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A/HISTORY OF SMITH COUNTY, KANSAS TO 1960 -
by
VERA EDITH CROSBY PLETCHER .
B. S., Kansas State University, 1956
A THESIS
submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Department of History, Political Science, and Philosophy
KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE AND APPLIED SCIENCE
1960
11
A11209 781353
2668 .TY 1960 P54 0.2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF MAPS AND AND TABLES iv MUELLER SCHOLARSHIP v
PREFACE
vi
CHAPTER I. AS GOD WROUGHT
1
CHAPTER II. TEPEES, TREATIES, AND TRAILS
12
CHAPTER III. SURVEY TO SETTLEMENT
25
CHAPTER IV. HOMESTEADERS AND HOMES
53
CHAPTER V. BOOM OR BUST
77
CHAPTER VI. COUNTY SIDE-LIGHTS
105
Newspapers
.105
Post Offices and Ghost Towns
.112
Transportation in Smith County
.119
Smith County Schools
132
Music and Books
.143
Infamous People and Incidents
147
County Organizations and Celebrations
151
The Usual and Unusual
.157
Some Representative Smith Countians
.164
CHAPTER VII. HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHTS
206
Smith County Memorial Hospital
207
Geographical Center of the United States
.208
Smith County Historical Society
210
The Kensington Band
21.1
The Old Dutch Mill
21.6
"Home on the Range"
.220
111
CONCLUSION 239 BIBLIOGRAPHY 243
APPENDIX.
251
iv
MAPS
Fig. 1. Location of Smith County in the State of Kansas
ix
Fig. 2. Oil and gas seeps in Smith County, Kansas
11
Fig. 3. Expeditions and trails in Kansas
19
Fig. 4. Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express Co.
22
Fig.
5.
Counties created by legislature in 1867
27
Fig.
6.
Early settlements in Smith County and creaks, 1878
28
Fig.
7. The original township division of Smith County
41
Fig.
8. Townships as organized by 1885
43
Fig.
9. Government lands 1875
83
Fig. 10.
Kirwin Dam Project and irrigation canals
102
Fig. Il. Location of post offices and ghost towns
123
Fig. 12. Townships and railroad routes in Smith County
128
Fig. 13.
Proposed Pike's Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway, 1913
130
Fig. 14. School districts in Smith County
142
TABLES
Table 1. Annual precipitation, Smith County, Kansas
6
Table 2. Origin of foreign born population in Smith County
56
Table 3. Population of Smith County by origin of birth
57
Table 4. Population of Smith County, 1870-1959
65
Table 5. Population of each town and township by decades 1880-1950 and 1959 67
Table 6. Comparative average prices in Smith Co., 1930-1932 94
Table 7. Farm Statistica, 1873-1956 100
Table 8. Post offices of Smith County in order of establishment
120
Table 9. County Superintendents in Smith County, 1872-1961
141
V
MUELLER SCHOLARSHIP
This study was made possible through the generous assistance of the Mueller Scholarship for Graduate Research in Kansas history. This annual scholarship was established at Kansas State College in 1956 by Colonel and Mrs. Harrie S. Mueller of Wichita, Kansas, for the purpose (1) of preserving the history of Kansas which includes attention to South Central Kansas; (2) of giving incentive to students to become teachers of history, especially of Kansas history, in the public schools of the state; and (3) to increase the knowledge, understanding, and ap- preciation of the Kansas heritage.
vi
PREFACE
Smith County is located in the north central part of Kansas, bordered on the north by Nebraska, and on the other three sides by counties quite similar in physical features, and economic and industrial development. The economy, except for a few minor industries, is based wholly on agriculture. The towns, none large enough to be classed other than rural, range from hamlets to a pop- ulation of approximately 2,400 at Smith Center, the county seat. Since there have been no industries to bring in "outsiders," most of the people are de- scendants or related in some way to the early settlers of the area and are intensely proud of their county.
The writing of this thesis on the history of Smith County has had a par- ticular interest for me because I belong in this category. My grandfather, Daniel H. Crosby, was one of the early homesteadera in the county. He was one of the incorporators of Cedarville, the first tom in the county, and later was a business man in Kensington for many years. He and his wife who came to the county with her parents in a covered wagon, were married by the first pro- bate judge of the county, John Harlan. The grandparents of my husband, John Pletcher and William Barcus, both homesteaded in the area then known as Crystal Plains. I lived in Smith Center all of my girlhood and graduated from high school there in 1935 so my ties to the county extend over three generations. For this reason the writing of the history of Smith County, while seemingly an insurmountable job, has been a pleasant and a fascinating task.
