Winfield Courier, Thursday, April 15, 1886
ED. COURIER: In your journal of March
24th, just received by me, is copied a little private note I
wrote the Rev. Mr. Reider. It was written with no idea of publication, or
of giving any matter of historical interest of your place. It has led me
to wonder whether the pioneers and old settlers of Kansas are as greatly
interested in the rise and progress of your State as I have been. I was
not a pioneer and do not claim any of the honor and glory that attaches
to the grand characters that made history when Kansas fought her way through
fire and blood to freedom. Going onto her soil in January, 1865, I was in
time to see the development of a great State, in a most wonderful manner.
At that date Weston was the western terminus of the H & St. Joe railroad
and we rode in a coach from there to Leavenworth. I resided in Kansas until
January, 1872, and saw the building of the Kansas Pacific, the L. L. &
G., Missouri River, Ft. Scott & Gulf, and Neosho Valley railroad, and
have ridden over those lines when towns along them containing from 500 to
1,000 inhabitants each had risen like magic from the prairie sod, and in
so short a time that not an old shingle could be seen upon a single roof.
It was during the latter part of December,
1870, that I visited Walnut Valley. A few months before this a Leavenworth
man had gone there. Among my friends were the families of Messrs. Andrews,
Hickok, and Rev. O. W. Tousey. They sent me an invitation to visit them,
telling me of the new country and of the name of the new town after myself,
and that they expected it would be the county seat. I had known of many
prophetic towns of euphonious and high sounding names that never existed
except in imagination, or in a glowing letter of an enthusiastic squatter,
or worse than that, only on a highly embellished and carefully platted card
board, that I was not especially influenced by the town or the promise to
immortalize my name, but I did want to see what was then known as the great
“southwest” that was booming from the rushing tide of immigrants
all going thither. I knew of the warm welcome, too, I should receive from
the large hearted old friends then on the ground. Accompanied by my old
college chum, Prof. D. H. Robinson, of the State University, we went to
Emporia by car and took a team and drove to Eureka, where we were joined
by my brother, S. Scott, now of Clay Center. From there we went west to
Butler County, through El Dorado, Augusta, and Douglass, all rival towns,
each full of prophecy and prophets, of their own success and the other failures.
Augusta was named after Mrs. Augusta James,
the wife of Mr. C. N. James, my parishioner. I spent a day or two at Augusta,
preaching evenings. I remember well the afternoon when we forded a stream,
passed through a strip of timber, and drove over the gently sloping ridge,
when we had the first view of the town of Winfield. The Main street was
laid out and enough stores and houses rudely built, with foundations of
other buildings laid to define where the intended main street was to be.
The record I made in writing to an eastern journal was this: “On the
center of a beautiful plateau of land, in the very heart of the valley,
is rising a splendid town. Four months ago two or three houses marked the
place where it was to be. Today there are twenty-seven buildings, twenty
more are rising, and about thirty more lots have been secured.” I met
there, besides the friends mentioned, D. A. Millington, an enterprising
businessman, whom I had known in Leavenworth, and he believed in the town,
and met me with cordiality and championed with liberality and enthusiasm
my proposition to raise money for a Baptist church in Winfield. I preached
every evening while there and hunted deer in the day time. The first day
I killed three, just across the creek west of the town site. I borrowed
and used a rickety old shotgun, with stock tied up with strings to hold
things together. My luck as a hunter all came the first day, and that, too,
in the forenoon.
The record of the Sabbath service is as
follows: I preached in a store not completed. The front end of the building
being out, we had for the congregation a wide open door. My pulpit was the
end of a work bench with my overcoat doubled up for a desk. The seats were
2 x 8 scantling resting on nail kegs and boxes, and yet the entire room
20 x 36 was full morning and evening with an appreciative audience. We had
a good choir and an organ. At the close of the morning sermon, a church
was organized with twelve members. During the evening and the next day a
subscription of $400 was secured, which was increased to about $700, sufficient
to enclose a stone building 24 x 40 with 14 ft. walls of your stone quarry.
This is the record: “I have never seen in the west as pure white magnitia
[magnesia] limestone as these quarries afford. It can be laid in the wall
for $2.25 per perch, thus furnishing durable and very cheap building material
for the poor as well as the rich. It seems a little unique to think of a
very poor man living in a magnificent limestone house roofed, shingled,
finished, and furnished throughout with the best quality of grained black
walnut, all this because it was so cheap—the difference between the
dwellings of the poor and the rich being in the cut of the stone and the
carve of the wood.” In returning home I volunteered to drive somebody’s
team for them and made the trip alone. From a point north of Chelsea, I
struck out across the Flint hills to go to headquarters of the east branch
of Fall river, traveling by compass. This is the record. “For the first
time in Kansas, I laid out upon the prairie, supperless and alone. With
oats and hay for the horses, a robe blanket with God’s moon and stars
in the heavens over me, and the precious spirit of Jesus in the heart, a
happy night was spent while joy came in the morning. I know now why Abraham
in journeying, rejoiced in setting by his altar and I can see how happy
spirits can be inspired to make heaven resound with hallelujah.”
Thus was the publication of the little
items of history, which seem to interest you, have tempted me to give you
a few more items of history on more general matters which may awaken in
others old memories and reveal to the younger generation what a luxury it
was to live and work when the foundations of enterprises were being laid,
which now add so much to the thrift, stability, and peace of a great state.
I was always proud of Kansas. I proclaimed it east and west as “the
poor man’s paradise, where continuous quarter sections could have more
bona fide settlers on them than any western state.” My interest and
pride in the state has never waned.