Part 24

The Russell firm, with other interests, established the Pony Express in 1860. The route from St. Joseph to Sacramento, 1920 miles, was covered in ten days—semi-weekly, at first. When the Civil war commenced, it was changed to daily. In the service were eighty riders and 500 horses — not ponies of the Indian class, but the best blooded horses that money could buy. They had to be fast to outrace the hostile Indians. The Pony Express, carrying first-class letters and telegrams only, lasted eighteen months. Telegraph connection with the Far West was established then. For a half-ounce letter a 10-cent Government postage stamp and a dollar Pony Express stamp were required. The Pony Express charge was much more at first.

Riders starting from St. Joseph and Sacramento simultaneously every morning kept a constant stream going both ways—day and night. Like the stage drivers, each rider had a given territory to make, with a change of horses every twelve miles. The first lap was from St. Joseph to Seneca. Lightweight riders only were used—mere boys they were. Don C. Rising was a Pony Express rider. He made his home in Wetmore after the close of the staging days.

The old road, with St. Joseph and Leavenworth as initial starting points, had a junction at Kennekuk, one and one-half miles south of the present site of Horton. On the St. Joseph branch were three stations — Wathena, Troy, and Lewis.

Later, Atchison was made the starting point for the stage and mails. At this time railroad service was extended from St. Joseph to Atchison—and, on the west end, river service was had from Sacramento to San Francisco. The first station out of Atchison was Lancaster, 11 miles. Then Kennekuk, 24 miles; Kickapoo, 36 miles; Log Chain, 49 miles; Seneca, 60 miles.

From Seneca the line continued westward to Marysville. It crossed the Big Blue river at Marysville, went up the Little Blue valley, crossed over to the Platte valley, then up the Platte to Fort Kearney. At Julesburg one branch turned south into Denver. The main line crossed the South Platte at Julesburg, touched at Fort Larimer and Fort Bridger in Wyoming. From Salt Lake it took a western course across Nevada to Virginia City; thence over the Sierra Nevada mountains to Placerville and Sacramento.

Considerable attention is given to the routing through Nemaha and Brown counties. For historical purposes, it is important that this should be done now while it is yet possible to trace the route with some degree of accuracy. Only slight evidences of the Old Trail remain. Practically everything obtainable now is a carry over from another generation, hearsay. In a few years more all information pertaining to the old road will have been relayed to a third and fourth generation, if not, indeed, forgotten altogether, locally. There are people here now, some living almost atop the Old Trail, who have never heard of it. There are none living now who were adults then, and even very few who were children. Albert Pitman, of Sabetha, aged 90, is probably the oldest person now living who was in the Powhattan-Granada neighborhood during staging days. Mrs. Martha Hart, E. J. Woodman, Volley Hough, Edwin Smith, and Ed. Vilott, now living at McAlister, Oklahoma, were children.

Tracing the Old Trail, locally, we find: The road at first came almost due west from Kennekuk across the Kickapoo Indian reservation, but probably bent over into what is now Brown County, as it followed the ridges. It crossed the Delaware at a point about eighty rods upstream from the crooked bridge on the present south line of the reservation—the Jackson-Brown County line. The Kickapoo reservation at that time contained about 150,000 acres. It has since been diminished three times. Now it is a block five by six miles in extent, thirty sections, 19,200 acres — with much of the land owned by the whites.

The first mission, built in 1856, was located on Horton Heights, inside the present city limits of Horton. The site was marked by a red glacial boulder on December 1, 1936 — 80 years after the Indian school was established by E. M. Hubbard—the first school of any kind in Brown County.

Also, there is confusion about the name of the stream spanned by the crooked bridge. Some call it the Grasshopper, and others refer to it as Walnut creek. It is neither. Lewis and Clark, explorers, named it the Grasshopper in 1804. It was changed to the Delaware in 1875 by an act of the Kansas legislature.

From that creek crossing, the trail followed the ridge to the old town of Powhattan in section 33, Powhattan township—the same section on which the East Powhattan school house is located, at the present intersection of U. S. 75 and the new graveled highway now running 11 miles straight east to Horton. The change station was on the northeast quarter, owned by Henry Gotchell, who had charge of the station, and also the post office.

