Robert Hall Pearson moved into Kansas Territory in 1854 shortly after it was opened for white settlement. For the next several years Pearson was an eyewitness of many of the violent incidents that became known as Bleeding Kansas. Later, he became a steward of one of the memorials of that era. His story begins in England.
Robert Hall Pearson was the son of William and Frances Hall Pearson. William Pearson was born in 1798 near York, England and became a carpenter. In 1824, he married Frances Hall in Aldborough, York, England. The couple started a family and had three kids who survived infancy: Ann (born 1826), Robert (born 1828) and Richard (born 1830). In 1832, William and his wife and family immigrated to the United States where they settled in the Pittsburgh area. A fourth child, Eliza, was born in 1840.
When a young man, Robert attended school and worked with his father, learning the cabinetmaker’s trade. Growing up, he worked for five years in a cotton factory and he became a stagecoach bodybuilder, however, like many men of his era, he was drawn to the gold fields of California in 1851. He worked as a miner for several years with fair success and returned to Pennsylvania in 1854. But Robert’s wanderlust was not yet sated. That same year he traveled by steamboat to Weston, Missouri where he waited with many others for the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act which opened Kansas Territory to white settlement. Until that time, the territory had been the exclusive province of Indian tribes.
In the company of Gaius Jenkins, Robert entered the Territory and in May 1854 he staked a claim north of Palmyra which was an important stop on the Santa Fe Trail.
Gaius Jenkins staked a claim just west of Lawrence, Kansas where he built a cabin. James H Lane had a claim to south of Jenkins. When the area was mapped the two claims overlapped and a dispute arose between Jenkins and Lane over the ownership of a well on the disputed property. Both Jenkins and Lane were free staters, but Jenkins supporters were from the North and Lane’s were from the Midwest highlighting the division even within the Free State movement. Lane was well known as a leader of the Jayhawkers who frequently raided pro-slavery strongholds in Kansas and Missouri. On June 3, 1858, when Jenkins accompanied by several of his supporters who were armed came to draw water from the well, Lane emerged with a shotgun. It is not clear who fired first, but when the smoke cleared, Lane had sustained a wound in his leg from a pistol and Jenkins lay dead from a blast from Lane’s shotgun. Lane was arrested and charged with murder but was acquitted at trial. Later, Lane was a Civil War general became the first US Senator from the State of Kansas. He died by suicide in 1866.
Robert’s claim was near the claim of another early settler, Lucius Kibbee. In fact, Robert stayed in Kibbee’s cabin for a few months while building his own cabin. Kibbee, of course is famous for a couple of reasons. First, it was in his cabin that the first sermon to white settlers in Kansas was preached by William Goode, a Methodist missionary. Later, on the same property in a cabin built by Henry Barricklow, the Palmyra proposal for the location of Baker University was accepted. A replica of Kibbee’s cabin is on the campus at Baker.
But Kibbee was famous for another incident that became part of Bleeding Kansas lore. On November 29, 1854, the day of the election of a territorial delegate to Congress, Kibbe was in a wagon with three other free state men leaving Lawrence bound for their claims. On the road, the men in the wagon encountered four men walking along one of whom jumped on top of a cabin with a thatched roof and preceded to set it fire. Knowing these men were pro-slavery, Kibbe challenged the men who had started the fire and they responded by threatening him with a knife. One of the men, Henry Davis, lunged at Kibbee with a knife and Kibbee responded by pulling out his revolver and shooting Davis. Kibbee was arrested, brought up on murder charges and was acquitted pleading self defense. Tensions were so high, however, that Kibbee felt unsafe and he and his family moved to Iowa.
In 1855, Robert married Catherine Baysinger the daughter of another early pioneer. Their marriage was one of the first recorded in Palmyra. Their first child, William, was the first born in the area. They eventually had nine children.
Robert was a staunch free state and anti-slavery advocate and life in Kansas is those years were not easy given the constant threat of attacks by pro-slavery border ruffians from Missouri who were determined to rid the territory of free staters and make Kansas a slave state. One such bushwacker raid is documented in the record of petitioners seeking compensation for losses incurred. Robert was at the home of his father-in-law, Peter Baysinger about noon on November 30, 1855 when a party of 25 horsemen and eight to ten wagons rode up in front of Baysinger’s house. The raiders dismounted and climbed onto the roof where they tore the shingles off, tore down the chimney and completely destroyed the house by setting fire to the bedding. They stole two rifles and according to another account took off with $560 in $20 gold pieces. According to family legend, during another raid this time of Robert’s property, Catherine and the kids had to hide in cornfield.
Tensions were elevated further when a free stater, Charles Dow was killed by a proslavery man, Franklin Coleman, over a land dispute near Hickory Point (a few miles northwest of Palmyra). Coleman was arrested by Douglas County sheriff, Samuel Jones, who was pro-slavery. One of Dow’s neighbors, Jacob Branson, organized a group of free staters who wanted to punish Coleman for his crime. The sheriff learned of the threats that Branson had made and arrested Branson while Coleman went free. However, a group of Branson’s friends rescued him, and they fled to Lawrence.
Jones was determined to track down Branson and his rescuers. He formed a large body of nearly 2,000 men, primarily Missourians, bent on storming Lawrence. Upon hearing this news, the citizens of Lawrence told Branson to leave and prepared to defend themselves. The call went out to all the local free-state militias to come and help defend the city. One of the militias that responded was Shore’s Rough and Ready Pioneer Company of Palmyra and Robert Hall Pearson was a member. The men in Lawrence built a series of earthworks and a fort with cannon on top of Mount Oread. The territorial governor, Wilson Shannon, initially sided with Jones, but decided to go and witness the situation himself. After learning that most of Jones men were not citizens of the territory as Jones had told him, he negotiated a treaty between the two sides and an all-out assault on Lawrence was averted. After spending over two weeks in the tense atmosphere of the city, Pearson was able to return home.
