THE VIGILANTES
Published in Wetmore Spectator,
August 28, 1931
By John T. Bristow
There was, assuredly, need for the vigilantes at one time in the Far West, where the idea originated and here there were no laws and no courts other than “miner’s courts”—impromptu courts set up by the people on the spot. But, with all the machinery of organized government functioning normally and in most instances efficiently there in Nemaha County, there was, seemingly, no call here for the vigilantes when they hanged Charley Manley.
The courier-tribune
(Semi-weekly)
Geo. C. Adriance Dora Adriance
SENECA KANSAS
Aug. 28, 1931
Mr. John T. Bristow, Wetmore, Kansas.
My dear Mr. Bristow:
We have just read with a great deal of interest your article in the Wetmore Spectator dealing with the hanging of Charley Manley. This is the first time I have ever heard of this act of the vigilantes. We are going to check through our files of April 1877 and see if we can find anything relating to it. In any event, I write to ask permission to reproduce this article in a much special issue of the Tribune we are putting out next year to celebrate Seneca’s 75th anniversary.
The article is so well written and deals with so early history of our county that I consider it admirably adapted to our purpose. The next time you are in ‘Seneca I should like to have you call at The Courier-Tribune office. I have no doubt you have a fund of other stories that would be just as interesting.
Sincerely yours,
Geo. C. Adriance
It is a tragic story — the hanging of Manley by the vigilantes. It was Mar. 31, 1877. I was a small boy when I first knew Charley Manley, just about big enough to turn a grindstone, with effort. There is purpose in this reference to the grindstone.
I remember the time very distinctly. And, with all due respect to the memory of my departed elders—the vigilantes—if, after so many years, I may be permitted to express myself freely and fully, I would say God seemed to be terribly far away from the scene that night. Before going into the details of the hanging, let us have a look into the workings of the vigilantes—that organization of men who set itself up as judge and jury and executioner. There was tactful veiling of the identity of the individual members, and little is known of the inside workings of the local vigilantes.
This much is known, however. There was one little slip — a bungle—that was, in time, the means of disclosing the identity of the local operators, but that secret was also carefully guarded until practically the last one of the vigilantes has passed on to another world beyond the reach of wagging tongues and the strong arm of organized law. There is now only one—possibly two—of the originals left.
The vigilante organization or “Committee,” as it was called, had its birth in the Far West, for the specific purpose of dealing with “road agents”—banded highwaymen and murderers. The idea traveled East and the farther it got away from the home of its origin the farther it seems to have gotten away from its original purpose.
In the sixties and seventies vigilante committees were in evidence the full length of the old Overland Trail, from California to Kansas, and the fact that Wetmore and Granada had as residents a half dozen or so of the old stage-drivers, express messengers, and pony express riders, may account, in some measure, for the local organization of vigilantes. And, if so, by the irony of fate, it was in the home of a former express messenger that the vigilantes claimed their first and only victim. It is known that at least two of the old stage employees were vigilantes.
Without question, the idea filtered in from the West. The almost constant stream of returning gold-seekers passing through Granada over the Old Trail at a time when the vigilantes were very active in the West — particularly in Montana—may have scattered the seed.
While I was out in the western mining district, a quarter of a century ago, chasing fickle fortune—which was always just a few jumps ahead of me—I heard much about the exploits of road agents, and the work of the vigilantes.
In the Old West, at Bannack, Virginia City, and Nevada, in the Alder Gulch section of Montana, where a hundred million dollars in placer gold was recovered in the early sixties, road agents plundered and killed, without mercy.
Placer gold, as many know, is free gold that has been eroded from exposed gold-bearing ledges and deposited in the sands and gravel along the water courses. It was the first form of gold-mining in the West—the lure that caused the great stampede to California in 1849. It has rightfully been called “the poor man’s gold,” because of the comparative ease in which it is recovered.
