USA > Kansas > Nemaha County > History of Nemaha County, Kansas > Part 28
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So it went. A few dugouts ten to twenty miles apart. Poverty everywhere. At another dugout a woman had just given birth to a baby. She had baked rye bread ahead in anticipation of the event. Her husband sold Stokes a loaf of bread. He sat down and ate it, then begged to buy more. The husband would not sell. Mr. Stokes cooked buffalo meat with buffalo chips. It was plenty tough.
There is nothing in this theory of wild game being so much better than any other kind. Mr. Stokes will take a good steak any time. Event- ually he reached his claim. There was no town of Smith Center then. There was no living on the crops produced. It couldn't be done. It wasn't done for twenty years afterward. The hundred dollars an acre
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homestead doesn't look so alluring, does it? Stevens and Dietrich moved their families from Sabetha to Smith county. Both men are dead. John Tyler died in Seattle. Mr. Stokes is the only head of a family still living. The reason he didn't move to Smith county was that the Grand Island owed him $210 and couldn't pay it. They did him a favor. He doesn't think those years of pioneer hardships would have been worth the hundred dollars an acre.
THE ORPHAN POPULATION
More than fifty orphan children, homeless from the vicissitudes of a city existence, have found a home, shelter and refuge in this county. The goodly people have given these not only a home, but in most cases the love and control of parents. Our first bevy of little ones, twenty-four in number, came ten years ago under the charge of Mr. Swan and Miss Hill, field agents of the Children's Aid Society of New York City.
Miss Hill is now the Kansas State agent, with headquarters at To- peka. Some of the innocents came from the Kansas Home of the Friend- less. Of all this number there was but one defective child. The rule is less than one in twelve. The city orphans know nothing of farm life, and yet they make good upon the farms and almost every case of dis- satisfaction of foster parent or child is found to be the interference of neighbors or servants.
The child's return to the foster parents in love, labor and usefulness more than justifies the expense, care and trouble. The responsibility of the child's life is carried by the organized societies and their represent- atives who govern their discipline and by advice and admonition assist in the guidance to a useful maturity of these children.
The remarkable success of these children proclaim that the rearing of the children is the greatest industry Nemaha county attempts. One of our most unpromising little ones has become the friend and associate of her foster mother. At eighteen she is little mother to two others. She has saved $500 and is today a useful, helpful housekeeper.
Another has demonstrated scholarship to a marked degree and by competitive examination won a State scholarship in the big institutions ยท of learning where she is finishing her education. This child was seven- teen. She knows how to do housework, milk, husk corn and drive a team.
It has been one of the aims to place these children upon the farms in preference to other homes. Upon the farms they have the intimate as- sociation of their foster parents, their regular, steady work, the oppor- tunities of the country school-the best in America today. Add to these the regular hours of sleep, the wholesome food of the farm table and the conditions for the rearing of the child become almost ideal.
The material affairs of the children are supervised by a local com- mittee that are in truth the representaives of the instiutions. The head- quarters of the movement in the county has been at Sabetha. and of the
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original committee, which consisted of George W. Hook, Ralph Tennal, Tom Pace, Roy Hesseltine, Grant Hazen and Will Guild, there remains active in the work Ralph Tennal and George Hook. These two have kept in close touch with their charges, and have urged upon both parents and children that maxim of good guardians of child life, "Don't see too much."
These supervisors are under lasting obligations to the newspapers of northeastern Kansas. These have, without money and without price, given most freely of their advertising columns, the reading space and their good will, and the children are blessed accordingly. The Sabetha "Herald," the Brown County "World," the Kansas "Democrat," Seneca "Tribune" and Troy "Chief" have each assisted cheerfully. May their blessings be accordingly.
The committee has found some royal helpers among the people, and among those have been Mrs. Henri Plattner who, by care, advice and material assistance, has found homes for many. To Irwin Hook and his gentlewife, whose home has at all times been open for the care and instruction of the children so unfortunate as to be waiting for new homes, much credit is due. Nemaha county has always cared for the orphans.
