Manning did pose a possible answer to why Kay could not find out anything from State re AEmporia Land Company@ members...who started Arkansas City. Manning referred to them as the ACresswell Land Company.@ Wonder if it would help to again contact the powers that be who research things to see if papers are still in existence re Cresswell Land Company. Drat! Turned letter over to Diane Kelly, I believe, and as a result do not have an address to write to.

Bill Conner, Osage Indian, was mentioned in a number of Cowley County newspapers. C. M. Scott, at one time editor of the Arkansas City Traveler, was a friend of Mr. Conner, and published a number of news items about him. The early issues of the Traveler are extant. They did not get microfilmed. As a result, only from area newspapers did we glean stories of early settlers and persons like Wm. Conner.

In the book entitled ABetween the Rivers, Volume 1,@ there is mention of Bill Conner serving as translator between Chief Hard Rope and Captain Norton in 1870 at Arkansas City.

[Kay had the following comments...do not know if they were taken from ABolton@ book or not.]

William Conner, probably a white Kansas Trader, married Metier-hon, an Osage woman. Their son, William (Bill) H. Conner, born in January 1846, became a student at the Jesuits= Osage Mission school; a founding father of the Osage Nation, who co-authored its U. S. style constitution in 1881, and was a rich rancher.

One day in 1872, William Conner sat on a rock atop a barren hill, where the Osage Agency is now situated. He stared down into the valley that would become the town of Pawhuska and said, AIt=ll be a long time before white men occupy this land.@

Winfield Courier, July 10, 1874. ABill Conner, a Little Osage Chief, married Miss Angie Pyne (Penn), of Osage Mission last week.@

Antoine Penn (a French Canadian) died in 1853 after a measles epidemic broke out at the Osage Mission, where he was buried on April 19. He was about thirty years of age. He had married an Osage, Pelagie Mongrain, in 1842. A daughter, Angeline Penn, was seventeen months old at the time of her father=s death. Angeline Penn Conner died in 1879 during her daughter=s infancy.

ABill Conner, an Osage Chief, was recently in Arkansas City. Pausing in front of the little meeting house for a moment, he went in and took his seat among the congregation. The preacher was discoursing on the text of the >sheep and the wolves,= and had evidently been drawing a contrast between the two subjects. AWe who assemble here from week to week and perform our duty are the sheep, now who are the wolves?= A pause and our friend Conner rose to his feet. AWa=al, stranger, rather than see the play stopped, I will be the wolves!= The preacher was vanquished.@ [Put story in Osage Indians file.]

AWm. Conner, well known in this vicinity and the Territory as the most intelligent Osage Indian in the Territory, made us a call last week to renew acquaintances. >Bill= was on his way west, as a guide to the party of Ponca Indians inspecting the country west of the Arkansas. Since leaving this place some years ago, Wm. Conner has donned citizens= clothes and has a farm of 107 acres on the Cana (later called the Caney) River, with a number of ponies and hogs.@

EDITOR COURIER: The Pawnees held a council last Saturday and declared their intentions to go back to their Reserve in Nebraska if the Government didn=t pay them according to the treaty. No one seems to know why they are not paid, and the delay is shameful and is working a great hardship upon them. The government should hold faith with the Pawnees, if with no other tribe. It can=t be recollected when they were at war with the whites, and I believe them as loyal men as exist today. Go among them and call for recruits today, and every soul that can cling to a horse will come forward and tell you as they did the agent in their council, they were ready to die for the government. This they said with tears in their eyes, while they begged to be told what wrong they had committed that they should be treated so negligently.

As ASun Chief@ said:

AWe feel as though we had killed some of the Great Father=s children, yet we know that we have not.@

I like the Pawnees. They are men all over. When they go on the plains, no Indian can cope with them, and when they talk, they are listened to. It is not so with the Osages. With them it is Ahow@ to your face and an arrow to your back. Of course, there are exceptions. My friend, Ah-hun-ke-mi, is one. (I put this in for fear ABill Conner@ will see it, and ABill,@ or AAh-hun-ke-mi,@ is a special friend of mine.)

Edwin C. Manning, of Winfield, one of the strong pioneer characters of Kansas, is well known to the public through the part he took in state affairs in an early day, through his loyalty as a soldier and his work as a newspaper man, but most of all for the part he had in the organization of Cowley county and the location of its county seat at Winfield, the town he founded and helped to build. His name is intimately connected with the history of that county and the city=s formative period, and his has been the pleasure of witnessing the transition and development of that unbroken prairie land, uninhabited save by Indians and wild game to one of the richest farming districts of the state. He has seen Winfield grow from one log cabin to a city of 8,000 inhabitants; a city presenting one of the most beautiful panoramic views to be found in the state, with its stately shade trees, its clustered spires, groups of college buildings and accompanying grounds, and fine school buildingsCthe view being accompanied by the hum of many and varied industries, and the city=s personnel being one of exceptional progressiveness and culture.

