
I came to this place two years ago next December & made it my home the first winter with William Sherman & Henry Sherman. They were men of intemperate habits & when under the influence of liquor boisterous & quarrelsome, particularly William. Last summer, William’s drinking & viciousness greatly increased. During the Spring past he was engaged in several fights while under the influence of liquor. Allen Wilkinson lived when I came here a few rods from the Shermans & I was well acquainted with him till his death. He was a man of a bad disposition & evil temper. During the winter that I lived at the Shermans Wilkinson & a man named Morse were present & in the course of a conversation between them Wilkinson said to him (referring to some reported statements of Morse) If you have said so Ill be damned if I don’t rip you! At a settlers meeting in Sherman’s house last summer Wilkinson drew his pocket knife evidently intending to use it in a trifling quarrel. Mrs Harris who was keeping house for the Shermans last May when William was killed told me & my family the next day that she did not know any of the men concerned in the murder & had no suspicion of any particular person or persons. And the next day after the murder of Allen Wilkinson I heard Mrs Wilkinson
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his widow, say that she did not know any of the men concerned in the affair.
John T. Grant
Early in the last Spring William Sherman called at my father’s a good
deal intoxicated with a bottle in his pocket & a bowie knife in his belt
& threatened that he would cut out the damned black hearts of my father
my oldest brother & sister. The next morning I called on an errand at the
Shermans; William was on the roof of an out house he called to me swinging his
bowieknife & threatening to cut my damned throat before I got out of the
yard. Henry came up to me & declared he would whip my father brother &
sister like hell.
William Grant
Mr Doyle Mr McMinn & Henry Sherman three or four days before Mr Doyle
& his sons were killed in May last came to my fathers about noon. They called
themselves a committee & they told him if he did not leave that day before
sundown they would burn his house. They called him hard names. Doyle said they
would burn the house as sure as he had an axe in his hand, which he had. Sherman
said he wasn’t a law abiding man to give lead away to kill people with.
Francis Morse
Brown’s Station June 14th 1856
The next Monday after the murders at Potawatomie late in the afternoon 8 men
came to my house & we invited them to take supper with us. After supper
they went down to John Brown jrs & staid there till Wednesday morning; and
in the course of that day we found they had gone to Browns Station. I have been
told though I am not certain of its correctness that 7 more were added to the
company while in our vicinity. With regard to the murders I do not know who
were engaged in them. I have no evidence affording ground for such a charge.
Mrs Mary Day

