Barton County democrat. [volume] (Great Bend, Kan.) 1885-1915, 1889-05-23
BILL ossoRn.s RECORD.



Quiet-Mannered Kentuckian Who KilleA
Fifteen Men In His Time.
1t is fit that the heroes should be
enumerated who participated in the
hardships and dangers of Captain
Browns raid into the woods of Knott.
and first of all the story of Bill Osborn.
the mildest-mannered gentleman that
ever kept private graveyard Bill
keeps cross-road grocery in the little
hamlet of Goodloe. He is apparently
forty or forty-five years of age, of
medium height, and sparely built.
He dresses in black cloth and wears a
black felt hat with a low crown. He
has face which would be hard for a
physiognomist to read. It is not bad
face; in fact, it has rather mild.
benevolent expression. The nose is
large and slightly tip-tilted. The eyes
are blue; there is a little mustache on
the upper lip; the corners of the
mouth turn downward. The jaw is
heavy and of irregular outline and the
chin is strong. In the raid Bill rode a
little bay mare, which bounced along
the road in a hard trot. If he had
worn white shirt instead of the red
flannel garment which appeared above
his vest he might have been taken for
a Methodist parson riding on his cir
cult
Osborn has romantic history. He
has killed fifteen men. When the
war broke out he enlisted in the South
ern army and fought in Kentucky,
Virginia and Tennessee under General
Marshall. In 1862 what was known as
the confiscation law was passed. /.
gave bad men a chance to perpetrate
outrages under the semblance of law.
Osborn's father lived at this time in
Wolf County. One day he was plow-
ing in the field when sixteen of his
neighbors galloped up, riddled him
with bullets. burned his house
and drove off his stock. Bill was
with Marshall in Eastern Kentucky
when news of the outrage reached him.
He summoned few of his friends
about him, mounted his horse, and
never stopped riding till he reached
the ruins of his old home. Over the
charred embers of that home he
swore an oath of vengeance to make
the killing of his fathers murderers.
identity from his mother and his
neighbors. The murderers, after
their dastardly crime, had set out for
Mount Sterling to join the Union
army. Bill and his men set out at
once in hot pursuit. He overlook
seven of the men while they were en-
camped between the outer and second
lines of pickets of the Union army.
He ran them of into the hills by night
and the next morning he stood them
in row and with his own hand shot
them down. Afterward he ate as
hearty breakfast as he ever ate in
his life. Soon after this he captured
three more of the men at West
Liberty, in Morgan County, and
killed them.
He visited vengeance on the rest from
time to time. He killed man named
Ghost in Wolf County while he was
blowing in the field. After shooting
him he took the dead mans hat and
carried it to his home, gave it to his
wife, and told her he had killed her
husband and that he was sorry to have
had to do it, but his oath had forced
him to it. He followed two men to
Missouri and killed them there. OF
the sixteen men who murdered his
father he has killed fourteen. Two
are still living. One of these has a
bullet-hole through his ear. which
was made by Bills revolver. and the
other is in an insane asylum. Bills
fifteenth man he killed a few years
ago in a personal Quarrel.-Liverpool
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