An original cabin-fort was built in 1855 five miles west of Mound City as the second cabin owned by James Montgomery after proslavery Missouri Border Ruffians burned his first one. Its logs were placed vertically and fit so tightly together that bullets could not penetrate the walls. The family slept in the loft, and the cabin had a cellar used to shelter fugitive slaves and also as an escape route for Colonel Montgomery through a tunnel leading into a nearby mound. James Montgomery, a school teacher and minister, came to the Kansas Territory in 1854 from Ohio to fight for the abolition of slavery. As a free-state leader, he headed a group of men called the immortal fifty, whose Sharps rifles and horsemanship made them known as the Kansas Jayhawkers, a force in the Bleeding Kansas era of 1854-1861. During the Civil War, Colonel Montgomery served and led black troops in South Carolina, worked with Harriet Tubman on raids, and fought in the battle at Mine Creek. He died at his cabin-fort home west of Mound City in 1871, where he farmed and lived with his wife and seven children, and he was buried in the National Cemetery Soldiers Plot in Mound City, grave number 76.