The Old Girl was still worried. I’m now almost sorry that I ever started this “Old Girl” differential, as it smacks of disrespect—and I do not want the reader to form any such ideas. The OG first asked the young girl to come up town with her—then, remembering that her best friend had dropped a hint that the ground upon which she now stood was insecure, she decided that she was not constitutionally able to face me just then with her problem. She sent the young girl, alone.
But the Kid—that’s what they called her when we went together to the picnic, and thereafter as a member of the Silver Stocking crowd—said, “If you go with her now, you will be the biggest fool in the world. All she wants to go with you for, is to see who he takes,” naming the RM’s son.
The Kid was smart.
But please do not think the so-called Kid was betraying a trust. She was really a woman now. And, besides, she had reason to believe that, to use a homely expression, she were very soongoingto get the OG’s goat, anyway.
And moreover, the Old Girl later told the “Kid,” perhaps in a gesture of discouragement, that I had gone with her steadily for nearly a year, and had never tried to kiss her. Had that not been the truth it would have been libel. -In the old days, the prudent young man did not dare kiss an old girl who was only filling a vacancy.
Prior to this, the “Kid” and I had “starred” in a local entertainment entitled “Beauty and Beelzebub”—and mutual admiration had blossomed then. She was the Angel and I was the Devil. In the tableau, the Devil, encased in a tight-fitting black sateen cover-all, with horns and a four-foot forked tail, was suspended on wires about four feet off the floor when the curtain went up. Then the Angel, up in the clouds, began the descent with song, the singing increasing in volume as she came down bare feet first, with outstretched wings, settling in front of the Devil. The “Kid” made a pretty picture, with her abundant dark hair—which, I happen to know, came down nearly to her ankles—spread over the white flowing covering whose traditional folds parted in front just enough to indicate that she dwelt in a place where shoes and stockings were taboo. The Angel departed by the same route—wire and windlass mechanism—went up into the clouds from whence she had come, with more singing, at first in full voice, then fading, fading, fading away in a manner denoting distance. In her young budding womanhood the “Kid” made a beautiful Angel—and the clear, sweet singing was out of this world.
Coral Hutchison was at first considered for the Angel. She was a beautiful girl, and a beautiful singer—and while she had a wonderful head of hair, quite as long as the “Kid’s,” its rather too blonde shade ruled her out. So the “Kid,” with the requisite dark hair, was given a place in the spot-light—and Coral did the singing behind the scenes.
Sorry, I can’t tell you what event or setting that tableau portrayed. There was much more to the show, speaking parts and superb acting. And though clearly the “Kid” and I were “it,” the whole show was titled “Beauty and Beelzebub.”
At the picnic, my adversary, the rich man’s son, said to me, “I see you’ve got a new girl. How come?” I said, “Yeah—likewise you. Thanks for the assist.” After I had started to walk on, he called, “Hey, John, whatsha mean by that?”
He was with Lou Kern. Hattie and Lou Kern, and Nina and Emma Bolman, were four Netawaka girls that were popular with our Silver Stocking crowd; as were also Caroline Emery, living in the country northeast of Wetmore, and her visiting friend, Mamie Blakeslee, a former neighbor whose home was now in Savannah, Mo.
Mamie Blakeslee was a strikingly pretty girl.
I shall now dwell a bit on a personal incident in connection with this beautiful girl. It was away back in 1884. I don’t think the girl was on my mind that day when I went to St. Joe. But, in St. Joe, I ran onto Bill (Hickorynut) Bradley who was on his way to Savannah, and he asked me to go along with him. One Oliver Bateman was to be hanged for the murder of two little girls who had caught him in an embarrassing act. The railroad was offering excursion rates, and the sleepy old Missouri town was decked out in celebration colors, with refreshment stands all along the lane from the jail to the gallows in an amphitheater in the nearby woods—everybody on the make.
Unlike Hickorynut, the hanging did not interest me, but the thought of seeing Mamie did. I called at the Blakeslee home on the outskirts of Savannah—it was a farm traded by G. N. Paige for the Blakeslee farm near Wetmore—on the pretense of wanting to see Mamie’s brother Edwin, who had been my schoolmate in Wetmore. He was not at home. I remained a reasonable time with Mamie, aiming to work up a little courage, and maybe ask her to go places with me—but lost my nerve.
Two hours later I met Mamie, with another girl, on a downtown street near the St. Charles hotel. Mamie said there was to be skating at the rink that night, and would I like to go? I certainly would. So now, after all, we would be going places together.
I called at the Blakeslee home for the two girls, and the ‘skating was going fine. Then, of a sudden, Miss West told me that Mamie was in a jam. Her steady, a traveling salesman, had unexpectedly dropped in on her—and, for some reason, likely well founded, Mamie had not intended to let him know about her going out with another fellow.
I told Miss West that we could fix that all right, if she herself did not have a steady sticking around somewhere. Miss West laughed, and assured me she did not have a steady. “If agreeable,” I said, “you shall now be my company, and, to all appearances, Mamie shall be the hanger-on, free to desert me for her steady.” Miss West laughed again, though she looked as if she were a little concerned about my reference to Mamie as the new hanger-on. Well, it was a slip. It was a term often applied to the extra girls in our Silver Stocking circle.
