Published in Wetmore Spectator—
March 27, 1936
By John T. Bristow
It was sixty-two years ago. Our quiet little village, surrounded by almost continuous open country, with grazing herds all bedded down for the night, slumbered. A gentle rain was falling.
The night train brought to Wetmore a man bent upon a desperate undertaking. Jim Erickson was a resident of these parts, but had been absent for some time. He did not seek lodgings in town. Under cover of the night he walked west on the railroad track for two miles, then turned off to the timber on the south. He spent the remainder of the night in a hay stack at the timber’s edge. Here he loaded his revolver for the cold-blooded murder of his neighbor and supposedly his friend, Adolph Marquardt.
With the coming of dawn on that spring morning, May 10, 1873, Jim Erickson-plodded on foot through the wet grass from his hay-stack bed to the Marquardt home two miles to the southwest. He knocked for admittance. The door was opened. Erickson’s gun flashed, and Marquardt fell dead by the side of the door.
Just what all happened after that is mere conjecture—but rumor had it that the whole abominable affair rested with Erickson’s burning desire to break the Tenth Commandment; and as expedient to this insane impulse he deemed it important for him to break also the Sixth Commandment. And as it turned out, he just about smashed the whole category of “Thou shall nots.”
Jim Erickson took the two small Marquardt children over to the home of Peter Nelson about a quarter of a mile away. He told Nelson that he had killed Marquardt; that he had shot Mrs. Marquardt in the thigh, crippling her, so that she could not get away, and that he intended to kill her when he returned to the home. Erickson also told Nelson that he had intended to take Mrs. Marquardt away with him, but she had refused to go.
It was never definitely established that there had been any promises or understanding between Erickson and Mrs. Marquardt. If there had been any clandestine meetings, they had the good sense, or more likely the good luck, to keep it well under cover. The one certain thing is that Erickson coveted his neighbor’s wife—and that was bad business.
The Marquardt children were too young to realize what had happened. The older child, a boy of four, could say nothing but “Boom!” The younger child died two years later in the home of William Morris.
The older boy—now Adolph Nissen—still lives. He was taken into the home of Christian C. Nissen. Or rather, the Nissens came to the boy’s home, acquiring the right through due process of law. And they adopted the boy.
The Marquardts were regarded as fine people, and if there had ever been any rifts in the family, the world did not know it. Jim Erickson was a rather quiet and apparently honorable man who owned a homestead north of the Marquardt home. The Marquardt land is now owned by Mrs. C. C. Nissen, Christian’s second wife, mother of Frits Nissen, and C. C.’s other four children—Bill, Homer, George, and Mrs. Charley Love. Peter Nelson owned the intervening eighty then. Erickson was a bachelor. The residents of that settlement were all countrymen. That is, they or their ancestors had immigrated to this country from that little corner of the old world known as the land of the midnight sun—Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.
There were no telephones then and the process of summoning the law was necessarily slow. William Liebig was constable. He was reputedly a very brave man, but that was one time when he displayed more caution than |. bravery. With a posse of deputized men, Liebig went to the scene of the murder—that is, they went near it. For long hours the men hung around on the fringe of the premises, watching and waiting. Finally Liebig crept noiselessly up to the house and very cautiously pushed the door open. His tension relaxed a bit. All occupants of the house were dead. Jim Erickson had killed Mrs. Marquardt while in bed. He then sent a bullet through his own head.
At that time there was a small publication at Netawaka whose outspoken editor believed in calling “a spade a spade.” His printed version of the affair, purporting to be based on revealments in the house on entry of the officers, was, to say the least, racily rotten.
Erickson’s body was brought to town and rested for a while in the wareroom of the DeForest store building. The doctors sawed Erickson’s head open, and decided that he had an “abnormal brain.” But evidently they were not satisfied with their findings. Anyhow, it would seem they craved another whack at him, as will be observed later. In making the post-mortem the doctors used a common carpenter’s hand saw. I saw them do it.
Marquardt and his wife were buried in the Wetmore cemetery. Marquardt was a Union soldier. His grave is marked with a slab bearing only his name.
There was no one here to claim Jim Erickson’s body. Neil Erickson, a cousin, lived in that neighborhood—but the crime was too horrible for him to have any part in the disposal of the murderer. Neil Erickson was a respected citizen. Neil later married Peter Pope’s widow. She was the sister of a Wetmore shoemaker named Reuter. Pope gave Reuter a cow for bringing his sister here—as a prospective bride—besides paying the woman’s way from Germany. She took with her into the Erickson home one child—Charley. I do not know if Charley was her son, or Peter Pope’s by his first wife. Likely the former. Pope had a daughter—Louise. She was old enough at her father’s death to make her own way. She worked in Dr. J. W. Graham’s home for several years. Neil Erickson was the father of Dick Erickson. Jim Erickson’s brother George came later, and lived here many years. He was an honorable man.
The town people decided that they did not want a murderer buried in the cemetery, so what was left of Jim Erickson after the doctors had finished with him, was dumped into a packing box, and he was buried on top of a high hill just south of town. This hill, then regarded as “no man’s land,” is now a part of the Bartley farm. It has been locally known ever since as Mount Erickson.
On the night following the planting of Erickson, two groups of doctors, with numerous assistants, started out to recover the body. But, as it turned out, the corpse was left undistributed—at least, for that night. Rumor had it that it did not remain long on the hill-top.
