Coffey County, Kansas History

When my father and mother (Mr. and Mrs. Job Throckmorton) came to Kansas in 1857, they came down from Ohio on the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers to St. Louis, then up the Missouri river to West Port Landing, which is now Kansas City, and then across by stage coach to Burlington, Kansas.

When they were on the boat, the deckhands had some disturbance and were about to get into a general knockdown. My mother was close by and had my sister Flora in her arms (Sister Flora was at that time eight months old.) When these men commenced their disturbance, mother commenced singing and she sang that song: "It matters not, I've oft been told, Where the body lies when the heart is cold, But this I tell you my wish to be, Oh! Bury me not in the deep, deep sea."

They just quieted down and there wasn't any other commotion among them. One hint from her was enough.

Years afterward, when my mother's father, Samuel T. White, came by stage coach from Kansas City to visit in our family, my two sisters and I were playing in the yard making a little sod-house. We saw the stage drive up and an old man pet out and start up to the cabin. We children ran to him, took him by the hand and came leading him into the house. When we got in my grandfather said: "Oh Katy! How does it come these children knew me?" We didn't know him. We thought it was our old itinerant Methodist minister, Reverend Fairchild, because he was the only old man that we knew. The settlers were most all young men.

Uncle James White was a widower and he and Uncle Samuel White, his brother, came to Kansas by way of Iowa. They drove through and settled on the Neosho river, about three miles north of Burlington. They had a log cabin and when my mother and father came to Kansas, they lived with Uncle James White, and mother kept house for him about a year before father and mother moved on to their preemption claim. Tall Prairie Grass Their preemption claim was west and south of Burlington about four miles, but it was high ground and father didn't live there but a short time until he sold that farm and bought the one adjoining Uncle James White's farm on the west and bordering on the south bank of the Neosho river. In 1866 he sold that farm and we moved down to the farm two miles north from Burlington which he occupied until about the time of his death. I remember when we moved down there that the prairie grass was higher than the wagon box. Father and mother sat in the front seat in the wagon and the five of us children in the back and I know the grass was high enough it would sometimes sweep along the top of the wagon box.

Hauls Lumber from Ottawa

Sometime in 1868 he built the pew house on the home place and hauled the pine lumber, siding and shingles from Ottawa. He would drive up in one day-forty miles load up the lumber and drive out from Ottawa about ten miles. The next day drive home to Burlington.

I lived in a log cabin up to the time I was about eight or ten years old. It was a double log cabin and had a fire-place to the west. What we called a double log cabin was where there was an alley-way between so we could pull firewood between the two cabins. We had a sleeping room in both rooms of the cabin. The fire-place was in the west room but the alley was between so if we wanted to we could drag wood between the two rooms. The fire-place was made of stone and we had andirons.

Files Legs off of Skillet

When father bought the first cooking stove he took the old skillet that mother had used in the fire-place, and filed the legs off so it would fit down on the stove. I must have been eight years old then.

Mother made candles. She had candle molds. She did not use the dipped candles like many did, but she had a pair. of tin molds and would melt the tallow and put the wick in the mold, then pour the tallow in. When the tallow got hard enough she would pull out the candles.

She had a spinning wheel, but did not spin but for a few years. She spun some cloth to make little Johnny White a suit of clothes. I have a picture yet where he has that suit on that she wove and made for him.

Prairie Fires

The prairie fires used to be quite dangerous. In going across the prairies, we always went prepared to back fire in case it was necessary. One night along about '69 the fire broke out upon the prairie by Ottumwa on the east side of the Neosho river and came sweeping down through the valley next to the river with such fury that at one place between Uncle Jim White's and our place it jumped across the river.

It burned an Indian who was on horseback. He started to run to the creek, but the grass was so high the fire swept through and overcame him. Robert LaFetra had just settled on his farm and had a little land broken out. They took some fire from the fireplace and back-fired around his house to keep it from burning; then he and his wife Mary got down on the freshly broken land where the fire couldn't get to them. The fire was so bad it burned up the sheds where the chickens were and lots of the chickens had their feathers singed off.

