USA > Kansas > Reno County > History of Reno County, Kansas; its people, industries and institutions, Vol I > Part 8
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THE BUILDING OF THE ROCK ISLAND RAILROAD.
One of the first things the Rock Island Railroad Company did was to run a survey through the country north of Hutchinson, crossing the Santa Fe at Sterling, and the people of Sterling thought they were going to get the road. M. A. Low, an attorney from some town in Missouri, did the negotia- ting for the railroad company. It is practically certain that they had no thought of going by way of Sterling, but they wanted to skin the county of Reno for the biggest sum possible, in the shape of a subsidy. At that time there was a law in Kansas allowing counties and other municipalities to sub- scribe stock in a railroad company, and pay for the same by issuing its bonds, and they could go as high as $4.000 a mile. The road wanted a class of bonds that would sell for the most money and county bonds were much the best at that time, whereas township bonds were not so much sought. The railroad company had to get its line southwest, and if the road had crossed at Sterling
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they would have had a long run through the western part of Reno county, and of course could have got nothing but township bonds, missing Hutchinson and the heaviest settlement. The matter of carrying county bonds was can- vassed and it was decided to offer the company $4,000 a mile clear across the county in a diagonal course, which meant about $170,000. A strong argu- ment was made that we were getting stock, and that if the road was worth anything for the company it would be a good investment for the county to take the $170,000 of stock. Every detail had been perfected by the railroad company to steal the $170,000 and they did so very easily. The proposition to build this road was not made by the Rock Island Road at all. The bonds were not voted to take stock in the Rock Island Road, and the county never got any stock in that road. The first move that the Rock Island made when they decided to build west of the Missouri river was to form a new company called the Chicago, Kansas and Nebraska railroad. all Rock Island interests. The bonds, were voted to this new company, and the road was built, and the stock in the new company was issued to the county of Reno. One of the early things that the Rock Island attended to was to place a first mortgage on the Chicago, Kansas & Nebraska Road and sell these first mortgage bonds. Six months after the issue of these bonds an installment of interest fell due, and was not paid. A foreclosure suit was commenced at once, and the Chicago. Kansas & Nebraska railroad was sold under the foreclosure, and all the assets were bought in by the Rock Island Railroad Company, and there was not a thing left in the shape of property for the stockholders of the Chicago, Kan- sas & Nebraska railroad, one of which was the county of Reno. There was never a cleaner steal perpetrated in the state, but it was all done within the law.
THE POWDER EXPLOSION.
The first live, successful, broad-gnaged business firm that did business in Hutchinson, was the firm of Allison. Devier & Blackburn. The individual names of the partners were M. E. Allison, W. C. Devier and John Blackburn. Allison and Blackburn were both professional druggists before uniting in this firm. Devier was known as "Billy" Devier, a greater distance from the town than any other man living here at the time. Allison looked after the business methods and system of the concern: Devier was the "business getter", and Blackburn gave his time to the attention of customers, and was a much-liked man. The business started in a store eighty feet deep and soon filled a room one hundred and fifty feet deep. Allison was the man who saw the oppor- tunities to enlarge. He conceived the plan of buying his goods cheaper by
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establishing a wholesale grocery store, and getting the benefit of the prices to wholesale dealers. West & Bloom, brothers-in-law, had a small livery stable on the corner of Second avenue and Main street, where the Whiteside building now stands. W. E. Hutchinson, two years before, had formed a com- pany to pay off the debts of the water-mill built by C. C. Hutchinson & Co. It only required about twelve thousand dollars to make the deal. West & Bloom had a little money, Allison & Devier had some money, and H. White- side also had a balance in the bank. West & Bloom were given an interest in the mill as were AAllison & Devier and Whiteside. Hutchinson reserved an interest for himself. There were four interests. The name taken for the mill company was West, Allison & Co. West and Hutchinson operated the mill. Bloom remained in the stable and Allison & Devier continued to confine themselves to the store. On account of this association, Allison proposed to Bloom to let them use his name