The Wetmore group, led by Dr. W. F. Troughton, was first in the field. Close on their heels came the Netawaka group. Dusk was upon them. One of the Netawaka men rode a white horse. That rider and his companions moved silently across the slough-grass swamp skirting the big hill, steadily gaining on the Wetmore men who had halted at the base of the hill. One of the local hirsute sentinels—they nearly all wore whiskers then—exclaimed, “It’s a ghost!” That was enough. The Wetmore group stampeded. The Netawaka group followed suit. And the cattle which had bedded down for the night at the base of the hill stampeded. The cattle bellowed, and what with terrified men and frightened beasts running this way and that way, pandemonium reigned supreme for quite a spell. Perhaps the cattle, too, had seen Erickson’s ghost.
Published in Wetmore Spectator and
Horton Headlight—1936.
By John T. Bristow
The Old Overland Trail
STATEMENT BY CHARLES H. BROWNE
Editor Horton Headlight
EDITOR’S NOTE—Nearly a year ago, J. T. Bristow, pioneer resident of Wetmore and former editor of the Wetmore Spectator, promised Charles H. Browne, editor of The Headlight at Horton, Kansas, he would prepare an article dealing with early history of this corner of Kansas, particularly as it was affected by the Old Military Road, which became the Overland Stage route to the Far West and also the Pony Express route.
It was hoped Mr. Bristow would have the article ready for the 50th Anniversary edition of The Headlight, published on October 29, 1936, but this he was unable to do. However, he furnished the article several months later, and The Headlight published it in seven installments.
The article is so unusually well written, so authentic, and of such absorbing interest that the editor has taken the liberty of reproducing it in a small booklet in order that it may better be preserved for its historical importance.
Kansas pioneers living in south-central Nemaha and southern Brown counties a little more than three-quarters of a century ago, witnessed the inauguration of a stage line over an old trail passing their very doors, so to speak.
That road, thick with horse and mule drawn vehicles and long ox-drawn wagon trains, grew quickly into the greatest thoroughfare of its kind on the face of the earth. Simply a winding trail, ungraded and almost wholly without bridges, it was by far the greatest line of vehicular traffic of all times. It was a road with a golden background. It is the major topic of this article.
At that time there were no railroads or telegraph lines west of the Missouri river. A vast wilderness, uninhabited except for Indians and a few isolated white settlements, all territory between the river and the Rocky mountains was designated as “The Great American Desert.” By many it was considered the most worthless stretch of country in the western world. An error, of course, and one agreeably noted by those living here now—notwithstanding the New Deal brain trust’s prophecy that much of this land is to revert to the desert.
W. F. Turrentine, in Spectator
A few days ago J. T. Bristow received a letter from Albert T. Reid, national vice-chairman of The American Artists Professional League, Incorporated, complimentinghimon his article, “The Overland Trail,” and asking for information regarding “Old Bob Ridley,” a famous frontiersman well known to what few of the old settlers are left in this vicinity. “Old Bob Ridley” was Robert Sewell who lived in this part of Kansas in an early day and had a lot of vivid experiences, some of which Mr. Bristow recorded in the article mentioned. Robert Sewell’s wife, several years his junior, was a sister of Mrs. V. O. Hough. We quote the following from Mr. Reid’s letter to Mr. Bristow:
16 Georgia Ave., Long Beach, N. Y., November 14, 1937.
Dear Mr. Bristow:
Ralph Tennal of Sabetha sent me your story, “The Old Overland Trail,” a few days ago and I read it from kiver to kiver without stopping to catch my breath. It is very fascinating and a swell job.
I was particularly interested in it because I had done a sketch which I intended painting sometime. I made the sketch about two years ago and from my memory of the incident which fascinated me particularly. I called it “Old Bob Ridley Brings in the Mall.”
Recently I put a mural in place in the Post Office at Sabetha which was called “The Coming of the New Fast Mail.” It is of the Pony Express rider passing the old Mail Stage. It has made a hit far beyond my wildest hopes and leads me to believe this is the sort of thing the public likes, and particularly our Kansas people—they like something which is out of their past, realistic, romantic, colorful.
Possibly you may remember me as the fellow who published the Leavenworth Daily Post for 18 1/2 years and the Kansas Farmer for almost eleven years during that period. I started to stick type on the Clyde papers. Was born up in Concordia and I never saw a railroad train until I was well up to six—just my father’s old stages which ran from Concordia to Waterville and Marysville.
So you see why the painting of our old past particularly interests me and why I have a considerable first hand knowledge and feeling for it. The details are most important to me. I made a most careful research for my Pony Express and I want to be very accurate with Old Bob when I start in to paint it. There are a few details I want to get straightened out, so I am imposing on you to help me, thinking you may have some interest in seeing the incident preserved.
I gave Mr. Reid the information he desired, but I do not know if he ever finished a canvass of “Old Bob.” Probably not—for it was my impression (from reading between the lines) that if and when it should be completed that I would be expected to approve it, in return for his compliment to me. Bob’s home town would have been the natural place to exhibit it. Albert was concerned most as to whether the stage-team driven by Bob at the time of the Indian attack near Cottonwood Springs, in which he killed three Redskins and wounded a dozen more, were horses or mules. I said in my story that “Ben Holladay gave him a gold watch for saving the stage and the four mules.” And this was Bob’s version of it. So I gathered that Mr. Reid had this incident in mind for his painting. Only recently, Dec. 10, 1950, the Topeka Daily Capital ran a story, with illustration of a canvass by Albert T. Reid, “Main Street—1873” of the Artist’s old home town, featuring his father’s four-horse stage coach on the takeoff from Concordia. The Capital article said the women’s organizations of Concordia were raising a fund of $1,500 to purchase the canvass.
