Light Up The Sky

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1 A raw, wild prairie, a Boston benefactor, and a locust plague . . . Page 1

2 A big celebration, Mr. Peabody, and a struggle with sin . . . Page 13

3 Keep to the roads, Mennonites, and Mr. Peabody again . . . Page 23

4 All the fun we can make ourselves . . . Page 31

5 A great fire, a president stops by, and the editor recalls the war . . . Page 41

6 A state fair? Really? And Chautauquas . . . Page 51

7 Everyone needs a good windmill––and a stock tank . . . Page 59

8 What’s not to like about silkworms? . . . Page 65

9 The Bechtel boys are making good . . . Page 71

10 That second railroad and why is it so hard to make electricity . . . Page 75

11 Our benefactor, Mr. Peabody, 1831-1905 . . . Page 83

12 Joe Young, champion of his age . . . Page 87

13 Two wars, a pandemic, and the death of William Morgan . . . Page 93

14 Auto fever and the best dirt highway in Kansas . . . Page 103

15 Peabody gets an oil patch . . . Page 117

16 We do like our fireworks . . . Page 129

17 The old soldiers and that other holiday . . . Page 141

18 So many ways to lose life and limb . . . Page 147

19 How many doctors are enough? . . . Page 153

20 Rain, snow, and drought . . . Page 159

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Chapters


21 Down on the Doyle––fun, fish, and floods . . . Page 165

22 Here is our holy church, where faith and love abide . . . Page 173

23 How many banks are enough? . . . Page 181

24 All the famous people have been here . . . Page 189

25 Frederic Remington, the “holiday rancher.” . . . Page 197

26 Fragrant alleys, suffrage, and oysters from Maine . . . Page 203

27 Bicycles, moving pictures, and a legendary marshal . . . Page 211

28 A new century, with all its promise . . . Page 219

29 An orphan train, a new library, and who will drive the fire truck? . . . Page 231

30 A new editor, a first-class movie theater, and a high school . . . Page 239

31 Hard times coming, the Depression and work relief . . . Page 253

32 Peabody went to World War II and the war came to Peabody . . . Page 261

33 Post-war Peabody had everything . . . Page 271

34 No more train trips. But there’s bowling. And we are champions. . . . Page 283

35 Making spirits bright––Christmas . . . Page 297

36 Agriculture in all its forms . . . Page 303

37 A football comeback, Joe Young Day, and tourists . . . 313

38 Promoting Peabody, the internet arrives and so does COVID-19 . . . 323

Appendices:

Peabody Businesses, 1881, 1971, 2021 (Page 341) • Civil War Veterans (Page 344)

Chronology (Page 347) • End Notes (Page 349) • Acknowledgements (Page 374)

The Author (Page 376)

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Cemetery

Top, until the 1930s when the modern US50 was built, the road to Florence (and then Emporia) went north of town on two different routes. Going west, 60th Street was the road to Walton and Newton. There were sidings at Braddock and Horner, as well as Peabody, to load livestock onto the Santa Fe. Below, part of Peabody Township in 1921. The site of the Doyle Valley water mill can be seen in Section 2 east of Peabody. The Rock Island/Country Club lake is not shown, but would be in Section 17.


Chapter 1

A raw, wild prairie, a Boston benefactor, and a locust plague

The first night, we camped at a little place this side of Cottonwood Falls . . . They told us there was no use going any farther west, there was nothing but a desert . . . - William C. Nye

If you lived in Wisconsin immediately after the Civil War, you would have heard the stories about Kansas, the state that the railroads were just then pushing through and opening up to settlement. If you lived in any of the eastern states you would have seen the boomer editions of Kansas newspapers that were sent east in great bundles, urging people to come to the land where the climate was always mild, where rains came on schedule, and where crops grew themselves. The railroads were also heavily promoting the new lands, both in this country and in Europe.

On July 16, 1870 an article appeared in the Wisconsin State Register, in Portage, Wisconsin, announcing the proposed emigration to Kansas of a large colony. Placed by Frederick H. Hopkins, the article said the colony would be formed upon the principles of morality and temperance. Only those people of good character would be invited to join. “No person of disreputable character or vicious habits will be allowed to become a member of the colony.”1

In Wisconsin in those years after the war, Hopkins and others knew that the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway was just then pushing southwest through Kansas, building track across unbroken prairie as it headed for California. That meant there would be opportunities for new towns and for farms and other forms of commerce. Many of these men had just come through the war. They were not afraid of hardship and they recognized opportunity when they saw it.

