W.T Stone wrote a friend in England, W.S. Harbert [A.S. Harbert] in 1866, about his travels to Lawrence and Leavenworth, Kansas. While Stone was impressed with the landscape and the rich agricultural conditions in Kansas, he was disappointed with the older residents’ resistance to progress. He wrote, “the facilities for making money and living easy hear have been so great, that the people (the old residents) have become very indifferent to the improvements and progress of the age.”1 Being unimpressed with Leavenworth and its lack of “money making” opportunities, Stone decided to travel to Lawrence, Kansas.

Stone commented that Lawrence residents, “are chiefly new England people & had you ever been in Boston, you would have some idea of what Lawrance [Lawrence, Kansas] is, as it is a pocket Edition of that famous city.”2 Stone referenced Lawrence’s violent history and the bloody attack on the city by William Quantrill in August 1863. Quantrill and his Raiders were a group of guerrilla fighters who supported the Confederacy and terrorized citizens living along the Missouri-Kansas border. Quantrill and his band ambushed Lawrence, Kansas, on August 21, 1863. It was reportedly, in retaliation for the collapse of a federal prison in Kansas City, Missouri, which killed and injured the female relatives of Quantrill’s men who were confined there, including the sisters of William “Bloody Bill” Anderson. Quantrill and his gang killed every man that “was big enough to carry a gun.”3 About 200 men and boys were slaughtered in what was deemed the Lawrence Massacre.

You will rember that this is the place that Quantrell [William Quantrill], with his band of robbers, destroyed, during the war. I have often read of the account in the papers. but I never realized the magnitude of their fiendis brutality, until I read a mor minute accout in the city Directory Such deeds of barberism, never was recorded, even, of the most savage tribes, of hostile Indians, Such horrible deeds of cold blooded murder, & such wanton destruction of property without exhibiting the slightest spark of human feeling, is certainly without a paralel in the history of the world.
-W.T. Stone letter to W. S. Harbert—October 28, 1866

According to the 1870 Census there was a W.T. Stone who lived in Shawnee, Kansas, and resided with the White family. He was approximately 26 years old and worked as a farmer.4

Contributed by the Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield

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1. Letter by W.T. Stone to a friend in England, October 1866, Lawrence, Kansas, Wilson’s Creek National Battle Field, Republic, Missouri.
2. Letter by W.T. Stone to a friend in England, October 1866, Lawrence, Kansas, Wilson’s Creek National Battle Field, Republic, Missouri.
3. Thomas Goodrich, Bloody Dawn: The Story of the Lawrence Massacre (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1991), 78.
4. 1870 United States Federal Census; Census Place: Shawnee, Johnson, Kansas; Roll: M593_435; Page: 647B; Image: 772; Family History Library Film: 545934.