF SOUTH DAKOTA
As before related, I was among the few pioneers who reached the Black Hills in the winter of 1875, and were not removed by the military.
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DEADWOOD IN 1876
As men in considerable numbers and a few women began to arrive in Deadwood, it became evident that the houses along Main Street would not be sufficient, and a few of us cleared the brush and timber along Whitewood Creek, laid out lots on each side of Sherman Street, and named it South Deadwood.
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GUN FIGHTERS, KILLING OF WILD BILL, TRIAL OF JACK MCCALL, HIS MURDERER AND A JOKE WORKED OFF ON SOME EASTERN WRITER
Along with the men who had come to settle and build up the country, came adventurers and a few of the sporting fraternity ever ready with the six shooter on slight provocation, especially when they were loaded with bad whiskey. Their advent as elsewhere insured early additions to our cemetery. With this element and Indians to deal with, guns and revolvers were in evidence and in easy reach everywhere.
Experience had taught those men to be judges of environment, which to them clearly dictated that the killing of miners or other peaceful citizens was an unsafe proposition and would not be tolerated for a moment, so like the fabled Kilkenny cats they fought out their disagreements among themselves. My long and varied experience with such men had convinced me that there was little or no danger from them, and that as long as a peacefully dispossed man attended to his own business and was not hunting for trouble, he enjoyed their respect and confidence. Those of us who were men of peace outside of war times and its alarms, had enough to do as citizens to strictly attend to our own business without attempting to meddle with the affairs or the business of others and we thus avoided trouble with the lawless element.
As an example, I will give an account of a pistol duel witnessed from the door of my place of business.
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Charley Storms and a man named Varnes fell out, the former saying, "Go arm yourself and come out shooting, as I will be there." And he was - with two sawed off "forty-fours" and a Sharpe's rifle! The firing commenced, several cartridges not exploding. At every shot he called to the other to come out from behind the running gears of a wagon, and when his revolvers would no longer work he threw them down and reached around the corner of the log saloon for his gun. Two men waiting there out of range, grabbed and dragged him in thus ending the affair.
Strange to say neither was hurt but a German barkeeper two doors above my office was slightly wounded, falling behind the bar yelling, "I am killed." Varnes was killed out West somewhere and Storms at Tombstone, Arizona, both, as in nearly all such cases, finally finding men a little quicker with the gun than they. At Cayville a man was killed, creating considerable excitement and the first miners' cpirt was organized to try the murderer. A jury was selected, the trial held and a verdict of not guilty rendered.
This led to and may have in some measure influenced Jack McCall to kill the famous Wild Bill Hickock a few days afterwards. On that occasion I had gone to Lead City, returning over the trail. Upon nearing the town, I saw mounted men in squads going rapidly up and over the mountain to the valley. This meant Indians. I hurried down, knowing friends out there were in danger, and reaching Sherman Street, met a man sho said Wild Bill had been killed or assassinated. Reaching the store, a miner named Andrews rushed in, saying the time had come when some action should be taken to stop such work, that Bill and he were schoolmates and boys together in Illinois, and he begged me to let the Indians go and help get the murderer1
1Wild Bill Hickock was the most celebrated of Western gun
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We saw a large party of men in the twilight down the street, and going to them, it was found they had gathered to swing McCall to a pine limb, one of them having a rope for that purpose. The hanging, however, was suddenly abandoned and indefinitely post-