Thus it was that in late September of 1870, A.S. Howard, William C. Nye, and Henry No person of disreputable character Beach threw a few belongings into satchels and or vicious habits will be allowed to boarded a train for Kansas, not knowing for become a member of the colony.

sure what they would find. Hopkins would come later.

As Nye recalled many years later, “The Santa Fe ran only to Emporia. I left my wife there while I came on . . . with four others in a covered wagon. The first night, we camped at a little place this side of Cottonwood Falls . . . They told us there was no use going any farther west, there was nothing but a desert, but we went anyway. We followed the line that was staked out for the railroad and when we came to this place where we thought a town ought to be we just staked one out.”2

He added, “It was a raw, wild prairie then and there wasn’t a house on the townsite or for ten miles around. There wasn’t much here but prairie dogs. We camped a few days in a wagon the other side of the Doyle. The five of us (in the party were John Cone, president of the party, and Charles Bradley, its general agent) formed a company and began laying out the town. All I had . . . was a little pocket compass.”

Marion County would have been almost all undisturbed prairie when the first EuropeanAmericans arrived. The prairie grasses––the big and little bluestems––would have been four to six feet tall in October. There would have been few trees and nearly all of them would have been along the creeks and in draws where they were somewhat protected from prairie fires. There would have 1


been cottonwood, willow, hackberry, and a few burr oak trees, among others. Doyle Creek, the Cottonwood River, and other streams would have run relatively clear, because there had been no farmers’ plows to disturb the soil.3

There would have been no standing bodies of water except for a few sloughs and marshes. Farm ponds would not come for a few years. There were lots of prairie chickens, but there were no house sparrows, ring-necked pheasants, or starlings in the state. Those were introduced in 1874, 1906, and around 1930, respectively.

The great herds of bison that were historically in central Kansas had been gone from the area only a few years––killed off or driven further west. Here and there the pioneers would have found buffalo wallows, shallow depressions where the great beasts drank and bathed.

There was apparently at least one person of European descent living near Peabody when the Wisconsonites arrived. W.C. Coble is described in Marion County histories as an “escaped Rebel conscript” from North Carolina, living two miles east of town, where he herded cattle. Having no desire to fight for the South, he had come in 1864.

The pioneers were not the first people to see this country, of course. Native Americans had roamed over it for centuries, using it for hunting grounds. The pioneers were not even the first men of European descent. Here and there across the landscape in 1870 were large stacks of loose hay, put there by cattlemen who had recently started driving longhorn cattle up from Texas to graze on the Kansas prairie. The hay stacks would sustain the cattle through the winter.

U.S. government surveyors had been through central Kansas in 1857, marking off the prairie into mile-square sections so that it could be sold and settled. Up on the bluff overlooking what would be the townsite, the new arrivals found a surveyor’s mark, and they used it as a guide to mark off the prospective town. It was not the first town in the county. Marion Centre was established in 1860 and had quickly claimed the title of county seat. Florence was platted in December 1870. Hillsboro would not be founded until 1879.

At the Peabody site, the initial party of travelers was joined within weeks by a second group of Wisconsonites. It included Hopkins, Henry Barrows, W.S. Jones, J.D. Milliken, J.D. Searles, C.H. Parkton, George H. Cooper, and Simon Kramer. That made more than a dozen men who were ready to build a town.4 Some of them would have also been accompanied by their wives. The first woman to come to live on the townsite is believed to have been Henry Beach’s wife, Maria. Maria and Henry had two children, Arthur and Estella, both under the age of four. A third child, Will, was born the year after they arrived.