Mr. LaFetra had just come from Ohio. He had been so anxious to see the Indians and soon after he came in 1869 the Indians were having a big dance. It was the Sac and Fox Indians. They were dancing and going on around the camp-fire and even once in awhile they would whoop it up. Away along in the night and eclipse came over the moon. The Indians were so scared they just hushed up and we didn't see or hear anything of them until the next morning. Then they sent one of their number up to my father before breakfast to find what was the matter with the moon. They said "It was sick." An Embarrassed Indian I saw one Indian very much embarrassed one time. He and his wife came to our cabin to buy some flour and bacon. His wife was carrying the papoose on her back in a blanket and he a great, big fellow-was just carrying his rifle. Mother sold him the flour and the bacon, wrapped it up in a stick and handed it to him. He commenced to put it on the wife's back so she not only had the papoose to carry but the meat and flour too. My mother took the papoose off the squaw's back and handed it to him and told him to carry that papoose. He was so embarrassed he just didn't hardly know what to do. But he carried it, at least until they got out of sight.

The Indians used to camp in our timber when they would be going back to their reservation at Quenemo after they had been out on a buffalo hunt. One time there were three hundred of them camped in our timber. A big rain came and the Neosho river was very high. When it started to go down, of course, it left the bank pretty slippery, but when it got low enough so they could swim their ponies across they started on to their reservation. A good many buck Indians swam across first. Then the squaws would take their ponies. The little papoose the squaw would put in kind of a sack made out of buffalo skin with kind of a puckering string at the top, holding that with a lariat cord. The squaw would hold to the mane of the pony and the pony would swim and pull her and she would pull the papoose in that boat arrangement.

Indians Do Joke

Some people say Indians never joke, but that is a mistake, because at that time one of those Indians swam across from the other side of the river and as they came up the slippery bank his hands came down in the slippery mud. As they came up, we children (three of us) were sitting on the bank. As he came up, he stuck his hand out and said ''How, How."

Molested by Indians Once

We never were molested by the Indians except on one occasion. The Kickapoo Indians who had the reservation up toward Topeka, had been at war with the Osages farther south and in coming back to their reservation they came through Burlington and got whiskey to drink and were drunk. As they came to our house they wanted in the house. They said they were cold and my mother was afraid as father had just gone from the house to one of the neighbors close by. The Indians pounded on the door and finally threw a spear right through a broken window, almost striking my sister Mary-she was a little baby in the cradle. Mother being afraid, had little Johnny White, who was with us, go out the back door and slip across to where father was and tell him to come home. Just as he came in, another band of Indians rode up from the road. They would yell and whoop. Father got his revolver and went out to where they were, and they just cowered right down. They said they were cold and hungry and white squaw wouldn't let them in. They went on across the Neosho river to their camping ground then, and the next morning they sent one of their men back to apologize for the way they had done. They knew they were off the reservation and were afraid for the consequences. They said they were cold and hungry and too much whiskey. That is, they were drunk.

The Indians would often decorate their faces fantastically, not only by paint, but by wearing ear rings. Some of the ear rings were very grotesque. For instance, I remember one Indian had a wire from the end of his nose to each ear and little pieces of-tin suspended from each ear.

Often times Indians, would hardly try to speak English. On one occasion an Indian came to my father when he was piling some lumber. He wanted some tobacco and father said: "Well it you want some tobacco, grab a hold of that lumber and help me move it." It happened to be one Indian that was willing to do a little work for some tobacco, so he helped father move two or three hundred of feet of lumber and put it in a pile. Then father gave him a little tobacco. Then he went to the house and wanted something to eat. He motioned to his mouth and tried to make out by signs that he wanted something to eat. Mother said: "I can't understand that." Finally he said: "Biscuits," and she gave him a biscuit.

