Jesse Newell’s Rifle Company Roster: Bob Newell, Died in Battle

Russell Robert shell The_Oskaloosa_Independent_Sat__Aug_31__1861_
Excerpt from Captain Avra P. Russell’s letter about the death of his third lieutenant, Bob Newell. Oskaloosa Independent, Aug. 31, 1861. Image from newspapers.com; article viewable here.

(Bob Newell was a free-state rifleman who rode escort for “The Immortal Ten,” the Kansans whose covert rescue mission freed Underground Railroad conductor John Doy from a Missouri jail in 1859. [See story here. ] Bob, just 21, was among about 20 Jefferson County, Kansas, men summoned to help The Immortal Ten on the last 20 miles of their dangerous rescue. This post introduces the young Robert Newell, killed two years later in the Civil War Battle of Wilson’s Creek in Missouri. Captain Avra P. Russell wrote to Jesse Newell about his son’s battlefield death. (Captain Russell’s letter is transcribed here.)

Captain Russell’s letter glistens as a death notification that could only have been written early in a war. It is mournful, respectful, laudatory, personal. And it was early: early in Kansas statehood, early in the Civil War, early in Robert Newell’s life.

Carefully composed but written with an unbearable purpose, the captain’s letter told Jesse Newell that his son Robert had died in the Battle of Wilson’s Creek in southwest Missouri, August 10, 1861.

“The terrible battle at Springfield, fought on the 10th … deprived you of a very promising son, and me of a brave Lieutenant and highly cherished friend,” the August 18 letter told Jesse and Rosannah Newell, Oskaloosa, Kansas.

Bob Newell, as he was known, died at 23 years of age. He and his younger brother, Abram, had rushed into Union army service alongside many other young Kansans when the new state raised its first two regiments. He mustered in to Company G, Second Regiment Kansas Volunteer Infantry. Bob was elected third lieutenant of Company G, serving under Captain Avra P. Russell.Robert Newell from muster roll ks memory

robert newell muster roll ks memo 2
These images are from the Kansas State Historical Society’s “Civil War soldiers name index, Kansas volunteer regiments, 1861-1865” on Kansasmemory.org. Bob Newell’s regiment’s page is here. The partial images show Newell’s age, rank, date of enlistment and mustering in and his death.

The young Newell’s brief life as a soldier began around June 20, barely two months after the Civil War began. And it was just the fifth month Kansas had existed as a state, a free state that forbade slavery.

Newell “…had taken a very active and efficient part through the day, manifesting a coolness and perfect self control almost unexampled in one so young and inexperienced on the field,” Captain Russell wrote of the battle and Bob’s part in it.

The Battle of Wilson’s Creek, a Union loss, was significant as the first major Civil War battle fought west of the Mississippi River. It gave the Confederates control in southwest Missouri.[i] Union forces were about 5,400 men; the Confederate and Missouri secessionist troops about 11,000. Losses were heavy for both sides: The Union lost about 1,235 men killed, wounded or missing and the Confederates and Missouri secessionist troops about 1,100.[ii] To understand the battle conditions Bob and his comrades fought in, told from a young Iowa soldier’s view, read this Emerging Civil War blog post here.

LoC Battle of Wilson's Creek, near Springfield, Missouri
This image, “Battle of Wilson’s Creek, near Springfield, Missouri” shows the battlefield death of Union Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Lyon and was published in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper on Aug. 24, 1861. It is held by the Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/2002736810/

Bob Newell’s death came shortly after Union Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon was killed on the Wilson’s Creek battlefield.[iii] Lyon’s death was the first of a Union general in the Civil War.

Jesse Newell passed Captain Russell’s condolence letter on to The Oskaloosa Independent, which published it Aug. 31, 1861. See the transcript here. It ran with a letter written home by another of Jesse Newell’s sons, Abram, a 21-year-old private in Bob’s unit. Abram was shot in the hand in the Battle of Wilson’s Creek and remained with the 2nd Kansas until October 31st when the regiment finished its service.[iv] Abram’s “Dear Parents” letter may be seen here.

BLEEDING KANSAS, JEFFERSON COUNTY STRIFE

Boots on the ground experience in the Kansas-Missouri border war over slavery had already initiated Bob Newell and a good many other Kansas soldiers to Kansas-Missouri violence. Bob had emigrated to Kansas Territory at 18 years old in 1856. He grew to adulthood in the Bleeding Kansas years when Missourians and partisans from southern states fought to make Kansas a slave state and freestaters fought to keep it free of slavery.[v]

Skirmishes popped up between Missouri and southern proslavers trying to drive freestaters out of Jefferson County and freestaters trying to rid their county of the marauders.[vi] After the peak of Jefferson County strife in September 1856, Jesse Newell was slapped with an arrest warrant that charged him with fighting against the proslavers.[vii]  He provided his own complaint back to the territorial governor, describing the 1856 war occurring in Jefferson County:

Jesse Newell included a frightening anecdote that included his boy, Bob.

