Even avid American Civil War buffs don't necessarily know the story of the Lawrence Massacre that occurred early on the morning of 21 August 1863. It probably remains the worst mass shooting in the State of Kansas with somewhere between 150 and 200 men and boys killed within the span of a few horrific hours.
The Massacre was also known as Quantrill's Raid because a man named William Quantrill led a Confederate guerrilla group, Quantrill's Raiders, responsible for the attack. Lawrence, Kansas was a Unionist town with a long history of support for abolition. It also had an association with a vigilante group known as the Jayhawkers who had been attacking plantations in pro-slavery Missouri. The Massacre might therefore have been seen as payback. This was, after all, civil war.
About 450 Raiders attacked Lawrence that morning. They surprised the inhabitants, most of whom were in bed and unarmed. A few hours later, the Raiders left the burned town in ruins, with many women left widowed and children fatherless.
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Destruction of the city of Lawrence and massacre of its inhabitants by so-called rebel guerrillas. Illustrated in: Harper's Weekly, v. 7, no. 349 (1863 September 5), p. 564. -- Public Domain |
One of the men living in Lawrence at the time who managed to survive the attack was Charles Frederick Saum. Thanks to the use of genetic genealogy to try to determine the paternity of my great grandfather Charles F. Edwards (1869-1941), I have established that Charles F. Saum is most likely either my 2nd great grandfather or 2nd great granduncle.
George Adam Saum (b. Saumsville, VA 1797, d. Highland, OH 1836) married Susannah Henderson (1805-1855) and had 7 children, including 4 sons, one of 3 of whom is most likely my great grandfather's father:
1. Charles Frederick Saum (1821-1886, lived in Lawrence, Douglas, KS)
2. Jacob "Jake" Saum (1822-1861, shot dead several years before my great grandfather was conceived)
3. George Thompson Saum (1824-1912, farmed in Kellogg, Jasper, Iowa)
4. Stephen Adam Saum (1834-1927, farmed in Kellogg, Jasper, Iowa)
The eldest son Charles Frederick Saum was born in Dodsonville, Highland, Ohio in 1821. He had one daughter born in 1844 to his first wife Mary Elizabeth Shawver before her death in 1846. His next marriage was in 1847 to Mary Bardell; the couple had nine children born between 1849 and 1869.
Charles Saum had "Go West" fever and moved first to Sidney, Champaign county, Illinois in October of 1857. Two years later, he followed brother Jake's lead and moved to Charlotte Township, Bates County, Missouri.
In the lead-up to the American Civil War, the Saums were abolitionists. This was not a popular position in slave state Missouri. In the fall of 1860, brothers Charles and Jake were two of the few in the township to vote the Lincoln ticket, which resulted in their names being included in words of warning posted on trees, buildings and fences throughout the area:
Although his name does not appear in any records for the Massacre that could be located, there are a couple of family stories about the Massacre. The obituary of one of his daughters carried an account of the event. The following is from the Topeka State Journal (Topeka, Kansas) 7 Feb 1910, p.7, (yes, there were 5 large headlines and, yes, aside from a brief introductory paragraph saying Mrs. Cowell was dead from cancer at the age of 41, leaving a husband and three children, the entire obituary was more about her father! For the record, her name was Emma Florence (Saum) Cowell, not that it was ever mentioned in her obituary.)
Mrs. John Cowell, Sister of S.C. Saum Is Dead
Their Father, F.C. Saum Nearly Quantrell's Victim
CALLED TO BE SHOT
But Life Spared Because He Was Sick
Ardent Abolition Preacher and Friend of "Father" Fisher
. . . Their father Frederick Charles Saum was a pioneer anti-slavery Methodist preacher. On this account, he was called out to be shot at the time of the Lawrence Quantrell raid of 20 (sic) August 1863 but was spared because he was ill at the time.
He was born near Cinncinnati, O. in 1817. Went to Champlain Co., Ill. where he became a Methodist preacher. He advocated anti-slavery and in this cause "stumped" all over Illinois and Indiana.
He came to Kansas with Jim Lane's army and in October 1861 located in what is now North Lawrence. At that time, there were no houses there -- just a tract of timber, but Rev. Mr. Saum purchased land and cleared a space for a home. He farmed and preached and was an ardent anti-abolitiionist. His life had been threatened several times by the pro-slavery element but undaunted he continued to preach what he thought was right. The late H.D. Fisher, author of "The Gun and the Gospel" was one of his personal friends.
