History of Nemaha County, Kansas, Part 12

Author: Tennal, Ralph 1872-
Publication date: 1916
Publisher: Lawrence, Kan., Standard Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 964

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For a time it seemed as if the highway of success was opening for the undertaking, but ere long private jealousies and sectarian prejudices were awakened that caused contentions to grow among the members of the society, which culminated on March 10, 1862, in what was for years afterward known as "The Centralia Riot," and for which the writer hereof, with some fifteen others, was arrested by John H. Rogers, then sheriff of Nemaha county, taken before H. H. Lanham, then as now a justice of the peace in Seneca, and after a week spent on preliminary examination, were bound over to appear at the next term of the district court, where the trial took place, and all were acquitted. James P. Taylor prepared the papers for the arrest and assisted in the prosecution, that being his first appearance in a Kansas court. In his closing argument he told the court to "Have mercy upon the boys, but to sock it to the old d-1." The defense was conducted by F. P. Baker, now of the Topeka "Commonwealth," and John C. Scott, who, years after, committed suicide in Marshall county, while William Histed acted as a sort of lay attorney, he at that time not having been admitted to the bar.

Thus ended the brilliant hopes and bright promises of Home Asso- ciation, and with it the bubble of one more ideal "Utopia" burst.

The organization went down; many of the citizens, now thoroughly disgusted, sought new homes, or went back to "her folks." A good share of the houses were moved away or torn down. Among those moved to Seneca we may mention that of F. P. Baker's dwelling, which furnished the germ of the house now occupied by John H. Peckham, while his office is now the front part of Joseph Behne's dwelling. The old

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Leatherby house, now on the bottoms east of town, was originally built in Centralia by William Holden. The Centralia hotel, after many trans- formations, is now the wooden part of the Cowdry building, the lower story being occupied by Johnston Brothers' land office and Parsons & Smith's boot and shoe store. And of the Centralia College, which was expected to become the Harvard of the West, nothing now remains but the building, transformed into a farm house, and occupied by our vener- able friend, Robertson.

Of the early settlers of Centralia, but few now remain. Dr. Hidden, Stephen Barnard, A. W. Slater, O. P. Gallaher, Reuben Mosher, Alex- ander Mccutcheon, John Hodgins, T. A. Campfield, the Sams and Yill- mer families, Judson W. Stickney and probably some others whose names now escape our memory, live in or near Centralia. E. D. Hymer died a few weeks ago; his family still live near town. William Histed is probate judge of Nemaha county. Joshua Mitchell, county clerk ; Dr. Shelton and Hugh Hamilton live in Beattie, Marshall county ; Delos W. Ager, who has as generous a heart as ever beat in human breast, and whose house was often our welcome home, now lives in Vermillion, Marshall county. Seth B. Hough, the generous, whole-souled, good- natured Seth, is married and rearing a family in Berlin, Minn. Scott B. Humphrey has a valuable farm near Seneca, upon which he lives Dr. N. B. Mckay is practicing his profession in America City. J. W. Tullor, after serving Nemaha county faithfully as county clerk for eight years, was called home from earth some eight years ago. F. P. Baker, who was then practicing law in Centralia, and that winter represented his district in the Legislature, who, before leaving for Topeka, called his fellow citizens in Centralia together and in a well written address explained to them what great things he intended to accomplish for Home Association and the Centralia College, has since made for himself a name, and fortune, we hope, as editor and proprictor of the Topeka "Commonwealth." 'If he reads this article he will probably smile as we do (in a strictly temperance manner) at the bright pictures we then saw of the glorious results to be accomplished in the then immediate future. and remember with a chuckle and a spasmodic contraction of the mus- cles of one side of his face, the secret society organized in his office. with its magic pass word and glorious object, and later, the obituary poetry, of which the grandeur of its conception was equalled only by the elegance of its style.

CHAPTER XV.

OTHER TOWNS AND VILLAGES.

GOFF-A RAILROAD CENTER-NAMED IN HONOR OF EDWARD H. GOFF-LO- CATION-JUDGE DONALDSON-MR. ABBOTT, FIRST MERCHANT- KELLY-A SHIPPING POINT-"THE KELLY BOOSTER"-A BEAUTIFUL CHURCH-THE KELLY BANK-SCHOOL-BUSINESS ENTERPRISES -- PIONEER FAMILIES-THE VILLAGES OF DORCAS, CLEAR CREEK, SOTH- ER, PRICE, ETC .- THE TOWN.OF BAILEYVILLE.