as the proprietor of a wholesale grocery store and a room for a store room was obtained and a sign put "C. Bloom" on the outside of the building. Bloom did not have a dollar in the business ; did not have a thing to do with the business, and never had any connection with a business of that sort. The scheme planned by Allison worked all right, how- ever. At this stage of their business a powder company proposed to make the grocery firm their agents for the sale of powder. There were hundreds of hunters in the country and the consumption of powder was no small item. There were no waterworks in the town at that time. Cow creek crossed Sherman street where the water and light plant now stands, but a little north it swung into and across Adams street and cut the edge of First avenue half way between Washington and Adams streets. The back end of the lot lying along Adams street, on the west side, and fronting on Sherman street, was some little distance west of Cow creek and was considered a safe distance from the business part of the town. Here the powder company purchased a small tract of ground, about twenty-five feet square, and on this spot erected a stone and cement building, probably ten feet square, with thick walls and with an iron roof and an iron door. Swung from one end was a heavy iron bar, three inches wide, a half-inch thick and about three feet long. The other end fitted over a staple, and was fastened with the strongest padlock made. Few people ever wandered so far in this direction from the business portion of the town. There was no way to get there except to cross the creek over the bridge on Main street, and then follow up the west side of the creek to the powder house. The buikling was so far away that probably not a dozen people in the town knew of its existence. There was nothing on the building to indicate what was in it or what it was for. A considerable excavation was
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made in the ground, and most of the contents were stored below the surface of the ground. It was built to hold a carload of powder, but at the time we are referring to there was not a half car in storage. The building did not stand over ten feet high above the surface of the ground. Less than a year after the powder was stored in this place, and during a thunder storm in the night, a bolt of lightning struck the powder house and exploded the powder. There probably never was a more astonished lot of people than the residents of Hutchinson. The nearest business house to the powder house was about eight hundred feet, and the farthest was perhaps twelve hundred feet. The buildings were the "square front" type of wooden stores, with as large window glass as could be put in. There were no watchmen or police, and no one knew what was the matter till morning came, except Allison and Devier. When business men went to their business in the morning they found their front window glass lying on the sidewalk in front in bits of pieces, hardly a piece being left in the sash where it belonged. Every store was wide open of course, and in some of them the rain had done some damage, but not much. It was such a sight as is seldom seen in a lifetime. There was not a claim that the powder house had been built too near the town, and that the grocery men were at fault. It is likely that if the creek had not been between the town and the store house it would not have seemed so far away; would have been known about by people more generally, and that the public would have taken an entirely different view of the accident. No person was hurt, but there was one remarkable escape.
Mrs. J. C. Beem at that time lived in a small wooden house on First avenue and on the north side of the street, and also directly north of the powder house. The construction of the house was simply weather-boarding on the outside of studding, and lathing and plastering on the inside of the studding. In Mrs. Beem's sleeping room her bed set with the head to the west and the foot to the east, making the side of the bed face toward the direction of the powder house. The house was about five hundred feet from the powder building. A rock as large as a man's head went through this house. going in on the south side and out on the north, and was lying a few rods north of the house in the morning. The rock passed directly over Mrs. Beem's bed, where she was sleeping, and barely high enough to avoid hit- ting her as it passed over. No one was hurt in the house. There was hardly a thing to show that there had ever been a building on the spot where the powder house stood, in fact, it would not have hardly been suspected by a stranger that a building had been there. The large iron bar referred to, which
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held the door closed, was afterward found on the farm of Judge Houk about a half mile away. There was never another powder storehouse built on the townsite.
THE WATER AND LIGHT PLANT IN SHERMAN STREET, WEST.