Bob Ridley (Robert Sewall) brought his colorful record with him when he came to Wetmore. Here, he was just like everyone else—maybe a little more so. He took life easy, did not brag overly much about his past exploits. Early in his career as stage driver on the Overland Trail, he fell into the habit of helping a red headed girl wait table at Mrs. D. M. Locknane’s celebrated eating house just west of Granada, grabbing bites now and again from his plate in the kitchen, as he worked, all through the twenty minute stops—and when this got monotonous he pepped up matters by grabbing the redhead, all in one take. HemarriedCicily Locknane—and established her in an eating house of their own at a station in the Little Blue valleywest ofMarysville, while he himself continued driving stage. But the frequent Indian raids in that section soon sent Cicily back toher motherat Granada. Then, when there was no more stage driving, Bob and Cicily moved down from Granada to Wetmore. Their activities here have been noted in other articles. Robert Sewell died in 1884.
J. T. B.
The Overland Trail, along which the mighty traffic of the plains moved, was first laid out from Fort Leavenworth to Fort Kearney in 1849. The road was definitely established in 1858, with a weekly mail route from Saint Joseph to Salt Lake. In its settled state, the line ran daily from Atchison to Placerville, and Sacramento, California.
Prior to that the route through this section was used by gold-seekers, following the discovery of gold in California in 1849. It was used by emigrants, trappers, and adventurers coming from the East. Military stores from Fort Leavenworth to the posts in the northwest were handled over this trail. Also, freighting by ox-train was carried on extensively from Leavenworth to the Mormon settlements in the Salt Lake valley.
Mormons, too, may have traveled the road. And, as has been asserted in print, Mormons there might have been who camped in a clump of timber a few miles west of Atchison, causing it to be locally known as “Mormon Grove.” Straggling Mormons, maybe. But not the main exodus. Contrary to fixed assumption, the great migration of Mormons to the Salt Lake valley in 1847 did not pass this way. Driven out of Missouri, they went to Illinois; and again driven out of Illinois, they traveled through Iowa, crossed the Missouri river at Council Bluffs and did not touch ground on which the Old Trail was subsequently established until they reached the Platte valley at or near Fort Kearney. The offense that had so incensed the righteous citizens of Missouri and Illinois was flagrant polygamy.
The main group of Mormons camped for nearly two years in Iowa while Brigham Young, with a few of his disciples, went on farther west is search of a place outside the United States where he hoped they could carry on without interference. The Salt Lake valley was then in Mexican territory. But almost before Brigham’s people had become settled the war with Mexico was over and Brigham’s refuge was ceded to the “hated” United States. Then for years the enormous migration across the plains to California poured through the land of mormon.
Brigham didn’t relish that—and in the following decade he kicked up quite a disturbance. On every hand, he showed his hatred of all peoples not Mormon. He climaxed matters with the Meadow Mountain massacre. In 1857 the Mormons plundered and murdered an emigrant train numbering nearly 150 people. To be exact—a historical fact—120 men and women were slaughtered. Seventeen children under seven years of age were taken alive into Mormon camp. Also rumors, and some overt acts, indicated that the Mormons were planning rebellion. This bit of history is related merely to clarify statements which follow.
Now the Old Trail through this section came into active use again. General Albert Sidney Johnson’s army of 5,000 men, with a long ox-train bearing military supplies, was sent out from Fort Leavenworth to put down the so-called Mormon uprising. And, incidentally, that new mail route through here was to give quicker service between Washington and General Johnson. Prior to that, mail went to Salt Lake and the northwest forts monthly, out of Independence, up the Kaw valley.
All this business about the Old Trail happened of course before my day. True, I came into this country over the Old Trail—when traffic was at its peak—but I was too young to note much. Therefore, in compiling this article I must draw from memory of what I have read, of what was told in my presence, by old-timers after the closing years, together with what I have been able to pick up at this late date—and from what I really know about subsequent incidents that shall be given consideration. It is not alone the story of the Old Trail.
I know of no old-timer from whom I could have obtained more reliable information than from my Uncle Nick Bristow. His first-hand knowledge of the Old Trail, and of the early history of the West, is reflected throughout this article.
My uncle, Nicholas Bristow, who died here November 12, 1890, age 69 years, came to Kansas before the Old Trail was in active existence—just how early, I do not know. When my father wrote his brother from their old home in Tennessee, he would send his letters in care of the Floyds at old Doniphan, a steamboat landing on the Missouri river about five miles north of Atchison. How often my uncle would get his mail depended upon how often he drove his lumbering ox-team across the forty mile stretch of intervening prairies to the river for supplies. Uncle Nick kept that yoke of oxen a long time. I remember seeing him break prairie with old Buck and Jerry, two rangy Texas steers with long spreading horns tipped with brass knobs.
And when my Uncle Nick wrote his cousin, Stephen Sersene, in California to ask, in substance, if he were really finding the gold—the lure that had snatched the said relative from his old Kentucky home and sent him scampering across the plains to the Pacific slope in 1849—and could he himself, should he go out there, stand a reasonable show of filling his own poke with gold-nuggets, he posted that letter at old Doniphan and it went to California by way of the Isthmus of Panama.
Had Uncle Nick been so fortunate as to get that letter in the mails so as to reach the Atlantic seaboard in time to connect with a semi-monthly sailing it would have reached his cousin Steven in about thirty days. With the inauguration of the Central Overland Stage Line, letters mailed at Granada or old Powhattan were taken through to the western coast in seventeen days—and later, by Pony Express, in ten days. Now, if he were living, my uncle could have his letters delivered in California by air-mail in ten hours. Thus have we progressed! Now, too, as all know, with three enabling devices, one can telegraph, talk, and sing to California, at will—and, if your photograph is of importance to the news service, it can, within certain bounds, be wired to California at the rate of an inch a minute for the breadth of the finished picture.