While visiting in Wetmore before this, Mamie had gone to a dance in Netawaka with a local man who proved to be not to her liking, and she had quit him cold at the dance hall door. Though it would hardly cause a ripple now, it was then considered about the worst thing that could happen to a young fellow’s social standing. I do not wish to identify him—yet I must give him a name to be used in Mamie’s pay-off to me for liberating her at the Savannah rink.
In the substitution of names, one is liable to innocently hit upon somebody’s real name, and to avoid the possibility of making this error, I shall give him the surname of his business partner, and go through the customary formality of saying that any similarity in names is purely coincidental. The man was half-owner of the livery stable from which we all got our “rigs” that night. And, anyway, the partners left here together for the state of Washington many, many years ago, and there should be no chance for repercussions now.
Mamie knew that I was familiar with the Netawaka incident—in fact, it was I who did the shifting with Sidney Loop to get her back home. When Miss West had delivered my message, Mamie broke away from her steady, rolled gracefully around the hall, and plumped herself down by my side, saying, “Thank you so much! It gets me out of an awful jam! And I want you to know that this is no Dr. Fisher deal!” I wondered? You know a girl, in competition with other girls, might strive for long to vamp a certain good catch—which is always a girl’s privilege—and then when the chance offers, find herself tied up for the time being with someone that right away stinks.
The Blakeslee family formerly lived on a farm four miles northeast of Wetmore, directly north of the old Ham Lynn farm. Mamie’s father, Nelson Blakeslee, often called at my father’s shoeshop for a visit. One time they planned on chartering a car together and shipping to California. I did not know Mamie then—but have since wondered what might have happened had they gone through with their plans.
Evidently Mamie did not make the most of the opportunity afforded her that night back in Savannah. She married Frank Schilling, of Hiawatha. There were some dark surmises that she stole Caroline Emery’s beau. “Stole” is an ugly word to be written in connection with this sweet, conscientious girl—as I knew her then. I would rather believe that Miss Emery’s beau was a man of rare good judgment. I have not seen Mamie since that night at the skating rink in Savannah. Now widowed, she lives in Fairview—thirty minutes away from Wetmore.
Back again on the main theme: In the days which followed, I said to myself—thought it with vengeance, anyway—that I would like to see the color of the hair of any d—d RM’s son that could make me give up this one, meaning the “Kid,” of course. And may I say that for once I now believed I had my girl matters well in hand.
But, believe it or not, still another son of that same rich man tried his darndest to edge in. At this time the younger boys had the habit of lining up on the outside of the church, at Epworth League meetings, and grab themselves a girl, with a polite, and sometimes not so polite, “May I “see you home?” After the third “No, thank you,” from the “Kid,” the RM’s son told her to go to that place which is sometimes politely called hades.
Mrs. Pheme Wood, a well meaning soul who had been an intimate friend of our family since the first day we came here in 1869, and who apparently took a special interest in my welfare, stopped me one day while passing her home, and said, “There’s something I want to ask you. Of course I don’t believe it, but I’ll ask anyway. Were you out sleigh-riding with Myrtle Mercer the day her father lay dead in the home?”
Myrtle was the afore-mentioned “Kid.”
I had not intended to name her just yet, but her identity would have to come out soon anyway, as she figures in this story to the end. And then some.
“Well,” I said—but got no further. Pheme broke in, “It came to me pretty straight, and one would think—” I stopped her with a promise to ‘fess up, if she would not run to my mother with it. “Oh that,” she laughed, remembering a kindred incident, “was for your own good.” She had gone to my mother on an errand of mercy. That she had her wires badly crossed did not deter her. She said she had it on good authority that I was about to marry the aforesaid Old Girl, who was much too old for me; and that my mother ought to use her influence to prevent it.
Myrtle’s father, John W. Mercer, section foreman, aged 39, had died suddenly of a heart attack while milking his cow one morning in February, 1888. And naturally, the family—the mother and five girls—had to make preparations for the funeral. Myrtle had a badly sprained ankle—acquired while ice-skating with George Peters on the creek near her home—but she managed to hobble up town, taking her baby sister Jessie with her. I followed them into the store, told Myrtle that I would get a sleigh from the livery stable and take them home. After driving the girls three blocks directly to their home, I picked up the Old Girl and we drove for an hour or more. I knew that Frank Fisher would charge me $2.00 anyway, and I wanted to get my money’s worth. I was seen picking up the “Kid” at the store and later seen driving with the Old Girl, and someone had imagined that the two girls were one and the same—and that’s how the story got started.
When explained, Pheme could have no criticism of Myrtle, nor of me either for driving her home. But, being a woman of the old school, she was bound to have her say. She said, “It looks like you should have had more respect for Myrtle than to go joy-riding with that other girl at a time like that.” I was not sure that she didn’t have something there. I said, “Remember, not a word to my mother.”
“Ah, go on,” she laughed.
