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 3
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Edward W. Smith had a grocery and general outfitting store in a frame building on Main street, afterwards owned by W. C. Woodman and next door south of his bank. J. H. Black and Lee
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HISTORY OF SEDGWICK COUNTY
Nixon were his clerks. J. M. Johnson opened the first exclusive grocery stock on North Main street, Arthur Allen, clerk. Arthur has since died. Bailey's was the first hardware store, kept in a little frame building located about where J. A. Black's diamond front grocery was. Mike Zimmerly started a hardware store and tin shop nearly opposite, and Schattner & Short kept a saloon in a frame building that stood upon the lot owned by Deacon Smith. H. H. Allen, Arthur's father, ran the first boarding house (a story and half) on the corner opposite Ford's grocery on upper Main street. John Martin ran a restaurant north of Steele's office, then north of Pine street, and just opposite was the Bismark saloon. "Doc." Oatley had a story and half resi- dence where the Occidental now stands, and just north E. H. Nugent started the first bakery in a one-story frame, and sunk the first drive well on the premises ever operated in Wichita. Hills & Kramer opened the first regular dry-goods store on the corner just south of the Occidental Hotel. Although Mr. Hughes kept a small stock of dry goods and clothing prior in the building still standing on the west side of Main street between Second and Third. The "Vidette" building stood a few blocks further north. The "Vidette" was the first newspaper printed in the Arkansas valley for its entire length, and was founded by Fred A. Sowers.
Charley Hill opened a drug store in a small frame building near what was then Kimmerle & Adams' tombstone shop, after- wards building a few doors further south. In the meantime Sol. Kohn came down from Hays and rented a frame storeroom south of the Lynch building on upper Main street, due south of the Occidental, now called the Baltimore Hotel, where he opened out in drygoods, groceries, clothing, boots and shoes, etc. He soon built lower down and next door north to Charley Hill, both then north of the old court house. The first church edifice was an adobe with a dirt roof that stood a half block north of Third street on the east side of Main street. It was built by the Episcopalians, under guidance of the then pastor, Rev. J. P. Hilton. It was unique, to say the least, as we recall it now. A rude board cross was nailed up in front of the entrance; the light was admitted through two small apertures cut up high in the mud and secured by wooden shutters; the roof waved in summer with highly colored prairie flowers and a luxuriant growth of tall grass, and rattled in winter time with the wind
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EARLY HISTORY OF WICHITA
whistling through the naked sunflower stalks that grew up there also. The church was officered by such eminent moralists as Bill Hutchinson and Charley Schattner, who ran the Bon-ton saloon ; George Richards, a traveling printer ; Bill Dow (Rattle- snake Bill"), a Cincinnati gambler, and John Edward Martin, whose chief anxiety in life was to get somewhere where he could not be found by the citizens of the place he last emigrated from. The above named were vestrymen. They sang in the choir, assisted in the sacrament, all wearing the robes of the church.
It was about this time that J. R. Mead, who had donated the church its ground, proposed to swap for another site further away, and some of the officers thought it an inferior location. The result was a Sunday after-service meeting, with all present, when the matter was fully discussed, and upon which occasion, as it waxed warm, William Bloomfield Hutchinson, a fully in- ducted vestryman, arose radiant in his vestry clothes and remarked in his usual smooth, bland and childlike manner, that "he didn't care a cuss what the other officers of the church done, but he was in emphatic opposition to seeing any citizen cheat Jesus Christ out of a foot of ground so long as he had power to interpose." The rest sedately fell into "Hutch's" opinion, so the matter quietly dropped and church was out for another holy Sabbath day.
In July, 1870, Wichita was incorporated as a town, with the following officers: C. A. Stafford and Chris T. Pierce, who kept a small grocery at the north end of town, Edward Smith, John Peyton (Uncle Jack) and Morgan Cox (afterwards landlord of the Avenue House) were the trustees; W. E. Van Trees, police magistrate; Ike Walker, marshal. April, 1871, the town was merged into a city of the third class, with Dr. E. B. Allen, mayor. Councilmen : W. B. Hutchinson, S. C. Johnson, Charles Schattner, Dr. Fabrique, George Schlichiter and George Vantileburgh. D. C. Hackett was appointed city attorney, H. E. Van Trees police judge and Mike Meagher harshal. W. C. Woodman & Son opened the first moneyed institution in 1871, as a loaning office, after- wards merged into the Arkansas Valley Bank. The Wichita Bank was opened in 1871, with C. Fraker, president; J. R. Mead, vice president, and A. H. Gossard, cashier. It started as a national bank and was closed shortly after the closing up of a cattle drive here in 1875. The Wichita Savings Bank was organ- ized in 1872, with M. E. Clark, of Leavenworth, president; Sol.