And had my uncle decided to go to California, the Isthmus route would have been his quickest and best way, if not the only safe way. However, notwithstanding the perils and delays of overland travel, more than a hundred thousand people crossed the plains in the first two years of the gold rush—many of them passing this way.
Our former townsman, Sneathen Vilott, whose home was then in Illinois, and who came to Kansas in 1855, went to California by way of the Isthmus of Panama during the gold excitement. I have often heard him talk entertainingly about that experience. Also, William J. Oliphant, father of Mrs. Robert T. Bruner, of Granada, went overland to California in 1849, and returned by way of the Isthmus. However, the goddess of gold did not smile upon either of these men. Indeed, they both worked in menial pursuits to earn return passage.
Like nearly every one else in those days, Uncle Nick was gold-minded. He coveted some of that gold. In fact, we all did in our day—uncle, father, brother, and I.
With sails all set for California and the placers, my father, William Bristow, actually got out as far as Kansas in 1856. But someone in old Doniphan, a relative of the Floyds who had been to California, took the wind out of his sails with a negative report. My father was then twenty-one years old. He visited his brother here, then went back to Nashville, got married, and came out here again with his family in 1865. He finally went to California to live out his last years. He died at Fresno in 1908.
In California, my father did not take up the hunt for gold—though, on one occasion when I was visiting him, he drove with me over to the old site of Millerton, which was one of the rich placers in the early days. It is where the San Joaquin river comes down out of the mountains. The only remaining evidence of that once hell-roaring town of 10,000 inhabitants is the old territorial jail, a large stone building with heavily barred windows and three foot walls—a relic of the wicked past.
While standing on the west bank of that swift flowing stream, watching the foaming waters among the boulders rush past, my father, pulling at his own whiskers in a sort of meditative way, said, with apparent regret, “If it hadn’t been for that old long-whiskered cuss back there at Old Doniphan, I might have been out here when there was something doing; and probably”—he glanced toward the old jail which was then closed to the public—”have gotten to see the inside of that building.”
While at old Millerton my father told me that my brother Dave, then in business in Fresno, had sent a representative and $5,000 into the Klondike country. In passing, I may say here that my brother’s five “grand” found a permanent home in the frozen north. Also, the miner sent to Alaska on a grubstake agreement got back within two years with nothing more than a sizable tale of hardships—and ten frosted toes. Julius Pohl, from Horton; Col. Ed. Post, from Atchison; and Sam Ebelmesser, formerly of Wetmore, now living in Los Angeles, were in that frenzied, frozen, Alaskan gold rush. Also, my brother Dave had some non-productive experience in seeking “black gold” in the Bakersfield oilfield—$15,000 worth of it.
My Uncle Nick was a Union soldier in the Civil war, and before that a soldier in the Mexican war of 1848—the war that dashed the heaven out of Brigham’s haven. Also, in a way, he was a soldier of fortune. He hunted gold, and he hunted mountain lions in the Rockies.
But Uncle Nick did not go to California. Almost before he had had time to hear from his cousin Steve, he got his chance to dig for gold—and strange as it may appear, it was in Kansas! My uncle was among the first at the sensational Cherrycreek gold diggings—the present site of Denver—in 1858, advertised at the time in the East as the gold-fields of western Kansas. For want of a better known landmark, probably, the scene of that gold strike was inaccurately laid in the shadow of Pike’s Peak. Though visible on clear days, through the sun-drenched haze that lies always, like a pall, over the mountain fastness, Pike’s Peak is a good hundred miles south of Denver. But that gold find was truly in Kansas. At that time Kansas territory extended west to the backbone of the Rocky mountains. The city of Denver—first called Auraria—scene of the Cherry creek placers, was named after the territorial Governor of Kansas—James W. Denver.
Uncle Nick located a claim at the Cherry creek diggings and sent home to my aunt Hulda a small bottle of gold-dust, saying in a letter to her that she was “no longer a poor man’s wife!” That was, as my aunt afterwards said, a “sorry” thing to do—like giving a reprieve to a condemned man, and then revoking it. My uncle brought home no gold. He must have neglected his claim for the more hazardous business of hunting mountain lions.
That ferocious beast, if you don’t know, is the big cat with four names. In the East and South he is the panther. In the Rockies he is the mountain lion. In Arizona and on the Pacific slope he is the cougar. Somewhere he is the puma. And everywhere he is the killer!
No Government bounty was paid on cougars then, as there is now; but the pelts were much in demand for rugs. Hunters went after the lions for the same reason that early-day trappers sought the beaver. I recall that the lion rug in my uncle’s home, measuring eight feet from tip to tip, with stuffed head and artificial eyes—a trophy of his Rocky mountain hunts, killed at the risk of his own life, was a scary thing. The great beast was shot in the nick of time—in mid-air, after that two hundred pounds ofdestructionhad made the spring for my uncle from an overhanging limb of a great pine.
And, incidentally, I might say my father had some terrifying experience with that killer, the panther. He was walking through the dark woods in his native Tennessee, nearing his home, when a night prowler fell in behind him, coming so close that he could feel the animal’s breath on his swinging hands, and he thought nothing of it—just then. Likely one of his dogs come to meet him. But in the yard, he could see by the light of the lamp in the window, which my mother was always careful to put there to show him that he would not be trespassing on the home of a wicked woman living in a lonely cabin in the nearby deep wood—a witch, they called her; but there was suspicion that she was more than that to some of the menfolk—he could see that his trailer was a panther. It had feasted on the offals from the day’s hog-killing, or butchering—and, with a bellyful, was in a rather composed mood. Not so my Dad. Did he run? He did not. He had learned from old hunters to not show fright when in a tight spot with that ugly animal. However, he said his stimulated mind reached the door about twenty “shakes of a sheep’s tail” ahead of his paralyzed legs.
