USA > Kansas > Sedgwick County > History of Wichita and Sedgwick County, Kansas, past and present, including an account of the cities, towns and villages of the county, Vol. I > Part 17
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fact alone kept an audience awake, no matter how dull was the play. There was no life insurance agent residing here then, and people were more careful of their lives than since the "boom." The pulpit was on a movable platform, and was as handy as a pocket in a shirt. The Rev. John P. Harsen was the Presbyterian minister. Mr. Harsen was a pioneer man. He was fitted to deal with all classes. He antagonized no one, and was a friend to all- black, white, copper-colored or tan, Jew or Gentile, rich, poor, good, bad, moral or vicious. He was a student, a pastor, but he was not a pulpit orator. His every-day life was a sermon. Mr. Harsen always reminded me of the following lines of Goldsmith :
"Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway, And fools who came to scoff, remained to pray." * * * * * * *
"He tried each art, reproved each dull delay, Allur'd to brighter worlds, and led the way."
The church, as a body, approved the forced resignation of Mr: Harsen, but the people of Wichita condemned the abdication, and another generation shall pass away ere Harsen will be for- gotten and the church ceases to be criticized for his removal. (Note .- This is a pure goat view or guess.) There was no day or night too hot or cold to prevent his leaving his fireside or home to give solace to the wretched or dying or perform the last sad rites over the body of the sinful and almost abandoned dead. His spiritual make-up was of Him who said: "Neither do I condemn thee ; go, and sin no more."
Mr. Harsen did not, perhaps, possess those ministerial charac- teristics required to hold a large and wealthy church together ; but he was possessed of a faculty to gather under one roof the sheep of his fold and the morally inclined goats, and form the constituent elements of a future church. He perhaps belonged to a pioneer civilization, where one-story wooden houses are fash- ionable, where poverty is only an inconvenience, and by reason of its universality is robbed of its humiliation, general condemna- tion and consequent degradation. Mr. Harsen owned 160 acres of land east of Wichita, afterward sold to Harry Hill, the "Okla- homa Boomer," and manager of a Wild West Show that broke every man connected with it, and had the proud distinction of being attached by creditors a greater number of times than any
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other show that ever existed. It is said that the route of this Wild West Show can be traced from county to county and from state to state by examination of the court and chattel mortgage records, without any other data to go by.
Unless I am at fault in my recollection, the music of the Pres- byterian church in 1874 and 1875 was under the charge of Mrs. Catherine Russell, Mrs. Emma J. Simmons, Mrs. Theodore Par- ham, C. S. Caldwell, W. B. Mead, Mrs. Mead and Miss May Wil- lard. Mrs. Simmons was the mother of Mrs. Floy Gallant.
As I remember, the regular attendants at the church in those years were A. A. Hyde and wife, the Misses Brown, J. H. Todd and family, Pattie Todd, wife of George C. Strong, Robert E. Lawrence and wife, Henry W. Lawrence and family, W. S. Cor- bett and wife, J. H. Black and wife, George E. Harris and wife, D. A. Mitchell and wife, A. J. Cook and family, Robert Cook, I. D. Fouts and family, C. S. Caldwell and family, Mrs. Hunter (Mrs. J. H. Black's mother), W. B. Mead and family, W. G. Hacker and wife, Fred Martsolf, Mrs. Harry Lindsey, George E. Kirkpatrick and family, D. A. McCandless and family, J. G. Rode and family, Will Reese and wife, John Reese and wife, Mrs. Ap- pleby, Mr. and Mrs. Throckmorton, Mrs. Charley Davidson, Ralph Stevens, Mrs. Carl Graham, May Willard, Emma Markham, Mrs. S. G. Butler, J. M. Steele, W. C. Little, John G. Dunscomb, John Lawrie and family, Lee Nixon, Mrs. Amy Sayles, A. H. Gossard, William West and wife, Mrs. R. H. Roys, Mrs. L. B. Bunnell.
The young men seen there often, occasionally, monthly, quar- terly and semi-annually were Harry Arrowsmith, Will Hillis, Wal- ter DuBois, Jim McCullough, Frank Todd, Fred Dutton, John I. Stewart, Kos Harris, J. T. McMillan, G. H. Herrington, John M. Allen, Amos L. Houck, Joseph Askew, E. B. Jewett and W. R. Kirkpatrick.