My mother got her first letter written by relatives in Tennessee, at the Powhattan post office. Her cousin, Gaius Cullom, a school teacher, wrote: “Powhattan—why, that’s an Indian name! I am grieved to believe my dear cousin Martha is residing dangerously close to wild Indians. Be careful, my favorite, and don’t let those accursed aborigines get your scalp!” Alone for the day with her three small children in her country home, a year later, some such fears must have gripped my mother, when, on approach of a meandering band of blanketed Kickapoos, she hurriedly gathered up her brood and made a dash for the cornfield.

The old town of Powhattan—not to be confused with the present town of Powhattan farther over in Brown county—which was established 11 miles northeast when the Rock Island railway went through in 1886 — was in the center of the northwest quarter of section 33. There was a store, hotel, blacksmith shop, and numerous dwellings. Although regularly surveyed in town lots, nobody really owned the land on which the town was located at the time. It was held by “quatter’s rights,” in succession, by three men—Peter Shavey, Riley Woodman, and C. C. Grubb. It is now a cornfield, owned by Mrs. James Grubb.

From Powhattan, the line ran west across the Timber-lake and Cassity lands. The Timberlake land is now owned by Mrs. Cora Jenkins. The road then followed the ridge to Granada, passing from Brown county to Nemaha county at that point.

In 1860 the Powhattan change station was moved to a point three miles north. The change was made to take out a big curve and save mileage. The new station was called Kickapoo. It was on Indian land near the new mission on the west edge of the reservation. Noble H. Rising was in charge. Later, he was a merchant in Wetmore; as was also W. W. Letson, Express messenger.

Going back to the Grasshopper-Delaware crossing, the new line ran northwest to the mission, crossing Gregg’s creek—now Walnut creek—about midway. From the mission, the road crossed the Bill Garvin lands and went almost due west to Granada, crossing Gregg’s (Walnut) creek again downstream from the present bridge east of Granada. Joe Plankington recently found a cache of rough “diamonds” in a hollow at the base of a tree near this crossing. The “rocks” were supposedly hidden there by a returning traveler, back in the sixties—probably a prospector afraid to chance crossing the Kickapoo reservation, carrying his precious find.

NOTE—Since this article was printed in 1936, Joe Plankington tells me that one of the old Kickapoos—Pas-co-nan-te, father of John “Butler ” —told him the Indians were stalking the traveler and that he, Pas-co-nan-te, watched the wayfarer hide the rocks in that tree, many moons ago. And Joe said the old Indian accurately traced the way — on paper—tree by tree, from the Trail to the right tree.

And furthermore, Joe believes he has seen the scalp of the former possessor of his rocks—and at the same time had his own hair standing on end. Because of a slight favor by Joe, Pas-co-nan-te asked him if he would like to see a scalp, and at the same time told a young Indian whom Joe thinks was a grandson, to fetch one. When the scalp was laid down where Joe could get a good look at it, Pas-co-nan-te grabbed Joe by the “topknot” saying, “Maybe me show you how.” The knife the Indian held in his other hand cut Joe to the quick—but the blood froze in his veins, and not a drop was spilled. Then the old Indian said, “Me foolin.’ Me know better now.” The young Indian told Joe, later, that he was pretty sure the old Indians had killed the traveler.

Joe also says he sent one of the “diamonds” to a niece in Boise, Idaho, and that the cutter who dressed the stone—for $25—pronounced it a high-quality pigeon blood ruby.

