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Letterbook of a frontier Baptist missionary with tales of friendly Indians and unfriendly Confederate raiders.
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Notes: Jeremiah Brower Taylor (1817-1893) attended the Hamilton Theological and Literary Institution (now Colgate University) as a young man, and was a New York coal merchant before becoming a Baptist clergyman in Stamford, CT circa 1857. His religious and abolitionist convictions led him to bring his large family to the Kansas frontier in 1861, just after the bloody Border War over slavery in "Bleeding Kansas." His plan was to turn a piece of raw prairie into productive farmland, as a means of supporting his family while embarking on missionary efforts among the rugged settlers and Indians. As it turned out, just the farming was hard enough--and the newly created state soon found itself on the side of the Union in the Civil War.
The earliest portion of the volume includes 85 pages of letters written from the Hamilton Institution (Colgate) as Taylor prepared to be a missionary. They include an inscription by visitor Love Coon Avung, in Burmese(?) and Chinese dated 24 February 1840, page 86; also discussed in a letter by Taylor on pages 102-103.
However, the heart of this large volume consists of more than 100 pages of letters which Taylor wrote from Kansas, 1861 to 1867 (pages 189-294). His farm was in Waterloo Township in Lyon County, in rural east-central Kansas a few miles north of Emporia. The letters discuss the hardships of frontier farming in detail, but even from the beginning, he was finding the time to preach at other settlements within a 30-mile radius. He received some support from his former congregation at Stamford, CT, and in return sent them frequent updates on his activities. Early in 1863, after repeated applications, he received more substantial backing as a salaried missionary for the American Baptist Home Mission Society. Taylor's letters on the hardships of frontier farming and circuit preaching are interesting enough, but the real drama comes from the Civil War, and with his many interactions with American Indians.
Many of the letters explicitly address his religious commitment to the Union cause. Early on, he notes that "some of the young men . . . have gone to war, a good warfare for the Stars and Stripes; may the Most High bless them and all the hosts which are engaged in our holy cause, to the utter confusion and annihilation of treason" (16 September 1861, pages 209-210). On 8 August 1862, he expressed confidence that "the Lord will bring . . . a complete collapse of American slavery and the slave-lords' rebellion."
The war was not an abstraction in Kansas. John Brown had led its recent violent struggles against slavery which served as a prelude to the war, and Confederate raiders from Missouri were a constant threat. Taylor noted on 8 August 1862: "It is not improbable that Kansas may soon have a visit from Price's army or guerrillas with fire and sword." Quantrill's murderous raid on the city of Lawrence is noted on 19 December 1863: "Bro. Brent was not at the Lawrence massacre. He was in usual health when I saw him. . . . . We have not been in any danger from guerrillas." He describes the fortification of the nearby Ottawa Hotel on 14 July 1864 (page 311), about 25 miles from Lawrence: "The first and second stories are lined, in part, with timber so as to be bullet proof. They are pierced in military style for defense. There is a good supply of muskets and revolvers in the house, and in front a liberty pole, with the Star Spangled Banner flying gaily at its head."
Taylor offers a vivid description of the response to the Price-Marmaduke raid on Kansas in a 11 November 1864 letter, pages 314-315. He describes the rapid formation of a large militia force in defense: "Never was a call more heartily or promptly responded to. . . . I met a subordinate going from house on the prairie at 10 P.M. to warn all liable to military duty to meet at the rendezvous at 10 A.M. the next day. On the afternoon of that day I saw a mounted squad hunting up delinquents, intending to take any by force if necessary. . . . In some counties all citizens under 60, black and white, went. Three or four days after the call was known in the different parts of the state, the men of Kansas, numbering over 20,000, were on the border at Kansas City and Paoli. . . . Price was greatly surprised and would not believe his own men when they told him the array of the Kansas Militia. Price's men, who were taken or came in with prisoners, said that it seemed that every cornstalk and tree was turned to a man. Price had told the rebels of Missouri that there was scarcely anything in Kansas but women and children, and that if they would join him and lay waste Kansas, they should have horses and cattle and sheep in abundance. . . . All very pleasing to them in theory, but rather difficult in practice. General Marmaduke wept the day after his capture. . . . [Price] was fought all along the border, leaving dead rebels strewed more than a hundred miles, with the loss of all his artillery, ammunition, trains and cattle."
Inserted into the volume is a partial letter from the same period by the Reverend's wife Laura Taylor: "I was sitting with my family at the breakfast table when a neighbor's son William Phillips came galloping to the house at full speed, saying in haste, ‘Price's army is on the border, give me the guns' (which my husband had promised them in case of need). The German man who lived with us went up to his bedroom, put on his uniform & was off on horseback for the border. My husband was off on one of his missionary tours thirty miles away, so I was alone with my nine children. I went upstairs with them, & opening the Bible to the Psalm & reading it, we commended ourselves to God in prayer. A coloured refugee, a light molatta who lived with us, come running in the room crying ‘Oh Mrs. Taylor they'll murder me like a dog because I'm a slave.' I said ‘Well, Lucy, I'll hide you over the bedroom.' ‘But they'll burn the house, you know.' ‘Well, Lucy,' said I, 'we will trust in the Lord. I think he will take care of us.' The children watched with the spyglass through the day to see if they saw the army coming over the hills."