fighters. He served thru the Civil War, and drifted West and received a commission as Deputy United States Marshal in Western Nebraska. His first exploit was to ferret out a gang of murderers near Fairbury. The MacCandless brothers, who constituted most of the gang, suspected Wild Bill of being a marshal and attacked him in his cabin one day when his partner was fishing. Bill killed two before they reached the cabin, and two more in hand-to-hand struggle inside. A fifth was so desperately wounded that he was out of the fight. The senior McCandless, the only one of the gang left, closed with Hickock, and Wild Bill's partner found both in the cabin apparently dead. McCandless had been stabbed thru the heart, but Hickock recovered from his wounds. He became marshal in Abilene and Dodge City, Kansas, in the days when those towns were the chief cattle shipping points in the West. These positions were by no means sinecures, and Hickock was compelled to engage in many gun fights. He killed a gambler named Phil Cole at Abilene, after Cole had taken a shot at him at close range. Cole was standing in a dark street and Hickock was in a well-lighted saloon, yet Wild Bill's shot was so accurate that Cole fell mortally wounded. Wild Bill's deputy, named Williams, hearing the shooting, ran to the scene of trouble. Hickock thought one of Cole's friends was approaching and fired in the darkness. He shot twice and both bullets took effect in Williams' heart. Hickock was almost unerved when he found that he had slain his deputy. Cole's mother, a wealthy widow from Texas, offered $10,000 to any one who would kill Wild Bill. Hickock was trailed for months by Cole's friends, but he escaped all the traps laid for him. Bill became a scout in several campaigns against the Indians, and was associated in this work with Buffalo Bill Cody. He became the marshal of Deadwood in the stirring frontier days. He was shot by a man named McCall, who had no quarrel with him but merely wanted to be known as the man who had killed the famous Wild Bill. Hickock was shot while playing a game of cards, his murderer stepping to the door and riddling Wild Bill with buckshot. There is a monument to Hickock in the Deadwood cemetery where he is buried.
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poned, when a Mexican came galloping up the street with the head of an Indian dangling by his side. They all gathered around the head cheering. That night one hundred and five business men met behind closed doors in Langrishes Theater.
To observe proper formalities, I was selected to act as chairman. After stating the object of the meeting to be the organization of a second miners' court to try the case next day, I stated that if any man present were not in harmony with the movement then was the time for him to leave. All remained. It was decided the jury should be selected by making out a list of twenty names of miners from each of the three mining districts, the name of each to be written on a separate slip of paper and well shaken in a hat, the twelve drawn therefrom to be the jury, lists to be made by a committee to be selected by the meeting when court convened next morning. On motion I was elected Judge, Isaac Brown, sheriff; John Swift, clerk; Colonel May, Prosecuting Attorney, and Judge Miller, attorney for the prisoner. Both were able lawyers at that time, although without clients, for there was no law in force then or for months afterwards.
While willing to assume the responsibility, I refused to serve unless all those present agreed to be present with their revolvers when the court convened to see that a proper jury committee was selected and to remain through the trial and see the proceedings through to the end. I told them that if any of them would not do this, to retire immediately. Again all remained and by a rising unanimous vote pledged themselves. When the court convened the committee and jury were selected and sworn according to program.
Officers and everybody except the prisoner were armed, and the theater was packed with men. The prisoner was brought in and entered a plea of not guilty,
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the trial proceeding under all the forms of law. Evidence of the killing by the prisoner developed an absolutely cold-blooded, cowardly assassination without any warning or extenuating circumstances whatever. Wild Bill had met his death while playing cards, the muzzle of the pistol being within six inches of the back of his head, the bullet coming out near the side of his nose and wounding the man he was playing with in the arm.
Evidence showed no provocation whatever and no motive save a love for notoriety, coupled with a full glass of whiskey taken in a saloon opposite, from which he could see the two players and the barkeeper, who were the only persons in the place. At noon the sheriff informed me that he had carefully listed those present who were in the meeting the night before and besides the officers only five had been present at the trial. for a moment I lost faith in humanity. He said there could only be a verdict - "guilty," to which I replied that I would do the sentencing in short order and expected him to be as expeditious with the immediate hanging. He assured me he would.