I might say here, before passing this incident, that after the family had split up a few years later, Myrtle was sister and mother too, as well as guardian, for Jessie. And speaking of pretty girls, this attractive little one had the makings of a real beauty that in later years just about topped them all.
The rich man’s sons were all fine boys—I think—but in view of their penchant for camping on my trail, the only compliment I wish to pay them now is to say: They did not play poker.
My trusted friend did not marry the girl I loaned him. She went with her parents and three brothers to Arkansas—and married down there. The trusted friend went to the Far West, made his stake, and married into a quite well-to-do family—and lived at Yakima, Washington.
The Old Girl got her man too—an out-of-town man—after she had quit fooling around with the younger fry, and went with Davey Todd to Kansas City to live. She became a helpless invalid—and then, not having prepared himself in a financial way for such eventuality, Davey literally and figuratively had his hands full. But, to the best of his ability, he was good to her—carried her around as if she were a baby. How do I know? Well, the “Kid’s” sisters, -Jennie and Kathy, neighbors while here, helped him a lot in giving her needed attention.
And now Euphema Wood speaks again. Commenting on this unfortunate affair, she said to me, “Now you can maybe appreciate all the grief I saved you.”
Many years later, I met the mother of the girl whom I designated for this writing as My Best Girl, on the train out of Kansas City going to Atchison, her home at that time. I knew the girl had married a man whom the family were pleased to call a Southern aristocrat, living at Bald Knob, Arkansas. He was a merchant who carried the sharecroppers—mostly descendants of Ham—on his books until harvest time, virtually owning them. This gave him status in his home community, particularly with the colored folk—and in traveling North this mark of distinction was greatly exaggerated. From what the girl told me, while on a visit back home, I think Mr. Walker was a worthy man—but that aristocracy appendage, I liked it even less than I liked the means that had been employed to push me out of the picture. It is a word that should never have been coined. I was pleased that the girl herself made no use of it.
In the course of our talking over old times in Wetmore, the mother said, “I never could understand why those two did not marry,” meaning her daughter and the boy who had succeeded me. I said, “If you really want to know,- I can tell you why. He just didn’t have the money to do it the way she insisted on having it done, an expensive wedding, and all that.” She, the mother, already knew why I had first gracefully tapered off, and then backed away from it all—for the girl had told me that her penitent mother had wanted to kick herself for speaking out of turn.
And the “Kid?” Well, wait and see. Might have to skip a few years, though. I had not yet made that stake. In reminiscing, one is permitted to wander about over all creation—provided, always, that he carries along for blending purposes at least one principal character already introduced: and makes sure to come back “home” before becoming hopelessly entangled in a wilderness of clearly unrelated matter.
The “Kid” figures prominently in this episode.
While in Kansas City, I ran onto a street hawker selling fake “diamonds” for one dollar each. Just for the fun of it, I bought one of the things, brought it home and presented it to Myrtle Mercer, who was now working in my printing office, merely to see how a diamond would affect a girl.
After showing me that her heart was in the right place, she darted out the door before I could stop her, ran down the steps to the Means store, and showed it to Lizzie Means; then beat it out the back door and ran across to show it to Mamma Alma. This lady was the wife of Dr. J. W. Graham.
Mamma Alma was sharp as all getout. Lizzie Means was a shrewd business woman, but she had a less inquisitive mind. And I guess Myrtle was pretty sharp too, after the first ecstatic shock had passed.
Myrtle came bounding back up to the office, and bawled me out: “Mr. Smartie, that is going to cost you a real diamond—and a good one, too! And I want it right now!” She had reason to believe I was holding out on her.
I said, “All right, all right—but you can’t have it now.”
Cloy Weaver, my printer, who had been out on an errand, had come into the office by this time. He stood there with his mouth open, wondering what it was all about. Cloy had a girl in Stockton, California, and was aiming to leave the next day for California to marry her. As I needed him, and as he had told me he had a wife in the Philippines—he was a veteran of the Spanish American War— I tried to show him that this would be a bigamous trick. He agreed. Cloy was always agreeable. He remained with me a while longer—and married Edna Hudson.
Lizzie told me later in the day that the bogus diamond had her fooled, too. She laughed, “By golly, it did sparkle real prettily, didn’t it? But it’s going to cost you a real diamond—don’t forget that. Mamma Alma and I are not going to let Myrtle forget it either, Ough,” she shrugged, - “that was about the dirtiest trick imaginable. And Myrtle was so pleased! It was a shame!” And Mamma Alma had told Myrtle that it was high time anyway for me to be giving her a “real” diamond.
The next morning Coral Locknane—Myrtle’s best friend—came to the office, and I don’t know what all passed between the two, but it is pretty certain they didn’t discuss trifles. The three of us went to Kansas City on the noon train. I said to the girls, “Shall we go to Cady & Olmstead’s or to Jaccard’s?” I had been to both places on my last trip, and I knew they had just the right quality of sparklers to tickle a girl’s heart—now that I knew how a girl would react. But Myrtle, feeling pretty sure of herself, and in high good humor, said quite emphatically, “Neither.” She looked down the street and said, “We are going to Mercer’s on Petticoat Lane. It’s a name I believe I can trust. You don’t think I’d let you steer me to a place like where you got that other thing?”