Unquestionably many things pass into history as mysterious, and for- ever remain so; when, if at the right time, the right source had been appealed to. the mystery would dissolve into the most commonplace matter. Hun- dreds of people have asked why was Sherman street obstructed by the build- ing of the water plant where it is. and the people on the west end of the street will always suffer a depreciation of their property by the fact that the access to it is permanently wrecked. Legally and morally these people are estopped from making complaint, for the reason that they acquired their property with a full knowledge of the conditions; but such circumstances do not always have the effect to hush the lamentations of the helpless, nor sup- press the questions of the querulous. Others, wondering will go about their daily work, comforted with the conceit, that if they had been the original promoters of this utility, they would have located it on the spur track of one of the railroads, where the coal for fuel could have been shoveled from the car into the bin at the boiler house, instead of being shoveled into a wagon, and hauled a half a mile, and then all shoveled again. The answer for the city, and the answer for the promoters are two words which seem to sound louder and sound oftener in the anxious public ear as the years go round-"personal privilege." West and northwest of the present site of the plant was once the storage reservoir or pond of the Water Power Com- pany and the dam and waste gates which impounded the waters were situated at a point on the creek which was the intersection of Sherman street. These
gates were unsightly large wooden affairs which were an eyesore to every passer on Main street. The pond should never have been put there and the gates should have been in another place, if they were to exist at all. The town was making complaint occasionally, and it was evident that there would be trouble in time. Drake and Orton, from Chicago, came into town unannounced one day and introduced themselves to the city authorities and proposed to ask for a franchise for waterworks. S. W. Campbell was mayor and W. E. Hutchinson was city attorney. The people were flattered with the thought of getting a good service plant of this nature without a donation and the request of the applicants was readily granted. The interest of Drake and Orton was not to build and operate a plant, but to sell the bonds which
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they would put on the property. They did not care to retain the ownership of the property, and they insisted that citizens of the town should take a major- ity of the stock as a gift. Stock was offered to Campbell, Hutchinson and L. A. Bigger, but none of them took any of it. Then the city made the stipu- lation that the plant should be located where it now is, but at that time it was the center of the creek channel and a difficult and expensive place on which to locate a building. The purpose of the requirement on the part of the city was to have the building hide the unsightly structure of the Water Power Company so it could not be seen from Main street. Drake and Orton hurried the building of the plant, and quickly sold $450,000 of first-mortgage bonds and got their money, and undoubtedly they made such profits that the matter of whether the plant was located in the middle of Cow creek or at a desirable place on the railroad was altogether a minor item. In a few years the purchasers of the bonds found that they had made a very bad invest- ment, and one-half of the bonds were cancelled, thus netting a loss to them of $225,000. Drake and Orton were in the city but a few times after the con- struction of the plant. The water power proved of little value, and the growth of the town made the area valuable, and the dam and the gates were cleared away and the ground sold off according to the original plat, but the water works plant could not be moved, and it still stands at a location unfortunate to all concerned.
CHAPTER X.
A YEAR OF DISASTER.
The year 1874 was a dismal one for the pioneers of Reno county. The author of this history has had many suggestions made to him to omit any reference to this year, urging that only the brighter and the more attractive things should be recorded, and that a period of such disaster as that year presented should be passed over with but little reference to it. But, his- torically, 18;4 was one of the marked years of Reno county's history. It was not one of prosperity, but it was a year unlike other years in the atten- tion that it brought to the county, and illustrates one of the strange char- acteristics of human nature in a most striking way. It shows how things that happened may produce results in ways that cannot be seen at the time and which only the years that have passed away reveal. So it would be unfair to omit the hardships of pioneer life, that those who live now in comfort and contentment may realize as best they can from the description the old settlers leave, of what trials and privations their comforts cost, that they may more thoroughly appreciate the heritage of the present.