The men immediately set to erecting rudimentary frame buildings, since winter was coming on. Travelers who arrived before the end of the year found a stable, a post office, and a house here and there. The first building was apparently a drug and grocery store built by Erasmus Moore. It was followed soon after by a boarding house erected by Simon Kramer. The fledgling town was named 2


Coneburg, for John Cone, president of the little company. Those first buildings seem to have been built near what is now Fourth and Fifth and Sycamore, making that the hub of the new town.5

The lumber for the first buildings had to be hauled from Emporia that winter. Jacob Keller brought much of it. Many years later he told the Peabody Gazette-Herald editor Oscar Stauffer, “All that winter I hauled freight from Emporia to Peabody at about seventy-five cents a hundred pounds. I used a team of horses and wagon and there were no bridges. We had to ford the creeks and I tell you, the uphill pull out of some of those creeks was very difficult. All during that winter when I was making those trips I slept out in the open, carrying blankets with me. But the open life agreed with me and I got fat.”6

A traveler who visited the townsite that December described his experience in an article in the Peabody Graphic many years later. He said that John Cone had an office in Emporia’s Buckeye House, where he promoted settlement at Peabody. “He said they had four townships that they had obtained from the government on which to plant a colony.” For a fee of $25, the colony would purportedly hold 160 acres for a prospective settler. The writer, who went only by “B.E.,” set out to visit the colony before paying anything. He said a horse-drawn hack made the trip from Emporia twice a week, but he chose to walk to save money.

Arriving on the townsite he found three or four buildings. “One of them was a stable which belonged to a firm known as Green & Harris where those who hauled lumber and provisions from Emporia kept their teams. Another building belonged to Mr. Kramer who kept boarders. A short way from Kramer’s was a store where drugs and groceries were sold by Mr. Moor (Moore) . . . Mrs. John Lands occupied a dwelling near the store and kept a few boarders. Mr. Nye lived in the west part of town . . . There was also a small building about 10x12 used as a post office. This was all of what was then called Coneburg.”7

That December, Hopkins and Nye registered the town site with the federal land office at Augusta. Some of the pioneers went back to civilization for the winter, but many others hunkered down on the site. Fortunately, the winter was mild. Then, as soon as the frost was out of the ground in the spring the settlers––those few who had teams and plows––were digging or plowing small plots of prairie to plant enough corn to feed themselves and their livestock, and for gardens.8 As the weather warmed, they erected a number of additional buildings, including two more boarding houses, a lumber yard, two grocery stores, a dry goods store, a drug store, a boot and shoe store, an agricultural implement house, and a blacksmith shop.9

The blacksmith proved to be an aggravation to the settlers. The town’s first history, written in 1876 described him this way, “About Jan. 1, 1871, the little community suffered a calamity in the coming to it from Emporia of a hefty individual by the name of M.R. Moser, who boasted of two things; that he was the best blacksmith in Kansas––and two, that he never dickered with a man without cheating him. This Moser built a little 10x16 blacksmith shop where he used to shoe horses at $5 a span, and sharpen plow shares at 75 cents each, in which way hundreds of dollars of the scanty funds of the new settlers made their way into the plethoric pockets of the redoubtable Moser.”

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Another pioneer settler, Helen Lyon, arrived at Coneburg in April 1871, taking a boat down the Mississippi from St. Paul, Minnesota, and then a train from Quincy, Illinois, to Emporia. She was joining relatives already at the townsite. She was to help them claim ownership of a tract of land by living on it. At Emporia, she boarded a stagecoach for Coneburg with one other passenger, Hannah Crawford, a hat maker. “She seems rather pessimistic, but I am glad for company,” Lyon noted in her journal. At Florence, the stagecoach broke down crossing a stream during a downpour. “Miss Crawford constantly bewails our fate,” Lyon wrote. The two finish the trip in a lumber wagon, arriving in Coneburg at 11 p.m. At the boarding house, all the rooms are taken. When one finally opens up at 4 a.m. Miss Lyon falls asleep on a bed, only to be awakened by a multitude of–– bedbugs. The boarding house operator asserted “You must have brought 'em with you.” Lyon confided to her journal, “A feeling of homesickness has come over me.”