E. E. Crichley came to Kansas from England with a party of orphan children that were distributed here about thirty-six years ago. He was taken into the O. C. Bruner home in Seneca. He remained with the fam- ily, and is now with the Santa Fe railway people in the coach depart- ment in the shops at Topeka. Although only five years of age when he was taken, he recalls quite well the day and occasion of his assignment, and when at home recently went to the court house to see if he recog- nized anything about the place that was impressed upon his child mind on the occasion of his first visit. All trace of a brother taken by a Mr. Rosengarten has been lost, and nothing is known of him since the time he was in the employ of Jake Allen, who used to run the big livery barn on the vacant block in the rear of the Kramer hardware store, and which was destroyed by fire some twenty years ago.
THE COUNTY HOSPITAL.
In the past few years in rich Nemaha county very few have wound their way "over the hill to the poorhouse." Thus it was called in 1869 when crops frequently failed and residents of "No Papoose' .oc- casionally lost their grip. Then a county farm was secured for their care and sustenance, a mile and a half from Seneca. A stone building was erected sufficient to accommodate thirty people. The eighty acres surrounding it have frequently been self-supporting, and larger acreage, with fine timber and a picturesque stream, are included in the grounds now. But the new building is called the County Hospital, and that is what it amounts to.
The building is modern in every respect, furnace-heated, a water- .
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works system, two windows to all the rooms, four porcelain baths, and a home of comparative happiness and contentment to the dwellers therein. Under the management of Mr. and Mrs. John Pugh, who are now conducting the hospital, it is almost self-supporting and his "family" is well content. Sara Teasdale's words about "The Poorhouse,"
Hope went by and Peace went by And would not enter in; Youth went by and Health went by, And Love that is their Kin.
Gray Death saw the wretched house, And even he passed by ; "They have never lived," he said, "They can wait to die."
are little suited to Nemaha county's Home for the Poor, where peace reigns with comfort and contentment.
Eighty windows glow in the western sun, and the glow they reflect is the glow reflected by the care and rest that is given the weary and the old within its walls.
CHAPTER XXXI.
NEMAHA'S SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF RENOWN.
DR. BENJAMIN L. MILLER-MRS. ETHEL HUSSEY-EX-GOV. W. J. BAILEY- E. G. STITT-MRS. NANNIE KUHLMAN-SENATOR W. H. THOMPSON- MRS. VIRGINIA GREEVER-WALT MASON-FREDERICK GATES-REV. A. G. LOHMAN-COL. H. BAKER-AND OTHERS.
Of the sons and daughters of Nemaha county, many have acquired fame, honor and riches bounded only by the nation and a few beyond this country's boundaries.
DR. BENJAMIN L. MILLER.
Benjamin L. Miller, born on the Rock creek farm of his father near the Nebraska State line, has just returned from an expedition in the countries of South America for the United States Government, examin- ing mines and conditions there. He has the chair of geology in Lehigh University, and was given a leave of absence of a year and a half for the work. Upon his trip letters of his findings and travels were sent to his' boyhood home and reproduced in home papers, in which he al- ways retains his interest.
Dr. Miller's discoveries were told at a congress of scientists in Washington, D. C., and before the president. The week in the National capital was notably given over to him and his work.
MRS. ETHEL HUSSEY.
While there may be truth in the saying that "a prophet is not without honor save in his own country," yet it would seem that there are rare occasions when two prophets, hailing from the same country, may admire one another. Such seems to be the case of Dr. Edwin E. Slosson for his former countryman, Prof. W. J. Hussey. Dr. Slosson and his brilliant wife, May Preston Slosson, a poet with a name of her own, were boy and girl in Nemaha county about the time Ethel Fon- tain was a girl in the same vicinity. All were children of pioneer citi- zens of this community ; Mrs. Slosson, of Centralia, Mr. Slosson, of Sa-
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betha, Ethel Fontain, of Fairview. Miss Fontain became a brilliant scientist and married Prof. Hussey, a man high in the same profession. She was his helper and companion in all remarkable achievements. Indeed, she was more: his partner in equal right. The same is true of the Slosson family. Dr. Slosson is associate editor of "The Independent Magazine" of New York, a periodical of highest standard. All are children of farmers, who helped to build this part of Kansas into the great commonwealth it is today. Mrs. Hussey's recent death occurred when she was returning from a trip of scientific research with her hus- band. Now for the pleasant things one gentle prophet of Nemaha county has to say of another, in a recent issue of "The Independent Magazine."
