There are numerous accounts of the acts of violence that plagued the western border from the 1850s into the Civil War. This period of history, coined the Border Wars, put brother against brother and neighbor against neighbor.
The issue that ignited this period of violence was slavery.
Hundreds of people lost their lives as border ruffians stormed the countryside and towns.
During the Civil War, some Southern sympathizers didn’t comfortably “fall” into the Confederate ranks; their ideals, ethics and morals were more questionable. In the southern Jackson County area, many families merged themselves into a much deeper connection that grew under the principles of a notorious leader named William Clarke Quantrill (1837-1865).
Free-state supporters who crossed Quantrill’s path usually didn’t walk away without some type of loss. Some lost their livestock and their homes to the torch, while many others were murdered.
In an act of violence during the Civil War, one man named Abraham Ellis was left a survivor – but he wasn’t left unscathed.
He became known far and wide as “Bullet Hole” Ellis because of a large hole in the center of his forehead – a constant reminder of an accurate shot from Quantrill’s gun.
Abraham Ellis’ story opens our eyes to a time when this area was sparsely settled and the Southern ideals of those living in Missouri were a constant threat to the Free State settlers just to the west in Kansas Territory.
The Border Wars and Kansas Territory
Before we dive into Abraham’s story, we have to look at the landscape of this area during this time period.
There was no greater time of constant worry and streaks of violence than the period attached to the Border Wars and Civil War on the western border. Starting in 1855 when Indian Territory morphed into Kansas Territory and opened up for legal settlement, the border exploded with acts of violence.
At the center of the conflict was slavery. If Kansas Territory would allow it, then the westernmost territories could follow suit. If slavery was adopted in this newly-opened country, then the balance of power in Congress would no longer be equal.
The history of all of the earliest settlements in Kansas, then a territory, started in 1854 after the Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise and opened up the issue of slavery to voters via-popular sovereignty.
People passionate on both sides of the slavery issue rushed to Kansas Territory to ensure that they would “win” the issue- free or slave. Towns such as Lawrence and Topeka were founded as anti-slavery settlements in 1854 by Emigrant Aid Societies who helped fund people in the east to move to Kansas.
At the time just to the east, Missourians – predominately pro-slavery settlers from Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee – balked at the idea that their new neighbor, Kansas Territory, would be a free state. This threatened the core of their livelihood and endangered their chattel property that tilled the land, washed their clothes, cooked their meals, raised their children and performed various trades. Even those without slaves were hellbent on maintaining this structure of Southern society.
By the time the Civil War broke out in 1861, this area had been at war, burning, pillaging and killing each other, for five years.
This vigilante attitude led to the rise of one curious guerrilla leader who, on paper, didn’t fit the typical mold of a bushwhacker. He was educated, born in the north and had no personal ties to the families in western Missouri who had lost property during the violence.
His name was William Clarke Quantrill. Born in 1837 in Ohio, he was well-educated and taught school in Ohio and Illinois before moving in 1857 to Kansas Territory.
He didn’t arrive in Kansas as part of the antislavery settlements, but he wasn’t proclaiming proslavery ideals either. Quantrill, then only about 19 years old, was looking for cheap land and new opportunities.
Abraham Ellis
Born April 22, 1815 in Green County, Ohio, Abraham Ellis was the third of seven children born to parents Henry Ellis (1782-1858) and Charity Harper (1791-1840). His paternal grandfather served in the Revolutionary War, and his own father served in the War of 1812.
He attended college and became a teacher, but “his health compelled him to cling to the soil.” Thus, he followed in the footsteps of his father and adapted to farming.
In 1843, Abe married Elizabeth Haughy (1824-1875) in Green County. They followed Abe’s parents to Illinois, where they lived for a period of time. They had the following children: Lorena (b. 1843), Laban (b.1849 – died 1856), Samantha (b. 1846), Josephine (b. 1852), Emma (b. 1855), Ella (b. 1857) and Laura (b. 1857).
From all accounts, Abe Ellis was vehemently against slavery, and this, along with the opportunity for cheap land, led him to uproot his young family and move in September 1857 to Lykins County (now Miami County), Kan. where he settled near the town of New Lancaster.
He wasn’t the only Ellis who moved to Kansas; a sister and a brother both followed with their families.
Living about 20 miles west of Abe’s farm was the infamous John Brown (1800-1859). By the time the Ellis family settled in Miami County, John Brown and his family had been active in the violence of the Border Wars for well over a year.
Abe Ellis claimed later in his life that he was “friends with John Brown” and “worked a year with him.” During this period, Brown stormed into Missouri and liberated 11 enslaved people, guiding them to freedom.
Brown was also quite engrossed at the time, planning his failed raid on Harper’s Ferry that would lead to his execution in 1859.
In 1858, Abraham Ellis entered politics. A convention was held at Paola to nominate candidates for the Territorial Legislature. An informal vote elected Abraham Ellis of Miami County and Samuel Houser of Osawatomie.
