William J. Bland was killed in World War I. His widow, Mrs. Mary Agnes Bland, was daughter of Mr. William Tell Johnson and Mrs. Agnes Harris Johnson (a Kansas City musician). William Tell Johnson (1848-) was a Kansas City lawyer and judge who also had business and family interests in Osceola, Saint Clair County, Missouri. His files include correspondence with William E. Connelley and others about the burning of Osceola during the Civil War; Bishops John Hogan and Thomas Lillis; and Archbishop John Glennon. These papers range roughly from 1822-1938. The collection also includes files dating from 1844-1862 pertaining to William Tell Johnson's father, Waldo Porter Johnson (1817-1885). Waldo Porter Johnson, a resident of Osceola, Saint Clair County Missouri, was a prominent Missouri attorney, soldier, and State Legislator. He served in the Mexican War with Colonel Alexander Doniphan and later served the Confederacy in the Civil War. An active Democratic politician, Johnson served for a short time in the Missouri legislature in the late 1840s; lost an 1854 race for a U.S. House seat; was one of five Missouri representatives at the Peace Congress in Washington, D.C., in February 1861; was elected as a senator to the U.S. Senate in March 1861 (he resigned in August 1861; a congressional directory was used as a scrapbook); served as a senator in the Confederate Senate from late 1863 until the end of the War; was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Confederate Army during the Civil War; and, was elected President of the Missouri Constitituional Convention in 1875. Johnson, a nephew of David Waldo, also served. Letters to family members in Virginia, including his father, William Johnson, and brother, Mortimer Johnson, in Bridgeport, Virginia, describing Missouri politics, agriculture, and Mexican War, as well as some family matters. 19 letters. Another her portion of this complex collection consists of some originals, copies and typescripts of Dr. Edwin E. Harris personal, political and Civil War-era period papers. Typescripts note that originals were donated to the United Daughters of the Confederacy Libary in Richmond, Virginia. Dr. Harris' Saint Clair County, Missouri, military unit closely paralled those of Jackson County Confederate Units. The Harris family conducted business through Independence. Mrs. Edwin E. (Margaret Ann) Harris, a refugee of Order No. 11, spent some of the Civil War years in the Red River Valley of Texas near other Jackson Countians. Most of the correspondence is of the Civil War period and is a personal, political and military nature although some deals with the California Gold Rush and other business activities. [Additional Harris letters are housed in the Gilder-Lehrman Collection of the New York Historical Society; gilderlehrman.org; document number GLC03135.10]