Colonel Manning spent his early youth in Vermont, and the common school education begun there was completed in Iowa. From 1856 to 1859 he alternately engaged in teaching and in attending Maquoketa Academy, where he completed the course in 1858. In 1859 he came to Kansas and located at Marysville, where he became editor of the ADemocratic Platform,@ having previously learned to set type. Though a Republican in his personal views he remained in charge of that paper until July, 1860, when a storm came and scattered the plant to the four winds. Its owner, Frank J. Marshall, a staunch Democrat, said he was glad of it, as he would rather see it destroyed than to have it print Republican sentiments. Edwin C. Manning was a young man, poor in purse but strong in energy, determination, and the power of accomplishment, and though the struggle for a living was a hard one in that day, his subsequent business career was one of success.

He was serving as postmaster at Marysville when Lincoln made his call for troops in 1861. He promptly responded to the call by resigning as postmaster and enlisting as a private in Company H, Second Kansas infantry. He was commissioned sergeant, however, and later was made first lieutenant. He served with his regiment in the Army of the Frontier until 1863, when he resigned and returned to Marysville, where he helped to organize and was made colonel of a militia regiment for frontier protection, the same being armed by the Federal government. He also resumed newspaper work as publisher of the ABig Blue Union.@ In 1864 he was elected state senator and served one term, representing Marshall, Washington, and Riley counties. In 1866 he removed his publication plant to Manhattan, where he established the AKansas Radical,@ which is still extant as the ANationalist.@ After conducting that publication two years, however, he sold it and, in 1869, removed to the vicinity of what is now Winfield, where he entered into a contract with the Osage Indian tribe for a tract of land. This contract, which Colonel Manning still has in his possession, is as follows:

AWinfield, Cowley county, Kansas, Jan. 18, 1870.

AReceived of E. C. Manning six dollars, for which I, Chetopah, a chief of the Osage Indian tribe, guarantee a peaceful and unmolested occupancy of 160 acres of land on the reservation, for one year from date.

