Part 4

I had recently been in Texas—and because of that trip to the Lone Star state, I had a message from a relative to a relative to be delivered in Nashville. Here again I should explain. On learning that I planned a trip to Galveston ten days hence, my Aunt Nancy Porter asked me to stop off at Dallas and call on a relative—a Cullom of the Tennessee tribe. I believe his name was Jerry. But if he were not Jerry, he was a close relative. When I called at Mr. Cullom’s real estate office in Dallas, I was told he had gone to Galveston. I went on to Galveston, and dismissed all thought of seeing my relative. I went out to the beach, and while strolling on the sands—on the gulf side of the sea-wall — among hundreds, perhaps thousands of other strollers, fell in with a friendly man. He told me he was from Dallas, and I told him that I was from Wetmore,„Kansas. He said, quickly, “Did you say Wetmore? Reckon you might know my cousin Nan Porter, there.” And I said, “Then, I reckon you know that my Aunt Nancy asked me to stop off at Dallas, and call on you.” He grabbed my hand, saying with real Tennessee accent, “Mr. John Bristow, I’m powerful proud to meet you.” Again, I may be wrong. It could have been the Texas accent. In the course of our conversation I told Cousin Cullom that I would be going to Nashville for the Centennial, and he said likely he would go, too. The message from him was for my Aunt Tennessee Cullom-Clark, mother’s sister, living in North Nashville.

I may say I’m “powerful proud” that my meddlesome letter-writing Aunt Nancy took it upon herself to notify our Texas cousin of my intended visit. That rather unusual chance meeting is paralleled by another chance meeting — which opens the way for bringing into this writing my distinguished Kansas cousin. I had an engagement to meet J.L.Bristow at the Eldridge Hotel in Lawrence, when he was Fourth Assistant Postmaster General — later, U. S. senator from Kansas. He was of my father’s branch of the Virginia and Tennessee Bristows, a third cousin to me, and up to this time we had never met. He was billed as principal speaker at a Republican rally in the Bowersock Opera House that night. Upon my arrival in Lawrence about noon, I discovered he was registered at the Eldridge House—but I could not locate him. I went out to the Kansas-Nebraska football game, and got a seat by a man who seemed to be deeply interested in the game. We conversed in an off-hand way when he was not up on his toes rooting for the Kansas team. From the conversation I inferred that he was a newspaper man, like myself. But, unlike myself, he was a college man. Not being a college man, I could not get interested in the game. It was brutal. When we had fetched up at the Eldridge House, this football enthusiast—now surrounded by politicians—said to me. “I am told by the clerk here that you were looking for me, and it seems you failed recognize a relative when you had found him.” He was my man.

Might say I first learned of my Kansas cousin when he was owner and publisher of the Salina Daily Republican, and I was publishing the Wetmore Spectator. A Kansas City printing firm addressed a letter to J. L. Bristow, Wet-more, Kansas—one initial off from my own. It was delivered to me. The contents of the letter showed that it should have been sent to the other newspaper man in Salina. I mailed it to him. He came back promptly wanting to know from whom did I get my name? One more exchange letters told us both exactly who we were. We both claimed kin to old Ben — of Virginia, Kentucky, and New York fame—though I do not now recall his specialty. But it’s a safe bet it had to do with politics. My father was a first cousin of J. L.’s father, a Methodist minister, living in Baldwin, Kansas. My illustrious cousin Joseph has climbed high up the ladder of political fame — and who knows his limit? I shall not lose track of him.

After I would have returned from Pensacola, Florida, and spent a day in Nashville with Uncle Tom and Aunt Irene Cullom, and their three daughters, cousins Lora, Clevie, and Myrtle, it was planned to give a party for me at Aunt Harriet’s country home, the day set for one week hence — when they “allowed” they really would show me some Tennessee girls. Here, I think my Wetmore Auntie had been meddling in my behalf once again. Well, no matter. If it was meant that the girls at the coming party would grade upwards in looks from the first showing, it surely would be worth coming back for. Cousin Maggie Lovell, a fifteen-year-old beauty, told me the girls would turn themselves loose at the party—and, she said, “The woods are full of ‘em.” The girls of the advance showing had been rather on the reserved order—I might say very lady-like. Still, I imagine there were missies in that group who would have been pleased to start something. Also, I imagine they were the flower of the flock.

