All In The Family, Thomas B. Harris & His Kin, Quantrill Men

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We are proud to offer for the month of December the account of a prominent but little known Missouri partisan ranger; Thomas B. Harris. The life of Quantrillian Thomas B. Harris mirrors the lives of many of the men along the border who joined William Clarke Quantrill and his famous guerrilla band. The lives of these men were interwoven by culture and family relationships. We hope you enjoy this image of Thoams Harris.

Thomas B. Harris was born in 1840. His father , Reuben Harris was from Virginia. They were farmers who owned a gristmill on the Little Blue River in Blue Township in Jackson County overlooking the Valley of the Little Blue 8 miles south of Independence, Missouri. Harris' home, located in a militarily strategic location would become a well used rendezvous for Quantrill's men during the war.

Thomas B. Harris was the third child and the oldest son in a family of nine children. His father married Laura Fristoe, sister to Bursheba Fristoe, Cole Younger's mother. Cole Younger was his first cousin. A Reuben A. Harris born in 1830 from Blue Springs and whose name appears on Quantrill's July 6, 1862 company roster is often mistaken as a relative.

Thomas B. Harris was a member of the West Fork of the Little Blue Baptist Church. The original members of the first church were all prominent citizens of the area: Richard Marshal Fristoe, a church deacon, one of the county’s first court judges, and a charter member of the church was Thomas Harris' maternal grandfather. Richard Marshal Fristoe, fought alongside Andrew Jackson at the battle of New Orleans, and it was through his efforts that Jackson County was named after his commander. His grandfather Fristoe was a grandnephew of Chief Justice John Marshall of Virginia and was the first presiding county court judge of Jackson County. Judge Fristoe served alongside other notable jurists such as fifty-year-old James B. Yeager, whose son, Richard Yeager, was one of Quantrill’s captains.

Included in the congregation was Benjamin Rice, a church member and deacon, who served as a local guard for the area against jayhawker raids. Other church members include John S. Muir, uncle of guerrilla Boone T. Muir and cousin of guerrillas George and Daniel Boone Scholl. Job Crabtree, who often sheltered Quantrill’s men and guerrilla John T. House whose father, Eli, was personally killed by Kansas Jayhawker Charles Jennison were members. Another member was William Hagan, whose brother was killed by Federal soldiers. Additional members were guerrillas Randolph Venable who fought beside Quantrill all the way to Kentucky; John McCorkle, Quantrill’s chief scout; and guerrilla Nathaniel Teague as well as Nathan Kerr, brother-in-law of Thomas Harris also attended. Nathan Kerr became a guerrilla after Federal troops hanged his father. On January 26, 1860, Nathan Kerr married Charity McCorkle. Also on the church rolls was Harris' cousin guerrilla John Flanery

Jayhawker raids left these pro-Southern farmers stunned. In October 1861 Jayhawkers raided their township eight miles south of Independence. On October 27 they burned the home of Martin Flanery, Thomas Harris' cousin who then joined Quantrill. Flanery reported that Charles Jennison’s jayhawkers had burned a church and twenty-seven other homes in the neighborhood and had pillaged the home of Reuben Harris in the middle of the night. Harris’s wife, Laura, their daughter Nancy, who had married guerrilla Jabez McCorkle, and their other small children were home at the time. The attack by the jayhawkers on the Harris home was recorded as following: One night while the family was asleep, the door of Mrs. McCorkle’s room on the first floor was broken open and a squad of noisy [jayhawkers] rushed into the apartment. The alarmed lady entreated them to retire until she could put on her clothes, but they cursed her and told her to get up pretty damn quick or they would prod her with their sabers. A bright fire was burning in the open hearth; the wretches took blazing brands and carried them about as they ransacked the closets, dresser drawers and trunks. A little girl [either three-year-old Virginia or six-year-old Eliza], who was sleeping with her mother, was awakened by the unusual noise and began to cry, and one of the men went to her and, holding a saber against her face, told her if she uttered another sound he would cut her "damned" head off. The poor little thing was so frightened and subdued that she did not speak a word for days. The young girls who were sleeping upstairs were aroused by the disturbance below, hastily dressed and ran to their mother’s room. The outlaws then turned their attention to the girls, using insulting terms, searched their persons for valuables, all the while singing ribald songs or telling obscene jokes. They took from a pocket in the housemaid’s petticoat forty dollars, tearing her apparel from her person. The creatures made the girls go before them as they searched every apartment in the house, from which they purloined every article of value they could carry. Then returning downstairs three of the wretches took by force three of the girls into the yard and marched back and forth in the moonlight, making most vicious threats and insinuations. After several hours of this atrocious conduct the creatures started away.