"The oldest of our State universities and the youngest of the uni- versities of Argentina have formed a unique sort of partnership to in- crease their efficiency in astronomical research. The observatories of Michigan and LaPlata have been, for the last few years, under the management of a single astronomer and their telescopes working in harmony command the heavens. Prof. W. J. Hussey is doubtless the first man to attempt to occupy chairs in two universities 9,000 miles apart. But Prof. Hussey is not unused to attempting the unusual. He has been at it all his life. A farmer boy does not work his own way to the front rank of steller discoveries at the age of forty-nine without exceptional initiative and ability. He started in life with no apparent advantages toward such a career, perhaps Quaker ancestry and a book loving father. He took the engineer course at Ann Arbor, working summers on railroad construction in Wyoming and Kansas to get money to carry him through the winter. One summer he was ordered to report to the superintendent at Mankato, to be sent into the field. Entering the office he found the superintendent out and while waiting, his orderly mind was so much distressed by the con- fusion in the office that he busied himself cleaning up and setting things to rights. When the superintendent came back and saw the transformation he gave the young man a position in the office instead of sending him out on the road. At the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton he began the discoveries which brought him an international reputation. Upon the publication of his work on the double stars ob- served at Pultowa, Russia, and of his systematic observations of the satellites of Saturn for many years, he was elected to membership in the Royal Astronomical Society of London and awarded the Lalande gold medal by the Paris Academy of Science. He has devoted himself especially to double stars, and has discovered 1,400 such systems pre- viously unknown. He has found that about one star out of every eighteen is really double. To distinguish between two such stars, which are less than two seconds of an arc apart is as difficult as it would be to distinguish two pinheads placed side by side at a distance of two miles."
(19)
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When Professor Hussey made the pictures of the eclipsed sun in Egypt, Mrs. Hussey accompanied him, and wrote a story of the ex- perience for the California papers. The "Herald," at that time, com- mented on her rare powers as a writer, and quoted from her story. A brief resume of Mrs. Hussey's story is reproduced here from the "Her- ald" of that date, about eight years ago.
"She tells of the long trip through the desert, and hardships of con- structing and mounting the enormons photographic instruments. Ice was carried over 500 miles to the party, not for their personal comfort, but to put in the photographic baths to counteract the effect of the intense heat so that the gelatine in the photographic plates would not melt.
"Weeks were spent in preparation, and thousands of dollars were spent, all for that two and a half minutes of time in which the eclipse lasted. Mrs. Hussey describes the scenes among the astronomers at the critical time just preceding the eclipse, and in very dramatic fashion. One hitch in the elaborate clock work and other mechanism would have been disastrous to the expedition, but the plates were photo- graphed and developed successfully and were on their way to America when the letter was written. Mrs. Hussey's husband is one of the big astronomers of the country. We quote below the opening paragraph of Mrs. Hussey's article which gives an idea of her style, and which we pronounce good enough to be literature.
" 'The unique interest that attaches to a total eclipse of the sun is not hard to explain; it is beautiful, it is rare, it is tantalizingly brief, it is a clue to mysteries. That blazing star, without which we should not know our own world, without which we should not know life at all, long stood behind its own light unrevealed. Now and then the moon's disk, of just proportions to screen the unbearable brilliance, comes between, and there flash into light the rose-red flames above the chromosphere, and the cold radiance never else suspected, the corona. A brief moment it hangs; then the following limb of the black disk crusts with red, a blinding spot of yellow appears, the light of common day again floods the sky, and the corona is lost like the dawn.'"
F. R. Richards was the childhood playmate of the famous lost Charlie Ross. Mr. Richard's father, the Rev. E. Richards, was a minister in New York, and lived next door to the Ross family. F. R. Richards says that for several years he played with Charlie Ross, the boy who was stolen. The Richards and Ross boys were almost the same age, and they were inseparable companions. One day when Richards was about six years old, he remembers missing Charlie Ross. Making in- quiries of his mother, Richards learned that Charlie Ross had been stolen. Mr. Richards says he remembers his loneliness for days after Charlie Ross had been stolen, because of being robbed of the com- panionship of the lost Charlie Ross.
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EX-GOV. W. J. BAILEY.
