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Thiis chapter was written by A. B. Brandenburg of Quinter, who was one of the earliest settlers, and one of the very few of those settlers of half a century ago who are still with us. Mr. Brandenburg can tell this story much better than any writer who came upon the scene in these later days; and in telling it he could say, like the hero of ancient times, "all of which I saw, and a part of which I was" W. P. H. In the first settling of this part of Kansas, the Kansas Division of the Union Pacific Railroad was one of the Pioneers. This was built thru here about 1866 and 1867 and was finished thru to Denver, Colorado, ready for trains to make the thru trips from Kansas City to Denver, September first, 1870. Wells were put down and section houses were built for the five men and crews about 14 miles apart. The writer came to Russell in January 1878 and went to work for a man that was one of the town company of Park, Kansas. He wanted another man and myself to come out to Gove County and locate and he let us have a horse and buggy to drive thru. We made the trip the last of April 1878. By driving thru we could see the country better, so will say that Fort Hays was the first sight we saw. The town was then not very large. The next place was Ellis, where there was not a building, only a small shed on the south side of the track, and nothing north of the creek. Next town was Ogallah and they had just finished a sod house and was digging a well and then on to WaKeeney. The town was plotted and two or three houses were built. The old town was known as Trego, in the draw west of WaKeeney about a mile. Then we drove on to Collyer where they were laying out that town and one house was already built. The old town was about a mile west of Collyer. A section house and water-tank had been built and was called Coyote. On we drove to Buffalo, now called Park. When the town was called Buffalo the postoffice was Hill Grove and then the town was named Buffalo Park, and later Park. H. J. Bliss, one of the town company, had built a store and lived over the store. There was one dwelling house, and a shed blacksmith shop. The first settlers were a number of families
from Pennsylvania, 16 families in all. These settled in and around Park in the spring of 1878. Another colony came
west and located at Collyer, settling as far west as Quinter, but there was no town where it now stands. In the
spring of 1879 the railroad laid a spur track where Quinter is now located and called the place Melota. The town
of Grainfield was started in the spring of 1879. A colony of Holland Dutch from Iowa, settled around Grainfield.
The town of Grinnell had then a section house and another small house where mostly tobacco and drinks were sold,
also a few groceries. As this band traveled north into the northern part of Sheridan and the southern part of Decatur county, between the Solomon and Prairie Dog property. A man by the name of Peck had a store on the Prairie Dog right in their path, also the post office in connection. The post office was called Shiboleth. I stopped with them several times after the raid and they told me the story of the raid on their house and store. From the house they took clothing and bedding and from the store dry goods. The fer.iher beds that were in the house were taken outside and emptied of feathers which were scattered to the four winds. Mr. Peck said that he had just received a barrel of syrup, that was all taken away, but what they used to carry it in had always puzzled him. The Indians als© killed the fat cattle, then cut them in strips and left them lay. After doing all the mischief they could here the band left for Nebraska, where their real trouble began. The settlers and cowboys were aroused over the depredations the Indians were doing and gathered together and went after them, finally driving the whole band into a canyon, where every member of the band was killed. The soldiers had been following the Indians but apparently did not want to catch them. The Indians said they were not afraid of the soldiers, but were afraid of the cattle men and settlers. They knew that the soldiers were allowed to go only so far, but the settlers and cattle men knew no such rules and meant business. What really made Buffalo Park a live town those days was the fact that the old cattle trail passed just west of Park, near the edge of town. There were from 100,000 to 200,000 head of cattle driven northward into the north western states. These were mostly cattle contracted for by the government. These cattle herds would start from Texas in March and get this far in June. The largest herd I ever saw at any one time was 10,000 head. It looked to me like they covered an area of ground 10 miles long by one quarter of a mile wide.While driving these cattle the men scattered along on each side to keep them in line, and each man as a rule had five saddle ponies and would use a fresh horse each day by turns. Those days they would let the cattle go all winter and then round them up in the spring, and each man pick out his own cattle. I heard one man say that when he left Texas he had 400 head of cattle in his bunch that did not belong to him, and when they arrived here had about 50 head that did not belong to him, most of them belonged in Nebraska. The cattle men had men stationed along the route with a list of brands whose business it was to take such branded cattle out of the herds as the cattle passed by. This cattle business is what made Buffalo Park a good town then. Many of the boys would drop out and go back home and others were here waiting for a job on the trail. By the end of 18 79 Buffalo Park-was a town with twelve stores and three Hotels, three livery stables, three restaurants, three saloons, one barber shop, two blacksmith shops, one harness maker and one bakery, and a paper printed here, was the first one to be printed in the county. The first school was started in the fall of 1878, the people built the house as there was nothing to tax, as