Butler County’s Eighty Years ~ 1855-1935
by Jessie Perry Stratford
A History of Butler County Biographical Sketches and Portraits with Foreword by Rolla A. Clymer
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the preparation of this book, material has been borrowed from Judge Volney P. Mooney’s matchless “History of Butler County,” published eighteen years ago; Andreas’s “History of Kansas,” Blackmar’s “Encyclopedia of Kansas History,” and Russell H. Fisher’s excellent book, “Biographical Sketches of El Dorado Citizens.” The compilation of “Butler County’s Eighty Years” was suggested by Judge Mooney, who generously volunteered permission to use his book to any extent desired.
The opening chapter and some other parts of the book were written by Bliss Isely, author of “Early Days in Kansas.” Other contributors are Rea Woodman, author of “Yesteryears;” Myra E. Hull, teacher of English in University of Kansas; Margaret Collins Cooper, who wrote “Oil In Butler County;” Victor Boellner, Kent Stratford, Gene Fleming and others whose signatures appear with their articles.
To Harriet Hull Fisher, a teacher in the El Dorado schools, who has been an unfailing source of inspiration and practical help, and to R. A. Clymer, Mabel McCarty and the many other men and women who have cooperated, and whose research and advice have made possible this volume, the editor is sincerely grateful.
--J.P.S.
December, 1934.
FOREWORD
The eighty years of the Kingdom of Butler are rich in romance and achievement. This great parallelogram of plenty, dwarfing by sheer bulk the other counties of Kansas, has been the scene of some of the most stirring episodes in the history of the Sunflower State. Its men and its might have gone into the weaving of a fabric that is unique in the nation, for the character of Kansas has been formed by the manner in which its people have reacted to their challenging environment. The Kingdom of Butler has played a full part in the social, economic and political drama of Kansas. Its sons and daughters have gone forth to perform roles that have added to its fame. Here the Big Beef Steer and his Little Red Sister have cropped the bluestem from a thousand hills; here waving fields of grain and forage have helped to fill the granaries of the nation; here oil fields have gushed forth riches far exceeding the golden flood of Alaska. Here towns and cities have sprung up, here a population has been reared that is independent, brave and resourceful.
The magic tale of this Kingdom is herewith told by one fitted by heritage and by talent to tell it well. Jessie Perry Stratford has created something of lasting value to the people of Butler – a volume, attractively and honestly prepared, which reveals the essence of all that has made the Kingdom of Butler glorious, and that surely shall lead it to future greatness.
R. A. CLYMER.
Map of Butler County
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Butler County’s Eighty Years
ADVENTURERS AND INDIANS
Butler County covers 1,440 square miles. It is the largest county in Kansas and is larger than the entire state of Rhode Island. Geographically it is compact in form, being almost entirely in the valley of the Walnut River, which heads near the northern boundary and flows south through Cowley County to empty into the Arkansas. Only along the eastern fringe does any part of Butler County slope away from the Walnut.
Little is known about the history of Butler County prior to 1802. It is known however, that it was a wonderful hunting land, that its valleys fed vast herds of deer and its uplands were thronged with buffalo. Visitors who came a century ago into what is now Butler saw elk, antelope, wildcats, bear, eagles, turkeys, prairie chicken, and numerous other game birds and animals. Its streams were alive with fish. Otter and beaver played on the banks of the Walnut, Little Walnut, Whitewater and tributary streams.
The earliest visitor to the vicinity of Butler County who kept a journal of his travels was Zebulon Montgomery Pike, a lieutenant in the United States Army, who crossed the plains to the Rockies in 1806 and was the first American explorer to see the great mountain, which Spanish and French roamers had long seen before, and which we know today by the name of Pike’s Peak.
A careful check of Pike’s route, indicates that he passed through a part of the present Greenwood County, traveling northwest just to the north of Butler County. The observations he made then of the country in the immediate neighborhood of Butler County reveal that this was a hunters’ paradise.