The settlers needed food to get by until their crops matured that first year. One of the Wisconsin men, Duncan McKercher, went back to Kansas City that spring of 1871 and bought a rail carload of potatoes and brought it to the end of the rail line at Florence. “The potatoes . . . were a godsend to many a poor, hungry family and lonely bachelor homesteader,” Thomas C. Thoburn, one of the first Peabody residents, remembered in 1901 in Despite the energetic start, townan article written for the Gazette.10

building did not go smoothly. That first Thoburn said garden produce did well that spring, claim-jumping occurred on the first year on the townsite. “During the long townsite, followed by in-fighting among summer everything was done to make ready for some of the pioneers.

the coming winter. There were wells to dig, stones to haul, houses to fix up to keep out the cold.” People were all in the same situation, he noted. “We were all new alike, and all facing a new situation.” Three-fourths of the settlers had no teams of horses or cattle. As soon as the railroad arrived, wagons and farm implements were shipped in. “. . . the man who owned a yoke of cattle and a wagon was counted independent,” he said.11

The Coneburg Town Company organized on March 31, 1871 and the plat of the town was recorded on April 10 at the land office in Augusta. Despite the energetic start, town-building did not go smoothly. That first spring, claim-jumping occurred on the townsite, followed by in-fighting among some of the pioneers.

“B.E.” wrote many years later in the Peabody Graphic, about the trouble that spring. “. . . R.O. Nelson, who lived in something that looked like a hen coop or a house sunk into the ground to the eaves, and had been gaining a precarious living at carpentering, jumped Commissioner Bradley’s claim just west of town. After this, claim-jumping became general and many of those who had paid the commissioners’ fee and entered their land and gone back after their families . . . found someone living on their claim when they returned.”

The Wisconsin group quickly splintered and a new group spun off from part of the old, the North Peabody Town Company. A legal battle ensued among various factions. And then another option developed that spring of 1871. Thomas M. Potter, who was a school administrator and teacher at Marion, acquired the half-section of land immediately south of Coneburg (an area from the current library building south to the other side of Doyle Creek) and invited settlers onto it. It didn’t take long for business people in Coneburg to begin to pick up and move to the new site, primarily because that land had a clear title.12

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Chapter 4

All the fun we can make ourselves

The past week has been a continuous sleighing picnic for everybody who has anything that will slide. - Gazette, December 17, 1885

Some of the little senior and junior boys indulged in a squabble over a game of ‘keeps’ the other day. Many naughty expressions were used and many ugly things said. In consequence the game of marbles has been prohibited on the school grounds. - Gazette, November 20, 1890

It requires about one hundred and seventy men and boys to stand on the depot platform when a train goes by. It seems to need about that number for a train to pass this station successfully. - Gazette, October 12, 1877

A town can’t live on commerce alone. It needs social life to make it a community. Peabody had a robust social and cultural life in its early years because people created it themselves. They organized literary societies, county fairs, and drama productions. They gathered in large groups for picnics in the country in someone’s “grove.” They organized and supported churches and schools, met their friends at the library, fished in the creek and went to the occasional circus and religious revival. If something more was needed, they went down to the depot and helped the trains go through.

If you had a craving, Henry Woolheater would sell you a “Belle of Peabody” cigar or some butterscotch candy at his “cigar and confectionary” store.1 You could go to the City Bakery, the Star Bakery or one of the frequent church socials for ice cream.2

Musical groups formed and reformed with some frequency in those early decades. Brass bands were a big deal. They were loud and they were fun and you couldn’t have a parade without one. In July 1883 the Gazette bragged, “Peabody boasted of two excellent cornet bands on the Fourth. The Mechanics Band, comprising twelve pieces . . . was in splendid playing order. The other band . . . the Peabody Cornet Band; they have been practicing every day for some weeks and when they opened out at daybreak on the Fourth with ‘Hail Columbia,’ it was indeed a treat.”3 The Mechanics Band was composed of, well, mechanics. They were mostly all employees of Rockwell & Sexton, the local windmill manufactory.4

Stringed instruments also had their advocates. “The denizens of the Methodist parsonage were regaled last Saturday night near low twelve, by the Peabody String Band, for the third time, with excellent music, for which we return thrice hearty thanks.”5 The editor’s family got a visit as well. “The Ladies Mandolin Club gave us a delightful serenade last Friday night. The bright clear moonlight and the sweet strains of mandolin and guitars were delicious.”6

