CAPTAIN WILLIAM E. MITCHELL
By Kathryn Mitchell Buster
Captain William E. Mitchell, Jr. was born in or near Kilmarnock, Scotland on June 24, 1825, the son of William E. and Mary Izott Mitchell. William, Sr. was thought to have been a weaver in or around Paisley, Scotland.
Capt. Mitchell’s siblings were Alexander, Agnes, Jean, James, and possibly even Henry and a sister, Helen, who may have died as a child.
In 1826, when William was just one year old, his family immigrated to Middletown, CT where his father was weaver in charge of the Russell & Company Weaving Mill in Middletown. His father was also very active in the Middletown Anti-Slavery Society, which was founded in the 1830s.
Young William was educated at D.H. Chase’s private school in Middletown. He then served as a corporal in the Connecticut State Militia in 1846. In 1849, he embarked on a six-year odyssey in search of gold, sailing from New York City to California via Cape Horn. It is assumed that he was not successful, for in 1852 he traveled on to search for gold in Maldon, Australia. After a six-year absence, William returned to Middletown, making a detour on the way home to visit family in Scotland.
When William returned to the United States, he found a country embroiled in controversy over the question of slavery and the newly enacted Kansas-Nebraska Act which gave settlers in these two territories “popular sovereignty” to decide for themselves whether they would enter the Union as free or slave states. At that time the Connecticut-Kansas Colony was being formed in New Haven, CT, recruiting people to settle in Kansas Territory to ensure its future as a free state. With his abolitionist upbringing and apparent wanderlust, William was eager to join them.
The Connecticut-Kansas or New Haven Colony is also referred to as the Beecher Bible and Rifle Colony. The great abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher, in rousing oration, led a drive to furnish a Sharps rifle, the most modern weapon of the day, to every member of the Colony immigrating to Kansas Territory. He also saw that a Bible was given to each man. And with that, the newspapers of the day began to refer to the group as the Beecher Bible and Rifle Colony, and the rifles as Beecher’s Bibles.
When the Colony left Connecticut their members included fifty-seven men, four women and two children. They traveled by boat to New York, and by train to St. Louis via Buffalo, Cleveland and Terre Haute. At St. Louis they boarded the steam ship ‘Clara’ for Kansas City.
Charles Lines, the company’s elected leader, kept a diary of their progress in the form of letters sent to Eastern papers. They were widely reprinted and circulated so that the entire country was aware of the Colony’s experiences in Kansas.
When they arrived at Kansas City they bought supplies and outfitted themselves with teams of oxen, then started in groups for Lawrence, arriving there between the 12th and 16th of April. G.W. Brown, editor of the Herald of Freedom, wrote of their arrival, “ They are a hearty, resolute, freedom-loving looking set of fellows, and we wish their fondest anticipations of life in the West be fully realized.”
On the evening of the 15th a meeting of welcome was held by the town’s leaders. Speeches were made and friendships re-kindled and initiated and the Company was invited to join in the Free State Government (within weeks Free-state leaders were arrested for treason and colony member Dr. Joseph Pomeroy Root was elected Chairman of the Kansas State Central Committee). The colonists pledged to come to the aid of Lawrence if called.
On the evening of the 18th, the company joined the citizens of Lawrence welcoming Senator Reeder and Free-State Governor Robinson in the dining room of the unfinished Free State Hotel. Ex-Governor Reeder and Robinson had been away when the town celebrated the Colony’s arrival. Pro-slavery forces would destroy the Free State Hotel during the sacking of Lawrence the following month.
After exploring other possible locations, the entire company arrived at Wabaunsee on the 28th of April and set about making it a home, their first shelters being dugouts or tents. Charles Lines suggested they all work together to build one large communal dwelling from the scarce supply of cottonwood trees growing on a nearby island in the Kansas (Kaw) River. Mitchell declared he would have none of that, and built himself a small log cabin three miles east of Wabaunsee.
According to Company minutes, on May 14th, “Mr. Lines called a meeting and read a dispatch from Topeka; “Dear Sir, news has just come that colonels Holliday, Dickey and Governor Robinson are now prisoners with the Missourians and that our friends at Lawrence are in want of help. Hope you will all come to a man and bring all the spare arms you have—come immediately to Topeka and there we will devise the best plan for operation.”
Adding to the urgency of this call for help, Colony member Amos Cottrell was overdue to return from Kansas City with a load of freight, so they decided to dispatch Mr. Mitchell, Dr. Root and Mr. Nesbitt to locate Cottrell and find out what was going on in Lawrence, and to report as early as possible. After the committee’s departure the Company voted to organize a military company they named the “Prairie Guards.” The absent William Mitchell was elected their Captain. They were enrolled as Company H. of the Free Kansas Militia. William Mitchell was addressed as Captain for the rest of his life.
The trio found Cottrell safe at Topeka, and Mitchell and Root continued on to Lawrence to assess the situation there. Having done so, they were on their way back to Wabaunsee on the California Road when they were fired upon as they approached a cabin occupied by the Lecompton Riflemen under the command of Captain John Donaldson. Placed under arrest without charges, they were taken to Dr. Stringfellow’s camp (probably Fort Titus) the next day. Sara Robinson documents the incident as an act of lawlessness in her book, Kansas: It’s Interior and Exterior Life. Eastern papers, including the New York Times, reported Mitchell and Root’s deaths at the hands of border ruffians. On the sixth day of their captivity, the 21st of May, they were marched within two miles of Lawrence where they witnessed David Rice Atchison address the assembled pro-slavery forces before their sacking of Lawrence. Dr. Root, who was proficient at shorthand, recorded Atchison’s words for posterity:
“Carry out to the letter the lofty and glorious resolves that have brought [you] here—the resolves of the entire South, and of the present administration, that is, to carry the war into the heart of the country, never to slacken or stop until every spark of free-state, free-speech, free-niggers, or free in any shape is quenched out of Kansas!”
