boldly asserting, “The only punishment that shall be inflicted by this
committee is Death,” undertook the job of exterminating the road agents.
And in one month’s time twenty-one of the notorious Henry Plummer gang
were hung. The job was pepped up a bit when the first victims squealed
on the others. This is history of the Montana vigilantes. They patterned
after the California vigilantes. And it is to be assumed that vigilantes
everywhere were organized along the same lines.
There was a vigilante committee in Nemaha County at least nine years
prior to the hanging of Manley. In September, 1868, Melvin Baughn, a
horse-thief, was legally hanged at Seneca for killing Jesse Dennis, one
of the deputized men who helped capture him. In writing of that hanging
George Adriance said there was a vigilante committee at the time, and it
wanted the officers to turn Baughn over to the committee.
Charley Manley and Joe Brown were charged with being implicated in
stealing John O’Brien’s horse. O’Brien lived on the Dave Ralston place
west of Granada and Brown lived on a quarter section of land west of the
Charley Green farm in the Granada neighborhood, about two miles from the
O’Brien farm. Charley Manley lived with the family of W. W. Letson at
Netawaka. He had lived with the Letsons at Granada and at Wetmore before
they moved to Netawaka. Letson and Spencer kept a general store here in
the old corner building now owned by Cawood Brothers, originally built
by Rising and Son.
At one of their meetings, it appears, the vigilantes decided to hang
Manley and Brown. One member who lived close to Brown pleaded for
the life of his neighbor. Brown had a family of small children. The
discussion waxed hot — and there was a great rift in the personnel of
the organization. They did not agree in the matter. The determined ones,
however, went ahead with their plans for the hanging. And on the night
of the execution some of the vigilantes, not in accord with the
plan, spent the night at the homes of their neighbors so as to clear
themselves of suspected participation in the hanging.
Charley Manley was arrested at Netawaka and was to have been given a
preliminary trial in Justice H. J. Crist’s court at Granada. He was
brought to Wetmore early the day of his execution and held under
guard in the office of the old Wetmore House until evening. The delay
supposedly was occasioned in order to bring Joe Brown to the bar of
“justice” at the same time. Later it appeared the proceedings had been
delayed, waiting for nightfall.
Robert Sewell, constable, liveryman, ex-stage driver and Indian fighter,
was the arresting officer. On the plains, and here, he was known as “Bob
Ridley.” George G. Gill was deputized as assistant constable. Dr. J.
W. Graham, a Justice of the Peace in Wetmore at the time, was appointed
special prosecutor by County Attorney Simon Conwell. Sewell, Gill, and
Graham, with Manley, drove to Granada in a spring wagon.
On the way to Granada, all unconscious of what was in the air, Dr.
Graham, seeing a tree by the roadside with a large overhanging limb,
jokingly said, “Whoa, stop the team, Bob—-we might just as well hang
Charley right here.” Manley laughed and said, “Oh, no—let’s all have a
drink.” He passed his bottle.
Court was to have been held in the Hudson hotel at Granada. But before
proceedings had started, the vigilantes, in black-face, with coats
turned insideout, appeared upon the scene and began shooting up the
place — with blanks. They seized Manley and rushed him away—to his
doom. Pandemonium reigned, and in the excitement the president of the
vigilante committee, it is said, raised a window and told Brown to “beat
it.” So, it would seem, the neighbor’s plea for Brown’s life, while very
costly to himself, as you shall see later, had made its impression.
Earlier in the evening, one high up in vigilantic officialdom, had
taken the precaution to relieve the three constables and the prosecuting
attorney of their revolvers—borrowed them “for a few minutes.” Dr.
Graham says he never did get his back.
Charley Manley was taken to a big tree down on the creek west of
Granada, and strung up. The tree was on the old Terrill place, now owned
by the Achtens. Monoah H. Terrill, a store-keeper at Granada, was a
brother-in-law of Manley. Terrill had died a long time before the Manley
hanging.
Manley was buried on the Terrill place—or rather what afterwards proved
to be the roadside—by the grave of his brother-in-law. Later the bodies
were removed. Terrill was placed in the Letson lot in the Netawaka
cemetery. Some say the body of Manley was also taken there. The Letson
lot has no such marker. Others say he was re-buried in the northeast
corner of the Granada cemetery. There is no marker or other visible
evidence of his grave there. His grave now seems to be as irredeemably
lost as was his life on that fatal March night fifty-four years ago.
It is said by those who were in a position to speak at the time, that
Manley made no protest, spoke not a word when the mob took him from the
room. Whether it was sheer shock that robbed him of all power to speak,
to think, to feel, no one knows. Dr. Graham says that after they started
away with the prisoner someone fired a gun, and he heard Manley say,
“Don’t do that boys, it’s not fair.” Just what happened after that was
never made public. The knowing ones didn’t seem to want to talk. There
were, however, many conflicting rumors afloat—sub rosa reports, you
understand. One rumor was that Manley was dead before they left the main
street with him—died from fright and rough handling.
