Eggert House is located 1½ miles west of the abandoned Franklin townsite in Douglas County, Kansas. Franklin was east of Lawrence, Kansas. Originally the house was a log hut that the Johan H. Eggert family moved into in 1856. At the time pro-southern partisans raided the area, taking items from area settlers, including the Eggert family. [1]
Douglas County is a county located in the U.S. state of Kansas. As of the 2010 census, the county population was 110,826, making it the fifth-most populous county in Kansas. Its county seat and most populous city is Lawrence.
Lawrence is the county seat of Douglas County and sixth-largest city in Kansas. It is located in the northeastern sector of the state, astride Interstate 70, between the Kansas and Wakarusa Rivers. As of the 2010 census, the city's population was 87,643. Lawrence is a college town and the home to both the University of Kansas and Haskell Indian Nations University.
Although the area became peaceful by 1857, in that year the Eggerts built a two-story limestone farmhouse, outfitted so it could be defended against attackers. Gun-loops were built into the first floor walls to enable the occupants to defend themselves against attack. It is unknown whether the house was manned by armed men, although William C. Quantrill and 400 Confederate guerrillas and army recruits passed within a half mile of the Eggert house August 21, 1863, on their way to raid Lawrence, Kansas.
The Confederate States Army (C.S.A.) was the military land force of the Confederate States of America (Confederacy) during the American Civil War (1861–1865), fighting against the United States forces. On February 28, 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress established a provisional volunteer army and gave control over military operations and authority for mustering state forces and volunteers to the newly chosen Confederate president, Jefferson Davis. Davis was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, and colonel of a volunteer regiment during the Mexican–American War. He had also been a United States Senator from Mississippi and U.S. Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce. On March 1, 1861, on behalf of the Confederate government, Davis assumed control of the military situation at Charleston, South Carolina, where South Carolina state militia besieged Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, held by a small U.S. Army garrison. By March 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress expanded the provisional forces and established a more permanent Confederate States Army.
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which a small group of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or irregulars; use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, hit-and-run tactics, and mobility to fight a larger and less-mobile traditional military. Guerrilla groups are a type of violent non-state actor.
The Eggert house still stands and is still occupied, having been well maintained through the intervening years. [2]