Uncle Nick’s recounted experiences with the lions were enough to fire the hunting blood in his young nephew. Later, however, the nephew going over the same ground said to himself, “To hell with the lions—me for the gold!” The contagion had gotten me. Recounting the great wealth of the five major placers, I “cussed” myself—mildly, of course—for not having been born earlier.
Too late for the placers, and thoroughly imbued with the idea, I took a dip at hard-rock mining—and, paradoxically, “cussed” myself again. Less mildly, however. Ah, that delving for gold—it is a dramatic game, a business wherein the element of chance runs rampant and the imagination is given unbridled play.
Bedeviled by Indians and highwaymen, there were perils and hardships in travel along the Overland Trail in those days—but nothing, absolutely nothing, slowed up the westward march. The race to acquire new wealth was on! “Pike’s Peak, or Bust,” was the slogan! In swinging up through Nebraska the Old Trail made a wide rainbow circle to reach Denver. There was literally “a pot of gold” at the end of the rainbow! Gold, glittering yellow gold! Nothing else in the wide world has ever stirred men more deeply, driven them to greater tests of endurance, or robbed them more swiftly of reason.
Still, gold changed the whole history of the country. It sent a mighty migration of people across the continent, built a trans-continental railroad, and established an American empire on the Pacific coast. And gold—magic gold—was the life-stream of the old Overland Trail!
The Cherry creek placers were the first after the California discoveries to attract the throngs of that gold-mad era. It was gold here in mid-continent! Gold in Kansas! It was new business for the Old Trail. The great bulk of western travel, with attending heavy commerce, was to the goldfields.
Again, in 1863, when placer gold was discovered in the Alder Gulch section of Montana, traffic on the old line became enormously heavy. The three principal camps—Bannock, Virginia City, and Nevada—yielded a hundred million dollars in placer gold. Twenty thousand gold-hungry miners frantically worked the streams for the yellow metal, while thousands more men were on the road to and from that Eldorado. They were mostly from the East—men who had traveled the Old Trail through here.
Indians have been mentioned. They were notably troublesome at times, especially in the buffalo country west of the Blue river. In that territory there were four hostile tribes—Sioux, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Pawnee. The Indians had the Overland Stage line between the Blue and Julesburg blocked for six weeks in 1864. Station-keepers, stage-drivers, and travelers were killed; stations were burned and stage-stock stolen. The congestion along the line extended back to Atchison. Numerous itinerant outfits were detained at Granada.
Even in my time, on this side of the Blue, the sight of a red blanket out in the open was enough to send a spasm of fear surging through children, and adults did not feel any too comfortable. Always there was that feeling that approaching Indians in numbers might not be our Kickapoos, but hostiles from the other side of the Blue. Then there came a day when our citizens were sure of it—no mistaking that band of four hundred redskins for the peaceful Kickapoos!
It was a queer looking cavalcade—tall braves and Indians squatty, squaws fat and greasy, bronze maidens passably “fair”; children, papooses, ponies, and dogs galore—with luggage lashed on long poles hitched to ponies in buggy-shaft fashion, with the rear ends dragging on the ground. The Indian travois.
At four o’clock of a rather hot summer day, those Indians, unannounced, made camp at the old ford near the edge of town. Two of our influential townsmen—one professional, one artisan—invaded the Indian camp, and through speech, signs, or somehow, gleaned the information that the Indians were from Nebraska and were on their way to the Indian Territory.
Come early bonfire-light that night, those two white men re-entered the Indian camp. They took along a Scotsman’s “wee bit” of the Indian’s “firewater,” but whether they unlawfully gave it to the braves or drank it themselves, was cloaked in silence. The charitable townspeople preferred to believe they drank it themselves—hence the mess. But the best “kid” analysis at the time favored the belief that the trouble had all come about through the white man’s ignorance of Indian etiquette—as with respect to bronze maidens passably “fair.”
Those two white men were ejected from the Indian camp—not exactly thrown out on their ears, but definitely dismissed. Expressed in Indian terms, here was a tribe whose braves “no like paleface put nose in Indian’s business.” In the telling, those two rebuffed men themselves did not seem to care very much—but all through the night the town waited in suspense. No exaggeration, there was needless apprehension. And may I add that this episode did not react unfavorably against the future high standing of those two influentials.
Traffic on the old dirt road, known as the Overland Trail, began in a big way in 1859, when the powerful freighting firm of Russell, Majors, and Waddell acquired the stage and mail business of John M. Hockaday, who held the first mail contract. The road was given another big boost when Ben Holladay, with his famous Concord coaches and four and six-horse teams, came onto the line in 1861. Holladay took over the stage and mail business of Russell, Majors, and Waddell.
About three thousand horses and mules were in the stage service. Eight to twelve animals were kept at each station, which were spaced on an average of twelve miles apart. At its highest the stage fare to Denver was $125, and to Sacramento $225.
The Russell, Majors, and Waddell firm, with headquarters at Atchison and Leavenworth, continued in the freighting business. This company employed 8,000 men, and was equipped with 6,000 heavy wagons, and 75,000 oxen. At the same time there were about twenty other firms and individuals freighting out of Atchison.
