His Death Started a Bloody War

 

When you begin researching your family history you never know what interesting people and stories you might uncover.  This is one such story from my own family history. 

Reverend Benjamin Franklin Tolby photo provided by the author

 

Benjamin Franklin Tolby was born 26 Sept 1841 in Hendricks County, Indiana. He was the son of Thomas and Nancy Tolby who were natives of North Carolina and Kentucky respectively. Thomas Tolby brought his family from Kentucky to Hendricks County about 1828 along with his parents and several of his siblings.

 

B. Franklin Tolby appeared on the Hendricks County census with his family in 1850 but after that his name appears as James Frankin Tolby or Franklin J Tolby. The name change is not explained in any family documents or biographical material. 

Soon after 1850 Thomas Tolby settled in Tippecanoe County, north and west of Battle Ground in Tippecanoe Township. By 1860 J. Franklin Tolby is teaching school in Tippecanoe Township while the rest of his brothers were engaged in farming.

On the 6th of August 1862 James F Tolby enlisted at Lafayette into company G of the 72nd Indiana Infantry Regiment for service in the Civil War. He was discharged 26 June 1865. The Regiment served as mounted infantry during most of 1863 and 1864. They served in campaigns throughout the south including the capture of Chattanooga, the Battle of Chickamauga, Kennesaw Mountain, Siege of Atlanta and many other operations throughout the south. One of their last operations was the pursuit of Jefferson Davis at the end of the war.
By the time the 1870 Census was taken Tolby had married earlier that year to Mary Russell and they had purchased a small farm west of Brookston. As fate would have it, farming apparently did not suit Franklin J Tolby.

He had joined the Methodist Church during a camp meeting near Battle Ground in 1857 and what he wanted to do was to become a preacher. In 1871 he was admitted on trial to the Methodist ministry and thereafter served churches in White, Benton and Newton Counties. In 1874 Tolby volunteered and was sent as a missionary to New Mexico where he was stationed at Cimarron but also served the Methodists in Elizabethtown which at the time had become a gold mining boom town.
Based on the recollections of those who knew him, Frank Tolby was personable and well regarded in the communities he served. He was described as bold and fearless both in the pulpit and out and was a naturally talented and compelling speaker.

 

Reverend Tolby, his wife Mary and their two young daughters, Rachel and Grace, had arrived in Cimarron at a particularly troubled time. You might say he landed right in the middle of a nest of mad hornets. Trouble had been brewing for a couple of years but there had not been any violence, at least not the kind that resulted in death.

 

Library of Congress photo

 

In 1841 when New Mexico was still a part of old Mexico a man by the name of Charles Beaubien, a French Canadian fur trapper who had settled in that part of Mexico some years earlier was able to get a large land grant from Governor Armijo. It contained nearly two million acres. At the time there was Mexican law that limited such grants to no more than 92,000 acres and that fact became important later. The Governor hoped that the area would be developed and filled up by Mexican settlers which would act as a buffer to Americans coming from the east.
In the 1850’s, Lucien Maxwell, a son-in-law of Beaubien, took on the active management of the land grant and after Beaubien’s death in 1864 Maxwell and his wife bought out the other heirs at a cost of about $36,000. Under Maxwell’s management settlers had arrived, but they were mostly Americans. Maxwell did not have formal arrangements with most of those who settled on his land, he was running several businesses that profited off the settlers in other ways and that made collecting rents less important. In 1870, Maxwell sold the grant to financiers representing British investors for the sum of $1,375,000 and afterwards retired comfortably to Fort Sumner, New Mexico where he died in 1875.

 Lucien B. Maxwell (legendsofamerica.com

The investors hired managers to look after the grant. Several well-connected Santa Fe politicians became local members of the board of the company. The foreign owners hoped to earn income from their investment. 

What they found was that records of sales and agreements were mostly nonexistent. Prior to the sale Maxwell had maintained a complex and fluid set of individual property relationships with those who lived on the grant land. Maxwell had sold some parcels, and some of those who lived and worked on the grant were squatters who had paid little or no rent for years. Some had lived on and worked their farms on that land for 30 or more years. Maxwell had operated one of the most tangled and ambiguous labor systems of the century. When the outsiders had arrived in New Mexico and tried to organize the estate and the enterprise along the lines of established U. S. business and legal practices it was an ill fit for those who were used to the Maxwell system. 

