Butler County Genealogy Trails Kansas Mrs Alvah Shelden Bio

BUTLER COUNTY'S EIGHTY YEARS BIOS

MRS. ALVAH SHELDEN

(Transcribed by Peg Luce)

The human scene affords no more beautiful vista than the years of a long life well spent; a life lived in close touch with its fellows, receiving and giving those benefits which make for the good of society, and the growth of righteousness. The long, useful life of Mary Lamb Shelden affords such a vista; the years of her unselfish spending are rich with golden fruitage – the fruitage that matures from constant thought of others. Life in El Dorado is a happier and finer experience for all its citizens because she wrought so patiently and wisely for the welfare of the community in the meager days of beginnings. And to raise the level of one community is to influence the environs of that community.

Mrs. Shelden comes of pioneer stock. She herself is a pioneer. She is more than a pioneer by experience; she is a pioneer by nature. That is, she is able to vision fine and vigorous growths from humble beginnings, and she has the patience that can wait for faith to follow vision. She belongs to that rare company of people who prefer to deal with acorns; who start things; who glory in beginnings.

She started or “founded” the El Dorado Public Library – now the Carnegie Library – and The Senior Woman’s Mutual Benefit Club. She has helped tirelessly to nurture and sustain other people’s planting; the Eastern Star of El Dorado, the Pythian Sisters, the Red Cross Welfare Association, city, county and state organizations, the Public Health Nursing Association, the Susannah French Putney Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and now her sunset days are spent in the gracious shade of many thriving trees – a spacious avenue of her own patient planting.

Nor are her sunset days mere leisure under the shade. She is still an active member of the Library board, the Butler County Tuberculosis Association of which board she was a charter member; the Woman’s Relief Corps and of the Shakespeare Club, the oldest club in the city – and a member of the Woman’s Republican Club. She is actively interested in all that concerns the public welfare of her town and state. She has been a member of the Library Board from the beginning.

In November, 1869, Chester Lamb, a dealer in fine horses, living near Cleveland, Ohio, started for Kansas with his three motherless children, Lida, Della and Mary, aged thirteen. Three of his sons had gone to Kansas, and it was Mr. Lamb’s desire to get his family together. The little party took “the Luxurious Lake Shore to Chicago, the less well-equipped Burlington to Kansas City, the new and crude Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe to Burlingame, a stage coach to Emporia, thirty-five miles distant, than a covered wagon to El Dorado.” What a momentous journey for the three children, such constant change and action! How alert they must have been for the sight of Indians and buffalo, how shiveringly fearful of robbers on the forest highways!

“El Dorado was the most pretentious town in the county,” writes Mrs. Shelden, in a recent paper reminiscent of her early days in Kansas – a paper that is on file in the State Historical Society in Topeka. “It had a new stone schoolhouse of one room, a two-story hotel, the El Dorado House, and a two-story business building across from the hotel, on what is now the Haberlein corner.” After a one night’s rest in El Dorado, the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Dan Bronson, the little family party drove to Douglass, twenty-five miles distant, where brother Henry lived.

Douglass was their destination, and their home for many years. Henry was already one of the leading citizens of Douglass. He was postmaster and owner and manager of the one-and-a-half story hotel. The postoffice was in a corner of the hotel, and Mary immediately installed herself as Assistant Postmaster. Also, Douglass had a log cabin general store, a blacksmith shop, and a little drug store. Quite a metropolis, as prairie towns went in 1869.

Douglass was Mary’s home town until her marriage. She was a pupil of the first school in Douglass, a subscription school held in a vacant store building. After two years’ schooling she attended the first Teachers’ Institute in Butler County. The Institute was held in Augusta, and while in attendance she met a young man named Alvah Shelden. She taught a year in the Little Walnut Valley District, then a year in Rosalia Township, about twelve miles east of El Dorado. That was the fall of 1873. El Dorado was building its first church that year, the Methodist Episcopal, corner of First and Gordy.