On the way out one of the vigilantes lost his cap. Someone picked it up.
The same man who had “borrowed” the officers guns, acting as rear guard,
rode back and took the cap. He said to the people who had followed from
the court room, “We don’t want to hurt anyone—but keep back.”
Some of the men in that mob were recognized, but, as one old timer
aptly puts it, no one at that time seemed to care a “helluva” lot about
knowing who they were. However, as the veiling gradually lifted, it
became known that the major portion of the respectable adult male
citizens — and a few bad eggs—were numbered among the vigilantes. They
were, mostly, fair-minded and just men. But, even fair-minded men, under
stress, can sometimes be auto-hypnotized into doing strange things—and
it would seem some of the vigilantes got terribly out of hand that
night. From all accounts the performance was a rather disgusting
exhibition of mob passion. Later criticism of the vigilantes was based
very largely on the inexcusable savage demonstration attending the
Manley hanging. And mistake not, there was criticism—criticism that
stirred the whole countryside.
Vigilantes did not tell their wives everything. It might have been
better if they had. And if the Manley demonstration had met with the
approval of the good wives and mothers of the participating vigilantes,
the women might have taken a hand in the general clean-up and scrubbed
the burnt-cork, or whatever it was that blackened their faces, from back
of the men’s ears and thus obliterated the telltale marks that lingered,
like the itch, with some of the boys for several days. The women
generally deprecated the hanging.
Just what evidence the vigilantes had against Charley Manley, and how
authentic or damaging it was, never was made public. Nor will it ever
be. Had the vigilantes permitted the trial to progress far enough to
establish the prisoner’s guilt, their actions would, no doubt, have
received less criticism. The friends of the vigilantes—the vigilantes
themselves never talked, as vigilantes—said that it would have been
difficult to produce convicting evidence as Manley was too good at
“covering up.” He was credited with being the “brains” of the gang.
Two business men in Netawaka were also suspected. They evaporated. In
fact, there were a dozen or more men scattered about over the country
who were under suspicion.
It was rather a hard proposition to handle. The farmers—the vigilantes
and the farmers, with a sprinkling of town people, were practically the
same—were terribly incensed because of the thefts of their horses, and
they were determined, at any cost, to put a stop to it. And while the
convicted horse-thief did not draw a death sentence, the courts were
efficient enough and willing enough to impose ample punishment on
offenders. But the real trouble was in getting convicting evidence. And
the courts could not, of course, play “hunches” in so serious a matter.
And where convicting evidence was lacking, it would seem about the
best—or worst—the vigilantes could do, was to make an example of some
one of those under suspicion, and hope that they had hanged the right
man — a rather dangerous procedure, and hardly sufficient excuse for
taking a life.
But one thing that worked then against bringing suspects into court was,
that in case of failure to convict, the court costs were assessed to
the complaining witness, and that meant a lot to the pioneer
farmer—especially to one who had just lost his horses. At least, that is
the way the John O’Brien complaint was handled.
The old court record shows that Constable Sewell traveled twenty-four
miles in making the arrest of Manley, for which he received $2.40.
George G. Gill, as deputy, received a like sum. The attorney received
$7.50. There was also a charge of $1.00 for the keep of the prisoner,
and another $1.00 for guarding him. Isaiah Hudson traveled only six
miles, three miles out and three miles back, in making the arrest of
Joseph Brown, for which he received $1.20. One witness, J. W. Duvall,
was subpoenaed in the Brown case. None in the Manley case. And,
presumably, because of the disrupted court proceedings and the loss of
the prisoners, it was “considered and adjudged” by the court that the
costs in both cases be charged to John O’Brien, the complaining witness.
Then, after the hanging of Manley, someone made a mistake—a very serious
mistake—which, coupled with the previous disagreement, came very close
to disrupting the vigilante organization. A letter, purporting to come
from the vigilantes, was sent to the rebellious member. It gave the man
ten days to leave the country, and warned him that if he failed to do so
he would be given the same treatment as was meted out to Manley.
This was a hard jolt to the obstreperous member. And it was a harder
jolt for the man’s wife. The woman opened and read the letter first, and
only for that she might never have known what it was that caused her man
to so suddenly develop a bad case of ague. Then, every day, for weeks,
as the gathering shades of night began to fall upon his home, this man,
with his wife and three small children, trailed off through the woods,
across lots, to the home of a relative to spend the night.
That letter was the cause of much mental and even physical misery for
the woman. She suffered heart attacks at the time: And in the weeks that
followed she suffered the mental torments of the damned. In relating the
matter to me very recently, she said, “Every time the dog barked I would
have a fit.” According to her version of it, those were the blackest
days of her life. And, like a scar, she will carry its horrors to her
dying day—to the grave. She knew what a crazed mob was capable of
doing. As a matter of fact, she knew what a guerilla mob had done to my
father’s family.