“…[This] country is infested with guerrilla bands, for they have taken me and my son Robert out and threatened to hang us both. And since that time they have threatened to hang my brother-in-law Joseph Phitsimons [Fitzsimmons] and have destroyed my property in throwing down my fences and destroying my grain and threatening to burn my house and break up my [saw] mill.”

Named for his grandfather, Robert Newell was born in Richland County, Ohio, in 1838 and moved with his family to the two-year-old state of Iowa when he was 10 years old. The family lived in Mahaska County, not far from a namesake town of Oskaloosa, Iowa. Bob’s two older brothers, Valentine and John, emigrated to Kansas Territory in 1855, the rest of the family settling at what would someday be Oskaloosa, Kansas, in May 1856.

Within two years of settling, Bob Newell owned 160 acres of Jefferson County, Kansas Territory, farm land northwest of Oskaloosa, land that is held today by descendants of Jesse Newell. He also had an interest in his father’s steam-powered sawmill on the west side of the public square. [See the Google image of Oskaloosa, Kansas.]

GOOD TROUBLE

Kansas Territory, as close as it was to the slave-holding states of Missouri and Arkansas, became a draw for determined enslaved people to escape bondage. Lawrence and its Douglas County surrounds, just across the Kansas River from Jefferson County and Oskaloosa, was a hub for these freedom-seekers. There, plans and routes were fixed to help enslaved men, women and children find freedom and safety in the northern states and Canada. Lawrence and Douglas County were well-populated with eastern abolitionists who wanted to rid the nation of slavery all together, and they were willing to break the law to do so.

I haven’t yet discovered how involved Bob Newell’s father, Jesse, was in Underground Railroad activity, but he gave young Bob a taste of it in 1859.

Bob and his brother John Newell rode with about 18 other Oskaloosa area men in their father’s rifle company to play a small role in one of the most celebrated rescues in Kansas history. They stepped up to help the good trouble makers from Lawrence, the Immortal Ten, who in July 1859 quietly broke Underground Railroad conductor John Doy out of a Missouri jail.

Doy had been headed north from Lawrence with 13 freedom-seekers six months earlier when his group was ambushed by slave catchers.[viii] The catastrophe happened about eight miles south of Jesse Newell’s home in Oskaloosa, and Doy had been on his way to the Newell place. Jesse Newell had agreed to help Doy and his party of freedom-seekers in some way as they continued north. [This link explains what we know about Jesse Newell’s role.]

The ambushers took the entire group hostage: Doy, his two assistants and the 13 men, women and children who had risked all for freedom. The ambushers hurried their prisoners across the border into Missouri and jailed Doy.

Six months later, the Immortal Ten swept Doy from his St. Joseph, Missouri, jail cell, crossed the Missouri River and began their dangerous trip south through Kansas to Lawrence. Suspecting they were being followed, the group’s leader, James B. Abbott,[ix] got word to Jesse Newell to bring his rifle company to be an escort guard for the last 20 miles of the trip.

Bob Newell’s name appears just once in the John Doy rescue story, but it tells us plenty about his mettle.

NEWELL’S HALL

Newell's Hall ME festival The_Oskaloosa_Independent_Wed__Oct_10__1860_
Methodist festival at Newell’s Hall. Clip from The Oskaloosa Independent, Oct. 10, 1860. Image from newspapers.com

As Oskaloosa developed, Bob Newell built a sort of town hall for citizens,  Newell’s Hall. He was building the wood-frame building at the southwest corner of Oskaloosa’s public square in August 1860, around the same time his father had built a two-story house for his family not far to the east.[x]

 

Newell’s Hall hosted local congregations of government, military and civil life. County Republicans, county court, church people all gathered there. Oskaloosans assembled at the hall to make sure Oskaloosa had a good enough road to connect it to the Smoky Hill Trail wagon route going from Leavenworth, Kansas Territory, to the gold mines of Colorado. (Oskaloosa won its place on the route.)

Courthouse square
Google map showing locations of the Newell’s sawmill, Bob Newell’s “Newell’s Hall” and Jesse Newell’s homestead. Google maps image, Imagery @2020 Maxar Technologies, USDA Farm Service Agency

Prim Methodists conducted a fund-raising festival at Newell’s Hall to furnish their new church. The October 3, 1860, edition of The Oskaloosa Independent cheerfully urged the ladies and gentlemen of Oskaloosa to pay $1 per couple to come and enjoy the festival. Immediately following the notice was a reply to the impertinent question of whether the festival would include dancing.

“Of course not,” was the organizer’s reply in the newspaper. “We would be surprised to learn that any gentleman or lady of self-respect, and a proper regard for religion and the church, would ever think for a moment, of dancing on such an occasion.”

 

After Bob Newell died at Wilson’s Creek, Henry F. Woolley had taken over Newell’s Hall. He operated a store on the first floor and the county court met upstairs. Eventually, Oskaloosa was erecting grander buildings. Newell’s Hall was pulled down in 1885 and The Oskaloosa Independent walked readers through a compressed Newell’s Hall history, starting with Bob Newell putting it up in 1860.