The Russell firm, with other interests, established the Pony Express in 1860. The route from St. Joseph to Sacramento, 1920 miles, was covered in ten days—semi-weekly, at first. When the Civil war commenced, it was changed to daily. In the service were eighty riders and 500 horses—not ponies of the Indian class, but the best blooded horses that money could buy. They had to be fast to outrace the hostile Indians. The Pony Express, carrying first-class letters and telegrams only, lasted eighteen months. Telegraph connection with the Far West was established then. For a half-ounce letter a 10-cent Government postage stamp and a dollar Pony Express stamp were required. The Pony Express charge was much more at first.
Riders starting from St. Joseph and Sacramento simultaneously every morning kept a constant stream going both ways—day and night. Like the stage drivers, each rider had a given territory to make, with a change of horses every twelve miles. The first lap was from St. Joseph to Seneca. Lightweight riders only were used—mere boys they were. Don C. Rising was a Pony Express rider. He made his home in Wetmore after the close of the staging days.
The old road, with St. Joseph and Leavenworth as initial starting points, had a junction at Kennekuk, one and one-half miles south of the present site of Horton. On the St. Joseph branch were three stations—Wathena, Troy, and Lewis.
Later, Atchison was made the starting point for the stage and mails. At this time railroad service was extended from St. Joseph to Atchison—and, on the west end, river service was had from Sacramento to San Francisco. The first station out of Atchison was Lancaster, 11 miles. Then Kennekuk, 24 miles; Kickapoo, 36 miles; Log Chain, 49 miles; Seneca, 60 miles.
From Seneca the line continued westward to Marysville. It crossed the Big Blue river at Marysville, went up the Little Blue valley, crossed over to the Platte valley, then up the Platte to Fort Kearney. At Julesburg one branch turned south into Denver. The main line crossed the South Platte at Julesburg, touched at Fort Larimer and Fort Bridger in Wyoming. From Salt Lake it took a western course across Nevada to Virginia City; thence over the Sierra Nevada mountains to Placerville and Sacramento.
Considerable attention is given to the routing through Nemaha and Brown counties. For historical purposes, it is important that this should be done now while it is yet possible to trace the route with some degree of accuracy. Only slight evidences of the Old Trail remain. Practically everything obtainable now is a carry over from another generation, hearsay. In a few years more all information pertaining to the old road will have been relayed to a third and fourth generation, if not, indeed, forgotten altogether, locally. There are people here now, some living almost atop the Old Trail, who have never heard of it. There are none living now who were adults then, and even very few who were children. Albert Pitman, of Sabetha, aged 90, is probably the oldest person now living who was in the Powhattan-Granada neighborhood during staging days. Mrs. Martha Hart, E. J. Woodman, Volley Hough, Edwin Smith, and Ed. Vilott, now living at McAlister, Oklahoma, were children.
Tracing the Old Trail, locally, we find: The road at first came almost due west from Kennekuk across the Kickapoo Indian reservation, but probably bent over into what is now Brown County, as it followed the ridges. It crossed the Delaware at a point about eighty rods upstream from the crooked bridge on the present south line of the reservation—the Jackson-Brown County line. The Kickapoo reservation at that time contained about 150,000 acres. It has since been diminished three times. Now it is a block five by six miles in extent, thirty sections, 19,200 acres—with much of the land owned by the whites.
The first mission, built in 1856, was located on Horton Heights, inside the present city limits of Horton. The site was marked by a red glacial boulder on December 1, 1936—80 years after the Indian school was established by E. M. Hubbard—the first school of any kind in Brown County.
Also, there is confusion about the name of the stream spanned by the crooked bridge. Some call it the Grasshopper, and others refer to it as Walnut creek. It is neither. Lewis and Clark, explorers, named it the Grasshopper in 1804. It was changed to the Delaware in 1875 by an act of the Kansas legislature.
From that creek crossing, the trail followed the ridge to the old town of Powhattan in section 33, Powhattan township—the same section on which the East Powhattan school house is located, at the present intersection of U. S. 75 and the new graveled highway now running 11 miles straight east to Horton. The change station was on the northeast quarter, owned by Henry Gotchell, who had charge of the station, and also the post office.
My mother got her first letter written by relatives in Tennessee, at the Powhattan post office. Her cousin, Gaius Cullom, a school teacher, wrote: “Powhattan—why, that’s an Indian name! I am grieved to believe my dear cousin Martha is residing dangerously close to wild Indians. Be careful, my favorite, and don’t let those accursed aborigines get your scalp!” Alone for the day with her three small children in her country home, a year later, some such fears must have gripped my mother, when, on approach of a meandering band of blanketed Kickapoos, she hurriedly gathered up her brood and made a dash for the cornfield.
The old town of Powhattan—not to be confused with the present town of Powhattan farther over in Brown county—which was established 11 miles northeast when the Rock Island railway went through in 1886—was in the center of the northwest quarter of section 33. There was a store, hotel, blacksmith shop, and numerous dwellings. Although regularly surveyed in town lots, nobody really owned the land on which the town was located at the time. It was held by “quatter’s rights,” in succession, by three men—Peter Shavey, Riley Woodman, and C. C. Grubb. It is now a cornfield, owned by Mrs. James Grubb.
From Powhattan, the line ran west across the Timber-lake and Cassity lands. The Timberlake land is now owned by Mrs. Cora Jenkins. The road then followed the ridge to Granada, passing from Brown county to Nemaha county at that point.
In 1860 the Powhattan change station was moved to a point three miles north. The change was made to take out a big curve and save mileage. The new station was called Kickapoo. It was on Indian land near the new mission on the west edge of the reservation. Noble H. Rising was in charge. Later, he was a merchant in Wetmore; as was also W. W. Letson, Express messenger.