this then was a township attached to Ellis county, and later when Trego county was organized it was a township of Trego county. The first Church organized in Gove county was at Buffalo Park by a Con-gregationalist missionary sent out by that church. He was an able man by the name of J. Q. A. Weller. In 1880 the people began to leave the town and also the settlers began to go away as there were no crops and hence nothing to sell. In some instances the man of the family would leave the family where they could take care of the things then find work elsewhere, so they couid earn some money to keep their families and in some cases the wife would go and they received the sum of $1.50 per week. That sum would seem almost nothing now. I have surely felt very sorry many, many times for these families with their children, and no one knows what some noble women have endured to bring up their families and keep their homes together, and it was those people that have sacrificed to make it possible for the present generation to have the advantages they have today. The first money the writer earned in Gove county was by picking bones over the prairies. One of the first wheat crops raised in Gove county was in 1881. There was about 20 acres of it on land about a mile east of Park. The writer and ex-sheriff Robert Bohn cradled, bound and shocked the wheat for a man by the name of Peach, who operated a blacksmith shop in Park. Grandma Christensen had a bakery in Park at the time, and we bought bread from her often. In February 1881 was the worst we ever saw on these plains. I was batching on my claim at the time and was caught there during the storm. I did not see any one for 11 days. Folks south of me ran out of provisions and had to go to town, they came by with a yoke of oxen and sled and we put my oxen and theirs to the wagon and broke the road to Park. We were the first team to get to town from south and east of Park. The most wicked blizzard we ever saw while it lasted was in February, 1883, but it lasted only six hours. During the blizzard of 1881 some burned up most of their furniture. It was not very costly stuff, however. It was mostly home made furniture. At this early day folks had to be men of all trades. Cabinet makers and sod masons, most of the houses were built of sod- or were dug-outs. The blizzard of January 1886 was the longest of any of them. There were 19 days during that storm that no train went through from Kansas City to Denver. Late in the spring of 1870 a caravan of 60 covered wagons traveling-together, past through Park. They were headed for the State of Washington. Their route followed the cattle trail northwest. These folks were from eastern Kansas and Missouri. The prairie did not appeal to them. Our social times naturally were limited compared to what they are now, but we had real good times together. The social dance and playing of games were the chief activities of the social life. In the fall of 1885 the town of Familton, now Quinter, was staked out by a town company from Nebraska and in the spring of 1886 a colony of the Brethren Church located here and began to improve this part of the country. There is not much use for me to say much about this country since the spring of 1886, as there are so many here who are familiar with its history from then on. When I first located here and was on my homestead, I would imagine I could see in the future. Perhaps only a few years, and see a nicely improver country-like it is at present-but after a few years, when there were seasons when we failed to raise any-thing, and what is more, it looked like it never would be of any account, brought the discouraging periods to the country. But thanks to the faithful few that stayed with it, it was these stalwart souls that saved the day for this country. After a time new settlers came and stayed, they too saw in the future that this would be a country of homes and determined to stick it out. It is to this class of people that we owe a big debt for the homes we now have in this section of Kansas. In what way could we be better rewarded for the sacrifice so many have made when we see the grand churches of the community, and the schools and all conveniences we now have, and best of all the God fearing people with whom we have associated. As I look around and think of the early settlers here and the good, kind friends of.those times and wonder where they are all now. The older ones are gone on and the younger ones are scattered to the four winds. At the present time I can count only two people living in this country now who were living in this country when I located in this county. They are Mrs. Emma Crippen of Gove and Charley Johnson living west of Grainfield. There were m any interesting events happened in those days, which 1 have passed over. In concluding this brief sketch of those earlier days will give the names of those who were members of the town company of Buffalo Park: J. W. Ellithorpe, S. J. Bliss, John Morgan, Jim Goudy, Ed Hibard, these were from Russell and there are a few more names I do not now recall. Every new state when admitted to the Union was endowed by the national government with a portion of the public land, for the support of education. The size of this gift varied somewhat with different states, but in the case of Kansas two square miles in each government township were thus set aside as school lands. These lands were not to be home-steaded but were to be sold for cash and the proceeds turned into the permanent school funds of the state. Some states administered their school land inheritance much more wisely than others. The states which held their school lands-several of which could be named if their names had anything to do with this story- now have a valuable property which brings a large revenue into their school funds. But the Kansas school lands were sold long ago at very low prices and never brought enough to do the cause of education much good. The school lands were offered for sale at $3 per acre, the purchaser paid one tenth down and had