The purpose of this thesis has been to give a brief asurvey of the history of Smith County from the pre-settlement days to comparatively recent times, in- cluding the history of the settlement of the various towns, and some represen- tative families and people who have contributed to its development. As no
vii
extensive reports of historical nature have ever been written for Smith County, this work is in the nature of a pioneer effort in the field.
In making the study I have been guided not only by the intrinsic inter- esta which the study has for me as a native Smith Countian whose forebears pioneered there, but also in the hope that the material here gathered to- gether for the first time may be of value in later years when many of the sources are no longer available. The principal sources of information have been personal interviews, personal correspondence, manuecripts of early set- tlers, chartere and newspapers on file in the archives and library of the Kansas State Historical Society in Topeka. Much of the material was found in the Library of the Kansas Historical Society, but it had not previously been collected where it was available for quick and easy reference. liad it not been for the cooperation and interest of the reference librarians, Mrs. Lorene Hawley, Mrs. Portia Allpert, and Mrs. Ellaen Charbo, much of it would never have been located.
I wish to thank Col. and Mrs. Harrie S. Mueller of Wichita, for the scholarship that helped make this thesis possible; and for the suggestions, constructive criticisma, and generous use of his time, I wish to express my appreciation to Dr. H. E. Socolofsky of the Department of History, Political Science, and Philosophy under whose direction this thesis was prepared; also to Dr. A. B. Sagesar whose commente and criticisms were extremely valuable.
To the many people who have helped in gathering this material -- Mir. and Mrs. Emmet Womer, Mrs. Hattie Baker, Mrs. Margaret Nelson, Mr. Ray Myers, Mrs. Theo Rice, Mr. H. V. Dilsavar, Mr. Oscar Crouse, Mr. Conrad Schwarz, the staff of Farrell Library, Kansas State University, and many more who are acknowl- edged in footnotes throughout the thesis, I want to gratefully acknowledge
viii
my indebtedness. Special appreciation is given to my husband and mother for their patience and inspiration throughout the months I have been occupied in this work.
Saith
Riven
1
. 1
1
1
KANSAS
Figure 1. Location of Smith County in the state of Karmes.
SCALE Q 20 4 MILES
CHAPTER I
AS GOD WROUGHT
Smith County lies in the extreme northern tier of counties in what is generally termed the north central area of the state of Kansas. It is bounded on the north by Webster and Franklin counties of Nebraska; on the west, east and south respectively by Phillips, Jewell, and Osborne counties of Kansas. It is 900 square miles of gently undulating grasalands except where the north fork of the Solomon River cuts across the southwest corner. Here chalk-rock hills border a vallsy which varies in width from one to five miles. Another rough area is the edge of the foothills of the Republican River in the ex- treme northwestern part of the county, which wers good grasslands before settlement.
In the twentieth century, Smith County is cut by ravines and ditches, many too deep to cross, due to erosion, but in 1876 it was optimistically de- scribed as "acarcely a ravine in the county where the plow or reaper can not be run in or across the same without any inconvenience. Along the streams the bottoms are wide and sloping .... There is not more than 3 per cent of our land, exclusive of the timbered portions, that cannot be tilled, and this 3 per cent affords ths most excellent pastures and stock grazing lands in the world."
The ground was covered with a short, nativs grass commonly called buffalo grass which browned under the sun but turned green with Light showers of rain.
1 Rev. W. M. Wellman, "History of Smith County", address delivered at Smith Center July 4, 1876, "in the presence of 2,000 honsst pionsers."
2
This grass deceived the firet travelers who thought its height and dead ap- pearunce showed the country infertile and unproductive, but they soon dia- covered that it cured on the ground, and not only the buffalo but cattle and horses could graze all winter and ksep in good condition. Grass roots closely entwined in the sod held the soil firmly eo that no silt was carried into the etreams and river to muddy its waters. It was said "the water in the Solomon River was clear as crystal and the fish could be seen plainly."2
The entire area is drained by tributaries of the Solomon River, which are Beaver Creek, East Beaver Creek, Cedar Creek, Middle Oak, West Oak, and Oak Creeks, Spring Crock, and Twelve Mils Creek, all of which flow in a southeast- erly direction. There are also two arms of White Rock Creek which drain east into the Republican River. Thess creeks and the river were bordered by tim- ber consisting of black walnut, oak, elm, hackberry, boxelder, willow, cot- tonwood, and cedar.3
A state survay in 1875 showed two per cent of the land in timber and 98 per cent in prairie.4 Wild plume, currants, and chokecherries were found. There were native flowers, although several early settlers note there were no weeds until settlere came and plowed the ground. It is said that as soon as the sod was broken, sunflowers were seen .? "They lined the trails; for miles one could see them."ยบ
The early animal life was that of the contiguous countiss in Kansas and Nebraska; rabbits, antelops, wild turkeys, prairie chickens, quails, squirrels,
