Born in Kentucky in 1839 before moving to Missouri and eventually living in Kansas when the Civil War started, Bill Anderson soon earned the non de plume “Bloody Bill.”
An unusual event made a guerrilla out of William Anderson. His family had been living in Council Grove, Territory of Kansas at the start of the war. After William Quantrill's raid on Aubry, Kansas on March 7, 1862 a Federal company from Olathe, Kansas sent a patrol from Company D, Eighth Kansas Jayhawker Regiment to investigate. Southern sympathizers living nearby were sought out and accused of aiding the raiders. William Anderson's father and uncle were named as such. When the Jayhawker company arrived at the Anderson farm on March 11th, William and his younger brother Jim were delivering 15 head of cattle to the U.S. commissary agent at Fort Leavenworth. When the brothers returned to their farm they found their father and uncle hanged in retaliation, their home burned to the ground and all their possessions stolen.
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