USA > Kansas > Wyandotte County > History of Wyandotte County, Kansas, and its people, Vol. I > Part 12
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The same proposition later was revived at different times until finally congress passed an act and a commission was named to sell Huron Place cemetery. After paying the expenses of removing the bodies and building a monument, the remainder of the proceeds were to be divided among the Wyandots. Objection to the sale again was manifested in the form of injunction proceedings instituted by Miss Lyda Conley, an Indian lawyer and one of the three sisters whose ancestors are among those who lie buried in this cemetery. With a devotion that was commended by many persons other than the descend- ants of the Indians, Miss Conley and her two sisters took possession of the cemetery, erected a little house in the center of the plot, guarded the graves by day and night and defied the officers of the courts to eject them.
The suit to stop the sale of the cemetery and the removal of the bodies of the Indians to Quindaro cemetery went through the state and federal courts, even to the court of last resort, the supreme court. Invariably, the courts sustained congress in authorizing the secretary of the interior department to appoint a commission to make the sale. Again and again another victory for the white man over the red man was recorded. Seemingly these old treaties were made to be binding on the Indians only ; always it is the white man who breaks them.
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The cemetery property has been appraised at $75,000, but at the beginning of 1911 the commission had found no buyer.
The square or block contained a small tract adjoining the cemetery, which was given to the Methodist Episcopal church to be held forever for religious purposes. At the time of the separation before the war the northern branch of the church was given a cemetery at Quindaro, the southern branch retaining the property adjoining the cemetery. To prevent eneroaehments, the other three corners of the square were given to the First African Methodist Episcopal, St. Paul's Episcopal and the
First Presbyterian churches. It evidently was the intention to place such safeguards around the burial ground as to forever protect the re- mains of their dead from disturbance. How far their wishes have been observed may be seen from the faet that the ground which was given to the Presbyterians at the northeast corner of Huron Place square was sold and the Portsmouth office building and auditorium are now oceu- pying it. The Methodist Episcopal Church. Sonth sold its corner (the northwest), and office buildings were erected thereon. The Grund hotel was built on the corner once occupied by the Episcopal church ; the Masonic temple occupies the old African Methodist Episcopal church corner, and Huron Place has been converted within recent years, into a beautiful park with broad granitoid walks, flower gardens and grassy plots surrounding the handsome public library building. The square, or block containing these several grounds lies between Minnesota avenne on the north, Ann avenne on the south, Sixth street on the east and Seventh street on the west.
REMINISCENCES OF THE EARLY DAYS.
Mrs. Lucy B. Armstrong, writing from the Neosho Station five miles south of Humbolt, Kansas, December 10, 1870, on the twenty- seventh anniversary of her coming to Kansas with the Wyandots, tells of scenes, incidents and people of the early days. Her letter was printed December 29, 1870, in the Wyandotte Gazette (now the Gazette- Globe of Kansas City, Kansas). It follows :
"NEOSHO STATION, five miles south of Humbolt, Kansas, December 10, 1870 .- This tenth day of December is the twenty-seventh anniversary of the day when my husband first brought his family into the first house occupied in Wyan- dot City. For three months and one week, we had been in Westport, Missouri, sojourning there until our chiefs and counselors could select and negotiate for a new home in place of the loved one on the Sandusky in Ohio, out of which the United States government had teased our people, after sending commissioners for that purpose, sixteen times, as I have been informed.
"Husband stowed his family, with all the baggage he could get in, into a double-seated buggy, which he had had made in Ohio and which, on account of its convenience and beauty, was a marvel to many of the old citizens of western Mis- souri, and drove down to the Kansas river. There being no bridge or even
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ferry-boat so that we could drive over, he unhitched his horses, took them to a farm half a mile back, to be kept there a day or two until he could return and take them on that side of the river, three or four miles, to a place where it might be forded.
"The weather was pleasant, and the children and I enjoyed our stay on the bank of the river and our first view of the new home, for, though wild, it was lovely.
" 'So to the Jews old Canaan stood, While Jordan rolled between.'