The prisoner, in way of bravado, made a statement that he killed Wild Bill because the latter killed his brother. This I knew was false. After arguments of counsel I charged the jury about sundown, and as the theater could not be used that night, the saloon where the killing occured was selected as the place to receive the verdict, the prisoner being confined in a cabin immediately in its rear, in front of which stood a large pine tree having a limb just right for the hanging. Conferring with the sheriff, we agreed that he should select fifteen of his and my nerviest friends, arm them, draw a chalk line across the floor, leaving a few feet in rear for the court proceedings, place three of the men at the alley near by, to halt and, if necessary, shoot any-
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body attempting to pass through, it being the only place accessbile to the hanging from the street.
Then we would bring in the prisoner and the other twelve men, seat him between me and the clerk, have the men line up with a revolver in each hand back of the chalk mark (as that eighty foot room would pack full of men) and then bring in the jury. All this he arranged perfectly. When the prisoner was seated, his feet beat a tattoo on the floor, and his teeth were chattering. He was a pitiable object of abject fear. The outside space in the room filled with men even up to the chalk line and a pin could have been heard to drop.
When the jury was in place I asked the foreman if they had agreed upon their verdict. He answered yes. "Mr. Foreman," I said, "you will pass the verdict to the clerk, who will read it." The verdict was, "We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty." McCall hurried out through the back door and was soon on a swift horse, fleeing the country in the darkness with California Joe and Texas Jack, friends of Wild Bill, in hot pursuit. He escaped, was arrested a few days afterwards in Laramie City, Wyoming, taken to Yankton by the United States marshal, indicted by the United States Grand Jury, tried and hanged for the crime. While I was a member of the Legislature of Dakota, I was shown the four posts where the hanging occurred.
The Deadwood jury, though remaining in the country, immediately dropped out of sight and hearing, and not until a few years ago did I find one of them in Deadwood, who said the jury agreed that McCall was clearly guilty and their verdict was a travesty of justice, but the cause for the verdict was the belief that the gamblers and real vicious element would run the county if their verdict were "guilty," one of the most absurd propositions ever advanced, for with ninety per cent, of good
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citizens there would have been an immediate and general get-away of the vicious element or an early organization of a strong vigilance committee.
A few years after my return home, a friend saw a man reading a book on a train, who, upon finishing it, said he had believed the story true until he came to the name of a judge which he could not pronounce and certainly no man ever had such a name. My friend asked to see it, and seeing it was a purported life of Wild Bill and that the name referred to was mine, he invited him to get off at Cheyenne and be introduced to the man who presided at that trial.
Recently a correspondent of some Eastern paper or writer for some magazine evidently fell into the hands of the old South Deadwood practical jokers, who loaded him with miraculous stories. He wrote several Munchausen articles about the wonderful deeds of McCall and Calamity Jane, in one of which he described a ride McCall made to Custer City to rescue a friend whom he heard the vigilantes were preparing to hang. Near Hill City his horse played out and slapping his saddle on the horse of a camper's broncho by the roadside, was away like the wind, arriving just as his friend was swung up and dangling between heaven and earth. According to the story he jumped off with revolver in hand, cut him down and with two on the horse escaped on a run.
The facts are, that at that time there was not a vigilante at Custer, and if there had been, that committee would have riddled him and his friend with bullets instantly. Vigilantes never hanged a man until ready and then did it quickly. They did not wait for a messenger to ride sixty miles and wait for McCall or anybody else to come that distance, for there was no telegraph line in those days.
No attempted hanging occurred in Custer while I was there
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and after my arrival in Deadwood, when McCall was not working a placer claim he was loafing around town. The same writer lauded Calamity Jane for great deeds performed with the road agents in their stage holdups and then with the officers of the law in pursuit of the outlaws, and wanted a monument erected to her memory, instead of which Charity dictates that the veil of oblivion should be drawn over the career of that woman. Connecting her actively with the road agents or officers has no foundation whatever, in fact, as any one can see, she would have been put out of the wasy by one or the other in short order if she had been on the road with either.