twenty years time to pay the balance, with interest at six per cent. But few people cared to purchase the state lands, even on such generous terms, so long as the national government was offering homestead land free to every actual settler. After the homestead lands were gone the school lands were soon snapped up; and thereby hangs a tale, as Shakespeare says. The first tract of school land to be filed on in Gove county was Section 36-13-26, which was taken in 1884 before the county was organized. The purchaser made his initial payment of thirty cents an acre, kept up his interest payments till 1894 and then abandoned the land. A few tracts were taken in 1885 and 1886 but most of these were abandoned after a few years. The first tract to be purchased and paid for was Section 36-12-29, the section on which (a part of) Gove City is located. This land was filed on in 1885 and patented in 1887 to the Gove City Town-site Association. Willard Teller paid out on the north east quarter of Section 16-15-27 and got a patent to it in 1887; a town had been laid out on this tract and named Teller, which was expected to become a real city when a railroad should be built up the Smoky. Soon the demand for school lands came to an end, and for twelve years following 1886 not a single tract was taken up; and most of those which had been taken up previous to that time were abandoned and reverted to the state. A few tracts of school land were taken up in 1898 and the two years following. It will be noted that at this time western Kansas was recovering from the calamitous Nineties, population was beginning to increase and land was again acquiring a value. In the natural course of events as things were going at that time all the school lands would have been taken within a few years, even at the extravagant price of three dollars an acre, thirty cents down and twenty years time on the balance at half the prevailing commercial rate of interest. But the Kansas legislature of 1901 started something. It occurred to that bunch of statesmen that the best thing they could do was to help the state get rid of its lands. The few remaining school lands were all in the western counties which were supposed to be a desert arid or semiarid country fitted only for pasture, and it was argued that the state should sell its holdings as quickly as possible and get out of the land business. Accordingly, the legislature amended the old law and cut down the minimum price of school lands from $3 per acre to $1.25. The bill went through the legislature very smoothly and was supposed to be a very nice law. After it was seen how the law worked the charge was made that it was a scheme of the western cattlemen to steal the state's school lands. And perhaps it was. Immediately following the passage of the new law
active trading in school lands began. Under date of April 15, 1901, the State Auditor, Mr. George E. Cole, wrote
from To-peka to the county clerk of Gove county (and presumably to all the county clerks:) Please give me the detailed information concerning the. school land subject to sale in your county. Also the detailed information concerning the land that has been sold on which payments are in arrears and on which the county clerk has not issued legal notice of forfeiture. Please list all land subject to sale or forfeiture, and whether leased. Under "Remarks" give some general information about what the land is good for whether wheat, corn, general farming, grazing or grass land. In order to be of value these reports should be returned to this office immediately. This information will be widely advertised and will result in getting a considerable amount of this land on the tax rolls, increase the population of the state, and in addition will materially increase the permanent school fund. I shall take particular pains to let it be known that you are instrumental in bringing this about and I hope it will receive your prompt and hearty support. The Gove County Advocate found little to approve in the plans to dispose of the school lands, and it's comment on the Auditor's letter was as follows (April 19:) Mr. Cole may be perfectly honest in his action but his anxiety to "get this land on the tax rolls and add to the population of the state'' by sacrificing the lands set apart for the benefit of the school children of Kansas is rather suspicious, coming as it does so soon after the passage of the law reducing the minimum price for school land to $1.25 per acre. We are not aware that Mr. Cole ever made any special effort to sell school lands when the minimum price was $3.00 per acre. Under the public land laws sections 16 and 36 in each township are set apart as school land. There are sixty sections of school land in Gove county. Of these about one-fourth have been sold; about seven sections are now held by settlers who are preparing to bring them into market, and seventeen sections are leased for a term of five years. Thus about two-thirds of the school lands are now used or yielding a revenue to the school fund in some way. For the year ending last October the sales of school land in this county amounted to $1470.39, and $483.87 was collected for leases. All lands were sold for $3.00 per acre and upwards, one section near Quinter having been bought by Samuel Long for $4.65 per acre. Gove county school land is worth something and there is no excuse for rushing it on the market for $1.25 per acre. The county is out of debt and has a surplus of $17,000 in the treasury; the school lands are yielding a good revenue now and should be held till they bring a good price. These lands when sold should go to actual residents and those who will use them, and not to speculators. Those who want school land should settle upon or lease it now to head off the speculators. A lease will hold the land for five years in spite of a sale, and a purchaser can oust a settler from the land only by buying his improvements; so that a lease or a settlement will virtually act as a bar to the designs of speculators. If you want a farm, get it right