In 1856, Sheriff Jones was shot while trying to arrest some free state men in Lawrence. He survived and returned with 800 pro-slavery men bent on destruction of the antislavery institutions in the city. The presses of the two antislavery newspapers were tossed into the Kansas River, the Free State Hotel was burned to the ground as was the home of free state leader Charles Robinson.
Ostensibly in retribution for the sacking of Lawrence, John Brown was responsible for the Pottawatomie Massacre in which Brown and his band of abolitionist settlers rounded up five pro-slavery men near Pottawatomie Creek and killed them in front of their families. Henry Pate was commissioned as a Deputy US Marshall, and he was determined to track down Brown in the Osawatomie area where Brown had his claim. While Brown was in hiding two of his sons were arrested and taken prisoner. Brown was incensed and he decided to chase down Pate and free his sons.
On Sunday June 1, 1856, still searching for Brown, Pate and his men reached Palmyra which they plundered and took several prisoners. Six of Pate’s men decided to go to Prairie City to do the same. The citizens of Prairie City were in church but armed and R. H. Pearson was standing guard. He spotted Pate’s men and sounded the alarm which caused the church goers to rush out with their guns drawn. Two of Pate’s men were taken prisoner and the rest scattered. By that evening Captain John Brown and his men were joined by Captain Shore’s company, and they learned that Pate had made camp along the banks of a branch of Captain’s Creek called Black Jack Creek.
During the pre-dawn hours of June 2, Brown and Shore approached Pate’s camp. Brown and his men which included R. H. Pearson took the left flank while Shore took the right flank. Pate and his men were caught in a crossfire. While Pate was able to force Shore to retreat, his company was still under fire from Brown’s group. The battle lasted three hours. Knowing that the free state men were going to be reinforced soon, Pate’s men began leaving the battle one by one and Pate was forced to surrender. This Battle of Black Jack was the first open conflict between pro-slavery forces and free staters, and some believe that it was the first battle of the Civil War which officially didn’t start until five years later.
Not all the border ruffians who had sacked Lawrence left the area, some settled in the pro-slavery town of Franklin a few miles south and east of Lawrence. James Lane formed an “army” composed of numerous local free state militias, and they were determined to attack Franklin where the proslavery ruffians had stored much of the plunder from the Sacking of Lawrence including rifles, cannon and ammunition as well as clothes and household goods. On the night of June 4/5, the block house at Franklin was attacked by two free state militias of which Robert Pearson was a part. A gun battle commenced, and the free state men decided to set the fort on fire by sending a wagon of burning hay against the fort. The fire did not have much effect, but some of the proslavery men began fleeing into the darkness. The free staters were able to confiscate rifles, ammunition and household goods that had stolen from Lawrence and leave with several wagons full of these goods. Attacks on proslavery strongholds continued throughout the remainder of 1856.
By 1857, the major skirmishes between free state and proslavery forces had abated and by the end of the year it was clear that the free state movement was becoming dominant in the Territory. There were still a few violent episodes like the Marais des Cygnes Massacre in which eight free state men were taken from there cabins lined up a shot by proslavery men.
Robert Hall Pearson was able to return to his home and focus on providing for his family. In 1859, the same year that Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state, Robert sold his claim north of Palmyra and purchased 160 acres one and a half miles west of Black Jack and later purchased another 80 acres which included the Black Jack battlefield.
However, Robert was not done fighting for freedom. During the Civil War, he joined the Missouri Home Guard which was charged with the protection of Kansas. Later he was transferred to the Ninth Kansas Infantry, and he participated in the pursuits of William Quantrill after his raid on Lawrence and Confederate General Sterling Price after the Battle of Westport.
Robert’s fist wife, Catherine, died in 1878 and he married Rosella Harris in 1884. In the 1880’s he built a house overlooking the Black Jack Battlefield. His descendants continued occupy the house and surrounding land until 2003. The house is listed on the Kansas Register of Historic Places. Today the site is called the Black Jack Battlefield and Nature Park and is adjacent to the Robert Hall Pearson Park.
Robert, a successful farmer and businessman, was a member of Baldwin City Lodge Number 31, I. O. O. F. was well as the Grand Army Post in Baldwin. He died in 1906 at age 77 and was buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Baldwin. Before his death he was recognized as the only living original settler of the Palmyra area.
There is no record of Robert ever having a direction connection to Baker, but dozens of his descendants have attended or worked at the University. To name a few, Roger O’Neil was RH Pearson’s great great grandson and graduated from Baker in 1971. Roger’s brother, Rick, and sister, Janine, are also graduates. Roger married Marcia Webb whose father was Fred Webb, Baker’s Dean of Students and Roger’s mother, Phyllis was his administrative assistant. RH Pearson’s great granddaughter, Lois O’Neil, was administrative assistant to the President of Baker and her son, Gary Caruthers, also graduated from Baker.
Skip Kalb, RH Pearson’s great great grandson, was Chairman of the Baker Board of Trustees. Patricia Wooster-Jackson is a great great granddaughter of RH Pearson and has been a leader among the alumnae of Zeta Tau Alpha sorority. The Pearson, Iwig, and O'Neil Family was honored in 1993 as the Baker Family of the Year.
Thanks to Ed Pearson, Marcia Webb O'Neil, Kelly Beal and Pat Wooster-Jackson for their assistance in research for this post.