The flush times in the Alder Gulch section, which contained about twenty thousand eager gold diggers, made rich pickings for the road agents. They preyed upon individual miners, on express companies, on anyone, anywhere they could grab gold-dust, or minted gold, the money of the times. And they were killers, every one of them.
The Montana vigilantes, sworn to secrecy and loyalty, with a by-law boldly asserting, “The only punishment that shall be inflicted by this committee is Death,” undertook the job of exterminating the road agents. And in one month’s time twenty-one of the notorious Henry Plummer gang were hung. The job was pepped up a bit when the first victims squealed on the others. This is history of the Montana vigilantes. They patterned after the California vigilantes. And it is to be assumed that vigilantes everywhere were organized along the same lines.
There was a vigilante committee in Nemaha County at least nine years prior to the hanging of Manley. In September, 1868, Melvin Baughn, a horse-thief, was legally hanged at Seneca for killing Jesse Dennis, one of the deputized men who helped capture him. In writing of that hanging George Adriance said there was a vigilante committee at the time, and it wanted the officers to turn Baughn over to the committee.
Charley Manley and Joe Brown were charged with being implicated in stealing John O’Brien’s horse. O’Brien lived on the Dave Ralston place west of Granada and Brown lived on a quarter section of land west of the Charley Green farm in the Granada neighborhood, about two miles from the O’Brien farm. Charley Manley lived with the family of W. W. Letson at Netawaka. He had lived with the Letsons at Granada and at Wetmore before they moved to Netawaka. Letson and Spencer kept a general store here in the old corner building now owned by Cawood Brothers, originally built by Rising and Son.
At one of their meetings, it appears, the vigilantes decided to hang Manley and Brown. One member who lived close to Brown pleaded for the life of his neighbor. Brown had a family of small children. The discussion waxed hot — and there was a great rift in the personnel of the organization. They did not agree in the matter. The determined ones, however, went ahead with their plans for the hanging. And on the night of the execution some of the vigilantes, not in accord with the plan, spent the night at the homes of their neighbors so as to clear themselves of suspected participation in the hanging.
Charley Manley was arrested at Netawaka and was to have been given a preliminary trial in Justice H. J. Crist’s court at Granada. He was brought to Wetmore early the day of his execution and held under guard in the office of the old Wetmore House until evening. The delay supposedly was occasioned in order to bring Joe Brown to the bar of “justice” at the same time. Later it appeared the proceedings had been delayed, waiting for nightfall.
Robert Sewell, constable, liveryman, ex-stage driver and Indian fighter, was the arresting officer. On the plains, and here, he was known as “Bob Ridley.” George G. Gill was deputized as assistant constable. Dr. J. W. Graham, a Justice of the Peace in Wetmore at the time, was appointed special prosecutor by County Attorney Simon Conwell. Sewell, Gill, and Graham, with Manley, drove to Granada in a spring wagon.
On the way to Granada, all unconscious of what was in the air, Dr. Graham, seeing a tree by the roadside with a large overhanging limb, jokingly said, “Whoa, stop the team, Bob—-we might just as well hang Charley right here.” Manley laughed and said, “Oh, no—let’s all have a drink.” He passed his bottle.
Court was to have been held in the Hudson hotel at Granada. But before proceedings had started, the vigilantes, in black-face, with coats turned insideout, appeared upon the scene and began shooting up the place — with blanks. They seized Manley and rushed him away—to his doom. Pandemonium reigned, and in the excitement the president of the vigilante committee, it is said, raised a window and told Brown to “beat it.” So, it would seem, the neighbor’s plea for Brown’s life, while very costly to himself, as you shall see later, had made its impression.
Earlier in the evening, one high up in vigilantic officialdom, had taken the precaution to relieve the three constables and the prosecuting attorney of their revolvers—borrowed them “for a few minutes.” Dr. Graham says he never did get his back.
Charley Manley was taken to a big tree down on the creek west of Granada, and strung up. The tree was on the old Terrill place, now owned by the Achtens. Monoah H. Terrill, a store-keeper at Granada, was a brother-in-law of Manley. Terrill had died a long time before the Manley hanging.