GOFF.

Goff goes a step farther than Wetmore and is the direct outcome of the railroad being run through its vicinity and needing a loading station. Goff is one of the youngest children of Nemaha county, and has sur- passed in numbers its sisters of many years older. Goff, being primarily a railroad town and the only one built for that sole purpose, looks like an alien among her agricultural sister towns. Goff is hilly, with odd, abrupt hills rising suddenly and for no apparent reason out of the earth. It is straggling and in its unusualness, very interesting.

Goff was named in honor of a railroad man, or rather a railway official, Edward H. Goff, of the Union Pacific railroad. Whether to pronounce the town Goff or Goffs is always a bone of contention, and can always raise a satisfactory disturbance in the switch shanty when the much-discussed plan on improving the Central Branch and extending the line to Denver fails.

The town was laid out in 1880. Two years later it contained a hotel and store, occupying one building. Today it is a prosperous town of 700 inhabitants, with a good business street and one of the handsomest school buildings in the county.

Goff looks like the adopted child of Nemaha county. If a resident of Nemaha had never seen Goff and knew nothing of it and should be set down there in the night, he would scarcely believe he was in his own county. Just as the rest of the county is pre-eminently a farming com- munity and the towns were built up for farmers' trade, Goff is a rail- road community and seems to have known it from the time it was fash- ioned by Mother Nature. Nemaha county is gently undulating until she gets to Goff. Then she is filled with perpendicular hills, vales and views.

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Unfortunately, Goff as a railroad center does not seem to be as thriving in its chosen line as one would wish. Two roads meet there and the town is attractive and individual in its hilliness, widely different from the rest of the Nemaha county towns, which are flat and level universally. Goff begins at the foot of a mountainous hill with the livery stable. It ascends perpendicularly half way to the clouds, where it ends in the handsome school house. Snowy winters in Goff are a paradise for Goff children. The only respectable coasting hill in Ne- maha county is in Goff. The Goff school house, which is the pride of the town, was picked up off its foundation sixteen years ago by a cy- clone. But the cyclone was comparatively gentle, as gentle as such an uncontrolled beast may be, and it carefully set the school house down. So instead of tearing the building down the Goffites simply put their fine school building back on the foundation and fastened it down tighter, where it served to educate the children and afforded a view that should have made an artist of every small boy in Goff, had he not found the frequent locomotive more fascinating than the pleasant outlook.

Goff has a citizen who has been a police judge about as long as Sabetha's Judge Cook. Since the beginning of time in Goff, Judge J. R. Donaldson has been police judge there. He takes care of the law and of his own domicile at one and the same time, and is an interesting char- acter.

Mr. Abbott, who owned the first store in Goff, under the firm name of Abbott & Reynolds, still lives in Goff, but has been retired from actual business for ten years. Goff was very poor in the days when the town was first started. Clothes and shoes were at a premium. It must have been a drouth year or grasshoppers or winds or something. At any rate, the folks were hard pressed for wearing apparel and the neces- sities of life. Mrs. Abbott came to the hilly, hidden, hungry little burg, a young married woman, with a trunk load of lovely clothes. When she went to church she found the other folks arrayed in calico gowns, many without hats or even sunbonnets and some without shoes. So she folded away her lovely clothes, got out the plainest things she had. made her others of greater simplicity and went to church and did about as her less fortunate neighbors. But Goff now is a town of peculiar fascination. Its hills and dales, its good hotels, its several excellent brick buildings and its fine picture show give it an air so different from other towns of the county that it is always interesting.

KELLY.

The building of the Kansas City & Northwestern railroad through the county necessitated another shipping station midway between Goff and Seneca. Kelly was the result. Kelly has thrived and prospered and has gathered unto itself many from surrounding localities. A general store is run by Emil Jonach, Jr., whose name has been identified with

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HISTORY OF NEMAHA COUNTY

Nemaha county since its first settlement. Jonachs have been the first name in mind at Woodlawn and now at Kelly. Another store is that of Schumacher & Ketters.

Perhaps the prime mover in Kelly affairs for a long number of years is Dr. Fitzgerald and his energetic wife. Mrs. Fitzgerald is every- thing in Kelly. Dr. Fitzgerald is the druggist as well as the town doctor. But Mrs. Fitzgerald is the assistant druggist, the postmistress, the tele- phone operator, and she was the editor for several months of the only paper Kelly has had in several years, "The Kelly Booster." The paper was printed at Goff, but the effort was too great a tax on the village criterion and after a few months of excellent editing, it was abandoned. Some fourteen years ago, when Kelly was a mere infant child of the county, Bernard Harrish tried publishing a newspaper there. He is located at Smithville, Mo., in charge of the "Herald." William Kongs has a hardware store in Kelly, and R. S. Vandervoort is the village black- smith.