It must be remembered that Pike traveled no farther in a day than a Model-T Ford can travel in an hour. Consequently he spent many days in crossing Southern Kansas. A few of the daily entries in his journal are here reproduced:
September 6, 1806 – In the holes at the creek we discovered many fish, which, from their stripes and spots, I supposed to be trout and bass; they were 12 inches long. This brought to mind the necessity of a net, which would have frequently afforded subsistence for the whole party.
September 9 – Killed one cabrie (antelope), two deer and two turkeys.
September 10 – Killed one elk, one deer.
September 11 – Killed one cabrie, one deer.
September 12 – Commenced our march at 7 o’clock. Passed rough flint hills. My feet blistered and sore.
September 12 – I stood on a hill (above Cottonwood) and in one view below me saw buffalo, elk, deer, cabrie, and panthers. Encamped on the (Cottonwood) branch of Grand (Neosho) River, which had steep banks and was deep. Dr. Robinson, Bradley and Baroney arrived after dusk, having killed three buffalo, which, with one I killed, and two by the Indians, made six; the Indians (Osages) alleging it was the Kansas hunting ground, therefore they would destroy all the game they possibly could.
September 13 – Killed six buffalo, one elk, and three deer.
September 14 – On the march we were continually passing through large herds of buffalo, elk, and cabrie; and I have no doubt one hunter could support 200 men. I prevented the men shooting at the game, not merely because of scarcity of ammunition, but as I conceived it, the laws of morality forbade it also.
September 16 – At the second creek, a horse was discovered on the prairie, when Baroney went in pursuit of him on a horse of Lieutenant Wilkinson, but arrived at our camp without success.
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The redoubtable Pike and his men passed on west, returning by way of Santa Fe and Texas. The tales they told of the wonderful game on the Kansas plains stirred the imagination of every red-blooded frontiersman. They wanted to go West. Pike made his report to President Thomas Jefferson and the story of the wild horses, fish and innumerable herds of big animals was put into print and was read not only in America but in Canada and England.
Today we know that Spanish and French explorers had visited Kansas long before Pike’s time, but in those days little was known of the French explorations and nothing of the Spanish.
We now know that the Spaniards often came to Kansas from Mexico and Santa Fe. The first of these daring conquistadors was Coronado, who entered central Kansas and may have camped in Butler County. We know he spent forty days in the central part of Kansas. How far east he traveled is yet largely conjecture. His entrance into Kansas was in 1541. He left behind a missionary, Juan de Padilla, a Franciscan friar, who preached to Quiverans, now identified as Wichita Indians. The Quiverans are believed to have lived at various places in the Arkansas Valley where their abandoned artifacts have been found, especially in the vicinity of Lyons. They doubtless visited the Valley of the Walnut and may have had villages there.
Padilla left the Quiverans to preach to the Kansas tribe, then living in the vicinity of the present Atchison. The Quiverans did not want him to take the blessings of Christianity to their deadly enemies the Kansas, and they killed Padilla rather than have him carry out his purpose.
The French appeared on the scene about the year 1700. We have a record of the Mallet brothers exploring the Arkansas River from the mountains to the Mississippi in 1742. Du Tisne also explored what is now southeast Kansas and may have come as far west as Butler in 1721.
In the year 1802, an event of importance occurred in the history of Butler County. In that year a large branch of the Osage Indian Tribe abandoned the ancestral home on the Osage River in the present state of Missouri and moved to the Arkansas Valley. When they moved into the Arkansas Valley it was utterly devoid of human habitations. The Wichitas had moved farther south into what is now Southern Oklahoma.
The occasion of the migration of the Osages was a quarrel in St. Louis between the French inhabitants and the Spanish rulers. It must be remembered that the Mississippi Valley was first claimed by France and the French founded New Orleans, St. Louis, Baton Rouge, St. Genevieve, Kaskaskia and many other cities on the banks of the Mississippi. Pushing westward up the Missouri River, they even went to the mountains and founded Fort Pierre, now the capital of South Dakota, and named Boise Creek, on which stands Boise, Idaho, the capital of that state. The Choteau family was the proudest and most famous of St. Louis. They had a monopoly on the Missouri River fur trade.
But the French and Indian War, resulting in the defeat of France, cost her most of her American possessions. Canada and all east of the Mississippi was given to England; and Louisiana, which included all west of the Mississippi, was ceded to Spain.