"When my husband returned he called for the skiff on the opposite side of the river, unloaded the buggy, took it to pieces, and, by making several trips across the river, transported buggy, baggage, wife and three children into the Indian Territory, and, borrowing horses from Wyandots encamped there, we were soon 'home again,' in the cabin he had constructed for us, about half a mile from the mouth of Jersey creek and within two hundred feet, east, northeast of the northeast corner of what are known now as Wawas and Fifth streets. When my Imsband sought for a suitable building site for our new home, he followed the Kansas river to its junetion with the Missouri, then went up the Missouri to the mouth of Jersey creek, and thence up the creek until he saw what he thought, from the view he could get of it through the rank growth of vegetation, a handsome elevation; there he built our cabin, without clearing more ground than was sufficient for the building to stand on. When I have heard ladies in our city complaining of want of room, I have looked back with gratitude to think how happy my husband's wife was that memorable tenth of December afternoon, in that sixteen feet square log cabin.
"The logs were scotched off in the inside of the building, and the chineking was put in neatly and closely to exclude dust; the puncheons in the floor, the clapboards in the ceiling and the poles on which the latter were laid, were all white and clean, and inside there was no mortar to clear away, or scrubbing to be done, and we soon had the furniture, which had been brought over from Westport, the day before we came, arranged in order. For a cupboard Mr. A. took the boxes in which we had brought our things from Ohio, knocked them to pieces, sawed them to fit a corner of the cabin and fastened them up for shelves; and thus we had a corner eupboard, which we shielded from dust and flies by a furniture chintz curtain. Then we had a toilet shelf, and a board stool under it for folding bedding, curtained with the same chintz, as well as was a high-post bedstead. In another corner of the cabin was another bedstead around which were hung curtains every other Tuesday night and each alternate Saturday night, to enclose a spare room for the United States agent to the Wyandots, who came over from his office at Westport and lodged with us, on the first named night, to attend council, and for the missionary who was to preach to us on the succeeding day, on the other. Space was left within the curtains for toilet conveniences. We had a trundle-bed for the children, a rocking settee for a cradle, six large chairs and one little one, a bureau, table, and cooking stove, and occasionally we put down a carpet. It was not convenient to keep it down constantly, for our potato hole was under the center of the floor, and we had to lift a puncheon to get the potatoes. JJersey creek was then a stream of nice, clear water, uncontaminated by slaughter houses or offal, and there were numerous springs in the neighborhood. Having good water; excellent bread made from flour and meal manufactured at the Shawnee Mission mill; plenty of meat purchased by the late Silas Armstrong, Sr., contractor for the Wyandot nation, with the addition of the first venison my husband ever killed, and therefore, the more delicious; hominy bronght by the Delawares, as a present to their uncles, the Wyandots; the potatoes; some fruit dried and preserved the preceeding fall; a small quantity of butter, and groceries we
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obtained at Westport-we were comfortably fed, and, before the close of the winter, we had eggs and milk. In April, another room was added to our cabin. "One week after the arrival at our cabin my husband's aunt, Mrs. Long, with the family, moved into a cabin on the opposite side of the creek, and by spring there were houses completed and occupied in the different parts of the city, but they were comparatively 'few and far between.' Previous to the emi- gration of the Wyandots from Ohio, a number had formed themselves into a company store, and it was established in Westport soon after the arrival in Missouri. As soon as a honse was ready at Wyandot, a branch of the firm commenced selling goods in it. Our friend, Mr. Splitlog, put up and carried on a carpenter shop; we had a blacksmith shop furnished by the United States govern- ment, and by the first of the ensuing July a frame school house was built and ocenpied, my husband being the first teacher. The building is the old frame on Fourth street, between Nebraska and Kansas avenues, occupied later as a car- penter shop.
"Once a week we received our newspapers and other periodicals through the post office at Westport. Kansas City was not in existence then; its place on the river was known as 'Westport Landing.'
"With the exception of a few days we had very pleasant weather through the winter and on Sabbaths we all got into our buggy and drove to different places in the new settlement to attend religious meetings held in camps until the people got into houses. During all the time we were at Westport there was but one sermon preached in the town, though it had been settled sixteen years and contained more than six hundred inhabitants. Here among Indians, with about the same population, were nearly two hundred members of the Methodist church, holding five class meetings, and two public services on each Sabbath, a prayer meeting on Wednesday evening, and preaching on Friday evening of every week, without any aid, outside of their own people, except that a missionary from one of the other missions in the territory preached to them once on each alter- nate Sabbath during the winter and until our own missionary, Reverend James Wheeler, came out with his family in May, 1844.