On the morning of August 20, 1863, Rev. Mr. Saum was ill in bed with stomach trouble. The raiders came. The town was filled with Quantrell's men who were engaged in their work of massacre and pillage. "Kill every preacher, " was the cry.
About 9 o'clock a knock came at the Saum home. Mrs. Saum opened it. S.C. Saum, then a little boy of 9 (sic), stood behind her.
"We want that preacher," said the man at the door. The minister heard, rose from his sick bed and came staggering in the door. His visitor raised his gun, but paused. "Oh, you be sick, is you?" he said. "Well, there are plenty of breathing preachers to kill so we let you off."
Then the speaker left. A little later, Alfred Lawson, a brother-in-law of the minister, was walking on the street. One of Quantrell's men snapped a revolver at him, but it failed to go off. With the same weapon, a few moments later the raider shot and killed another man.
A little after the raid the Saums moved to the Charles Robinson farm north of Lawrence. From there they went to Osborne County where Rev. Mr. Saum died in November 1877."
There are a few glitches in the obituary: first and middle names or initials not in the usual order, birth year for Charles off by 5 years, age of son actually 5 rather than 9 and the date of the raid off by a day. But both Charles and his Lawson brother-in-law mentioned did live in Lawrence at the time of the massacre and both did survive. The relationships among the people mentioned are all correct. The stories given for their escaping the fortune of so many of their townsmen seem plausible. Nevertheless, this obituary is rather skimpy evidence; more reliable sources regarding Charles being a preacher and how he avoided death during the raid have not been located.
The report may well be a bit of an embellished or completely invented family story, given that in his own lengthy memoirs of the event by Charles's son Randolph Foster Saum who was almost 13 and present during the raid, no such event is mentioned. Randolph's eye-witness account from his "Early Memories of Kansas":
"At the time we lived in south-east Lawrence near what was then called the Franklin road on the street running east and west, the first street north of what is now the City Park. We lived in the last house east on that street.
Early that morning my mother and oldest sister were up getting breakfast, and suddenly heard a noise and went to the east door to see what it was. I also was up and with them. We soon found out the source of the noise. It was the feet of about 400 horses with wicked men on their backs, armed with shotguns and the largest side arms.
These robbers were riding about twelve abreast as this was out on the open commons, the road not yet confined it to the streets. Just as the front ranks got past our house about 200 feet, they all gave a demon yell and started on the gallop, some of them firing their guns to frighten and surprise the people of the town.
Just as the last raiders passed our house the sun was just half in sight. It was very still -- not a breeze to stir a leaf on the trees. In a few moments we began to hear the reports of firearms all over the city, and it was so still that the smoke from the old Eldridge Hotel ascended nearly 600 feet high. It was the highest building in Lawrence at that time,
All the other buildings along Main Street or Massachusetts street were burned down inside 45 minutes after the raiders had passed our house. All Main street was in flames.
. . . Those raiders were in Lawrence a little over four hours. That evening the people of the city commenced to gather up the dead and care for the wounded, and continued the next day. I remember of seeing a long row of dead men laid out on the floors of the M.E. Church."
No mention was made by Randolph of his father having been ill in bed at the time. It seems the raiders simply rode past the Saum home.
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Randolph Foster Saum, son of Charles Frederick Saum |
Charles Frederick Saum left a vast number of descendants, dozens of whom are my family's DNA matches. (Although we also have many matches to descendants of George, the vast majority are descendants of Charles. No descendants of third brother Stephen have shown up as matches.)
Three of Charles Saum's youngest legitimate children were born after the Lawrence Massacre - and he may have also fathered my great grandfather some five years later. Anyone who descends from one of these later-born children can be grateful that he was left alive that awful morning of the Lawrence Massacre.
Some Resources:
Epps, Kristin, Quantrill's Raid on Lawrence, Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict 1854-1865, Kansas City Public Library Digital History located online at https://civilwaronthewesternborder.org/encyclopedia/quantrills-raid-lawrence
Fisher, H.D., The Gun and the Gospel Early Kansas and Chaplain Fisher: Chicago, New York, Medical Century Company, 1897 on Internet Archive accessible at https://archive.org/details/gungospelearlyka00fish/mode/2up
History of Cass and Bates Counties Missouri, National Historical Company, Saint Joseph, Missouri, 1883, page 1148 (with respect to threat to "Lincoln Allies") accessible online at https://archive.org/details/cu31924028846447
Military Records at the Archives & Library of the Ohio History Collection accessible online at https://ohiohistory.libguides.com/military/CivilWar