Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories: Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas
John Locke · en
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.