In this account I propose to set out the little good that was in my life, at the same time not withholding in any way the bad, with the hope of setting right before the world a family name once honored, but which has suffered disgrace by being charged with more evil deeds than were ever its rightful share.
To the host of friends in Minnesota and Missouri who have done everything possible to help my brother and myself during the last few years, with no other object than the love of doing good and aiding fellow creatures in suffering, I wish to say that I shall always conduct myself so that they will never have the least cause to regret having championed our cause, or feel any shame in the friendship so generously proven to us. Nothing lies deeper in my heart than the gratitude I feel to them all, except a desire to prove myself worthy.
In the two states named these friends are too numerous for me to mention each of their names, but among those in Missouri who traveled long journeys to Minnesota to plead my cause, even though they knew it to be unpopular in many quarters, I wish to especially thank Col. W. C. Bronough of Clinton, Capt. Steve Ragan, Colonel Rogers of Kansas City and Miss Cora MacNeill, now Mrs. George M. Bennett of Minneapolis, but also formerly of Kansas City.
In concluding these remarks, I wish to say that from cover to cover there is not a statement which could not be verified.
Yours Truly, COLE YOUNGER Lee’s Summit, Mo.
Political hatreds are always bitter, but none were ever more bitter than those which existed along the border line of Missouri and Kansas during my boyhood in Jackson county in the former state from 1856 to ’60. These hatreds were soon to make trouble for me of which I had never dreamed.
Mine was a happy childhood. I was the seventh of fourteen children, but my father had prospered and we were given the best education the limited facilities of that part of the West then afforded.
My people had always been prominent, politically. It was born in the blood. My great grandmother on my father’s side was a daughter of “Lighthorse Harry” Lee, whose proud memory we all cherish. The Youngers came from Strasburg, and helped to rule there when it was a free city. Henry Washington Younger, my father, represented Jackson county three times in the legislature, and was also judge of the county court. My mother, who was Bursheba Fristoe of Independence, was the daughter of Richard Fristoe who fought under General Andrew Jackson at New Orleans, Jackson county having been so named at my grandfather Fristoe’s insistence. Mother was descended from the Sullivans, Ladens and Percivals of South Carolina, the Taylors of Virginia and the Fristoes of Tennessee, and my grandfather Fristoe was a grand nephew of Chief Justice John Marshall of Virginia.