The first church in El Dorado was an important event, and the young man whom she met during Institute, young Alvah Shelden, requested the honor of her company – dignified days they were, even in central Kansas – at the dedication services of the new church. She accepted the invitation – but she had no new dress to wear! She borrowed a pony, rode to El Dorado, and bought a dress pattern of red plaid silk at the Gardner-Tolle store. When she got back to her boarding house she found that the only lamp chimney in the house had been broken! The house would be in darkness that evening, and her new dress had to be made. What to do! She filled a saucer with lard, stuck in a rag, lighted the rag, and made her dress by the light of the improvised candle. A quick-witted, resolute, resourceful, practical young woman, that Mary Lamb, stitching away in the smoky gloom!

She went to the church dedication in her new red plaid silk dress, bright and shining and rustling, the dress she had earned, planned, cut out and made by the light of a smoking rag, burning in a saucer. The incident is typical of her character and of her after life. Four years later in 1877, she married Alvah Shelden, and the young couple moved to El Dorado to live. There they established their residence, reared their family – there were six little Sheldens – and became useful and honored members of the community. For many years Mrs. Shelden was owner and editor of The Walnut Valley Times, one of the most influential newspapers in Butler County.

Mrs. Shelden describes the arrival of the young gallant to escort her to El Dorado, to the dedication ceremonial. “He surprised me by coming early. I was not yet dressed for the trip to town. The house in which I was boarding consisted of one large room, with two beds in one end, and a stove in the other. I managed to seat Mr. Shelden facing the stove – it was bitter cold – then I climbed onto my bed, pinned a shawl across the corner, and, presto, my change of dress was made in no time. The pins held!”

In Mrs. Shelden’s possession is a little tintype photograph of herself and her sister Lida, aged seven and nine. Their dresses are made exactly alike, plain tight waists and full, gathered skirts. The material was dark blue delaine, Mrs. Shelden says, with bright spots or springs in it. They wear girdles made of black silk edged with red silk braid, hoops, and black, laced high shoes. Their hair is smoothly parted, and fastened primly behind their ears. Two serious, modest, apprehensive – looking little village maidens, firm to face what’s coming next, but scared of everything. “We went to school scared just like that!” said Mrs. Shelden, laughing softly as she looked at the little picture.

And there’s a valentine, sent her in 1873, when she was teaching in Rosalia Township. You will remember she taught there after she attended Teachers’ Institute, in Augusta. For Mary romance began at Institute, as it has for many a young “lady teacher.” It was her first valentine, and is a tiny paper affair, three by two and a half inches, soft as silk now, and faded. The decoration is a heart bordered with paper lace, the lace decorated with gold, and an infinitesimal bunch of red roses at the dimple of the heart. In the center of the heart is printed the “sentiment:”

“Lady, I have lost my heart;

Have you found the stranger?

Oh, so very great the smart,

Maybe ‘tis in danger!”

Folded with the valentine is a faded letter, a four-page letter of exquisite script. The letter was written to Mary December 30, 1863. Mary was seven years old when this letter traveled from a southern battle camp to her, ‘way up in Ohio; she is seventy-eight now, and her eyes still glisten as she reads the first sentence: “Yes, bright-eyed, fair-haired, rosy-cheeked dear Sister of mine, I am now going to write you a perfect love of a letter.” Dear homesick soldier boy, facing death on the morrow, for all you knew, you did indeed write the little Sister “a perfect love of a letter.”

The story of the beginning of the El Dorado Public Library, as Mrs. Shelden tells it, seated in her pleasant living room, where the open piano is, and the books and the sunshine, is an interesting one. In 1897, she says, El Dorado had about 2700 people. Money was scarce, for the community was just coming out of a long depression. The W. C. T. U. had a rental library – a few books in a small bookcase. To raise money for this “library” Mrs. C. A. Leland put on a one-act play, “Six Cups of Chocolate,” at the Opera House. The play netted forty dollars. “If we might only start a free library with that forty dollars!” said Mrs. Alvah Shelden.