If you wanted more of a martial flavor to your music, that was available, too. “The concert and entertainment by the Peabody Military Band last Friday night and its repetition last night were two musical and literary occasions long to be remembered . . . the appearance of the ladies’ mandolin club called forth showers of applause. The recitations given were excellent . . . The Military Band is in better shape than it ever was before and will win new laurels this year.7 “The Peabody Cornet band received this week a piece of new music, composed by Mr. Warner who is soon to settle among us, which he had named the ‘Peabody March’ in appreciation of the many friends he found here on his recent visit.”8

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Music added a special quality to any day, noted the editor of the Peabody Graphic, a newspaper which had started up in 1884 in competition to the Gazette. “. . . a good band is almost a necessity in any town as we all know how pleasant it is to walk down street in the evening and hear beautiful strains of music floating on the air.”9 There would have been other strains of music on the air as well, in those early days when people opened their windows for ventilation. In 1883 there were 19 pianos and 57 pump organs in town, said the Gazette editor, who had taken his own count.10

In the beginning, Peabody did not have large halls where music and other events could be presented. “If there is something more than another that Peabody stands in need of, it is a public hall,” said the Gazette in 1877, when the town was barely seven years old. “At present, the only place that exhibitions, concerts, etc. can be given is at one of the churches, and for all classes of entertainment these places cannot be had. It would be a The Florentine Mandolin Club, in the 1890s, with guitars, violins, and good investment for somebody mandolins. Top row, from left: Charles Vaughn, Lizzie Paine Jackson, to put up a place of this kind.”

Harry Heter, Mary Worthington Tibbins, Louise Dorley, Jessie Guinn. Just a year later, the editor’s Center row: Cora Brown, teacher, and Clifford Furst. Front row: Bessie Guinn Burton, Jennie Hunt Westerhouse, Della Wertz, and wish was fulfilled, with the Freda Gibney. opening of Bragunier’s Hall.11 C.W. Bragunier was a local dry goods merchant. The hall was located in what is now Santa Fe Park. Said the Gazette, “It has a fine stage with drop curtain, scenery, and everything complete. It is well-finished throughout, and a decided ornament to the city, being as it is, one of the finest halls in the state. Mr. Bragunier is deserving of the thanks of this entire community for his enterprise, and all will be pleased to learn that it bids fair to prove a profitable investment for him.” It was just a few steps from the Santa Fe tracks, and when trains passed through, the building must have fairly vibrated.

If you had gone down to Bragunier’s Hall in 1881 you would have heard the Overture from The Bohemian Girl opera on violin and piano. There was also the Davis Family, which came with a “ladies’ full cornet band” and also a “ladies’ string band.” The ladies also played tunes on “genuine ox horns.” The Kendall Company acting troupe presented “Jane Eyre” and “Cinderella” that year. The Gazette approved. “. . . it is rare indeed that our people have the opportunity to hear such excellent renditions of the great masters . . .” The hall was also used for lectures, political meetings, and church dinners.

And then two years after it opened, that venue had competition. The editor noted, “W.D. Butler is about to erect a fine stone store building, double size for his large and increasing (hardware) business. The upper story will be an opera house––something our city badly needs.”

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Butler Hall was actually not built over the hardware store, but in a separate building on the northwest corner of Second and Sycamore (now an empty lot). It had a large auditorium with a stage that had backdrops and a curtain painted by the Kansas City Scenic Co. It was used for many years for musical events, dances, lectures, and more unusual presentations. One such event, put on by the ladies of the The greatest event of the Presbyterian church, featured local residents posing as season in this city was the grand various characters, such as a mermaid, Siamese twins, Alexander the Great, Little Bo-Peep, and the pirates dress carnival last Friday evening at the skating rink. Captain Kidd and Blue Beard.12

In November 1885 a third hall opened in Peabody. “The dedication of the new hall of Covenant Lodge No. 113 (Independent Order of Odd Fellows) of this city took place yesterday afternoon with imposing ceremonies.” There was a grand parade with a band, the ceremony itself, supper and a social. (The Odd Fellows would build a larger hall in 25 years, but for now, this was their home).13

At this point Peabody had three public halls, but it still wanted another. Two of them were fairly small, and Butler Hall seemed to be booked much of the time. In addition to stage presentations, Butler Hall acquired an additional use in 1894 when it began to be used as a roller skating rink.14 The Gazette editor was heartily in favor. “This will furnish our young folks with a healthful way of spending their evenings.” It was a hit from the beginning. Within two months the rink was doubled in size. Celebrity skaters were brought in. “Mr. Harnit, of Emporia, the champion one-mile skater of Kansas, and Harry Ryner, of Cincinnati, Ohio, the finest fancy figure skater, were entertaining our citizen skaters at the rink on Tuesday evening.”

