The names of the other victims in the articles and letter should read: Wattles not Waffles. Augustus Wattles and John Wattles were well-known Kansas free soil pioneers who emigrated to Kansas from the same part of Connecticut that John Brown’s family was from (one of John Brown’s ancestors was a carpenter on the Mayflower). The Wattles brothers were friends of both John Brown and James Montgomery. They also were both involved in the activities of the Underground Railroad in Kansas Territory. John Otis Wattles had attended Yale and was a prominent anti-slavery lecturer in the East prior to emigrating to Kansas. He was well-known to both William Lloyd Garrison as well as Gerrit Smith. The Wattles family was involved in anti-slavery activities in Ohio 20 years before they came to K.T. Augustus Wattles studied at Lane Seminary in Cincinnati under Rev. Lyman Beecher, father of Harriet Stowe Beecher and Rev. Henry Ward Beecher (Sharps carbines were dubbed “Becher’s bibles” during the Bleeding Kansas period). Augustus Wattles worked at the Herald of Freedom in Lawrence alongside George W. Brown until he moved to Linn County along with John Otis Wattles and others in 1857 when they settled the new town of Moneka in Linn County. Linn County had become a hotbed of conflict as Douglas County centered on Lawrence became decidedly majority populated by free state settlers. The other founders of Moneka were other Douglas County free-soilers. More on the history and background of the Wattles family can be found in the attached reference and “Linn County, Kansas: A History” (1928) by William Ansel Mitchell. https://civilwaronthewesternborder.org/encyclopedia/wattles-family

I would conclude based on the preponderance of evidence provided by histories of both the Wattles and Doy families that Charles Doy and John Otis Wattles were murdered in cold blood by pro-slavery men, possibly raiding Border Ruffians from Missouri or pro-slavery Linn County residents. The Marais des Cygnes massacre of five innocent free state settlers had taken place only a year earlier and not far from where Doy and Wattles were murdered. The brigandry of pro-slavery men continued into the Civil War years with the raids of William Quantrill and his fellow Confederate guerilla force.