All Southern girls at that time were supposed to be pretty. The climate, and the care in which the girls were taught to shield their faces from the sun was believed to make for superior beauty. My mother said that in her day no girl would ever think of going out without her sun-bonnet.

Admittedly, the South is blessed with some extremely beautiful girls. But, after extensive searching, may I say that—exempting cousins of course—I did not find it overwhelmingly so. I am convinced that it takes something more than climate and ribbed sun-bonnets to turn the trick; and that the South has no monopoly on this something. Also, I further find that the strikingly beautiful girl is, like -prospector’s gold, where you find her. And for my money give me the sun-kissed girl from the wide-open Kansas range.

Unfortunately, I was called home, and did not have the pleasure of attending the party—and was compelled to send regrets, from Nashville, by mail. Also, I missed the chance to see Jim Spain call up the spirits. But then it was only a half promise. When I asked Jim if he would hold a seance for me, he said, “Reckon I might—but generally I aim to do it only for the hill folks.”

“But,” I said, “you fooled my mother and my Aunt Nancy when they were down here not so long ago.” He said “Yes—I did. But you know they grew up here in the South where most everybody believes in ghosts.

“My mother used to tell us kids that there was no such thing as a ghost—but she said it in such a dispirited way as to cause me, as young as I was, to doubt if she fully believed her own words.

I grew up in a generation which talked freely, pro and con, about ghosts. And, believe it or not, I have actually seen Erickson’s ghost—that is, until the apparition faded away into something tangible, as “ghosts” always do if given time. There was a time here when I — and other youngsters of like caliber—looked for Erickson’s ghost in every dark corner. And I think that if I should even now go through the woods on the old Hazeltine farm adjoining town, at night, as I often did in the early days, I would involuntarily keep an eye peeled for the ghost of Jim Erickson, a murderer and suicide, of May 10, 1873—buried, without benefit of clergy, mourners, or even regulation coffin — on top a high hill just south of town. To mention only one of the several proclaimed haunted houses—which always go hand in hand with ghosts—Jim Erickson’s ghost cut up a good many capers here in the early days, particularly where “it” was often “seen” on the margin of the big swamp lying between town and the high hill. Let there come a foggy night someone was sure to say: “Erickson’s ghost will stalk tonight.” A party of three young couples—boys and girls — set out one night to trap old Jim, or whatever it was that haunted a vacant house of many rooms, which sat on a high hill near the swamp—but, would you believe it, they were disturbed by another couple who had preceded them—and all fled the scene in a rout. Actually, some brave people — grown-up’s—positively refused to venture south of the creek on foggy nights. It’s not a promise—but I may, at some future date, write the Erickson story for the Spectator readers.

And I can well believe Jim Spain had the situation as to ghosts stalking among the oldsters of his generation in the South sized up correctly. However, the bright kids of today should never be troubled with any such hallucinations.

No, kids—truly, there is no such thing as a ghost. My mother told me so.

NOTE—Cousin Bill Porter recently visited Nashville, and was told that Jim Spain (having died in cousin Margaret Lovell-Ezell’s home in Nashville in 1948, aged 84) is only a memory down there now.

And what a memory!

CAREFUL PLANNING When still very young, Donna Cole—in our home—had eaten an apple and was nibbling the core. My wife said to her niece, “Oh, oh—child, you must not eat that core.” Donna smiled, and taking another bite, said, “Ain’t goin’ be no core.”

At another time, the wife and I were visiting in the Locknane home in Topeka—and Myrtle had taken Donna along with us, at the suggestion of Coral, who said they would try to get her pictured in the Sunday Daily Capital. Well, they did that easily. Donna was deservedly given a top position—a standout picture—among other youngsters. Myrtle and Coral were very proud of this—and Donna “rode high” during our stay.