The prisoners were released as the bombardment of the Free State Hotel began. Mitchell and Root returned to Wabaunsee the next day.
On June 30th Mitchell and two others were elected to represent the company at the Free State Convention called at Topeka for July 3rd. Dr. Root was there in the role of Chairman of the Free State Executive Committee. Root and Mitchell were present when the gathering was dispersed by federal troops the next day.
Later that summer the Wabaunsee Prairie Guards were called to participate in the fall campaign. They were gone for six weeks and participated in a number of skirmishes against pro-slavery forces under the command of Jim Lane and others. They manned breastworks on Mount Oread and were credited with saving the day when the “largest and best organized band that had ever invaded the territory” was massed at Franklin preparing to attack Lawrence. Known to veterans of the Border War as the September 14th “Battle of the 2,700”, and considered “one of the most critical situations of the war”, it occurred when most Free-state forces were away fighting the Battle of Hickory Point near Valley Falls. The “Wabaunsee Boys”, with their Sharps rifles, stayed in Lawrence because a number of them were sick. Remembering the day, colonist J.M. Hubbard described the scene:
“In the midst of the excitement and confusion of the situation, old John Brown appeared upon the scene and proceeded to advise and direct with all the coolness of a farmer going about his evening chores.”
“The whole body of border Ruffians were in camp at Franklin. They were seen coming on the main road into Lawrence; the Beecher Rifle Company took a position about a half a mile out of town in a ravine and when the column came in shooting distance our boys opened fire on them. They soon turned back and got out of range of the Sharps rifles. It was the Wabaunsee boys and they alone that turned that body of men back in double-quick time.”Fortunately for Lawrence, the newly appointed Territorial Governor Geary traveled in the night from Lecompton to Franklin and was able to convince the pro-slavery forces to stand down, and the anticipated battle did not happen.
After his mother’s death in Middletown in 1858, Capt. Mitchell invited his father and his unmarried sister Agnes to come live with him. It was during this time that Capt. Mitchell was active as a “conductor” and “Stationmaster” on the Underground Railroad, hiding freedom-seekers in the loft of his log cabin.
In response to the destruction of Lawrence led by the Confederate Guerilla leader William Quantrill on August 21, 1863, Governor Carney placed the state on a war footing and called for all able-bodied men to organize themselves into militia companies. The Prairie Guards had disbanded when the territory attained statehood in 1861. The Wabaunsee men met on September 12th at the town hall and formed company C, of the Fourteenth regiment. William Mitchell was elected a second lieutenant, but was later appointed to a staff position.
As George S. Burt later recalled, “We began drilling, as nearly every one had some kind of a horse, and some of the mounts were truly ludicrous. We held quite a number of meetings before all the able-bodied men were in line. We met to practice every Saturday afternoon, going through the common cavalry maneuvers. Captain Noyes had been in the three months’ service at the beginning of the war in 1861, so he knew a few of them. We continued to practice through the fall and into the winter, as the people were not rushed with work, and there was no objection to those who had no horses coming to look on.
When spring opened we did not meet very often, and had begun to think that there would be no call for the militia, but all at once, in July 1864, a call came one Sunday morning to the captain to get every available man who had a horse, and proceed to Fort Riley at once. The Indians had attacked a wagon train near the great bend of the Arkansas river, killed some of the drivers, and stole goods, cattle and horses, and had escaped into the hills northeast of Fort Larned.”
“At Junction City we were joined by the Pottawatomie and Riley County companies; also the Zeandale company, with Perry McDonald as captain. J. M. Limbocker was captain of the Riley county company. Here we were all put under the command of Capt. Henry Booth, of company L, Eleventh Kansas Cavalry, who was going west after the Indians.”
They marched as far west as Trego County and were gone from home about three weeks. They never engaged any hostile Indians.
Capt. Mitchell’s father died in 1864 and is buried in the Wabaunsee Cemetery. Agnes Mitchell stayed on after their father’s death, to keep house for her brother until his marriage in 1868 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Mary Ann Chamberlain (who was originally from Middletown, CT as well). During this same time (1868-69), Capt. Mitchell served as a State Legislator, helping write Kansas law.
The Mitchells had four children in those early years. Alexander C. (Chamberlain?) was born in 1869, H. (Henry?) Raymond in 1872, William Izott in 1873 and Maude Josephine in 1875.
Before his marriage, Capt. Mitchell, using the log cabin as a nucleus, expanded the house to one more suitable for a bride from the East. As the family grew, the house grew. (Due to its history as a way station in the Underground Railroad, the house is now a Freedoms Frontier National Heritage Area partner and an authenticated site in the National Park Service’s Network to Freedom program commemorating the Underground Railroad).
The family lived in the house and farmed until 1881 when Capt. Mitchell found a manager for the farm and moved his family to Wabaunsee. For the next 14 years, he and his sons ran a general store in Wabaunsee, which also served as the U.S. Post Office and the depot for the Santa Fe Railroad. In 1895, those of the family still at home, returned to the farm, where Capt. Mitchell lived and farmed until his death in 1903. He is buried in the Wabaunsee Cemetery. In 1953 his son Will bequeathed a portion of the Mitchell farm to the people of Kansas to become a public park commemorating his father and the Beecher Bible and Rifle Colony. The property is now known as the Mount Mitchell Heritage Prairie Park.