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HISTORY OF SEDGWICK COUNTY
H. Kohn, vice president, and A. A. Hyde, formerly of Leaven- worth, cashier. It was incorporated in the fall of 1882 as a national bank.
In 1872 Wichita, through the efforts of our representatives at Topeka, was made a city of the second class, and out of a total vote of 479 elected E. B. Allen mayor for a second time; Mike Meagher, marshal; William Baldwin, city attorney; Charles A. Phillip, treasurer, and J. M. Atwood, police judge. During this year the big bridge spanning the Arkansas river, at the west end of Douglas avenue, was erected at a cost of $27,000. The bridge was built by W. J. Hobson, contractor, and paid for by a joint stock company organized for that purpose. It nearly paid for itself in tolls the first year and would have made the company rich had it not been for the pluck of Lank Moore, Hills & Kramer, J. C. Fraker and other "north-enders," who forced it to be sold by starting a free bridge near the junction of the two rivers, where the park now is. The county then bought it and abolished tolls. The "drive" came in hot about this period in 1872. Wichita was the thriftiest and most uproarious town between the two seas. Large sign boards were posted up at the four con- spicuous entrances into town (James G. Hope was then mayor), bearing the strange device: "Everything goes in Wichita; leave your revolvers at police headquarters and get a check; carrying concealed weapons strictly forbidden." Everything did go in Wichita; there was not a gambling device known to the world that was not in full operation openly. A variety theater nightly gave exhibitions in the old building then south of what was called the Hills & Kramer corner on Main street. It was, in fact, more of a free and easy than a theater. Then the streets just clanged with the noisy spurs of Texas cowboys and Mexican ranchmen, while the crowds that pushed along the resounding board sidewalks were as motley as one could expect if suddenly transported where there was a delegation from every nationality, hastily brought together, at a vanity fair to vie in oddity with each other. Whimsical and eccentric were our citizens of '72, with a constant nervous suppressed something in their expression that you never could quite fathom until there was a chance for a fight or a foot race. Then you would see the glad change sweep over their brow, dispelling the somber shadows, and lending a glad sparkle to the eye, as they went for the belt that held up their jeans and two navies and began to toy with the
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EARLY HISTORY OF WICHITA
triggers, while a sweet, expectant smile lit their sad looking countenances. Texas sombreros and leather leggins, the brigand- ish looking jackets with bright buttons close together of the Mexicans, the buckskin outfit of the frontiersman and the highly colored blanket representatives from a half dozen different tribes of "Poor Lo," all alike fantastic, but all fantastically different, mingled with noisy shouting, was a familiar street scene of early '72 at Wichita. Then add to this a brass band brought down from Kansas City by the gamblers, on a year's engagement, that played from morning until far into the night, on a two-story platform raised over the sidewalk against a large frame building that stood where the Kansas National Bank now is.
Steele & Smith's real estate office, a one-story frame with a wooden porch, occupied the New York store corner, and in the rear of it was pitched throughout the entire season of the drive a large tent, in which was given the exhibtion of Prof. Gessley, the armless wonder. The street blew white with his progressive poem, "writ by hisself." It went on to say: "With the reigns between his toes, he loads, primes, puts on a cap and fires off a gun, and often goes to shoot wild game for want of better fun. He handles the pen with the ease of any in the land; in fact, his foot is turned into a hand." Connected therewith under one pavilion (in show parlance) was also the child wonder, born alive (but awfully dead at the time), with two heads, four arms, two feet and one perfect body; also a pig with two bodies and eight legs, to attract the crowd. A hand organ filled with doleful and disjointed tunes ground unceasingly, while at ten-minute interludes, all day long, would ring out the sharp report of the gun the professor fired with his toes, followed by the deep Pennsylvania Dutch accent of the professor, yelling in his hilarity until it could be heard above the organ and band over the way, "Dere she goes agin; kick like a mool !"
Mix this all with the motley caravan that thronged the streets, the fighting, yelling, swearing, and too often the ring of the revolver that carried death with it, the night scenes of dance houses, painted courtesans and drunken brawls, and you have the Wichita of 1871-72 and '73.
So Wichita began, a town at the junction of the two rivers, the early gathering point of the Osages, their favorite camping ground; all of the surrounding country abounded in game; the home of the buffalo, and their favorite feeding ground; abundant
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HISTORY OF SEDGWICK COUNTY
waters, succulent grasses, delightful climate. A border town, a frontier trading post, a good town from the very first, full of traditions, full of history, full of energy and push, the future is full and promising for Wichita, and her destiny is to make a great city. That she will fill the promise of her founders, no one can doubt.
