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 38
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There is a stone chapel built and furnished by the Order of . Eastern Star at a cost of over ten thousand dollars, and this order has supplied the home with nearly all its furniture and is now thoroughly equipping the Isolation Cottage with electric lights, gas stoves and all furniture and bedding. The beneficia- ries of the Home are aged Master Masons, their wives or widows and children of the members of the Order Eastern Star. Since its opening it has given shelter to almost two hundred of these needy old people and helpless little children. The old people come here expecting to spend their declining days and finally to
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HISTORY OF SEDGWICK COUNTY
be laid away to sleep in the home lot in Maple Grove Cemetery. The children come to remain until educated and fitted for some station in life. It is a gratifying fact that, so far, every child who has gone out from the home has made good in the positions they have been called upon to fill, thus proving that the discipline and moral training received in the home has been a blessing to them. The home is maintained by a per capita tax of 50 cents per annum from the membership of the Grand Lodge of Kansas and 10 cents per annum from the Order Eastern Star of Kansas. The superintendent of this splendid Wichita institution is James Snedden, and the matron is his wife, Mrs. Mary C. Snedden. They have had charge of the home more than years, and have done much to make it what it is.
JEREMIAH GILES SMITH.
By
THE EDITOR.
I have been requested by a large representation of the mem- bership of Wichita Consistory, No. 2, the largest consistory in the Southern Jurisdiction, to give a space to Jeremiah Giles Smith (33), the real founder of Wichita Consistory. This is not only the duty that I owe the dead, but it is a great pleasure. To no single individual, dead or alive, is the membership of Wichita Consistory so much indebted as to Brother Giles Smith. Early and late, in season and out of season, his heart was in the work. Through evil and good repute he stood by his guns, and let no man, now that he is dead, seek to snatch his well earned laurels from his brow. He was easily the foremost Mason in Sedgwick county, and passed away without an enemy in the world. In his death the fraternity lost a tower of strength and a tireless worker for a great cause. "The noblest Roman of them all, his sword hangs rusting on the wall."
Born August 30, 1851, at Winchester, Ind., Brother Smith was made a Master Mason in Mystic Tie Lodge, No. 398, at Indianap- olis, Ind., August 21, 1876. In the Scottish Rite he received the degrees from the fourth to the thirty-second, inclusive, in the bodies of the Rite in Indianapolis, Ind. In 1882 Brother Smith removed to Kansas and located in the young and thrifty city of
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Wichita. Dimitting from the Scottish Rite bodies in Indianap- olis, he took an active part in the establishment of the Rite in that young city, and as the different bodies were instituted, he became a charter member of each, and was the first Master of Kadosh, and for several years he was the Deputy of the Inspector General of Kansas, always active and zealous in the advancement of the Rite. He was elected a Knight Commander of the Court of Honor, October 18, 1888, and for his valuable labors in behalf of the Rite he was elected to receive the thirty-third degree at the same session of the Supreme Council, which honor was conferred upon him by the Inspector General of Kansas, with the assistance of others, November 17, 1888.
While not alone in his labors and efforts in behalf of the Scot- tish Rite bodies at Wichita, no one is entitled to greater credit than he, and he lived to see the bodies there become foremost in the Grand Jurisdiction, and in possession of the finest cathedral in the land devoted exclusively to the Scottish Rite. Brother Smith died very suddenly at his home, January 13, 1909.
TRADES AND LABOR ORGANIZATIONS IN WICHITA.
Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, Wichita Lodge, No. 356. Meets every Sunday morning at 211 East Douglas avenue; S. F. Ayler, president ; J. W. Taylor, secretary ; O. A. McIlvain, finan- cial secretary.
Ladies' Auxiliary, Peerless Princess Lodge, No. 349, B. of R. T. Meets second and fourth Thursdays of each month at 211 East Douglas avenue ; Mrs. Alice Hibberd, president ; Mrs. Stella Bumstead, V. M .; Mrs. Minnie Stewart, secretary; Mrs. Lucretia Davis, treasurer.
Order of Railway Conductors, Wichita Division, No. 338. Meets second and fourth Sundays of each month at 211 East Douglas avenue; L. W. Cregger, C. C .; August Anderson, secretary.
Peerless Princess Division, No, 221, Ladies Auxiliary to O. R. C. Meets first and third Wednesdays of each month at Maccabees' Hall; Mrs. Mattie Gray, president; Mrs. Hylda Hollingsworth, vice president ; Mrs. Elizabeth Nichols, secretary and treasurer.