Thomas B. Harris was also a cousin of guerrilla George W. “Bud” Wigginton. Frank James remembered seventeen-year-old Bud as the man who never swore and remarked, “He was a Christian if there ever was one.” Bud originally joined Quantrill with his cousin, John McCorkle, after jayhawkers looted his parent’s home. Wigginton’s sixty-eight-year-old father, John Wigginton, was mercilessly murdered in front of his wife and daughter by Federals. His personal property was all taken and his house burned down leaving only the land. The soldiers also killed Bud’s brother Wallace then threatened to throw Bud’s sister Mollie in prison if he did not join the local Union militia. Instead he joined Quantrill.

The very next day, Cole Younger, along with cousin's Tom Talley, John and Jabez McCorkle met four of Jennison’s jayhawkers near the Blue Cut neighborhood across from Reuben Harris’s farm. After a three-mile chase, three of the jayhawkers were shot from their saddles.

Other skirmishes Thomas Harris took part in with Quantrill was when being surrounded and fighting their way out of the Tate house on March 23, 1862 and the Sam Clark home a week later, the Federals believed that Quantrill and his men were scattered and defenseless. Colonel Albert Peabody circulated a report that Quantrill’s company was disorganized and on the run. They considered themselves the hounds with the fox at bay. He called for assistance from the other area outposts to bring in Quantrill and the remainder of his band. For this reason, the Federals concentrated on Jackson County with a vengeance. Quantrill and his men spent the night with the family of guerrilla Thomas Harris in the Valley of the Little Blue then moved the next night a mile away to the farm of Job Crabtree, a relative of the Harris’s. The guerrillas camped the remaining night just to the south of Crabtree's at the abandoned farm of Jordon R. Lowe. Here in a raging rainstorm Quantrill's men were surrounded again but miraculously managed to escape only losing two men and one captured.

The very next day, Cole Younger, along with cousin's Tom Talley, John and Jabez McCorkle met four of Jennison’s jayhawkers near the Blue Cut neighborhood across from Reuben Harris’s farm. After a three-mile chase, three of the jayhawkers were shot from their saddles.

Other skirmishes Thomas Harris took part in with Quantrill was when being surrounded and fighting their way out of the Tate house on March 23, 1862 and the Sam Clark home a week later, the Federals believed that Quantrill and his men were scattered and defenseless. Colonel Albert Peabody circulated a report that Quantrill’s company was disorganized and on the run. They considered themselves the hounds with the fox at bay. He called for assistance from the other area outposts to bring in Quantrill and the remainder of his band. For this reason, the Federals concentrated on Jackson County with a vengeance. Quantrill and his men spent the night with the family of guerrilla Thomas Harris in the Valley of the Little Blue then moved the next night a mile away to the farm of Job Crabtree, a relative of the Harris’s. The guerrillas camped the remaining night just to the south of Crabtree's at the abandoned farm of Jordon R. Lowe. Here in a raging rainstorm Quantrill's men were surrounded again but miraculously managed to escape only losing two men and one captured.