FIRST CITY OFFICERS OF WICHITA.
1872.
Mayor-E. B. Allen.
Police Judge-J. M. Atwood.
City Treasurer-Charles A. Phillip.
Marshal-M. Meagher.
City Attorney-M. Baldwin.
City Clerk-George S. Henry.
Justices of the Peace-William H. Roarke, H. E. Van Trees. Constables-S. K. Ohmert, George De Amour.
Council-First ward, Dr. Owens, Charles Shattner; second ward, James A. Stevenson, C. A. Bayley; third ward, J. M. Martin, A. J. Langsdorf; fourth ward, J. C. Fraker, William Smith.
Board of Education-First ward, N. A. English, Nelson McClees; second ward, E. P. Waterman, W. C. Woodman; third ward, G. W. Reeves, R. S. West; fourth ward, A. H. Fabrique, Fred A. Sowers.
FIRST COUNTY OFFICERS OF SEDGWICK. 1872.
Judge Thirteenth District-W. P. Campbell.
Board of County Commissioners-H. C. Ramlow, R. N. Neeley, Sol. H. Kohn, chairman.
County Treasurer-S. S. Johnson.
County Clerk-Fred Schattner.
Sheriff-John Meagher.
Clerk District Court-John McIvor.
Probate Judge-William Baldwin.
Superintendent Public Instruction-W. C. Little.
Register of Deeds. John McIvor.
County Attorney-H. C. Sluss.
County Surveyor-John A. Sroufe.
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EARLY HISTORY OF WICHITA
THIRTEEN MAYORS IN THIRTY-NINE YEARS.
During its thirty-nine years' existence as a city, Wichita has had thirteen mayors. Of this number seven are dead and the other six reside here. Following is a list of the mayors in suc- cession from first to last : E. B. Allen, 1871-72; James G. Hope, 1873-74 and 1876-77; George E. Harris, 1875; William Greiffen- stein, 1878 and part of 1879, 1880-84; Sol. H. Kohn, 1879; B. W. Aldrich, 1885-86; J. P. Allen, 1887-88; George W. Clement, 1889-90; John B. Carey, 1891-92; L. M. Cox, 1893-96; Finlay Ross, 1897-1900 and 1905-6; B. F. McLean, 1901-4; John H. Graham, 1907-8; Charles L. Davidson, 1909-10.
William Greiffenstein occupied the major's chair in Wichita longer than any other man, having held the position about six years and a half. James G. Hope was elected to the office of mayor four times, but that was when mayors were elected every year. Next to Greiffenstein, Finlay Ross, who was elected three times and served six full years, has held the office longest. L. M. Cox was twice elected to the office and so was J. K. McLean, both of whom served four years.
The five living ex-mayors of Wichita are George E. Harris, of 224 South Lawrence avenue; Finlay Ross, of 821 North Waco avenue; L. M. Cox, of 529 North Waco avenue; B. F. McLean, of 313 North Seneca street, and John H. Graham, of 825 Wiley avenue.
CHAPTER III.
WICHITA AS A COMMERCIAL AND MANUFACTURING CENTER.
By EUGENE FAHL.
The truth about Wichita is good enough. The figures given in the following article are as nearly accurate as it was possible to obtain. They were obtained from the most authoritative sources. Came a day in early spring, just forty years ago, when a sturdy pioneer merchant jerked a paper bag from a pile of miscellaneous packages on the end of his rude counter, not to fill it with sugar or beans for a waiting customer, but to rip it open and draw thereon in his crude way the plat of the original city of Wichita. This document was filed for record on March 25, 1870. It is now in the recorder's office at the Sedgwick county court house, a beautiful building costing a quarter of a million dollars, in the substantial, fast growing city which the early day German trader was so largely instrumental in founding. Later, another pioneer of a different type, Colonel M. M. Murdock, founder and editor of the Wichita "Eagle" and one of the most talented and powerful personalities of the virile West, nicknamed the young city at the "meeting of the waters" of the Big Arkan- sas and Little Arkansas rivers, the "Peerless Princess of the Southwest," and this has been her nickname since that day. There were many lean years in the West between 1870 and 1900-many lean years. The Princess at times became haggard and careworn. Her enemies encompassed her about. Her trials ยท and tribulations were many. They were the trials and tribula- tions of a royal pioneer. But today she is fair, fat and forty ; she is no longer a princess but has become a queen-the Queen City of the Greater Southwest, her star is in the ascendant and her sturdy sons and daughters who stood by her through the dark days are now reaping the reward of their faithfulness.