The summer of 1874 was dry and hot. There is no detailed weather record of temperature of rainfall, but the old settlers speak of the intensity of the heat and the length of the drought. Ned Webster's monthly records. as shown in another chapter. makes this the hottest year of his observations. There was approximately four thousand acres of corn in cultivation that year. Some of it was sod corn, but there was considerable ground, over three thousand acres, that had been broken in 1872, and in the sandy region, a part of which had been broken up in 1873, was ground that could be culti- vated. Of course there was no cultivation for the sod corn, no chance to stir the ground and in this way minimize the injury of the dry weather. . year like this would be particularly hard on sod corn. The heat of July doomed the corn. It withered up and would not have made good food if it had been left. But a short time after the 28th of July there was not even a semblance of the corn stalks left, for it was in these days the first grass- hopper- appeared in the sky. One of the old settlers of that day found a description that he said exactly described this visitation of the winged
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plague : "For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did cat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left ; and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, throughout all the land of Egypt." Exodus 10:15. They came in one continual stream, that was hours in pass- ing, flying high in the air, obscuring the sun and having the appearance of a heavy snow. The locusts were of a dark brown hue, but in flying they show the underside of their body, which is white and gave their flight the appearance of a snow storm. Beneath this mighty stream was another one, which was continually detaching itself from the main body, coming to the ground. They kept this up for seven days. This flight swept through the state from west to east. It almost produced a panic. Those that stopped were but a small part of the vast number that filled the air. Where they came from or where, they went, no one knows. What conditions brought them forth never has been ascertained, but the destruction they wrought was complete. They came again in 1876-but not in any such numbers as in 1874. Even in 1876, late in September, they ate all the leaves from the trees. Some were sowing wheat when they came, but the "hoppers" ate the hard grains as fast as the sower would put them on the ground. Chickens fled from them as from a hawk. The "crunch" of the insects as a person walked on the ground was a sensation not soon forgotten.
The destruction of 1874 was complete. There was absolutely nothing left, no feed for horses or cattle, no wheat nor corn. The early settlers could not go through the winter without help, so, carly in the fall, a meet- ing was called in the court house to provide some means for the relief that was necessary. A "central committee" was appointed to have charge of the matter for Reno county. This committee was William Ingham, T. F. Leidigh and L. Houk. They inmediately appointed sub-committees for each of the townships into which the county was then divided.
The grasshopper plague was not confined to Reno county, the whole state having been visited. No one was exempt, so a similar organization existed in all of the settled counties of Kansas and a central body, located at Topeka, to handle the matter in a general way. Agents were sent to Eastern cities to solicit aid. The railroads of the county "deadheaded" all of the things that were shipped to the state. Reno county had an agent and his assistants in New York City. All the donations boxed and shipped to Kan- sas were designated for the "Kansas Relief Fund." Considerable money was donated. It was estimated carly in the winter that there were one
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thousand persons in Reno county who were dependent on outside help to get through the winter. The entire population of this county that year was six thousand four hundred and seventy-six.
There were a few who left the county, but nearly all of the people stayed through the winter. They knew that in all Kansas such a catastrophe could not occur often. They had seen the prosperity of 1873 and had seen the soil' yield bountifully. even after only two years of cultivation, so they concluded to remain in the county and fight it out.
It is impossible to tell how many thousand dollars' worth of goods and money were sent into Kansas. The records that were turned over to the State Historical Society show that Reno county received considerable aid. One such receipt aside from individual instances of aid, shows that twenty- four carloads of grain and feed and flour were received by Reno county. There are numerous personal receipts on file there for boxes and barrels of goods shipped to individuals and which were not handled by the committee. At a distance of more than forty years, some things are plainly apparent in this relief work. One of the most noticeable of them is the greed dis- played by some of the people who were recipients of that aid. Some of them receipted for enough goods to keep their family and feed their stock for more than a year. Perhaps it would be impossible to have handled the matter so that the charge of graft would not have been sustained. But the greed displayed by some was plainly evident. The Eastern part of the United States was interested in helping the. "starving people out in Kansas." Their generosity was not stinted. Some of the agents sent out by the vari- ous counties took advantage of the desire of the East to see that the dis- tress was removed and exaggerated that distress, sometimes to their own gain. So that the "grasshopper relief" extended far beyond the necessity of the times.