away, on some school section. The county commissioners were importuned to have the school land; appraised and sold and a meeting of the board was called to consider the matter (April 25); at the meeting (says the Advocate) "a plea was made to have appraisers appointed but none of the members of the board viewed the proposition with favor, as they had found that the people generally are opposed to taking such, action at this time." The same week the Advocate says: "Gove county citizens seem to have suddenly awakened to the advantages of school land as a real estate investment, as evidenced by the rush of the past week to make settlement on all that was not already tied up. In several cases there was a race for possession a la Oklahoma. When the time for selling it arrives there will be little of Gove county's school land unoccupied." The school lands did not last long after attention had been called to them in such a fashion. The record shows that on one certain day eleven filings were made on school lands and on another day nine. From the time when the new law went into effect till the end of 1903 eighty entries were made, in 1904 there were thirty, in 1905 twenty seven, in 1906 eighteen. This cleaned up the school lands -and ordinarily this would be the end of the story; but it is only the beginning. The school lands had been sold and the incident was in a fair way to be forgotten when in 1906 Capt. George K. Spencer, who had once been a resident of Gove county but was now living in Kansas City tendered to the treasurer of Gove county a payment on a tract of school land which he had purchased twenty years previously. The land was the west half of section 36-13-31, and the record showed that Mr. Spencer had purchased it in 1886 for $3 per acre, made his initial payment, kept up his interest for about ten years and then stopped paying. His contract had then been forfeited, following the proceeding provided by law; and later on the land had been sold again to Arthur Stansbury, at $1.25 per acre. The county treasurer refused to accept a payment on a forfeited contract. Mr. Spencer contended that the forfeiture had not been made according to law, and brought a mandamus suit in the supreme court of the state to revive his title to the land and compel the treasurer to accept his money. The decision of the court is found in Volume 74, Supreme Court Reports, case of Spencer vs. Smith, and was handed down June 9, 1906. The law provides that in cases of this kind the sheriff shall serve notice of forfeiture upon the party holding the contract to the land, or if the party cannot be found he shall post the notice of forfeiture in a conspicuous place in the office of the county clerk. The sheriff had done this and put his endorsement on the notice in the following words: "Received this notice this 8th day of January, 1898, and served the same by posting a certified copy in the county clerk's office, January 13. 1898, as the within named George K. Spencer cannot be found in the county." The Court declared that there had been no forfeiture, because the notice had not been properly served. Said the Court: "The returns show fatal defects. No personal service was made, and the essentials of a constructive service do not legally appear. Notice can only be given by posting where the purchaser cannot be found and no one is in possession of the land. The returns of the sheriff show that Spencer could not be found in the county, but they do not show that no one was in possession of the land. The returns further fail to show that the notices put up in the county clerk's office were posted in a conspicuous place. The failure to observe these requirements defeats the attempted forfeiture." Therefore, because of these defects which the court had been so acute in discovering, the state could not regain this land after Mr. Spencer had violated all the terms of his contract. This decision of the Kansas Supreme Court is one of the finest examples of judicial thick headedness and hair splitting to be found in all our history. County officials are not one hundred percent efficient, and probably never will be. If they make some trifling mistake, if the court really wanted to get at the facts, it would have been easy to prove by competent witnesses that Spencer had abandoned the land, had ceased to make the payments required in the contract, that no taxes had been paid on the land for several years, that no one was claiming the land or making any use of it and. finally, that the bulletin board on which the notice was posted was the most conspicuous place in the county clerk's office. But the court would have none of this sort of evidence; the sheriff had not stated in so many words that the notice was posted in a "conspicuous" place, and the court slammed the door in his face in the following language: "Oral proof offered to show that the notice was sufficient in fact, or to amend the service, is not admissable." Of course, the effect of this decision was to upset the title to practically every piece of school land in Kansas. And, as if by prearrange-ment, as soon as the decision was handed down, the old contracts which had been forfeited for years made their appearance and their possess-ers descended in a swarm upon the present holders of school land. In nearly every case these old contracts seem to have found their way into the hands of lawyers or other smart people from the cities who did not care for the lands but held the con-tracts as a club over the head of the new claimants, to get as much money as they could out of them. The new claimants were actual settlers-the law required actual settlement and at least $100 in improvements-and in their unorganized condition they were ill fitted to deal with this sudden peril which threatened to deprive them of their homes. Some of them capitulated and came to terms with the old contract holders. Others were defiant; one of the latter kind tells of his experience about as follows: "I had bought a tract of school land, and afterward sold the contract to