Kenneth Spencer Research Library

Last week was the 161st anniversary of the 1863 raid of Lawrence, Kansas, home to many free-state and abolitionist leaders. In the early hours of Friday, August 21, 1863, Confederate guerilla chief William Clarke Quantrill and 400 of his men rode into town, taking it by surprise. They ransacked homes, looted stores, set fire to homes and businesses, and killed close to 190 men and boys. The focus of this post is just one of the many personal stories from that awful day.

Frederick and Amelia Read were living and working in Lawrence at the time of the Raid. Frederick (1831-1901) immigrated to Lawrence from New York in 1857. It’s possible that he came as a member of one of the last parties of settlers sponsored by the New England Emigrant Aid Society, whose mission was to ensure that Kansas entered the Union as a free state (i.e. one that did not allow slavery). Frederick Read owned and operated a dry goods business for several years. After the Civil War, his wife Amelia (1834-1892) was an agent for the Wheeler & Wilson sewing machine company, working out of the family’s store.

At the time of the Raid, Frederick and Amelia were very likely grieving the deaths of their two young daughters. In researching this post, I found the following article in the Lawrence Republican on May 3, 1860: “In this city, on Monday morning, April 30th, ADDIE L., only child of F.W. & Amelia A. Read, aged one year, eleven months and twenty-two days.” I also found, in the Complete Tombstone Census of Douglas County, Kansas, this record of the couple’s second loss: “Died at the residence of Levi Gates in West Lawrence, August 30, 1862, Freddy Rockwell Read, only child of F.W. and Amelia A. Read, aged eleven months.” Both Freddy and Addie were buried in Pioneer Cemetery, now located on the University of Kansas campus. The location of their graves is unknown.

Only the Reads’ youngest child – their son Lathrop – survived to adulthood.

Almost exactly one year after Freddy’s death, the Reads experienced significant losses during Quantrill’s Raid. Frederick escaped physical harm, but raiders looted and burned his store. Amelia was somehow able to save the family’s house from being set on fire, but she couldn’t stop the raiders from robbing the home.

There are multiple published descriptions of the Reads’ home during the Raid. One can be found in The Lawrence Massacre by a Band of Missouri Ruffians Under Quantrell [sic], published in 1865 by J. S. Boughton. Spencer Research Library has a copy of the volume; it’s also available online. Note that this account mentions daughter Addie by name, but it was her sister Freddy who had “died a few months before.”

The residence of F. W. Read was probably visited by more squads than any other place, as it is situated in the heart of the city. Seven different bands called there that morning…The next squad were for stealing, after demanding as they all did fire arms at first, they wanted money next and then helped themselves to whatever they could find. They found in the back side of a bureau drawer a little box containing a pair of gold and coral armlets [elsewhere described as bracelets] used to loop up the dress at the shoulder of their little girl Addie who had died a few months before. Mrs. Read begged very hard that he would please not take them as they had been her little dead child’s and she wanted them to remember her by, the brute replied with an oath “Damn your dead baby, she’ll never need them again.”

The heartbreaking story of the bracelets and the ambrotype below were the inspiration for this post. The ambrotype is part of Spencer’s Leonard Hollmann Photograph Collection. It’s identified as a post-mortem image of Freddy Rockwell Read, likely because it’s accompanied by a copy of the child’s obituary (quoted above). However, given the information I found while researching this post, I now believe that is incorrect.

The child in the ambrotype looks to be about two years old, the age Addie was when she died. Thus, I believe the child in the ambrotype has been previously misidentified and is the Reads’ oldest child Addie. It’s still unclear who the bracelets belonged to.

Kathy Lafferty
Public Services

Caitlin Klepper
Head of Public Services

Check the blog each Friday for a new “That’s Distinctive!” post. I created the series because I genuinely believe there is something in our collections for everyone, whether you’re writing a paper or just want to have a look. “That’s Distinctive!” will provide a more lighthearted glimpse into the diverse and unique materials at Spencer – including items that many people may not realize the library holds. If you have suggested topics for a future item feature or questions about the collections, feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of this page.

This week on That’s Distinctive! I am sharing a collection of Lawrence Bank banknotes. According to the finding aid, “the collection contains four Lawrence Bank notes of three and five dollar denominations. These notes are imprinted with ‘The Lawrence Bank, Lawrence, Kansas’ but were probably issued by the Lawrence National Bank, which was established in the 1860s.”

Incorporated by the territorial legislature in 1858 and located on the east side of Massachusetts street in downtown Lawrence, the Lawrence Bank opened for business in 1860. According to an article in the Lawrence Business Magazine, “the Lawrence Bank issued currency in various denominations, but only bills for $1, $2, $3 and $5 are known to survive.” The existence of the Lawrence Bank was short-lived, as “Quantrill’s raiders robbed and burned the bank. It never reopened after the raid but continued to redeem currency presented for payment until it closed for good in January 1864.”

As seen in the images, the banknotes came into the library’s possession as fragments. They were pieced together and preserved by the Libraries’ conservation department. It’s not often that fragmented items are adhered to a secondary layer, but at times it is deemed necessary by our conservators and curators.