Kelly has a beautiful new Catholic church, completed within the past year at a cost of $40,000, Father Edwin Kassens, pastor. The exterior is more beautiful than the famous St. Benedict's, but the in- terior is not so elaborate. The Methodist church has been meeting in Kelly since the foundation of the town eighteen years ago. There were eighty original members and they are served by Rev. Moyer, of Corning.

The Kelly Bank is again the child of Nemaha county pioneers. G. A. Magill, a son of Caleb Magill, is the cashier. His wife is a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Scrafford. Both names are identified with the foundation of the county. Charlie Scrafford was a founder of Seneca. Caleb Magill was a pioneer resident of Granada. Kelly has a farmers' union store and a barber shop. Its two elevators are owned by the union and the Denton Brothers, of Leavenworth, with Bert Cole as man- ager of the Denton elevator. The Catholic parochial school, in charge of the sisters, has one hundred pupils. Mrs. George Magill teaches the village school with about twenty-five pupils. R. M. Emery, of Seneca, is president of the bank. F. M. Spalding, whose home is in Lincoln, Neb., owns the lumber yard, which is one of a string extending from Sabetha to Lincoln. O. D. Ruse is the Kelly manager. There is a cream station under the management of F. E. Gabbert, another name prominent in Nemaha county history. There is a hotel and restaurant combined. This with less than 200 inhabitants, including the station agent, completes, the prosperous, little town. There is not a vacant dwelling in Kelly. In fact, the new station agent had to camp in a box car recently for two months until a house could be planned and arranged for the occupancy of himself and his family. There are also on the road between Goff and Seneca, Sourk and Kampler stations, mere shipping points for stock or grain on occasion.

George Magill, cashier of the Kelly bank, is a descendant of Caleb Magill, one of the four Magill brothers who helped to settle Nemaha

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county. Four of the Magill brothers, who were among the earliest set- tlers of Kansas, married girls named Mary and they already had a sister Mary. So ever since their marriage their wives have been referred to as Mary with the Christian names of their particular husbands added. For instance, there are Mary David, Mary Aaron, Mary Charlie, and their own sister, Mrs. Payne, whom they call Mary K. or Mary Kansas, as that is her middle name in honor of her native State.

VILLAGES.

One time postoffices which have passed out of the here into the nowhere were Dorcas, in Capioma, township, and Clear Creek. Both were kept only in farm houses, the rural routes putting them out of business. Near Wetmore about thirty years ago a section house was built and given the name of Sother, in compliment to the Hon. Thomas Sother. A store was erected, but it, too, has gone the way of blasted hopes.

Berwick, comprising a store and ex-postoffice and four houses, has continued as a stopping point of the Rock Island railroad between Sa- betha and Bern. Price is a shipping point on the Grand Island between Oneida and Sabetha. Both have excellent stores, a convenience to the farmers nearby, and life saving stations for autoists who forgot to fill their gasoline tanks before leaving their homes on either side of the village stores. Price was named for J. E. Price, a prominent grain man of Sabetha in the early eighties. J. E. Price was a soldier, who received a medal for manning an abandoned gun at the siege of Richmond. He was well beloved in Sabetha and the grandmothers of today recall with affection broom drills and exercises and entertainments he taught them as little girls. In connection with Mr. Price is Samuel Slosson, who, with his brother, W. B., one of the real fathers and faithful lovers of Sabetha, built the Price elevator in Sabetha. Samuel Slosson was the first station agent at Sabetha.

The brothers moved from Sabetha to Albany during the exodus of 1870 to greet the coming of the railroad to Nemaha county. Samuel Slosson, who is dead, was the husband of Mrs. Dr. Emma Brooke Slosson, the only practicing woman physician of Nemaha county, who lives here still, retaining their old family home and the love and affec- tion of her lifetime friends. Dr. Slosson is still practicing medicine. At one time she and "Old Dr. Irwin" of beloved memory, were the only practicing physicians in Sabetha, owing to a State restriction which re- quired special examinations for physicians at that time. The Price village store is now run by M. J. Steiner, one of the Amish German brethren, who have taught improved farming methods to many Ameri- can brother tillers of the soil. The Berwick store is in charge of A. F Grote.