On January 29, 1863, forty-nine year old Jeptha Crawford was seized from his home in the Blue Springs area by Colonel William Penick’s men. Jeptha Crawford was married to Elizabeth Harris, the aunt of Thomas Harris. Jeptha had nine children, the youngest of which was five years old. A neighbor recounted the murder: Mr. Crawford, an old man with a large family of children, was a Southern sympathizer, but had never taken up arms against the government. He went to the mill one day with a sack of corn to have it ground to make bread for his wife and children. He left home early in the morning, was to be back by noon. Noon came, the wife had prepared dinner as best she could, but was waiting for her husband’s return so she could have bread for their dinner. Two o’clock came and the husband was still absent. The children were hungry, crying for something to eat. The mother would say, “Papa will soon be here, then my darlings shall have something to eat.” Three o’clock came, and the mother saw a company of soldiers approaching. They rode up to the door. The mother looked out and saw her husband a prisoner in their midst. He was told to dismount. Then they shot him down before the eyes of his wife and children, shot down like a wild beast. The mother was told to get out of the house with her children, as they were going to burn the house. She asked them to let her give her little children something to eat, as they had had nothing to eat since early morning. In answer to her appeal one of them snatched a brand from the fire and stuck it in the straw bed. Everything was soon in flames. The mother hastened from the house, snatching up a few things as she went. Her husband killed, her house burned, she and her little children turned out in the cold world, homeless and destitute.
 
Being thrust into the harsh winter weather without provisions and shelter, Elizabeth Crawford sought shelter and comfort with some neighbors who had the courage and Christian charity to take her family in. There was nothing she had left but her family, that and a hatred for the kind of men who would do these things to peaceful citizens. Shortly after Quantrill’s return with his company from Texas, Elizabeth learned that he was camped nearby. She took her four sons, to the guerrillas’ camp. She approached Quantrill and said, “These are all I have left. Take them and make soldiers of them.” On March 26, Quantrill took the Crawford brothers and ambushed some unwary Federals. Patiently waiting for a Union patrol from Independence, Quantrill sprung from ambush along the east fork of the Little Blue, shooting five Federals from their saddles and running down and killing four more as they retreated. After the ambush Quantrill had the bodies loaded into a wagon and taken back to Independence with a message for Colonel Penick that the same fate awaited all of his soldiers who ventured out into “Quantrill Country.”

While Quantrill was in Richmond, Virginia during the winter of 1862 seeking a colonel's commission of independent cavalry several from his company began drifting back from Arkansas into Jackson County. The first to arrive was Lieutenant William Gregg. Others in Quantrill’s command soon followed; Thomas B. Harris and his cousins George Wigginton and brothers John and Jabez McCorkle and neighbor Benjamin Rice made their way home in January.

In August 1863 Thomas Harris’s seventeen-year-old sister Nannie was seriously injured in the Kansas City prison collapse where five young Southern women were murdered when Kansas Jayhawkers undermined the building they were in. Harris also lost a sister-in-law, Charity McCorkle Kerr, in the jail collapse. Nannie Harris was one of the women arrested. She later told her granddaughter that the Redlegs set fire to her home and mill in the early summer of 1863, wrecking it so that she had to buy flour and supplies in Kansas City. Nancy recalled going to Kansas City with her sister-in-law, Charity McCorkle Kerr, in July 1863. While they were in a store, some men approached them and arrested them. They were then taken to a women’s prison. Charity and Nannie were not the only women taken into custody. Others arrested included their cousins, sisters Susan Crawford Vandever and Armina Crawford Selvey; sisters Lou Mundy Gray, Susan Mundy, and Mattie “Martha” Mundy; sisters Josephine, Mary, and Martha Anderson, sisters of Bill Anderson; Mollie Grinstaff; a Miss Hall, and a Mrs. Wilson. Also arrested was Alice Van Ness.

At first the women were imprisoned in the Union Hotel. Then some of the women were separated from the group on the pretext that the prison was becoming overcrowded. All of them happened to be relatives or acquaintances of Quantrill’s men. Susan Crawford Vandever and Armina Crawford Selvey’s brothers, William, Marshall, Marion, and Riley Crawford, and Susan’s husband, Thomas Vandever, were all in Quantrill’s company. Union soldiers had murdered their elderly father and burned their home only six months before. Charity McCorkle Kerr’s brothers, John and Jabez McCorkle also rode with Quantrill.

Here is an image of two of the women who were victims of the Jail collapse, Nannie Harris and Charity McCorkle Kerr.