"Esquire Gray Eyes, an ordained local preacher, a good speaker, was the most active and zealous of their preachers and exhorters, and, though not at all edu- cated, was very useful and influential. At the close of one of the meetings in January, 1844, he said to some of the brethren. 'I want to build a meeting house.' Said one 'You have no house for yourself yet;' for he was living in a camp. 'I want a house for my soul first,' he replied, and he persuaded the men of the nation, whether church or not, to meet together in the woods, ent down trees, hew logs and haul them to a place near Mr. Kerr's present residence. The United States government had not paid the Wyandots for their homes in Ohio, and they had no money to pay for lumber or work; so they made clapboards for the roof, and puncheons for the floor and seats. In the latter part of April we worshipped in the house, the minister standing on a strip of floor laid at the opposite end of the building from the door, and the people sitting on sleepers not yet covered. On the first Sabbath in June, the first quarterly meeting in the territory, for the Wyandots. was held in the house, it being finished. The missionary was present, having arrived a few days previous.
"Those were haleyon days that I have thus hastily and imperfectly reviewed. Though we heard not 'the sound of the church-going bell,' our ears were not pained, nor our hearts grieved by the sound of the ax or gun on the Sabbath. Though our church was rude and the seats uncomfortable, yet they were always well filled with worshippers, and God was there. "
"LUCY B. ARMSTRONG."
CHAPTER IX.
OLD WYANDOTTE'S EARLY DAYS.
WHEN THE WHITE SETTLERS CAME-THE CATFISH HOTEL-RESI- DENTS IN 1855-6-ISAAC ZANE'S PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE-WHEN THE TOWNSITE BOOMERS CAME-THE TOWN ORGANIZATION-THE BIG TOWN LOT SALE-A RUSH OF POPULATION-FOUR BROAD AVENUES-A FAMOUS OLD HALL-WHEN WYANDOTTE BECAME A CITY-A FORBIDDING LOOKING PLACE-THOSE READY-MADE HOUSES-THE BLUE GOOSE SALOON -OFFICERS FOR TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS.
Among the nearly one hundred thousand of our population there linger a few men and women who, through the long years, have wit- nessed every stage of development: First, from an Indian village, of a few log cabins, to a frontier river town ; then, to an incorporated city of small proportions but of great aspirations; then, to a bustling emporium, that, in after years with its neighboring small eities and towns, was merged into Kansas City, Kansas, grown now to a metropolis of mag- nifieent proportions. .
Some of these pioneers were here before Minnesota avenue was marked out, when the slope from Fifth street down to the river was oe- cupied with meadows and cornfields, and beyond Fifth street were the woodlands. And the tales these pioneers tell of the early days pos- sess a charm that makes them delightful to hear.
From 1845 to the beginning of the year 1857 Wyandotte was simply a rallying point. Ilere the individual members of the Wyan- dot nation, whose farms were scattered over the reservation of thirty- nine square miles, gathered for consultation. Their council house stood on Fourth street near State avenue for many years, a small, one-story frame building devoid of architectural pretensions. A road starting or ending near the only store-a two-story frame that is still standing on the north side of Nebraska avenue between Third and Fourth streets -wound its way around the council-house, on past the Silas Armstrong homestead near the corner of Fifth and Minnesota, along the ridge to near the southern boundary of Huron Place; thence bending northward and passing to the north of the little frame church and parsonage of the South Methodist, located at the eorner of Seventh and Minnesota, it passed out through the reserve to the government road leading to Fort Leavenworth. The line of Minnesota avenue from Fifth to Seventh street was aeross a deep hollow, and was not opened for some years after
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the town was settled. The fill for these two bloeks was a heavy one, as can be seen by examining the extensive basements on the north side of the street.
There were many fairly extensive farms seattered through the reserve. The Mudeater place, now within the city limits, was in an ad- vanced state of cultivation, probably, as are the best-managed farms in the county today, and there were a number of others nearly as good.
WHEN THE WHITE SETTLERS CAME.
