Part 22

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 the ominous clouds 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.

MOUNT ERICKSON 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.

TURNING BACK THE PAGES 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.

WANTS INFORMATION W. F. Turrentine, in Spectator