any rifts in the family, the world did not know it. Jim Erickson was a
rather quiet and apparently honorable man who owned a homestead north
of the Marquardt home. The Marquardt land is now owned by Mrs. C. C.
Nissen, Christian’s second wife, mother of Frits Nissen, and C. C.’s
other four children—Bill, Homer, George, and Mrs. Charley Love. Peter
Nelson owned the intervening eighty then. Erickson was a bachelor. The
residents of that settlement were all countrymen. That is, they or their
ancestors had immigrated to this country from that little corner of
the old world known as the land of the midnight sun—Sweden, Norway, and
Denmark.
There were no telephones then and the process of summoning the law was
necessarily slow. William Liebig was constable. He was reputedly a very
brave man, but that was one time when he displayed more caution than |.
bravery. With a posse of deputized men, Liebig went to the scene of the
murder—that is, they went near it. For long hours the men hung around on
the fringe of the premises, watching and waiting. Finally Liebig crept
noiselessly up to the house and very cautiously pushed the door open.
His tension relaxed a bit. All occupants of the house were dead. Jim
Erickson had killed Mrs. Marquardt while in bed. He then sent a bullet
through his own head.
At that time there was a small publication at Netawaka whose outspoken
editor believed in calling “a spade a spade.” His printed version of the
affair, purporting to be based on revealments in the house on entry of
the officers, was, to say the least, racily rotten.
Erickson’s body was brought to town and rested for a while in the
wareroom of the DeForest store building. The doctors sawed Erickson’s
head open, and decided that he had an “abnormal brain.” But evidently
they were not satisfied with their findings. Anyhow, it would seem they
craved another whack at him, as will be observed later. In making the
post-mortem the doctors used a common carpenter’s hand saw. I saw them
do it.
Marquardt and his wife were buried in the Wetmore cemetery. Marquardt
was a Union soldier. His grave is marked with a slab bearing only his
name.
There was no one here to claim Jim Erickson’s body. Neil Erickson, a
cousin, lived in that neighborhood—but the crime was too horrible for
him to have any part in the disposal of the murderer. Neil Erickson was
a respected citizen. Neil later married Peter Pope’s widow. She was the
sister of a Wetmore shoemaker named Reuter. Pope gave Reuter a cow
for bringing his sister here—as a prospective bride—besides paying the
woman’s way from Germany. She took with her into the Erickson home one
child — Charley. I do not know if Charley was her son, or Peter Pope’s
by his first wife. Likely the former. Pope had a daughter—Louise. She
was old enough at her father’s death to make her own way. She worked in
Dr. J. W. Graham’s home for several years. Neil Erickson was the father
of Dick Erickson. Jim Erickson’s brother George came later, and lived
here many years. He was an honorable man.
The town people decided that they did not want a murderer buried in
the cemetery, so what was left of Jim Erickson after the doctors had
finished with him, was dumped into a packing box, and he was buried on
top of a high hill just south of town. This hill, then regarded as “no
man’s land,” is now a part of the Bartley farm. It has been locally
known ever since as Mount Erickson.
On the night following the planting of Erickson, two groups of doctors,
with numerous assistants, started out to recover the body. But, as it
turned out, the corpse was left undistributed—at least, for that night.
Rumor had it that it did not remain long on the hill-top.
The Wetmore group, led by Dr. W. F. Troughton, was first in the field.
Close on their heels came the Netawaka group. Dusk was upon them. One of
the Netawaka men rode a white horse. That rider and his companions moved
silently across the slough-grass swamp skirting the big hill, steadily
gaining on the Wetmore men who had halted at the base of the hill.
One of the local hirsute sentinels — they nearly all wore whiskers
then—exclaimed, “It’s a ghost!” That was enough. The Wetmore group
stampeded. The Netawaka group followed suit. And the cattle which had
bedded down for the night at the base of the hill stampeded. The cattle
bellowed, and what with terrified men and frightened beasts running this
way and that way, pandemonium reigned supreme for quite a spell. Perhaps
the cattle, too, had seen Erickson’s ghost.
TURNING BACK THE PAGES Published in Wetmore Spectator and
Horton Headlight—1936.
By John T. Bristow
The Old Overland Trail
STATEMENT BY CHARLES H. BROWNE
Editor Horton Headlight
EDITOR’S NOTE—Nearly a year ago, J. T. Bristow, pioneer resident of
Wetmore and former editor of the Wetmore Spectator, promised Charles H.
Browne, editor of The Headlight at Horton, Kansas, he would prepare
an article dealing with early history of this corner of Kansas,
particularly as it was affected by the Old Military Road, which became
the Overland Stage route to the Far West and also the Pony Express
route.
It was hoped Mr. Bristow would have the article ready for the 50th
Anniversary edition of The Headlight, published on October 29, 1936,
but this he was unable to do. However, he furnished the article several
months later, and The Headlight published it in seven installments.
The article is so unusually well written, so authentic, and of such
absorbing interest that the editor has taken the liberty of reproducing
it in a small booklet in order that it may better be preserved for its
historical importance.
Kansas pioneers living in south-central Nemaha and southern Brown
counties a little more than three-quarters of a century ago, witnessed
the inauguration of a stage line over an old trail passing their very
doors, so to speak.
That road, thick with horse and mule drawn vehicles and long ox-drawn
wagon trains, grew quickly into the greatest thoroughfare of its kind
on the face of the earth. Simply a winding trail, ungraded and almost
wholly without bridges, it was by far the greatest line of vehicular
traffic of all times. It was a road with a golden background. It is the
major topic of this article.
At that time there were no railroads or telegraph lines west of the
Missouri river. A vast wilderness, uninhabited except for Indians and a
few isolated white settlements, all territory between the river and the
Rocky mountains was designated as “The Great American Desert.” By many
it was considered the most worthless stretch of country in the western
world. An error, of course, and one agreeably noted by those living here
now—notwithstanding the New Deal brain trust’s prophecy that much of
this land is to revert to the desert.
WANTS INFORMATION W. F. Turrentine, in Spectator
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.