Butler County Genealogy Trails Kansas Alvah Shelden Bio

BUTLER COUNTY'S EIGHTY YEARS BIOS

ALVAH SHELDEN

(Transcribed by Lori DeWinkler)

Alvah Shelden, pioneer country school teacher, one of the earliest of the Butler County school superintendents, former El Dorado postmaster, able, professive and substantial citizen, but whose chief distinction is that of editor and publisher, was born January 15, 1849, at Fond-du-lac, Wisconsin. He came to Butler County in 1869 and to this city a few years later and for nearly forty years, up to the time of his death, December 17, 1911, was a leader among that group of men who laid the foundation and are directly responsible for El Dorado’s present consequence.

Mr. Shelden was a perfect product of strong, virile, pioneer life. For thirty years he was a part, directly or indirectly, of the picturesque, and sometimes spectacular and sensational and murderous frontier, extending from the far north to the far south. As a baby, he was reared in Fond-du-lac when that French and Indian settlement was in its infancy. As a child, he removed with his parents to Little Rock Arkansas, then but slightly more than a wilderness. During the late 1850’s, he was living in Texas where grim tragedy entered the home and his father was slain by a pro-slavery sympathizer—it was one of the tolls of those perilous times in that section of the country; and finally, through the wilds of the Indian country, he came to Butler County, entered into the vigorous life required for the development of a virgin region and by sheer force of fine personality, high moral standards, native intellectual ability and untiring industry achieved for himself an outstanding influence throughout this entire section of Kansas. To property appreciate the life of Mr. Shelden, it should be taken in chronological sequence, and no Kansas biographer or historian has done so well as Judge Volney P. Mooney, his personal friend of many years. The following several paragraphs are excerpts from Judge Mooney’s most excellent “History of Butler County:”

“When Alvah Shelden was three years of age, his parents moved (from Fond-du-lac) to Little Rock, Arkansas, and a year or so later, to Helena, Texas, where his father was shot and killed, in 1859, in his own doorway, by a Southern sympathizer, because of his fearless and outspoken anti-slavery sentiments. Martin Vaught, then living in Jefferson County, Kansas (and who, in 1864-66 was Butler County register or deeds and the first to occupy that office) started at once for Texas to bring back his widowed sister and her five children, Olive, Alvah, Marion and Mary (twins) and John. He made the journey on horseback, starting early in October, 1859, and made the trip to thirty-five days. Remaining in Texas, until May 1860, he settled up the affairs of his brother-in-law and then started for Kansas in a covered wagon, drawn by five yoke of oxen and the party driving fifty head of cattle and eight horses through. The trip was made in six weeks. The family had several miraculous escapes and a number of adventures and exciting experiences, particularly on crossing through Texas and the Indian territory, at that time still in a large degree, wild and savage.

“The Shelden family eventually arrived at Chelsea, Butler County, Kansas, piloted by the ever-faithful, ‘Uncle Mart,’ and remained at that point until the fall of the year, when they went to Paris, Illinois, to make their home with Alvah Shelden’s grandfather, John Vaught, who was a prominent and well-to-do farmer. There they remained until 1868, in which year, the ‘Call of Kansas” appealed to Alvah, who now was a stalwart and independent youth of nineteen years, and the head of the family. Accordingly, with the family, he turned his face westward, driving a big team of bay horses (Dick and Al) to a wagon, with which his grandfather had outfitted him. They stopped by Chase County, on the south fork of the Cottonwood River, where they rented a farm. It proved to be a year of bounteous crops, and through hard work and close saving, the family managed to have a little money left over at the close of the season and this they put into building a home. Coming to Chelsea Township, they bought 240 acres of land on Cole Creek, and there built a native lumber house of five rooms, most of it walnut. Alvah, aided by his younger brothers and his uncle, Martin Vaught, framed and finished it. Anyone who is at all familiar with early Kansas history will appreciate the hardships and early privations incident to the development of and payment for a home at that time. Upon Alvah, the eldest of the three sons, the greater part of the burden rested. Through his perseverance, pluck and ambition, he succeeded in the accomplishment of his object.