As one looks over the present church, indulges in retrospec- tion, unrolls the scroll of the past, he realizes the ravages of the gnawing tooth of time on matron and maid, and him who came in the pride, strength and glory of ambitious manhood to do honor unto Him who walked upon the sea, who died upon Calvary ages before civilization penetrated the American desert and builded homes and fashioned a city at the junction of the St. Peter and St. Paul (Big and Little Arkansas rivers), where Coronado bivouacked his Spanish buccaneers in his march to find and conquer the kingdom of Quivira, plunder, ravish and sack the
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"Seven Cities," and float the banner of Castile and Aragon on the heights of Cibola.
The then older men, the patriarchs of this church, ha' gone where pre-emption and homestead contests are unrecognized, where town building is a lost art, and the local rivalry locating a county seat, of finding a site for a mill, a depot or postoffice is a dead science; where toll-bridges are not required. On the eastern hill, from whose crown our own Henry Clay Sluss first beheld the "Happy Valley" and pronounced his prophetic apos- trophe on the royal infant at his feet, these pioneer patriarchs sleep. There were plainness, bluntness, directness and honesty in their every-day life that commanded reverence, even in a gen- eration where "Honor thy father and thy mother" is a repealed statute.
"If death unto the noble dead Is sweet as life to them that live, Why mourn for those who worms ha' fed, Or salt the earth wi' bitter tears ?"
If Christianity is true, the dead patriarch is the happy patri- arch, and is now in attendance at an eternal and universal world's fair compared to which the Chicago exposition was as feeble, meager, vapid and trashy a copy as the tin crowns of the king of a one-night-stand show in a cove oyster town is compared with the coronet of the Dutchwoman who rules Great Britain.
Of others in this church, one may say :
"They are fast achieving the silver livery of age, and though not clean past youth, yet have some smack of age in them."
When one realizes that the babes christened in this church have grown to manhood and womanhood, even since Dr. Hewitt's time, we realize that the whirligig of time is still a-spinnin'. One young married woman had only one regret on her wedding day, viz .: that she could not be married by the Presbyterian pastor, Dr. Hewitt, who had baptized her when she was three months old.
This life-growth affection by children for a pastor is the out- growth of the system of the selection of pastors. To our mind, the "circuit-rider" system is not conducive to the building up of bonds 'twixt pastor and church.
"With tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Round which our past-time and happiness grow."
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I have read in history of family doctors and family lawyers who, from sire to son, three generations or more, have been in one place. The pastor in a church should be as fixed as the pulpit, metaphorically speaking.
The corner-stone of the present church was laid on July 4, 1876. My recollection is that the day was the hot, hotter, hottest, dusty, dustier, dustiest, torrid, torrider, torridest day in Kansas. In fact, it was a catoose, serifacious, sevaguous day. These last three words express the positive, comparative and superlative degree in anything as to fineness, quality, length, breadth, thick- ness, good, vile, gorgeous, etc., etc. Any one needing an adjective to express any differentiation of a word can use these instead of hackneyed and commonplace terms which are worn thin by the abrasion of millions of tongues for ages.
The corner-stone contains the ordinary things put in corner- stones since the day Hiram of Tyre consigned his rafts of cedar and cypress to Solomon and drew a sight draft for corn and oil to liquidate the balance of trade, thereby establishing amicable trade relations between them. (Blaine, no doubt, was aware of this when he flew reciprocity's eagle some years ago.) In addi- tion to the "staple articles" put in the corner-stone hereinbefore mentioned and heretofore referred to, there were the following "new goods," to-wit :
1 letter to posterity.
1 letter to local editor Wichita "Eagle."
1 letter to money order clerk, postoffice, Wichita.
1 letter to registry clerk, postoffice, Wichita.
1 letter to descendants of Frank Yike and Mary Carpenter.
1 letter to descendants of J. P. Harsen and wife.
1 letter to descendants of W. J. Hobson.
1 letter addressed "To any white man having the name of Murdock, at Wichita, Kansas. If none at Wichita, then to any man in Kansas of that name."
M. W. Levy deposited two silver half-dollars.
All of the above are to be opened in A. D. 1976.
Frank Yike and wife lived on the West Side. W. J. Hobson was a bridge builder and clothing store man. He and Morgan Cox, partners as Hobson & Cox, bought out Hays Bros.' clothing store, then known as "Oak Hall," at 103 West Douglas avenue, in the fall of 1874 or 1875.
Mr. Harsen received a salary of $800 per year, which pre-
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vented his wasting his substance in riotous living. He received $3,600 for his claim, afterwards sold to Harry Hill. Many of his friends regretted that he did not hold his claim until the "boom" and lay it out in town lots (and then go "busted" ?).
