Archive 19 Letters James Henderson in Kansas and Missouri Detailed Description of DODGE CITY KANSAS Sam Bass Outlaw

Item Details

An interesting archive of 19 letters to James Henderson, a Virginian who moved to Missouri and Kansas in the 1870s and 1880s.  The letters are primarily from friends living in Missouri and Kansas with a few from Staunton and Charlottesville, Virginia.  Of particular interest is a wonderful detailed letter from Dodge City, Kansas in 1885 at the high point of the cowboy days and another letter where the author writes the Ballad of Sam Bass, the famous outlaw.  The letters say in part:

You wish to buy my interest in my land you can have it $25 dollars per acre.  I am aware of the fact that land is the best property in the United States it will rent for ten percent and is bound to get higher every year.  the increase in the population is immense and the land of the eastern states are worn out and abandoned and the cheap land will all be taken up...after it is declared open by the President until it is  all settled up claims in Oklahoma are selling for ten dollars per acre...two months ago 80 car loads of farmers sold their farms out for 110 dollars per acre and moved to middle Iowa to buy cheap land...

Sam Bass met his fate on July the 21st they shot poor Sam with rifles, balls and embed out his purse, poor Sam is now a corpse...Jim Murphy took Sam's good gold and did not want to pay and the only way he knew to win was to give our Sam a way out...Jim Murphy was arrested and then released...

Dodge City 1885...I presume you will be somewhat surprised to hear of my summer's sojourn out on the frontier borderlands of the sunflower state...I have been recuperating ever since my arrival in the much noted City of Dodge...I shall remain here until September then return to Gilliam to take charge of the schools...I would teach in the Pueblo Collegiate Institute...

Dodge City is situated in the Arkansas River about 375 miles of Kansas City, she is the seat of Ford County and has good Railroad Facilities.  The A.L.S.F. Railroad runs through the town, one of the best roads in the west.  Ere long and she will have two more roads intersecting the Arizona Territory and San Francisco at this point which will make it on eo fate best points in the west.  All branches of business are well represented here on a large scale.  The country is rapidly settling up and all branches of industry do a thriving business.  Thousands upon top of thousands of acres of virgin soil that have not been disturbed except by the tramp of the buffalo and the eld from the days of Adam to the present are being turned up for the first time...The grangers this is what the people call all farmers out here are coming in from all parts of the union to settle upon this beautiful plain...This section has been blessed with plenty of rain hence all growing crops look remarkably well...I have purchased a tract of land lying 4 miles south of the city Gave $2000 for 480 acres.  I have made this purchase for speculation as I am fully confident that non less than five years land will be worth more than double present value...