Thomas Harris' home was plundered and finally burned down by Kansas Jayhawkers on February 22, 1863. During Christmas week of 1863 Todd and Cole Younger disguised as Federal soldiers rode into the Union Garrison of Kansas City to avenge the death of Cole Younger's father. Before riding away they killed ten Federal soldiers. They made their way back to the Harris farm on the banks of the Little Blue. Here they warmed themselves next to a roaring fire. In retaliation Penick responded by offering a thousand dollars for the head of Cole Younger, five hundred dollars for either of the McCorkle brothers, and one hundred dollars for any of the rest of the guerrillas, dead or alive. Penick sent a detail to the Younger farm. Arriving at midnight on February 9, 1863, they had orders to burn the house to the ground. They poured lamp oil on the floors and forced Bursheba Fristoe Younger, Cole’s mother, to set fire to her own home.

The July 6, 1864 Quantrill' s guerrillas took part in the Wagner fight with a company of the 2nd Colorado Regiment. The battle took place adjacent to the farm of Thomas Harris. In this skirmish the guerrillas killed twenty-seven Union soldiers under the command of Captain Seymour Wagner.

During the early summer of 1864 Quantrill with a group of handpicked men, left for Howard County, Missouri. He knew that Price would soon be making another campaign into Missouri in the fall of 1864, so he decided to rest for a while and then meet with the general at a prearranged point and time. Those who accompanied him were his wife, Kate, and Thomas B. Harris, Jim Little, John Barker, Dave Hilton, Tom Evans, George Shepherd, John Ross, and Bill Toler and eight others. Following the battle of Fayette on September 20, 1864 Quantrill remained in Howard County assisting the citizens guard their property. On Saturday, October 8, 1864, accompanied by Thomas Harris, Quantrill began the search for a Richard Kimsey who was preying on local citizens. It was not long before they found their man riding with an accomplice, Robert Montgomery. On the high road west of Clark’s Chapel, the four men met in the middle of the road. After confronting Kimsey with his crimes, angry words were exchanged, and Quantrill attempted to arrest Kimsey, ordering him to surrender his pistols. Kimsey went to draw his gun, but Quantrill was faster, and Kimsey fell dead from his horse. Thomas Harris then shot Montgomery.

When Quantrill decided to ride east to try to join Robert E. Lee and join his army as an independent cavalry in order to receive honorable terms of surrender at the close of the war Thomas B. Harris was one whom he requested to go along. With Harris were his two cousins, John McCorkle, and George Wigginton and his brother-in-law James Lilly and neighbors Clark Hockensmith and Randolph Venable. By mid-January 1865 Quantrill’s company had managed to cross Tennessee and enter Kentucky near the little town of Canton.

Harris took part in many battles with Quantrill in Kentucky and was wounded near Worthville, while riding with Kentucky guerrilla Sue Mundy. After Lee surrendered Quantrill told John McCorkle he intended to surrender to Federal authorities at Louisville. McCorkle and his cousins, George Wigginton and Thomas Harris, turned back with John Barnhill to their former camp at the home of the Thurmans. It was here they received news of Quantrill being wounded at the Wakefield farm. After Quantrill's death guerrilla captain Henry Porter gathered most of the remnants of Quantrill’s band, now numbering only eighteen, and surrendered to a Captain Young at Samuel’s Depot in Nelson County and received their paroles on July 25, 1865, according to Quantrill’s dying orders. The group included Thomas B. Harris, Frank James, Andy McGuire, Lee McMurtry, Allen Parmer, William Hulse, Bud Pence, Isaac and Bob Hall, Jim Lilly, Dave Hilton, John Ross, Randolph Venable, and Payne Jones. John McCorkle and his cousin George Wigginton attached themselves to a regular Confederate army unit and surrendered with them.

In later years the census shows that Thomas B. Harris was married but widowed by 1910. Other official records indicate that Harris lived out his life in Jackson County attending the Quantrill reunions until his death. Thomas Harris fought at Tate House fight, Clark House fight, Lowe House fight, Prairie Grove, Cane Hill, 1st Battle of Independence, Lone Jack, White Oak Creek, Lawrence , Baxter Springs, Fayette, Glasgow, Centralia and reasonably many more battles and skirmishes with Quantrill's now famous band.

Paul R. Petersen © Quantrillsguerrillas.com. "Permission should be requested and agreed to before using this copyrighted essay and/or image." Our next image is of John McCorkle and T. B. Harris.