Indian Delicacy

The Indians boiled the most of their food, so when they would go to cook an opossum or coon, they would just singe the hair off of it and put it in the pot and boil it. Some folks were down from Burlington to see the Indian camp and they wanted to take a taste of the quarry that the Indians, had. They did taste it and just afterwards the old squaw reached down in the kettle and took hold of a string and she had an opossum on the other end of it. The visitors quickly lost their appetites.

On the west of our farm there was a lake that covered about twenty acres. This lake was covered with pond lilies, or as the Indians call them: chink-a-pins. The Indian squaw would often take up these roots; than they would take the hard nuts and crack them, mix them with the chink-a-pin roots and boil to make soup. Saved

Meadow Lark's Nest

One time when we children were still on the farm that we owned before we moved to where the bridge is now; that is, where the Throckmorton bridge is, there were three of us playing on the prairie where father was breaking sod with oxen and had two yoke of cattle. While he was going around, we children found a meadow lark's nest right close to the furrow, and as he came around we showed him the nest. He turned those cattle and threw his plow out of the ground so as not to plow up that meadow-lark's nest. I have always thought that showed a very kind heart in him.

Father was a very patient man but he did not work oxen very long. He bought in 1866 his' first horse. I remember we called that horse "Old Julia." My sister Mary and I (I was about eight or nine years old I think) got on her to ride and thought we could ride all right. But it was flying time and the old pony went under the plum tree limb and rubbed us both off. It didn't hurt us very badly.

The Grasshopper Year

Most of the time we had plenty to eat, but during the grasshopper time, it was pretty hard to have white bread. We had corn-bread and almost every farmer raised cane sufficient to have molasses. I was a pretty good-sized boy when the grasshoppers came. That was in 1874. They commenced coming from the southwest and just as far as we could see in the sky we could see nothing but grasshoppers. It looked almost like snow. They commenced to light and then they ate every green thing. They got almost everything that year. Lots of the settlers were discouraged and some of them would have gone back to their former homes, but they couldn't very well. There was much need of help for the settlers.

Crop Follows Grasshoppers

The very next year following the grasshopper year we had an abundant crop; never did raise as much corn to the acre as we did in 1875. The effect of it was that Kansas made an exhibit at the Centennial at Philadelphia in 1876. It created so much attention that following the Centennial, the settlers came to Kansas in great numbers and took up claims that a few years befort would have been considered practically useless of course, the homestead law had been passed and that was a great stimulant for settling this country.

Nearly Drowned

I came very near being drowned one time. I was in company with Willie Venard, who afterwards became my brother-in-law. I had been across the river visiting at his house and we were going down to the river. His father and my father were back of us. We ran down to the edge and I took a stick to measure to see how deep it was. I told Willie I didn't think that was over my head and just as I turned around to tell him that, I began to slip, the bank was so muddy. I didn't get scared, but I slipped in. I said: "Willie, call for pa," and he called and called. I went down until I could touch the bottom of the river with the stick. I would come up, catch my breath and go down again. My father ran and jumped right off the bank into the river and just as I came up the last time, strangling, he grabbed me and took me out. They laid me over a log and worked with me until I came to. That night every time I would get almost to sleep, I would think I was in the river, and awake with a jump.

First Public School

My father taught the first public school in Burlington-that was in 1863. He taught in the old Methodist church. It was when they moved the town site to Burlington. He had a big school of mixed scholars, all the way from children to men grown. There had been a private school taught by Mrs. Reamer before that, but no public school.

Had to Work

In 1874 my father was elected county clerk of Coffey county and he held that office for four years. During that time I was about fourteen to sixteen years of age. It threw a great deal of the work on the farm upon me. We kept help- two hands most all of the time- but we dealt in cattle. We had generally about one hundred head of feeding cattle and it was my work to haul out the corn for them. Of course, we didn't get any high prices for cattle then as we do now. When we get as high as five cents a pound. we thought we were doing fine. We would buy them at about three cents a pound, feed them corn and sell them at about five cents a pound, if the gain on the cattle paid for the cost of the corn we thought we were doing pretty well.

