LAFAYETTE SHADLEY GRAVESTONE PHOTO
The Star and Kansan, Friday, September 8, 1893:
Few men in Montgomery county were better known than “Lafe” Shadley, as he was always familiarly designated. For seventeen years of his life is was his business to face bullets. Four year of service in the Union army and thirteen since in positions which required him to oppose himself to the enemies of law and social order here on the border, made his life an especially eventful and stirring one; and, despite one or two slight wounds, his experience no doubt tended to make him rash in his bravery. For he was brave, as he was honest and manly. An athlete in physical constitution, hardship or privation seemed to have little effect upon him. An absolute stranger to fear he made an ideal officer. Among the outlaws and brigands that infest the territory he had made himself feared and hated for his aim was deadly and his nerves tense as steel. In the camps and fastnesses of that section there is greater rejoicing over his death that there would have been had any other official in the territory fallen. The estimation in which this man of blood and iron, who loved not slaughter, but who personified to its violators the avenging majesty of outraged law, was held by his neighbors, was attested by the vast concourse that on Wednesday followed his remains to their last resting place in Mount Hope cemetery. That such a man should be sacrificed, that so kind a husband and father, so generous and helpful a neighbor, so pleasant a companion, and so useful and worthy a citizen, should fall beneath the bullet of a bandit, who was warring upon society, seems a thousand pities
Lafayette Shadley was born on June 4th, 1844, near Zanesville, Licking county, Ohio, and would have been 49 years and three months of age had he lived another day. His parents removed while he was still young to Davis county, Iowa, where he lived until in July, 1862, at the age of eighteen he enlisted in Co. B, 30th Iowa Volunteer Infantry. With his regiment he participated in the siege of Vicksburg and the seven days battle at Jackson, Miss. He was in the battles of Lookout Mountain, Mission Ridge and Ringold and was with Sherman from Atlanta to the sea. During nine months of his service in the army he acted on a detail as cannonier of the 1st Iowa Battery. He was mustered out of the U. S. service on June 5th, 1865; and on February 4th, 1866, was united in marriage to Malinda Randolph. They continued to reside in Davis county, Iowa, until November, 1879, when they removed to Kansas, settling in Drum Creek township on a place which he still owned at the time of his death. In November, 1879, he was elected sheriff of Montgomery county, and in 1881 he was re-elected. From 1884 until 1888 he served a deputy sheriff under Os. McCreary. In 1889 he was appointed chief of police of the Osage Nation, a difficult and dangerous position whose duties he discharged with zeal and fidelity, until relieved a few weeks ago upon the appointment of a democratic successor. When he retired from office he had just located the band of robbers who held up a Santa Fe train at Cimarron last spring, and had since been endeavoring to organize a posse to capture them. Last week he received a telegram from Deputy Marshal Hixon, of Oklahoma, asking his aid in the capture of the Dalton-Starr gang, which was making its headquarters at Ingalls, near the northeast corner of that territory. He responded promptly, hoping to be able to run down the men he was after at the same time, and went, as it proved, to his death.
He was a member of St.. Bernard Commandery Knights Templar, Fortitude Lodge A. F. & A. M., here, and also of the local lodges of the A. O. U. W. and Select Nights and the Modern Woodmen; and carried life insurance to the amount of about $15,000 in these and other associations.
His remains were brought back to his residence in this city on Monday night, and the funeral services occurred at 1:30 p.m., the discourse being preached by Rev. J. W. Wright, of the M. E. Church. Not less than 500 people, including depulations from neighboring towns and cities, attended the funeral, and a concourse of nearly a hundred carriages made up the mournful cortege that wended its way to the cemetery on Wednesday.