Background
William Clarke Quantrill was born on July 31, 1837 in Canal Dover, Ohio, United States. He was the eldest of the eight children of Thomas Henry and Caroline Cornelia (Clarke) Quantrill.
William Clarke Quantrill was born on July 31, 1837 in Canal Dover, Ohio, United States. He was the eldest of the eight children of Thomas Henry and Caroline Cornelia (Clarke) Quantrill.
William Clarke Quantrill had studies at school for brief periods in Ohio and Illinois.
In 1857 William went to Kansas with a party of settlers, where he filed claim to a tract of land, but he was too restless, too fond of adventure, to be satisfied with a farmer's life. In 1858 he traveled with an army provision train bound for Utah, and at Fort Bridger, Salt Lake City, and other places he seems to have been a gambler under the name of Charley Hart. Returning to Kansas, he taught school in the winter of 1859 - 1860. During the rest of 1860 he lived near Lawrence, either with Indians or with whites of questionable character, again going by the name of Charley Hart. Several murders and thefts were attributed to him; finally, a warrant was issued for him on a charge of horse-stealing, but he fled before he could be arrested. In December 1860 he attached himself to five young abolitionists who intended to seize the three slaves of Morgan Walker, a Missouri farmer, and free them. Quantrill, whose sympathies were now proslavery, betrayed his companions to Walker, and three of them were killed.
Returning to Kansas, he was arrested on the horse-stealing charge but was aided in escaping to Missouri. When the Civil War began, he was for a time irregularly connected with the Confederate army and fought at Lexington, Missouri. He next appeared as the chief of a band of guerrillas, a scourge to Missouri and Kansas, robbing mail coaches, raiding and sacking communities and farms supposed to be Union in sympathy, frequently slaying Northern partisans, and having occasional brushes with Federal troops. In 1862 the Union authorities formally declared him and his men outlaws. They were part of a Confederate force that captured Independence, Missouri, in August 1862.
At dawn on August 21, 1863, he rode into Lawrence with a band of about 450 men. Dissension finally arose among his troop, and it broke up into smaller bands.
Early in 1865 he with thirty-three men entered Kentucky, robbing, foraging, and occasionally killing. In May of that year, probably May 10, a small, irregular Federal force surprised the guerrillas near Taylorsville, Spencer County; Quantrill was fatally wounded; and he died nearly a month later at Louisville.
Quantrill was married to Sarah Katherine King.