With two big farms in Jackson county, besides money-making stores and a
livery stable at Harrisonville, my father at the outbreak of the war was
wealthy beyond the average of the people in northwestern Missouri. As a
mail contractor, his stables were filled with good horses, and his
property was easily worth $100,000, which was much more in those days, in
the public esteem, than it is now.
This, perhaps, as much as Walley’s enmity for me, made him the target for
the freebooters who infested the Kansas line. In one of Jennison’s first
raids, the Younger stable at Harrisonville was raided and $20,000 worth of
horses and vehicles taken. The experiment became a habit with the
Jayhawkers, and such visits were frequent until the following fall, when
the worst of all the indignities heaped upon my family was to be charged
against them—the murder of my father.
When the body was discovered, it was taken in charge by Capt. Peabody, who
was in command of the militia forces in Kansas City, and when he found
$2,000, which father had taken the precaution to conceal in a belt which
he wore about him, it was sent home to our family.
It has been charged that my father tried to draw his pistol on a party of
soldiers, who suspected me of the murder of one of their comrades and
wanted to know my whereabouts. This is false. My father never carried a
pistol, to my knowledge, and I have never had any doubt that the band that
killed him was led by that same Capt. Walley. Indeed he was suspected at
the time, accused of murder, and placed under arrest, but his comrades
furnished an alibi, to the satisfaction of the court, and he was released.
He is dead now, and probably he rests more comfortably than he ever did
after that night in ’62, for whether he had a conscience or not, he knew
that Missouri people had memories, and good ones, too.
But the freebooters were not through.
My sisters were taken prisoners, as were the girls of other families whose
sons had gone to join the Confederate army, their captors hoping by this
means to frighten the Southern boys into surrender.
After my mother’s home was burned, she took her children and went to
Lafayette county. Militiamen followed her, shot at Jim, the oldest of the
boys at home, fourteen, and drove him into the brush. Small wonder that
he followed his brother as a soldier when he became old enough in 1864!
Despairing of peace south of the Missouri, mother crossed into Clay
county, remaining until the War between the States had ended. But not so
the war on her. A mob, among whom she recognized some of the men who were
pretty definitely known to have murdered my father, broke in on her after
she had returned to Jackson county, searched the house for Jim and me,
hung John, aged fourteen, to a beam and told him to say his prayers, for
he had but a little time to live unless he told where his older brothers
were. He defied them and was strung up four times. The fourth time the
rope cut deep into the flesh. The boy was unconscious. Brutally hacking
his body with knives, they left him for dead. That was early in 1870.
June 2 of that year, before John had recovered from his injuries, mother
died.