There came to St. Louis a brilliant young Spaniard, Manuel Lisa, who told the Spanish governor there that it was not fair to let the Frenchmen have the monopoly of the fur trade of the Missouri. He thought it ought to go to some worthy Spaniard, especially to Manuel Lisa. Accordingly the monopoly was sold to him in 1802.
But little good did it do him. Pierre Choteau, in whose honor was named Pierre, South Dakota, secured the monopoly of the Arkansas River trade, and then persuaded the majority of his friends, the Osages, to move into the Arkansas Valley. They built their homes along the Neosho and Verdigris Rivers. The very name Verdigris in French, meaning gray green. The Osages hunted westward into the Valley of the Walnut and far up the Arkansas. They caught the beaver of the Walnut, sold the skins to their good friend, Pierre Choteau, who snapped his fingers at Manuel Lisa and shipped the furs across the ocean to Paris to be worn by the fashionable folk there.
But while the commercial war was in progress, Spain deeded Louisiana back to
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France, and France, in turn, sold it to the United States. The Osages, having already moved to the Arkansas Valley, continued to claim the Walnut Valley as their own.
To the north of them was the Kansas tribe, who, by that time had moved westward from the Missouri River to live along the banks of the Kansas and to hunt southward as far as the valley of the Cottonwood in the present Chase County.
The northern boundary of Butler County was the dividing line between the hunting grounds of the two tribes. That is why the Osage guides advised Pike in 1806, to kill buffalo without stint, for, at that time, they were in the Cottonwood Valley, the home of the Kansas, and the Osages did not care how many Kansas buffalo Pike’s men destroyed.
WORE TRAIL ACROSS BUTLER COUNTY
In their westward wanderings, the Osages actually wore a well-defined trail across Butler County. It crossed the Walnut immediately south of the present El Dorado, coming from the eastward by way of Rosalia. The Missouri Pacific follows within a mile or two the route of the Osage trail the entire distance across the county. It crossed the Whitewater at Towanda and touched the Little Arkansas seven miles north of Wichita.
This trail was extensively used and prior to 1821 was the road from St. Louis to the Rockies. In fact, the Osage Trail was the original Santa Fe Trail. In 1812, James Baird, Samuel Chambers, and Robert McKnight drove a pack train of mules over the Osage Trail to Santa Fe, where they were thrown into a dungeon for entering New Mexico contrary to Spanish law which forbade the admission of strangers. In 1815, August Pierre Choteau, a son of Pierre, went to the Rocky mountains and hunted beaver on the site of the present Colorado Springs and Pueblo, packing the furs back to St. Louis by way of the sites of the present Towanda, El Dorado and Rosalia. Choteau, with his partner DeMunn, operated in the Rockies for two years. He even entered Santa Fe and was thrown into jail for his temerity. The Spanish governor sold his goods, valued at $30,000, and imprisoned Choteau for forty-eight days. He was glad to get away alive.
After that we find Choteau many times on the Plains west of the Walnut. Thomas James, who went to Santa Fe in 1821, upon returning with his mule train, writes in his journal that he met A. P. Choteau and a party of St. Louis Frenchmen west of the Little Arkansas River and that Choteau invited him to eat with them on the open prairie. James was delighted for Choteau served coffee, the first James had had in more than a year.
We have no means of knowing how many times A. P. Choteau and his followers, some of whom were white, some half-breeds, and some Osages, camped on the Walnut or the Whitewater and boiled coffee over their camp fires, for the Choteaus kept no journals.
But we can wander down into the Osage Nation in Oklahoma today and meet with his descendants, for, although Choteau was well-educated, having attended the United States Military Academy and having served as an officer in the War of 1812, he was a true son of the West. He had a home in St. Louis and war married. His white descendants still live there. But, after the death of his white wife, he lived on the Neosho, married two Indian wives and had half-breed offspring. Washington Irving, who visited the Osages and was entertained by Choteau describes his habitation in his “Tour of the Prairies.”