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HISTORY OF SEDGWICK COUNTY
OTHER SECRET SOCIETIES.
By
RODOLPH HATFIELD.
Wichita is noted for its many secret societies, and is a state- wide preferred general lodge meeting place. Its location and superior railroad connection with all portions of the state make it a very general annual rallying point for all manner and name of fraternal orders.
ODD FELLOWS.
Wichita Lodge, No. 93, I. O. O. F., was instituted June 24, 1872, the charter members being George W. Reeves, B. C. Purcell, Frank Hamilton, H. W. Kendle, Charles Eckardt, J. N. Warren and W. J. Hobson.
The Wichita Encampment, No. 29, I. O. O. F., was granted a charter October 11, 1876, with C. C. Furley, W. A. Richey, W. J. Hobson, H. H. Peckham, T. H. Minnick, W. P. Stem and M. W. Levy as charter members.
From this early beginning have grown Queen City Lodge, No. 296; West Side Lodge, No. 345; North Wichita Lodge, No. 348, with their complementary Rebekah lodges, constituting the most numerous secret order membership in the city.
ANCIENT ORDER OF UNITED WORKMEN.
Wichita Lodge, No. 22, A. O. U. W., was chartered November 1, 1879, with thirteen members. There is now Peerless Lodge, No. 271, A. O. U. W., besides two complementary Degree of Honor lodges, all with a large and enthusiastic membership.
There are likewise several fraternities known as Modern Woodmen of America, Woodmen of the World, Fraternal Aid, Eagles, Red Men, Knights of Pythias, Knights and Ladies of Security, Fraternal Brotherhood, Fraternal Mystic Circle, Fra- ternal Union of America, Hermann's Soehne, Highland Nobles, as well as some other and newer organizations. Many of the fore- going are open to both men and women.
The colored people, too, have their branches of many of the old line and newer fraternal societies.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE MEDICAL PROFESSION IN WICHITA.
By
DR. A. H. FABRIQUE.
Noble Prentiss, who was one of the most distinguished writers and newspaper men of Kansas, once said that in this state there were two kinds of doctors-"one kind was called Doctor, and the other kind was called Doc." Wichita has had both kinds. It would take a lexicon to cover all of the various doctors which Wichita has had, and it would take several lexicons to cover all of the kinds of doctors who have in the past come and gone in this city. Through all of the changing years of good times and bad, of good crops and bad, through drouths, and grass- hoppers, and all of the ills and vicissitudes of a new country like Sedgwick county, and a frontier town like Wichita, I might say it has been "a survival of the fittest." It took a great deal of nerve to practice medicine in Sedgwick county prior to the eighties. Since then it has been easier. I came to the county in 1870, and began actual and active practice in 1870. Prior to 1880 I can readily recall those of my profession in Wichita. Wichita was about the only town of any population prior to that time. I can recall the names of most of the early doctors in Wichita prior to that time. Dr. E. B. Allen, Dr. Oatley, Dr. H. Owens and the writer came to Wichita in 1870. Dr. W. T. Hen- drickson and Dr. Furley came to Wichita in 1871. Dr. C. E. McAdams and Dr. A. J. Longsdorf came to Wichita in 1872. The writer is the only survivor of the early M. D.'s. At that time there were no hospitals in Wichita; it was all the old-time prac- tice and a following of the old-time methods. In those days the physician went to the patient; now the patient very largely comes to him. New methods have supplanted the old rules, and these are to the credit of the profession and greatly to the benefit of the patient.
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HISTORY OF SEDGWICK COUNTY
Dr. Furley was twice president of the Kansas State Medical Society. In those days the practice of the Wichita doctor ex- tended to the Walnut river on the east, to Newton on the north, to the Indian Territory on the south, and to the west as far as one could ride in two days. Dr. Allen was the first mayor of Wichita, was state representative, and afterward was secretary of state of the State of Kansas. Many times the doctor was called to distant points, making the trip on horseback. Some- times the trip was made on the old familiar buckboard, and oftentimes the doctor was compelled to go into camp to rest him- self and team before beginning his return journey. In gunshot wounds, which were many, we used the old-time army instru- ments. Antiseptics were unknown in those days, and all surgical instruments were of a crude pattern.
The District Medical Association was organized here in 1878. It took in the counties of Sedgwick, Butler, Harvey, Sumner, Reno and Cowley. In 1874 the doctors began to settle in other portions of Sedgwick county, Dr. Tucker settling in Derby and Dr. Goddard settling in Sedgwick in 1875; in the year 1880 a number settled in the smaller towns, notably Dr. Shannon in Cheney and Dr. Dwight in Mt. Hope. The old guard of the pro- fession has largely passed away.