When we went into the Mercer Store, Mr. Waddington, the diamond salesman, as it happened, pushed his portly self forward, and asked, “What will it be, please?”
I said, pretty loudly, “A diamond ring for Miss Mercer!” That claimed the attention of the whole house—the proprietor included.
Coral had several pretty good diamonds of her own. She took a seat with Myrtle at the salestable in the little black velvet-lined cubby corner, while I stood back and looked on. When Mr. Waddington told them the price of the one they had selected, Myrtle exclaimed, “Whe-e-ew!”
Then she looked to me for approval. The modest, one carat blue white stone was in good taste, plenty big enough for a girl. Coral’s largest diamond—at that time—was also an even carat, and she was a great help to Myrtle in making the selection. Coral said, “It’s not good taste to have them too big.” Later, Myrtle said earnestly and very softly, as if the thing had taken her breath away, “Do you really think you want to stand that much?” Mercer’s was the highest priced shop in Kansas City—but in a case of this kind I figured that a girl must have what she wants.
Then we separated, and I went over to the Cady & Olmstead store on the corner of 11th and Walnut, and bought for myself—or rather paid for what I had already bought—the beautiful blue white diamond, nearly twice as large, which Myrtle’s sister Jennie had helped me select only three days before. Jennie had warned me not to spring that fake diamond on Myrtle. Said it might not set just right with her. But I knew that Myrtle was too smart a girl to let anything make her mad at me for long.
Mr. Cady said, “You are a day early—where’s the lady?” “Yes,” I said, “I’m early. Got pushed around a little. Never mind the lady now. Though you may still make it a Tiffany setting, but make it for this hand right here.” He gave me a sympathetic look. Mr. Cady was such a nice man that I felt duty bound to tell him, as nearly as I could, what had happened to the lady.
Sometimes even quality folk didn’t get to see Mr. Cady, in person. Well, I did—just like I said. I still have the sales ticket, dated May 12, 1903, bearing his notation, “Will exchange Tif. Belcher mounting without cost—or diamond for other goods any time without discount.” Signed, “Cady.”
All this was too much for Coral. A woman with money of her own can stand only so much. She went over to Norton’s—and bought herself another diamond, nearly twice as big as Myrtle’s. The satisfied expression on her lovely face was something to behold. My first thoughts were that this might call for me to do some swapping with Myrtle. But, no sir—she’d not part with hers. If pressed, she’d claim them both. Trust a woman!
We had to stay the night in Kansas City with Myrtle’s sisters, Jennie and Kathy. When she got the chance, Jennie asked me, “How did it work?” meaning the bogus diamond.
“Well,” I replied, “it looks like it hasn’t blown the top off anything yet.” She said, “It surely does look that way now, but I wouldn’t be so sure of it after she sees the beauty we picked out for her.”
The two country girls had talked nothing but diamonds from the time they had entered the apartment.
The next morning the three of us started out three ways to get our diamonds—only we didn’t do it just that way. We went the rounds in a group. Mr. Mercer told Miss Mercer that she had selected the best one-carat blue-white flawless diamond in his store. And he wondered if they might not be related. Myrtle came home pretty pleased for keeps that time.
I’ve always counted it my best investment.
Published in Wetmore Spectator,
August 28, 1931
By John T. Bristow
There was, assuredly, need for the vigilantes at one time in the Far West, where the idea originated and here there were no laws and no courts other than “miner’s courts”—impromptu courts set up by the people on the spot. But, with all the machinery of organized government functioning normally and in most instances efficiently there in Nemaha County, there was, seemingly, no call here for the vigilantes when they hanged Charley Manley.
The courier-tribune
(Semi-weekly)
Geo. C. Adriance Dora Adriance
SENECA KANSAS
Aug. 28, 1931
Mr. John T. Bristow, Wetmore, Kansas.
My dear Mr. Bristow:
We have just read with a great deal of interest your article in the Wetmore Spectator dealing with the hanging of Charley Manley. This is the first time I have ever heard of this act of the vigilantes. We are going to check through our files of April 1877 and see if we can find anything relating to it. In any event, I write to ask permission to reproduce this article in a much special issue of the Tribune we are putting out next year to celebrate Seneca’s 75th anniversary.
The article is so well written and deals with so early history of our county that I consider it admirably adapted to our purpose. The next time you are in ‘Seneca I should like to have you call at The Courier-Tribune office. I have no doubt you have a fund of other stories that would be just as interesting.
Sincerely yours,
Geo. C. Adriance
It is a tragic story—the hanging of Manley by the vigilantes. It was Mar. 31, 1877. I was a small boy when I first knew Charley Manley, just about big enough to turn a grindstone, with effort. There is purpose in this reference to the grindstone.
I remember the time very distinctly. And, with all due respect to the memory of my departed elders—the vigilantes—if, after so many years, I may be permitted to express myself freely and fully, I would say God seemed to be terribly far away from the scene that night. Before going into the details of the hanging, let us have a look into the workings of the vigilantes—that organization of men who set itself up as judge and jury and executioner. There was tactful veiling of the identity of the individual members, and little is known of the inside workings of the local vigilantes.