We did not have fences. We herded on the prairie north of Burlington. We didn't have sheep then. When we herded, we would lie on a high place most of the time and see the place most of the time and see that the cattle did not go off with other cattle.

In '64 and 'GG father was a member of the State Legislature. I can remember yet how he used to go from home to. Topeka in the stage coach before we had any railroads. When I was a little boy we attended school at Burlington. One day I ran away from school to see the building of the M. K. & T. as they were building south from Junction City to the Indian Territory. I did not intend to run away from school, but I didn't get back in time. It was a big sight to me-the first engine I had ever seen. The M. K. & T. was built as a southern branch of the Union Pacific rail road and they were getting every alternate section of land as an inducement for them to build through the Indian Territory into Texas so the government would have a way of transporting troops down into that new. country.

We shipped cattle to Kansas City. We did not drive any cattle there. Some of the first we raised might have been driven, but when father engaged in feeding cattle it was after the Katy railroad had been built.

In 1876 the Santa Fe built from Ottawa to Burlington.

Indian Grave in Feed Lot

In our feed lot right where we fed cattle there was an Indian grave. It was covered with flat limestone rocks and before the Indians were moved to their reservation at Quenemo, when they were going to their hunting ground, they would come to the grave and tramp a ring around it by having the ponies tramp around and around the grave. One of the Indians would stand on the grave and hold the lariat and make the ponies tramp around and around until they tramped the weeds down. Then they would put bread and meat under the stones on the grave. After they had gone, we would go down and sometimes find beads that had been lost where they had been tramping and we would notice where they had put bread and meat under those rocks: At an early day in Kansas the smallpox was so bad among, the Indians it killed many of them.

Old Joe Quinemo was a great friend of my father's. Snowfall Kenemy was a little Indian boy that I used to play with. He could play hide and seek behind the smallest piece of grass I ever saw.

Years afterwards, one time, the Indians were moved to the Indian Territory and Joe Quinemo and other Indians were coming through; father had them stay all night at our house and put their ponies in the barn. It was very seldom that an, Indian would ever sleep in a cabin, but that time Joe Quinemo and the two men that were with him " slept down by the fire-place in the cabin. When they got ready to start on the journey in the morning Joe Quinemo came bringing in an old cowbell. He handed it to my father and said: "Me, You, Give. No swap." He was making father a present of the cowbell. I could understand some things the Indians said-not a great deal. One time my father was visiting an Indian cabin and he forgot his buckskin mittens. Pretty soon he said to me (I was about 8 years old) "George, I wish you would go down to Joe Quinemo's and bring my buckskin mittens. I have forgotten them." I went down and got them. My mother was surprised and said: "How did you make them know what you wanted?" I told her I held out my hands and said: "Bucky, bucky skin." They got them and handed them to me.

They had something like carpet made out of rushes and they would cut little poles in the timber and put them in the ground, tying the poles together at the top, then wind the rush carpet around that, leaving it open at the top so that they could build a fire and the smoke would go out the top.

They always had lots of ponies and dogs. When they went to move " from place to place they would carry their wickeyup and roll it up in bundles, they had their own way of making saddles. They would hang these bundles on the pony and pack them that way -Indian style-that is, one pony after the other. They sometimes put the papoose in sort of a bundle on the side of the pony-more often the squaws carried the papoose on her back, even though she was riding.

The Sac and Fox Indians were poor Indians compared with the Cheyenne.

We had breaking plows but no drills, discs, planters or anything of that kind. In planting corn, we prepared the ground and marked it off both, ways, with a marker. We would then plant the corn by dropping three grains to a hill, sometimes covering it with a hoe and sometimes with a shoveled plow the shovel was made like the blade of a spade, covering the corn and then lifting it up, letting the one horse pull it.

The first moving machine I ever saw had one big wheel, instead of two. It was owned by Mr. Nelson, at Burlington.