The Kansas Herald of Freedom reported, “The candidates were called upon to know their political views, and they each laced themselves on the Republican platform, and took a pledge of exclusive Republicanism, and declared themselves in favor of a radical change in the county lines.”
Paths of Two Men Cross
Abraham Ellis’ past experience as a school teacher served him well. He was named Superintendent of Public Instruction where he traveled to the rural schools in his county to ensure they were in good order.
Another job requirement was to hire teachers.
In the winter of 1859-1860, a young man standing about 5’10” with fair hair, blue eyes, and a clean-shaven, flushed face approached Abe Ellis for a certificate to teach school at Stanton in Miami County.
It was William Clarke Quantrill, and he was awarded the certificate and visited his school when he was teaching.
“I found him an interesting, well-educated man,” Abe Ellis would later write in 1881. “We slept together and talked.”
By “slept together,” Ellis infers that he stayed overnight with Quantrill at a boarding house and spent time with him.
A collection of Quantrill’s letters sent to his mother in Ohio survive, and in one letter dated January 26, 1860 written at Stanton while a teacher shows a shift in his thoughts about the border warfare.
He wrote: You have undoubtedly heard of the wrongs committed in this territory by the southern people, or proslavery party, but when one once knows the facts they can easily see that it has been the opposite party that have been the main movers in the troubles & by far the most lawless set of people in the country. They all sympathize for old J. Brown, who should have been hung years ago, indeed hanging was too good for him. May I never see a more contemptible people than those who sympathize for him. A murderer and a robber, made a martyr of; just think of it.
Quantrill’s ideals slowly began to shift toward the proslavery sentiment. By the following winter, he was staying at Col. Marcus Gill’s (1814-1886) home in the town of New Santa Fe (current-day 120th and State Line). In the spring, he accompanied the Gill family and others to Texas so they could hold their enslaved in a safer country.
By Christmas 1861, Quantrill successfully recruited young men from Jackson and Cass Counties to be part of a guerrilla unit that became known as Quantrill’s Raiders.
These weren’t traditional soldiers; they were infamous for attacking civilian populations, killing citizens and soldiers, and living “in the bush” where they were supported by proslavery families living along the border.
The Bullet Hole Incident in Aubry
While Quantrill and his men stormed communities along the border, Abraham Ellis eagerly enlisted in early-antislavery leader Jim Lane’s Brigade and served as Quartermaster. He arranged supplies, provisions and soldier logistics.
Abe was stationed in September 1861 in Barnesville, Kan., a small town on the eastern border about 80 miles from Kansas City.
While on a trip between Fort Scott to Fort Leavenworth, Abe Ellis stopped overnight in the small town of Aubry, Kan. He’d just visited with Gen. David Hunter “and received from him assurances that our whole Southern border should be protected,” the newspaper reported. “This is a matter of the most vital interest to Kansas.”
The bushwhackers, led by Quantrill, had threatened attacks – and executed them.
The town of Aubry, established in 1858, was named after Santa Fe trader F.X. Aubry and sat at current-day 199th and Metcalf Avenue. It wasn’t much of a town at the time, but it had a town doctor named Simeon Bell (1820-1913; he established KU Medical Center), a few merchants and a tavern that also functioned as a hostelry.
On the night of March 6, 1862, Abe Ellis was quickly introduced to Lt. Reuben A. Randlett (1837-1932) of Company A, 5th Kansas who was to share a room with him upstairs in the hostelry for the evening.
Lt. Randlett had been on leave and was traveling from Kansas City to meet up with his unit in Barnesville, Kan.
Accounts of what happened vary; newspapers were less than reliable in details due to slow communication. Interviews with Lt. Randlett by early historian William E. Connelley and letters that survive from Abraham Ellis offer similarities but still hold key differences.
Around daybreak on March 7, the landlord, likely a man named Greenbury Trekell (b. 1825) who was one of the five founders of Aubry, began knocking loudly on the doors, saying “The bushwhackers are coming!”
Lt. Randlett, thinking it was some kind of joke, remarked later “that such means to get them up early was outrageous.”
Both Ellis and Randlett were sleepy, trying to make sense of the situation upon them. The landlord returned, telling them that the guerrillas had surrounded the house.
Lt. Randlett got dressed and tried looking out the windows, but they were iced over in the cold March air. He went to a neighboring room and was able to make out guerrillas from the window. He leapt into action, searching the home for weapons. He found only three pistols inside the home and later noted “this was no match for 40 guerrillas.”
Abe Ellis was still upstairs, and after he sprang out of bed, he covered his head with a fur cap. He tried to look out the windows, just as Lt. Randlett had done seconds earlier. Near the window sash, the frost wasn’t as prominent – and that was all Quantrill needed to launch a near-perfect shot.
Practically square in his forehead, Abe Ellis was hit with the bullet from Quantrill’s gun that was shot from the yard up through the second story window.
Perhaps the sash of the window slowed the bullet down, or perhaps it was divine intervention. Regardless, what happened was a miracle.
He fell to the floor, blood gushing from the bullet lodged in his skull. A group of bushwhackers came up the stairs, as they were told a man – likely dead – remained up there.
