Topeka’s Kansas State Record of Nov. 6, 1867, reported Chester Thomas Jr. leading Sherman Bodwell by 1 vote for Shawnee County Sheriff.

The editor added, “Before going to press, we hope to give the vote in Monmouth, when our readers can add it to the above votes. There are over 40 soldiers’ votes on the plains, and it may decide who is sheriff.”

Elsewhere in the paper, the Monmouth returns were reported, divulging an additional 40 votes for Bodwell to 20 for Thomas. With a decided majority, Bodwell was anxious to conclude the election, but there were those pesky absentee soldiers serving on the plains.

Bodwell pressed the county election board to issue a certificate of election without counting the soldiers’ votes, arguing that the act allowing the count of absentee soldiers had been passed before the Constitution was changed, “and therefore unconstitutional.” Judge Gilchrist agreed. The election board was ordered to canvass the votes. The election board met Dec. 10, 1867, counted the votes, excluding the votes of the absentee soldiers. Sherman Bodwell was declared the duly elected Sheriff of Shawnee County.

Sheriff Bodwell conducted the affairs of office with routine efficiency.

Newspaper accounts record tax sales, election duties, general arrests and occasionally delivering prisoners to the penitentiary. The son of “eminently honest” parents, Bodwell lived by a strict religious code. He and his brother, Rev. Lewis Bodwell, were among the staunch New England abolitionists that came to Kansas in 1856.

The brothers were active in the famous Underground Railroad, helping rescued slaves escape to freedom.

Sherman Bodwell served in the Second Kansas Infantry and later the Eleventh Kansas Cavalry during the Civil War.

The June 11, 1869, Topeka Daily Commonwealth published a somewhat humorous account depicting Bodwell’s sense of moral respectability.

“The person in charge of the circus sideshow yesterday informed the gaping multitude who were staring at the speaking likenesses of the Maine Girl, ‘The most beautiful little woman in the world,’ and the ‘The Giant of Palestine.’” It required a great deal of moral courage to enter that tent, but leaving required no such courage. Among those who “instantly and indignantly” left were a number of Topeka men, including Sheriff Bodwell.

The June 23, 1869, Daily Commonwealth carried a light-hearted portrayal of Sheriff Bodwell’s dispensation of the law.

“Yesterday morning Sheriff Bodwell discharged two of his employees, they having been promoted to a higher and more useful field of labor — the State free school, near Leavenworth, where there is always plenty to do and tobacco thrown in. One of the aforesaid was the man who accidentally hitched his team to another man’s wagon and failed to discover his mistake until it was too late. The other was also sent up for the too free use of other people’s property,” In early Oct. 1869, a Nebraska man tracked a pair of horse thieves to North Topeka. Instead of taking legal action, he confronted the thieves with a proposition to let them go if they offered up an additional two horses.

Unwilling to see the inside of a jail cell, the thieves agreed and were allowed to escape. In doing so, the Nebraska owner became a fugitive for the crime of “compounding a felony.”

Whether or not he was apprehended was not reported.

Bodwell did not run for reelection in the fall of 1869. The Jan. 12, 1870, Kansas State Record noted, “Sheriff Bodwell is closing up his business as Sheriff of Shawnee County. No one can deny but that he has put the county to but little expense. He goes out on his own account (refusing to run again) with clean hands. We have no better citizen or honester man in the county.”

Ten months later, Bodwell was working as mail clerk in the Topeka Post Office. Near sunset on Sept. 12, 1871, he stepped from the curb into the street at the northeast corner of Sixth and Kansas Avenue. He was only a few feet into the street when a charging horse and rider hit him and knocked him to the street “with great violence.” The rider, known as Andrew Jackson, was apparently drunk, riding with the bridle loose on the horse’s neck and making no attempt to guide him. He was described as a Texan working for Curly Marshall on the grading crew that was building the railroad extension from North Topeka to Atchison.

Bodwell was taken to the clerk’s room at the post office where doctors treated swollen and bloody bruises on his face and forehead. He seemed to improve and was taken to his father’s home later in the evening, but soon he “became unconscious and died at 20 minutes past 10 o’clock.”

The community was stunned at the loss of one described as “a good man and true, a modern knight, ‘without feat and without reproach.’” Bodwell was 36 years old. The man who rode him down changed horses at Marshall’s grading camp and fled, apparently to Texas. He was never found.

Sherman Bodwell was declared “a living power” whose memory and example would remain strong among Topeka’s citizens. For those who knew him, the editor of the Kansas State Record wrote, “Being dead, he yet speaketh.”

One hundred fifty-two years after his tragic death, Sherman Bodwell’s memory as a knight among men lives on The Way West.

“The Cowboy” Jim Gray can be reached at 220 21st Rd., Geneseo, KS 67444, (785) 531-2058, or kansascowboy@ kans.com.