"In May, 1860, the notorious "Pickles" of Linn County, a general all-round thief; was arrested and brought to Fort Scott for trial for theft. His real name was Wright, but he got his nickname of "Pickles" for having, in one of his expeditions, stolen a two-quart jar of pickles and devoured them as he rode along. When taken into court he plead guilty to the charge of horse-stealing, and was at once sentenced to the penitentiary, as an act of discretion, to avoid falling into the hands of an Osage Vigilance Committee, who had assembled in town, headed by old Billy Baker with a rope. Some of Pickles' gang came down as far as the Osage and endeavored to raise a rescuing party, after the Ben Rice fashion, but they soon abandoned the project. The day for that sort of thing had passed. The vigilance committee mentioned, or anti-horse thief society, as they called themselves, which had been formed up about Mapleton, came into town to look after the Pickles trial, with an eye open for a possible attempt at rescue.
Pickles fared better than did a man named Guthrie, who, some time before this, was found with a horse supposed not to belong to him, and was taken from the hands of a constable and hanged by this committee. They also got hold of Hugh Carlin, who had given the settlers on the Osage a good deal of trouble, and in the early part of July he was taken from the house of A. F. Monroe, without giving him time to dress, and that was the last of Hugh Carlin.
In these hangings a young man named L. D. Moore was particularly active as a member of the committee. On the night of the 16th of November he was visited by Jennison, with a squad of about twenty men. Upon arriving at Moore's house, Jennison kicked open the door and shot Moore before he had time to get out of bed. This murder was in retaliation for the hanging of Carlin. Although Moore, who had settled on the Osage in 1857, was a Pro-slavery man, politics had little or nothing to do with his death. It was a kind of an afterthought—a finishing up job of Jennison's, who two days before that had started out on a circuit in Linn county, first hanging old man Scott in his own door yard, in the north part of that county; the next day hanging Rus Hines near the Missouri State line, east of Mine creek, and winding up with the killing of Moore. The first two were killed on the pretext that they had aided in the return to the owners of runaway negroes, and Moore was killed because he was, as Jennison said, "a little too — conservative."