Such recently hatched up stories are in line, however, with attempts to change names of mountains, streams and noted land-marks in this mountain country. for instance, an attempt is being made to change the name of the Seminoe range of mountains to Seminole, when the fact is, that range was named after Old Seminoe, a Canadian trapper who lived or camped near its north base. The word Seminole is in no sense applicable, for it is not even probable that a Seminole Indian was ever within hundreds of miles of those mountains.
THE INDIANS KILL THE STREET PREACHER SMITH
On a bright Sunday morning, a few days after the McCall trial, the Reverend Henry W. Smith, our street preacher, started for the valley to hold services in Crook City.
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SETTLEMENT OF SPEARFISH VALLEY BEGINS. INDIAN FIGHTS AND A CAT STORY
Judge W. W. Bradley and brothers, along with other comrades and friends of boyhood and war days and several Montana men, conceiving the idea that farms or ranches in the Spearfish Creek Valley out on the plains would become valuable, congregated on the ground where the town of Spearfish is now located, and not-withstanding the great danger from Indians, located and built houses on their claims.
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ORGANIZATION OF LAWRENCE AND TWO OTHER COUNTIES IN THE HILLS. FIRST ELECTION AND MORE EXCITEMENT
The Legislature of Dakota provided for the organization of the county of Lawrence with Deadwood as the county seat.
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ELECTION AS A MEMBER OF THE TERRITORIAL COUNCIL OR SENATE OF DAKOTA. SOME HISTORY OF THE SESSION AND COURT STORIES
At that election three hills counties, Custer, Pennington, and Lawrence, had a voting strength of more than seven thousand in a total vote of nineteen thousand in the Territory.
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ROAD AGENTS AND THE KILLING OF JOHNNY SLAUGHTER, A STAGE DRIVER
During the early days in the settlement of the Black Hills, after the Indians had no longer to be contended with, it had become safe for the light fingered gentry (who like the Buck Indian, scorned to work) to branch out more openly in their operations as Road Agents.
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HAPPENINGS ON THE STAGE LINE. "BIG NOSE GEORGE." THE STONEVILLE FIGHTS AND A BEAR STORY
When the Black Hills stage line was first established it was over the road from Cheyenne by way of Custer City to Deadwood.
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RETURN TO DEADWOOD AND OTHER EVENTS OF A STRENUOUS CHARACTER
Upon my return to Deadwood I accepted the position of Deputy Recorder or Register of Deeds.
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DROUGHT AND EXTREME COLD CRIPPLES SHEEP BUSINESS. EARLY DIGNITARIES OF WYOMING ARE NOW FAMOUS U. S. STATESMEN
For nine years all my hard earnings over and above family expenses had been invested in the sheep business.
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ENGAGE IN THE CATTLE BUSINESS, CHANGE RESIDENCE AND OTHER EVENTS
In the spring of 1882, after having cleaned up the wreckage of the sheep business, my son, J. M. Kuykendall, and I purchased a ranch and bunch of cattle near Warm Springs, now Saratoga, Wyoming.
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TO MY ASSOCIATES, THE PEOPLE GENERALLY AND MY BOY AND GIRL FRIENDS
When nearing the end of life, especially if prolonged to a good old age, it seems natural that the mind should revert to personal shortcomings of the past and humanitarian acts performed. Also, it reverts to the lessons learned through long contact with all phases of human nature and we ask ourselves whether or not we have labored alone for our own generation or for those of the future as well. Again we ask ourselves, have we been so wrapped up in worldly selfishness and pursuit of the Almighty dollar that our ears have been closed to the cry of the distressed and the wail of the orphan and our eyes closed to avenues for the betterment of humanity and the upbuilding of human character separated from the greed and avarice of the Shylocks, who like the poor, have always existed.