Tiffany McIntosh
Public Services

Check the blog each Friday for a new “That’s Distinctive!” post. I created the series because I genuinely believe there is something in our collections for everyone, whether you’re writing a paper or just want to have a look. “That’s Distinctive!” will provide a more lighthearted glimpse into the diverse and unique materials at Spencer – including items that many people may not realize the library holds. If you have suggested topics for a future item feature or questions about the collections, feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of this page.

This week on That’s Distinctive! I’m sharing a small and simple collection of business cards from Lawrence. The Lawrence business card collection features business cards from mostly the 1880s. The two featured today are from the Lawrence Business College and J. House.

An online exhibit from the Lawrence Public Library notes that the Lawrence Business College was “established in 1869 by W.H. McCauley [and]…was the first business college in Kansas. The school was located in the Lawrence National Bank building on the third and fourth floors.” While the business college no longer exists, it is widely unknown when and why it shut its doors. Some personal accounts from attending the college can be found in the John L. Kilworth papers at the library.

J. House was a clothing business operated for several decades by Jacob House at 729 Massachusetts Street in downtown Lawrence. The building is marked by a plaque as having survived Quantrill’s Raid in 1863. Jacob House, his wife Ricka, and their seven children resided at 805 Ohio Street for many years before relocating to 701 Tennessee in 1904. House’s 1913 obituary in the Lawrence Daily Journal-World declared that “no man in Lawrence stood higher in the esteem of the public” than him. The article noted that House was born in Austria in 1833. After emigrating to the United States in 1854 and living in a variety of places, he settled in Lawrence and opened his business in 1862. House was in his store at the time of Quantrill’s Raid; he was taken by a group of raiders and “kept as a prisoner and guide all day. He was forced to show them from place to place and everywhere he saw the dead bodies of his friends and acquaintances.”

Tiffany McIntosh
Public Services

Check the blog each Friday for a new “That’s Distinctive!” post. I created the series because I genuinely believe there is something in our collections for everyone, whether you’re writing a paper or just want to have a look. “That’s Distinctive!” will provide a more lighthearted glimpse into the diverse and unique materials at Spencer – including items that many people may not realize the library holds. If you have suggested topics for a future item feature or questions about the collections, feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of this page.

This week on That’s Distinctive! we share an original letter from George E. Young, a survivor of Quantrill’s Raid on Lawrence. This Monday, August 21st was the 160th anniversary of the raid, which left much of Lawrence in disarray and burned to the ground. Many innocent people lost their lives, and you can tell in the letter from George to his father that it seemed to be quite a distressing day for those who survived. The letter was written just two days after the raid. The results of the raid will likely never be forgotten.

For more information, see the online exhibit for the 150th anniversary of Quantrill’s Raid on the library’s website. There are also many landmarks around Lawrence that can be visited in connection to the raid. The Watkins Museum of History in downtown Lawrence has an interactive exhibit that covers the event.

Tiffany McIntosh
Public Services

One hundred and fifty-seven years ago, on August 21, 1863, William Clarke Quantrill and his men rode into Lawrence bent on destroying the town. The results of the dawn raid were the destruction of numerous businesses and homes and 143 deaths. State officials and people from surrounding towns provided aid to Lawrence to help meet the basic needs of the residents and to rebuild the town. 

Although her family lived in Lawrence, Anna Julia Soule was a school teacher in Kanawaka, six miles to the west, at the time of the raid. That morning, she saw the smoke coming from Lawrence, and would later recall that “we (the citizens) knew that a raid had been feared but vigilance had been relaxed and, concluding that there was not much danger, the town had stopped keeping guard at night” [1].

When Anna reached Lawrence after the raid, she found her high school teacher among the dead at the first house she stopped at. Upon locating her brother William Soule, Anna learned that her the rest of the family were safe, but that the family’s house had been destroyed. They had nothing except for the clothes they were wearing. The family stayed at the home of prominent Lawrence physician Sylvester B. Prentiss in the days following the raid. 

Anna briefly return to Kanawaka to teach after the raid, but not for long. As she would later write, “the term was nearly out and the excitement made teaching difficult, as even in the country the raid was the only thing in all our minds” [2].  

Instead of completing the term, Anna decided to go to Maine with her mother and sister to live with family and friends for a time. Of the first leg of the journey back east, she wrote,

“We went on the stage to Leavenworth, borrowing bonnets for the trip so far and sending them back on the stage. The people of Leavenworth were very kind, the women meeting daily to sew for the Lawrence sufferers and offering us help, but we only accepted such things as seemed necessary for our journey, as the people in Lawrence were in greater need than we were, for we were going to our friends who gladly helped us” [3].

The ladies returned to Lawrence in 1865 to find the town rebuilt. On June 21, 1866, Anna married Dr. Prentiss. Over the years, she was an active participant in the Lawrence community. She was involved in Lawrence’s temperance organization, was a founding member of the Lawrence No Name Club, active in her church, and took part in the reunions held by raid survivors. Anna was also the proprietor of a home goods store for several years.

Anna wrote about her experiences during Kansas’s territorial period for publications and the various clubs, organizations, and activities in which she was involved. 

[1] Clevenger, Maurine. “Memories of Early Lawrence.” Jayhawk: The Magazine of Kansas, volume 2, number 8, August 1929.

[2] Prentiss, Ann Julia Soule. “From Boston to Kansas in 1855.” Kansas Woman’s Journal, June 1926.

[3] Ibid.

Letha Johnson
Kansas Collection Curator