Notes for HARRIETTE SHOE:
Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date: August 2, 1937
Name: Harriet Harlan
Post Office: Fairland, Oklahoma
Date of Birth: June 13, 1850
Place of Birth: Muscatine, Iowa
Father: David Shoe
Place of Birth: Pennsylvania
Information on father:
Mother: Hannah Evans
Place of birth: Pennsylvania
Information on mother:
Field Worker: Nannie Lee Burns
Interview: 7022
THE LITTLE SOLDIER.
I was born twelve miles north of Muscatine, Iowa, June 13, 1850. My father, David Shoe, and
Mother, Hannah Evans were born in Pennsylvania with Dad's folks being born of Dutch Parents.
They were married in Ohio near Cleveland, later coming to Iowa.
We left Iowa the fall I was seven years old. Father sold all of his stock before leaving and we
traveled by boat down the Mississippi River to Saint Louis and then up the Missouri to what is now
Kansas City. We would tie up and camp along the way. One night, my sister, brother and I
were gathering wood for a fire when we found a man's hat; soon we came upon the coat and
then found his body lying under a tree with the flesh gone- just the bones were there.
LIFE IN KANSAS
My father stopped in what is now Kansas City and being a blacksmith, he had a shop there
for a short time with the Shawnees and Wyandottes living nearby. We stayed there one
winter untill May of the next year, when father moved to near Florence, where he began
to farm. Mother's youngest brother, Andy, was with us and helped father in the shop in Kansas
City and moved to Florence with us.
CIVIL WAR DAYS
Father was not a strong man and so was unable to join the army. My oldest brother joined
Company C. 11th Kansas Infantry. My youngest brother, really too young to join, enlisted in
the Militia.
We had frequent visits from both sides and when the Gray Coats asked father anything, he
would tell them he was a Democrat. However to join them you had to pass a physical
examination which father could not. The other side took anything, even boys and old men and
when approached by them father would say, "I'm just an old man, not able to do anything."
The first time the Blue Coats stopped at our house they killed all mother's chickens and then
forced her to lend them a kettle in which to cook the chickens.
A widow named EDWARDS lived near Florence, and a Baptist preacher had a mortgage on her
home for five hundred dollars. He (the preacher) came to her home one day in February and
demanded the money and she told him that she could not pay him and asked him to give her
time as she had small children. He refused and told her that he would be there the next
morning at nine o'clock and if she did not have the money, he would put her out. That night
Cousin Bob came to our house to see us as he was passing through. Mother asked him to
stay all night but he said that he couldn't. Later she told him what this preacher had done
and asked him if he could help the widow. He studied a while and then smiled and said, "If you
will take care of Ribbon and me, I'll see." I was only a small child and he called me "Wasp."
I spoke up and said, "Cousin Bob, if you'll stay, I'll take care of Ribbon." That night while he slept
I sat in the door all night and held the reins of the horse.
This horse was trained and she could sense danger and you could tell from her actions when
there was alarm. Later she was shot from under him and he never ceased grieving for her.
Later he rode a Claybank named Bess but he never cared for her as he did for Ribbon. He gave
mother five hundred dollars and told her to take it and give to the widow and tell her to pay
the man when he came the next morning, but to demand the return of her mortgage, which
she did. Knowing the time that the man was supposed to call on the widow, he left our house
and waited for him. As the preacher left her home, he grabbed the money the lady had just
given him. A week later, he was at the house again and his pocket was full that it was bulging
and I asked what he had in his pocket, he replied, "We dived into a store the other night and
here are some ribbons for your dolls, Wasp." There was ribbons of many sizes and colors.
"That's for holding Ribbon the other night," he said.
THE BURNING OF LAWRENCE
The women folks of the James, the Youngers and the Quantrell kinfolks had been placed for
safety in a brick house in Lawrence and they had stationed pickets around the house. In some
way, the other side had found a way to under-mine the house with powder, and when it
exploded some of them were killed and others wounded. The burning of Lawrence was in
retaliation for this.
Cousin Bob, with eighty men, was camped near our house when the other side with a large
force came up and camped for supper near the house. Father managed to get word to Cousin
Bob and he and his men slipped away without being discovered and went ahead to Lawrence,
gathering more men as they went.
There was a regiment, or eleven hundred men there, and Pa had thirty acres of corn cut and
shocked. They fed all of it to their horses that night. Later that night, they forced Pa to go with
them and show them the road to Lawrence. Not far from our house the road forked in three
directions and not knowing what the soldiers intended to do with Pa, and being afraid they
would kill him, I went along in my gown, barefooted
It was a clear frosty night, and they tried to get me to go back but I wouldn't. After they reached
the three forks and Pa told them the way they told him that he could go back home.
I was called the "Little Soldier" and no matter where Pa went, I went along. I do not know
what I could have done, but I thought I could help him.
