Jane Haller, Mother of Guerrilla Leader Bill Haller

   My latest book is called Lady Rebels of Civil War Missouri. It's more or less a follow-up to one of my previous books, Bushwhacker Belles, but with a slight difference. The first book concentrated almost exclusively on women in Missouri who got into trouble with Union authorities for helping guerrillas, mostly by feeding and harboring them. The new book, on the other hand, focuses more on women who got into trouble for other activities, such as spying or delivering Confederate mail, and a lot of those activities occurred in and around St. Louis. There are a few exceptions, however. A few women who got into trouble mainly for helping guerrillas were left out of the first book but included in this one. Jane Haller is one example.
   Jackson County guerrilla leader William Quantrill formed his band in late 1861, and William Haller (sometimes spelled Hallar) was made first lieutenant. Quantrill quickly drew the notice of Federal authorities, as did some of his lieutenants. We know from extant records, for instance, that Union officials were well aware of Bill Haller and his older brother Wash at least as early July 1862, when William Kerr, a Federal spy, reported to Lieutenant Colonel Buel, post commander at Independence, that he'd been held prisoner by Quantrill's guerrillas and that Wash Haller had argued that he (Kerr) should be executed. Quantrill overruled Haller and ordered that George Todd and Bill Haller take Kerr away from the guerrilla camp and turn him loose.
   In late August of 1862, a couple of weeks after the Battle of Independence, a detail of Federal soldiers were fired upon from the bush as they were traveling the road between Independence and Lexington, and one soldier was killed. Colonel William R. Penick, Buel's successor, thought "Captain Bill Haller," as he was called in Union records, was responsible for the killing. An incident that happened a month and a half later seemed to suggest that Penick might have been correct. In mid-October, near the exact same spot where the August ambush had occurred, Haller's mother, Jane, and two other women were arrested because the carriage they were traveling in "showed signs" that they had been taking food to the guerrillas, and one of the women had shouted to somebody in the bush to warn them of the Federals' approach.
   All three women were arrested and taken back to Independence, where they were held as prisoners. In late November, Jane, who was under investigation for subversion, was banished to Pennsylvania, where she stayed with her deceased husband's relatives. Sometime in the summer of 1863, she was allowed to come back to Missouri after taking an oath of allegiance to the Union. By this time, her son Bill had been killed in a skirmish with Federals the previous spring, but whether she got back before a second son, Abe, was killed in the late summer of 1863 is not clear.
   Jane died in 1868 and is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Independence.
   My new book contains a more detailed account of Jane Haller's clash with Union authorities.