WICHITA HOSPITAL NEEDED EVERY DAY.
By
MRS. GEORGE L. PRATT,
President Board of Directors of Wichita Hospital.
September 9, 1885, a small band of earnest women met in Wichita and organized the Ladies' Benevolent Home, and a house on South Market street was selected for its quarters. Its object was to give temporary relief to the homeless and sick. That this was needed was proven by the broadening fields of their labor and the increasing demands for the care of the sick which were made upon the association. The better, therefore, the association, the better, therefore, to fulfil the object of the founders and meet the demands of the people. In January, 1887, the institution was incorporated under the title, Ladies' Benevolent Home and
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Hospital. A trained nurse was employed, a staff of physicians selected, and, with more commodious quarters, in the building now known as the Rescue Home, the institution began its career. In May, 1889, full hospital work was being done, and the asso- ciation became the Wichita Hospital.
With the increase of patronage of the hospital came the real- ization that competent nurses, trained for the work, were abso- lutely essential to its success, so in 1896 the management inaugu- rated a training school and the institution was reincorporated as the Wichita Hospital and Training School for Nurses.
Early in the year 1898 the great work that this institution was accomplishing, and its crowded condition in its old quarters, was brought to the notice of a benevolent gentleman in Boston, and to his kindness and generosity the association is indebted for the present home of the hospital. Through the liberality of the Wichita people and the untiring efforts of the board of twenty women, it has been reconstructed and transformed into the pres- ent modern and well equipped hospital building. But with the growth of the city the demand for hospital accommodations has increased, and again the Wichita Hospital needs larger quar- ters. For a long time the board of directors has felt the need of a new building, and has planned an annex with bright, cheerful rooms, large verandas, operating rooms modern in all equipment, an obstetrical ward, and new dormitories for the nurses. And what is needed most of all is the co-operation of the people of Wichita in helping the women of the board to raise the funds necessary to carry out their plans and build a hospital that Greater Wichita will be proud to have bear the name of the Wichita Hospital.
CHAPTER XXXV.
SCRAPS OF LOCAL HISTORY.
There were law suits there, cases of replevin, in which the judgment was given to one side, and to the other the payment of costs in order to keep any feeling of triumph on either side down. The dram-shop was a center of interest. At that time Kansas had some sort of a dram-shop law, and before a dram-shop could be started a petition had to be presented to the board of county commissioners granting permission. This petition had to be signed by a majority of the residents, male and female, in the township. It is charged that the women were generally against the establishment of dram-shops, and that in order to secure their names a petition for a new road was circulated, the heading being cut off after all the women had signed it, and a dram-shop peti- tion heading substituted. One day there was a suit in replevin before Justice Zimmermann, of Park City. A man had taken up another man's horse and had failed to advertise it. The owner of the horse tried to take him without paying the feed bill, alleg- ing that as the holder hadn't advertised he did not have to pay the feed bill. The owner, becoming the plaintiff, replevined the horse. The case was tried with great bitterness; the plaintiff got his horse and was made to pay the feed bill, while the defendant had to pay the costs. This was the first case Ed. Jewett ever tried in Sedgwick county, for which he received $3 fees, repre- senting the plaintiff. The case was finished at sunset. At 4 o'clock the next morning Jewett was summoned from his bed and met both plaintiff and defendant. They were not quarreling. They had started home, got lost, and had been circling until they struck the Jewett farm. But the narration. Wichita wanted the Santa Fe south from Newton. It was necessary to vote bonds. Park City set out to defeat those bonds. The election which fol- lowed was the most wonderful in the annals of Kansas.
A cowboy coming into Wichita from the South, smelling emphatically of Mexican associations, early election morning, was pulled down off his horse and told to vote. "I ain't a citi-
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zen," he said. "That makes no difference. Are you in favor of a railroad ?" "Bet your life." "Crawl down and vote." "But I'm from San Antonio." "That's all right. Go ahead and vote." Half-breeds from the woods about Ft. Gibson, bull-whackers from the rocks about Ft. Sill, Indian traders from Medicine Lodge, everybody who happened to be in town, was voted for a railroad to Wichita. There is no evidence on the charge, but with these conditions prevailing, some men voted twice. A memory is liable to be treacherous at such a time. But Park City was outdoing Wichita. Freighters from Pike's Peak were compelled to cast their ballots against railroads. Men from the Smoky Hill and all along the trail were grabbed up and made to voice their senti- ments, whether they had any sentiments on the matter or not. The leaders at Park City were not "literary" in any sense of the word. They had arranged a long list of fictitious names. For each name they put in a ballot against the railroad bonds. The voting place did not close at 6 o'clock, but at 2 o'clock the next morning the vote was still in progress. And the names gave out ! Their former acquaintances back in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, some dead and gone, were voted.