The Locknanes had a fine home, neatly, though not lavishly furnished—and a “hired girl”; a Cadillac car, and a colored chauffeur.

Along with all her gayety, Donna did a little sound thinking. She whispered. “How can they beford all this, Aunt Myrtle?”

RED RIFLEMEN Published in Wetmore Spectator,

Feb. 7, 1936—and in

Seneca Courier-Tribune’s Historical Edition.

By John T. Bristow

It was early autumn far back in the pioneer days. The wood which this story opens was one of the largest stands big trees in Northeast Kansas. It was bordered on the high slopes with sumac, hazelbrush, and tall grass. The trees had not yet fully shed their leaves.

An Indian, blanketed, with a long rifle swung across withers of his buckskin pony, detached himself from the band of rovers and rode straight to the place where my father and I stood, under a great oak tree, frozen to the spot. A foreboding stillness pervaded the oak grove. I was terribly frightened. Somehow the idea had formed in my young head that the Indians would not kill children; that they carried them off alive, along with the scalps of adult whites.

About that time frequent accounts of Indian depredations had filtered in from the west — gruesome, hellish, blood-curdling stories they were.

A tribe of Indians lived then, as now, on a reservation only eight miles away. The fact that those Kickapoos were considered civilized and peaceable did not register in this all boy’s mind—nor even in some adult minds.

My father, William Bristow, was reared in the heavily wooded sections of Kentucky and Tennessee, where, in his day, the gun and the “hound-dog” were man’s dearest possessions. I knew that he was a crack rifle-shot; that he could, without doubt, hold his own with the advancing redman—but not against that band of savages lurking in the background. Wrapped in flaming blood-red blankets, those Indians, silent and sinister, with the long barrels of their rifles sticking up like telegraph poles, looked as if they might be making ready to go on the warpath.

Closer and closer came the Indian. And why the devil didn’t my father shoot? Was he going to let that redskin take his scalp? In a fit of panic I dodged behind the big oak tree; and then just as suddenly I popped out again and backed up my father by clutching his trousers legs from behind. It is surprising what amount of terror can flit through a small boy’s mind in so short a time.

In a flash I reviewed again the fate of the German girls, orphaned and stolen by the Indians. All oldtimers here will recall that the German girls—Kate, Sophia, Addie, and Julia—after being rescued from the Indians, became wards of the Government and were placed in the home of Pat Corney, who lived for many years on Wolfley creek. Their ages ranged from six to seventeen years when rescued. They were filthy dirty—grimy, without clothes. When the two younger girls were brought to the Corney home—the other two were recovered later—the old Irishman exclaimed: “For God’s sake, Louisa, get a tub of water and a bar of soap!”

Also, about this time—probably a few years earlier — our townsman, Andy Maxwell, after leaving Wetmore to take up his home in the West, was besieged for three days by Sioux and Nez Perce Indians. With Andy were Mrs. Maxwell — his sister-in-law — his daughter May, and four men. They were traveling out of Miles City, Montana, in covered wagons. The story of this Indian encounter had filtered back to Wetmore where Andy Maxwell’s mother, a brother, and two sisters still lived. According to the report, Maxwell and his men took their stand in a small timber tract, on three sides of which were deep gullies. Owing to this advantageous position the Indians could not follow their customary tactics of circling the whites. They skulked. And whenever an Indian would get near enough, he would be picked off by the white man’s bullet. Maxwell and his men killed eight Indians. Two of the white men were severely wounded. May got an arrow through her foot; Andy lost a lock of his hair and had his face grazed by a bullet. Mrs. Maxwell was shot in the arm. The party lost twenty-six oxen. Andy Maxwell now lives at Santa Ana, California.

I have mentioned these two Indian incidents briefly, merely to give the reader some idea as to what was, and might have been, flashing through my mind at that tense moment—and for their historic value. Also other Indian pictures assailed me. That awful moment will stand out in my memory while life lasts.

