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Like many other Kansas counties, Morris County had its share of issues during Kansas' fight to become a free state which continued on into the Civil War. After the commencement of hostilities between the North and the South, the people of Morris County were kept in a constant state of feverish excitement by perpetual threatened invasion from hostile Indians on the south and west, and by incursions of Missouri bushwhackers, who, after committing all manner of violence in the eastern portion of the state, were working to the mountains and plains of New Mexico and Colorado where they could prey upon trains crossing the plains, and murder all the defenseless people who favored the Union. It was during one of these bushwhacking raids in 1862, by Bill Anderson and his followers, that Judge A.I. Baker, one of the most respected citizens of the county, and his brother-in-law, George Segur, were murdered at Baker's home on Rock Creek.

When the Civil War began, the Anderson family lived in Kansas not to far away from the Bakers. Natives of Missouri, they had moved to Kansas before it became a state when it was thought Kansas could be made a slave state by colonizing largely from the South.

Missouri Bushwhackers

At that time Baker kept a supply store near the Santa Fe Trail, which stood about seven or eight rods from his house. The Andersons were not long in perfecting their plans. The stranger was sent to Baker's house, instructed to tell him that he was "boss" of a train that was camped a short way off, and that he desired to purchase some supplies. Baker, never having seen the stranger before, and this being a usual occurrence, was entirely free from suspicion, but yet in those unsettled times when every man on the frontier went armed, he took the precaution to buckle on a pair of revolvers, and thus prepared, and accompanied by his brother-in-law, George Segur, he went with the stranger to the store. It was now well into evening, so that under the darkness the Andersons could station themselves close to the store without running much risk of detection.

Baker had just about finished putting up the stranger's order when the Andersons, with their partners in crime, rushed into the store and fired, wounding both Baker and Segur in the first discharge. Taken by surprise, and being outnumbered two to one, Baker and Segur in their wounded condition sought shelter in the cellar, where the murderers sought to follow them, but Baker, firing through the cellar door, wounded Jim Anderson in the leg, breaking his thigh bone. The Andersons then withdrew from the building and set fire to it. In the cellar Baker told his brother-in-law that he was mortally wounded and could not live long, and advised Segur to escape through the cellar window, which, after much difficulty, he succeeded in doing. While the store was being devoured by the flames, the desperadoes watched outside lest Baker should escape, and thus one of the most respected citizens of Morris County was burned to death in the cellar of his own store by this gang of cut-throats, after having been mortally wounded at their hands. Segur died from his wound on the following day. After finishing their hellish work in Morris County, the murderous gang returned to Missouri to guerrilla warfare and bushwhacking.

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