Mr. R who had moved on the land with his family. I had never heard that the land had been so'd and forfeited before my time, and supposed that I was the first purchaser. I heard that the supreme court had made a decision of some kind affecting school lands but did not suppose it had anything to do with my case. Then one day when I went to town a stranger came to me and told me that he was the owner of my school land. He had the contracts and a certified copy of the court decision to prove it, too. You could have knocked me over with a feather. As I had disposed of my interest, probably I could have stood from under and let Mr. R do the fighting, but I felt under at least a moral obligation to protect my purchaser. I read the documents over slowly, to gain time to think, and then I talked it over with him about like this: "I see, Mr. J that you have the contracts, and that the court says they are good. I see, also, that you defaulted on them ten years ago and that you owe ten years interest and ten years taxes. You will have to pay all these up before you can establish your claim to the land; also penalties for non payment of taxes, and these penalties are assessed by our local officials; and you will find that they are good chargers when it comes to dealing with a speculator who is trying to take something away from one of our own people. And when you have made all these payments you have only bought yourself a lawsuit, for we are on that land in good faith and are not going to get off till we are put off." By this time I was doing all the talking. He left me and drove out into the country to see Mr. R, who, of course, told him he would talk to me about it. When I got home I found Mr. R very much excited and more than half convinced that I had swindled him. I offered to trade back, but that did not suit him, he wanted only to keep the land. All right then, we will stick together and fight that fellow to a stand still. Well, that was the last of Mr. J. He gave us up as a bad job and never bothered us again." A meeting was called at Gove City, August 25, and the school land holders formed an organization with J. W. Suiter president, C. H. Cole secretary and J. F. Mendenhall treasurer. The members empowered those officers to act for the organization and pledged them their moral and financial support. In all the neighboring counties similar action was being taken. It was agreed to appeal to the state legislature, which was to be chosen in the fall. Every candidate for the legislature was sounded out, to be sure that he was right on the school land question. When the newly elected legislature met the following January it showed itself overwhelmingly in sympathy with the settlers on the school lands, and eager to do everything which lay in its power to reverse the supreme court. The school land act which it passed was Senate Bill No. 1, which numeral means that it was the first bill introdued at the session and the first one to become a law. The act fairly bristles with provisions intended to deny and undo everything the court had put into its decision. The law is too long to reprint here in full, so a few extracts must suffice: "Where entries which appear upon the records-in the office of the county clerk indicate that the interest of the purchaser in the tract of land had been forfeited for default in the payment of money due the state-such entries shall be prima facie evidence, in any action or proceeding in any court in the state, that proper notice of the purchaser's default had been issued and legal service thereon made, and that all things necessary to be done had been dnly done and performed. Any entry upon said records of the county clerk as canceled, forfeited, reverted to state, and the like, with or without date, shall be held to be an entry indicating that the interest of the purchaser had been forfeited." "The return of the sheriff on any notice issued by the county clerk to the purchaser of school lands of his default shall not be held to show an in-sufficient or invalid service because of the omission of any recitals required by law to show legal service; but if, notwithstanding such omissions, such return shows that service of such notice was made by posting a copy thereof in the office of the county clerk, such return shall be prima facie evidence, in any action or proceeding in any court in this state, that the persons upon whom such notice was to be served could not be found in the county, that no person was in possession of the land described in the notice, and that a copy of such notice was posted in a conspicuous place in the office of the county clerk." "In any case where the sheriff's return fails to show legal service, parol and other evidence may be introduced to prove that in fact legal service of the notice was made." The act then went on to provide that any holder of a forfeited contract who wished to try his case in court must do so within six months after the forfeiture or within six months after the passage of the act. A reading of this law makes it look as if the supreme court was pretty well spanked, as far as the legislature could do it. The passage of this act relieved the fears of the
school land settlers, and the situation was soon straightened out. In a few cases the holders of the old contracts