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BAILEYVILLE.

Baileyville, the westernmost town of the county, was named in honor of ex-Governor Bailey's father, who laid out the town seven miles west of Seneca. It has prospered and become a convenient shipping point, if not a city of any considerable growth. G. M. Rasp was the first postmaster of the village and a St. Joseph firm established a store, hay sheds, etc. Later these were sold to the Bailey Brothers and to other interested local citizens. The St. Joseph & Grand Island put in a siding and Baileyville increased in numbers, citizenship and substan- tiality.

The most interesting thing of Baileyville is a community hall, built for the use and entertainment of both villagers and country people of the surrounding farms. Club meetings, social and business gatherings are held here. It is a well built, nice looking building, of which any community might be proud. The outlying farm lands are undulating and beautiful. The hills from the southern part of the country have rolled themselves out into more level surfaces, and the land is so pleas- ing to the eye as to bring a covetous sigh from the passerby.

An interesting pioneer who did much for this part of the country was Xavier Guittard, who was the oldest postmaster in point of service in the United States at the time of his resignation, about 1908. He had been postmaster of Guittard Station for forty-seven years. He came to this section in 1857 with his father. Guittard Station was named for the elder Guittard and was one of the famous stations on the old Cali- fornia trail. George Guittard and Xavier Guittard managed the town- ship's affairs for twenty-five years, and the elder Guittard was the con- fidential agent of "Ben" Holliday when he managed the great overland stage company. The California trail ran directly through the Guittard farm, and Guittard Station was one of the most important on the famous route. Many distinguished persons were entertained by Xavier Guittard and his father in those days. When Xavier Guittard sold the old home- stead a few years ago, he presented the Roman Catholic Cathedral at Leavenworth with a French crucifix which had been a treasure in the Guittard family for more than 300 years.

CHAPTER XVI.

ONEIDA.

FOUNDED BY COL. CYRUS SHINN-ELECTION OF NAME-LIQUOR RESTRUC- TION-SUPPORTED GOVERNOR ST. JOHN-POSTOFFICE-EARLY ENTER- PRISES-CHURCHES-SUBSTANTIALLY BUILT-SCHOOL-"REAL ES- TATE JOURNAL"-NEW YORK "TRIBUNE" REPORTS OF "BLEEDING KANSAS"-FIRST RELIGIOUS SERVICE-LODGES AND WOMAN'S CLUBS.

Col. Cyrus Shinn founded Oneida, now a thriving town of 300 inhabi- tants, lying midway between Sabetha and Seneca, on the Grand Island railroad. Colonel Shinn's idea was to give a town lot to every one who came to Onedia to settle and build up the city. He bought 400 acres of land in 1873, laid out streets and lots on most of it and named it Oneida. In an election held for naming the town Oneida or Shinntown, Onedia won. Why it was so named is not explained, as Colonel Shinn was a Southerner from West Virginia. He used to say in the early days of Oneida that he would "boom the town if he never made a cent." One thing was required of Onedia settlers on the Shinn lots, however, and that was the settler was not to sell liquor or allow it to be sold on the premises. The result is that Oneida has never had a saloon, and Gilman township was the only one in Nemaha county that returned a majority for Governor St. John, the Kansas Governor whose election was won on the Prohibition ticket. It is recalled during that stirring campaign that St. John was burned in effigy in many towns, so opposed were the people to prohibition. Twenty-five years later monuments were raised in his honor and praise, so convinced had Kansas become of the excellence of his prohibitory law.

Before Colonel Shinn decided to put his farm into a town, a post- office called Oneida had been kept in the farm house of Henry Kerns. It is possible that the name "Oneida" was found more euphonious than "Shinntown," although there is occasionally found a former resident of the village who refers to it as Shinntown. Colonel Shinn erected a store building, which eventually became the postoffice, with J. O. Stienbaugh as postmaster, succeeding the farmer, Kerns. An acre of land was pre- sented to G. W. Buswell for establishing thereon a cheese factory. Colonel Shinn meantime was traveling through the East advertising his town by lectures, handbills and pamphlets, and giving away lots to all

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comers. Surely no town was built on firmer faith. He opened a land office and started a newspaper called the Oneida "Real Estate Journal." The customary blacksmith shop and necessary stores followed and a two-story hotel was built, called the Lindell. The first keeper of the inn was B. F. Chamberlain. The owners since have been many and varied. But the hotel is still open and of daily use to travelers. The streets were named in order after Presidents, as are the streets in Chicago, in whose footsteps it was supposed to follow. Two churches

PUBLIC AND CHURCH BUILDINGS, ONEIDA, KANS.

were built immediately, one a Christian church, and the other with the metropolitan name of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian.