Moses Grinter was the first permanent white settler in Wyandotte county. Hle was sent from his home in Beardstown, Kentucky, by
MOSES GRINTER, FIRST WHITE SETTLER, AND HIS WIFE ANN GRINTER,
the United States government to locate a ferry across the Kansas river for a military road between Fort Leavenworth and Fort Scott. He arrived at Secondine on the Kansas river, about nine miles west of the Missouri line, in January, 1831. He established the ferry, married Anna Marshall, a Delaware Indian, bnilded a home, reared a family of ten children, and when he died, in 1878, his grandchildren numbered twenty-one and his great-grandchildren thirty-six. French traders, explorers and missionaries came and went, but for many years Moses Grinter was the only white man to dwell in the wilderness. Hiram M. Northrup and Charles B. Garrett, white men, came out from Ohio with the Wyandottes in 1843, and by marrying Wyandot women they were
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adopted into the tribe and were associated with the Indians in the early years of Kansas and of Wyandotte county. Mr. Northrup was a resident of Kansas City at the time the 1855 treaty was made, and was required to select his wife's allotment and to live on it. Naturally anxious to get as close to the ferry as possible, he made his selection for a building site not far from where the court house now stands, and brought men from Kansas City to clear away the brush. While thus engaged, Ike Brown rode up and told him that it was his aunt's claim, taking him to where four saplings had been cut and placed on the ground forming a square ; and this way of appropriating claims was the rule in the early days in Kansas. Mr. Northrup said he did not know of the prior claim, and would look elsewhere, but this was just what Ike did not want and he agreed to make it all right with his "aunt" for twenty dol- lars. ' Mr. Northrup said he knew it was a clear case of "hold-up" but he gave Ike the twenty dollars as the quickest way out of it, and this was what his part of the future metropolis cost him.
It was not until the Wyandots' reservation became subject to settlement, through the treaty of 1855, that the tide of emigration of white men set in. And then began the rush.
Thomas J. Barker, a native of Virginia, came up the Missouri river on a steamboat in April, 1855, joined Colonel Charles Manners' engi- neering corps as a cook and helped survey the line between Kansas and Nebraska sixty miles west from the Missouri river. When the work was finished he returned to Wyandotte, on December 27th of that year, and since that eventful day more than fifty-five years ago he has resided there.
THE CATFISH HOTEL.
Mr. Barker began his long career as a citizen of Wyandotte as a cook for the Indian, Ike Brown, whose log house had been converted into a boarding house. He was assisted by two Indian women, Mary Spy- buck and Susan Nofat. The regular boarders at that time-January, 1856-were Henry McMullen, Emmet MeMullen, Edwin T. Vedder, George Horworth, L. A. McLane, Elisha Diefendorf and several others, who worked in the surveyor general's office. Numerous transients, most of whom were Indians who had received annnities and had plenty of money, stopped at the hotel. It was a four room log cabin, located where A. R. James and Son now have a coal and feed establishment at the southwest corner of State avenue and Fourth street. The ice in the Kansas river broke up early that spring (1856) and shoved out on the shore numerous catfish which were cooked for the boarders. From that the boarding house took the name of the "Catfish Hotel."
The surveyor general's office was a log house in Fourth street just north of where it is crossed by State avenue, and was owned by J. D. Brown.
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HISTORY OF WYANDOTTE COUNTY
THE RESIDENTS IN 1855-6.
Mr. Barker gives the following as those who were here in 1855 and 1856.
Surveyor General Calhoun was away much of the time-when offi- cially at Wyandotte he stopped at the Gillis House in Kansas City, Missouri.
Robert L. Ream, chief clerk, with his family, lived with Silas Armstrong.
George C. Van Zandt and family lived in Isaac Zane's ("Blind Isaac") one story brick house, near the intersection of Seventeenth street and Haskell avenue.
Oliver Diefendorf and wife stopped with D. V. Clement in a two story frame house located about four hundred feet north of Virginia avenne and Sixth street.
Colonel William Wear lived in a tent near Jersey ereek between Fourth and Fifth streets.
Samuel Parsons boarded with Joel Walker on the northwest eorner of Third street and Washington avenue.
Governor William Walker lived in a one story frame and log house on the west side of Halloek avenue about four hundred feet north of Virginia avenue.
Joel Walker lived on the northwest corner of Third street and Washington avenue and there was a cabin about two hundred feet southeast of his residence where his negro man and wife stayed.
Matthew R. Walker lived in a one story brick house where the Baptist Theological Seminary now stands.
Isaiah Walker lived between Ninth and Tenth streets near Free- man avenue.
Silas Armstrong lived in an eight room, two story briek house on the northwest corner of Fifth street and Minnesota avenue.