Mrs. Leland liked the suggestion. A meeting of citizens was called, to be held at the Ellet Opera House. A Library Association was formed at the meeting. Mrs. Alvah Shelden was elected Treasurer. Most of the members wanted a rental library, but Mrs. Shelden held out firmly for a free library, and won. One hundred people signed up for one dollar each. Enthusiasm ran high. The new Treasurer recorded in her new Treasurer’s Book, first page, top line, “On Hand, $140.00.”

Then Mrs. Shelden got the ladies together, and they arranged for a book social. It was held in the City Hall. Everybody who came brought a book for the new free Library. A small room in the City Hall was secured, rent free, and a librarian engaged at five dollars a month. The El Dorado Free Library was an accomplished fact. The library was open three afternoons a week, for three hours, from 2 to 5 o’clock.

After fifteen years’ work as a member of the Library Board, Mrs. Shelden thought to herself, one day, “Why don’t we have a Carnegie Library?” She wrote Carnegie; in due time she had the proud happiness of turning the first spadeful of dirt for the foundation of Carnegie Library Building. It was dedicated in 1913, and stands today, a source of immeasurable happiness to thousands, a monument of use and beauty to the perseverance of a public-spirited, loving-hearted, energetic woman, Mary Lamb Shelden.

Perhaps the word “energetic” best describes Mrs. Shelden, if one is seeking a single word for that purpose. She has a genius for hard work, for details, and for the application of ideas to practical ends. Her vision is not empty and ineffectual dreaming; it is translated into practical action, and herein lies the secret of her value to her town, her county, her state. She is tireless in driving to completion the thing she sets out to do. And then, priceless above computation, is a sense of humor that never fails her. Without it her heart would have failed her many times in her undertakings for the good of others. Only steadfast faith in humanity as it is, not as it ought to be or might be, made it possible for her to work so steadfastly for the public weal. Humor accepts humanity for better or for worse, like matrimony.

Then she has large sympathy, and “sympathy is a love that understands.” She “cares” that people are happy, and alive to the opportunities of culture; she “cares” that her home town is clean and healthy and progressive; she “cares” that a way is opened for righteousness, and always she is willing to spend time and energy to make these things actually existent in her community. And all this unselfish “caring” has made her what she is today, the beloved and distinguished Lady Bountiful of her old home.

Mrs. Shelden was born in Troy, Geauga County, Ohio, April 19, 1856, and her ancestral line traces back into Colonial America. Her ancestor who served in the Revolutionary War was Peter Tower, of Hingham, Massachusetts, and he was a descendant of Robert Tower of Hingham, England, who died in 1634. Third in line from Robert Tower was Jeremiah, who was killed by the Indians during King Phillip’s War. Peter Tower was the father of Sarah Tower, who married Abner Bates. Abner Bates was the father of Hannah Bates, who married Chester Lamb. He also was the father of David Bates who married Hannah Lincoln, member of that family whose name has become the greatest in American history, with the exception of that of Washington. Chester Lamb was a corporal in the company raised at Shutesbury, Massachusetts, for service in the War of 1812. Among his children was Chester Lamb, II, who became Mrs. Shelden’s father and for whom her eldest son, Chester Conklin Shelden, was named. He was a native of New York. He married Anna Crooks, a native of Ohio. The mother died in Ohio, in 1862, when Mrs. Shelden was a child. The father died in Sterling, Kansas in 1882.

Six children were born of the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Shelden. They are: Bertram B., born June 29, 1878; died February 21, 1882; Mary Myrtle, wife of Henry G. Sandifer, deputy probate judge of Butler County, El Dorado; Chester C. Shelden, oil producer, married Elizabeth Summers and lives in El Dorado; Lida Lou, wife of Lee Scott, oil man, Wichita; Bernice B., born July 19, 1885, died August 22, 1902; and Marjorie J., wife of Joe Turner, of the Kansas Gas & Electric Company, and residing in El Dorado.