This church was organized March 13, 1870, on Waco avenue, above Oak, at the Munger House. The charter members were: John M. Steele (Jim Steele), E. A. Peck, William Finn, W. H. Gill, William Smith, R. M. Bowes, B. S. Dunbar, Lucy Greenway (wife of D. R. B. X. I. Y. Greenleaf), Ella Boggs, Margaret, Mary and Anna Peck and Mrs. Amy Sayles (wife of M. A. Sayles and daughter of A. J. Cook). William Finn now lives at Sedgwick City.
In 1870 this church held services in a livery stable, and the flies-the big blue-bottle flies, the pestiverous gadflies, the ram- pant "hoss-flies," the blue-tail flies, blue-green flies, flesh, black, cheese, forest, bee, spider, wine, bat, Hessian, onion and stable flies, and "all and singular" the multiform, the gregarious and annoying insects of every "name and nature and kind whatso- ever" that bother man, woman and beast, that infest the fauna and flora of stables, that live, move and have their being, that are born, baptized, educated, married and rear progeny, in, under, around, about a stable, and die and go to the field Elysian of "Flydom"-all made it their particular business on Sunday to get up early and wash and dress their "kids" so as to be sure of a parquet or dress-circle seat on a large, glassy bald-head, at eleven a. m. and then hold the fort from the solo or voluntary to the common singing, on through "preachin'," on and on to the col- lection, aye, verily even unto the doxology.
And when the services were o'er, And the flies, the said flies, galore, Emerged in a body from the door, And in the air did soar, The weary passer-by wont to exclaim, That a hive of bees had swarmed.
Editor's Note .- This livery stable incident is not based on any well authenticated historical sketch, preserved in the archives of the church, or in any musty tome, enveloped in Kansas "Loam," but is reasoned out from cause to effect, just as the
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scientist, from a bone, constructeth an animal; and gives it char- acteristics and habits.
Later, afterward, subsequently, according to the chronology of the church, the church caused to be builded a tabernacle on the corner of Wichita and Second streets, at the place where the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company now stops its passenger trains. The said tabernacle was a well built building and in keeping with the size, wealth and social position of the congregation. This church was not a small, insignificant, "dinky" affair, as many suppose. It is not the building now used by the Missouri Pacific railway as a place to sell tickets and store baggage at Wichita and Seconds streets, as people generally believe. A person of even limited observation would, on viewing the said place, reach the conclusion, at sight, that a respectable church body, cor- poration or association would not have build such a "wood-shed" affair for church purposes, even in the early cottonwood-lumber, saw-mill days, when ''wet-pine" was a luxury and seasoned hardwoods were as far beyond the dream of the dwellers in the "Happy Valley" as alabaster and onyx are now barred in the nocturnal visions of a "busted boomer" who was on the bullish side of the market in from 1886 to 1888.
Later on the tabernacle was conveyed to the Catholic church and was its church building for some years and until the same was transferred unto the colored people, and it is now the Cen- tropolis hotel on Main street, between Elm and Pine streets. Many memories cling 'round this building. Children who were christened in it have grown to man and womanhood and have been united in it until death us do part; from it, the tenement of clay hath been borne to the silent city on the eastern hill; in it many have turned their backs on the world, flesh and devil and pushed forward, onward, upward, to a nobler life, in happy, sober earnestness. From the day it was builded until the present time, a change, a transformation hath taken place, which the most sanguine never imagined; since its construction a single lot has sold for more money than the entire townsite at that date would have brought in cash. Three of the elders of this Presbyterian church are of legal age as elders, viz .:
Robert E. Lawrence, January 8, 1871. C. S. Caldwell, October 13, 1872. D. A. Mitchell, December 13, 1874 (since deceased).
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I am very proud to be a "goat" where elders "hold their job" from generation to generation, since the Australian ballot has become a law, and the congregation, without fear, favor or espionage, can vote its individual sentiment.
The history of this church since 1876 1 leave to others. I long since determined to preserve a short sketch of this church, for the generation to come after us.
Note .- I acknowledge indebtedness to Judge D. A. Mitchell for historical data. He furnished the "wool" but the carding, as well as the "shoddy" are from mine own factory and loom. Much good wool hath been ruined by poor dye and bad looms, and forced on the "trade" by the loud pattern and glib salesman.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE BOARD OF TRADE OF WICHITA AND HEREIN.
By KOS HARRIS.
"Of many worthy things which I fain would rescue from quick oblivion."
Long since I resolved to preserve a sketch of the board of trade. Many facts are now in the realm of legend. In this zone men differ ; I give only my own views, subject to criticism, carp- ing and contradiction.
To destroy wild beauty, toil, fret and die, The pioneer came, with strong arm and brain; The vision that runs to the western sky, Forever was o'er on the wind-swept plain.