In 1821, the Santa Fe trade began to go by way of the Missouri River to Franklin, Independence, and finally Westport, and thence over what is today familiarly known as the Santa Fe Trail. But Butler County people can well say that the original trail passed through their own borders.
What is said to be the first Fourth of July celebrated in Butler County was in 1847, when Captain J. J. Clark, with a company of Missouri volunteers rode over the Osage trail to take part in the Mexican War. His company arrived on the hill above the Walnut and camped July 3 at the old Osage Trail crossing about a mile and half south of the business center of the present El Dorado. The following morning they fired a salute in honor of the day, mounted their horses and rode on their way. The record of this early celebration is found in Captain Clark’s diary.
With the discovery of gold in California, the Osage Trail became alive with
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‘49’ers headed for the golden West. The well-known California Trail began at the Missouri River, the branches starting from Westport, Fort Leavenworth, Omaha and Council Bluffs and all converging at South Pass to cross the Rockies.
But emigrants from the South chose a southern route, some of them crossing Texas, but many making their rendezvous at Fayetteville, Ark., and then proceeding in covered-wagon caravans northwest until they came to the Osage Trail. They followed that trail westward across the Walnut. Thousands of them camped at different times south of El Dorado. Then they made their way westward to cross the Whitewater just west of the present Towanda. There some of them followed the Osages trail west to join the Santa Fe. The majority, however, trekked northwest and joined the Santa Fe Trail in McPherson County or continued northwest to strike the California road in Nebraska. Those taking the Santa Fe route had the choice of two roads to California. They could go to Santa Fe and take the Spanish trail to California, or proceed to the Rocky Mountains at Pueblo; thence go north into Wyoming and across the Rockies at South Pass.
A long-forgotten people once lived in the confines of the present Butler County and enjoyed the rolling uplands and the pleasant valleys. We do not know who they were, but we know they were here, for they have left their signs in the shape of stone artifacts. They were not Osages, or, if they were, they lived here long before the French explorers came, for, in the time of the French, the Osages lived in the present Missouri and came to Kansas only to hunt.
The Osages who came to Kansas in 1802 did not make pottery or stoneware. Instead they bought iron kettles from the French traders and used either guns or, what was more common, steel pointed arrow heads, and iron axe heads, buying such materials from the French traders who came to them from St. Louis. Even if the Osage hunters had had pottery, they would have left it at home and would not have carried it on their hunts into the Walnut Valley.
Some day a discovery may be made that will reveal to us who were the ancient people who left their corn grinders, knives, and other implements and weapons, as well as pottery, in Butler County.
Possibly a branch of the Wichita or Pawnee tribe lived in Butler County at one time. Indians would have been foolish if they had passed up such a good hunting ground as Butler. Here was everything that a hunter might want for life. Living was easy here, with abundant game wandering about within arrow shot. The valleys afforded excellent gardens for the women where they could grow corn and pumpkins. There was plenty of wood for fires.
Who were the Indians that were smart enough to come and make their homes on the sides of El Dorado, Augusta, Douglass, and other towns? An authentic article on archaeology of Butler County is in V. P. Mooney’s History of Butler County. It was contributed by Bill J. Martin, who wrote in 1916:
“Bellin’s map of Louisiana of 1744 says the country of the Kansa Indians extended from the Missouri river almost to the mountains. Some have said that Butler County never was in habited by sedentary tribes of Indians, but I think otherwise, as I have explored a good deal of the southern half of the county, and have found much evidence of settled prehistoric occupation, in the valleys of Big Walnut, Little Walnut, Hickory, Picayune, Mephitis Americana and other creeks. I have in my collection of ancient Indian relics numbers of the following implements and weapons: Metates, mano stones, whetstones, rubbing stones, grinding stones, boiling stones, hammer stones, cup stones, anvil stones, stone mauls, arrow shaft rubbers, stone axes, flint spades and hoes, celts, spears, arrows, perforators, drills, whole pipes, pieces of pipes, blocks of catlinite (pipe material), flint flakes of many colors, flint knives, discs and pieces of broken pottery of many different kinds.