With this as a foundation and without any claim to perfection or saintly merit (as neither exists in human nature) I close this historical narrative with a few ideas or lessons obtained through bitter experience. Among them there was an incident with a man in Kansas. This man we aided materially with oxen and plow, breaking part of his prairie farm without any charge whatever, leaving the plow with him to use for two or three years. At the end of that time he wanted to know if he had not become the owner through peaceable possession for that length of time. That man had early imbibed the advice of a father to his son to "Get money. If you
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can not get it one way get it another. But get money," which has placed many boys, young and old behind jail and penitentiary walls or in their graves through violent deaths.
Closely connected with this Autobiography are the men who always want to know where they come in on any proposition in which money cuts a figure, also how much money a man will put up to induce them to do their duty morally and socially, while they at the same time profess unbounded friendship for the man they are attempting to fleece financially. Often after being fleeced, these men are sold out as in the case of Judas, with this difference that the Judas has no qualms of conscience over his treachery. Such and others of equal slippery tendencies do not hesitate a moment to promise one thing and do the opposite.
Probably the most of us have had more or less experience with people who have or pretend to have a personal grievance against some particular person, and for which there is often no just foundation. Such people are like another class few in number, who are profusein their expression of friendship and flattery when sober but woe to their victim who happens along when they are drunk as they then exemplify the old saying "That what a man thinks when sober will be unpleasantly expressed when he is drunk." These two classes are among the most dangerous of all, outside of regular criminals, and the sooner one shuns and ignores them the better for his peace of mind.
Now and then experience brings to the surface another small class of people who pride themselves upon being plain spoken on all occasions, making everybody in hearing feel uncomfortable no matter what the environment may be. The singular thing about such plain speakers is that immediately after they have given the uncalled for "wordy" stab which can not well be resented they
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will profess the warmest friendship for the victim. Such impossible creatures should be sidetracked from all social functions and public gatherings wherever it can be done until they are broken of the habit.
Then there is the professional liar and slanderer, the retailer of injurious gossip, the perpetual character wrecking tale-bearer and the general meddler with other people's affairs, and it is not necessary to dwell at any great length upon the evil effects engendered in nearly every community by these classes who should be shunned by everybody. Then of course, [the] vicious lawbreaking element has to be guarded against and dealt with as it is a perpetual menace to society, the State and the National Government.
In opposition to all such people there is, in every community, in my opinion, a good large majority of people who are opposed to the work of all the classes mentioned, who are charitable not alone in a financial way but also in a moral way by aiding if possible in the reformation of the unfortunates who have drunk at the fountain of vice and immorality. By refraining from casting stones of condemnation and judgment in their direction they endeavor to cast the broad mantle of Charity about the ordinary shortcomings of poor frail humanity.
A big proportion of our people are law abiding and strive to bring their children up to recognize that the only true road to permanent happiness consists in obedience to the laws of nature and man, and of the Supreme Ruler of the Universe. Especially to the rising generation of boys and girls, I want to say that the only true road to real permanent happiness and peace of mind is to resolutely and with a fixed determination avoid bad habits and vice of all kinds, be true to self, be just and charitable, do right because it is right and fear not, and avoid bad companions. I want to urge
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them to take no stock in the slippery phrase used by demagogues who know better, that "everything is fair in Love, War and Politics." For such is not, and never was the fact since the dawn of real civilization and he who in this day and time attempts to teach that there is any truth whatever in such phrase needs watching.
Like the great majority who have appeared and disappeared from the scenes of life, I am calmly and quietly waiting for the great change which comes to all and which ushers all into the mysteries of the other life or existence beyond the grave to which we look for a happy meeting of our friends and dear ones who have gone before. As these will probably be my last words of admonition to most of those who read this book and especially to my dear boy and girl friends whose paths through life are or will be beset with good and evil I beseech you to avoid the latter as you would the Viper and Rattlesnake and cling to the former as the only priceless Jewel worth striving for in this life.
