The
Wild West: tall tale stories of cowboys, Native Americans, fur trappers and
traders. Men who swapped the bustling east for the barren west. Uncharted
territory- the want and need to establish something- to find something…To
change their destiny.
When
I think of the West of the 1800s, frankly, I am terrified. If my main squeeze
back in the “olden days” would have said, “Let’s head out west! I can get me
some land, build us a home…” I would have said NO. Even if I would have started
the journey I would have most likely been the first to die of dysentery
or something else unpleasant.
Maybe I played too much "Oregon Trail" in the 1980s.
Other
men and women did not hesitate to take the road, in Robert Frost’s words, "less traveled by.” Two of these men, Jim Bridger and Louis Vasquez, did
just that- opted for the unknown.
I
could outline the full history of these trailblazers, but this blog is truly aimed
at telling the stories that you may not often hear around the water cooler of
history books. This is intended to shed some light on specific information that I have uncovered in mountains of documents. Jim Bridger and Louis
Vasquez didn’t just travel, literally, over mountains.
Alas,
I need to give a little background information on their histories so that you
can see how cool it is they chose Washington Township as their final home – and
how really, really cool it is that they did business
in New Santa Fe.
James
Felix Bridger, nicknamed “Old Gabe” by his closest companions, was born in 1804
in Virginia. When he was a young child, he and his family moved to St. Louis.
Unfortunately when he was 13, he had lost his entire family, leaving him out
to fight on his own. He was uneducated in a formal setting and illiterate. He
started to go on expeditions to the west when he was a teenager. He fur trapped,
traded with the Native Americans and was fluent in several Native American
languages, conversational French, and Spanish.
Pierre Louis Vasquez oil painting |
Pierre
Louis Vasquez (born 1798 in St. Louis), our lesser known of the two profiles,
is, on paper, the one from a prominent upbringing. His father, Benito, born in
Spain, was one of the “first families” of St. Louis. His mother was of French
Creole origin. Louis’ native tongue was French, although he, too, was fluent in
multiple languages. Bernard DeVoto in “Across the Wide Missouri” refers to
Vasquez as “of aristocratic birth. . . And bits of aristocratic elegance clung
onto him in the mountains like cottonwood fluff.”
This
is a striking contrast to the accounts of Old Gabe.
Hollywood
royalty has reignited one of the oldest and saddest sagas of the Wild West.
Leonardo DiCaprio brilliantly gave his Academy Award winning performance as Hugh Glass in “The Revenant.” The Revenant is a movie for
the ages - a gruesome and shockingly raw portrayal of a man who was thought to
be knocking on death’s door after a terrible attack by a grizzly bear. Two men,
one being a nineteen year-old naive Jim Bridger, were left to tend to the dying Glass. Thinking Glass wouldn't survive much longer, they dug a
shallow grave and left him behind. Whoops....
...Hugh
may have been pretty angry when he survived the 200 mile journey after being
deserted.
Hugh
Glass did, indeed, face Bridger. One account of the confrontation states, “(Bridger) kept
entirely to himself, unapproachable as a wild animal crawling off to lick its
wounds. . . he knew only that he had done a cowardly thing.”
I
would like to believe that this was one of the
speed bumps in the life of Bridger and his triumphs supersede his teenage lapse in judgement.
By
1824, Jim Bridger was credited with “founding” the Great Salt Lake. In that
same year, the South Pass was founded by a small group of men, including none
other than Vasquez and Bridger.
Bridger
went on to marry three Native American women and have six known children, one dying
in an Indian attack in the Oregon Territory.
Replica quarters at Fort Bridger, Wyoming From Wyoming State Parks |
In
1843, Bridger and Vasquez established Fort Bridger in Wyoming, designed to be a
stop for supplies and provisionals for those traveling on the Oregon Trail.
This
is when the true partnership of Bridger and Vasquez blossomed.
In
striking contrast to Bridger’s three marriages to Native American women (first to a woman named Cora, the second to a Ute Indian and the third to Mary Washakie),
Vasquez remained single until the ripe old age of 49. In 1847, he wed the widow
Narcissa Burdette Land in St. Louis. Narcissa was not a fan of Bridger’s new wife, the Ute Indian “squaw,”
and they fought constantly. At this time, the men would have cohabitated a single
residence at Fort Bridger, living under close quarters with growing children
and two women from very different backgrounds.
One.
House. One very, very small house.
Narcissa
and Bridger’s wife did get along in later years, and Narcissa was even present
when she died in childbirth in 1849.