AWitness, William Connor. AChetopah X

This contract secured to Colonel Manning the peaceful occupancy of that tract of land, which later became the original town site of Winfield. The first forty acres platted embraced what is now that portion of the city north of Ninth street and west of the east side of Main street. In the same month, prior to his contract with the Indians, he had organized the Winfield town Company and, having some knowledge of surveying, had located the line of Main street by the North Star at night, determining by mathematical calculations the magnetic variations, as there were no surveying instruments in that region at that time. A later survey by the government disclosed a variation of but fifteen degrees by its established magnetic meridian. In the previous months of October and November Colonel Manning had erected a log cabin near the north end of what is now Manning street, and in this cabin the town company was organized, in January, 1870. The town was named Winfield at the suggestion of Rev. Winfield Scott, a Baptist clergyman at Leavenworth, who had said: AIf you are going to start a town there and will give it my name, Winfield, I will go down and build a house of worship for you.@ As the town company adopted the name of Winfield, Reverend Scott kept his part of the pledge and, with local aid, erected a church building in Winfield, which is still standing on Milling street, between Seventh and Eighth streets. The first residence to be built on the original town site of Winfield was a balloon framed structure erected by Colonel Manning, in January and February, 1870, and was located at the corner of Manning and Eighth streets, the site now occupied by the Doane lumber yard. To this cottage Colonel Manning removed his family from Manhattan. Other claims now incorporated in the town of Winfield, besides that of Colonel Manning, are those of A. A. Jackson, C. M. Wood, and W. W. Andrews. On Christmas day, 1869, there arrived at Colonel Manning=s cabin the following party of men: Prof. H. B. Norton, G. H. Norton, Judge Brown, T. A. Wilkinson, H. D. Kellogg, and John Brown. They brought with them a letter from Lieut. Gov. C. V. Eskridge, Hon. Jacob Stotter [Stotler], and Preston B. Plumb requesting that Colonel Manning should cooperate with this party in establishing a town at the mouth of the Walnut river, in Cowley county. The present site of Winfield appeared to be at about the junction of the Walnut and Arkansas rivers, the point designated in the letter, according to the map of the state at that time. Colonel Manning accompanied the party, which camped the first night in the low bottom woodland south of Timber creek and near its mouth, the stream being known at that time by the Indian name of ALagonda.@ As colonel Manning had previously explored that section he advised that the junction of the two rivers would be too far south for the proposed metropolis. As a precautionary measure, for fear Colonel Manning=s views were correct, the party spent the second day in staking out claims, covering all the beautiful and fertile valley south of Timber creek and east and north of Walnut river. The third day, December 27, the party moved southward and camped that night at the mouth of the Walnut river. The following day Judge Brown and Colonel Manning started in search of the state line. After weary hours of travel, over bluffs and through briers and brush, they found the surveyor=s marks, which showed that the line crossed the Arkansas river near the mouth of Grouse creek. Colonel Manning swam the river on his horse at this point and recrossed the river about two miles above the mouth of the Walnut river, breaking the ice at each point and arriving at camp about dusk. The party decided on the present site of Arkansas City and named the prospective city Delphi. Later the name was changed to Cresswell and then to Arkansas City. Colonel Manning returned to his claim and, on January 1. 1870, located A. A. Menor and Col. H. C. Loomis upon two of the abandoned claims. The nearest post office and the nearest official who could administer an oath was twenty miles away. Colonel Manning sent for the neighborhood mail several times a week and was taking the ADaily Capital Commonwealth.@ Through its columns, in February, 1870, he discovered that a bill had been introduced in the senate to organize Cowley county and to establish the county seat at Cresswell. Lieutenant-Governor Eskridge, president of the senate; Hon. Jacob Stotler, speaker of the house of representatives; and Senator Preston B. Plumb, all residents of Emporia, were members of the Cresswell Town Company. The situation required immediate action to save the day to Winfield. Colonel Manning hastily dispatched J. H. Land, C. M. Wood, and A. A. Jackson to the valley of the Arkansas, Walnut, and Grouse rivers, there to secure the names of all the settlers and to report to him at Douglass, three days later, with an enumeration of at least 600 settlers. They met at Douglass, February 23, as agreed, before =Squire Lamb, made a sworn statement as to the census taken, and signed a petition requesting Gov. James M. Harvey to issue a proclamation organizing Cowley county and designating Winfield as the county seat. With this petition and enumeration Colonel Manning hastened to Topeka, 200 miles distant. At the time of his arrival the bill was being read for the third time before the senate. He failed to secure its defeat in the senate, but his friend, Hon. John Guthrie, a member from Topeka, by shrewd tactics presented a vote on the bill in the lower house until the legislature adjourned three days later. On February 28 Colonel Manning took his papers to Governor Harvey, who acted favorably on the petition. The settlers at the mouth of Walnut river did not learn of the defeat of their bill until several days after the legislature adjourned, nor that the county was organized with Winfield as the county seat. Colonel Manning helped to establish the first store in Winfield; served as the first postmaster; raised the first wheat in Cowley county; and, in the fall of 1870, served as the first representative from Cowley county. He was reelected to the legislature, in 1878, his legislative service consisting, in all, of two terms as representative and one term as senator from Marshal county. Although Congress had passed an act, July 15, 1870, for the purchase of the Osage reservation, it was not until January, 1871, that the government survey was made. The first tract of land entered was the Winfield town site and the second entry ws the eighty acres owned by Colonel Manning. The town of Winfield began to build up immediately and, in 1876, Colonel Manning erected the square of buildings known as the Manning Block. He was admitted to the bar, in 1872, and practiced some. He also edited a newspaper in Winfield two years. In 1880 he went to New Mexico on account of ill health and remained there two years. He then became a resident of Washington, D. C., where he remained until 1896. He was there engaged in the management and direction of a creosote plant, located at Wilmington, N. C., and in securing railroad franchises at various points throughout the South. In 1896 he returned to Winfield, where he is actively engaged in local affairs and in the management of his considerable holdings in business and residence property. In 1910 he was appointed a member of the municipal commission of Winfield, which has charge of the $250,000 water and light plant, and of this body he was chosen chairman.