 

When the new company demanded rents from the squatters they were mostly ignored, the land grant managers tried legal processes and when those attempts failed they started evicting families. Several well-connected Santa Fe politicians had become board members of the company so in many ways the “company” and the government were one. What the company needed was what the politicians provided.
If the families refused to vacate, threats of violence were used and in some cases buildings, pastures or crops were burned, and livestock either driven off or killed. There was widespread belief that the Grant owners and managers had paid off judges and other officials so that every legal challenge the settlers made was defeated. There were accusations of corruption, many of which were later proven to be true.
There was a strong feeling among the Americans who had settled on the grant that the land should be converted to public domain land and put on the market by the Federal Government. They believed that the original grant had not complied with Mexican Law and should be vacated or at least sized down by about half. Others argued that any grants that had been made by Mexico should be null and void simply because the United States had won the Mexican war.
It did not take Reverend Tolby long to take sides and he was firmly on the side of the settlers against the Foreign owned land company and the local politicians (known as the Santa Fe Ring) who enabled the bully tactics being used by the company. Tolby not only preached against the company and their enablers from the pulpit in both Cimarron and Elizabethtown, but he soon started writing long detailed letters describing the situation to newspapers back east. One of his “editorials” published in the New York Sun in which he named names associated the group known as the Santa Fe Ring and described their corrupt political methods. That one apparently caught the attention of the wrong folks in New Mexico.

Sunday, September 13, 1875 was Tolby’s day to preach in Elizabethtown, around 25 miles from his home in Cimarron. His wife Mary and their two daughters had stayed home. Mary expected his return on Monday, probably no later than late afternoon. He didn’t return Monday and early on Tuesday Mary had become worried and requested a search party. Rev Tolby was found dead, shot twice in the back and hidden behind some brush. His horse, saddle, and other personal items had not been touched so it had clearly not been a robbery. Tolby’s many friends throughout Colfax County were furious. Even Clay Allison a local rancher and a noted gun fighter who had fought for the Confederats during the Civil War was furious. The two men were unlikely friends, but Tolby had the sort of personality that drew people to him. Allison has been described as a man with a temper and the personality of a Honey Badger. Once asked what he did for a living he replied, “I’m a shootist.” Lots of people were afraid of him, and with good reason. Clay was a man who went to extreme lengths to extract retribution when he felt he had been slighted or wronged. His Bible Belt upbringing demanded a settling of scores for the death of a Methodist minister who was also his friend.

 

 

The “cold war” that had been going on since Maxwell sold the grant to the foreign investors had entered a new, and much more dangerous phase.

Besides Clay Allison, who did not need much of an excuse to settle a score, Reverend Oscar P McMains took up the mantel of leading a “holy war” to break the backs of the Maxwell Grant owners. He was quoted as saying “The war is on..no quarter will be given for the foreign land thieves and their hired assassins”. 

Within two weeks rumors began to circulate that Cruz Vega the man who hauled mail from Elizabethtown to Cimarron and was the new Cimarron constable, was involved in the murder. On the evening of October 30, 1875 a masked mob who were said to have been led by McMains and Allison confronted Vega. He denied having had anything to do with the murder and pointed the mob toward Manuel Cardenas. The mob didn’t believe Vega. He was pummeled and then hung from a telegraph pole. Ten days later Cardenas was arrested in Elizabethtown and questioned. He said Vega had shot the minister and in addition he pointed the finger at two men who were members of the Santa Fe Ring named Mills and Longwell and said they were behind the killing.
Mills barely escaped a furious mob in Cimarron but was later arrested. Longwell had escaped to Fort Union just ahead of the Allison brothers. In the meantime Cardenas was still being held in Elizabethtown and transported from the jail to the office where he was being questioned. One night as he was being returned to the jail he was shot by person(s) unknown. Violence was out of control around Cimarron and for weeks the town was in the hands of a mob. In the months after Tolby was killed it has been estimated that as many as 200 others lost their lives in Colfax county in the aftermath of Tolby’s murder.

 

 

Lew Wallace (William Henry Smith Memorial Library, Indianapolis)

 

Finally, in 1878 President Hayes fired the corrupt and inept Governor Samuel Axtell and appointed a Hoosier by the name of Lew Wallace as governor. Hayes wanted the mess in New Mexico cleaned up, it was being well reported in papers around the country. Although the worst of the violence in Colfax County had ended by 1878 there were still sporadic outbreaks of violence until 1887 involving the land grant company and those who were against the company.

Wallace had his hands full, just as the Colfax County war was beginning to cool down another range war was heating up in Lincoln County which at that time was the largest county in the country, consisting of nearly the entire southeast quarter of the state. Billy the Kid was actively involved in that mess.

