The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1895-05-17
A SHAWNEE co. BOY.
A. D. Stevens Whose Remains
Have No Place to Lie.
WAS A RESIDENT OF SHAWNEE

When He Joined John Browns Hen
So Much the More should His Body
BE Inferred Hero.
One of the John Brown men whose
bones are soon to be unearthed at Perth
Amboy, n. J., and for which no resting
place has been provided, was a former
resident of Shawnee county; and he
went from here to join John Browns
volunteers. This was Aaron Dwight
Stevens
1t is a fact not well known here that
Stevens home was in Shawnee county
and that he preempted a quarter section
of land somewhere in the county near
Topeka. When he was swung into eternity
on the sixteenth of March, 1860, in Char
lesion, W. Va, there was no one to
claim his body in this territory, which
was then rent with dissension and civil
strife, and it was sent to New Jersey to
be cared for by patriotic woman by the
name of Mrs. Rebecca B. Spring
Stevens was the man who was shot as
he was carrying a flag of truce from the
place where the John Brown party was
fortified to the soldiers. Though bodily
wounded he survived to die on the scat
fold
- II LIS ~ " 44dA per CITY Ob0N6uB
said: "What happiness there is in think
ing that we are doing the best we can
for humanity although we meet many
hardshlps on our journey"
After his conviction and sentence he
said: 81 am cheerful and happy, ready to
die at a moments notice, though l would
like to live as long as anybody"
Stevens WAS born in Lisbon, Conn,
March 10, 1881, and enlisted in the
Mexican war. After the war he entered
the Indian service and served as a
bugler
One day he became incensed at the
major who ordered a soldier inhumanIv
punished and beat his bugIe to pieces
over the officers head For this he was
sentenced to be shot, but the president
commuted his sentence to three
years Imprisonment at Fort Leavenworth.
He served two years of the time and then
escaped and lived for short time among
the Delaware Indians He changed his
name so as to conceal his identity.
In 1856 Stevens appeared in Topeka
where he was known by the name of
Charles Whipple, and it was under
this name that he made an an.
try on quarter section of land.
Soon afterwards he organized a camp
OF tree state men and joined John Browns
party in 1857. He is described as being
handsome man, standing six feet two
inches in his stocking feet.
Albert Hazlett, who was executed with
stevens, was born in Pennsvlvania in
1887. He went to southern Kansas in
1897, but only remained a short time and
then returned to his old home. He NEXT
left Pennsylvania to join the John Brown
party at Kennedy's farm and was can
tured with the followers of Brown. The
charleston Jeffersonian published the
3ollowlng the day after the execution:
The near approach of the day of exc
cutlon seemed to have but little effect on
tne prisoners and for the past few DAYS
they were unusually cheerful, Stevens
declaring it was his wish to be free and
therefore desiring the day of his execu-
ton to arrive. Yesterday morning the
fable was set in the passage for the Grim
inals to eat and seated around were the
two men who in few hours were to hs
launched into eternity, a sister and the
betrothed of one and the brother of the
other. - VI Z
Miss Dunbar of Ohio was enpaoed 70
marry Stevens The article Continues.
"a short time was spent in adiusting
che roDe properly around the necks of the