“Judge Pettit held district court in the lower room,” the newspaper recounted. “J. Gill Spivey there made a speech and took the oath as a [Union] militia officer, and afterward went south and got a commission in the rebel army.

“[U.S. Sen.] S.C. Pomeroy made a speech there, also, when he was senator, and [U.S. Sen. and Union General] Jim Lane made his appeal within its walls for ‘foot soldiers,’ who would go over to Missouri on foot and come back riding one horse and leading another.”[xi]

WAR

Kansas joined the Union as a state free of slavery on Jan. 29, 1861. Three months later, the Civil War began. The new state of Kansas legislature was still writing new laws, trying to determine which city should become the state’s capital and rushing through military-related legislation.

Kansas men were ordered to form “military companies” a few days after the Civil War’s start April 12, 1861. President Lincoln ordered that two full-out Kansas army regiments be filled from those militia-like military companies, and armed and equipped.

Oskaloosa’s public square filled with citizens on April 22 to create a military company.

Wareham Gibbs, a 71-year-old veteran (of the War of 1812, perhaps), marched the crowd from the public square to Newell’s Hall, according to the April 24, 1861, Oskaloosa Independent. The militia men went inside and voted to name their company the Union Guards.

Bob Newell was elected 3rd sergeant of the Union Guards, and Jesse Newell signed up for the uniforms committee. Future Jefferson County military recruiter A.W. Spalding issued a patriotic speech, and so did J. Gill Spivey (And, yes, military records confirm that he did join the Confederates, as referenced above.) The crowd called for John F. Hinton, who declined to speak but instead played a rousing “Yankee Doodle.” The Independent article doesn’t note which instrument he played.

Bob Newell was among those leaving the militia group to join a fighting regiment, the Second Regiment Kansas Volunteer Infantry. The 2nd Kansas organized and drilled in Lawrence during May and set out in June on a 40-mile march to Wyandotte, Kansas (now Kansas City, Kansas), and then across the Missouri River to Kansas City, Missouri. Newell’s comrades elected him third lieutenant of Company G under Captain Russell when they met at Kansas City.

2nd reg bravery from Leav T, The_Oskaloosa_Independent_Sat__Aug_31__1861 p1
A portion of a soldier correspondent’s letter about the Battle of Wilson’s Creek to The Leavenworth Daily Times printed in The Oskaloosa Independent Aug. 31, 1861. The image is from newspapers.com  and may be read here.

The 2nd Kansas’s job would be to help U.S. troops prevent Confederate and Missouri southern sympathizers from conquering Missouri, which was a slave state that did not secede from the United States.

Anonymous soldier correspondents kept Kansas newspapers abreast of Kansas soldiers’ experiences. Some grousing fell upon the long march to Kansas City, a lack of uniforms and their less-than-ideal weapons.

One of the correspondents, who was with Bob Newell’s Company G, wrote that the 2nd Kansas regiment had learned at 8 a.m. on June 18 that they would march to Wyandotte. By 11 a.m. they had crossed the Kansas River at Lawrenece and moved east. They covered 12 miles before stopping at 5 p.m. for a quick supper at Little Stranger Creek, and then took up their march, guns shining in the moonlight.

“During the early part of the evening, bursts of songs, and jests and shouts of laughter echoed over the prairie,” the soldier correspondent wrote, his letter published June 29 in The Fort Scott (Kansas) Bulletin. “But later the unwonted fatigue bore down the exuberant spirits of the men and by 10 o’clock the lines were as quiet as a funeral procession.

“Here and there men would drop out of the ranks, and be down among the tall grass, doggedly determined to go no farther, and it required the utmost exertions on the part of the officers to rouse them to farther effort.”

After sleeping on the prairie grass the regiment was off again, “foot sore and tired.”

“Mile after mile of the weary march dragged slowly along beneath the broiling rays of the sun,” the correspondent wrote. “The blistered foot and parched tongues brought the enthusiasm of yesterday down to zero. The secessionists were cursed as the cause of all our sufferings and many and deep were the maledictions showered on their devoted heads.”[xii]

Soldier “M,” also in Bob Newell’s Company G, wrote that the 2nd Second Kansas finally got part of their uniforms, “a single blouse to each man” when they reached Missouri. Soldier “M” was a correspondent for The Daily Times, Leavenworth.[xiii]

“Perhaps it is no fault of the Government, but still it seems to me that the Kansas volunteers have been treated with gross neglect in the way of clothing, “M” wrote on June 20. “The men grumble not a little about it. Another cause of complaint with the Second Regiment is the character of arms issued to us. They are the common musket, in very bad condition, and I believe they are condemned —  if they are not condemned, they ought to be.”

Writing after the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, correspondent “F.A.R.” charged that the First and Second Kansas regiments had been “shamefully abused” from the start of the war.

