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Kansas Historical Notes - August 1941

August 1941 (Vol. 10, No. 3), pages 334 to 335.
Transcribed by lhn;
digitized with permission of the Kansas Historical Society.

The American Association for State and Local History was organized in New York City December 27, 1940. Immediate plans of the association include the publication of a new edition of the Handbook of Historical Societies in the United States and Canada, also a number of bulletins on such subjects as the organization of a local historical society, how to plan such a society's program of activity, how to write a local history, how to restore and care for historic sites, and how to produce historical plays and pageants. The association plans to act as a clearing house for such activities. All local historical societies and individuals interested in history and its preservation are invited to become members. Both individuals and institutions are eligible to membership, and those who apply not later than October 8, 1941, will be listed as founding members. Applications for membership should be addressed to David C. Duniway, secretary-treasurer, Box 6101, Washington, D. C. C. C. Crittenden, of Raleigh, N. C., is president of the association.

The program for marking the historic sites of Kansas on the state's major highways has continued during the summer. Titles, location and dates of placing other Kansas Historical Markers not previously announced in this section include: Mission Neosho, on US-59 in Christian church grounds at Shaw, Neosho county, June, 1941; Fort Scott, on US-69 at the north city limits of Fort Scott, Bourbon county, June; Kansas City, Kan., on US-24 nine miles west of Kansas City, Wyandotte county, June; Lincoln County Indian Raids, on K-18 about two miles east of Lincoln, Lincoln county, June 1; Geodetic Center of North America, on US-24 and US-281 one-fourth mile north of Osborne, Osborne county, June 5; El Quartelejo, on US-83 ten miles north of Scott City, Scott county, June 8; Battle of Hickory Point; in roadside area bordering US-59 one-fourth mile north of Dunavant, Jefferson county, June 22; Waconda, or Great Spirit Spring, on US-24 about three miles east of Cawker City, Mitchell county, June 22; The Chisholm Trail, on US-81 1 1/2 miles north of Wichita, Sedgwick county, June 25; Geographic Center of the U. S., on US-36 one-third mile west of junction with US-281 (11/2 miles south of Lebanon), Smith county, June 29; Fort Hays, on US-40 at the east city limits of Hays, Ellis county, June 30; Indian Burial Pit, on US-40 four miles east of Salina, Saline county, July 4; Hollenberg Pony Express Station, on US-36

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one-half mile east of junction with K-15E (three miles south of Hanover), Washington county, July 13; Father Juan de Padilla and Quivira, on US-50N and US-77 one mile south of Herington, Dickinson county, July 20; Civil War Battle, Drum Creek Treaty, on US-160 about one mile east of Independence, Montgomery county, July 23; Chouteau's Island, on US-50 one mile west of Lakin, Kearny county, July 26.

In 1939 A. E. Gledhill placed a stone marker on the homestead of Joseph Gledhill, in southeast Smith county, commemorating the settlement of Twelve Mile Valley and the establishment in 1874 of the Twelve Mile post office in the home of Joseph Gledhill, who was a member of an Eastern colony which arrived in Kansas in 1871. The monument also marks the old Cawker City-Smith Center trail.

On the death of William L. Huggins May 23, 1941, Harry A. Wayman became president of the Lyon County Historical Society. Judge Huggins was a founder of the society and had served as president since its organization in 1937. Mr. Wayman held the office of Vice-president during the same period.

Carl Florell recently discovered what is believed to be an Indian burial pit on his farm southwest of Courtland in Republic county, according to the Courtland Journal of May 29, 1941. Investigation of a "rocky ledge" revealed a smooth circular stone floor about eleven feet in diameter with a pit in the center. The skeletal remains which were found were old and powdered at touch.

It was announced in the Kansas City (Mo.) Star, July 16, 1941, that an association has been formed to persuade congress to make a national park out of the Alexander Majors home and forty adjoining acres, located at 8145 State Line Road, just outside Kansas City. Alexander Majors, a member of the famous freighting firm, Russell, Majors and Waddell, built the house in 1856. Inventories of the archives of eleven counties of Kansas have been published by the Kansas Historical Records Survey since its inception in Kansas in 1936. Counties completed to date are: Bourbon, Cherokee, Franklin, Graham, Gray, Greenwood, Johnson, Montgomery, Osage, Seward and Shawnee. All historical materials in the courthouses of these counties, including the unpublished official documents and records, were sorted and inventoried as part of the nationwide Inventory of the County Archives series. The historical background of each county and a detailed statement of its organization and the functions of its agencies accompany the archival guides, all

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neatly mimeographed and bound. The survey is carried on by the Division of Community Service Programs of the Work Projects Administration. Mary Parkman, of Topeka, is state director and Harold J. Henderson, Topeka, is state supervisor. The Kansas Historical Society has sponsored the project since September 1, 1939.

On September 12, 1866, the University of Kansas opened its doors in Lawrence with three faculty members and forty-nine students in attendance: Not one of the students was ready for college work, and preparatory courses had to be arranged for all. In commemoration of the seventy-fifth birthday of the university, an illustrated 202-page history by Robert Taft, entitled Across the Years on Mount Oread, 1866-1941, was issued in the spring of 1941. The book, well edited and printed, consists of a series of historical sketches with pictures and photographs showing the growth of the school and its development into the state's foremost educational institution. The framers of the legislative act establishing the university cautiously provided for male and female branches. "The female branch may be taught exclusively by women, and buildings for that branch shall be entirely separate from the buildings of the male branch." From the beginning, however, at a time when coeducation was still in the experimental stage, all departments have been open to women as well as men.

Vanguards of the Frontier, by Everett Dick, was published in the spring of 194I by the D. Appleton-Century Company, of New York. The book is a companion volume to the author's Sod-House Frontier. In Vanguards, Dick has re-created the life of the forerunner of the homemaker in the vast territory west of the Mississippi river. He sought to discover the manner of living, dress, food, entertainment, and mode of life in general of the vanguards of the frontier-the hunters and trappers, the Indian agents and mountain men, the soldiers and missionaries, prospectors and express riders, bullwhackers and lumberjacks, gamblers and bandits, ranchers and cattlemen. Theirs was a life of hardship and reckless adventure, romanticized in fiction, but in reality close to the savagery of the human and animal inhabitants of the wilderness. This book offers adequate proof of a trapper's statement, quoted in the last chapter of the book: "It is easy to make a savage of a civilized man, but impossible to make a civilized man of a savage in one generation."

An objective and thorough study of The Kansas Industrial Court, an Experiment in Compulsory Arbitration, by Domenico Gagliardo

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of Kansas University, was recently published by the university's committee on social science studies. The Kansas Industrial Court was created during the first administration of Gov. Henry J. Allen in an attempt to settle the coal strike of 1919, and to prevent new strikes. In the 264-page book Gagliardo describes the creation of the court and analyzes the characters of the three men who had important parts in the court controversy: Governor Allen; William L. Huggins, author of the industrial court law and one of the judges of the court, and Alexander McWhirter Howat, leader of the mine workers of Kansas who fought the court bitterly during its existence. The court gained nation-wide attention during the five years it functioned, and the law, wrote Gagliardo, "was one of the most intensively litigated pieces of American labor legislation prior to the national labor relations act." The court began as a noble experiment in the regulation of relations between workers, employers, and the public, but it failed, because of its political, economic and legal weaknesses.