“From the time of his youth, Mr. Sheden had been an inveterate reader and through his grandfather’s library and the county schools, which he attended first in his eleventh year, he acquired a good education, which, in later years, aided by keen observation and an innate understanding of human nature, became a liberal one. So, it was but natural that his mind should run, more or less, along intellectual one. In 1872, he taught his first country school. In 1874, he was made assistant cashier in the Farmers & Merchants Bank, of El Dorado; and, in 1876, was elected county superintendent of public instruction of Butler County. In 1878, he was re-elected to the superintendency of the county schools and, in 1879, appointed postmaster of El Dorado, which position he held five years. In 1881, Mr. Shelden bought the Walnut Valley Times, a publication which he owned and edited for thirty years. March 1, 1911, he retired from active work, transferring the newspaper and business to his son, Chester C. Shelden. It was in June of the same year that he was stricken with angina pectoris, a disease of the heart, from which he never recovered, his death occurring December 17, 1911. No more fitting appreciation of his career and qualities could be written that the following, from the pen of his old time friend and newspaper associate, George F. Fullinwider:

“As a writer, Mr. Shelden was apt and forceful, and as an editor, able and emphatic with opinions all his own, expressed tersely and plainly. As a business man, he was conservative, prompt, firm and successful. He was one whose opinions and advice were sought by his fellows and considered sound. As a citizen, he was honored and respected; as a friend, he was loyal and true. He was as kind as a woman, big hearted, generous to a fault, discriminating in his friendships and unyielding in his condemnation of wrong-doing. He always was interested in the welfare of the community and his efforts were enlisted in behalf of progress and enterprise. During his regime as an editor, he always was reaching out for the best in the newspaper world. Nothing was too good for his paper and its readers. So well did he succeed, that he ranked with the best in the state and he enjoyed a wide reputation as a writer and editor of ability. In proof of his enterprise, his special editions of which he issued more than any man in the state, namely, “The Pink Edition, ‘Old Soldiers’ Edition,’ ‘Farmers and Stockmen,’ and ‘The Women’s Edition,’ have gone down in history as some of the brightest and best pieces of newspaper work of that kind in Kansas. His public life and work are done; no more will he furnish ‘copy’ or correct proof. The Foreman has called ‘thirty’ on his book and readers will look in vain for locals and editorials from his pen. But the fleeting years, in their onward march, cannot efface the memory of his good deeds, nor can time beat out the numberless pages he has written and left as a record for generations unborn.”

Mr. Shelden, during his entire life in El Dorado was active in the progress of the county. His early selection, when only twenty-five, as assistant cashier of the community’s leading bank, and two years later, or at twenty-seven, being placed at the head of the county school system, are ample evidences of his ability and the splendid confidence and respect in which he was held. He was a Mason, with membership in Patmos, No. 97, A. F. & A. M but was peculiarly free from fraternal or other affiliations. With the exception of being a Mason (Patmos No. 97, El Dorado) and carrying a membership in the United Workmen and Knights & Ladies of Security, he had no lodge or associational connections. He was a communicant of no church. His whole life seemingly, was devoted to his family and to his newspaper and he made a magnificent success of both. He was of Dutch or Holland, descent and his forebears were among the early American settlers. His parents were Benjamin and Louisa (Vaught) Shelden, each members of families of pioneer settlers in Indiana and Illinois, later in Wisconsin, then Arkansas and Texas, and, finally in Kansas, the mother dying in this county.

On January 28, 1877, Mr. Shelden was united in marriage to Miss Mary Lamb, of Douglass, a teacher in the schools of that city and their courtship was a romance of the early schools of this county, dating from their first acquaintance at an institute, in Augusta, in April, 1872. Mrs. Shelden still resides in El Dorado, continuing as the adviser of her children, now grown into manhood and womanhood, and the personal friend and confidante of that group of younger matrons, who grew up with the Shelden family. She is recognized as perhaps the best informed in the county upon the early history of this section and local organizations and the local newspapers ask her frequently for special articles in the nature of reminiscences.