so i'm knee-deep in the civil war era, when nebraska was a wild territory, and i had lots of relatives kicking around trying to settle unsuccessfully. they finally feared for their lives, after a terrible raid of lawrence kansas by the quantrill gang, and decided to pick up and head back to illinois in their covered wagon. i've been copying from old yellowed pieces of paper, typed on and saved for maybe a hundred years, so i have what in history is called first-hand accounts. the problem is, i might not be able to throw it away even after i digitize it, because it just seems so original. some of it has this gorgeous handwriting that you just don't see anymore. my goal is to make it all published, in a series form, to entertain the reader as one moves through history.

and now, deep in the civil war, they've gotten into their covered wagon, and it's kind of a hoot having the whole family on a single boxy carriage, with chests, beds, everything they own, a white covered sheet over it, the whole works. and it rains, not once or lightly, but a nebraska type rain, all-encompassing, huge, several days worth. they cross the nishnabotna in western iowa and it's jumping its banks. they get robbed by bloody bill anderson but that may actually be on another trip, in missouri (see map above), or somewhere. i'm not quite finished putting the pieces together.

the finishing of the railway through northern missouri changed their options considerably. that was a well known wagon trail, and if they took it, that would explain bloody bill anderson - that's where he was, in central missouri, even going after trains or hanging around that trail. but if the young girl is right - she wrote her own account - they rode their wagon through southern iowa, from the nishnabotna to burlington. and then anderson would have had to have been somewhere else.

missouri at that time was hostile, dangerous, lawless. even jesse james was robbing people, and saying no doubt that he was with bloody bill anderson's gang. lots of people were unhappy with the union's occupation of missouri. and lots of people didn't quite give up easily. they made missouri, and possibly the land around it, a little civil war hell.<

today historians argue about how important the "western theater" was in the civil war. very important, at least to my family, I would say. i had to stop typing this story of quantrill's raid in lawrence - a little too graphic - even though it was technically just a story. my great grandfather grew up hearing stories like the one about quantrill, and eventually just wrote it down. i try to stay true to the story - there's a lot more to it than just "then we went here," since they were in a covered wagon, and it was territory, and anything could happen, and did.