“They have never yet received their uniforms, and are half naked, with no tents, and half of them without blankets.” F.A.R. wrote in the September 26 Vermont Phoenix of Brattleboro, Vermont.

“When they started from Fort Leavenworth [First Kansas] in the spring for the South they were provided with condemned tents and blankets, but now they are without either and compelled to sleep on the ground in the open air.

“In the late battle at Springfield [Wilson’s Creek] these two proved themselves the crack regiments, and certainly ought to be provided with clothing and camp equipage.”

The Battle of Wilson’s Creek showed the Kansas troops, considered “raw recruits” in some publications, would fight. The Battlefields.org Wilson’s Creek website page says even though the Confederates counterattacked the Union forces three times, they failed to break through the Union line.

The Confederates and Missouri forces then pulled back, but Union Major General Samuel D. Sturgis, who had taken command when Union Brigadier General Lyon was killed, realized his men were exhausted and running out of ammunition. Sturgis ordered his men to retreat.

“The Confederates were too disorganized and ill-equipped to pursue [Union troops],” the Battlefield.org website summarizes.[xiv]

Despite their loss, the Kansas Union troops won praise for their fighting as regiments and as individual soldiers.

Major John M. Schofield noted in an after-battle commentary that the Union troops’ food and supplies were low and that the soldiers had had to forage in the area.[xv] They were exhausted from their long marches.

But just before the end of the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, the “… Second Kansas Regiment [Bob Newell’s regiment], which had firmly maintained its position on the extreme right from the time it was first sent there, found its ammunition exhausted, and was ordered to retire, which it did slowly and in good order, bringing off its wounded.”

In his letter to Jesse and Rosannah Newell, Captain Russell strove to assure the bereaved couple that Bob Newell did not suffer in his battlefield death.

“He was killed almost by my side, at the close of the day, when we were retiring from the field, by the bursting of a shell,” Russell wrote. “The missiles entered the back part of his head, and he fell a corpse – never moved or spoke after falling.”

“[Bob Newell] – was continually in the front of the battle doing noble execution himself, and giving courage to the whole company by his intrepid example,” Captain Russell wrote, bypassing the cold brevity of a formulaic “we regret to inform you” letter that he might have to write later in the war as soldiers’ deaths multiplied.

Russell himself would soon die in the war. He died Dec. 12, 1862, from injuries he received in the Battle of Prairie Grove, Arkansas, five days earlier.[xvi] He was 29 years old.

The soldier correspondent “M” who served with Bob Newell in Company G praised his regiment’s performance at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek and mourned Bob Newell.

“The Kansas 2nd was the last regiment to leave the field, and the only regiment that left with all the companies present, and in perfect order,” soldier “M” wrote August. 18, 1861, from camp near Rolla, Missouri.[xvii] “We left slowly, followed by the artillery and soon were off the field. As we were leaving, a shell thrown by the enemy fell and burst near us, killing our Third Lieutenant, Robert Newell, from Oskaloosa.

“He was struck on the back of the head, and killed instantly. He was a young man of sterling worth, and as true a heart as fought on the field. During the whole time he was at his post, cool and firm. His loss is keenly felt by us all.”

Abram Newell, Bob’s little brother, wrote in his letter home that Bob had been killed while his regiment was in retreat. The artillery shell that killed Bob also injured several other soldiers, Abram said.

“We did not have time to stop and bury him [Bob] then,” Abram wrote. “But he was decently buried afterwards.”

Soldiers who died at the Battle of Wilson’s Creek were buried on the battlefield and moved six years later to the National Cemetery at Springfield, Missouri. Bob Newell, like so many of the others who died that day, has no grave marker, according to the Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield website.

[i] I am not knowledgeable enough about the Civil War to supply the big picture part of Robert Newell’s story at Wilson’s Creek. I hope readers will seek, in addition to Kristen Pawlak’s piece here, some of the many articles, papers and books about the Battle of Wilson’s Creek. Ms. Pawlak’s recent article about the battle centers on a member of an Iowa regiment that according to the War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I., Vol. III fought alongside the First Regiment Kansas Volunteer Infantry and Bob Newell’s Second Regiment Kansas Volunteer Infantry in the U.S. forces’ Fourth Brigade.

The National Park Service operates the Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, Republic, Missouri; its website: https://www.nps.gov/wicr/index.htm

Jefferson County sent soldiers to the battle in both the 1st and 2nd Kansas regiments. Jeremiah H. Bennet wrote about the Jefferson County soldiers at Wilson’s Creek in The Oskaloosa Independent in two articles:

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/3603122/the-oskaloosa-independent/

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/961239/wilsons-creek-and-jeffco-soldiers/#

[ii]  The troops and casualty figures are from the Wilson’s Creek page on the Battlefields.org website.     https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/wilsons-creek

[iii] Lyon, beloved by his troops, had been a federal in the U.S. armed forces assigned to Kansas Territory after the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act took effect. He was favored by Kansas Territory freestaters. A soldier’s letter written eight days after the Battle of Wilson’s Creek and published in The Leavenworth Times said that Company G Corporal Marshall Edward Spurlock was among those who carried Lyon’s body from the battlefield.

