Near the end of the Civil War, a baby named George was born in a cabin here to an enslaved woman named Mary, who had been purchased by Moses Carver in 1855 when she was about 13 years old. After years of violence and guerrilla war on the frontier Missouri-Kansas border, raiders came to Carver's farm, found no cash, and carried off Mary and her baby. Moses Carver asked a local Union scout, John Bentley, to recover them as stolen property. Bentley returned with a very sick George, but Mary had disappeared. Carver rewarded Bentley with a $300 racehorse. In George's later memory of this story, he focused on Carver's special effort to get him back, seeing in it the first tangible sign that he was a special person destined to accomplish much with his life.