Manley was buried on the Terrill place—or rather what afterwards proved to be the roadside—by the grave of his brother-in-law. Later the bodies were removed. Terrill was placed in the Letson lot in the Netawaka cemetery. Some say the body of Manley was also taken there. The Letson lot has no such marker. Others say he was re-buried in the northeast corner of the Granada cemetery. There is no marker or other visible evidence of his grave there. His grave now seems to be as irredeemably lost as was his life on that fatal March night fifty-four years ago.
It is said by those who were in a position to speak at the time, that Manley made no protest, spoke not a word when the mob took him from the room. Whether it was sheer shock that robbed him of all power to speak, to think, to feel, no one knows. Dr. Graham says that after they started away with the prisoner someone fired a gun, and he heard Manley say, “Don’t do that boys, it’s not fair.” Just what happened after that was never made public. The knowing ones didn’t seem to want to talk. There were, however, many conflicting rumors afloat—sub rosa reports, you understand. One rumor was that Manley was dead before they left the main street with him—died from fright and rough handling.
On the way out one of the vigilantes lost his cap. Someone picked it up. The same man who had “borrowed” the officers guns, acting as rear guard, rode back and took the cap. He said to the people who had followed from the court room, “We don’t want to hurt anyone—but keep back.”
Some of the men in that mob were recognized, but, as one old timer aptly puts it, no one at that time seemed to care a “helluva” lot about knowing who they were. However, as the veiling gradually lifted, it became known that the major portion of the respectable adult male citizens — and a few bad eggs—were numbered among the vigilantes. They were, mostly, fair-minded and just men. But, even fair-minded men, under stress, can sometimes be auto-hypnotized into doing strange things—and it would seem some of the vigilantes got terribly out of hand that night. From all accounts the performance was a rather disgusting exhibition of mob passion. Later criticism of the vigilantes was based very largely on the inexcusable savage demonstration attending the Manley hanging. And mistake not, there was criticism—criticism that stirred the whole countryside.
Vigilantes did not tell their wives everything. It might have been better if they had. And if the Manley demonstration had met with the approval of the good wives and mothers of the participating vigilantes, the women might have taken a hand in the general clean-up and scrubbed the burnt-cork, or whatever it was that blackened their faces, from back of the men’s ears and thus obliterated the telltale marks that lingered, like the itch, with some of the boys for several days. The women generally deprecated the hanging.
Just what evidence the vigilantes had against Charley Manley, and how authentic or damaging it was, never was made public. Nor will it ever be. Had the vigilantes permitted the trial to progress far enough to establish the prisoner’s guilt, their actions would, no doubt, have received less criticism. The friends of the vigilantes—the vigilantes themselves never talked, as vigilantes—said that it would have been difficult to produce convicting evidence as Manley was too good at “covering up.” He was credited with being the “brains” of the gang.
Two business men in Netawaka were also suspected. They evaporated. In fact, there were a dozen or more men scattered about over the country who were under suspicion.
It was rather a hard proposition to handle. The farmers—the vigilantes and the farmers, with a sprinkling of town people, were practically the same—were terribly incensed because of the thefts of their horses, and they were determined, at any cost, to put a stop to it. And while the convicted horse-thief did not draw a death sentence, the courts were efficient enough and willing enough to impose ample punishment on offenders. But the real trouble was in getting convicting evidence. And the courts could not, of course, play “hunches” in so serious a matter.
And where convicting evidence was lacking, it would seem about the best—or worst—the vigilantes could do, was to make an example of some one of those under suspicion, and hope that they had hanged the right man — a rather dangerous procedure, and hardly sufficient excuse for taking a life.
But one thing that worked then against bringing suspects into court was, that in case of failure to convict, the court costs were assessed to the complaining witness, and that meant a lot to the pioneer farmer—especially to one who had just lost his horses. At least, that is the way the John O’Brien complaint was handled.