At 3 o'clock a committee woke up the late Judge W. T. Jewett and asked him to "think up some new names!"
The end of it all was that Wichita won out. Park City, with its 300 inhabitants, cast 1,000 votes. Park City waned. A fire carried off one of its largest buildings. Others were moved away. By 1879 all that marked its site, except the little grave, was a bunch of yellow Scotch thistles and a depression in the ground, once the beer cellar of the dramshop. All is now gone but this small depression. The townsite was sold for taxes and was bought by W. and N. McClees, and thereafter passed through various hands. That is the story of Park City.
The land on which it stood is now owned by J. W. Laming · and Zaring Laning and John Page, an engineer on the Missouri Pacific. Two of the families who were there then and still live in the vicinity are the Jewetts and the Pauls. One of the last scenes in the history of the town was the action of Hockins, one of the founders. He gathered up a lot of coyotes, wolves, pole- cats, deer and buffalo and set out for Indiana to exhibit them. Whatever became of him and his menagerie is as big a mystery as the present whereabouts of the Countess, with her long, flowing hair and her titled estates in England.
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HISTORY OF SEDGWICK COUNTY
Note: Park City was at one time the rival county seat of Wichita .- Editor.
PARK CITY AND WICHITA AND THEIR ASTONISHING CONTEST.
By
E. B. JEWETT.
The recent death of Judge W. T. Jewett removes from the theater of the West one of the last characters in the memorable contest between Wichita and Park City, the only rival this city has ever known. The story has passed out of the minds of many who once knew it. To many others it is strangely fiction-new. Here is a city of broad pavements, of long, shaded streets, of beautiful homes, of multiplied political complications, of entan- gled commercial competition, of accumulating and clashing pro- fessional ambitions. There, the spot once religiously despised and bitterly hated as a rival, the yellow-sheathed cornstalks crackle and wave their wizened arms in solitude, over a hollow in the ground, slowly filling as the years go by, and coming at last to the extinction of a common level. The contest between the two towns has long ago lost its significance, in the wall of accumulating years which bar the present from the issues of the past. To most people of Wichita, Park City is mythical. But it was once a "city," worthy of many a violent oath, worthy of being condemned, and worthy of an aggressive enmity.
There were wintry nights when, in the Wichita dramshop, at the slivered pine bar, the cow-spurs clinked an accompaniment to a long Homeric narration in derogation of the location of Park City. And on the same night a crowd, equally worthy to all eyes save those of Fate, gathered in the dramshop of Park City and mixed anathemas against Wichita with a very ragged and barbed variety of sheep-dip. The verity was that the contention grew from the very lack of argument on either side, for anger flour- ishes most without any vestige of reason about it. Both Wichita and Park City were located on a table-flat bottom. Both rested next to the Big river (the Arkansas). The banks of the Arkansas were higher at Park City, a most momentous claim, offset by Wichita's insistence that this was the junction of the Big and
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Little Arkansas. The latter claim was pooh-hoohed by Park City, while the high-bank advantage of Park City was outraged by high-colored ridicule in Wichita. The real contest ended in the most remarkable election ever held on earth. No western Kansas contest of after years could equal it, for in western Kansas there was the skeleton of law. In the contest between Wichita and Park City there was not an outline of righteousness.
Park City was located in 1870, fourteen miles northwest of Wichita. Its site lies now five miles directly west of Valley Cen- ter, between the Big and Little Arkansas. The location is admit- tedly today very beautiful for a town. Here the serpentine Ar- kansas swings into a great bend, and at this bow, to the east and north of it, the pretentious City of Park was platted. The bottom is higher than at Wichita, and in the large city mapped out a gorgeous park was reserved. Nereus Baldwin, now of this city, had pre-empted eighty acres at this point, which the Park City boomers secured. The prime movers in the location of the town were a lawyer named Nichols, a man named McIlvane, and Frank Hockins. The site was chosen with due design. The Santa Fe Railroad, on its ambitious way to the old city of Santa Fe, in New Mexico, had reached Newton. The first survey out of New- ton carried the road southwesterly through the northwest corner of Sedgwick, through the Indian Territory partly, and into New Mexico, missing Colorado entirely. This was following an old trail, for the Santa Fe trail curved down nearly to Park City from the north, in order to strike the Arkansas valley quickly .. Large, imposing maps of the city were made and sent East, show- ing a perfect network of avenues, and in the center the large park with the mythical trees marked plainly and with brilliant prodigality. Near the townsite were W. T. Jewett, on a farm; Dan Bright, now deceased, but a prominent man of late years in Larned; Col. James Hammon, of Virginia, and Mr. Paul, now deceased. At that time Park City had about 300 people, and was very prosperous, as much on its prospects as anything else, al- though most of the people in the country west of it and many on the land north of it traded there. There were three large stores, among other things, and the inevitable dramshop.