My father said not a word, and to be sure I could not read his reactions. I knew only that he had been harboring a fine mess of mixed emotions at the moment when the Indians appeared.

Mark this well.

“How!” greeted the Indian as he drew rein. He slid off his pony and surveyed the surroundings quickly. At edge of the clearing his redskin companions, departing from their single-file formation, sitting on their ponies, went into a huddle not unlike modern collegiate intelligentsia on a gridiron.

Though it may be said that the Indian’s mission was of rather urgent nature, let us leave him standing here by the side of his pony while I tell you how my father and I happened to be caught in this embarrassing predicament.

For some reason, undoubtedly well grounded, the owner of that timber forbade hunting on his premises. Nevertheless, on one occasion, that ban was lifted in promise, if not in reality—and therein lies the nucleus of this tale.

One day while on a friendly call at the shoeshop in Wetmore, John Wolfley granted permission to my father to shoot squirrels in his timber, though he made it plain that this was to be considered a special favor, because of old friendship. My father and John Wolfley, the senior John, were among the first settlers in this country. They came before the railroads, before the towns in this section—in the log cabin days. The towns then were strung along the old land or military road passing five miles north of here. As compared with highways of the present day, it was not a road. It was but a rut, a serpentine streak of dust spanning the great plains, crossing the mountains—and on to California. Yet, it carried immense traffic—stage, pony express, commerce — and was a celebrated thoroughfare. Many notables passed this way. U. S. Grant, Horace Greeley, Mark Twain. And although of no particular moment here, I might add that I, myself, came into this country over the Old Trail at a time when traffic was near its peak.

It was, therefore, in considerable blitheness of spirit that on one fine October day my father and I “hoofed it” five miles up Spring creek to the Wolfley timber. We were going to a choice and restricted hunting grounds, on invitation of the owner—a favor granted no one else.

My father shot a squirrel. The report of his gun, heard by the owner of the place who was in the timber gathering down-wood—sometimes in the old days called squaw wood — brought a vigorous protest from a half-hidden spot across the creek.

“Get out!” the angry voice shouted.

My father was not disturbed. Not then. He even laughed a little. And I fear his voice was charged with rather too much mirth when he called back across the stream, “Why, John, don’t you know me?”

Like a flash of lightning came back the ultimatum, “I don’t care if you are General Grant, you can’t hunt in my timber!” So that was that—a sorry situation for two old friends to impose upon themselves.

My father told me we would leave the Wolfley timber by the shortest route. Leaving the dead squirrel on the ground where it had fallen, he started off at once with the stride of one bent upon urgent enterprise, muttering incoherent but indubitably uncomplimentary things about his late friend. It is such breaches of friendship, as this seemed to be, that cause men to talk to themselves.

Sometimes, however, what we consider a calamity proves to be a blessing in disguise. That was true in this case. And the breach, which loomed so menacingly on the horizon at the moment, instead of impairing a fine friendship was the indirect cause of making it everlasting.

Even as my father hastened away, the Invisible Hand was working in his favor. Had there been no interruption, he would have continued on his course as mapped out, up the creek, and the providential thing which was very soon to take place would have miscarried. Here I want to interpose a paragraph—maybe two, or more—to show how welcome this providential thing that was now about to enter my father ’ s life.

A shoemaker with a family rather too large to support in comfort even in normal times, was my father—a slaving man who, like so many others in those pioneer days, had nearly reached the limit of his endurance. In this new country everyone was directly, or indirectly, dependent upon the products of the soil. Those were the days of Texas long-horn cattle and ten cent corn—when there was corn. Those were the days when snows driven by winter’s howling blasts across the open prairies piled high in the streets and country lanes and cut off all communications with the outside world for weeks at a time. At such times we would burn corn for fuel. Well do I remember the superior warmth of those corn-fed fires. They were life-savers for those who were compelled to live in the open, wind-blown homes of that day.