got the land. but most of them were put to flight and made little profit out of the af-fair. He did nothing of the sort. He made no move to avail himself of the decision in his favor, and now it was discovered that instead of paying out on the land according to his contract he, or his attorney, was negotiating with his late opponent, Arthur Stansbury, to buy the title which Stans-bury had acquired to the land at the new minimum of $1.25 per acre. There is some difference between a land deal at $3 per acre and one at $1.25. It appeared to the angry state and county officials that Spencer's suit had not been brought in good faith but that his purpose was merely to blackjack Stansbury and use the state and the supreme court to pull his chestnuts out of the fire. Accordingly, suit was begun in the district court of Gove county to compel Spencer to pay out on his contract or to forfeit the bond which he had put up when he entered into the contract. The case is known on the records of the district court as Case No. 734, and the assistant attorney general, John S. Dawson, (now a member of the supreme court) came out from Topeka to prosecute Spencer. Now Spencer is on the defensive and pleads, We cannot carry out our contract because the land has already been sold and patented to Stansbury, and that lets us out. The state says, You've got to do it. The state wins the suit, gets judgment against Spencer, the sheriff starts out to collect the judgment, reports that he cannot collect, Spencer is out of the county and there is no property to seize except the land, and the land had already been patented to Stansbury but Stansbury's title to it is not good because of that decision of the supreme court. It is a fine mess. The sheriff is looking for Spencer's property, to seize it on execution. Spencer is holding a contract which he is anxious to get rid of. tansbury has paid out his money and holds a patent
which the court has decided is no good. Spencer has grounds for a damage suit, and so has Stansbury. It looks as
if the supreme court, or somebody, will have to make some more decisions. The offer is accepted and patent issued to True. How much True paid Stansbury for his interest does not appear. What Spencer got out of it, if anything, also does not appear. He probably got nothing, and was out that thirty cents per acre and all the interest payments he had made the state. The purchasers of school lands all over western Kansas were put to a vast deal of trouble. The supreme court of Kansas made itself ridiculous and was reversed by the legislature. And nobody made anything out of it except a sharp lawyer who started the suit and. got a half section of. land. This may be a tale of a tempest in a teapot, but it is a story of a feud which raged at
the firesides and the cross roads, and before the Supreme Court of the state and at the polling places; and it
will explain why our county has never had a new One thing we have always prided ourselves on, that Gove county has never had any bonded debt. Some Kansas counties as soon, as organized proceeded to go into debt and issue bonds, to build a new court house or for other purposes, or to pay current expenses. In some cases the county debt had its accompaniment of fraud and scandal. At any rate, a county debt was a handicap, and we prided ourselves on the fact that we could hold up our heads and tell the world that our county had no debt and that our taxes were low. (Speaking personally, I recall that it was this distinction which first attracted my attention to Gove co.un-ty and caused me to select it as a home instead of some other western county.) As one of the inducements to get the county seat located at their town the Gove City Town Company had offered the county the free use of their building for a term of ten years, wTith the option of buying' it at the end of that time for a thousand dollars. The offer was accepted, and for twenty years the court house problem was solved and settled. The building was a substantial two story structure, about 32 by 32 feet, and had been used at first as a hotel. The name and date, "Benson House," and "1885" were carved in stone on the front. Years afterward, when a new roof was put on and some other alterations made, the name was taken down, but the date remains. In its time the old court house was considered quite good enough. The county officials occupied the ground floor and a part of the upstairs; and the balance of the second floor was occupied by the court room, which was large enough for the semi-annual sessions of the district court and for political conventions and other public meetings (and for the Gove City literary society.) Then without warning, out of a clear sky as it were, came the news that we were to have a new court house at Gove City. I will let those who sponsored the scheme tell the story, if they wish, of how the plan was hatched and put over-I know nothing about it. There had been no public discussion of or agitation for a new court house. The bill providing for the new court house was passed by the legislature of 1905, sometime in its session from January to March, but was published for the first time in the Statute Book, which did not make its appearance till July. The law is too long to be given here in full. It conferred authority upon the board of county commissioners of Gove County to build a new court house at Gove City "on the tract of land now owned by the said county and known as the public square in Gove City." (This is the square on the hillside three blocks north of the court house). The cost of the court house was not to exceed; sixteen thousand dollars. The commissioners could levy an annual tax of not to exceed three mills on the dollar to build the court house. (At that time a three mill tax would have brought in about $5,000 a year.) The board of commissioners was further authorized to draw on the general fund of the county for "such sums as they may deem necessary" to complete the building, and were permitted to start construction at any time after the first day of July, 1905. As has been said, the news burst upon us as out
of a clear sky. The Act was published in July. But the Statute Book has a very limited cir-| culation, only a few
copies of it found their way to Gove county, I communication was much slower in | those days before automobiles
and i good roads and telephones, and most of the people of the county knew nothing of the law and the new court
house and the new tax burden till the Board of Commissioners met at the regular time on the first Monday in August
and levied a tax of three mills to build the new court house. Then as the poet wrote about a famous battle, there
was a call To Arms! and a hurrying to and fro. I think that the first one who told me about it was John Hopkins.
