Not as much has been said or
written about the Border Wars as about the Civil War. And yet, the two are a
part of each other. The fighting along the Kansas-Missouri line was cruel and
bloody. William Clark Quantrill was a guerrilla warfare leader in this area and
had among his followers such outlaws as the James brothers and Cole Younger and
his band.
Quantrill and his men were causing
such havoc along the border that Gen. Thomas Ewing Jr. issued Order No. 11, the
gist of which meant swift and cruel punishment to anyone harboring Confederate
soldiers. In this region it was hard to tell who leaned toward the Union and who leaned toward the Confederacy.
The story comes down through my
husband’s family of an unusual incident that happened about this time. Cole
Younger took a chance when he knocked on the door of this farmer, asking for a
place for his band of men to camp. They needed to rest, eat and sleep, he told
the farmer.
This man stood in the door looking
at the band of rough-looking men. What was he to do? If he said they could
stay, he might be turned in as a Confederate sympathizer. If he told them they
couldn’t stay, there was no telling what might happen. He silently assessed the
situation and decided for the sake of his family, he must tell them they could
stay. However, in return, he extracted a promise from Cole that no one in his
family would be harmed.
When the farmer started to tell
Cole where he should camp, Cole informed the farmer he had already checked out
the situation and had found the perfect place to camp. A spring, feeding into a
creek with tall trees and brush, which would hide his men from prying eyes,
would be the right site.
Instead of an overnight stay, the
men camped there several nights. Needless to say, there was not much sleeping
being done inside the house.
When Cole came to the door a few
mornings later, he politely thanked the farmer for letting them stay. He talked
about the wonderful spring water and the comfortable area where they slept.
When he finished talking, he handed the owner some money to pay for the trouble
he had caused. He told the man he hoped their stay would not bring suspicion to
the household. He and his men disappeared down the road.
Zoe Rexroad
Adrian, Missouri
went out from the editors of the then CAPPER’s Weekly asking for readers to send in articles on true pioneers. Hundreds of
letters came pouring in from early settlers and their children, many now in
their 80s and 90s, and from grandchildren of settlers, all with tales to tell.
So many articles were received that a decision was made to create a book, and
in 1956, the first My Folks title – My
Folks Came in a Covered Wagon – hit the
shelves. Nine other books have since been published in the My Folks series, all filled to the brim with true
tales from CAPPER’s readers, and we are proud to make those stories available
to our growing online community.