Black Jack Battlefield - Baldwin City, Kansas - U.S. National Register of Historic Places on Waymarking.com

The original nomination identifies the ruts of the Santa Fe Trail, from which Brown’s forces fired on the pro-slavery forces of Henry Clay Pate during the battle as the location of the battlefield. The assumption was that the ruts involved were those on the Ivan Boyd Prairie. A recently uncovered 1953 sketch of the site based on testimony of early settlers suggests that the battle site was on the Pearson/Cavender property which is also the testimony of Dana Cavender whose wife was a granddaughter of Robert Hall Pearson. Dana Cavender recounted how Captain Samuel Shore, who fought with John Brown, returned to the site in 1911 and identified the focus of action as having taken place along the stream that flows through the Cavender property north of the farmhouse. The interview of Dana Cavender with Ron Parks of the Kansas State Historical Society accompanies this amendment to the nomination. Unfortunately, the U.S> General Land Office’s Surveyor plat map of the area was completed in January 1856 before the battle. The Land Office map indicates that the Santa Fe Trail ran across the northern side of Section 12; the Trust’s property is the 39.24-acre site on the eastern side of that section.

If the battle site was located on the presently identifiable ruts, the area of the farmstead was part of the field of action. It may have been where Brown and his men prepared for their final assault on captain Pate’s forces.

It is the intent of the Trust ot secure the professional services of an historic archeologist to undertake extensive metal detection surveys of all of the properties identified in the nomination.