This much is known, however. There was one little slip—a bungle—that was, in time, the means of disclosing the identity of the local operators, but that secret was also carefully guarded until practically the last one of the vigilantes has passed on to another world beyond the reach of wagging tongues and the strong arm of organized law. There is now only one—possibly two—of the originals left.
The vigilante organization or “Committee,” as it was called, had its birth in the Far West, for the specific purpose of dealing with “road agents”—banded highwaymen and murderers. The idea traveled East and the farther it got away from the home of its origin the farther it seems to have gotten away from its original purpose.
In the sixties and seventies vigilante committees were in evidence the full length of the old Overland Trail, from California to Kansas, and the fact that Wetmore and Granada had as residents a half dozen or so of the old stage-drivers, express messengers, and pony express riders, may account, in some measure, for the local organization of vigilantes. And, if so, by the irony of fate, it was in the home of a former express messenger that the vigilantes claimed their first and only victim. It is known that at least two of the old stage employees were vigilantes.
Without question, the idea filtered in from the West. The almost constant stream of returning gold-seekers passing through Granada over the Old Trail at a time when the vigilantes were very active in the West—particularly in Montana—may have scattered the seed.
While I was out in the western mining district, a quarter of a century ago, chasing fickle fortune—which was always just a few jumps ahead of me—I heard much about the exploits of road agents, and the work of the vigilantes.
In the Old West, at Bannack, Virginia City, and Nevada, in the Alder Gulch section of Montana, where a hundred million dollars in placer gold was recovered in the early sixties, road agents plundered and killed, without mercy.
Placer gold, as many know, is free gold that has been eroded from exposed gold-bearing ledges and deposited in the sands and gravel along the water courses. It was the first form of gold-mining in the West—the lure that caused the great stampede to California in 1849. It has rightfully been called “the poor man’s gold,” because of the comparative ease in which it is recovered.
The flush times in the Alder Gulch section, which contained about twenty thousand eager gold diggers, made rich pickings for the road agents. They preyed upon individual miners, on express companies, on anyone, anywhere they could grab gold-dust, or minted gold, the money of the times. And they were killers, every one of them.
The Montana vigilantes, sworn to secrecy and loyalty, with a by-law boldly asserting, “The only punishment that shall be inflicted by this committee is Death,” undertook the job of exterminating the road agents. And in one month’s time twenty-one of the notorious Henry Plummer gang were hung. The job was pepped up a bit when the first victims squealed on the others. This is history of the Montana vigilantes. They patterned after the California vigilantes. And it is to be assumed that vigilantes everywhere were organized along the same lines.
There was a vigilante committee in Nemaha County at least nine years prior to the hanging of Manley. In September, 1868, Melvin Baughn, a horse-thief, was legally hanged at Seneca for killing Jesse Dennis, one of the deputized men who helped capture him. In writing of that hanging George Adriance said there was a vigilante committee at the time, and it wanted the officers to turn Baughn over to the committee.
Charley Manley and Joe Brown were charged with being implicated in stealing John O’Brien’s horse. O’Brien lived on the Dave Ralston place west of Granada and Brown lived on a quarter section of land west of the Charley Green farm in the Granada neighborhood, about two miles from the O’Brien farm. Charley Manley lived with the family of W. W. Letson at Netawaka. He had lived with the Letsons at Granada and at Wetmore before they moved to Netawaka. Letson and Spencer kept a general store here in the old corner building now owned by Cawood Brothers, originally built by Rising and Son.
At one of their meetings, it appears, the vigilantes decided to hang Manley and Brown. One member who lived close to Brown pleaded for the life of his neighbor. Brown had a family of small children. The discussion waxed hot—and there was a great rift in the personnel of the organization. They did not agree in the matter. The determined ones, however, went ahead with their plans for the hanging. And on the night of the execution some of the vigilantes, not in accord with the plan, spent the night at the homes of their neighbors so as to clear themselves of suspected participation in the hanging.
Charley Manley was arrested at Netawaka and was to have been given a preliminary trial in Justice H. J. Crist’s court at Granada. He was brought to Wetmore early the day of his execution and held under guard in the office of the old Wetmore House until evening. The delay supposedly was occasioned in order to bring Joe Brown to the bar of “justice” at the same time. Later it appeared the proceedings had been delayed, waiting for nightfall.
Robert Sewell, constable, liveryman, ex-stage driver and Indian fighter, was the arresting officer. On the plains, and here, he was known as “Bob Ridley.” George G. Gill was deputized as assistant constable. Dr. J. W. Graham, a Justice of the Peace in Wetmore at the time, was appointed special prosecutor by County Attorney Simon Conwell. Sewell, Gill, and Graham, with Manley, drove to Granada in a spring wagon.
On the way to Granada, all unconscious of what was in the air, Dr. Graham, seeing a tree by the roadside with a large overhanging limb, jokingly said, “Whoa, stop the team, Bob—-we might just as well hang Charley right here.” Manley laughed and said, “Oh, no—let’s all have a drink.” He passed his bottle.