[iv] Abram went on to serve in the Kansas State Militia in 1863 and 1864 as Kansas defended its borders against rebel invasion from across the Missouri border.

[v] The struggle was carried out both with violence and via political tugs of war and elections. The 1854 passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act meant white men (no one else could vote) in Kansas Territory would decide whether to allow slavery in Kansas or to ban it. After defeating the earlier proslavery Kansas Territory government at the ballot box, freestaters in 1859 adopted a constitution prohibiting slavery in Kansas. Kansas became a state free of slavery on January 29, 1861, the time gap due to the U.S. Senate’s slave power opposing a free Kansas. But as southern states began walking out the secession door, enough Senate votes were left to admit Kansas free.

[vi] For background about “Bleeding Kansas” in Jefferson County, Kansas Territory, see earlier posts about the September 1856 “battles” of Grasshopper Falls, Slough Creek and Hickory Point. https://jeffersonjayhawkers.com/2018/01/26/the-battle-of-grasshopper-falls/

https://jeffersonjayhawkers.com/2017/09/11/our-captured-flag-slough-creek-part-i/

https://jeffersonjayhawkers.com/2016/10/10/north-of-the-kansas-river/

[vii]Jesse Newell’s complaint to Kansas Territory Gov. John Geary, dated Sept. 20, 1856, is held in the archives of the Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas. The Joseph Fitzsimmons mentioned in the complaint co-founded Oskaloosa with Jesse Newell.

[viii] Maj. James B. Abbott, the chief organizer of the Immortal Ten and the man who called for Jesse Newell to bring his rifle company and perform escort guard duty, wrote about the rescue and perilous journey from St. Joseph, Missouri, back to Lawrence, Kansas Territory. He read his account at the Kansas State Historical Society annual meeting in 1899. Near the end of his story, he names some of Jesse Newell’s rifle company members [some names corrected]. Read Abbott’s tale here.

“Thinking that it was more than likely that the horseman who followed us would endeavor to get reinforced at Lecompton and try to recapture Dr. Doy, word was sent to Captain Jesse Newell, of Oskaloosa, to furnish an escort; and when we arrived at his place we found the Captain on hand with the following-named officers of his rifle company, to wit: Jerome Hazen, First Lieutenant; J. I. Forbes, Second Lieutenant; John Newell, Gil. Tower, Robert Newell, James Monroe, Resolved Fuller, M. R. Dutton – privates; and eight or ten others. And without delay we passed on, most of the escort going to within a few miles of Lawrence, and the captain and a few of his men going the whole distance, where we arrived about six o’clock in the evening, and where we also found the streets lined with people…”    

[ix] Abbott, endnote viii.

[x] The Newell-Johnson-Searle House, a wood-frame house and limestone cabin on Oskaloosa’s east side, were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017. Only some wood framing inside and portions of the house basement are original to Jesse Newell in 1860, but the small limestone cabin behind it has been dated as a few years older and as original to Jesse Newell. Jesse Newell’s descendants purchased the homestead plot and are busy with restoration.

[xi] The Oskaloosa Independent, Aug. 15, 1885, Page 3.  Jefferson County built its brick courthouse in 1868, providing an official venue for court proceedings and other county functions. The public square upon which the courthouse sat was donated by Jesse Newell and Joseph Fitzsimmons, co-founders of Oskaloosa. The old brick courthouse was destroyed by a tornado in 1960 and replaced with a modern one.

[xii] Read the Fort Scott Bulletin newspaper article by an unnamed soldier here: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/57635204/2nd-kansas-regiment-march-to-wyandotte/

[xiii] This excerpt was taken from a collection of war-time Leavenworth Dailey Times articles. Betts, Vicki,”[Leavenworth, KS] Daily Times, June 12, 1860-October 8, 1861” (2016). By Title. Paper 51. http://hdl.handle.net/10950/705

[xiv] Battlefield.org’s Wilson’s Creek page: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/wilsons-creek

[xv] From Major John M. Schofield’s communications of Aug 20, 1861, War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies Series I., Vol. III. P 57. Copyright 1971, the National Historical Society. Schofield was acting adjutant general for the Army of the West at the time.

[xvi] Russell County, Kansas, is named for Avra P. Russell.

[xvii] Soldier “M”’s letter was printed in the Leavenworth Daily Times on Aug. 22, 1861. The information is taken from Kansans go to War: The Wilson’s Creek campaign as reported by the Leavenworth Daily Times Part II. Edited by Richard W. Hatcher III and William Garret Piston. Kansas History 16 (Winter 1993): 224-247. https://www.kshs.org/publicat/history/1993winter_hatcher.pdf

 

 

Thomas Bayne and Marcus Freeman: Slavery in Jefferson County, Kansas Territory

By Jane Hoskinson*

In the U.S. census of 1840, George Bayne of Shelby County, Kentucky, reported holding 22 black persons in slavery. When he died in 1845, he divided his estate among his children. Those who lived north of the Mason-Dixon line received land and money. Those who lived in slave-holding states received human “property.” In 1850, George’s son Alexander Bayne reported holding six people in slavery in Jefferson County, Kentucky.