Willis J. Bailey, vice president and managing officer of the Ex- change National Bank, Atchison, Kans., since 1907, and governor of the State of Kansas from 1903 to 1905, was born in Carroll county, Illinois, October 12, 1854. He was educated in the common schools, the Mount Carroll High School, and graduated at the University of Illinois as a member of the class of 1879. In 1904 his Alma Mater conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws. In 1879, soon after completing his college course, he accompanied his father to Nemaha county, Kansas, where they engaged in farming and stock raising, and founded the town of Baileyville. Upon reaching his majority Governor Bailey cast his lot with the Republican party, and since that time has been an active and consistent advocate of the principles espoused by that organ- ization. In 1888 he was elected to represent his county in the State legislature; was reelected in 1890; was president of the Republican State League in 1893; was the Republican candidate for Congress in the First district in 1896, and in June, 1898, was nominated by the State convention at Hutchison as the candidate for congressman at large, defeating Richard W. Blue. After serving in the Fifty-sixth Congress he retired to his farm, but in 1902, was nominated by his party for governor. At the election in November he defeated W. H. Craddock, the Democratic candidate, by a substantial majority, and be- gan his term as governor in January, 1903. At the close of his term as governor he removed to Atchison, and since 1907, has been vice president and manager of the Exchange National Bank of that city. Shortly after his retirement from the office of governor, he was prom- inently mentioned as a candidate for United States senator, and in 1908, a large number of Republicans of the State urged his nomination for governor. Mr. Bailey has always been interested in behalf of the farmers of the country, and from 1895 to 1899, he was a member of the Kansas State Board of Agriculture.
E. G. STITT.
E. G. Stitt, late of Sabetha, was an old time friend and business comrade of William Thaw, grandfather of Harry K. Thaw, and he told the story of how the Thaw fortune was started and incidentally men- tioned the sterling character of old William Thaw, on whose grandson the attention of the nation was riveted during his trial for the murder of Stanford White. William Thaw was an old canal man on the Penn- sylvania canal and made a large part of his money in the canal business. He had in a measure retired from the canal for larger interests when Mr. Stitt was interested in canal contracts. William Thaw, Andrew Carnegie, a man named Clark and Thomas A. Scott built a bridge over the Alleghany river to connect two railroads which heretofore had
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transferred passengers by drayage and busses and horses. The four men asked Mr. Stitt to take a block of stock in the bridge; in fact, they were rather insistent about it. But Mr. Stitt was fearful of the venture and dared not sink his money. Had he put in $1,000 he would have re- ceived enough money from the receipts of the bridge to have kept him for life. The four men mentioned were bridge stockholders. They charged twenty-five cents each for all passengers ovr the bridge and $5 for each car and engine. The same charge is still in effect after half a century. There are thousands of passenger and cars crossing this bridge daily. Harry K. Thaw, millionaire homicide, is one of the beneficiaries' of the immense amount of money brought in by the bridge now. William Stitt said that William Thaw was the most beloved man in Pennsyl- vania. He was loved by young and old, rich and poor. Saturday af- ternoons Mr. Thaw gave entirely to the interests of the poor. They rang the bell of his palatial Pittsburg home and he personally talked with them and heard their troubles. He alleviated them by money or sympathy, as the case required. He personally saw that the cases of trouble were genuine. Upon his death the city of Pittsburg went into mourning. Mr. Thaw was worth $100,000,000 at the time of his death. He left $10,000,000 to each of his ten children. This is the sort of a man whose grandson faced the murder charge and is known as the degen- erate son of riches, who in a measure expiated his crime in prison and asylum.
MISS NANNIE KULHMANN.
Miss Nannie Kulhmann, a former Centralia woman, is holding a po- sition in Washington for which she had to compete with a hundred men. She is official translator for the patent office. In her work she writes, reads and translates twelve different languages and the dialects of each. The languages are French, German, Spanish, Portugese, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Polish, Bohemian, Hungarian, Norwegian and Swedish. Miss Kuhlmann is A. Oberndorf's sister-in-law. She tauglit school in Centralia two terms, about 1883 and 1884. Her sister, Miss Emily Kulhmann, who was here at the same time, the two emigrating from Germany, was one of the first kindergarten teachers in Kansas, having a class here and beginning the work in Topeka. She is now deceased.