2 Rev. W. M. Wellman, op. cit .; Margaret Nelson, Home on the Range, p. 44. 3 A. T. Andreas, History of Kansas, p. 908.
4 Annual Report of Kansas State Board of Agriculture, V. 4, Topeka, 1875.
5 Minnie D. Millbrook, Ness Western County Kansas, p. 26.
6 Margaret Nelson, op. cit., p. 44.
3
blacksnakes, rattlesnakes, ducks, gesse, fox, desr, beavers, wolves, coyotes, and buffalo. Areas several acres in extent in the Solomon River Valley were covered with prairie dog mounds. 7
Smith County was in the area that was the grazing ground for the hugs buffalo herde on which the Indians depended for existence, and thess large hards were seen by the earlisst settlers in the county. Mrs. Margaret Nelson, a daughter of homestenders and author of the book, Homs on the Rangs, writes, "The buffalo was the department store of the Plains Indian. When ths millions that roamed the prairies wers exterminated, the Plains tribes were starved in- to submission. It is the shame of the white man that within three years of his arrival the plains were almost stripped bare of meat for both the Indian B and the homesteader n The same idea was expressed by Minnie Millbrook when shs wrots, "The buffalo was not only the trade goods of the Indian, it was also his commissary
Various accounts tell of buffalo in Smith County the first years of settlement. Charles Biermann was building a log houss in 1871, but did not havs the roof on yet when he saw what looked like a black cloud rolling up on the horizon. "There was buffalo as far as I could see ... a moving mass." He climbed on the corner of the logs and watched for several hours as they passed by. 10 Harry Ross told of men who were hunting buffalo in Smith County being caught in the Easter storm of 1873. One, Ed Howell, lost his team and most of his fingers and toss. His companion, named Gates, died.11
7 The plants, grass covering, and the extent of ths prairis dog villages are also described in Fremont's account of his trip through this area: John C. Fremont, Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, 1843- 1844, pp. 108-109.
8 Ibid., p. 11-12.
9 Millbrook, op. cit., p. 27.
10 Smith County Clippings, Vol. I, Kansas State Historical Library. 11 Harry Ross, That Prics Whits Rock, p. 34.
Edna Chase Cowan came with her family to Smith County in 1871 and set- tled west of Gaylord near the Solomon River. One day they heard a distant rumble. Her father yelled that there were buffalo coming. They sat by the window and watched thea circle ths house several times. As they left, her father shot a calf. 12.12 William Allan, who settled on Oak Creek in 1871, stated that the big hunters estimated 10,000 buffalo were in the radius of fifty miles of their place. In 1872 a buffalo, apparently wounded by hunters, wandsred into a homesteader's yard and chased the children into the houss. In the southeast part of the county in 1872, buffalo, chased by hunters and con- sequently "on the prod", attacked two settlers who barely escaped being killed by running from tree to tres until the hunters arrived. "In '72 and '73 many settlers came and the buffalo disappeared rapidly."13
The last wild buffalo recorded as seen in Smith County was a lone ani- mal about two years old captured by Lee and Lon Cook, Harve Hayworth and Shube Carruthers on Loss Creek in the northwestern corner of the county in 1877. He was little and thin so they fattened him up. People came from miles around to sse the buffalo. They finally took him back to Indiana thinking to make some money showing him, but their project was disappointing, so they butchered him and sold ths hide for five dollars. 14
12 Bess Cowan, Reminiscences of Edna Chase Cowan as written by her daugh- tar, 1951. Manuscript in the Kansas State Historical Library.
13 Errol Allen, "Incidents of Homestead Days, " unpublished manuscript by son of William Allen, found in Kansas State Historical Library; Robert C. Venabla, "The Kansas Frontier, 1861-1875," unpublished M.S. thesis, Univ. of Oklahoma, 1936. Venable stressed in his thesis that it may be the killing of the buffalo and wild gums that was a determining factor in the passing of the frontier, for these herda provided the principal sustenance of life for the Indians and after their disappearance the Red man was more easily induced to accept mys of civilization. Since Smith County was settled after the great buffalo hunta had moved west and south, this may account for less Indian troubls there.