Court was to have been held in the Hudson hotel at Granada. But before proceedings had started, the vigilantes, in black-face, with coats turned insideout, appeared upon the scene and began shooting up the place—with blanks. They seized Manley and rushed him away—to his doom. Pandemonium reigned, and in the excitement the president of the vigilante committee, it is said, raised a window and told Brown to “beat it.” So, it would seem, the neighbor’s plea for Brown’s life, while very costly to himself, as you shall see later, had made its impression.
Earlier in the evening, one high up in vigilantic officialdom, had taken the precaution to relieve the three constables and the prosecuting attorney of their revolvers—borrowed them “for a few minutes.” Dr. Graham says he never did get his back.
Charley Manley was taken to a big tree down on the creek west of Granada, and strung up. The tree was on the old Terrill place, now owned by the Achtens. Monoah H. Terrill, a store-keeper at Granada, was a brother-in-law of Manley. Terrill had died a long time before the Manley hanging.
Manley was buried on the Terrill place—or rather what afterwards proved to be the roadside—by the grave of his brother-in-law. Later the bodies were removed. Terrill was placed in the Letson lot in the Netawaka cemetery. Some say the body of Manley was also taken there. The Letson lot has no such marker. Others say he was re-buried in the northeast corner of the Granada cemetery. There is no marker or other visible evidence of his grave there. His grave now seems to be as irredeemably lost as was his life on that fatal March night fifty-four years ago.
It is said by those who were in a position to speak at the time, that Manley made no protest, spoke not a word when the mob took him from the room. Whether it was sheer shock that robbed him of all power to speak, to think, to feel, no one knows. Dr. Graham says that after they started away with the prisoner someone fired a gun, and he heard Manley say, “Don’t do that boys, it’s not fair.” Just what happened after that was never made public. The knowing ones didn’t seem to want to talk. There were, however, many conflicting rumors afloat—sub rosa reports, you understand. One rumor was that Manley was dead before they left the main street with him—died from fright and rough handling.
On the way out one of the vigilantes lost his cap. Someone picked it up. The same man who had “borrowed” the officers guns, acting as rear guard, rode back and took the cap. He said to the people who had followed from the court room, “We don’t want to hurt anyone—but keep back.”
Some of the men in that mob were recognized, but, as one old timer aptly puts it, no one at that time seemed to care a “helluva” lot about knowing who they were. However, as the veiling gradually lifted, it became known that the major portion of the respectable adult male citizens—and a few bad eggs—were numbered among the vigilantes. They were, mostly, fair-minded and just men. But, even fair-minded men, under stress, can sometimes be auto-hypnotized into doing strange things—and it would seem some of the vigilantes got terribly out of hand that night. From all accounts the performance was a rather disgusting exhibition of mob passion. Later criticism of the vigilantes was based very largely on the inexcusable savage demonstration attending the Manley hanging. And mistake not, there was criticism—criticism that stirred the whole countryside.
Vigilantes did not tell their wives everything. It might have been better if they had. And if the Manley demonstration had met with the approval of the good wives and mothers of the participating vigilantes, the women might have taken a hand in the general clean-up and scrubbed the burnt-cork, or whatever it was that blackened their faces, from back of the men’s ears and thus obliterated the telltale marks that lingered, like the itch, with some of the boys for several days. The women generally deprecated the hanging.
Just what evidence the vigilantes had against Charley Manley, and how authentic or damaging it was, never was made public. Nor will it ever be. Had the vigilantes permitted the trial to progress far enough to establish the prisoner’s guilt, their actions would, no doubt, have received less criticism. The friends of the vigilantes—the vigilantes themselves never talked, as vigilantes—said that it would have been difficult to produce convicting evidence as Manley was too good at “covering up.” He was credited with being the “brains” of the gang.
Two business men in Netawaka were also suspected. They evaporated. In fact, there were a dozen or more men scattered about over the country who were under suspicion.
It was rather a hard proposition to handle. The farmers—the vigilantes and the farmers, with a sprinkling of town people, were practically the same—were terribly incensed because of the thefts of their horses, and they were determined, at any cost, to put a stop to it. And while the convicted horse-thief did not draw a death sentence, the courts were efficient enough and willing enough to impose ample punishment on offenders. But the real trouble was in getting convicting evidence. And the courts could not, of course, play “hunches” in so serious a matter.
And where convicting evidence was lacking, it would seem about the best—or worst—the vigilantes could do, was to make an example of some one of those under suspicion, and hope that they had hanged the right man—a rather dangerous procedure, and hardly sufficient excuse for taking a life.
But one thing that worked then against bringing suspects into court was, that in case of failure to convict, the court costs were assessed to the complaining witness, and that meant a lot to the pioneer farmer—especially to one who had just lost his horses. At least, that is the way the John O’Brien complaint was handled.