It was but a few hours till we heard the sound of guns and saw the smoke of burning buildings
in Lawrence. Cousin Bob did not lose a man but many were killed on the other side. In history
this is called, "The Lawrence Raid."
My brother, who joined the army, had first tried to join the Confederates but to join them you
had to pass a physical examination and be twenty-one years of age. He was minus a kneecap
so they would not take him, then he angrily told them that he would join the Blue Coats and
help them whip the Confederates. This was John Shoe who in later years was the first man to
strike lead at Galena, Kansas.
None of our family were killed in the War and we did not have much stock to lose as father had
sold it when we left Iowa and had never bought much.
The War was not so bad as pictured by some as they never killed a man unless they were
ordered to do so. Even the pickets of the two armies were friends and I have known them to
exchange chews of tobacco. The bushwhackers had no principles, for they used the War as an
excuse to take anything that they wanted. Captain Jim LANE was called, "Feather-bed Thief
Lane." I have seen him with several feather beds strapped on to his saddle at one time.
The Northern soldiers were called "Federals," Blue-coats," and sometimes the "Union Men."
We were called "Rebels," "Gray-coats" or Confederates."
LATER YEARS
We moved from Florence to Columbus, Kansas, April 1, 1865. I had gone to school at Florence
and started school at Emporia when the folks moved and mother wanted me to come along.
As I was home visiting from Emporia I stayed, and after they got down here mother wanted me to
continue with them and I did and although my clothes and trunk were at Emporia; I never went
back for them.
Father rented a place on Shoal Creek near where Galena is now and here I met the man I
married, David L. HARLAN, a Cherokee Indian, whose father, David Harlan, Sr., had been Chief
when he brought the Immigrants and Old Settlers here. They had settled on Spring River at
the mouth of Shoal Creek. We were married at Enterprise, now Joplin, Missouri, June 16, 1866
Harvest was on and my father-in-law wanting my help to cook did not want us to leave so we
remained for some weeks. I was anxious to have a home of my own and insisted on it, so
my father-in-law said one day; "all the horses are busy and if you move you will have to take
Paddy and Buck, the two oxen. We loaded my clothes and trunk and mother gave me a dozen
hens and a rooster. I got my bedding, among which was a blue and white wool cover that I
had woven when I was fourteen. I told Mother when I was weaving "I was so proud of myself,
some day it would be written in history."
Our house was of hewed logs and very nice. One room, 16' x 18', and a shed kitchen. Here our
first three children, Della, Willie and Laura, were born. After we moved to ourselves father
gave me a mare and a cow, and my husband had a mare. I liked my home but as my husband
was away so much I was lonesome and the wolves would howl around so that the first time I
went home I told my younger sister, "she had to come and stay with me, and she did.
An Eventful Ride.
In February after we were married, my husband wanted some iron wedges sharpened to split
timber and I offered to take them to the blacksmith's shop in Baxter Springs. Frank BARNETT,
who was the husband of Samantha HILLEN, now lives here in Fairland, and owned the first
blacksmith shop in Baxter Springs.
I took the short cut by the old Baxter Springs and as I rode up the hill my mare began to
snort. When I reached the top, there hanging to a limb on a big cottonwood tree near the
spring, were three bodies. I got off my horse and led her up to the tree, and there I saw the
bodies of Jim, George, and Joe MERCER; their coats, hats, shoes, or rather boots were gone,
and lying on the ground was the body of Nick GILLETT, their cousin. They had been shot. I
went on to Baxter and told Frank Barnett and he gathered some men together and they went
after the bodies. I learned afterwards they were shot by a supposed Vigilante Committee
who claimed that they were gathering up and branding too many cattle. Afterwards at a
dance I saw a man wearing the boots of Jim. I knew the boots as they were stitched in an
unusual manner.
We remained at our first home five years; then we bought out Harlan Hors and moved on the
old place. When it was found that the Cherokees could not hold the land in what is now
southern Kansas we sold our place and located south of here towards Hickory Grove. We took
our land south of Chetopa and here I lived after my husband left, and till my youngest son
James Rondal Harlan (called Cuds) began to play professional ball and could not be at home.
Sometime before this I had gotten a divorce and later married Pierce MCCLAIN. This was
forty-eight years ago. He only lived a year and eight months, so I went to work six miles
south of Chetopa and worked for many years.
I have owned three restaurants and worked in several, at Galena, Picher, Bluejacket, Vinita,
Adair and Big Cabin. I clerked for five years in a store at Pensacola, and worked in the Osage
country five years. I came here thirteen years ago to be with my daughter, Della, who was in
poor health.
Eleven years ago, my former husband, David Harlan, broken in health came here to my
daughter's and I took care of him the last four years of his life. He died here seven years ago
last February 15th.
Children of DAVID HARLAN and HARRIETTE SHOE are:
i. JAMES RONDAL "CUDS"10 HARLAN.
ii. DELLA HARLAN.
Article furnished by: Connie Schofield
