Curtis and Otis Get Involved in a Set-to

John and Edith McClenny raised their four children on a farm near Dunavant, KS, a small town in Jefferson County near Topeka. Their children were the two boys, Curtis and Otis, born respectively in 1891 and 1893, and the two girls,  Vala and Helen, born in 1897 and 1900. In the summer of 1913, John was kicked in the head by one of his horses and lingered for a month before dying in September.

In November 1915, the Valley Falls New Era ran the following article:    

Curtis, on the left, and Otis McClenny, pictured in 1917.

The matter of keeping Otis and Curtis McClenny under a peace bond came up before Judge Raines Monday, and the boys were discharged. [The boys were 24 and 21]

A month or two ago Marion Smith, of southeast Valley Falls, went before Justice of the Peace Lord at Valley Falls and swore to a complaint that these two boys had threatened his life and that he was in fear they would carry out their threat and asked that they be put under a peace bond. This Justice Lord did, fixing the bond at $500 each and the bonds, duly executed were filed with the Clerk of the Court. The matter of hearing whether or not these bonds should be continued came up for hearing Monday as noted above. 

 It seems the whole trouble between these parties started over the fact that some of the McClenny’s hogs had gotten into Smith’s corn and some of Smith’s chickens had gotten into the McClenny’s wheat. The matter of damages to the two crops was settled some time ago after the property had been appraised. At the time the McClenny’s came to the Smith home to get their hogs, which had been taken up by Smith, a quarrel ensued in which the boys “invited Smith out into the road saying they would brain him.” 

Gladys McClenny nee Jones 1907

Later when the boys were returning some tools they had borrowed from Smith he alleged they had threatened to murder him. And again, later, when Curtis McClenny came to the Smith home with a check in payment for the damage done to his corn a quarrel started which ended in Smith throwing a large stone (the stone was introduced in evidence) at the McClenny boy; and the two clinched and at this time Smith says he stated that “if my brother [Otis] was here, we’d murder you.” 

The court, after hearing denials from the boys and their witnesses, decided that he could not believe that the boys intended to injure Mr. Smith and accordingly dismissed them. 

The McClenny boys were farming some of Smith’s land at the time of the trouble. The court, in rendering his decision, stated that in his opinion the case was one for the county attorney and that the Justice of the Peace had not jurisdiction in the matter, any more so than he (the Judge) would have, had Mr. Smith appealed to him in the first place; and that instead of the boys being put under a peace bond in view of the testimony, it looked like it should have been a case against Smith on grounds of assault and battery; (he having thrown a stone at the boy.)

Glenna and Ferol McClenny nee Howard 1917

      Within a year the McClenny boys had each married and moved to Topeka.