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WICHITA AS A COMMERCIAL CENTER
Great mills, manufacturing establishments and mercantile houses, beautiful, well paved streets, splendid homes, churches and public buildings and excellent schools and collages are their portion. The domain of her subjects has become so rich in production that when the harvest time draws near the great wheat markets ask: "What is the outlook in Kansas?" and the answer affects the price of bread in all the nations of the earth. And therein lies her greatness, for her prosperity is founded upon the production of the necessities of life.
Today the population of Wichita is estimated by the com- pilers of the latest city directory at 60,000. Other estimates run as low as 55,000. Area, 183/4 square miles, with 375 miles of streets, about 30 miles of which are paved; water mains, 65 miles ; capacity of pumping plant, 15,000,000 gallons per day; number of miles of public sewer, 75; assessed valuation, $44,444,451; area public parks, 325 acres; altitude, 1,300 feet; average tempera- ture for 21 years, 56 degrees ; average rain fall for 21 years, 292/3 inches. Five railroad systems, as follows: Santa Fe, Rock Island, Frisco, Missouri Pacific, Orient, with 44 daily passenger trains. Electric street railway, 30 miles ; natural gas mains, 100 miles ; number of telephones in use in city, 6,500. Daily papers : The Wichita "Daily Eagle," the morning paper, and the Wichita "Daily Beacon," the evening paper. Public schools, 17 (three more will be ready for next term); academies (Catholic), 3; colleges, 2; business colleges, 2; colleges of music, 3; churches, 31; enrollment in public schools, 7,623. Public and semi-public buildings and their cost: Federal building, $150,000; city hall, $150,000; Sedgwick county court house, $250,000; Masonic Tem- ple, $250,000; Masonic Home and grounds, $250,000; Y. M. C. A. building, $110,000; St. Francis Hospital, including grounds and equipment, $200,000; construction begun on Convention Hall, $150,000; Kansas Sanitarium, $50,000. Number of banks, 11; total capital and surplus, $1,013,000; deposits January 1, 1910, over $11,000,000; bank clearings, 1909, $128,399,860. Num- ber of real estate sales in 1909, 5,331, amounting to $9,612,580; postoffice receipts, $232,326.61 ; building permits, approximately, $4,000,000; city revenue, $835,000. Number of jobbing and wholesale firms, 138, doing an annual business in 1909 of over $40,000,000; packing houses, 2, with an annual production of 60,000,000 pounds; flouring mills, 5, with a daily capacity of 4,100 barrels; lumber business, $10,000,000 in 1909. Wichita is
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HISTORY OF SEDGWICK COUNTY
the largest broom corn market in the world, handling about 40,000 tons annually, has the largest broom factory, with a daily capacity of 2,000 dozen brooms. The value of automobiles distrib- uted by Wichita dealers in 1909, $1,250,000. Number of cars of grain bought and sold by the Board of Trade, 24,000. The Union Stock Yards handled in 1909 756,560 hogs, 184,659 cattle, 22,796 sheep and 3,645 horses and mules, or over 14,000 cars of stock.
GROWTH OF WICHITA.
It is difficult to show the important things concerning the growth of a city, in figures. The growth in population, in postal receipts, in bank deposits and bank clearings, etc., can all be given in figures. But the bustling activity, always apparent in a prosperous city, the expansion of the many mercantile and manu- facturing establishments, many of them enlarged to double their former capacity, the atmosphere of general push and progressive- ness, are hard to portray in figures. To the business man, how- ever, who speaks the language of figures and is accustomed to it, the following comparative statistics regarding the city of Wichita will speak in no uncertain tones, for established cities do not grow at such a rate without cause. The cause in this instance is the rapid development of the greater Southwest, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico, which is just naturally Wichita's trade territory by right of location :
Population in 1900, 24,571 ; in 1910, 60,780, a growth of nearly 150 per cent in ten years. Bank clearings for 1906, $58,062,985; for 1909, $128,399,860, a gain of over $70,000,000, or 121 per cent, in three years. Bank clearings for 1908, $72,948,070; for 1909, $128,399,860, a gain in one year of $55,000,000, or 76 per cent. Bank deposits January 1, 1900, $1,281,671; January 1 1910, $11,000,000, an increase of almost 1,000 per cent in ten years. Building permits for 1908, $1,563,200; for 1909, $3,968,350, an increase in one year of 154 per cent. Postoffice receipts in 1900, $73,934; in 1910, $232,326.61, an increase in ten years of 212 per cent.