Many, many were the times that my mother—sweet, patient, administering
angel—was called upon to be with that woman in her hours of great
distress. And once, when the insidious thing was about to consume her,
my mother brought the woman home with her for a week.
The marked member finally took the matter up with other vigilantes, and
to save the sanity of the man’s wife — and no doubt to appease the man’s
fears also — after all denying knowledge of the letter, the vigilantes
signed a paper pledging protection to the man. The marked man — and his
friends in the organization—however, had a pretty good idea who wrote
that letter.
With such a document in evidence the identity of the vigilantes, which
had been so closely guarded up to this time, was no longer cloaked. At
least the veil of secrecy now had a big rip in it.
The hanging of Manley had a tendency to slow up activities, but it did
not stop the horse-stealing. And once more the Committee set out to make
an example of an accused man. Frank Gage, charged with stealing a horse
from Washie Lynn, was being tried in a Justice court somewhere over
in the Powhattan neighborhood — probably Charley Smith’s court. The
vigilantes were in readiness to “storm” the court and take the prisoner,
as they had done in the Manley case at Granada, but the plan was
abandoned at the last minute.
Two horsemen, young and daring, with a whiff of what was in the air,
made a hurried run to the scene. They told the vigilantes that they were
about to make a mistake—that they, the informers, knew positively
that Gage was elsewhere the night the Lynn horse was stolen. The
high-stepping modern Paul Revere of that heroic dash still lives. The
other has gone to his reward.
Gage, of course, was acquitted, for lack of evidence. Later, the real
thief, convicted for stealing wheat, confessed to stealing the Lynn
horse, and told where it was. Washie reclaimed the animal.
The man who was credited with being the president of the vigilante
committee afterwards became a very popular and efficient peace officer
of Nemaha county. And, if I understood the man rightly, I think he would
have fought forty wildcats, and maybe a buzz-saw or two, before he would
have surrendered, for unlawful handling, a charge of his to any set of
men—vigilantes, clan, mob extraordinary, or even a regiment of soldiers.
Soon after the Manley hanging a branch of the Kansas Peoples Detective
Association was organized here. Unlike the vigilantes, its purpose was
not to override the law, but to assist it in capturing and convicting
horse-thieves. W. D. Frazey was president and E. J. Woodman was
secretary.
Now a line about the Old Overland Trail. Besides carrying a faint flavor
of Manley handiwork, it was the avenue by which I myself came into this
country. But I did not ride the old Concord coach drawn by its four
spirited horses. I came by the slower mode of the ox-team.
The Old Overland Trail, or military road, as it was sometimes called,
was vastly different from the good roads of the present time—very, very
much different from the elaborate specifications for Number Nine, now
building through Wetmore. It was little more than a wide rut worn deep
by the constant movement of horse-drawn vehicles, including, of course,
mules and oxen. There were stage-lines, pony-express riders, and heavy
freighting outfits. The commerce of the West was handled over the Old
Trail.
Starting at Atchison, the Old Trail came into the Pow~ hattan ridge
settlement at the southwest corner of the Kickapoo Indian reservation,
and, keeping to the high ridges as much as practical, it passed
through Granada, Log Chain and Seneca, and on westward to Oroville and
Sacramento, in California. The stage company maintained a change station
on the old Collingwood C. Grubb farm—called Powhattan. Noble H. Rising
was in charge of the station after it had been moved three miles
north, and the name changed to Kickapoo. His son, Don C. Rising, was a
pony-express rider. W. W. Letson was express messenger. Bill Evans, Lon
Huff, and Bob Sewell, oldtimers here, were stage drivers.
The road made a sharp turn to the north before reaching Granada. Peter
Shuemaker lived on the farm now owned and occupied by Charley Zabel,
west of the turn. Shuemaker wanted the road to pass by his farm, and,
at his own expense, built a cut-off in the hope that traffic would be
diverted that way.
Roads in those days were built, mostly, by the simple process of going
out with a plow and running a couple of parallel furrows, with the
proper spacing to accommodate all anticipated traffic. Peter Shuemaker’s
cut-off veered off to the northwest, across the prairies just anywhere
the going seemed to be good, until it intersected the Old Trail again.
And though as simple as that, road building in those days was not
without difficulties. Some would want the road and some wouldn’t want
it.
“Uncle” Peter’s road bumped into a circumstance when his engineer
projected the cut-off across the farm of a certain female importation
from the Emerald Isle. And right there Irish wit and Missouri temper
mixed. William Porter, not so very long removed from the Rushville
hills, was chief engineer and contractor for the prairie division of
“Uncle” Peter’s cut-off. Mrs. Flannigan met the Missourian head-on, with
an old horse-pistol wrapped in her apron. “Off with you, I’ll not have
the place torn up,” she commanded.
Entirely unaware of 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.