There was land to be had for the taking, but my father thought he could not afford to take it. Without capital to stock the free grass range, the pioneer farmer could not hope to make more than a bare living. And when crops failed for lack of moisture, as they too often did in the early days before the country became seasonable for the production of grain, all suffered.

That was pioneer Kansas! That was “Droughty Kansas! ” That was “Bleeding Kansas!” It was not the Kansas of today—barring, of course, the year 1934, and maybe with apologies for 1935.

Then, before that providential find was to bear fruit, two outstanding reverses visited appalling hardships upon an already discouraged peoples. The lingering effects of the great money panic of 1873 was the cause of much distress. There was no such thing as Federal aid then, and everyone here was on his own. However, the East did contribute some bacon and a quantity of cast-off clothing, including plug hats and Prince Albert coats—useful in some cases, but generally scorned by the needy people.

That money panic was brought on by the collapse of the Jay Cooke brokerage houses in three eastern cities. Cooke, a nationally known promoter, was financing the building of the Northern Pacific railroad, and had made too many advances.

It may be of interest here, especially in Nemaha and Jackson counties and possibly throughout all Northeast Kansas, to know that, later, through an unprotected brokerage partnership in the National Capitol with that wizard of finance, a former resident of Wetmore township, Green Campbell, who had come into local and national prominence by reason of his sensational rise to affluence as principal owner of the famous Horn Silver mine at Frisco, Utah, dropped a cool million of his mine-made dollars in the aftermath of that failure.

After he had failed, Jay Cooke, still the promoter par-excellence, secured a railroad for Green Campbell’s mine. Later, after he had sold his mine, Campbell went to Washington as delegate to Congress from Utah. Still later Campbell joined Cooke there in the brokerage business. With new money in the firm, Cooke’s old creditors swooped down upon Campbell like a swarm of bees. And they stung him hard. His first check was drawn for nine hundred thousand dollars! However, there was no time after selling the Horn Silver mine that Green Campbell was not a rich man. Green Campbell endowed a college at Holton, Kansas, bearing his name. His old homestead was in the southwest part of Wetmore township. It is now owned and occupied by August Krotzinger.

Then there was the year 1874—a blank year with its train of blighted hopes that socked the whole populace still deeper down into the slough of despond. Following a season of scanty production, the crops that year, in the spring and up to mid-summer, showed signs of fulfillment. Then came the usual anxious period—dry, windy, scorching days, And hope, that had sprung in the tired hearts of the farmers commenced to die as they looked with anxiety on the drooping crops. The people prayed for rain. They watched for clouds. Then, out of the northwest there came a cloud—a black cloud, a menacing cloud, that was to blot out all renaming hope.

It was a rain of pests—a deluge of grasshoppers! Like the plagues of old they descended upon us. And they greedily devoured every growing thing—corn, grass, weeds, foliage of the trees—leaving in their wake a barren waste and a woefully impoverished lot of people. After devouring every edible thing, and gnawing on pitchfork handles and axe handles — for salt deposited by sweaty hands — the hoppers deposited eggs in the ground, and then perished with the coming of cold weather. The young hoppers in the spring of 1875 cleaned up the farmer’s first plantings—but on a day, at noon, late in June they rose up as a cloud blotting out the sun from the earth as they winged their way to greener pastures—where, nobody here knew.

Now we have left the Indian standing there by the side of his pony for a long time. But the Indian doesn’t mind. Not our Kickapoo, anyway. And, as a stickler for the truth, for accuracy of detail, I will admit that my deductions, my fears, did not coincide with the facts as later developed; that, in the language of the street and as my father said of me at the time out there in the wood—literally, I was “all wet.”

That Indian was not an emissary of destruction, rather, he was, after the manner of the wise one of his peoples, a maker of good medicine. My father’s great haste to get away from the Wolfley timber had been halted by a clump of black oak trees. There were two holes in a large limb of the great oak under which the Indian found us standing. The Indian looked up into the tree. “Long time go Indian’s tomahawk make holes,” he said. “Maybe catchum coon,” He shifted his beady black eyes to another part of the tree, and exclaimed, “Seeum squirrel!”