The old court record shows that Constable Sewell traveled twenty-four miles in making the arrest of Manley, for which he received $2.40. George G. Gill, as deputy, received a like sum. The attorney received $7.50. There was also a charge of $1.00 for the keep of the prisoner, and another $1.00 for guarding him. Isaiah Hudson traveled only six miles, three miles out and three miles back, in making the arrest of Joseph Brown, for which he received $1.20. One witness, J. W. Duvall, was subpoenaed in the Brown case. None in the Manley case. And, presumably, because of the disrupted court proceedings and the loss of the prisoners, it was “considered and adjudged” by the court that the costs in both cases be charged to John O’Brien, the complaining witness.
Then, after the hanging of Manley, someone made a mistake—a very serious mistake—which, coupled with the previous disagreement, came very close to disrupting the vigilante organization. A letter, purporting to come from the vigilantes, was sent to the rebellious member. It gave the man ten days to leave the country, and warned him that if he failed to do so he would be given the same treatment as was meted out to Manley.
This was a hard jolt to the obstreperous member. And it was a harder jolt for the man’s wife. The woman opened and read the letter first, and only for that she might never have known what it was that caused her man to so suddenly develop a bad case of ague. Then, every day, for weeks, as the gathering shades of night began to fall upon his home, this man, with his wife and three small children, trailed off through the woods, across lots, to the home of a relative to spend the night.
That letter was the cause of much mental and even physical misery for the woman. She suffered heart attacks at the time: And in the weeks that followed she suffered the mental torments of the damned. In relating the matter to me very recently, she said, “Every time the dog barked I would have a fit.” According to her version of it, those were the blackest days of her life. And, like a scar, she will carry its horrors to her dying day—to the grave. She knew what a crazed mob was capable of doing. As a matter of fact, she knew what a guerilla mob had done to my father’s family.
Many, many were the times that my mother—sweet, patient, administering angel—was called upon to be with that woman in her hours of great distress. And once, when the insidious thing was about to consume her, my mother brought the woman home with her for a week.
The marked member finally took the matter up with other vigilantes, and to save the sanity of the man’s wife—and no doubt to appease the man’s fears also—after all denying knowledge of the letter, the vigilantes signed a paper pledging protection to the man. The marked man—and his friends in the organization—however, had a pretty good idea who wrote that letter.
With such a document in evidence the identity of the vigilantes, which had been so closely guarded up to this time, was no longer cloaked. At least the veil of secrecy now had a big rip in it.
The hanging of Manley had a tendency to slow up activities, but it did not stop the horse-stealing. And once more the Committee set out to make an example of an accused man. Frank Gage, charged with stealing a horse from Washie Lynn, was being tried in a Justice court somewhere over in the Powhattan neighborhood—probably Charley Smith’s court. The vigilantes were in readiness to “storm” the court and take the prisoner, as they had done in the Manley case at Granada, but the plan was abandoned at the last minute.
Two horsemen, young and daring, with a whiff of what was in the air, made a hurried run to the scene. They told the vigilantes that they were about to make a mistake—that they, the informers, knew positively that Gage was elsewhere the night the Lynn horse was stolen. The high-stepping modern Paul Revere of that heroic dash still lives. The other has gone to his reward.
Gage, of course, was acquitted, for lack of evidence. Later, the real thief, convicted for stealing wheat, confessed to stealing the Lynn horse, and told where it was. Washie reclaimed the animal.
The man who was credited with being the president of the vigilante committee afterwards became a very popular and efficient peace officer of Nemaha county. And, if I understood the man rightly, I think he would have fought forty wildcats, and maybe a buzz-saw or two, before he would have surrendered, for unlawful handling, a charge of his to any set of men—vigilantes, clan, mob extraordinary, or even a regiment of soldiers.
Soon after the Manley hanging a branch of the Kansas Peoples Detective Association was organized here. Unlike the vigilantes, its purpose was not to override the law, but to assist it in capturing and convicting horse-thieves. W. D. Frazey was president and E. J. Woodman was secretary.
Now a line about the Old Overland Trail. Besides carrying a faint flavor of Manley handiwork, it was the avenue by which I myself came into this country. But I did not ride the old Concord coach drawn by its four spirited horses. I came by the slower mode of the ox-team.
The Old Overland Trail, or military road, as it was sometimes called, was vastly different from the good roads of the present time—very, very much different from the elaborate specifications for Number Nine, now building through Wetmore. It was little more than a wide rut worn deep by the constant movement of horse-drawn vehicles, including, of course, mules and oxen. There were stage-lines, pony-express riders, and heavy freighting outfits. The commerce of the West was handled over the Old Trail.
Starting at Atchison, the Old Trail came into the Pow~ hattan ridge settlement at the southwest corner of the Kickapoo Indian reservation, and, keeping to the high ridges as much as practical, it passed through Granada, Log Chain and Seneca, and on westward to Oroville and Sacramento, in California. The stage company maintained a change station on the old Collingwood C. Grubb farm—called Powhattan. Noble H. Rising was in charge of the station after it had been moved three miles north, and the name changed to Kickapoo. His son, Don C. Rising, was a pony-express rider. W. W. Letson was express messenger. Bill Evans, Lon Huff, and Bob Sewell, oldtimers here, were stage drivers.