“William Bass, who lives near Pontiac, has perhaps as varied an assortment as mine, including flint fish hooks, something I have never found. All of the artifacts mentioned, with the manufactures of wood, bark, reeds, fibers, sinews, hides, bones, shell, horn, hair, feathers, and other perishable materials, prove that the ancient man of Butler County was an industrious person. His wife also was always
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at work, tanning hides, moulding pottery, working in her garden, cooking and manufacturing the first breakfast foods, hominy and succotash. There are village and camp sites on Hickory creek, on the Stebbins ranch, Wellington Sowers ranch, J. C. Getter ranch, Mrs. Benninghoff’s ranch, H. M. Cotton farm, Pattison ranch, Brown ranch, Mrs. Noe’s farm, J. Ellis farm, William Morti ranch and others. On Little Walnut Creek, B. F. Yates’ farm, Hon. F. Leidy’s farm, L. Boellner’s farm, Nunes’ ranch, F. M. Tabing’s farm, Bear ranch, the Marshall Brothers farms, the Dilts and Discom farms, and Joe Parker’s farm. On Picayune creek, on the B. F. Rickey farm, and on Mephitis Americana creek, on farm of F. M. Tabing.
“I presume there are many more places where our red friends lived, and loved, and worked, and sang and danced, in the days of long ago. On a farm on the Big Walnut River, once known as the Hazelhurst place, now owned by Mr. Taylor, there is an ancient village site about a mile long, which must have once been covered with many ridges; the ground is full of scrapers, chips of flint and pottery sherds. My friend, the late Hon. James R. Mead, of Wichita, expressed the opinion that Butler County was a most desirable place of residence for the aborigine, on account of the numberless creeks and springs, and the purity of its waters. Alas! That the Kansa should ever have exchanged this excellent beverage for piejene (firewater). The Kansa nation had a tradition that prior to the year 1500 their home was near the sea of the rising sun. There is no tradition about the fact that the sun of their destiny is almost set, as in 1907 there were only seventy full-bloods left alive. May the ashes of those who have departed to the Happy Hunting Grounds rest in peace.
“Butler County must have been a good location for the man of the Age of Stone, as there is much blue-gray shert or flint, and on Hickory creek there is an abundance of flint nodules of all shapes, from the size of a nutmeg to as large as a man’s head, all suitable for the making of flint hardware. Prior to the coming of the paleface the countless herds of Buffalo roamed at will over the prairies. Their bones and teeth are found on campsites on the bottom lands. I never have seen but one whole earthen vessel of Indian manufacture found on this territory. It was bowl found by Edward Steffen on the Steffen ranch, on Hickory creek, and is now in my collection. The reason that all the pottery is found broken, was that when a Kansa lost his wife by death he would give away or destroy her cooking utensils as a mark of respect. In these days we sometimes hear of men smashing the dishes, not on account of disrespect to their wives, but on account of the exceedingly bad quality of the booze. I presume that in prehistoric times the dog was much used as a beast of burden. In the year 1724 M. DeBourgmont, a French military commandant, on the Missouri headed a booster trip to the Commanches, to gain their friendship and their trade. On July 7, 1724, he arrived at the Kansa village on the Kansas river, and on July 24 was accompanied by the following numbers of Kansa boosters; “three hundred warriors, two grand chiefs and fourteen war chiefs, 300 squaws, 500 Indiana children and 500 dogs loaded down with baggage and provisions.”