The old court record shows that Constable Sewell traveled twenty-four miles in making the arrest of Manley, for which he received $2.40. George G. Gill, as deputy, received a like sum. The attorney received $7.50. There was also a charge of $1.00 for the keep of the prisoner, and another $1.00 for guarding him. Isaiah Hudson traveled only six miles, three miles out and three miles back, in making the arrest of Joseph Brown, for which he received $1.20. One witness, J. W. Duvall, was subpoenaed in the Brown case. None in the Manley case. And, presumably, because of the disrupted court proceedings and the loss of the prisoners, it was “considered and adjudged” by the court that the costs in both cases be charged to John O’Brien, the complaining witness.
Then, after the hanging of Manley, someone made a mistake—a very serious mistake—which, coupled with the previous disagreement, came very close to disrupting the vigilante organization. A letter, purporting to come from the vigilantes, was sent to the rebellious member. It gave the man ten days to leave the country, and warned him that if he failed to do so he would be given the same treatment as was meted out to Manley.
This was a hard jolt to the obstreperous member. And it was a harder jolt for the man’s wife. The woman opened and read the letter first, and only for that she might never have known what it was that caused her man to so suddenly develop a bad case of ague. Then, every day, for weeks, as the gathering shades of night began to fall upon his home, this man, with his wife and three small children, trailed off through the woods, across lots, to the home of a relative to spend the night.
That letter was the cause of much mental and even physical misery for the woman. She suffered heart attacks at the time: And in the weeks that followed she suffered the mental torments of the damned. In relating the matter to me very recently, she said, “Every time the dog barked I would have a fit.” According to her version of it, those were the blackest days of her life. And, like a scar, she will carry its horrors to her dying day—to the grave. She knew what a crazed mob was capable of doing. As a matter of fact, she knew what a guerilla mob had done to my father’s family.
Many, many were the times that my mother—sweet, patient, administering angel—was called upon to be with that woman in her hours of great distress. And once, when the insidious thing was about to consume her, my mother brought the woman home with her for a week.
The marked member finally took the matter up with other vigilantes, and to save the sanity of the man’s wife — and no doubt to appease the man’s fears also — after all denying knowledge of the letter, the vigilantes signed a paper pledging protection to the man. The marked man — and his friends in the organization—however, had a pretty good idea who wrote that letter.
With such a document in evidence the identity of the vigilantes, which had been so closely guarded up to this time, was no longer cloaked. At least the veil of secrecy now had a big rip in it.
The hanging of Manley had a tendency to slow up activities, but it did not stop the horse-stealing. And once more the Committee set out to make an example of an accused man. Frank Gage, charged with stealing a horse from Washie Lynn, was being tried in a Justice court somewhere over in the Powhattan neighborhood — probably Charley Smith’s court. The vigilantes were in readiness to “storm” the court and take the prisoner, as they had done in the Manley case at Granada, but the plan was abandoned at the last minute.
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.
The road made a sharp turn to the north before reaching Granada. Peter Shuemaker lived on the farm now owned and occupied by Charley Zabel, west of the turn. Shuemaker wanted the road to pass by his farm, and, at his own expense, built a cut-off in the hope that traffic would be diverted that way.
Roads in those days were built, mostly, by the simple process of going out with a plow and running a couple of parallel furrows, with the proper spacing to accommodate all anticipated traffic. Peter Shuemaker’s cut-off veered off to the northwest, across the prairies just anywhere the going seemed to be good, until it intersected the Old Trail again. And though as simple as that, road building in those days was not without difficulties. Some would want the road and some wouldn’t want it.
“Uncle” Peter’s road bumped into a circumstance when his engineer projected the cut-off across the farm of a certain female importation from the Emerald Isle. And right there Irish wit and Missouri temper mixed. William Porter, not so very long removed from the Rushville hills, was chief engineer and contractor for the prairie division of “Uncle” Peter’s cut-off. Mrs. Flannigan met the Missourian head-on, with an old horse-pistol wrapped in her apron. “Off with you, I’ll not have the place torn up,” she commanded.