Oneida was built at once. No makeshifts were permitted. A school house, two stories high and graded into four departments, was erected on a sightly hill without delay. An opera hall was built for public gath- erings, substantial and roomy, in continual use today. A park was re- served, with the distinguished name of Hyde Park, and a restaurant was

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opened with the famous title of Rialto. The town thrived and flourished and filled up with smart, progressive people, and is so filled today over forty years later.

The "Real Estate Journal," however, was sold to J. F. Clough, editor of the Sabethia "Republican," who conducted it for four years as the Oneida "Journal," and four years later suspended the publication. The cheese factory became the most famous in the county, its sales extending from St. Joseph to Denver, and prospering until the cheese trust put all small establishments out of business. This booming and thriving and advertising of Kansas and Oneida did its part in helping the State into its own. Reports taken or sent "back East" were not always so glowing as those borne by Colonel Shinn, as will be seen in the following har- rowing Eastern newspaper tale.

Ex-Postmater Russell, of Oneida, has a copy of the New York "Tribune" dated August 9, 1856, which contains thirteen columns of cor- respondence from Kansas. Over half of the eight page issue of the Tribune was devoted to the trials and tribulations of the Free State men. None of the correspondence was less than a week old and some of it was a month old. Those were slow days in the transmission of news to the papers. All the correspondence went to the "Tribune" by mail.

The correspondence was all full of horrors-tales of political as- saults and murders ; of prejudice and of wrongs perpetrated because of prejudice. To read this paper one can readily see why the State is called "bleeding Kansas." To go through the mass of correspondence seems like walking through a chamber of horrors. Emigrants coming from Illinois and Ohio and other States were stopped in Missouri, robbed and plundered and sent back toward their starting point. Every paragraph of the thirteen columns is filled with blood and plunder.

One writer in a letter written in St. Louis says:

"I am, at last, out of the demon's claws. I reached this city, from Kansas, yesterday evening. I am en route for Baltimore, and shall start on my way tonight.

"Anarchy, in its most hideous form, runs riot in Kansas. There is no war between the two parties, the principals of the war are ignored. It is murder and plunder which devastate the land. I have been as- sailed five times within four weeks, and have very narrowly escaped with my life, not without gross personal violence. At Lecompton, last Tuesday. I was set on by a howling mob, and my life threatened. I called on Governor Shannon for protection, but he informed me that he could give none. 'Your people,' said he, 'are shooting down our people at every turn, and you must take your choice.' These were his words. He advised me to leave the town, and I did. The United States soldiers can do but little ; martial law alone can save all parties from going to destruction.

"My hope in Kansas becoming ultimately a Free State is in nowise diminished. They can never get an actual population in the Territory

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who will prefer Slavery to Freedom. The men who are now in from the South are mere desperadoes, who have been brought out for the express purpose of murdering and plundering the people; they are entirely unfit for any industrial or honorable occupation, or anything good whatever -the basest ruff-scruff of Southern cities. Whenever the work of mur- der and pillage is done, they are done with Kansas, and it will be left again to the bona fide settlers."

Here is another little incident experienced by a man named John A. Bailey while he was going to market :

"I have been fourteen months in the Territory ; came from Pennsyl- vania; I started last Tuesday morning for Little Santa Fe, after pro- visions for myself and neighbors; I had gotten as far as Bull Creek by five o'clock in the evening, when a man came up and stopped my wagon, telling me to stop there for the night ; this man was Coleman, the mur- derer of Dow; he had twenty men encamped where I met him; among them I recognized Buckley, Hargus, Jones, Connelly and the Cuming brothers. The two first were also accomplices in the murder of Dow, and all of them in the posse of Jones which took Bransom; in the night my horses were stolen, their halters cut ; in the morning these men made pretense of sympathy, and said, 'It was too bad for people to steal horses from their friends :' they told me I could find them in the camp at Cedar Creek, and three of them volunteered to go with me; I borrowed a pony and leaving my wagon with the others, started.

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History of Nemaha County, Kansas, Part 12

Author: Tennal, Ralph 1872- Publication date: 1916 Publisher: Lawrence, Kan., Standard Publishing Company Number of Pages: 964

Author: Tennal, Ralph 1872-
Publication date: 1916
Publisher: Lawrence, Kan., Standard Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 964