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Kansas Historical Notes - November 1938

(Vol. 7, No. 4), pages 431 to 434
Transcribed by lhn;
digitized with permission of the Kansas Historical Society.


Oregon Trail Memorial Association officials, headed by Dr. Howard R. Driggs, of New York, president, were in Kansas August 18 and 19, 1938, assisting in the dedication of Pony Express trail markers at Seneca and Marysville. On August 18 two markers were presented to the Horton-Kennekuk Historical Society. The society plans to place one of them on Highway No. 159, south of Horton, at a point where the old express route intersects the present highway, and the other on the site of the old express station in Kennekuk. At Seneca trail association officials assisted in the dedication of a marker erected at Fourth and Main streets on the site of the Seneca Pony Express station. On August 19 plaques were placed near Marysville; one a mile west and the other two miles east of the city on the old trail adjacent to U. S. Highway No. 36. John G. Ellenbecker, Marysville, is Kansas regent of the association and writes that Kansas may use about 130 of the plaques before the trail through Kansas is considered adequately marked.

The Chase County Historical Society held its annual business meeting in Cottonwood Falls, September 10, 1938, and elected W. N. Oles, president; George Starkey, vice-president; Mrs. Helen Austin, secretary, and S. H. Baker, treasurer. The following township directors were named for three-year terms: Mrs. Clara Hildebrand, Matfield township; Edwin Jackson, Cottonwood township, and T. R. Wells, Diamond Creek township. Mr. Oles, the new president, succeeds Claude W. Hawkins, of Clements, who has been head of the society since its organization in December, 1934. Dedication of a tablet in the Kirwin city park for old Fort Kirwin and stockade was a feature of the old settlers' program held there on October 4, 1938. The marker was provided by the Phebe Dustin chapter of the D. A. R.

At the closing session of the thirty-eighth annual two-day reunion of the Twentieth Kansas Regiment Association held in Topeka, October 9 and 10, 1938, C. E. Steele, of Pomona, was elected president and L. E. Coffield, Yates Center, was elected vice-president. Reelected officers were: Harry W. Brent, Topeka, secretary-treasurer; and Jerry C. Springstead, Topeka, historian. At a meeting of the Riley County Historical Society held in Manhattan, October 10, 1938, Mrs Medora Flick was elected president;

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Mrs. F. L. Murdock, vice-president; Mrs. G. H. Failyer, secretary; Mrs. Caroline Smith, treasurer, and G. H. Failyer, custodian. The board of directors includes C. M. Correll, Grace Given, Mrs. Loyal Payne, W. D. Haines, C. W. Emmons, Mrs. Flick, Mrs. Murdock, Mrs. Failyer, and Mrs. Smith.

Swedish history and Enterprise was the program theme for the Dickinson County Historical Society's meeting in Enterprise, October 21, 1938. At the business meeting presided over by W. A. Stacey, of Abilene, president of the society, Mrs. A. B. Seelye was reelected first vice-president and Mrs. H. M. Howard was reelected secretary. Terms of the other officers did not expire this year. Mrs. M. Y. Griffin, Merriam, was elected president of the Shawnee Mission Indian Historical Society at the annual meeting October 24, 1938. Mrs. Griffin succeeds Mrs. Carl Harder, Merriam. Other offIcers include: Mrs. Jack Weems Quarrier, Sixty-first street and Del Mar, vice-president; Mrs. A. V. Fuller, Merriam, recording secretary; Mrs J. G. Schell, Merriam, corresponding secretary; Mrs. J. C. Hill, Merriam, treasurer; Mrs. X. O. Meyer, Olathe, historian; Mrs. John Sanders, Shawnee, custodian; Mrs. Ross Smith, Merriam, parliamentarian, and Frank C. Wornall, 3810 Warwick boulevard, supervisor. Mrs. John W. Sanders presented Gwendolynne Jones, a member of the freshman class of Olathe High School, $10 as first prize in the essay contest, "Why Is the Old Shawnee Mission of Interest to the People of Johnson County and the State of Kansas?" Betty J. Smith, Shawnee Mission Rural High School, was awarded a framed etching as a special prize for her entry.

Fifty-year residents of Kiowa county were special guests at the second annual jubilee sponsored by the Kiowa County Historical Society in Greensburg, October 25, 1938. At the society's business meeting the following officers were reelected: Bruce Kennedy, Mullinville, president; J. H. Olinger, Greensburg, first vice-president; Frank E. Dowell, Wellsford, second vice-president; Sam Booth, Belvidere, third vice-president; Mrs. Benj. 0. Weaver, Mullinville, secretary, and Mrs. Chas. T. Johnson, Greensburg, treasurer. Larned City Guide, the first of the American Guide Series to be issued by the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration of Kansas, was released in October, 1938. Featured in the illustrated pamphlet of thirty-four pages were a historical sketch of the city, general information concerning the Larned of today, a

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city map and suggested environs tours to points of interest. The Larned Guide was published by The Tiller and Toiler of Larned. Copy was prepared by the Federal Writers under the supervision of Harold Evans, state supervisor.

The Historical Records Survey of Kansas, a division of the Women's and Professional Projects of the Works Progress Administration, is compiling bibliographies of historical materials in the county archives of Kansas. When completed this Inventory of the County Archives of Kansas will number 105 volumes, one for each county in the state.

The Kansas survey was started in February, 1936, under the direction of A. Q. Miller. Since October, 1936, Harold J. Henderson has been state director.

At present the survey is working in approximately sixty-five counties. The Johnson, Greenwood and Montgomery county volumes have already been published. The Seward county volume is scheduled for publication this fall. Averaging 146 mimeographed pages the publications sketch the counties' historical background and describe in detail the organization and functions of the offices whose records they list. The inventories are guides to the location of all extant official county archives.

The Kansas Historical Society receives copies of these Kansas county inventories for filing and has been designated a depository for copies of all similar publications issued by the survey, which also operates in other states.

Dr. Robert Taft, of the University of Kansas, whose lectures with lantern slides featured annual meetings of the Kansas Historical Society in 1933, on early Kansas scenes and persons, and in 1937 on frontier artists, is author of Photography and the American Scene, published by The Macmillan Company of New York in October, 1938. Kansas photographs reproduced were the Historical Society's daguerreotype of a Free-State battery taken in Topeka in 1856 pictured before and after its restoration by Doctor Taft, and Alexander Gardner's photographs of Fort Harker, a bull train crossing the Smoky Hill river near Ellsworth, the main street of Ellsworth, a ranch house of central Kansas, and laying track twenty miles west of Hays, all taken in October, 1867. The volume contains 546 pages with over 300 photographic illustrations. Doctor Taft wrote two articles concerning the Historical Society's Gardner stereoscopic photographs which were published in Volumes III and VI of The Kansas Historical Quarterly.

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Life and Times of Mother Bridget Hayden, by W. W. Graves, has been published recently by the St. Paul Journal. Mother Bridget came to present Neosho county in October, 1847, to assist in a school for Indian girls at Osage Mission. In 1870 she opened St. Ann's Academy for young women and governed it until her death on January 23, 1890. The 324-page illustrated book is No. 8 in the Graves Historical Series.