Two years later, Alexander moved his family to Missouri. According to Alexander’s granddaughter Nora Bayne, “In 1852 they started west in search of cheaper land, Thomas [Alexander’s son] and a negro boy driving through by wagon and the family coming by boat. Their destination was Westport Landing.”

Alexander managed the Gillis House hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, for two years and bought a farm near Westport. Alexander and his third wife, Elizabeth Hite Bayne, had a total of six children, three from their marriage, two from Elizabeth’s previous marriage to Alexander’s brother Griffin Bayne, and Thomas, Alexander’s son by his first wife, Elizabeth’s niece Susan Hite Bayne.

Thomas Bayne was born May 16, 1836, in Shelby County, Kentucky. His mother, Susan, died not long after his birth. In September 1836, Henrietta, a woman enslaved by the Bayne family, gave birth to her son, Marcus Freeman. George Bayne “gave” Henrietta’s infant to his young grandson Thomas.

The enslaved Henrietta raised the boys together, “just as if we had been two little puppies,” according to Marcus. Thomas would often save food and coffee from his own meals to share with Marcus. “He thought a great deal of me,” Marcus said, “and once when his stepbrother licked me, he nearly cut him to pieces with a Barlow knife.” When the family moved to Missouri, Marcus worked at the Gillis House, learning to cook.

Nora Bayne wrote that her father, Thomas, had a “boyhood dream, of owning a section of land amidst large timber, with fields of corn and blue-grass, and raising pedigreed horses, cattle and hogs. . . In the fall of 1853 they learned that the Kaw Half-Breed Indian Land situated north of the Kaw River 50 miles west would be open for settlement the following spring. [This was inaccurate; the Kanza protested white settlement in 1857 and were upheld.] In February 1854, Thomas Bayne and a young man by the name of Arch Bradley bought a team, covered wagon and outfit for six months’ trip and started in search of the Kaw land.”

The boys built a cabin in virgin timber that reminded them of Kentucky. They hunted for game and explored the area, meeting some of the Kanza people who lived and camped there. Nora Bayne’s impression was that their interactions were peaceful, but she also said that a group of “Indians came to burn the cabin.”

Exploring downriver in the winter, the boys were caught in a blizzard with only two matches, one of them broken, but still succeeded in starting a fire. They discovered the abandoned settlement of Daniel Morgan Boone, who had been appointed “Government Farmer” for the Kanza people in 1827. Arch Bradley returned home after a few months.

Thomas described the Boone village: “Just east of my prairie farm was an old well, near the bank of the river, when I moved here in 1854. The remains of quite a village can still be seen in the vicinity. When I broke the prairie I found the charred remains of a rail fence that had enclosed over 100 acres of land. This old village is seven miles above Lawrence on the north side of the river.”

In spring 1855, Thomas sent for Marcus Freeman, his sister Charity and their cousin Fielding Edwards, to work on his farm.

Marcus recalled, “I stayed for a few months, and then with his permission went back to Kansas City and married and rented my time for $200.00 a year for seven years until I was emancipated. Mr. Bayne gave me a pass which allowed me to go between Missouri and his farm in Kansas.”

The Baynes shared the labor of their enslaved people. The 1859 Kansas census recorded Alexander Bayne owning two people, William Bayne owning one, and Thomas Bayne owning none, as Marcus Freeman’s labor was “rented.” Marcus said that his sister, Charity, “had belonged to Will Bayne, Thomas’s stepbrother, and he left her on his brother’s farm when he went to California.” William Bayne, Thomas’s stepbrother and cousin, traveled to California in 1853 but returned to settle east of Thomas in 1859.

Alexander and Elizabeth Bayne and their three younger children moved to Kansas in 1856, taking a claim west of Thomas’s farm. In 1857, Henry Hatton moved to Kansas from Indiana with his wife, Minerva, and daughters, Susan and Sarah. Thomas Bayne married Susan Hatton in February 1858. William Bayne married Sarah Hatton in October 1860.

Thomas Bayne assisted in surveying the county and setting township lines. Thomas, William and Alexander Bayne held a variety of early local offices in Jefferson County. In 1856, Alexander and William were officers on the proslavery board of Kentucky Township. In 1858, Alexander chaired the Kentucky Township board of supervisors; Thomas was treasurer and later assessor.

Another early Kansas Territory settler was James Scaggs,[i] a slaveholder who claimed land on the Kanza reserve in Jefferson County in 1854. According to John Speer, editor of the Lawrence Tribune, “He was a leading man of his class, enthusiastic in his idea of planting slavery in Kansas.”

In the Kansas Territory 1859 census, James Scaggs reported holding 13 people enslaved; Thomas Bayne recalled the total as 27.