 

As reported by the Daily New Mexican, Mary Russell Tolby buried her husband on Saturday Sept. 18, 1875 (newspapers.com)

After Mary  buried her husband in the Cimarron cemetery she  wasted no time getting back to Indiana. In 1884 she married Erastus H Smith in White County. They moved back to Tippecanoe County and lived near Battle Ground where they raised two sons. Some sources indicate Mary had given birth to a son named Frank Tolby soon after Reverend Tolby’s murder. That son died before 1880.
                                       

                                           AFTERWARD:
Although a substantial reward was posted by New Mexico in addition to a second reward posted by the Masonic Lodge and other friends in Cimarron the murder remains unsolved to this day. 

                      Reproduction of early reward poster for the “Shootist” Clay Allison

Clay Allison who had been directly involved in much of the violence following Tolby’s death as well as other incidents not related to that period married and settled down a bit. He left Cimarron and moved to the Texas panhandle. Ironically Allison’s death July 1, 1887 was the result of a wagon accident.

Governor Wallace finished his novel Ben Hur in 1880 during his time in New Mexico. He resigned as governor in March 1881. In May of 1881 he was appointed Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, a diplomatic post he remained through 1885 after which he returned to his home in Crawfordsville.    

The ghosts of Cimarron may have followed Mary Tolby and her children back to Indiana. In 1911 Grace Tolby, the youngest Tolby daughter was committed to Central State Hospital. She had been seeing and hearing spirits or angles who had come to disturb her and she had frequent conversations with said spirits, sometimes becoming violent, screaming and throwing things at the spirits. One must wonder if her early girlhood experiences in New Mexico were contributed to her later mental health.   

In 1913 the Cimarron Masonic Lodge dedicated a large new monument over the grave of Rev. Tolby. Mary Russell Tolby Smith was an older sister of my great grandmother.  I took this photo several years ago on a trip through Cimarron.  

Art or Not? That is the question.

ART OR NOT

Not about details...but shapes, color, and light

Is an image that is created with paint or pencil superior to an image created with an electronic device or computer program? I have always referred to myself as a photographer. For along time I thought of Artist and Photographer as two different beasts. More recently I have started to think of myself as more of an artist.  What was that evolution about?  Am I simply trying to satisfy my own ego? 

When my passion for photography first began and I took all the "usual" photos.  I took loads of people pictures, weddings, senior pictures, family events and other "ordinary" stuff.  Since my retirement we have traveled a great deal and I took loads of landscape pictures, some that could best be described as "experimental".  I was trying to see things from a different perspective, new angles, different light.  I was often quite happy with the results if that experimenting.  Most of that was done simply through camera settings, some with a little help from Photo Shop.  There is a lot of really beautiful scenery between here and California and I usually had pretty good luck getting an accurate representation of that beauty but what excited me was that sometimes I was even able to capture something more, best described as more like the essence of the place.  That was exciting and intriguing.  I wanted to do more of that and so the experimenting continued.  

Sundown in my dream.  

I have come to believe that an image or a piece of physical art such as sculpture or architecture that captures the imagination and the awe of the person looking at it and makes them want to ponder what they see, makes them feel as if they are there, or that they want to be.   If it does those things then I believe it is art.   I don't believe that the manner in which the image or thing was created matters. Too often we get hung up on technical definitions and descriptions. We do that in many areas, not only art.  We too often miss the message because we are arguing about definitions. Not all art needs to be absolute visual reality, sometimes it is OK to be something that leaves you wondering and in awe.  

I would really love to know what your thoughts are  about the question: What is Art?  Comments welcome, and encouraged?  

shadow and light

Building tomorrow

shape and color

Body Language: Created from 12 individual shots.  Thank you Photoshop for the help.

  

I Feel Lucky

For all of my life, except for 5 years, I have lived in or near Lafayette/West Lafayette.  I took many things about my community for granted. The appearance did not change much through the first twenty years of my life.  In 1973 a large enclosed shopping mall was built at the south edge of town.  New housing additions were being built in both towns. Those additions were all being built at the far edges away from the centers of town.  

At first the changes where not noticeable.  In most ways the town continued to have the same feel and look. When the Mall opened it took J.C.Penny from a downtown location.  It also took Sears from near downtown.  By the mid 70's many of our old downtown buildings were beginning to look tired and worn, a lot of them were a hundred years or older.  Gradually other businesses began closing, many of them having been long time downtown businesses.   Loebs Department store which had been a downtown institution for almost a century closed.  Reifers Furniture, another long time downtown business closed. The whole downtown from Ferry street to Main Street to Columbia Street and South Street was beginning to look tired, sad, and worn out.  Downtown was well past its prime.  