Going back to the Grasshopper-Delaware crossing, the new line ran northwest to the mission, crossing Gregg’s creek—now Walnut creek—about midway. From the mission, the road crossed the Bill Garvin lands and went almost due west to Granada, crossing Gregg’s (Walnut) creek again downstream from the present bridge east of Granada. Joe Plankington recently found a cache of rough “diamonds” in a hollow at the base of a tree near this crossing. The “rocks” were supposedly hidden there by a returning traveler, back in the sixties—probably a prospector afraid to chance crossing the Kickapoo reservation, carrying his precious find.
NOTE—Since this article was printed in 1936, Joe Plankington tells me that one of the old Kickapoos—Pas-co-nan-te, father of John “Butler”—told him the Indians were stalking the traveler and that he, Pas-co-nan-te, watched the wayfarer hide the rocks in that tree, many moons ago. And Joe said the old Indian accurately traced the way—on paper—tree by tree, from the Trail to the right tree.
And furthermore, Joe believes he has seen the scalp of the former possessor of his rocks—and at the same time had his own hair standing on end. Because of a slight favor by Joe, Pas-co-nan-te asked him if he would like to see a scalp, and at the same time told a young Indian whom Joe thinks was a grandson, to fetch one. When the scalp was laid down where Joe could get a good look at it, Pas-co-nan-te grabbed Joe by the “topknot” saying, “Maybe me show you how.” The knife the Indian held in his other hand cut Joe to the quick—but the blood froze in his veins, and not a drop was spilled. Then the old Indian said, “Me foolin.’ Me know better now.” The young Indian told Joe, later, that he was pretty sure the old Indians had killed the traveler.
Joe also says he sent one of the “diamonds” to a niece in Boise, Idaho, and that the cutter who dressed the stone—for $25—pronounced it a high-quality pigeon blood ruby.
The old stage drivers “bumped” into many exciting and some amusing incidents. In the Far West “Hank Monk” held the record for fast driving and tall stories. And fictitious or not, “Hank” was the ranking driver in the West. Here it was Bob Ridley, Bill Evans, and Lon Huff—with Bob well out in front. My cousin, Bill Porter, says his uncle Bill Evans told this one. His run took him across the Kickapoo reservation. Whenever his stage would pass the Indian Mission the young Indians would put on a demonstration—race their ponies around the stage, compelling him to stop. Then they would ask for tobacco. Bill was always prepared for them. On one trip out of Saint Joseph he had only two passengers—mere boys, from the East. They said they were going West to fight Indians, and they had the guns strapped on them to do it. Knowing how the young Indian bucks would perform, Bill told his passengers that he was now coming into Indian country, and was liable to be attacked—but they, the boys, must not start shooting until he gave the word. It would be suicidal for them to start the fight. He told them other reasonable and some* highly unreasonable stories about the Indians. The boys were expecting the worst. The young Indian bucks appeared as usual, and circled the stage—yelling, screaming, yelling like assassins pouring out of bedlam. Bill tossed his plug of tobacco out to them—then climbed down from his high seat and looked in on the boys. They were down on the floor, hiding. Before completing his run, the boys told Evans that they were going to abandon the notion of fighting Indians. Bill said, “I told them that I was sure they would change their minds after having one good look at the Indians.” One of the boys said, “We didn’t really get a good look at them—.” but we heard their blood-curdling yells, and that was enough. The other boy said, “What I want to know is—how do we happen to be alive?”
After the removal of the Powhattan change station, Henry Gotchell sold to Riley Woodman. Woodman sold to C. C. Grubb, who came to section 33 in 1857. Grubb was postmaster after Gotchell. Mail was carried down from Granada. Later, the Powhattan postoffice was moved to Wetmore.
Riley Woodman, father of E. J. Woodman, came in 1863. While the mail and stage now went on the north road, some traffic still followed the old line. In December, 1863, an ox-train transporting Government supplies was snowed in at the Woodman place and remained there until March. In the outfit were seventeen men, two saddle horses, and ninety-six oxen.
The Government paid Woodman one dollar a- bushel for corn—not an excessive price, under prevailing conditions. But often freighters and travelers were compelled, in emergencies, to pay ruinous prices for feed. Scarcity and the high cost of provisions at times, also taxed the travelers’ slender resources.
In 1860, the driest of all years in Kansas since the first efforts at farming, nothing was produced. Potatoes, Mrs. Martha Hart tells me, did not grow as large as hazelnuts. That year William Porter yoked up four steers to his lumber wagon and drove them over into Missouri, where he traded one yoke of oxen for provisions—and he didn’t get a burdensome return load, at that. There was a little short slough-grass in the lowlands, which the farmers cut with cradles and sold to overland travelers at twenty cents a pound.
From Granada, the road went past the cemetery, touched at the Sneathen Vilott farm, section 24, Capioma township; thence northwest to Log Chain in section 19. From Log Chain the line ran northwest to old Lincoln, section 13, Mitchell township—about one mile northeast of the State lake—thence to Seneca. Granada and Lincoln were not change stations.
If the hills about old Log Chain could talk, doubtless one could find a lot of story material there. While to my knowledge the only thing to distinguish that station was the mud-hole that gave it its name, it really has a colorful background. Rich in legendary lore and historical fact, there is no telling what an enterprising artist might do in painting the old picture over. It is said Abe Lincoln got as far west as Log Chain. The land is now owned by Dr. Sam Murdock.
Nearly all the old-timers here took one or more turns at bull-whacking across the plains. It was the only sure money “crop” for the pioneer farmer. Usually one trip was enough. Fred Liebig, Henry McCreery, and John Williams made several trips.