The founders of the town were confident-alas! too confident -as events proved. The Santa Fe determined on its plug branch south from Newton to a point to meet the Texas cattle trail. Park City and its founders were high-headed and possessed a
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goodly share of the earth, in their imagination. It is said, but this is not authentic, that the Santa Fe offered to come directly south from Newton to Park City, in return for a portion of the townsite. But the owners of that townsite valued it. It was not to be parted with frivolously, and this offer they refused. Park City's magnetic powers were greater than a corporation's greed, and Park City took her stand of defiance. The railroad would have to come to the town. It could not, indeed, survive without the town. But that is getting ahead of the story. In Park City were many characters. One of these was Mr. Nichols, a very bril- liant lawyer, who had a very fine library. Another character was an English woman-at least she said she was. She claimed her first husband was an English count, and gave the name of his estate, since forgotten. Her second husband was a common citi- zen of Park City, without any noble appendage in the way of title. By her first husband she had one daughter, and in that daughter she centered all her ambition, believing-holding, at any rate-that some day the daughter would succeed to the earl- dom. In obedience to this belief, the daughter, a young woman, was called by her mother, with a defiant persistency, "The Count- ess." And after a time the city began to call her "The Count- ess." She was, in time, known by no other name. The Countess was a very fine specimen of humanity, fair of face and buxom of figure, with a wealth of cascading brown hair, which she always wore streaming down over her shoulders. She had many suitors, accoutred in broad sombreros and spurs and heavy top boots. None, in the known history of Park City, won her heart.
One day the husband of the Countess' mother dropped dead on the street. Nichols, the lawyer, believed there had been foul play. He sent for the coroner, Dr. Owens, of Wichita, who did not arrive until the next day, by which time the dead man had been removed to his wife's home. The widow had heard the evil suspicions against her and the talk of a post-mortem examination, and when Dr. Owens and the jury of twelve good men and true hove up to the front door, the widow, planting herself squarely in the door, began :
"Enter, gentlemen, at your peril. Coke on Common Law: ‘A domicile is sacred to its inmates.' Page 306. Blackstone: ‘A man's home is his castle.' Page 207. Chitty on Tenantry : 'The law extends to the family door-step.' Page 20."
The jury wavered and fell back. The dead man was not cut
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open. The law the widow quoted was afterwards found to be false and extemporaneous. In justice to the widow, it must be said that she did not poison her husband. But at that moment the panicstricken jury timidly returned a verdict of heart dis- ease. One day a certain long and lanky cow-puncher struck town and was at once smitten with the beautiful Countess. With a suppressed headyness he waited three days before making an out-and-out proposal of marriage, which the Countess rejected. The unhappy suitor thereupon began to "shoot up" the town. He was seized by the citizens and locked in a lawyer's office, where, two days later, after some protocoling, he promised to be good in return for his liberty, which was given him. The town occasionally had its funerals. One of the citizens was a sterling young man. He had proposed to one of the young women of the town and they were soon to be married. They had talked together for hours or strolled hand in hand along the bank of the river, building on the future when Park would be a great city, and their ships had come in. But he died. The young woman for years kept his grave green and was true to his memory. Year by year, as adverse fortune came creeping in on the little place, she was true to her trust. One by one the buildings were hauled away or toppled down from desertion and decay; one by one the rude head-boards to the graves in the little cemetery tumbled over and were appropriated for incomplete hog-pens or other pur- poses of utility. Year by year the rural quiet ate into the heart of the little place, until cornfield stillness came at last, and all was obliterated but that one grave, still ever green and neat. The faithful one had other suitors, but her heart was steadfast. As the years went by she heard of the rival city of Wichita's growth, and came once or twice to see it, and then returned to Park City and its lone vestige-the grave she loved so well. But years ago she died of a broken heart, they say, at last, and the little grave surrendered to thistles and sunflowers and disap- peared at last, as all its fellows in the past.
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