We had chairs in the log house with woven hickory bottoms and pretty good, home-made comfortable beds, with featherbeds and light government blankets. The government blankets were really the remains of the Civil war, because nearly every man in the service had blankets that had been brought home when he came. We had a factory at Burlington that wove blankets-that was quite an enterprise. It was operated by F. A. Atherly, father of M. G. Atherly of Gridley and Frank Atherly of Strawn.

Nearly all the provisions that were brought in came by way of Leavenworth. The men would go to Leavenworth to get goods for the stores and haul them from there generally by ox teams.

Grandma did not have a sewing machine until in 1868 or '69. It was a Wheeler and Wilson-a good one. She washed with a washboard and tub.

First Church was Methodist

The first church at Burlington was a Methodist church that stood in the east part of town at the corner of Second and Hudson street, just north of where the Long Bell Lumber company is now. My father and mother were charter members of that church. Some of our ministers at that time were later quite prominent Methodist ministers. There was Rev. G. R. Rice. S. E. Pendelton and Rev. Mr. Hancock. They went to church with the ox teams sometimes, a bit more often with horses. By the time we had the church most of the people had horses.

At one time pretty near the close of the war, there were 8000 refugee Indians from the Indian territory here. They were the Chocotaw, Chickashas, Creeks and Seminoles. The government had brought them up there between Burlington and LeRoy. They were in charge of Colonel Coffin. You can imagine what a time they must have been for the army. They didn't commit any great depredations at all- they were practically all friendly Indians-but often they had trouble among themselves. They were kept there until after the close of the war, then taken to the Indian Territory.

Father was not in the regular army. He was United States Marshal.

Buys Herd of Sheep

In 1876 my father and I went overland to near Toronto, in Wilson county and bought three hundred twenty-five head of sheep. We bought them of Charles LeFleur, west of the Verdigris river. When we started to take them home, they would not ford the river because sheep will hardly ever go into the water at all. Father went back to Charlie LeFleur's and borrowed a wagon load of walnut boards and hauled them down to the Verdigris river; put some rocks in the water with some cross-pieces, putting those boards down to make a bridge across the Verdigris river. Then taking a little salt in a bucket, he called to the sheep and they followed him right along. My brother and I herded the sheep while father took the lumber back; then we came on home across the prairie, passing close to where Gridley is now.

The people in our neighborhood would go close to Wichita to hunt Buffalo. They hardly ever went until alter they had the corn husked in the fall.

One time father went to shoot a deer that was in the field close to our house, we older children crawled up to the henhouse to watch him and just as he got nearly there, the deer started to run. Father looked up and saw that the children on the henhouse had scared the deer.

In 1876 President Hayes was elected President of the United States. He had promised to remove the troops from the south which he did. The effect of it was that the negroes of the South being afraid, started immigrating to Kansas. The transportation companies encouraged them to come, and the result of it was that it brought lots of those exodist negroes to Kansas many of them are still here. The negroes in our county in talking about it said they told them to come to Kansas, where Governor St. John would give them 40 acres of land and a mule to tend it. Many of them did go out on school land west of Burlington, but only remained for a little while before coming to town. They said they couldn't live on prairie grass. Most of those negroes moved to the south part of the state, down about Independence some of them just across the line into the territory-some to Coffeyville where they could raise cotton.

Three Big Bridges They built the bridges-three of them-in 1869, one at LeRoy, one at Strawn and one at Burlington. The Throckmorton bridge was not built until 1882. The county voted $45,000 in bonds for the building of the first three iron bridges in Coffey county, two of them are still in use. The other might have been, but they condemned it and built a new one at a cost of $75,-000.00-a cement combination bridge. It was while I was attending the university at Lawrence in 1882 that Mr. Haskell introduced me to Mrs. John Brown-the only time I ever saw her. They held a reception for her in Lawrence as she was going East from Oregon.
Geo. Throckmorton.