So, in the sense of having comfort added that could not have been enjoyed without the relief work. Reno county and, in fact, the whole of Kansas, did not suffer in the least from the grasshoppers. In fact, it was a great blessing to the county. The hot winds and the dry weather had ruined the crops. Had not the "hoppers" visited the country there would have been alnost as much distress as there was after they had stripped the land of all that they could eat. But when the destitution was referred to. when the "hand of Providence," as one of the agents reverently referred to the grasshopper plague whenever he spoke of conditions in the state, was hard on the land. it called forth the unstinted aid that nothing else would
MAJOR-GEN. JESSE LEE RENO
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have done. The grasshoppers, instead of being a curse, were a blessing to Reno county.
There was another feature to this disaster that is really one of the difficult things to understand. There is on file in the State Historical Society a list of donors of the "Howard County, Indiana, Reno County, Kansas, Relief Fund." On this list is the name of the father of the editor of this history. The following year this father came to Reno county and bought land in the very county which the year before he had helped in its distress. What was the attraction that drew to Reno county the men who liad, a year before, helped to support those that the plague had vexed?
L. A. Bigger was in the land business in Hutchinson for many years. He has told of many similar experiences. He said that in October, 1874. there came to his office many persons attracted by the crowd that had congregated around it, supposing them to be land seekers, only to find that they were farmers of Reno county getting wheat that had been donated to this county for seed. Mr. Bigger always secured the names of his visitors, to send them advertising matter, and he remarked that he was astonished to learn how many of those men came to Reno county in the years of 1875 to 1878, who had seen the county in her distress, when seed for the next crop was largely donated. This to him, was one of the most remarkable things in all his experience. Who can understand that trait of human nature? Who is able to tell why they came to Kansas to make their homes in 1875 and 1876 when "Droughty Kansas" was a by-word the land over, because of the distressing days of the year 1874.
The people of Reno county were not discouraged by the grasshopper visitation. More sod was broken out and all of the sod ground that had been corn in the summer was plowed under and sowed to wheat. The drought was broken early in the fall, the rain fell in abundance, the ground was in fine shape and when the seed arrived the sowing was done. A very large percentage of the ground that had been broken was sowed to wheat, which got a good start and furnished pasturage in the winter and early spring. The evidences of the drought and the grasshoppers soon vanished. The courage of the pioneer was tried and was found sufficient and, while the winter of 1874 was not an enjoyable one, it was not as bleak as it appeared on the July morning after the grasshoppers had darkened the sun of the previous day.
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CHAPTER XI.
ORGANIZING THE COUNTY.
At the time Reno county was organized. the statutes required six hun- dred inhabitants as a necessary number to entitle a county to obtain self- government. Counties having a less number of inhabitants were attached to other counties for municipal and judicial purposes. Late in December, 1871, a petition was circulated in Reno county and the requisite number of signers was obtained. It is evident from looking at the list now, that some signa- tures were placed on the roll by proxy, for some of the inhabitants, still residents of Reno county, were entirely too small at that time to take any interest in any of the affairs of state. As soon as the petition was completed it was taken to Topeka by C. C. Hutchinson and was approved by Governor Harvey. He then issued an order for the organization of the county. He likewise appointed a special board of county commissioners, consisting of C. O. Bemis, William H. Bell and Thomas Allen, to have charge of the busi- ness of the new county until an election could be held. This board held its first meeting on January 4, 1872. Bemis was not present at this meeting, but the other two members met and elected Bemis chairman of the board. Who presided at this meeting is not disclosed by the record. The entire county was placed in one township, which was given the name of "Reno." From this one township all of the other townships have been taken and the territory now called Reno township is what remain's after the organization of the other thirty-one subdivisions of the county. An election was called to select a county seat and notices were posted in "three most conspicuous places," notifying the voters of the election. The date was fixed for Satur- clay. February 3, 1872.
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