So what makes me feel lucky?  It sounds like a sad story, and it would be a sad story had it ended in 1990 after 20, and more years of decline.  Instead, like a human who beats cancer, or someone who gets a heart transplant...the downtown began to grow healthier following a series of changes and it continues to improve in health every year.  

A large part of the credit for downtown's comeback goes to the Lafayette Railroad Relocation project.  Removing the trains that bisected town was a huge benefit for both traffic and safety through downtown and into West Lafayette. The first railroad was relocated in 1994, ending 142 years of train traffic down the middle of 14 blocks of Fifth St. The second Railroad was relocated in 2001. It was a project that had taken about 30 years from developing and talking about the idea through funding and construction.  Two new bridges were built, the old Main Street bridge was turned into a pedestrian bridge between Lafayette and sister city West Lafayette. A third bridge also saw improvements also.  Two underpasses were installed under the new corridor at Wabash Avenue and North 9th.  and finally the old brick railroad depot was moved to a new plaza that anchors the west end of Main street next to the new corridor which now runs next to the Wabash. 

 Almost immediately you started to see that change was happening.  Empty store fronts were no longer empty. Outdoor art appeared in many locations around downtown.  New buildings, including nice condos were added along 2nd street and along Main street filling up space that had become parking lots 50 years ago.  People were living downtown again. Today on a walk along Main street from 11th down to 2nd street you see almost no empty buildings. 

Perhaps one of the most positive results of all this new excitement about downtown is that a lot of interest has been created in support of historic preservation. Much of that excitement has been created by one talented and dedicated young man who has a passion for preservation.  Because of that new interest, many of the old buildings have had facelifts that not only preserves them but does so in a manner that is sensitive to the style of the buildings.  

One of the fun changers downtown that I love is the appearance of what I call "alley art" which are murals painted on available wall space by some very talented young artists.  Each mural is different but they could be described as enchanting, dazzling,  intriguing, ironic,  or silly but every one of them is fun to look at and they add both color and excitement to our downtown.  Once again downtown a fun place to go shopping, to eat out, or to simply walk along and enjoy the views.  As I said, I feel lucky to live in a town that was able to pull itself up by the bootstraps, even it it has taken the better part of 50 years. I'm excited to see what's next.  

At Riehle Plaza the anchor of Main street

As we pass through the doors of 200 years of history for Lafayette

A little playful humor

More alley art.  

Honoring the Wabash

One of my favorite pieces of sculpture with courthouse dome in background
 

Refurbished. This was once a fires station
during the days of horse drawn equipment.

 

A little excitment at night. 

Midway down Main, the old Lafayette theater brought back by the City. 
Appropriate words on the Marquee, Eat - Drink - Explore 

 

Memories

I want to keep them!

Where have they gone? 

Some memories are better forgotten.  Other memories you want to hang on to.  All things considered,  I would rather have memories, even it means I must have both of those types.  Memories can bring great joy, like the ones I remember of sitting on the porch swing with my grandma "Meme" and watching the sun sets, or at about age 5 the faint memory of sitting on the edge of the bed with my other grandma with her arm around me.  I don't remember if we were talking but I clearly remember the feeling of being loved. I can still see that room, even where the bed was located in the room.  

A couple of nights ago as I was getting into bed my back itched and I asked my wife if she would scratch my back.  I lifted my T-shirt and she gave my back some great itch relief.  As she was doing that I said, did you know I have a numb place on my stomach?  She said, That's probably from when you had your appendix removed.   What? I had my appendix removed.  She told me the story of the Christmas when I got sick a day or two before Christmas and she took me to urgent care and from there I was transported by ambulance to the hospital where they took out my appendix, and that I was released from the hospital and we were able to have our family Christmas celebration on time.  My immediate thought was "She must be making that up, I have no recollection of any part of what she just said, how could I not remember something like that?"  The next morning I texted both of our daughters to see if they remembered such an event....they both did! My reaction might have been "Damn, what's going on in my head?"  But I wasn't really surprised.  

In the summer of 2020 I had a seizure, the first one I had what what I can only describe as talking and even walking around the room, but at the same time not being aware of anything at all.  We attributed it to perhaps I had a heat stroke or something. I had just come in from some heavy work in my flower beds on a typical very hot humid day here in Indiana.  I do remember thinking I wanted to go inside to get a drink of cold icewater.  