Scaggs was regarded as a “rough” man. He rented out skilled enslaved people, such as blacksmith Robert Skaggs, who worked independently in Lecompton. Marcus Freeman’s sister, Charity, married Robert Skaggs. By 1859, it had become clear that slavery would soon be banned in Kansas. Scaggs removed to Texas with all his “property.” Charity went with her husband, with the permission of the Bayne family. Free-state men had threatened to liberate the enslaved people, so Scaggs armed them, trusting them to guard his $10,000 in specie on the journey.

In January 1861, Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state. In April 1861, the American Civil War began. Marcus Freeman recalled, “I was working in the printing office for Van Horn and A. Beal on the Kansas City Journal at the time of the firing on Sumpter, and worked the press when they were getting out the extras for the occasion. I remember the excitement well.” In March 1863, Marcus married Mary Ann Jones at the Eldridge Hotel in Lawrence, Kansas, where he was working as a cook. According to the Topeka Plaindealer newspaper, Marcus was working at the Eldridge at the time of Quantrill’s raid in August 1863.

In October 1864, Thomas and William Bayne enlisted in Company N, 4th Regiment, Kansas State Militia. From the Kansas State Historical Society, Militia rolls, Oct. 9-26, 1864, Kansas Memory, vol. 2, p. 79: “T.R. Bayne went out as Orderly, was elected Capt. on the 16th Oct., 1864, took command on the next day, commanded the Co. up to the state line, when he deserted and led his company home, except the former Capt. who left the Co. and crossed the line. Capt. Bayne lost his Muster Roll and all the papers belonging to the company. All the other members of the Co. deserted Friday and Friday night, the 22nd of Oct., 1864. . . Most of the Co. refuses to assign the Pay Rolls and Muster Rolls. Each man in the Company drawed one single blanket, the price of which I do not know.”

Kansas militia units helped to defeat the Confederate and guerilla forces of Gen. Sterling Price at the Battle of Westport on Oct. 23, 1864. Militia enlistees were not required to cross the border into Missouri. Thomas’s company and other units who remained in Kansas were within their rights.

The Baynes may have had a personal reason to avoid the battle. Their young half-brother, James Warner Bayne, called “Warner,” had joined Company B of the Confederate 12th Missouri cavalry regiment under Col. David Shanks. Company B was recruited in Jackson County, Missouri, in 1862-63. The 12th participated in Price’s raid on Missouri and Kansas in 1864. Warner Bayne was taken prisoner and died at Fort Leavenworth in November 1864.

Theodore Frederick Bayne, Thomas’s youngest brother, was shot to death on the Kaw bottom (in or near Rising Sun) on August 20, 1865, by Robert Higgins in a dispute over a young lady. Higgins ran away. Laura Bayne, the youngest sister, married Joseph McCall in 1865. She died in 1868.

Alexander Bayne’s third wife, Elizabeth, died in 1866. A year later he married Angeline McAninch in Johnson County, Missouri. Alexander studied medicine and practiced as a country doctor in Missouri and Kansas in the 1870s. He died at the home of his son Thomas in 1883. In 1880-81, William Bayne served as sheriff of Jefferson County. He died in 1911.

Thomas Bayne served as a Jefferson County commissioner in 1874. He was elected to the Kansas legislature in 1882. When he died in 1896, the Oskaloosa Independent said, “Although a democrat he was respected by men of all parties.” Susan Bayne died a few months later in 1897.

Thomas and Susan Bayne had six daughters; Sallie and Jessie died young. Nora and Bettie remained at home until 1897. Fannie Bayne Wilson died in 1898. Nora and Bettie raised her daughter and son, Inez and Thomas Bayne Wilson (https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/thomas-bayne-wilson/12238 ), until their father, Benjamin Wilson, remarried in 1903. Maude Bayne married John Morin in 1878; they raised two daughters, Zerelda and Mary Maud. The Morin family moved to California in the 1910s, and Nora and Bettie moved with them.

Robert and Charity Skaggs worked for James Scaggs in Texas, six years enslaved and two as free persons, earning enough money to return to Kansas in 1868 or 1869. William and Thomas Bayne helped them get started farming in Kansas, renting land to them. They bought 50 acres near Big Springs in Douglas County and farmed there for 40 years. They are buried in Eastview Cemetery in Big Springs, along with Charity and Marcus’s mother (and Thomas Bayne’s foster mother), Henrietta Freeman.

In 1871, John Speer reported that James Scaggs, having lost his fortune, was living in Montgomery County, Kansas, renting a cabin from a man he had formerly enslaved.

Marcus Freeman was head cook at the Eldridge Hotel in Lawrence until 1885, when he accepted a position at the Copeland Hotel in Topeka. He was head cook there for nearly 20 years. He owned a barbershop in Topeka, and Mary Ann opened a bakery there in 1894.

They had five children. Only their daughter, Mayme Johns Shane, survived them. Marcus Freeman died in 1905.