"Hop" was mad. Next I ran across Squire Sutcliffe who was spreading the news and asking everybody what
they thought about it. My opinion agreed with his exactly. Then came Col. Reynolds, like Paul Revere riding the
country and -broadcasting the news. I think it was my own Now for a moment, before we plunge into the thick of the fight, let's laugh. Funny, isn't it, how some people's minds react to a situation. The hardest boiled old scrappers in the county were out in force at our meeting; and before the fight was over we had all the kickers in Gove county working together something which will not happen more than once in a lifetime. One of our foremost agitators was in town that day but would not attend the meeting--he had political ambitions and feared the effect if he were caught in such a crowd. Another one of our agitators got cold feet, and would not enter the hall till he glanced through the door and counted about sixty there, all mad,-then he became bold as a lion. Col. Reynolds called the meeting to order and asked for nominations for chairman. Jacob Tustin was elected chairman and the writer and John Norton secretaries. I had feared that the enemy would try to prejudice the movement by calling it a Grainfield scheme to take the county seat away from Gove City to Grainfield; it would not do to have a Grainfield man for chairman; I looked the crowd over swiftly and nominated Mr. Tustin. He was an old timer, a leading citizen whom everybody knew and respected, and he lived in Gove township. Nobody could say now that it was a Grainfield move. But you cannot watch all the corners at once it so happened that Tustin, Norton and myself had all been Populists when that party was in existence some years before. (John will put in a denial here, for he was a Democrat; but he was a good Democrat, who worked in harmony with the Populists, and we were quite willing to accept him). So now the. enemy turned on us and called it a "Populist move." The Populist party was dead, but evidently its memory still lingered. Thus, in getting out of one difficulty we had gotten into another. Speeches were made. But if the meeting were to end in talk it would be "mere sound and fury, signifying nothing"; something definite must be accomplished. The writer of this history had prepared a statement for publication, and this was now read to the meeting. It didn't quite suit, so a committee was appointed, consisting of S. S. Reynolds, R. H. Samson and the writer, to take the statement out and work it over again; some minor changes were made, and the address was then adopted in the following form: "To the Tax Payers of Gove County: By secret and underhand methods a special tax has been imposed upon us for the erection of a new court house at Gove City. The law was put through the legislature by the representative of this county without the knowledge or consent of the people of the county and without any discussion of the matter, and the levy-has been made by a majority of the board of county commissioners. The Tax Payers meeting held this day at the city of Grainfield wishes to record its emphatic opposition to this scheme, for the following reasons: In the first place, there is no pressing need for
a new court house, and we can get along with the old one for the present. Thirdly, when the new court house is built we want it built properly and legally. The General Statutes of Kansas, chapter 27, paragraph 50, says: "No Board of County Commissioners shall proceed to build any permanent county buildings and assess any tax for that purpose without first submitting the question to a vote of the electors of the county." We see no reason for departing from this principle, and we believe that this attempt to build a court house without taking a vote of the people is not only against good public policy, but that the tax is illegal and will be so declared by the courts. Pending a decision of this matter by the courfts, we advise every one to pay this tax, at the same time filing a written protest against it with the county treasurer, to insure that the money thus illegally collected shall be returned to them when the tax has been declared void; and we call on the voters of Gove county to so use their ballots at the next election that no one shall be elected Representative or Commissioner who is not known to be opposed to building a new court house, unless the same is first approved by a vote of the people, special acts of the legislature notwithstanding." The hat was passed and a few dollars in small change collected for printer's bills and other expenses. Then came the question, When shall we meet again? And then John Hopkins made the motion that our next meeting be two weeks hence, in Gove City! This was carrying the war into the enemy's country, with a vengeance. I will admit that the audacity of the proposition fairly took my breath away; but it suited the humor of the crowd, and the motion carried with a whoop. The meeting at Gove City, Oct. 7, had its thrills. The court room was more than filled. The court house crowd was out in force and tried to argue the case and convince cur crowd of the error of its way. The three who were brave enough to argue were O.