A couple of months later another "event".  My wife and I were sitting at our computers in the office.  My wife told me later. "you were sitting in your chair, spun around and vomited on the floor, then I cleaned up the mess and we went back to our computers.  That evening she asked me,  "how are you feeling now".  "I feel fine, why?"  She told me she was just concerned because I had thrown up that afternoon.  I looked at her like she was nuts, told her I didn't know what she was talking about,  then I got up and looked in the waste basket for dirty paper towels. CRAP...THERE THEY WERE.  WTF IS WRONG WITH ME? 

The rest of the year passed with nothing unusual happening. Then came March 16th. Just an ordinary day.  We finished dinner and I picked up my plate and carried it to the kitchen thinking to myself I was going to find something for dessert.  my wife heard a loud crash and called out asking if I was all right.  I did not respond.  She found me laying on the floor in the pantry, unconscious, she talked to me, and then touched my leg and she said my whole body stiffened when she touched me. She called 911 and soon the fire department arrived. I am told, but do not remember that the firefighters helped me up off the floor and walked me to the dinning room and were talking to me.  I have no memory of any of that. Then the Ambulance arrived and they helped me onto the cot and wheeled me down to the street and hoisted me into the back of the truck.  I do have a sort of hazy recollection of the feeling of being lifted up and I recall that the medic kept talking to me, asking questions all the way to the hospital and all I wanted to do was go to sleep.  As they were unloading me things were clearing up in my head and I remember being wheeled into the ER and of the events that happened there.   I had a cat scan which showed no stroke so they sent me home and did not make a specific diagnosis, just an unexplained loss of consciousness. 

I followed up with a visit to the family doctor and he referred  me to a neurologist.  After 4 or 5 EEG tests, including one where I was wired up for a whole weekend the neurologist explained that I was having seizures of the type called "complex partial seizure or sometimes called focal onset impaired awareness seizures.  Epilepsy, who saw that coming at age 70? 

I believe, though it has not been confirmed by my neurologist, that my loss of some memories is related to the seizure issue.  At any rate I am much more conscious of my memories than I once was.  I'm also more afraid of losing more of my memories.  The bottom line is what I said before,  I'd rather have memories, even if all of them are not roses and rainbows.  

 

I DON'T GET IT

Exclaimer:  I am not a politician, nor an expert in foreign affairs, nor a military expert. I have friends and neighbors who might be of the Jewish faith, I might have friends or neighbors who are of the Muslim Faith, or perhaps Catholic, or Baptists, and so on.   But you know what?  I don't know what faith they are because I never asked.  I believe a person's faith is between themselves and God.  It's none of my business. 

The Middle East has been suffering through more war and killing since October and it was all started by a group of radicals who took the lives of more than 1000 people who were minding their own business on the other side of a border between Gaza and Israel and then that was followed by Israel "getting even" and attempting to eradicate the entire group of radical murderers.  Don't get me wrong, I believe Hamas consists of men who are murderers and are guilty of crimes against the law as well as moral crimes. They should all be put out of business, permanently.  

That said, I want to first ask a question.  If someone murders my wife is it right for me (or the state acting in my place) to then find and kill that murderer,  Of course it is.  But is it right that the state,  while in the process of finding and killing that murderer also decides to kill the wife of the murderer, the children of said murderer, his cousins, his grandmother, and his neighbors who knew nothing about his crime?  I think not.  In that way it is as heinous as what the the murderer did in the first place.  I don't understand why the world is not appalled by the manner in which Israel attempts to eliminate Hamas.  

My second thought, and maybe even more important,  and even more confusing to me is this.  Even if Israel were able to eliminate ever single Hamas fighter and leader they have surely created thousands more enemies in the process, new enemies that live right next door.  Am I misunderstanding human nature? If my three year old child is blown to bits by an Israeli rocket I believe I'd end up being a dangerous enemy to Israel in the future, even though I was not originally associated with Hamas and even if I had held no grudges against Israel prior to them murdering my 3 year old daughter.  Harsh language you think?  I think it's just being honest about human nature.  Israel will be no better off in a year than they were at the beginning of their pursuit of the Hamas murderers and maybe worse.  

Scenes of dead children break my heart and bring me to tears.  I can no longer even bear to watch the news. I understand there are Israeli parents and children who are suffering now too.  For the good of all humanity this killing must end.  I don't understand how world leaders, including those in our country don't demand it.