The old stage drivers “bumped” into many exciting and some amusing incidents. In the Far West “Hank Monk” held the record for fast driving and tall stories. And fictitious or not, “Hank” was the ranking driver in the West. Here it was Bob Ridley, Bill Evans, and Lon Huff—with Bob well out in front. My cousin, Bill Porter, says his uncle Bill Evans told this one. His run took him across the Kickapoo reservation. Whenever his stage would pass the Indian Mission the young Indians would put on a demonstration — race their ponies around the stage, compelling him to stop. Then they would ask for tobacco. Bill was always prepared for them. On one trip out of Saint Joseph he had only two passengers — mere boys, from the East. They said they were going West to fight Indians, and they had the guns strapped on them to do it. Knowing how the young Indian bucks would perform, Bill told his passengers that he was now coming into Indian country, and was liable to be attacked—but they, the boys, must not start shooting until he gave the word. It would be suicidal for them to start the fight. He told them other reasonable and some* highly unreasonable stories about the Indians. The boys were expecting the worst. The young Indian bucks appeared as usual, and circled the stage—yelling, screaming, yelling like assassins pouring out of bedlam. Bill tossed his plug of tobacco out to them—then climbed down from his high seat and looked in on the boys. They were down on the floor, hiding. Before completing his run, the boys told Evans that they were going to abandon the notion of fighting Indians. Bill said, “I told them that I was sure they would change their minds after having one good look at the Indians.” One of the boys said, “We didn’t really get a good look at them—.” but we heard their blood-curdling yells, and that was enough. The other boy said, “What I want to know is—how do we happen to be alive?”

After the removal of the Powhattan change station, Henry Gotchell sold to Riley Woodman. Woodman sold to C. C. Grubb, who came to section 33 in 1857. Grubb was postmaster after Gotchell. Mail was carried down from Granada. Later, the Powhattan postoffice was moved to Wetmore.

Riley Woodman, father of E. J. Woodman, came in 1863. While the mail and stage now went on the north road, some traffic still followed the old line. In December, 1863, an ox-train transporting Government supplies was snowed in at the Woodman place and remained there until March. In the outfit were seventeen men, two saddle horses, and ninety-six oxen.

The Government paid Woodman one dollar a- bushel for corn—not an excessive price, under prevailing conditions. But often freighters and travelers were compelled, in emergencies, to pay ruinous prices for feed. Scarcity and the high cost of provisions at times, also taxed the travelers’ slender resources.

In 1860, the driest of all years in Kansas since the first efforts at farming, nothing was produced. Potatoes, Mrs. Martha Hart tells me, did not grow as large as hazelnuts. That year William Porter yoked up four steers to his lumber wagon and drove them over into Missouri, where he traded one yoke of oxen for provisions—and he didn’t get a burdensome return load, at that. There was a little short slough-grass in the lowlands, which the farmers cut with cradles and sold to overland travelers at twenty cents a pound.

From Granada, the road went past the cemetery, touched at the Sneathen Vilott farm, section 24, Capioma township; thence northwest to Log Chain in section 19. From Log Chain the line ran northwest to old Lincoln, section 13, Mitchell township—about one mile northeast of the State lake—thence to Seneca. Granada and Lincoln were not change stations.

If the hills about old Log Chain could talk, doubtless one could find a lot of story material there. While to my knowledge the only thing to distinguish that station was the mud-hole that gave it its name, it really has a colorful background. Rich in legendary lore and historical fact, there is no telling what an enterprising artist might do in painting the old picture over. It is said Abe Lincoln got as far west as Log Chain. The land is now owned by Dr. Sam Murdock.

Nearly all the old-timers here took one or more turns at bull-whacking across the plains. It was the only sure money “crop” for the pioneer farmer. Usually one trip was enough. Fred Liebig, Henry McCreery, and John Williams made several trips.

Fred Shumaker, father of Roy and “Hank,” who came here in 1856, was a driver for the freighting firm that transported the stores for General Johnson’s army. After the army had reached Fort Bridger, where it was detained through the first winter, Shumaker was detailed as driver for a guard sent on beyond Salt Lake to meet the army payroll coming in from California. The safe containing the money was transferred to his wagon. On that trip he saw, scattered about on either side of the road, bleaching in the desert sun, the bones of those ill-fated emigrants who lost their lives in the Meadow Mountain massacre. Fred Shumaker earned enough money on that trip to pay for his first farm, which cost him $1.25 an acre. He married Rachel Jennings, the sister of Zeke Jennings who lived on a farm northeast of Wetmore for many years. She was employed in the Perry hotel at Kennekuk.

Bill and Ben Porter, who came here first in 1856—left, and came again in 1858, drove oxen for a transport company hauling Government supplies. On one trip, the company feed supplies ran short out in Wyoming and most of the stock died. The train was hauling corn to the northwest forts, but it could not be used, even in emergencies like that. A guard was left with the train while waiting for fresh oxen to move it. The weak cattle, still able to travel, were taken back to Leavenworth. It was a bitter cold winter. The drivers protected themselves as best they could from the Arctic blasts in snow drifts.

