Boston Corbett Monument

Location:  From Concordia, South on Hwy US 81 3 miles, then turn off and go East 2 1/2 miles, turn South and go 3 miles, then turn East and go 1/2 mile.  Monument is on South side of road.  The last 1/2 mile is Dry Weather ONLY.

Nearest Town:  Concordia

Contact:  Ph.   785/243-2866

One of the more colorful footnotes in Kansas History is remembered on this simple monument constructed by Boy Scouts.   Boston Corbett's claim to fame:  He was the man who shot John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Lincoln.

Corbett had been a sharp-shooter during the Civil War, and after the assassination of Lincoln, he volunteered to join a detachment of soldiers searching for Booth who was soon tracked to a barn in Virginia.  When the old barn had been surrounded, Booth refused to surrender.  Though under orders not to fire, Corbett dropped Booth with one shot, through a crack in the barn--an amazing shot--with the bullet taking nearly the same path in Booth's head as the one he'd discharged into Lincoln's a few days before.  Though Corbett always maintained that he'd seen Booth raise his pistol after being ordered to surrender and was taking aim at their commander, he was charged with disobeying orders.  Nothing ever came of the charges, but Corbett was discharged from the army shortly thereafter.  He became bitter that he hadn't received the recognition he felt he deserved, and eventually moved to Cloud County, near Concordia, where he homesteaded and constructed a dugout in the area now marked by the monument.

Some of Kansas's best attractions are in cow pastures, and the site of Corbett's dugout is one of these.  In the photo at right, cows gather around the depression that was once Corbett's abode on the Kansas prairie.  It was here that Corbett eked out a living, and generally kept to himself.   Corbett was a very religious man in addition to being a crack shot.  One day he happened upon some of the local boys playing baseball on Sunday.  Deeply offended, he pulled one of his .38 pistols, and waving it in the air, put an end to the game that day.  Soon Corbett was paid a visit by the sheriff, informing him that he must stand trial for threatening the youngsters.  He sent the sheriff back to Concordia in the same manner as he had dismissed the baseball game earlier.  Several days later, however, he appeared in town to stand trial saying that the Lord had told him to.   About half-way though the trial, Corbett exclaimed that he'd "fallen in with a den of liars" and dismissed the court by the same method he had used to end the baseball game and sent the sheriff back to town.  This really happened and is backed up with newspaper stories written at the time.

Friends of Corbett's soon learned of the incident, and since many felt that he had been shorted in both pay and recognition by the US Government, they offered him the position of assistant doorkeeper of the Kansas Legislature.   When Corbett left his dugout in Cloud County, he took only a small box with him leaving behind everything else, including the hole had dug near his home which he intended to be his grave (photo at right).  Trouble soon followed him to Topeka, however.  The long-haired, eccentric man soon became a sort of tourist attraction at the state house.  The situation came to a boil one day when some legislative pages and others were holding a mock session in the legislative chamber.  When the "speaker" made some remarks about the opening prayer that the religious Corbett considered blasphemous, the eccentric man wheeled around with his trusty .38 in hand and promptly dismissed this bogus session of the legislature.  Over the years, much has been added to this part of the Corbett story, including that he dismissed a real session of the Kansas Legislature and that he fired his weapon in the Capitol--both of which are false.   He was soon arrested, however, and judged to be insane.

Corbett (photo at left) was sent to the State Insane Asylum, but quickly escaped on a stolen pony.  The last known sighting of Corbett was in Neodesha, where he stayed with a friend he had met while both were prisoners of war during the Civil War.   Corbett, always an honest--if odd--man, instructed the friend to be sure the pony got back to it's rightful owner then boarded a train.  What happened to him after that no one knows for sure.  Some have speculated he went to Mexico, fed up with the government that he felt had not only abandoned him, but shamed him as well.   There is some evidence, however, that he may have ended up in Minnesota where he was thought to have died in a large forest fire, but we will never know for sure what happened to this little man who left his own unique mark on Kansas History. 

(Special thanks to the Cloud County Museum's curator and staff for all their help!)

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