Woodsdale
One of two towns involved in a county
seat fight that came to a violent conclusion with the "Haymeadow
Massacre", Woodsdale was founded in 1885 by Samuel Wood,
an attorney from Topeka. Mr. Wood was born on December 30, 1825
in Ohio to Quaker parents.
Mr. Wood was upset that neighboring
Hugoton had been chosen as the temporary county seat, so he began
legal proceedings in Topeka to stop the organization of the county.
In August 1886, Wood was arrested and
taken to Oklahoma by supporters of Hugoton who explained that
he had gone on a hunting trip in the Indian Territory. However,
Wood's friends were suspicious and started a search party to find
him. They caught up with Wood and his captors, and Wood later
filed civil and criminal proceedings against the Hugoton folks,
but they were dismissed due to lack of evidence.
Woodsdale became an incorporated town
on April 11, 1887.
In June 1888, the Rock Island Railroad
made a proposal to build two rail lines, one in the southern part
of Stevens County and the other line in the northern part. Hugoton
was halfway between the two lines, but Woodsdale would be close
to the northern line.
Tempers began rising during a meeting
about the rail lines held at Voorhees, a nearby town. Sam Robinson,
marshal of Hugoton hit the under sheriff of Woodsdale with a revolver
during the altercation. The under sheriff issued an arrest warrant
for Robinson a few days later, but when Marshal Ed Short of Woodsdale
went to Hugoton to arrest Robinson, a gunfight erupted between
the two marshals. The Hugoton men outnumbered Short and ran him
out of town.
A railroad bond election was held in
late June, and it wasn't without controversy. The militia was
called in when it became clear that the vote counting wasn't going
to happen without conflict. General Murrey Myers and his unit
went to the area and disarmed forces in both Hugoton and Woodsdale.
A month later, on July 22, after learning
that Marshal Robinson was on a hunting trip, Marshal Short and
several friends set out for Oklahoma to serve Robinson with the
arrest warrant. They figured it would be the best time to this
since many of his Hugoton supporters were not with him on the
trip. Short did send word for Robinson to surrender, but he left
the camp immediately. Marshal Short then sent for Woodsdale's
sheriff, John Cross, and four of his deputies to help find Robinson.
The deputies' names were Ted Eaton, Bob Hubbard, Roland Wilcox,
and Herbert Tooney.
Two brothers who had been with Robinson,
Orin and Clare Cook, returned to Hugoton, and after organizing
a posse, they headed back into Oklahoma. They came upon Marshal
Short and ran him out of the area. When Sheriff Cross failed to
find Short or Robinson, he and his deputies headed back to Woodsdale.
There was a strip of land just south
of the southern border of Kansas that was known as "No Man's
Land". Today it is the Oklahoma panhandle. On July 25, the
Cross party came upon a group of haymakers that were on land close
by a place known as Wild Horse Lake about eight miles south of
the Kansas border, and had made camp there for the night when
Marshal Robinson and his men came upon the group and ordered them
to surrender and hold up their hands. Robinson then shot and killed
Sheriff Cross, and all four of the deputies were also shot. The
Robinson party checked to make sure that the men were dead, and
they shot each one again, except for Tooney, whom they must have
thought was dead for sure. Tooney was able to go for help, and
he managed to get to Voorhies (another town in Stevens County)
where he was given medical attention. Robinson and his men escorted
the people who were in the meadow making hay back to their homes,
and then returned to the murder scene. They found only four bodies
and started searching for Tooney...in the opposite direction that
Tooney had taken.
Some citizens of Hugoton threatened
to burn down Voorhies in an effort to run its citizens out of
the county because they helped Tooney. Once again, the militia
was called in to establish martial law in the area.
Robinson had disappeared from Stevens
County before the military arrived, and Wood began the process
of bringing criminal charges against Cyrus E. Cook, O. J. Cook,
J. B. Chamberlain, Cyrus Freese, J. J. Jackson and Jack Lawrence.
In a Federal Court in Paris, Texas, a hearing was held during
October 1889 and the six men were indicted in the murders of Sheriff
Cross and his men. It seems that Robinson was not at the hearing
and that he had gone to Colorado after he left Stevens County
a year earlier. It is known that he robbed a store/post office
in Florissant, Colorado, and after being captured, he was convicted
and sentenced to fourteen years in the Colorado State Penitentiary.
This allowed him to be bypassed at the trial in Paris for killing
Sheriff Cross and three of his deputies. The trial took place
in July 1890, and the six men were found guilty and were sentenced
to hang on December 19, 1890.
The case was appealed to the U. S.
Supreme Court, and it was heard on December 11-12, 1890. On January
26, 1891, the Court's decision voided the convictions because
it was determined that the Paris Court and all other courts had
no jurisdiction over the site where the murders took place.
When Sam Wood went to Hugoton on June
23, 1891, to answer a "bribery charge" that had been
brought against him, he was shot in the back as he entered the
courthouse. Wood tried to get away, but the shooter, James Brennan,
shot him two more times which left Wood dead. The presiding judge,
Theodosius Botkin, gave Brennan to the custody of the sheriff
of Morton County, which was what Brennan asked for. Botkin was
an enemy of Wood, and it is not for certain, but it could be possible
that Judge Botkin could have been a suspicious party in getting
the treacherous charge leveled against Sam Wood to bring him to
his court. Judge Botkin was also involved in the Seward County
Seat wars, as well.
Brennan had been a witness for the
defense in the Paris trial, and apparently he did not like the
way Wood had questioned him; his anger led him to kill Wood. He
was arrested and held in the jail without bond. However, Brennan
was never tried for murder due to several factors - 1) it had
been determined that he could not receive a fair trial in Stevens
County; 2) the change of venue was never requested because under
Kansas law at that time, only the defense could request a change
of venue; and 3) due to another law that stated that if an accused
man was being held without bond and had not been tried in two
regular court sessions, he was to be released.
Charles Curtis was one of the lead
attorneys who represented the state during the Brennan case. He
later served as Vice-President of the United States in 1929-1933.
Hugoton was named the permanent county
seat in 1887 and that signaled an end to, not only the Stevens
County Seat War, but also to the town of Woodsdale.
The ethnicity of its settlers is unknown.
Sources
Butler, Ken. "Kansas Blood
Spilled into Oklahoma". Blue Skyways. October 26,
2005 <http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/stevens/haymeadow.html>.
Fitzgerald, Daniel. "Faded
Dreams: More Ghost Towns of Kansas". Lawrence, KS: University
Press of Kansas, 1994.
"The History of Stevens
County and Its People." Hugoton, KS: Stevens County History
Association, 1979.