Wagon trains of the larger outfits consisted of twenty-five wagons, five yoke of oxen and a driver for each wagon — with wagon-boss, assistant boss, and herder.

My Uncle Nick Bristow and Green Campbell took a turn at bull-whacking for that major freighting firm—Russell, Majors, and Waddell. But imbued with the spirit of the times, they forsook the bulls for the more exciting business of panning gold. My uncle’s exploits have been mentioned. In other articles I have referred, with no little degree of pride, to the Campbell mining success—he having gone from here into the West in company with my uncle—and then, too, he “schooled” one connected with my own efforts in the mining game. That we failed to duplicate his enviable success was no reflection on that able tutor.

This, however, has never been in print. Green Campbell made his first money at mining in the Cherry creek diggings — $60,000. He spent most of it while in that camp. He told my mining partner, Frank Williams, that he spent his money rather too freely, in the customary way of that period, at old Auraria. It was money he very much needed later. With only $1,500 of his stake remaining, he went to the Alder Gulch diggings in Montana. At Bannock he and a partner, Mart Walsh, located claims which sold for $80,000. Walsh, a merchant at Muscotah in the early days, at one time owned 600 acres of land north of that town. He died in a county home in Oklahoma, penniless. He was a brother-in-law of Mrs. William Maxwell, of Wetmore.

Later, Green Campbell made his big fortune, millions, in lode mining in Utah and Nevada, which, since his death has, largely, been kept intact by his wife and two sons, Allen and Byram — his second family — now living at 705 Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, California. The first boy was named for his father, who, in the halls of Congress, was the Honorable Allen G. Campbell. The other boy was named for Campbell’s partner in the famous Horn Silver mine—August Byram, of Atchison. There was a girl, Caroline.

Given space, I could make of this in itself a very interesting story. Green Campbell’s second wife was Eleanor Young, a reporter on a Salt Lake newspaper, and daughter-in-law of the famous old Brigham himself, who hated all peoples not of the Mormon faith. It is not recorded that the lady said to her man, like Ruth of old, “Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” But the inference is, she did. Campbell did not go Mormon. Indeed, he was poison to the saints after he contested the election of his Mormon opponent, Bishop Cannon, and took unto himself the Canadian’s seat in Congress after it had been occupied by the alien for nearly two years.

Several of the old stage drivers, after closing days, married and settled down in Wetmore. Robert Sewell married Cicily Locknane; Lon Huff married Clara Rising; Bill Evans married Kate Porter. Through their activities on the stage line, and breathing the free atmosphere of frontier life, these men were all moulded pretty much into a like pattern. Good story-tellers all, they lent themselves to the occupation without stint. Jovial and courteous at all times, they shunned work—unless it be with horses. Lon Huff drove the hearse for the local undertaker. He had a black team for adults, and a team of white horses for children.

Robert Sewell, the outstanding character, known on the plains as “Bob Ridley,” owned a livery stable here. Shall I tell the auto-minded young sprouts that the livery stable, now in the discard, was an enterprise of the horse-and-buggy days—a place where rigs were kept for hire? Sewell’s wife, Cicily, ran a hotel. Her mother, Mrs. D. M. Locknane, had conducted a famous eating house just west of Granada during overland days. Those two early-day enterprises of the Sewells were known as the “Overland Livery Stable,” and the “Overland Hotel.” Bob Sewell had a record of killing three Indians and wounding a dozen more in a running fight near Cottonwood Springs. Ben Holladay gave him a gold watch for saving the stage and four mules.

About the Old Trail, I have heard my uncle say that in the flush times of 1865 and 1866, when traffic was at its peak, there was hardly an hour of the day when one could not see the road lined for miles—one seeming endless procession moving westward. No other road ever had such a promiscuous, persevering throng—a weary plodding throng, whose way was fraught with many hardships, whose dead were left all along the Old Trail from the Missouri river to the Golden Gate. Other stage lines threaded the West and the Southwest—but the Overland has gone down in history as the greatest of them all.