According to the Topeka Plaindealer, Marcus Freeman “was one of the best cooks of his day, and was well acquainted with most of the leading men of the state and nation. He was a drawing card for the Copeland as it was often said by drummers and politicians that they longed to get back to Topeka to get some of his cooking.” But in 1901, the Copeland let Marcus Freeman go. “Mark Freeman for many years head shef (sic) at the Copeland Hotel was relieved on Saturday night,” according to the June Topeka Plaindealer in 1901. “His place was filled by a white cook.”

In 1895, Zu Adams of the Kansas State Historical Society, interviewed Marcus Freeman for a collection of narratives about slavery in Kansas. Marcus was reluctant to give her permission to publish his memoir unless she first consulted Thomas Bayne. “Mr. Bayne,” he said, “has always been a good friend of mine, and I don’t want to hurt him. . . He was offered at one time $1,800 for me. A man named Davis wanted me for his father’s farm in the south. Mr. Bayne was kind to his slaves. He would buy cloth for himself and me off of the same piece of goods. . . When the colored refugees came over into Kansas during the war, many of them came up the river as far as Lawrence. They were destitute. Mr. Bayne assisted them in many ways. He invited [them] to come out to his woodland and carry in all the wood they needed for fuel, free of cost.”

When Zu Adams wrote to Thomas Bayne, he responded with a few additions to Marcus’s account, and offered his reaction to her project, “I am not ashamed of having owned Slaves. Of course we knew that we had a great responsibility on our hands but was willing to meet it – we was not like northern people covered solely by prophet. . . but it is of no use to write on this Subject – the northern people don’t now understand what Slavery was and never will.”

This paternalistic attitude was common among Kansas slaveholders, according to Marc Allan Charboneau: “Because they had convinced themselves that slaves had accepted their enslavement willingly, slaveholders placed blame for disloyalty on abolitionists and other free-soilers in the territory. Paternalism relied on a hopeful belief that by treating slaves decently, they would reciprocate with loyalty and docility. Slaveholders had difficulty admitting that perhaps the slaves were not as contented with their condition as they seemed. . . As for the slaves, they rejected any paternalistic attempts of control by the masters and instead chose to take advantage of a unique opportunity for freedom offered by Kansas.”

When Thomas Bayne ran for the Kansas senate in 1892, Marcus Freeman told a reporter, “Tom Bayne is a good neighbor, but he is on the wrong side, and always was, and these times when these fellows are bidding for the colored vote, I feel like drawing history on them. They can’t stand history. I’m a free man, . . . but it is no thanks to Tom Bayne. No self-respecting colored man can vote for him.”

~

* Written and researched by Jane Hoskinson, editor of the Jefferson County Genealogical Society publication, Yesteryears, with research assistance from Liz Leech.  Jane was an editor for University Relations at the University of Kansas for 35 years, but got her start in journalism at age 11 working for her father, John P. Hoskinson, at the Oskaloosa Independent.

Sources:

  • Bald Eagle, Lecompton Historical Society, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 1990
  • Bayne, Nora, letter to A.E. Van Petten, Sept. 11, 1926, Kansas Historical Society (printed in Yesteryears, October 1992)
  • Charboneau, Marc Allan, “Slave Territory, Free State: Slaveholders and Slaves in Early Kansas,” M.A. Thesis, Emporia State University, Dec. 18, 1999
  • Cory, C.E., “Slavery in Kansas,” Kansas Historical Collections, Vol. 7, pp. 229-242
  • Cutler, William G., History of the State of Kansas, published by A.T. Andreas, 1883
  • The Kansas Blackman, Topeka, Kansas, Aug. 31, 1894
  • Kansas Historical Society, https://www.kshs.org/, https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/kansapedia/19539, https://www.kansasmemory.org/
  • The Kansas Semi-Weekly Capital, Topeka, Kansas, Nov. 10, 1892
  • Leech, Elizabeth A., “Jefferson County Jayhawkers and Forgotten Freestaters,” https://jeffersonjayhawkers.com/
  • The Oskaloosa Independent, Aug. 15, 1860; Aug. 26, 1865; Aug. 7, 1880; Nov. 27, 1896
  • Patrick, A.G., “Old Settler’s Corner,” Oskaloosa Times, Apr. 18, 1902
  • Portrait and Biographical Album of Jackson, Jefferson and Pottawatomie Counties, Kansas, 1890
  • Territorial Kansas (reminiscences of Marcus Freeman, John Armstrong and John Speer; letters from Thomas Bayne and John E. Stewart), https://territorialkansasonline.ku.edu/index.php
  • The Topeka Daily Capital, Aug. 23, 1879; Dec. 15, 1888
  • The Topeka Plaindealer, Dec. 14, 1900; Apr. 7, 1905

[i] “Scaggs” is the spelling in the earliest Jefferson County documents. “Skaggs” or “Skeggs” is the spelling that appears on the memorial of Robert and Charity Skaggs and in many later documents.