14 Margaret Nelson, op. cit. p. 235. Verified by the author in an inter- view with Mrs. M. Nelson.
5
The sport most enjoyed by the mon after the buffalo were gone was jack- rabbit hunts. Between Christmas and New Year's, 1876, a grand hunt was organ- izsd in Smith County. The county was divided equally between sast and west and the hunt ran for an entire week. Ten thousand rabbits were slaughtered and taken to Hastings, Nebraska, which was the nearest railroad point, where they wers sold. The losing ad de gave a big supper to the winners on New Year's night. 15
The fertility of the soil was not apparent to the first travelsrs through Kansas. The acarcity of trees, ths short, dead-looking grass and the infre- quent rain did not look like signs of an productive area to ths men from the grsen, timbered valleys sast of the Mississippi river. Smith County was part of the area Piks designated as ths Great American.Dessrt.
The key climatic factor then and now is the amount and variability of rainfall. The average annual rainfall in Smith County is approximately 22 inches but a low of ten inches and a high of thirty-eight inches in a single year havs been recorded. Ths climats is the variabls climate of the plains area: hot, dry summers with sudden showers, considerable wind, and occasional tornadoss. Ths winters may be characterized by many days of cold but with sunshine, or there may be heavy snowfall, usually with much wind and deep snowdrifts. Ths drier air tends to register lower temperatures, often zaro or near zero for days in succession.
The weather is always an element of risk in an agricultural area, and in this "temperamental" region it is a constant topic for conversation. It spelled joy or sorrow, success or failure for the settlers in ths 1870's
15 Smith County Old Settlers' Homecoming Assoc., Smith Centar Souvenir, 1912.
6
Table 1. Annual precipitation, Smith County, Kansas. 1898-1952 .*
Toar
:
Inches of Precip.
:
Inches of Precip.
Year
Inches of Precip.
1898
16.34
1916
18.27
1934
10.02
1899
18.25
1917
16.69
1935
29.07
1900
22.96
1918
22.95
1936
10.11
1901
16.54
1919
29.49
1937
14.39
1902
33.80
1920
21.41
1938
20.07
1903
32.94
1921
13.87
1939
14.85
1904
21.50
1922
16.49
1940
16.43
1905
27.95
1923
29.86
1941
30.26
1906
20.00
1924
18.09
1942
25.56
1907
16.29
1925
20.66
1943
15.78
1908
28.33
1926
16.49
1944
32.93
1909
26.95
1927
23.95
1945
22.53
1910
17.53
1928
30.99
19446
35.47
1911
20.25
1929
18.49
1947
24.06
1912
20.41
1930
18.58
1948
-
1913
20.96
1931
21.73
1949
28.99
1914
17.81
1932
-
1950
23.67
1915
34.13
1933
15.01
1951
38.18
Average precipitation, 1898-1914
22.29
Average precipitation, 1915-1930
21.71
Average precipitation, 1931-1952
22.20
Year
# Climatic Survey of the United States, Report of United States Department of Agriculture, Weather Bureau, 1952.
7
and continued to do so in the twentieth century.
Archaeological and geological surveys of Smith County have been made but natural resources have been undeveloped to a great extent. Fossils found along the Solomon Hiver and in Oak Creek tributarias show evidence of three different periods of the earth's past. First, the sea eilt shows it was part of the ancient inland Chalk Seas; fossil vegetation found marke the tropical climate of the dinosauric age; later deposits of the glacial age are found. 16 These different periods made a soil of a fertility hard to duplicate, but left little known mineral deposits.
The finding of what was apparently mammoth skeletons in a sand pit on ths Merrill Lyon farm four miles southwest of Smith Center in July, 1953, seems to further confirm this. The story, as told by the Smith County Pio- near, was that Gale Reilly of the local state highway crew found a broken part of a tusk. The enginser, Charles Vinckier, and foreman, Charles Springer, stopped work in that part of the pit and notified Kansas State College. Three men from the geology department removed a head and one verte- bra. Unfortunately, as soon as the air strikes the bones they start to de- teriorate unless shellacked. The head was broken by a careless souvenir hunter before it could be removed. The skull was three iset across and the tueks wers estimated to be at least eight and one-half feet long. A mam- moth thigh bone dug from the same pit in 1907 is in the University of Nebras- ka liuseun.