Luey B. Armstrong lived near Sixth street, extended, between Walker and New Jersey avenue.
IIannah Armstrong lived near Eighth street about where St. Margaret's hospital now stands.
Mathias Splitlog lived near Barnett avenue and Dugarro avenue.
Clay Long lived between Thirteenth and Fourteenth on the south side of Tauromee avenue.
Isaac Brown's home was on the southeast corner of Fourth street and State avenue.
Matilda Hick's was on the north side of the Quindaro Boulevard between Eighth and Ninth street.
George I. Clark's home was three hundred feet north of the Quin- claro boulevard between Seventeenth and Eighteenth streets.
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HISTORY OF WYANDOTTE COUNTY
Isaac Zane ("Blind Isaac") lived near where Seventeenth street and Haskell avenne eross.
Jared S. Dawson on the southeast corner of Cleveland and Tenth streets.
Charles B. Garrett on the east side of Seventh street, one hundred and twenty feet north of Chelsea Park "L" road.
D. V. Clement on the west side of Sixth street four hundred feet north of Virginia avenue.
"Irish" Mary near Third street and State avenne.
H. M. Northrup lived in Minnesota avenne, near the south side, between Seventh and Eighth streets.
Lucy Charloe lived about Fifteenth street and Parallel avenne.
John Barnett lived near Seventeenth street and Reynolds avenue.
There was a blacksmith shop near Third and Nebraska avenue. The Wyandot Indian council house was on the east side of Fourth street, between State and Nebraska avenues. There was a small eabin on bank of the river at the foot of Ann avenne where ferrymen stopped. These houses with the surveyor general's office and "Catfish Hotel" were all the houses and the families of those mentioned as ocenpying them, were all the inhabitants, that were at Wyandotte in the winter of 1855-6. The surveyor general's office was moved to Wyandotte in Angust, 1855, and from there to Lecompton, in 1857.
ISAAC ZANE'S PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE.
Isaac Zane, whom the people of that day knew as "Blind Isaae," was a character of Wyandotte. Ile was a brother of Mrs. Brown, wife of the proprietor of a hotel. He was an inventive genius and before he became blind had accumulated a fortune in lands and other property. He had been working a perpetual motion machine for seven years when Thomas J. Barker was employed at one dollar a day to eut patterns for the mechanism. Mr. Barker's principal duty was to direet Mr. Zane's hands in making the patterns. Ile worked with patience for several days, and Mr. Zane was so well pleased that he wanted Mr. Barker to go to Washington with him to assist in getting a patent. He promised Mr. Barker a present of a quarter of a million dollars. Mr. Barker, however, induced the inventor to wait until the next fall, and he sug- gested that if the inventor took care of the property he then had he would have a fortune without the perpetual motion machine. Mr. Zane took the advice. Then he had Mr. Barker at work assisting him to find a vein of coal in Wyandotte which he said he discovered before he lost his eyesight. After that Mr. Barker went to work chopping wood for Isaac Brown on the present site of the Kansas City, Kansas, High School.
Good old father Barnett lived in the Sonth Methodist parsonage,
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near Seventh street and Minnesota avenue, and for some time had served the Wyandots as the representative of his branch of the ehureh. After the town started, as it was the only place of worship, the new comers and the Wyandots united, and on Sundays the little church was thronged. To most of the congregation English was the native tongue, but not to all. Silas Armstrong would usually aseend the pulpit and act as interpreter for the few Wyandots present who were unable to understand.
WHEN THE TOWNSITE BOOMERS CAME.
In the spring of 1857 a steamboat that ploughed its way up the Missouri river from St. Louis, deposited a lot of Yankees and eastern men on the levee at Kansas City. Easily they might have been taken for tenderfeet, but they were plucky. They had gold in their pockets, and then they were looking for a place to build a town. But choosing a site for a town was not an easy matter. Dr. J. P. Root and Thomas F. Eldridge were sent out as scouts for the Yankees. They traveled the north side of the Kaw river from its mouth to Lawrence searching for a site for the "future great" city. Finally they chose the rolling hills back from the Missouri river as the ideal place.
"The great cities on the American continent grow westward from the water courses," they reasoned. They crossed the Kansas river by ferry and hurried through the thick growth of timber in the bottoms to Kansas City to tell their friends. That night-it was late in Mareh- a meeting was held in the Gillis hotel on the levee near the foot of Main street.
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