“The greatest event of the season in this city was the grand dress carnival, last Friday evening at the skating rink. The costumes were selected with excellent taste. The large extension to the rink makes it a fine room for skating . . . and the house was well-filled. Music by our city band.”

The editor of the Graphic expressed measured approval. Noting that the proprietors were clearing $12 to $15 a day, he observed, “It is probably a muscle-developing and healthful amusement, but we wonder what the young people who patronize the rink would say if they were called upon to contribute fifteen dollars a day to the library and reading room . . .?”

There were also rinks at Florence Butler/Sawtelle Hall, at Second and Sycamore, had a roller and Marion, and no doubt Newton. It skating rink on its second floor. At left is the former Peabody was the thing to do, especially for Hotel building which burned in 1984. younger people. Interestingly, the rink was on the second floor of Butler Hall. There were businesses underneath it, including the medical offices of Drs. J.M. Miller and Linzie Morrill. The doctors would have been handy for the occasional broken wrists one floor above, if they could tolerate the noise overhead. “Mrs. John Lucas fell while skating in Roberts’ rink, Marion, Saturday evening, and sustained a severe fracture of the arm. Several others have been 33


injured in a similar manner,” the Gazette noted. There was also a carpentry shop below the rink, that of W.W. Oakes.

When W.D. Butler died in 1898 his hall became known as Sawtelle Hall, for the new owner, one of his employees. One of the last references to the rink was in 1909 when a children’s “masquerade skate” was held there. The boys’ prize, a knife, was won by Luther Marsh. The girls’ prize, a box of candy, was won by Lucy Underwood.

Today, as you pass by the former site of Butler/Sawtelle Hall on the northwest corner of Second and Sycamore––torn down in 1920 and now marked only by a low stone wall––imagine roller skaters in 1880s attire, making long, graceful, rumbling ovals above your head, around and around. The hall also served as a venue for political rallies and community dinners through the years. For many years the high school boys’ and girls’ teams played their Beyond Butler Hall, the belfry of the school building a block basketball games there.

away is visible. A fourth hall, erected by the Masonic lodge, and referred to as the “opera house,” went up in 1897 in the 200 block of Walnut. It became the premier hall because it was equipped with comfortable seating for 700 people, and it had new acetylene lights. The auditorium was on the ground floor, and the Masons and later the Eastern Star, used the upper floor.15 Opera houses could be quite ornate, but there’s no indication this one was. There was no elaborate description of it when it was built, and no photos have come to light of its interior. It was probably a comfortable, but basic auditorium.

Outdoor recreation had its place in Peabody, too. There were ice skating rinks from time to time, and occasionally there was skating on Doyle Creek. When there was sufficient snow, the sleighs were drawn out of barns and put into use.

“The snow of last week caused the lovers of sleighing to rejoice. A party of thirteen young ladies and gentlemen paid Mrs. Webster and Miss Freeland a visit and it was a surprise. The query as to how thirteen can be put in one sled box and how it can be managed by four horses, has been answered by that party.” - Gazette, March 16, 1882

“Since the young men have all gotten out their sleighs, the professor has been complaining of the girls being sleepy in school.” - Gazette, February 13, 1902

There were other entertainments as well. In 1883 a performer named LeRoy made a little money by walking a tightrope stretched from the tops of business buildings downtown. He took up two collections. Unfortunately, he was then arrested for not taking out a business license. City officials kept him overnight, but decided not to prosecute him and so he did one more walk, taking up a third collection. Said the Gazette, “He generally gets from five to ten dollars in each collection as he is a good performer.”16

In February of 1884 Peabody residents were invited to contribute to a national fund to pay for construction of a pedestal for the new Statue of Liberty, soon to be placed in New York Harbor. 34



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