Taylor's relationships with the local American Indian tribes were much more congenial. On 16 September 1862, page [245], he describes an encounter to his old Stamford Sunday School students: "The men were large and bare-headed, the squaw was comfortably dressed. They insisted on my copying a writing which they had which said ‘Good Indian, please to give good Indian hog, flour, anything you can spare.'" He also visited a camp of 1,000 Sauks and Kickapoos, "five miles south of us, on their way to a buffalo hunt. . . . Their faces were painted, and they were prepared for war, as they are sometimes attacked by hostile tribes while hunting." On 20 March 1863, page [273]-[274], he gives a long account of a drunken Spaniard who tried to kill a young Kaw in nearby Wilmington, KS. The Kaw were "camping in the woods adjacent as in the winter they move their camps to trade skins or ponies or moccosons for flour, corn or pork." The drunkard "chased them with a Colt's dragoon revolver," but missed. Taylor adds (in contrast to the usual image of the Wild West): "It is not usual to go armed here."
Taylor arrived in Kansas with a good contact among the Indians: John Tecumseh Jones was a prominent Pottawatomi who had been a friend of John Brown. He had attended the Hamilton Institution (Colgate) before Taylor, and founded the Baptist-affiliated Ottawa University. Taylor's 15 June 1864 letter (pages 306-307) discusses the founding of the eastern Kansas town of Ottawa. "Bro. Jones was ordained as an evangelist. He was of the Potawatomie tribe, but he has been with the Ottawas some years . . . and he has preached for the Ottawas and occasionally for other tribes. . . . The village of Ottawa has been commenced within two months, and it has already four or five buildings, and several others begun. As the tribe may be called a Baptist tribe, so this is intended to be a Baptist town, and region. . . . The Ottawas, through the United States, have devoted 20,000 acres of land, for a school, academy, and college. This land has been selected from their woodland as the most valuable. Already 5,000 acres of the 20,000 have been sold and proceeds are designed for an Indian school building."
On 16 June 1865, pages [336]-[341], Taylor returns to visit Brother Jones, and hears the dramatic story of his survival in the Kansas Border Wars: "His former dwelling . . . was burnt to the ground in border ruffian times. He said the house was surrounded at midnight by a large party of four hundred men who were in the vicinity, who demanded that he should come out. . . . The ruffians set fire to the house, and Bro. Jones took a heavily loaded shotgun and opened the front door. The light of the flames revealed him to the ruffians with his gun raised to his shoulder, and they cried out ‘Don't shoot!' and fell back to the sides, when he with his gun walked out, partially screened by smoke, but was fired at three or four times, without being hit, and thus escaped through a cornfield, none daring to follow him closely. He had given to his wife seven hundred dollars before leaving. The ruffians called for the women to come out, and they should not be hurt. They went, but Mrs. Jones dropped her money and the ruffians divided it. They took one man out of the house and beat him and left him for dead, but he recovered." Taylor describes the ordination of Brother Jones on 8 December 1865, page 355.
On June 1865, pages [332]-[335], Taylor provides a long description of the Sauk and Fox Reservation, noting Moses Keokuk (son of the famed Sauk chief). "The first house I called at was an Indian's and you may imagine my surprise, while pointing to a large white frame house and out buildings, I asked, ‘Who lives there?' when I received the reply, ‘Keokuk, an Indian Chief.' . . . There are 25 orphan children in this Mission School, which is sustained in part by the annuities due the children, and partly by Christian benevolence. This school was commenced by Mr. Martin, the present Indian Agent, under great opposition from the Tribe, as they had carefully remembered and followed Black Hawk's advice, never to adopt any of the customs of the whites." Taylor took a side trip to "preach to a Baptist Church of 20 or more Refugee Creek Indians and Negroes. There may have been 30 of them in all and some of the Colored brethren had Indian wives. They had a colored brother as preacher among them who interpreted to them sentences as I preached. They sang in the Creek language. . . . The Indians are very superstitious. A child died at this school two months since and some of the squaws that visited the child said they knew that there would be a death there, for that they had seen the Fireman there; that the Fireman would poison anyone. That it assumed different forms, sometimes that of a butterfly, therefore the children are taught to chase and kill butterflies; and the Indians held a solemn feast to drive off the Fireman."
Four of Taylor's charming drawings are laid down in the volume. On page [269] is a school house which also served as home of the Hopewell Baptist Church in Anderson County, 1863 (later described on page [290]). His drawing of his loyal "Gospel Pony" on page [287] has its description on page [282]. Page [325] has his most elaborate drawing, "Baptism of Sister Johnson, Dragoon Creek" (described on page [271]), and another smaller drawing of a meeting house.
We will close with Taylor's reflections on the end of the war. On 19 April 1865, page [329], he wrote "The land is filled with mourning at the assassination of President Lincoln and Secretary Seward; when shall the atrocities of oppression cease, and the wickedness of the wicked come to an end?" On June 1865, page [330]: "Let us rejoice together in thanksgiving to God for the return of peace to our nation, and for all the wonders God has wrought in delivering from bondage the millions who were enslaved. It is the Lord's doing and marvelous in our eyes. The colored children, instead of being sold and separated from their parents, never to see them again, to spend their days in ignorance, sin, and misery; will now have the blessings of home and liberty."
Provenance: J.B. Taylor's bookplate on front pastedown, with gift inscription dated 1894 (the year after his death) from widow Laura to eldest son James Spencer Taylor (1849-1923); purchased on eBay by the consignor, January 2025. -
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