WAS BORN IN SLAVERY;
THRILLING LIFE STORY
Richard   Colwell—Humble   but Respected   Colored   Citizen—Lived With Younger Family
Everybody in Shenandoah and all the traveling men who visit Shenandoah know Richard Colwell or "Dick'', the colored parser at the Hunt hotel, but probably few of them know his life story. During the twenty-one years he has lived in this city his life has been peaceful and there has been little to vary the daily routine, but all the earlier years of his life were cast among stirring scenes, with slavery, flight, border Warfare, capture, romance and tragedy all forming chapters that would interest the reader like the story of "Uncle Tom's Cabin", if we had the ability to write it.
Richard Payton Colwell is the full name. He and his brother, Rus, were twins, the thirteenth and fourteenth of the family, born in old Kentucky, near Louisville, several years before the war. He is reticent about his age but he was a lively chunk of a boy when the troubles broke out over slavery in Kentucky in 1858. Dick was born a slave in a big log hotel on a 900 acres plantation owned by a man named D. O. Smart, an uncle by marriage of Cole Younger and Frank and Jesse James. The plantation was devoted chiefly to the production of tobacco and Smart had a[t] times as many as 160 slaves. Dick's mother died when he was but six weeks old but his father remained on the plantation until Dick was ten or twelve years and then was sold and taken farther south. Colwell speaks highly of the character of his old master, saying that he was kind to his slaves and abolished the whipping post and the auction block. He kept families together as much as possible and even took pains to give the slaves some education. Mrs. Smart and her daughters taught the colored boys and girls to read and write. In fact it was the kindness shown to the slaves that was the beginning of the troubles of the Smart family. He freed some of the slaves and when they were taken up and whipped or impressed into slavery again Smart had the perpetrators arrested.

The slavery question was a very delicate one in Kentucky in the few years preceding the war and in 1858 Smart and a number of other families were compelled to leave the country for their own safety. They fled first to Louisville and there bloody riots took place in which a number of persons, both white and black were killed. Smart and his family and seven other families, all wealthy Kentuckians, then crossed the Ohio river and proceeded by ox teams to Cedarville, Ohio, twenty-five ox teams in the caravan and Dick proudly driving the lead team. He was the only colored boy in the bunch but he stuck to the Smarts with the loyalty of a dog and followed them through all their vicissitudes.

In the following year the company all took steamboat down the Ohio and up the Mississippi river to St. Louis, where all stopped except Smart and his family. They went up the Missouri river by boat to Jefferson City. Smart carried $16,000 on his person but pretended to be poor as those were perilous times. They were not allowed to stop at Jefferson City and had to camp in an old mill at Eudora, the people of the locality thinking Smart was an agent of the underground railway. They went on to Fulton and.Smart rented a farm near there, buying a couple of horses from a farm hand. The word got out that the horses were stolen and a committee waited on Smart and gave him a few hours in which to leave the country. Instead of doing this Smart and his sons armed themselves and several neighbors came to their aid and a pitched battle followed.   Dick was stationed out a quarter of a mile to give the alarm when the raiders should appear, and he did so. There were nearly a hundred men in the attacking party but the defence was maintained so stoutly that the posse was driven off, leaving seven dead.

Mr. Smart however, found it advisable to leave and he and his family went to Miama in the fall of 1861, but the gang followed them there, surrounded the house and called him out, shooting him down among the bushes of his own door yard, where the body lay all day, the gang compelling Mrs. Smart and her family and servants to cook and serve them, and not until after night were they permitted to care for the body of the old master.

Mrs Smart soon after this went to Independence, Mo., near Kansas City, Dick accompanying her faithfully as he had the old master.  Her brother George James, lived at Liberty and she desired to join him there but he advised her to remain away as the sentiment was so strong against him that she would be in danger. However she soon after found her sister-in-law, Mary Younger, mother of Cole Younger, at Lee's Summit, which became Dick's home for many years. He became a trusted servant of the Younger and James boys and looked after the farm work.   Late in the summer of 1862 a band of soldiers came through there and raided the place, taking everything of value about the place and pressing every man into the service who was physically able.   Mrs. Younger smeared Dick's hands with blood and told him to pretend he was wounded and thus he was allowed to remain and for some time was the only man about the place, with six women and a lot of children to look after.

