The Missouri in the Civil War Message Board

Re: 1861- 62 in Cass & Jackson Co.s: Atrocities

Judy,

Thanks for the invitation. I appreciate it very much. But I will be down to Topeka to speak to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Colonels Lewis and Harrison Camp #1854, Topeka, KS, on April 21, a commitment I made some time back when Dr. John McCoin asked me to come. This will be my fifteenth speech in about the last year in this area as well as twelve other bookstore signings. So I'm very pleased to tell the "other side of the story," one many may hate to hear, but must, I fear, till I am through telling it. I wish I could be with the rest of you at Morristown. I visited the area of old Morristown only a couple weeks ago with my son, Don A. Gilmore, and we pretty much believed that part of the old town of Morristown was eroded away by a ravine south of the road where I think some of the town existed, but it appeared that the main part of the town was to the north of this ravine. But I'd sure like to hear what the rest of you think about this question of where the old town was located. I had some old maps, but they are not always as accurate as one might hope. Again, thanks for your invitation.

After attending a meeting of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Brigadier General John T. Hughes Camp #614, last Thursday, where I conducted a seminar, one of the members sent me an excellent photo of the old Perdee home, were Quantrill and his small army rallied along the floodplain of the Blackwater River before riding to Lawrence to sack the town. The photo was given to me by David Goodman, who said that the house was nailed together with old square nails that some of our oldtimers may be familiar with, almost as hard to pull out as the tooth of an elephant. The picture was taken around 1960, and only one half of the shutters of one window were still present, and one half of one window was leaning against the house. Incidentally, I am about to receive a large cache of copies of photos of many of the guerrillas, even Quantrill, from a woman in Kentucky, looking for some kind of input or verification. I hope that many of them are authentic, but we shall see. There are just many old photos that are simply fake, and a lot of them get into history books and contaminate our knowledge. But we have to leave our minds open for the possibilities of photos still being out there and not yet revealed.

Best regards,

Don

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Re: 1861- 62 in Cass & Jackson Co.s: Atrocities
Re: 1861- 62 in Cass & Jackson Co.s: Atrocities
Re: 1861- 62 in Cass & Jackson Co.s: Atrocities
Re: 1861- 62 in Cass & Jackson Co.s: Atrocities