SENATOR W. H. THOMPSON.
Senator William Howard Thompson, of the United States Senate, was a Nemaha county youth, who recalls with interest his arrival in the county and the long walk he made to a farm in Rock Creek town- ship, north of Sabetha. He was a good pupil in school, taught in the country schools, was his father's court stenographer when his father was district judge, married a daughter of Andy Felt, of beloved mem- ory, one of the pioneer newspaper men of the county, and was elected to the senate when a resident of Garden City, Kans., having, within the current year, removed to Kansas City, Kans.
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MRS. VIRGINIA GREEVER.
Nemaha county claims Mrs. Virginia Greever for her daughter. Miss Dora Adriance, of the Seneca "Courier-Democrat," one of the clever- est of Kansas newspaper women reporters, says that Mrs. Greever was the most intimate girlhood friend of her mother. Her parents were Mr. and Mrs. F. P. Newland, who lived and died in Seneca. Mrs. Greever brought prohibition to Kansas. The story goes that thirty- five years ago the prohibition question was up for decision in the Kan- sas legislature, the amendment prohibiting the sale of liquor as a bever- age. The Senate passed it. Both men and women were working for its passage by the House, but defeat seemed to be imminent. Speaker Clark was about to announce a negative vote, when Mrs. Virginia Greever, a Nemaha county girl, then the wife of a member from Wyan- dotte county, rushed up to him, and in an impassioned plea, besought him for her children's sake, and for his children's sake, and all the chil- dren of the world, for Kansas' sake, and, above all, for God's sake, to change his negative vote to a vote in favor of the measure. Mr. Greever put his arm around his wife, faced Speaker Clark, and said: "Mr. Speaker, I vote in favor of prohibition." So it was through the courage of a Nemaha county woman and the consideration of her husband, a Democrat, that Kansas secured the most famous law in its constitution.
WALT MASON.
Walt Mason, the most widely read and best paid poet America has produced, is a Nemaha county product ; or, if not born within its con- fines, he spent many years on its farms. Recently, Walt Mason wrote a poem about acquiring an automobile. His ambition was to come di- rectly up to Nemaha county and parade up and down the road before the Nemaha county farmer's place where he was employed as a youth, and honk his automobile horn continuously to let the man know how he had prospered. He has not come as yet, but we are expecting him. Nemaha county is very proud of Walt Mason. Not to have read his poems argues oneself absolutely ignorant of newspaper perusal. Walt Mason worked as a cub reporter on the Atchison Globe. He wrote his paid locals into poetry that amused the entire town and were his first poetical effusions. He puts a sheet of paper, or a roll, rather, in the typewriter and simply reels off his inimitable stuff by the yard.
FREDERICK GATES.
Frederick Gates, private secretary and right hand man for John D. Rockefeller, was a boy in Sabetha. His father, Rev. Granville Gates, was the first minister of the Baptist church, the first church in Sabetha. Rev. Gates was pastor of the church during most of the seventies, and
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was here when the church edifice was erected. Fred Gates did not for- get his boyhood chums during his brilliant financial career. At least one of them, George Black, whose mother was one of the founders of the Baptist church, was offered a position with Mr. Gates in his work in the East. Mr. Black is now a figure in insurance circles in St. Louis. Frederick Gates later became cashier of a bank in Highland, Kans., and afterward a preacher in Minnesota, where George A. Pillsbury, the great miller, became interested in him. The original corporation papers of the immense Pillsbury mills were written by the son of a Nemaha county farmer, Judge WV. D. Webb. Pillsbury helped Gates found the Pillsbury Academy at Owatonna, Minn. Later, Gates started a move- men to found a big university in Chicago, and interested Rockefeller in the plan, securing from him the first $600,000 contribution. Rockefeller insisted that Chicago people should make this an even million and Gates induced Chicago men to put their money into the enterprise. From this start the great University of Chicago was built, and a Ne- maha county boy started it. .
Fred Gates became the big distributor of John D. Rockefeller's gifts, and became a great financier on his own account. He was presi- dent of great corporations, the biggest of which was the Lake Superior Cosolidated Iron mines, with railroads, boat lines, etc., which Gates sold to the United States Steel Corporation for $75,000,000.
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