Entirely unaware of the ominous clouds rolling up in the sky of his destiny, the wily William squared himself in an attitude of defiance, squinted his eyes in the peculiar manner of his people, spat out his tobacco, and said, “I carkilate I’m running this road.” Whereupon Mrs. Flannigan unbound her pistol, and replied, “It’s a fine young man you are, but I’m sorry to tell you that you’ll never see your old mother again.”
Contractor Porter decided to take fate in his own hands and change the plans of destiny as decreed by Mrs. Flannigan. He took another chew of tobacco and then meekly backtracked for a mile over the perfectly good road he had just built—and ran some more furrows. You couldn’t block a road project with a horse-pistol, or even with injunctions, in those days. There was too much open land.
The generous spacings and fine appointments of Peter Shuemaker’s cut-off—it had a corduroy bridge, over Muddy Creek, with nigger-head trimmings—were out of all proportion to the scanty travel that passed his way. And when “Uncle” Peter found that he couldn’t bring the traffic to him, he, like Mahomet, went to it. Shuemaker built a hotel in Granada.
Recollections are now about as dim as the Old Trail itself, but there is one oldtimer who asserts that it is his belief that Ice Gentry and Charley Manley were credited with being the axe-men who made the slashings on the timber division of “Uncle” Peter’s cut-off. But, says another, that may have been before Manley came into the neighborhood. Nothing certain about that, though. So many of the old fellows have their biographies so scrambled that it is hard to get at the truth. The suggestion was, nevertheless, timely. And, anyway, Charley Manley spent his last day on earth in Peter Shuemaker’s hotel at Wetmore.
As I remember him, Charley Manley was a rather quiet, pleasant mannered man. And, although a matured man himself — he was about forty, and unmarried — he made friends of the youngsters about town and seemed to enjoy their company. He could always find a way to help a boy with a few dimes.
Early in his career here in Wetmore it was settled that I was to have the job of turning the grindstone for Charley Manley whenever he needed help to grind his axe. Since that time I have often wondered why he had so much axe-grinding to do. But I thoroughly enjoyed, with all the thankfulness of a growing young boy’s” healthy heart, the dimes and quarters he gave me. And sometimes I have thought that maybe he ran in a few extra and needless grindings solely to gladden my heart.
Then came the time when Charley Manley fitted his grindstone with foot pedals. I used to sit by and watch him do the grinding without my help, and long for the dime I was being cheated out of by the introduction of that new labor-saving device. One time Charley Manley let me pour water on the grindstone while he ran it with foot-power. He said the tin can suspended over the stone, which was releasing a steady stream of water where it was needed, did not do the work so satisfactorily. He gave me a quarter for that.
With all his axe-grinding, I never knew Charley Manley to do more than chop wood on the Letson wood-pile. No coal was burned here in that axe-grinding period. Wood was brought in from the timber, a wagon-load at a time, in the pole, or in cord-wood lengths. It was chopped into stove lengths as needed, enough to cook a meal at a time. And sometimes the chopper would make the supply very scanty, or even renege on the job altogether. Then the cook would have to go out and scrape up chips. How well I know that. Aside from my axe-grinding activities I spent some time on the Bristow wood-pile in my younger days. And I am now sorry to say there were times when my patient mother would have to gather in the chips.
The last words Charley Manley ever said to me were, “Come over to Netawaka and see me sometimes, Johnny, and I’ll let you turn the grindstone for me.” He smiled pleasantly. That was while he was held in custody here the day of his execution. Poor fellow, he did not then suspect what was to be his fate. Naturally, I felt badly about the hanging—and the loss of my opportunity to make another honest dime. And the worst that I could now wish for the shades of his executioners, is that they be compelled to take turns in turning Manley’s grindstone, over there in the vast beyond, until his axe is made sharp, sharp, sharp—and then, that Charley’s ghost be licensed by Him who judges all things, to use it—provided, of course, that he didn’t steal their horses.