In writing the foregoing sketch of my life, many minor details have been left out, also many reminiscences of a sad as well as ludicrous character and thrilling and dangerous experiences. My family is of good and honest old stock and the same can be truthfully said of my wife's family on both sides of the family tree. I have endeavored to keep unsullied the name and honor of both and outside of the exigencies of war, have never without the greatest provocation injured a human being intentionally, if at all. To my sons and their posterity, to whom this is dedicated, I leave the future honorable perpetuation of the name with the hope and urgent request that it be kept untarnished through all succeeding generations.
WILLIAM L. KUYKENDALL
To show in part the great esteem and affection in which Judge W. L. Kuykendall was held, it may be here mentioned that the following lodges, associations and societies sent letters, telegrams and resolutions upon hearing of the passing away of the "Grand Old Man."
RESOLUTIONS
Cheyenne Lodge No. 1, A. F. & A. M.
Saratoga Lodge, No. 43, I. O. O. F.
Enterprise Encampment of Casper, Wyoming.
Hall of Big Horn Lodge No. 36, I. O. O. F.
Hall of Golden Rebekah Lodge No. 7.
Eliza Rebekah Lodge No. 26, I. O. O. F. (Named in honor of Mrs. Kuykendall)
South Deadwood Hose Co. No. 2 (where an enlarged photograph of Judge Kuykendall has been recently placed).
LETTERS AND TELEGRAMS
Denver Omnibus and Cab Co. (84 names signed).
Representatives of Grand Lodge Riverton, Wyoming; Fellowship at Baltimore, Md.; Society of Blackhills Pioneers, Sovereign Grand Lodge at San Antonio, Texas; Sovereign Grand Lodge, Honolulu, Hawaii; Sovereign Lodge of Worcestershire, Mass.
Louis A. Von Tilborg, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Colorado I. O. O. F. wrote immediately upon hearing of the death of the Judge to the subordinate lodges of the State informing them that their past Grand Sire, after a long and useful career had died. He wrote "A splendid man, a loyal friend, and a great Odd Fellow rests from his labors." These lodges attended the funeral in a body. The Odd Fellows Fraternal Press published a beautiful tribute to their "brother."
G. B. Kuykendall a prominent physician and surgeon of Pomeroy, Washington, gives in a letter this interesting information in regard to the Kuykendall family.
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"The family came from Nageningen Gullderland province, Holland, but there was an older home which bore the old Archaic Dutch name of Kijkin, t-dal meaning a view into the dale or valley. The family is easily traced from New Amsterdam, to which place an ancestor came from Holland to Fort Orange or Albany, thence down to Port Jervis, N. Y., and down on the Delaware to Ancient Minisink. It was down the wonderful Old Mine Road that our ancestors tracked their way to near the Delaware Water Gap, and the Ancient Copper mine there. Down in this region some of the Kuykendalls lived for 200 years, and some of them are found there yet. Down on the Delaware in what was called the 'Minisink' region were found the old homes of Jacob and Mathews Kuykendall who were brothers and sons of the first born American Kuykendall. Mathews undoubtedly was the ancestor of the W. L. Kuykendall.
"There on the Delaware are ancient stone buildings in quite good condition yet and inhabited.
"I also found there an ancient cemetery, the first dedicated to public use in Sussex County, N. J.
"I then traced the Kuykendalls to Virginia, found the very land they located on and purchased from Lord Fairfax prior to 1749, found the identical deed to one of the places, the deed still in good preservation bearing the seal of Great Britain.
"I found the place of our great great grandfather with ruins of old mill masonry and mill race, and an ancient log house.
"There were many of the Kuykendalls in the Revolutionary War.
"In New York in early times, and later, the Kuykendalls lived very near places made famous by Washington Irving's Legends, and along the old mine road are strewn many old forts used during the Revolutionary War and in the previous French and Indian war, and war with savages. All along that ancient highway are noted battlefields and historic spots so that our people had something to stir their souls and fire their patriotism."
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