Current view of the Bridger Mountains, Bridger Pass panoramio.com |
By
the 1850s, the relationship with the Mormons was questionable and the men opted
to sell the fort in Wyoming to them, although some accounts say they were never paid. Raising young children on the frontier was
not an ideal situation, so by this time the men decided to move to the Jackson
County, Missouri area and settle into a much more stable life- with separate homes.
Around
1855, both Bridger and Vasquez traveled to the Kansas City area. Bridger
continued to whet his appetite of the west by traveling as a scout. According to
his daughter, he was sometimes gone as long as three years.
Bridger
and Vasquez both had residences in
Westport, and a lot of the history books highlight this; however, both men purchased farms not too far away
from one another. Bridger’s farm, now partially marked across from St. Joseph’s
Hospital on Carondelet Drive, went as far north as Watts Mill and as far south
as Glen Arbor Road, just past Red Bridge Road. Vasquez’s farm shared a property line with the great-great
grandson of Daniel Boone and is bordered by Bannister Road on the south and 91st
street on the North.
Ironically, I live blocks away from this farm now… in Boone Manor.
Location of the Bridger Farm from City Title Insurance, 1970 Missouri Valley Special Collections |
By
this time, the town of New Santa Fe had burst out of the very seams of the
Missouri-Kansas border and was outfitting travelers on the trails to the west. It
was no “true” secret that Jim Bridger helped erect a building with the help of George
Kemper in the town of New Santa Fe. In a taped interview from the 1990s, which
now resides at the Historical Society of Missouri, Kenneth Klapmeyer (1907-2005)
recounted his deep-rooted memories. He mentioned that an old foundation existed near the
current “mortuary” (McGilley Funeral Home), and he stated, “The house burned
down. There was a store in there some place long before us. Jim Bridger was
involved.”
This
peaked my interest and had me patiently perusing old land records to see if maybe, just
maybe, Bridger didn’t just build a business in the town. Maybe he was more
involved than I originally anticipated?
In
January of 1853, a deed indicates that none other than Jim Bridger and
Louis Vasquez bought, $50 cash in hand, lots 7 and 8 in New Santa Fe. This was
even BEFORE they "sold" Fort Bridger to the Mormons!
Okay,
so back in these days, there was no such thing as building permits or business
licensing. Trying to decipher what happened on a stretch of land is near
impossible. In order to appreciate this story, we have to use a little known
power called “preponderance of the evidence.” Any historian or genealogist
knows that sometimes, whether you like it or not, you have to fill in the blanks.
You’re always looking for more information to support your claim, and your
research is never, ever completed.
We
have to presume where and when things happened when there is only a sprinkling
of written accounts. We know, due to written documentation, that Bridger helped
build a store in New Santa Fe. But, no written record ever stated he was involved
in a store.
But,
I beg to differ. The preponderance of the evidence tells me otherwise. Bridger
and Vasquez bought land in 1853 for $50.00. FIFTY. DOLLARS. That’s equivalent
to about $1,400 in today’s money.
That’s
still pretty cheap- and the lots in New Santa Fe were selling for $50 a lot at that time- with nothing on them.
By
1854, only a year later, they sold half of the lots for $170.16- an obvious
improvement to the amount paid a year later. That’s about $4,500 in today’s
moolah. They sold it to Josiah Watts.
Recognize
the last name?
Josiah
Watts was none other than the older brother of Stubbins Watts, the infamous
miller of Dallas, Missouri- also known today as Watts Mill. And Stubbins was a
known pal of Jim Bridger.
I
love how sometimes the dots just connect.
Of
course, you may be thinking that the two mountain men SOLD the land to Josiah
and the story ends there. At first, I thought so, too. When I thought I had run
out of options, I ran across a newspaper article that had me doing the happy dance
in my living room.
Summons from the Olathe Mirror Published August 1, 1861 |
Bridger,
without a shadow of a doubt, DID have a
store in New Santa Fe.
In
August of 1861, the Olathe Mirror published
a summons because a business was suing for unpaid debts. “Lewis Vasques, Joseph Bridger, and Josiah Watts, doing business as
Vasques, Bridger & Watts, Plaintiffs, vs. T.S. Edwards, Defendant.”
There
it is, plain as day- in print. One of the only
ways to really find out what was going on with businesses at the time is
from surviving newspapers and surviving court records. So, it’s no surprise my
next stop was to the Johnson County Archives. And yes, the name on this
document is incorrect- as they list Bridger as “Joseph” – but I promise you it's him!