A later find was made across the pit some 75 to 100 feet east of tha earlier discovery. The skull was larger than the first with one tusk about nins feet long. The tip, estimated at another foot, was missing. The other
16 Smith County Pioneer, April 16, 1936.
8
tusk, broken off within a foot of the head by the bulldozer, measured nine inches in diameter at the break. There were two teeth in the head, one meas- uring ten inches in length and five inches in width, both in the upper jaw. 17 Another tusk and some bones were found by Robert Maxwell northwest of Smith Centar. They had apparently been uncovered by a heavy rain and were in a strata about five to six feet below the normal surface of the land in that vicinity. 18
Limestone abounds and is of good quality for construction purposes. Sandstone is plentiful, but is of an inferior quality, while there are small quantities of gypsum of fine industrial quality. 19
Chalk deposits have been found from Jewell County southwest to Finnay County. They have been scenic wonders for years while the United States im- ported chalk from England. In 1952 the Kansas State Geological Survey made investigations that revealed some exceptionally pure chalk in Smith County. 20
It is now mined on the Giese farm in Harvey township and the Walter Hofer farm in Vallay township. Chalk shipments have been made from Gaylord and Harlan. It is the only place in the United States that chalk is mined on a commercial basis. An estimated 50,000,000 tons make up the largest and purest commercial reservas on the continent. 21
Oil and gas seeps have been reported in Smith County for years and were reported in a Kansas Geological Survey in 1917. In 1916-1918 much of the land
17 Smith County Pioneer, July 30, August 6, 1953.
18 Smith County Pioneer, October, 1959.
19 Charlas R. Tuttle, New Contennial History of Kansas, p. 650-651.
20 Alvin Leonard and Walton Durum. Geology and Ground - Water Resources of North Fork of the Solomon Hiver, State Geological Survey of Kansas, Bulletin 98, p. 23; John D. Bright, Kansas, The First Century, p. 202. 21 Smith County Pioneer, November 7, 1940.
9
around Athol in the western part of the county and Bellaire in the central part was leased for oil development. A few tests were drilled but with no favorable results. Kenneth Landes and John Jewett made trips to Smith County in 1938 and in visita with M. R. Dimond and other citizens they got the fol- lowing story. About sixty years ago oil that was similar to kerosene and used in lamps was obtained from dug water wella little more than twenty feet deep in Old Germantown. Later neighboring wells here and around Bellaire be- came unfit for water uss. At Bellaire the town became infuriated because they thought some person was putting oil in the town well. "Coal oil" Was rediscovered there about 1917 in a shallow well and used for automobile fuel. In 1917 it was reported that crude oil - one hundred or more barrels -- waa taken from a well about twenty-five feet deep in Athol. It ran into a cistern that was being dug and was pumped out with an ordinary pitcher pump at the rate of five gallons a day to heat a commercial garage. A well near the hotel had to be abandoned because of oil pollution.
In 1938 oil similar to kerosene accumulated on a cistern in Athol to the depth of several inches. Test holes were made by state geologists near the cistern in Athol and kerosene-like oil along with water was bailed out. Sand with a strong odor of crude oil was found at twenty-four feet. Analyses of incomplete samples showed that this does not resemble any of the crude petroleum of Kansas. The unusual character can possibly be explained as the result of filtration.
Surface geology of Smith County is very simple. It has an Ogallala formation of Tertiary Age in the northwest corner of the county and in a nar- row outlier extending southeastward from the southern part of TIS, RL3W, to a mile or two west of Bellaire. No seeps have been reported from either of these two areas of Tertiary rock. The rest of the county, except for a rela- tively small area in the south and southeast parts is floored with the chalky
10
shale of the Miobrara formation. This formation is the thinneat in the south- east part of the county where the underlying Carlile shale is exposed and is the thickest beneath ths cap of Tertiary rocks in the southwest corner. All but one of the seeps shown in the map occur in the area floored by the Nio- brara formation - mostly where the chalky shale has broken down through weathering into a veneer of soil several feet thick. The gas seep in Sec- tion 3, TSS, RLlW in the southeast part of the county is the only seep known in the area of the outcrop of Carlile shale.
It seems unlikely to us that the source sseping is to be found in the shallow formations. These formations are notably devoid of oil in other parts of the state where they have been adequately tested, except of sandstone layers in the Dakota.
Under the circumstances the best guess that can be made is that the source of oil is in the formations of Pennsylvanian age which occur in Smith County at depths in excess of 2,000 feet .... Recent chemical studies of soils, especially in the Gulf Coast area, have shown that the lighter, more volatile components of crude oil can travel upward through a considerable thickness of rock strata .... In the course of upward migration the crude oil has been fractionated so that only the light constituents have appeared at the surface. The presence in commercial quantities is a possibility without the presence of seeps. The presence of eceps strengthens this possi- bility. 22
22 Kenneth K. Landes and John M. Jewett, Oil and Gas Seeps in Smith County, Kansas. State Geological Survey of Kansas, Mineral Re- sources Circular 12, 1939. (Summarized by the author. )
11
BI 5W
R14W
RIJV
RIRV
RIIV
S
Reimsville
S
Smith *Center
Bellaire
S
Kensington
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