In March Quantrell planned to attack Independence. We met at David George’s and went from there toward Independence as far as Little Blue church, where Allen Parmer, who afterward married Susie James, the sister of Frank and Jesse, told the captain that instead of there being 300 Jayhawkers in Independence, there were 600. The odds were too strong, and we swung around to the southwest.
Thirteen soldiers who guarded the bridge at the Big Blue found their number unlucky. Continue reading
Buffalo Bill Cody
Bill would be 169 years old today. I wonder what kind of show he would be putting on, were he alive and able.
William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody (February 26, 1846 – January 10, 1917) was an American scout, bison hunter, and showman. He was born in the Iowa Territory (now the U.S. state of Iowa), in Le Claire but he grew up for several years in his father’s hometown in Canada before his family moved to the Kansas Territory.
Buffalo Bill started working at the age of eleven after his father’s death, and became a rider for the Pony Express at age 14. During the American Civil War, he served from 1863 to the end of the war in 1865. Later he served as a civilian scout to the US Army during the Indian Wars, receiving the Medal of Honor in 1872.
One of the most colorful figures of the American Old West, Buffalo Bill started performing in shows that displayed cowboy themes and episodes from the frontier and Indian Wars. He founded his Buffalo Bill’s Wild West in 1883, taking his large company on tours throughout the United States and, beginning in 1887, in Great Britain and Europe.
John Jarrette
I was only seventeen when Col. Mockbee gave a dancing party for his daughter at his home in Harrisonville which was to terminate seriously for some of us who were there.
The colonel was a Southerner, and his daughter had the Southern spirit, too. Probably this was the reason Continue reading