Time was not on their side; the event unfolded quickly as the guerrillas, led by Quantrill, stormed inside the home.
Lt. Randlett and others ran to the tavern office “and handed his revolver to a guerrilla he found there, saying he was a Union soldier and demanded the treatment due a soldier who surrendered.”
Two guerrillas pointed a gun in his mouth and one at his temple. Before they could finish Lt. Randlett off, Quantrill asked if Randlett had a horse. He said he did in the stable, and Quantrill ordered it brought to him.
He also ordered they not harm the soldier who could be used for a prisoner exchange.
Meanwhile, guerrillas ran up the stairs and, according to Ellis’ letter, “As soon as they got within four of five feet of me they all pointed their revolvers to my head, with their finger on the trigger – at last one of them balled out – If you have any money God damn you give it to me in a minute or I’ll blow you to Hell.”
Ellis turned over $250.
They screamed at him to go downstairs. “I then crawled down stairs & was helped into a chair & in a few minutes [Quantrill] came [and] recognized me.”
Their time together – Quantrill as school teacher in Stanton and Ellis as superintendent – would prove to save his life.
Quantrill reportedly said, “You are not the kind of man I was looking for. I’m damned sorry.”
Lt. Randlett wiped the blood from Abe’s face as the two old acquaintances continued to talk. The fact that the man could even speak was certainly amazing.
The Aftermath
Abe Ellis told Quantrill that he had about $50 worth of groceries and a wagon, and Quantrill assured him nothing would be taken.
The owner of the tavern, likely Greenbury Trekkel and two of his workers were chased into a field and killed. Greenbury’s wife was a few months pregnant when he was murdered. Another man named William Whittaker was also killed.
Lt. Reuben Randlett was hauled away with Quantrill’s men and was held prisoner for 11 days before being let go in Independence, Mo.
After his long conversation with William Clarke Quantrill, Abe Ellis “fainted away & lay on the frozen ground for about four hours senseless & motionless & to all appearances dead.”
Abe Ellis was likely treated by a Union doctor who removed the ball and 27 pieces of bone. It took Abe five months to recover.
The bullet and the bone fragments were sent to the Army and Navy Medical Museum in Washington, D.C.
Interestingly, the whereabouts of these items are unknown today.
A shot to the head wasn’t going to stop Abe Ellis; in 1863, he recruited a full company for the 15th Kansas and was named lieutenant. They were sent in November to Bates County, Mo. where the newspaper wrote, “The boys know the bushwhackers, and will look after them.”
Ellis would never see Quantrill again; he was killed in 1865 at the age of 27 in Kentucky. But he made his mark on the border, murdering hundreds of men and sacking towns such as Lawrence, Olathe, Shawnee, Independence, Baxter Springs and Aubry once again in 1864.
Ellis’ Later Life and Lasting Legacy
Abraham Ellis, nicknamed “Bullet Hole Ellis” in the newspapers and by the community, moved in 1870 from Miami County to a homestead five miles west of Elk City. He settled into a quiet life where he thrived at farming. He was especially known for his orchards.
He served again as superintendent of schools, reverting back to a position that likely saved his life.
Surprisingly, Abe Ellis had to wait years for a pension for his service. He finally received $2,250 in back pay when he was granted his pension in 1884.
His beloved wife passed away in 1875, and his daughters living nearby did their best to take care of their aging father. He’d often joke with neighborhood children “that the bullet went into his skull and wandered around hunting for brains and finding none came out in disgust.”
This, of course, wasn’t true, as he was able to function with little issue for 23 years with a hole in his head.
But by June 1884, Abe was haunted by his old injury, and it was reported he “lost his mind.” The newspaper reported, “We understand that the wound in his head has finally caused the loss of his reason.”
One of his daughters wrote that they took charge of his home and helplessly watched “as the callus growth which formed in the wound pressed hard against the brain, causing the loss of mental power, obliging him to give up the life of public service for which he was so well fitted.”
He died inside his home on March 14, 1885. He was 69 years old.
The life he led was that of a man who fought to ensure Kansas was a Free State and gave himself in all causes to help his fellow man. Even in his later years, he didn’t harbor ill will toward the man who shot him.
He wrote, “The only redeeming traits I ever saw in [Quantrill] was that he showed by his kindness to me, after I was wounded that he was not entirely a Demon – But history will record him a desperately bad man – a highway robber, of the darkest shade & a desperate leader of a set of the most desperate Demons that are ever disgraced the name of man – Infinitely worse than he was. . . But they took every advantage of the surroundings – by treachery to drench the earth with blood & carnage.”
Abraham Ellis took a bullet from the gun of the most notorious guerrilla leader this country has ever seen, yet the hole in his head represented more than just survival. It was a scar left by the Border Wars that ravaged the community, divided families, and transformed neighbors into bitter enemies.
Quantrill’s bullet failed to silence Abraham Ellis. Instead, “Bullet Hole” Ellis continued to serve his state, his community and Free State principles for which he had risked his life.