Fred Shumaker, father of Roy and “Hank,” who came here in 1856, was a driver for the freighting firm that transported the stores for General Johnson’s army. After the army had reached Fort Bridger, where it was detained through the first winter, Shumaker was detailed as driver for a guard sent on beyond Salt Lake to meet the army payroll coming in from California. The safe containing the money was transferred to his wagon. On that trip he saw, scattered about on either side of the road, bleaching in the desert sun, the bones of those ill-fated emigrants who lost their lives in the Meadow Mountain massacre. Fred Shumaker earned enough money on that trip to pay for his first farm, which cost him $1.25 an acre. He married Rachel Jennings, the sister of Zeke Jennings who lived on a farm northeast of Wetmore for many years. She was employed in the Perry hotel at Kennekuk.
Bill and Ben Porter, who came here first in 1856—left, and came again in 1858, drove oxen for a transport company hauling Government supplies. On one trip, the company feed supplies ran short out in Wyoming and most of the stock died. The train was hauling corn to the northwest forts, but it could not be used, even in emergencies like that. A guard was left with the train while waiting for fresh oxen to move it. The weak cattle, still able to travel, were taken back to Leavenworth. It was a bitter cold winter. The drivers protected themselves as best they could from the Arctic blasts in snow drifts.
Wagon trains of the larger outfits consisted of twenty-five wagons, five yoke of oxen and a driver for each wagon—with wagon-boss, assistant boss, and herder.
My Uncle Nick Bristow and Green Campbell took a turn at bull-whacking for that major freighting firm—Russell, Majors, and Waddell. But imbued with the spirit of the times, they forsook the bulls for the more exciting business of panning gold. My uncle’s exploits have been mentioned. In other articles I have referred, with no little degree of pride, to the Campbell mining success—he having gone from here into the West in company with my uncle—and then, too, he “schooled” one connected with my own efforts in the mining game. That we failed to duplicate his enviable success was no reflection on that able tutor.
This, however, has never been in print. Green Campbell made his first money at mining in the Cherry creek diggings—$60,000. He spent most of it while in that camp. He told my mining partner, Frank Williams, that he spent his money rather too freely, in the customary way of that period, at old Auraria. It was money he very much needed later. With only $1,500 of his stake remaining, he went to the Alder Gulch diggings in Montana. At Bannock he and a partner, Mart Walsh, located claims which sold for $80,000. Walsh, a merchant at Muscotah in the early days, at one time owned 600 acres of land north of that town. He died in a county home in Oklahoma, penniless. He was a brother-in-law of Mrs. William Maxwell, of Wetmore.
Later, Green Campbell made his big fortune, millions, in lode mining in Utah and Nevada, which, since his death has, largely, been kept intact by his wife and two sons, Allen and Byram—his second family—now living at 705 Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, California. The first boy was named for his father, who, in the halls of Congress, was the Honorable Allen G. Campbell. The other boy was named for Campbell’s partner in the famous Horn Silver mine—August Byram, of Atchison. There was a girl, Caroline.
Given space, I could make of this in itself a very interesting story. Green Campbell’s second wife was Eleanor Young, a reporter on a Salt Lake newspaper, and daughter-in-law of the famous old Brigham himself, who hated all peoples not of the Mormon faith. It is not recorded that the lady said to her man, like Ruth of old, “Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” But the inference is, she did. Campbell did not go Mormon. Indeed, he was poison to the saints after he contested the election of his Mormon opponent, Bishop Cannon, and took unto himself the Canadian’s seat in Congress after it had been occupied by the alien for nearly two years.
Several of the old stage drivers, after closing days, married and settled down in Wetmore. Robert Sewell married Cicily Locknane; Lon Huff married Clara Rising; Bill Evans married Kate Porter. Through their activities on the stage line, and breathing the free atmosphere of frontier life, these men were all moulded pretty much into a like pattern. Good story-tellers all, they lent themselves to the occupation without stint. Jovial and courteous at all times, they shunned work—unless it be with horses. Lon Huff drove the hearse for the local undertaker. He had a black team for adults, and a team of white horses for children.
Robert Sewell, the outstanding character, known on the plains as “Bob Ridley,” owned a livery stable here. Shall I tell the auto-minded young sprouts that the livery stable, now in the discard, was an enterprise of the horse-and-buggy days—a place where rigs were kept for hire? Sewell’s wife, Cicily, ran a hotel. Her mother, Mrs. D. M. Locknane, had conducted a famous eating house just west of Granada during overland days. Those two early-day enterprises of the Sewells were known as the “Overland Livery Stable,” and the “Overland Hotel.” Bob Sewell had a record of killing three Indians and wounding a dozen more in a running fight near Cottonwood Springs. Ben Holladay gave him a gold watch for saving the stage and four mules.
About the Old Trail, I have heard my uncle say that in the flush times of 1865 and 1866, when traffic was at its peak, there was hardly an hour of the day when one could not see the road lined for miles—one seeming endless procession moving westward. No other road ever had such a promiscuous, persevering throng—a weary plodding throng, whose way was fraught with many hardships, whose dead were left all along the Old Trail from the Missouri river to the Golden Gate. Other stage lines threaded the West and the Southwest—but the Overland has gone down in history as the greatest of them all.
Three score and ten years have now gone by since the last Concord stage coach made its final run from Atchison, through Granada. All equipment was at that time moved west to the end of steel—leaving the eastern end of the great Overland Trail abandoned and waiting, a lost ghost, for the day when Fate, slow but sure, should plow it under. And with poignant memory was gone, too, a stirring bit of frontier life in the West.