author
W. H. (William Henry) Ryus
b. 1839
A Kansas frontiersman turned memoirist, he wrote a vivid firsthand account of stagecoach travel and life along the old Santa Fe Trail. His best-known book draws on years spent working across the early West and meeting the people who shaped it.
1 Audiobook
The second William Penn : a true account of incidents that happened along the old Sante Fe trail in the sixties
by W. H. (William Henry) Ryus
About the author
Born in 1839, William Henry Ryus is chiefly remembered for The Second William Penn, first published in 1913. The book presents his recollections of the Santa Fe Trail in the 1860s and reflects his experience as a stagecoach driver and observer of frontier life.
Library and catalog records consistently identify him as W. H. (William Henry) Ryus, born in 1839. A memorial record suggests he was born in Schuyler County, New York, came to Kansas around 1860, and worked at different times as a farmer, builder, stage driver, store worker, sheep herder, and sawmill operator.
His writing is valued today for its direct, personal view of the American frontier. Rather than reading like a distant history, The Second William Penn feels like a witness account from someone who spent years on the trail and later set those memories down for readers.