That same fall Mrs. Younger sent Dick horseback with $2,500 in his belt to Kearney, where he was to give it to a relative of hers for burial and safe keeping. On the way Dick was captured by Quantrell and his gang and his horse taken from him. They threatened to shoot him but did not suspect him of carrying money. They kept him with them for ten days when one rainy night he escaped and finished his journey to Kearney on foot and delivered the money safely, returning to Lee's Summit on foot.

Colwell was trained to be a cook and his earliest recollections of work are with pans and kettles and vegetables in the old Kentucky home. After the war he remained in Lee's Summit or regarded that as his home until twenty-three years ago. His first position as a regular cook was at Pleasant Hill, Mo., at a Missouri Pacific eating house. He cooked eight years at the Union depot hotel at Kansas City, a short time in St. Louis and for a time at the Bacon House, St. Joseph.

In 1877 he married a girl named Annie Bruton, one of a family of 18 children and lived with her 2 1/2 years but she took consumption and Dick took her to California and back to Denver trying to restore her health and there she died.

After the death of his wife Colwell got the wanderlust and traveled all over the south.   He had saved a few hundred dollars and spent every cent of it trying to find his father. He even went to New Jersey and to Canada  following up  false rumors but never found a trace of his father. He has seen none of his family since his boyhood.

You would not think to see Dick now,  peaceful  and cheery all day long, that he had ever been a scrapper, but he was, and it is hard to get him to talk about this feature of his past life. While the writer was in Texas some months ago he met a man who told us of a time in St. Joseph when Dick cleaned out two gangs of toughs, both white and black, in one evening. While Dick was a fighter he never started a quarrel. It appears on this particular occasion that Dick went to a dance and he and a big black bully drew the same number by mistake and both chose to dance with the same girl. She was most white and she had several admirers, both white and black, and they undertook to put Dick out of business. He smashed a chair over the head of one, knocked one down with his fist, took his revolver away from him and shot the lights out and ran every body out of the hall, except the dusky girl who remained with Dick and they were king and queen of the ball. Dick was arrested but his employer went bail for him and when the police court made investigation Dick was released and a half dozen of the others were jailed and fined. The whole affair was creditable to Dick and the gentleman who told us said he was clearly acting in self-defense, but Dick himself tells us that he is ashamed of that part of his history.

Very soon after this fracas he came to Iowa, landing in Bedford. In fact he had his eye on the colored belle of the town and he hurried up to marry her before she should hear about his trouble in St .Joseph. She was Miss Sarah J. Bowman, whom he married and who has been his devoted wife ever since.

They came to Shenandoah twenty-one years ago and he found employment at the Delmonico hotel. He was notified two or three times to leave town as no colored people were wanted but he paid no attention to the threats but went about his own business, quietly and peaceably. He remained with the Delmonico seven years and has been with the Hunt hotel fourteen years and now enjoys the respect and good will of everybody. With the assistance of Col. George Bogart and A. T. Irwin he purchased a little home on Thomas avenue where he and his good wife have lived for fifteen years. He has paid for it in full and then made his wife a present of it.

He says he has no further ambitions than to make an honest living and live a christian life. He and his wife are members of the A. M. E. church and he belongs to the colored branch of Masons.

Dick is better known by many as "Dad Bob", that being his nearest approach to profanity, an expression that he uses to puncture his conversation when excited and it is certainly better than the profane and indecent expressions many men use thoughtlessly.

He has been with the Hunt hotel so long now that he has become one of the permanent fixtures and the
place would not be recognized without him.      

[Sentinel Post, Shenandoah, Iowa, Mar 26, 1912]