Part 23

A few days ago J. T. Bristow received a letter from Albert T. Reid, national vice-chairman of The American Artists Professional League, Incorporated, complimenting him on 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. He married Cicily Locknane—and established her in an eating house of their own at a station in the Little Blue valley west of Marysville, while he himself continued driving stage. But the frequent Indian raids in that section soon sent Cicily back to her mother at 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 Cherry c reek 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 of destruction had 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.