D.R.Atchison and Gen.

B.F.Stringfellow had at this time won a national notoriety in this struggle now going on in Kansas; and both were leading members in the Atchison town company.

Dr.
Stringfellow was deputed to act as editor-in-chief of the _Squatter Sovereign_, a paper at that time started in Atchison; but the editor was Robert S.Kelly.Bob Kelly, as he was popularly called, was a born leader among such a population as at that time filled Western Missouri.
The towns along the Missouri River were the outfitting points for that immense overland freighting business, that was at that time carried on across the western plains, to Santa Fe in Mexico and to Salt Lake, Oregon and California; and here congregated a multitude of that wild, lawless, law-defying and law-breaking mob of men, that accompanied these expeditions, and were the habitues of these western plains, or were among the gold seekers of California.
Bob Kelly was left an orphan at an early age, and was from his youth surrounded with such a population.

In person he was handsome as an Apollo, broad-shouldered and muscular, with fair complexion and blue eyes, and was the natural chief of the dangerous men that were drawn to him by his personal magnetism.

Moreover, he possessed so much native eloquence, and such an ability to make passionate appeals, as made him a fit person to fire the hearts of these men to deeds of violence, I obtained a claim to 160 acres of land, twelve miles from Atchison, and on the banks of the Stranger Creek.