Our sympathies control judgment; opinions are formed by association ; facts take on the hue of wishes; fancy and imagina- tion supply lapses-in the chain of a narrative-until, as Shake- speare hath it :
"Made such a sinner of his memory, to credit his own lie." When this last stage of the disease is reached, we are qualified as a witness-and ready to swear to all we relate.
By question and association, the things I recite were unto me divulged. When I landed at Wichita, Uncle Jake Pittinger took me to Will Reese's carpenter shop on North Market street and I negotiated for seven wet pine planks, one inch thick and twelve feet long, and the same were put on the walls of a room nine feet wide, twenty-four feet long and twelve feet high. (I could have arranged the square feet of this room better by laying it on its side.) If I had placed these shelves on North Main street, I would have had a different destiny. "The lottery of my destiny barred the liberty of choosing" where I would place those shelves.
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Greiffenstein rented rooms on credit; North Main street demanded cash. Thirty days on Douglas avenue colored all my views of Wichita to such a pitch that three North Main street men together on Douglas avenue was in itself a suspicious circumstance, de- manding explanation.
There was no "Board of Trade" then; there were two cliques striving for the mastery of a street. We talked, then, not of build- a city, but of building a street.
To my mind there was one main figure in Wichita, and that was Greiffenstein ; others had an avocation, "Dutch Bill" played "rounce," "the devil among the tailors" and smoked an admix- ture of tobacco and perique-and deliberated. Douglas avenue was his business. It was his "first born," the "apple of his eye," and all the ends at which he aimed were Douglas avenue. The Iron-gray German was a wizard, who rubbed his "snow-blind eyes" touched his enchanted meerschaum-wand, and in the dis- solving circling clouds of ascending smoke, beheld visions of a future Douglas avenue, akin to the streets that the genii of Aladdin's lamp created at his call. He was not a talker, but a thinker. In fact he was a
"Sworn enemy to long speeches, And never given to repartee; His deliberation was long, His conclusion sure and strong."
Monticello, The Hermitage, and Greystone have each had their pilgrims, but Greiffenstein's old home on South Water street, now Forum, was to the Douglas avenue men "Strawberry Hill," and thither on Sunday afternoon the cavaliers of the avenue went to plan the week's campaign.
On the, then, wide-open porch, surrounded by Jim Steele, N. A. English, Jim McCullough, C. F. Gilbert, Colonel MeClure, Fred Daily, Charley Thompson, M. W. Levy, Sol Kohn and Bro. Morris, the chieftain sat and blew the "clouds" heavenward and listened, and on the morrow gave his deductions.
Greiffenstein, in the pre-grasshopper day, was always in evi- dence when the tocsin sounded to summon Douglas avenue to battle for the supremacy of the "half section line, Douglas avenue over Central avenue and North Main street; then his step was quicker, and the smoke rolled high-
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There was glory on his forehead There was luster in his eye.
How many times since, "Those halcyon days, When flowers bloom'd in all our ways"
has the image of this generous, faithful man come before me in "Board of Trade" councils. The absence of some men create a feeling that power has departed. To my mind, in after years, the absence of the reviled "Big Four" from "Board" meetings created this feeling. (This may be, however, the lingering Doug- las avenue bias.) Douglas avenue men had brains, ideas, courage, but on one occasion "Dutch Bill's" absence on account of a sore throat, "milled," stampeded Douglas avenue men, in A. D. 1874, like Texas steers crossing the Big river below the bridge.
Greiffenstein was the Henry of Navarre; his meerschaum plume, as the banner, was followed trustingly and blindly. Some men are a battalion; Greinffenstein was a brigade. His calm, silent presence was the presage of triumph.
"One blast upon his bugle horn, Were worth a thousand men."
Greiffenstein was a statesman. The placing of the toll-bridge stock in the hands of H. C. Day, N. McClees, et al., "North enders," deprived Main street of voices, which, for "dividends hoped for," would have made them as enemies to Douglas avenue. 'Twas their interest to draw interest. The building of Eagle block and the location of the postoffice, the Eagle office, county offices, court house, in it, was sagacity; the removal of the land office to Douglas avenue was the storming of the heights of El-Caney.
Charles Gilbert and James R. Mead, with large interests both north and south, were neutralized.
The north end was W. C. Woodman, Lank Moore, Al. Thomas and J. C. Fraker, leading a brigade of neutrals and close students in private economy with a Yankee bias.