“Verily, I say unto you that this was great dog-trot of 191 years ago. It is needless to say the expedition was a grand success, as any proposition backed up by Kansas men could not be otherwise. It has sometimes been said that the ancient inhabitants of Butler territory were non-agriculturists, but I think the stone mills, spades and hoes found on the grounds prove that they were farmers to some extent. The ancient Indian, enjoying superb physical and mental health, was a keen observer of all the details of nature. In his rambles in pursuit of game and other travels he never failed to note strange and curious stones and take them to his home for further examination, and to see if they could be made into implements, by either flaking, pecking or grinding. He also knew much more about botany than many of Dr. White’s gardengrangers ever learned. (I think Dr. White organized the gardengrangers along some time in the seventies). The Kansa had more religion than must of us, as he connected every mystery in nature with his God, the Great Manitou. In my collection of relics are many so-called cupstones. They are flat stones of flint and limestone, with from one to six or more small saucer-shaped depressions on one or both sides. Some scientists think they were for cracking nuts; others, that they were for making fire by revolution and friction of a stick of wood in the cavities, and as the cavity, when worn too deep, would not work, a new cavity had to be made. I adhere to the fire theory for these reasons: The flint blocks have but one cavity, not being
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worn out like the soft limestone, and some of the limestone blocks have the cavities so near the edge that a blow hard enough to crack a black walnut would smash the block to pieces. I have a big stone sledge made of a mountain rock, which had been broken in two. One part of this tool was found by the late H. H. Marshall on his farm, the other was found by my son, Louis H. Martin, on the farm of the late Charles Tabing. There are two kinds of implements peculiar to this buffalo country, flint scrapers and four-edged flint knives. The scrapers were used in preparing hides for tanning process; the four-edged knife is of a long diamond shape, and is generally finely chipped.
“I have in my collection a piece of iron ore, which had evidently been used as a source of paint; it was found on Hickory creek. Some Indiana had carved on it fancifully the face of an otter or some other animal.
“W. K. Moorehead, author of “Prehistoric Implements,” says on page 66: “Taking Manhattan (Kansas) as a center, and drawing a circle fifty miles in diameter, an archaeologist will find a local culture somewhat higher than the average plains tribes attained elsewhere. Primarily, they depended upon the buffalo, but they also were agriculturists, although on a small scale.’
“I would like the liberty of extending this area at least fifty miles farther to the south of Manhattan so as to include this great land of Butler County, as I have objects in my collection which show absolute perfection in the arts of chipping, grinding and pecking stone into fine implements.
“The writer of the foregoing sketch as lived in Butler County forty-five years, and is profoundly in love with its people, its soil, its trees and its grass, its rivers and its rocks, its sunshine and its flowers, its past history and its present and future prospects. I often have described it to my friends as a paradise in the center of the United States, and that it really is the heart of the world. Some of these friends sometimes dispute this statement, that Butler County is the center of the United States. Then W. J. M. comes back with the rejoinder that there are some rock-ribbed hills on the Atlantic shore, and some sandy stretches on the Pacific which we do not count, and that Butler County is indeed the center of the great United States and the heart of the world.”
Butler County was organized as one of the original thirty-three counties of Kansas. It was created by an act of the legislature of 1855. This legislature of Kansas Territory is referred to as the bogus legislature, because the members were elected by force of the Bowie knife and pistol and some of them actually were residents of Missouri while sitting in the Kansas legislative halls.
But whether they were bogus legislators or not, they have left their imprint on the map of Kansas. The succeeding legislatures changed some of the names of the counties, but they retained the name of Butler. Originally Butler County covered 900 square miles. It extended north to Wise County, the present Morris, and covered only the northern part of the present Butler. The shape and size of Butler was changed five times. Once it covered all of Cowley County as well as Butler. At times it has covered parts of Chautauqua, Elk, Greenwood, Chase, Marion, Harvey, Sedgwick and Sumner Counties. It was given its present shape and size by the state legislature of 1867, the act becoming effective February 26, of that year.
NAMED FOR ANDREW PICKENS BUTLER
Butler County was named in honor of Andrew Pickens Butler, United States Senator from South Carolina, who lived from 1796 to 1857. He was a brilliant Southern statesman and worked for the cause of the South. He was one of the senators who voted for the Kansas Nebraska bill. He first served in the South Carolina legislature in 1824, and was appointed judge of the circuit and supreme courts in 1833. In 1846 he became United States Senator, and served until his death. Senator Butler was denounced with great severity in 1856 by Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in his speech, “The Crime Against Kansas.” A nephew, Preston S. Brooks, a member of congress, assaulted Sumner with a gutta percha cane and severely injured him. Senator Butler was a zealous advocate of the right to introduce slavery into the territory of Kansas. Among other counties of the original organization named for southerners were: Davis, Wise, Lykins, Doniphan, Jefferson, Calhoun,
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