THE OUTLOOK.
It has been said recently by a man well informed in matters pertaining to the city that there are 800 buildings of various kinds in the course of construction in Wichita today. A ride
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WICHITA AS A COMMERCIAL CENTER
through the different sections of the city would lead one to believe that this statement was too low rather than too high, there being scarcely a block in the city without building improvements of some kind in progress. Wichita will be a city of 100,000 popula- tion in less than five years. Some of the larger projects now building or in immediate prospect (1910) are the following: A convention hall with a seating capacity of 5,000, to cost $150,000, for which the contract has been let. New high school building to accommodate 1,200 students and costing $150,000. Ten-story office building costing $350,000, now well under way. Ten-story office building to cost approximately the same as above. Plans are drawn and construction will begin soon. Six-story office building and store costing $55,000, nearly finished. Commercial Club building, $85,000, well under way. Fine theater to cost $75,000. Immense agricultural implement branch house, to be one of the largest in the West. Large wholesale grocery building, now under construction; a new firm in the city. Four-story building for a branch house of the largest dealers and manufac- turers of plumbers' supplies in the world. Fifty miles of paving to cost over $2,000,000. An electric interurban line, with sixty miles of track, connecting Wichita with a number of towns north and west of the city. Cost $1,000,000; now under construction. Terminal Railroad Association will make extensive improvements, costing $100,000. Orient railroad shops, to cost $300,000, and employing about 300 men. Elevated railroad tracks and union passenger station, requiring an expenditure of about $400,000. Paper and strawboard manufacturing plant, to cost $500,000. Immense additions to one of the packing houses, $300,000. Two new churches, one costing $200,000 the other $100,000. Wichita Natural Gas Company improvements costing $400,000. The Street Railway Company will expend $700,000 in improvements. Building permits for the first three months of 1910 are just about equal to the total of the year of 1908. The indications are that building operations in 1910 will exceed $6,000,000.
COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL.
The industrial and commercial interests of the city of Wichita in the order of their importance are as follows: First, wholesale and jobbing; second, handling live stock and packing meats; third, handling grain and milling flour and feed; fourth, handling
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HISTORY OF SEDGWICK COUNTY
broom corn and manufacturing brooms; fifth, miscellaneous manufacturing.
No other city in the United States of equal size does so large an annual jobbing business. The principal lines are dry goods, groceries, notions, drugs, hardware, hats, shoes, furniture, agri- cultural implements and lumber. There are two large wholesale dry goods houses, five grocery houses, three drug houses, one hardware house, one wholesale hat house, one shoe house, one furniture house, one notion house, many implement houses, and the lumber jobbers, commission dealers and mill agents number over thirty. The traveling representatives of these houses are to be found in all parts of the fast developing territory of western Oklahoma, northern Texas and New Mexico, as well as in Kansas, and they sent in $31,000,000 worth of business in 1909. Lumber companies whose general offices are in Wichita own and operate more than 250 lumber yards in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico. Their annual business has reached the $8,000,000 mark. One firm, the Boyle Commission Company, buys and sells over 2,000 carloads of potatoes per year, their record sales being 63 cars in one day and 530 cars in one month. A large four-story building is being built, to be occupied by an addition to the city's wholesale grocery business, the new firm coming to Wichita for the purpose of getting better railroad facilities, while one of the wholesale grocery firms, Jett & Wood, established some years ago, more than doubled the size of its building the past season, so that the increase in the wholesale grocery business is apparently keeping pace with the other lines of jobbing. A $50,000-building is to be built immediately for the Wichita Wholesale Furniture Company, which has outgrown its present quarters. The capital of this firm will be doubled at once. The McArthur-Kiler Mer- cantile Company, a wholesale notion house, increased its business 100 per cent in 1909. From these few instances it will be seen that the wholesale business in Wichita is not exactly a losing proposition.
LIVE STOCK.
Second only in importance and annual business to the jobbing interests are the Wichita Union Stock Yards and their allied interests, the packing houses. Fourteen thousand and eighty-four cars of live stock were handled by this rapidly expanding market in 1909. These would make a train about 120 miles in lengthi.
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WICHITA AS A COMMERCIAL CENTER
These cars contained 756,560 hogs, 184,659 cattle and 22,796 sheep. About 60,000,000 pounds of the finished product of pork, beef and mutton were cured and packed by the local packing plants. With the by-products their business in 1909 amounted to about $9,000,000.
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