Three score and ten years have now gone by since the last Concord stage coach made its final run from Atchison, through Granada. All equipment was at that time moved west to the end of steel—leaving the eastern end of the great Overland Trail abandoned and waiting, a lost ghost, for the day when Fate, slow but sure, should plow it under. And with poignant memory was gone, too, a stirring bit of frontier life in the West.

MEMORY’S STOREHOUSE UNLOCKED Published in Wetmore Spectator, Holton Recorder, Seneca Courier-Tribune, Atchison Daily Globe—

December, 1938.

By John T. Bristow

Green Campbell’s Colorful Mining Career

The train wound its way by easy stages down from the mountain heights into the desert valley. The railroad split the great basin in halves. On either side treeless mountains rose in endless succession. It was mid-summer in the great inter-mountain region—and the sage-fringed valley, broad and almost level, stretching ahead for miles and miles, shimmered frightfully under the glaring rays of the noonday sun. And winds swept out of the south like withering blasts from a slag furnace.

It was the Utah desert.

Far off to the right, shrouded in desert haze, could be seen the tip of a mountain which marked the approximate location of a famous early-day mining camp. The scene — barren, desolate, and so familiar to me — brought back a flood of memories. Instantly my mind dwelt upon events of the long-ago in that old mining camp and simultaneously with the home-life back in Kansas of the man who made it.

In that brief flash I saw it all. In that jumbled picture I glimpsed a sturdy hoist over a deep shaft at the base of that mountain, whose cables had in times past brought up daily tons of high-grade argentiferous ore, every ton of which, though it greatly enriched my erstwhile Kansas.

The last installment of J. T. Bristow’s fascinating tale of the career of Green Campbell is a fine piece of writing. We have heard many commendable expressions on this biographical sketch. . . . The author, J. T. Bristow, is a resident of Wetmore, a former newspaperman, well known to many of our citizens. That he is a good writer is the conviction of all.

—WILL T. BECK, Holton Recorder, neighbor, had spelled defeat for him in the most sacred phase of human life.

In that flash I glimpsed too a stretch of rich rolling Kansas prairie lined with streams of running water and a healthy growth of timber, in the center of which, down by the timber’s edge, was once this man’s place of abode, and which was then, and still is, but a few miles from my own home. And I saw a wrecked home; a court house thronged with curious people; and a lonely woman, a distraught wife and mother of a little boy, fighting desperately for her freedom—and alimony.

The scene is now in Kansas. It will shift back and forth between here — meaning, roughly, Wetmore, from which place this writing issues—and the old mining West again and again as this narrative unfolds.

THE CHERRYVALE ICE CO.

Watkins Brothers, Prop’s

CHERRYVALE, KANSAS

Feby. 17, 1939.

Jno. T. Bristow, Esq., Wetmore, Kans.

Dear Friend John:

“Memory’s Store-House Unlocked,” by J. T. Bristow, appearing in the Wetmore Spectator, came to me through the mail recently and I sure enjoyed reading it more than anything I have read in some time.

Having attended the Campbell University and knowing personally many of the characters in your article makes it of unusual interest and I wish to congratulate you for writing such an interesting historic record and thank you for the copy sent me.

Sincerely yours,

F. M. Watkins

Among the emigrants from the East during the early settlement of the Sunflower state, were John and Green Campbell. Tall, stalwart young men they were. Green was then twenty-two years old. John was a few years older. With their sisters, Caroline and Sally Ann, and their mother, Ruth Campbell, born in North Carolina in 1803, they came to Nemaha county by ox-team in a covered wagon from down around Springfield, Missouri, in 1856. Their father, James Campbell, had died in Missouri.

Passing up smooth high lands, the brothers selected adjoining claims in the breaks of upper Elk creek, section thirty, Wetmore township. This selection of rather rough lands was influenced no doubt by the presence of some timber and a spring of “living” water—two indispensable requisites of the pioneer farmer. Then, too, they might have entertained the notion of becoming cattle barons. Many of the early comers had such dreams. Here was the ideal location. Here they would have few neighbors—and unlimited free range.

Goodsprings, Nevada, February 12, 1939.

Mr. John T. Bristow, Wetmore, Kansas.

Dear Sir: