A WITNESS TO BLEEDING KANSAS

REMINISCENCES OF HENRY HIATT OF TWIN MOUND

Kansas State Historical Society

February 6, 1897

Toussaint La Hay settled in Douglas County before I came to Kansas and built a nicely finished pine house of three or four rooms, plastered, painted, and on a raised foundation.  His claim was half a mile east of what is now known as Sigil Bridge, a little post office at the crossing of the Wakarusa, eight miles from Lawrence.  Gabriel Markle, who married a daughter of La Hay, still lives on this place.  The house was one of the nicest ones in the country at that time, and was perhaps put up in 1855.  Mr. La Hay had a wife, two sons, and two or more daughters.  His boys were pro-slavery and rough and always ready to fight.  I think he owned one or two slaves.  His boys were both large enough to hold claims, and I think there must have been two or three quarter sections of land in the family, good bottomland.  La Hay was a man of wealth and influence among his people.

Sometime in 1856 a party of free-state men, supposed to have been residents of the vicinity, but whose identity I never learned, robbed his house of furniture, clothing, etc., and burned it to the ground.  La Hay was not intimidated by this outrage, but immediately put up a log-pole hut with dirt floor, when he lived for some time and until he built a better frame house than the first.  I think he left our neighborhood shortly before the war, going south.  I think his daughter married Mr. Markle about the time he left.

I felt indignant when I heard of the robbing and burning of La Hay’s house, although I was a free-state man and had come to Kansas with the intention of doing my part in the struggle.  I remember of calling on La Hay early in our acquaintance and expressing my desire that we should be neighborly.  I told him that it was only the circumstances of our bringing up that made me an abolitionist and him proslavery; had he been residing north and I south, our views would have accorded with our environments.  He seemed greatly pleased with my overtures of friendship, and we always got on well together.  My wife and I attended the marriage of one of his daughters during the time the family lived in the log house.  The young man whom she married worked in my saw mill.  (Claims, 1861, p. 1536).

I had another neighbor by the name of Geo. W. Ward, who had been a member of the first border ruffian legislature.  He had a comfortable double log house.  For reasons of personal safety he left home in the fall of 1856, leaving his wife, a woman of perhaps sixty years, in charge of the premises.  On the night of September 7^th, some free-state men in our neighborhood, Alfred Curtis, A. E. Love, and one other man I did not know, went to Ward’s house, and not finding him at home proceeded to carry away bedding and clothing.  Then they piled the furniture together and set fire to it.  They had ordered his wife to leave, but she would not go until the fire drove her out.  They took some cattle, hogs, and chickens.  The cattle they killed and offered it for sale in the neighborhood.  Some time after the fire Mr. Ward returned and rebuilt the house, remaining a year or two until he could see it, going south before the war.

The men who committed these depredations were our free-state neighbors.  I told them that it was our duty to behave ourselves.  If we acted as badly as the Missourians, plundering and murdering, our friends in the east would have no sympathy for us, and would leave us to our fate. (Claims, 1861, p. 1735-1737.)

Permission to use this document courtesy of Archives Division, Kansas State Historical Society