This
is one of those moments as a historian and genealogist that I love. After a
long day of teaching, I couldn’t resist running out to the archives to see what
these cases involved. Although a lot of good stuff can be found online, the really, really good stuff requires time and visits to archival holdings buried in buildings. I was convinced the only way to make this claim of a legitimate
business being run was to investigate the court cases myself.
I
walked into a large warehouse-style building in southern Olathe, greeted by two
lovely ladies anxious to help in any way. I had called ahead to the Johnson County Archives, and they were
ready with the information I had been seeking. To my surprise, they carried out
folders and gingerly laid them in front of me. “Here you go,” one lady smiled.
Summons dated April 6, 1860 Vasques, Bridger & Watts vs. John Taylor & Sarah Taylor Courtesy of the Johnson County Archives |
“These
are the originals? From 1861?”
“Yes.
Be careful.” She walked away and planted herself behind her desk.
Seriously?
I
adore when things like this happen – and they are quite rare these days. Most
things are microfilmed. Occasionally while at the National Archives there may
be an original book you thumb through, but somehow this felt different.
I
stared down at the creamy white pages, the ink dried in perfect scrolls of
cursive handwriting. These pages in my hands (no white gloves!) were
transcribed over 150 years ago.
... Before
the Civil War.
The
information involved in the court case is really irrelevant, except it shed a
little bit of light on some of the operations of a “trading” post. It
became clear that one part of this business was to loan out money.
In
the two cases I was viewing, they traded a deed of land as security when a man, T.S. Edwards (who had fled and was nowhere to be found), needed a quick
$212.45. Another case from 1860 correctly identifies the business owners as “Louis
Vasques, James Bridger and Josiah Watts.” In 1858, the business had loaned them
$347.12- owed in twelve months. When they hadn’t paid, the business sued them
for the land they had used as
collateral.
It’s
like a title loan! I guess I was wrong- the swindlers on TV now aren't the innovative engineers of the "strapped for cash" mantra! These guys in the 1850s and 60s gave you a chance to pay your debt (with interest), and if
you didn’t, they sued for the rights to the land. Brilliant.
Of
course, I still couldn’t “prove” the business was even in New Santa Fe… especially being that these cases were in Johnson
County, Kansas and not Jackson County, Missouri. But, the land they were suing for was in Kansas Territory.
Yeah, Kansas wasn't even a state at this point.
One
of the other ways I have been able to document what was going on in the town of
New Santa Fe is by reading hundreds of pages of probate cases prior to the
Civil War. This may seem boring. Let me tell you.... It is…..
Until
you hit the jackpot.
Original promissory notes from 1859 for Vasquez, Bridger & Watts Courtesy of Johnson County Archives |
Harrison
S. Vivion, buried at Blue Ridge Cemetery, lived around New Santa Fe and died in
August 1855. Unfortunately, his wife suffered another blow when their young
daughter, Elizabeth, died in 1857.
Included
in this probate is a bill dated “New Santa Fe, August 27, 1857” from none other
than Vasquez, Bridger & Watts for funeral clothing for the young child.
She was nine years old when she passed away.
This
is one of those moments where I simultaneously got extremely excited and tremendously
sad. This was the reality of pioneer life- but it still makes my heart skip a
beat. Your husband dies at the age of 42 and two short years later, you lose
your daughter?
Invoice from H.S. Vivion's will indicating clothing bought from Vasquez, Bridger & Watts in New Santa Fe |
In
that one probate case, my whole expedition on Bridger and his business in New
Santa Fe seemed infinitely clear; I knew it was important to focus on the fact
that he, indeed, did have a business in New Santa Fe, even though it really is
unclear how involved he was.
These
two men, with the spirit of a younger, vibrant businessman named Josiah Watts,
ran a store in New Santa Fe. Josiah himself was a bit of a trailblazer,
partaking in the Gold Rush in 1849 and returning to the area known as New
Santa Fe after this failed attempt at getting rich quick. A biography on his son states Josiah did have a business with Jim Bridger, another indication of his involvement in this lost history of the town. He left New Santa Fe in the height of the Border Wars and settled on
a farm in Johnson County, where he died in 1895.
Vasquez
died in 1868, leaving his stamp on the American frontier.
Jim
Bridger, even after his venture in New Santa Fe, opened a business at 504
Westport Road. It is a fact he bought this building in 1866 from Cyprian Chouteau, nestled right up to Boone’s
Trading Post, A.K.A. Kelly’s in Westport. For many years, it was the home of Stanford and
Son’s, a comedy venue, and was for a short time a business aptly named "Bridger's Bottle Shop." Some to this day argue whether or
not this building is actually older than Kelly’s because they were built within months
of each other.
John McCoy, Alexander Majors & James Bridger Pioneer Park, Westport and Broadway St. |
One
cannot help but wonder if the literal foundation of the old “Vasquez, Bridger &
Watts” business in New Santa Fe can be rediscovered. In April 1965, a publication in the
Jackson County Historical Society magazine written by Mrs. Greenberry Ragan,
states, “One of the old store buildings was built by James Bridger and George W.
Kemper. The store keeper of this store was J.P. Smith.” It can be confirmed by
land records that the west half of lots 7 and 10, the original lots bought by Bridger
and Vasquez, were purchased by J.P. Smith from Henry Barager in 1856. But this is only half of the lots purchased in the original land deed.
And
what happened to these buildings? ….The Border Wars and the Civil War! More on this in my next
post! :)
By
1875, Jim Bridger was blind. According to a biographical sketch published in
1950 by the Kansas City Times,
Bridger oftentimes said, “I wish I war back thar ‘mong the mountains agin. A
man kin see so much farther in that country.”
In
1881, Jim Bridger died and was buried on
a hill ½ mile north of Watts Mill in the Watts Burial Ground (currently 101st
and Jefferson). He was later removed by an old friend and reinterred at Mount
Washington Cemetery.
So
much can be learned from these old mountain men and their dedication to the
dreams they held. Those familiar with the area of Washington Township, Jackson
County and New Santa Fe should be pleased to recount the expeditions of these
men.
Gene
Ceasar, author of “King of the Mountain Men: The Life of Jim Bridger” concluded,
“(He) was the product of a young wild America, lost America, and there can
never be another like him.”
I’m certainly glad that these trailblazers took the road less traveled.
I shall be telling this with a sigh | |
Somewhere ages and ages hence: | |
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— | |
I took the one less traveled by, | |
And that has made all the difference. Robert Frost |
Very well researched & written. Thank you for your time & efforts. Looking forward to the next post!
ReplyDeleteThank you!
DeleteI enjoyed your post very much and I especially liked the references to the places where you found your information. People don't often realize the hours of research it takes to find bits of information that one needs to reconstruct lives.
ReplyDeleteThank you! I always want to site the information but I think footnotes and endnotes kind of "ruin" the feel I'm going for! :)
DeleteWow, Diane. What painstaking work you have done to produce this report. As an author I can really appreciate your efforts. A little over 2 years I came out to the "Border" to do some research on a book that came to me in a dream. Even the name of the main character came to me that way and when I searched for that name it didn't exist. So I took a research trip to that area thinking I would write a novel, but what I uncovered changed my direction completely. I now wanted to do a historical novel. Although I was originally from Missouri I had never heard of the atrocities and massacres that had occurred during the border wars and into the Civil War. And I was from Missouri. While my novel is about a later time than Bridges and Vasquez I found it rewarding to know about that era. I will try to read everything you write. Many thanks. William Clifford Brown
ReplyDeleteWow, I love your response to this blog! I am glad you find the information interesting and rewarding. It's important to uncover and share as much as I can about what I have learned - and continue to learn. I would LOVE to know what you've written and have thought about dabbling in a novel (someday). Thank you again, and I have now added an option so that you can subscribe to my blog! If you look, it's at the top righthand part of the screen. I hope to hear more from you. :)
DeleteDiane! A most excellent account, with great citation for tremendous credibility. As a fellow local historian and author, I, too, appreciate the hours and energy behind your writing. And, I'm so excited to learn more (and NEW) about Bridger, Watts, Vasquez, and New Santa Fe, etc., because of your recent discoveries and posting(s). KEEP IT UP, Diane! Applause, applause. David W. Jackson, The Orderly Pack Rat (orderlypackrat dot com)
ReplyDeleteThank you so much, David! Your comment means a lot. I want to make history FUN to read and interesting to those that both understand and appreciate it and those that may not usually "care." This month is a busy one, but I'll be getting another post out hopefully next week! Spread the word, and I'll have to check out your website!
DeleteReading the Martin City Telegraph this morning I discovered your site. I love KC early history and now will be going through your blogs on the various people and activities. It is good to "fill in" the real story sometimes with past knowledge. Your dedication and research are appreciated. You really dig for the true story. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteLouis Vasquez was my gggrandfarther. The painting shown here is NOT him. It is probably his older brother Benito, jr. the error is due to a longstanding misidentification of the picture in the MissorinHistorucal society archives. I have a daguerreotype of him and he looks much different than in this painting. A copy of he daggerotype was published in the Colorado historical society bulletin.
ReplyDelete