In 1860 Colonel Manning married Delphine Pope of Jackson county, Iowa, who bore him three children: Benjamin, deceased; Martha (Goodwin); and Ernest Frederick, who was the first white child to be born in Winfield and is now an expert mechanic at Bridgeport, Connecticut. Mrs. Manning died February 20, 1873, and, in 1874, Colonel Manning married Margaret J. Foster. Of their union were born two daughters. One is Mrs. Margaret Belle Murphy of Kansas City, Missouri, and the other is deceased. The third marriage of Colonel Manning occurred when Miss Linia Hall became his wife. She is the daughter of Lot Hall, a native of Massachusetts, who spent his entire life in his native state. Colonel Manning is a Republican in politics. Fraternally he is a member of Siverd Post, No. 85, Grand Army of the Republic, and of the Kansas branch of the National Loyal Legion. He is a member of the Masonic order and of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. He has also achieved distinction as a journalist, his articles having been sought and published by various journals of the state. One of the best articles from his pen was that entitled, AThe Passing of Ingalls,@ published by the AWinfield Courier,@ in 1896. Colonel Manning was made president of the Kansas State Historical Society on December 6, 1910. He has just published a book, under the title of AAutobiography, Historical and Miscellaneous,@ which will be found in some of the public libraries of the state and on a shelf in the State Historical Society.

On January 13, 1870, the Winfield Town Company was organized with E. C. Manning, President; W. W. Andrews, Vice President; C. M. Wood, Treasurer; W. G. Graham, Secretary; E. C. Manning, J. H. Land, A. A. Jackson, W. G. Graham, and J. C. Monforte, Directors. The forty acres of the land belonging to Manning was laid out as the center of the new town, and Main street, 120 feet wide, laid out north and south of this land. A log house was put up on the main street by the settlers, and given Manning in exchange for his land taken by them. Settlement on the town site was slow, and when on August 15, A. D. Millington, now proprietor of the Courier, and J. C. Fuller, of the Winfield Bank, arrived and purchased Jackson=s claim, the only buildings were the log store of E. C. Manning, which stood where the opera house now does; the log blacksmith shop of Max Shoeb, where Read=s bank is now located; the drug store of W. Q. Mansfield, and the hardware store of Frank Hunt. Millington and Fuller at once took active steps for the advancement of the town. For the various steps which led to their final success, we are indebted to the following account kindly furnished by Mr. Millington, who, as a leading character in the events of that day, deserves special credence:

The survey showed E. C. Manning=s claim to be the northwest quarter, and J. C. Fuller=s claim the northeast quarter of Section 28, in Township 32, south of Range 4 east. The town company=s forty acres was the northeast quarter of Manning=s claim. Immediately after the Government survey, in January, 1871, E. C. Manning, J. C. Fuller, and D. A. Millington formed themselves into another company, called the Winfield Town Association, and joined the southeast quarter of Manning=s claim with the west half of Fuller=s claim, as the property of the association. This added to the town company=s forty acres made a town site of 160 acres, in square form, and D. A. Millington, who was then the only surveyor and engineer settled in the county, surveyed this town site off into blocks and lots, streets and alleys. Though the three above named persons had then control of most of the stock of the town company, yet there were several other stockholders in the company, so that the addition to the town site being wholly controlled by the three men, made it a different ownership, and created the need of the new corporation, the Town Association.

During the spring, new buildings continued to be built on the town site, stores and shops were filled, and dwellings occupied. It took a long time, or until July 10, for the notes, plats, and records of the survey to be made out and recorded in the offices at Washington and Lawrence, and get ready to open the land office at Augusta. During this time, the occupants of the town site began to get restless, and demand that the companies should give them more lots free. Some urged that the companies had no more right to the town site than anyone else, and that all the unimproved lots legally belonged to the owners of the improved lots, to be divided pro rata. These disaffected parties became so numerous as to embrace a great propor-tion of the seventy-two owners of buildings on the town site. They procured the services of a great land lawyer of Columbus, named Sanford, made an assessment, and collected money to carry out their measures, held meetings, in which excited speeches were made against the two corporations, and were prepared, at a moment=s notice, when the land office was open, to rush in and enter the town site, through the Probate Judge, who should distribute the lots to the inhabitants, according to their theory. Thus commenced the famous Winfield town site controversy.

[Everywhere else, the first name used, is that of ALagonda.@]

A post office was established at Winfield in May, 1870, with E. C. Manning as Postmaster. The office was in an old log store which stood where the opera house is now located. This building was removed in 1878 to the rear of the Telegram building, and served a year later as the starting point of the fire which swept the corner of the block. The post office moved from the log store to T. K. Johnson=s, then back to the first position, whence it was moved again, occupying several places on Ninth avenue and finally reaching its present quarter. Manning held his position but a short time, being followed the same year by A. W. Tousey. T. K. Johnson took the office in 1871, James Kelley in 1875, and D. A. Millington in 1879.