Freedom Festival 2011

By Kevin Gray

A rainy weekend did little to prevent events from taking place as scheduled at the Freedom Festival in John Brown Memorial Park during the weekend.

As smoke began to rise from a 10:30 a.m. gunfight Saturday performed by the Kansas River Gang Old West Reenactors, one of the performers reminded everyone, “and it’s beginning to rain.” By the time their show was finished, many of the actors lay dead in the wet grass.

Nobody seemed to mind the dampness, and the festival continued. Awnings covered vendors and the shelter house, as well as the John Brown Museum and Adair Cabin.

John Brown’s great-great-grandniece Mary Ward Buster welcomed visitors to the cabin. Even as the rain fell, members of the McLains Battery, Colorado Volunteers, reenactors from Wichita and Kansas City, Kan., could be found in the nearby encampment.

McLains Battery had actually been stationed in Paola during the Civil War. “Our unit is very historical to this area. They were assigned to Paola from mid-September 1864 until mustered out in May 1865,” said Diana Seba from Wichita.

Also found in Union blue and available in the military encampment was Mike Hadl from Lawrence.

Hadl had known nothing about his ties to a man who had helped with the fall of Richmond in the Civil War. “Before 1998, I could tell you nothing about Osawatomie or this area other than that John Brown was from here. But once I started looking into family ties, it all came together,” Hadl said.

Having come up to the cabin from the encampment to drop off fliers about his organization, Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War 1861 to 1865, he said his grandmother Isabel Rohrer lived north of Osawatomie and south of Paola. This is about all he knew until he began his research.

But Hadl said he finds it important to help people learn more about the history of areas affected by the Border War between Kansas and Missouri before and during the Civil War. “I didn’t know my ancestor, Charles Sherman from Germany and a member of the 5th Iowa Company D, volunteer cavalry, had helped capture Richmond, which brought the war closer to an end,” Hadl said.

His great-great-grandfather Sherman, before coming to Kansas, had been involved in the capture of the Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Hadl said. “How exciting was that to learn that Sherman, then a part of McCook’s command of Wilson’s Raiders, had captured Davis and guarded him ?” Hadl said.

Sherman’s connection to Miami County came at war’s end. “After the war ended, Sherman relocated to Paola, where he opened a tailor’s shop and his brother a livery stable, where people could bring horses for feeding or shoeing,” Hadl said.

Hadl never realized the extent of his family in Miami County. “I found out I had a grandfather in Paola and a grandmother in Osawatomie. From my late grandmother, Isabel, I have an iron Charles Sherman used in his tailor’s shop. And from a cousin, I received his scissors and a cape,” Hadl said.

This is why the Freedom Festival is so important, Hadl said. “There is so much history that took place in eastern Kansas in the 1850s and 1860s. From Lawrence and West Port down to the Battle of Black Jack near Baldwin, and Quantrill’s raid and Quantrill’s movements throughout the area. Then, there was Osawatomie and the battle there and the Battle of Mine Creek in Linn County and actions all the way down to Fort Scott,” Hadl said.

The Freedom Fest, Hadl said, gives people a chance to learn more about those times.

Since the John Brown Jamboree was held this past June, Mary Ward Buster said she had a chance to read letters written by J.B. Remington, one of Osawatomie’s founders and husband to Emma Adair, Samuel and Florella Adair’s daughter.

J.B. Remington, who would eventually serve Osawatomie as mayor and eventually in the Republican House of Representatives, had been the first union officer inside the Confederate White House. “He was the first one inside the mansion and took possession of Jefferson Davis’ papers, but the papers were returned in time for the Jamestown Exhibition of 1907,” Buster said.

Remington also served in the Republican House of Representatives during what had been called the Populist War of 1893. The People’s Party or Populists had won the House of Representatives in 1892, but the Republicans claimed 64 seats. Both houses claimed majorities, when they reconvened in 1893.

Remington, Buster said, had been an elected member of that same House. “He was in the room and with the speaker, when the Speaker of the House took a sledge hammer and broke open the chamber doors locked by the Populists meeting inside,” Buster said.

Reading Remington’s letters gave Buster what she called an amazing summer. “I never really knew Jeremiah Remington, even though I had visited his home often as a little girl. Through the letters, I became better acquainted with him as soldier, son and husband,” Buster said.

One letter Buster read had been talking about how Remington’s leadership in a particular battle had been superior. “It had been the best led of the Civil War,” Buster said.

The Civil War era letters, Buster said, showed more concern for his mother than his own safety. “He would write after a battle, ‘There’s nothing to worry about. It was your boy who led the battle, it was your boy who made sure the union flag was hanging high on the highest parapet on the battle field…’ to make his mother feel better about having made him the man he was in battle,” Buster said.

Buster said Remington had wanted to enlist in the Spanish-American War. “He was up in years by then, an elderly man, and too old to go, but he started recruiting younger men from Miami County. This way, he found others to go, even if he couldn’t,” Buster said.

Most importantly to the city of Osawatomie, Buster said, had been his words on his deathbed. “It wasn’t what he said to his wife and daughter, but that he was more concerned about the citizens of Osawatomie that he had dedicated his whole life to,” Buster said.

Also on Busters mind in the cabin Saturday was the sale of the Remington home. She looked across the park through the trees at the home sitting up the hill from the John Brown Park entrance. “If I could get several people to donate $10,000 apiece, we could buy the home and restore it to its grandeur,” Buster said.

The exterior today is far from what it once was, Buster said, but the interior is still in good shape. “Emma Adair may have grown up in this cabin, but she spent her years in the house on Brown Avenue overlooking the park. It was a grand house for someone who grew up in a cabin,” Buster said.

As Buster took time to visit with more visitors, Hadl said, his group in Lawrence, the Sons of Union Veterans, their camp is named after Kansan Sergeant Samuel J. Churchill, an artilleryman and Medal of Honor awardee from the Civil War.

Under a charge and heavy enemy fire from a Confederate charge, he stayed at his post, Hadl said. “The other men ran for cover, but Churchill stayed. He had to swab the barrel, pack the powder, add the ammo, ram it in, set the cannon’s direction and fire the cannon all by himself. He did this at least 11 times until he stopped the charge and his men rejoined him,” Hadl said.

Few people know about Churchill’s bravery, Hadl said, which is more reason for events like Freedom Fest. “He saved the battle because he did what he was trained to do, and he did it again and again, while under small arms fire,” Hadl said.

Both days ended with reenactments of the Battle of Osawatomie.

Additional entertainment was provided by Flamenco guitarist Rod Radford, the LeCompton Reenactors, Kerry Allenbrand as John Brown, the Osawatomie Time Machine, a gospel concert, Todd Mildfelt’s lecture on James Montgomery and John Brown, and Civil War Photographer Alexander Gardner portrayed by Doctor Doug McGovern.

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Posted by admin on Sep 21 2011. Filed under News and Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry