Wood, S. N. (Samuel Newitt)

Samuel Newitt Wood was born into a Quaker family at Mount Gilead, Ohio on 30 December 1825. From an early age, Wood interested himself in politics and in the abolitionist cause, acting as a conductor on the underground railroad. It was in this endeavor that he met his future wife, Margaret Walker Lyon, with whom he had four children. After teaching and reading law, he was admitted to the bar in 1854. That same year, Wood and his wife headed to Kansas in the name of the free state cause; Wood settled in the 1850s on a site near Lawrence, in Wakarusa township. In 1859 Wood moved to Cottonwood Falls, Chase County and started the Kansas Press, the first newspaper in the county, which later moved counties and changed names. He also served as a territorial legislator and was later both a state senator and representative, as well as a judge. When civil war broke out, Wood immediately enlisted. He continued to edit and publish newspapers, and he was an original stockholder in the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. In the 1880s he became involved in the county seat wars involving Stevens County. Because of this conflict, Wood was killed on 23 June 1891 by James Brennan.

The Hay Meadow Massacre of July 25, 1888, the bloodiest episode of the Stevens County, Kansas, county seat war, resulted in the murder of Sheriff John M. Cross and three of his deputies.

The Stevens County war, 1885-1889, was a series of violent events between the feuding towns of Hugoton and Woodsdale. Both towns wanted to be named the county seat of Stevens County. Hugoton was named county seat in 1887, but this decision only intensified the feud. Following disputes over the election of the county sheriff and the placement of a railroad line, the Marshal of Woodsdale, Ed Short, attempted to arrest Sam Robinson, Marshal of Hugoton, on charges of assault. This resulted in the murder of four Woodsdale men by a posse from Hugoton in a hay meadow at Wild Horse Lake in No Man⁰́₉s Land (the Oklahoma Panhandle). Only Deputy Herbert Tonney survived the massacre though he was wounded and left for dead. Following the massacre, the governor of Kansas sent the military to disarm both towns.

Six Hugoton men were indicted and convicted for the murders: Cyrus E. Cook, O.J. Cook, J.B. Chamberlain, Cyrus Freese, J.J. Jackson and Jack Lawrence. Sam Robinson escaped indictment due to his imprisonment in a Colorado penitentiary for robbery. Colonel Samuel N. Wood, the founder of Woodsdale, served as a prosecutor at the trial in Paris, Texas, in July 1890. However, in 1891, the Supreme Court overturned the convictions on appeal due to a lack of jurisdiction over the crime.

Sources:

Butler, Ken. "Kansas Blood Spilled Into Oklahoma." Blue Skyways. http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/stevens/haymeadow.html (accessed July 19, 2010).

Williams, Robert L. "Judge Jesse James Dunn." Chronicles of Oklahoma 18, no. 1 (March 1940), http://digital.library.okstate.edu/chronicles/v018/v018p003.html (accessed July 19, 2010).