Biography
Charles Doy was the nineteen-year-old son of Underground Railroad conductor John Doy. He accompanied his father and thirteen Black passengers on a January 1859 journey from Lawrence, Kansas Territory, toward Nebraska. Armed Missourians seized the party on January 25 and carried John and Charles across the state line, where both were committed to jail on allegations of abducting enslaved people. Charles remained imprisoned at Platte City until the first trial at St. Joseph on March 20, when prosecutors abandoned the case against him and released him. He later joined the Kansas party that returned to St. Joseph and rescued his father from jail.
The script identifies Charles as John Doy’s son, arrested with him on January 25, 1859. It gives his age as twenty-five, conflicting with the existing biography’s nineteen; no birthdate is inferred. His case was dropped after the March mistrial, and the script reports his death in a Linn County ambush in 1860. Dismissal alone does not prove an exact physical discharge day. John Doy’s Escape, Shared Stories of the Civil War, version October 18, 2011, original PDF page 6. Source: https://freedomsfrontier.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/John-Doy_final_10.18.11.pdf#page=6
Charles Doy was killed in an ambush in Linn County, Kansas, in 1860. The year is recorded without an inferred day or month; this was separate from his 1859 confinement.