The road made a sharp turn to the north before reaching Granada. Peter Shuemaker lived on the farm now owned and occupied by Charley Zabel, west of the turn. Shuemaker wanted the road to pass by his farm, and, at his own expense, built a cut-off in the hope that traffic would be diverted that way.
Roads in those days were built, mostly, by the simple process of going out with a plow and running a couple of parallel furrows, with the proper spacing to accommodate all anticipated traffic. Peter Shuemaker’s cut-off veered off to the northwest, across the prairies just anywhere the going seemed to be good, until it intersected the Old Trail again. And though as simple as that, road building in those days was not without difficulties. Some would want the road and some wouldn’t want it.
“Uncle” Peter’s road bumped into a circumstance when his engineer projected the cut-off across the farm of a certain female importation from the Emerald Isle. And right there Irish wit and Missouri temper mixed. William Porter, not so very long removed from the Rushville hills, was chief engineer and contractor for the prairie division of “Uncle” Peter’s cut-off. Mrs. Flannigan met the Missourian head-on, with an old horse-pistol wrapped in her apron. “Off with you, I’ll not have the place torn up,” she commanded.
Entirely unaware of theominousclouds rolling up in the sky of his destiny, the wily William squared himself in an attitude of defiance, squinted his eyes in the peculiar manner of his people, spat out his tobacco, and said, “I carkilate I’m running this road.” Whereupon Mrs. Flannigan unbound her pistol, and replied, “It’s a fine young man you are, but I’m sorry to tell you that you’ll never see your old mother again.”
Contractor Porter decided to take fate in his own hands and change the plans of destiny as decreed by Mrs. Flannigan. He took another chew of tobacco and then meekly backtracked for a mile over the perfectly good road he had just built—and ran some more furrows. You couldn’t block a road project with a horse-pistol, or even with injunctions, in those days. There was too much open land.
The generous spacings and fine appointments of Peter Shuemaker’s cut-off—it had a corduroy bridge, over Muddy Creek, with nigger-head trimmings—were out of all proportion to the scanty travel that passed his way. And when “Uncle” Peter found that he couldn’t bring the traffic to him, he, like Mahomet, went to it. Shuemaker built a hotel in Granada.
Recollections are now about as dim as the Old Trail itself, but there is one oldtimer who asserts that it is his belief that Ice Gentry and Charley Manley were credited with being the axe-men who made the slashings on the timber division of “Uncle” Peter’s cut-off. But, says another, that may have been before Manley came into the neighborhood. Nothing certain about that, though. So many of the old fellows have their biographies so scrambled that it is hard to get at the truth. The suggestion was, nevertheless, timely. And, anyway, Charley Manley spent his last day on earth in Peter Shuemaker’s hotel at Wetmore.
As I remember him, Charley Manley was a rather quiet, pleasant mannered man. And, although a matured man himself—he was about forty, and unmarried—he made friends of the youngsters about town and seemed to enjoy their company. He could always find a way to help a boy with a few dimes.
Early in his career here in Wetmore it was settled that I was to have the job of turning the grindstone for Charley Manley whenever he needed help to grind his axe. Since that time I have often wondered why he had so much axe-grinding to do. But I thoroughly enjoyed, with all the thankfulness of a growing young boy’s” healthy heart, the dimes and quarters he gave me. And sometimes I have thought that maybe he ran in a few extra and needless grindings solely to gladden my heart.
Then came the time when Charley Manley fitted his grindstone with foot pedals. I used to sit by and watch him do the grinding without my help, and long for the dime I was being cheated out of by the introduction of that new labor-saving device. One time Charley Manley let me pour water on the grindstone while he ran it with foot-power. He said the tin can suspended over the stone, which was releasing a steady stream of water where it was needed, did not do the work so satisfactorily. He gave me a quarter for that.
With all his axe-grinding, I never knew Charley Manley to do more than chop wood on the Letson wood-pile. No coal was burned here in that axe-grinding period. Wood was brought in from the timber, a wagon-load at a time, in the pole, or in cord-wood lengths. It was chopped into stove lengths as needed, enough to cook a meal at a time. And sometimes the chopper would make the supply very scanty, or even renege on the job altogether. Then the cook would have to go out and scrape up chips. How well I know that. Aside from my axe-grinding activities I spent some time on the Bristow wood-pile in my younger days. And I am now sorry to say there were times when my patient mother would have to gather in the chips.
The last words Charley Manley ever said to me were, “Come over to Netawaka and see me sometimes, Johnny, and I’ll let you turn the grindstone for me.” He smiled pleasantly. That was while he was held in custody here the day of his execution. Poor fellow, he did not then suspect what was to be his fate. Naturally, I felt badly about the hanging—and the loss of my opportunity to make another honest dime. And the worst that I could now wish for the shades of his executioners, is that they be compelled to take turns in turning Manley’s grindstone, over there in the vast beyond, until his axe is made sharp, sharp, sharp—and then, that Charley’s ghost be licensed by Him who judges all things, to use it—provided, of course, that he didn’t steal their horses.