The north end, with Central avenue as the main artery east and west, with capital in hand could have placed the Santa Fe depot at the corner of Fifth and Central, the big bridge across the river at Central avenue, and forever "shut" Douglas avenue out on the first heat. The south end had less cash but more faith and
MAIN STREET, WICHITA, IN 1870, LOOKING NORTH FROM DOUGLAS AVENUE.
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BOARD OF TRADE OF WICHITA
courage. Its friends were a unit, and this unity characterized the "Board of Trade" in after years, and a study of men shows that the "Board of Trade" was ever dominated by Douglas avenue men. Though it was concealed generally, the "Board of Trade" was selected on Douglas avenue before the annual meeting. This was not chance but design. Greiffenstein was a statesman; he was not a politician. He read the future and felt that only in- creasing labor could conquer the natural advantages of the north end. The location of the Oliver-Imboden mill on Douglas avenue was a fixed fact before Woodman and Lank Moore knew the mill was on foot.
Greiffenstein, Sol Kohn, Morris Kohn, M. W. Levy, N. A. Eng- lish, A. W. Oliver, Jim Steele, Billy MeClure, Colonel McClure, Jim McCullough and a host of "small fry" made the Douglas avenue crowd. In after years Douglas avenue was "a power," and through it all the same spirit dominated the selection of men and characterized the measures adopted. 'Twas Douglas avenue that located the Missouri Pacific depot (only it stopped at Second street instead of the avenue) ; it located the city building and the postoffice. Douglas avenue debated three days as to whether or not it would fight the court house bonds. It is a matter of deep regret that the court house bonds were not defeated and a location selected having some regard to the convenience of business men. Time was when court twice a year resembled a "general muster," but the court house of Sedgwick is a place of business, even as a bank or a store.
There is a legend that "Dutch Bill" and N. A. English drove "Old Ben" from Wichita to Emporia to catch Tom Peters, of the Santa Fe road, and secure the Santa Fe to Wichita. This drive was made in a single buggy and made with three stops. The trip was successful, and N. A. English received from Tom Peters a guaranty for a "life pass." In 18. . the railroad company repudi- ated the "pass." English sued the road and recovered. (See 38 Kansas, 110.) There were many who claimed that English had no more to do with it than many others. The depot was put on Mead's land, but English had a "life pass." English either had much to do with the location or he "hoodooed" Tom Peters. Mead's land was so situated as to give him such a double pull that the north end lost a good fighter on north location. In other words, he had a "lead-pipe cinch," and did not worry on loca- tion. When the depot was first located it was a "heap way" from
.
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depot to the Douglas Avenue and Occidental hotels, and the "old Daily House" (corner of First and Water) and Southern Hotel (old Missouri Pacific ticket office on Main street), now Hub Cloth- ing Store. The business men demanded a sidewalk to the depot. One was built from Lawrence avenue to Fifth avenue, fronting English's land. After some tax sale proceedings and an injunc- tion suit the city presented English with a receipt in full. It seemed that the council neglected to do everything in regard to the "business" except to build the sidewalk. As there were no city taxes levied in those days, the income from various divers and sundry "places" (now abolished) paying all expenses, tlie loss was not mourned over.
(Note-In this connection it may be remembered that in those halcyon days, ere the tempestuous storm burst in fury o'er. our defenseless head, it was our proud boast to the incoming "sucker" that "there were no city taxes.")
To return to our mutton: In 1877 to 1879 "things" moved slow, * * * slow. Acres of lots had been sold for taxes; no one wanted any. The foreclosure of mortgages on the Occidental Hotel, the prior failure of the First National Bank, the tendency to move toward and on Douglas avenue, the freeing of the toll bridge, and other lesser things paralyzed North Main street, and for a season Main street was "Goldsmith's deserted village." The fortunes of Main street have been as the waves of the sea-at highest and lowest tide. The depression on Douglas avenue has been great, but if it had equaled Main street's depression, Main street would have been annihilated.
In 1879 the Frisco railway pointed Wichitaward, but had Win- field and Wellington in view. A business men's league was called and every human in the county was for the bonds. The vote supposedly was for a railroad from St. Louis to Wichita and one fork to Viola township and one to Mount Hope. The railroad got as far as Wichita and stopped. It then appeared that the railroad intended to "go on." The vote was inseparable ; Wichita stood "pat" on three lines or no bonds; and the result was "no bonds." Two men of all others claimed the crown for the Frisco road-C. Wood Davis and Colonel Jocelyn-but Col. M. M. Mur- dock, Jim Steele, A. W. Oliver, M. W. Levy, Col. Milton Stewart, N. A. English et al. were found about that time and did some work. There is a legend that after the road was built and the usual excursion to the business men who did nothing toward
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