- B. Jones. John L. Cook, and J. F. Mendenhall, but they had little luck, opposition only made our crowd more determined. Petitions had been circulated, asking the commissioners to reconsider their action in levying the court house tax. ommissioner Rundberg had voted against the levy; the other two commissioners would not come to our meeting. Some of the petitions had not been turned in yet, so we stand adjourned till two weeks later, October 21st, at Gove City again. The court house crowd did not attend the meeting of the 21st. One of the unfriendly commissioners was present, having been waited upon by a special committee with a polite invitation. Petitions were laid before him showing that, with some townships missing or incomplete, five hundred voters had asked to have the levy reconsidered--of whom 2 38 were from his own commissioner dis-trict. This showing had no effect. Evidently the time for petitioning was past. So the meeting proceeded to adopt a resolution, "That we bring an injunction suit to restrain the county from collecting the special court house tax; that an executive committee of five be elected to bring the suit, and a committee of one from each township be appointed to solicit funds to defray the costs; that the executive committee have full charge of conducting the suit and three members of the committee constitute a quorum." The committee selected was S. S. Reynolds, R. H. Samson, J. M. Sturman, M. E. Wil-kinson and W. P. Harrington. Reynolds was made chairman of the committee, Harrington secretary and Samson treasurer. This was the last of the mass meetings; the scene now shifts to the courts. The county attorney was on our side, so the Board of Commissioners (Rundberg dissenting) retained O. B. Jones of Gove City to represent the county and instructed him "to employ such counsel as he thinks best in the matter." He selected as his assistant J. S. West of Topeka. The county had the bill to pay. Our committee employed Lee Monroe of Topeka (former district judge) and Chambers & Chambers of Hoxie. To put an end to the charge that this was a "Popuiist move" the injunction suit was brought in the name of Alex Haney and several other good Republicans. (Mr. Haney was at this time the Republican county chairman.) The case was tried before Judge Reeder at Hays, Dec. 19. (The writer was shucking corn that day and did not go to Hays. Have always regretted it. Those who were there told me I missed something.) The papers said that about twenty five were down from Gove county to hear the trial. Now here is another laugh. The court house crowd felt sure of Judge Reeder. It came out later that Judge Reeder had himself suggested that Gove county needed a new court house and had himself drawn the bill. But when the case came before him for trial Judge Reeder found that the laws and the precedents were all on the side of our Tax Payers organization, so he decided in our favor. No wonder the court house crowd was sore. They took it out on Judge Reeder in the next campaign, and defeated him for re-election. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, which in April 1906 handed down a decision sustaining Judge Reeder. This was the end of the trial, so far as the legal aspect was concerned. The courts had probably never read the manifesto which we had delivered at Grainfield; but they found objections to the law which we had never thought of, and declared it unconstitutional because it directly violated a provision of the state constitution. The opinion of the court of last resort may be found in full in Volume 7 3, Supreme Court Reports. Boiled down, the decision is: "This law is to be interpreted as authorizing the commissioners of Gove county to use a part of the general revenue fund for the building of a new court house. Such provision violates section 4 of article 14 of the state constitution, forbidding the diversion of a tax from the object for which it is levied, and is therefore void. Such provision is so related to the other provisions of the act that the entire act must be held void." The fight on the court house was financed by voluntary
contributions, which were small in amount but large in number. There was no single contribution larger than $10.
After the case was finished the Tax Payers committee published a statement: If this is pro-rated back to the con-tributors as was at first proposed, each contributor will receive about 7 per cent of what he paid in. As a promise was made in the beginning to pro rate we feel under obligations to make this promise good to all parties who wish to avail themselves of .it. For the next thirty days R. H. Samson, treasurer, will repay to all who ask for it seven per cent of their contribution. After thirty days whatever balance is left will be donated to some public or charitable purpose." In the end, the balance was turned into the fund which was being raised to fight the Gove County High School. The high school fight and the court house fight were two separate and distinct affairs, but three members of our committee of five were also interested in the fight on the high school; they wanted to use our balance in. the other case, and they had their way. The suit having been decided, the Board of Commissioners ordered the tax refunded which had already been collected toward the construction of the new court house, and most of it was so returned to those who had paid it. But between eight and nine hundred dollars of it was never claimed. Most of this, perhaps all of it, was paid in by non-resident land owners who probably never heard of the court house tax and the conflict which raged around it, or knew that they had a rebate coming. After lying unclaimed in the treasury for several years this balance in the "County Building Fund" was turned into the general fund of the county. And so the treasury of Gove county profited several hundred dollars by this tax levy, even though the levy had been declared invalid by the courts. Of course, the fight had to be carried into politics before it could finally be settled. (The writer of this sketch had small hand in this part of the war, and could view it as an interested outsider.) The Democrats nominated an anti-court house county ticket, and hoped that the court house crowd would be able to control the Republican organization but it wasn't. That Republican convention at Gove City would make a good story in itself, if we had time and space to tell it. The court house crowd had the delegates from Gove and Grinnell townships, and the antis had the rest of them, though some of the delegates were a trifle shaky. The antis held a caucus of their delegates the night before the convention at a farm house a few miles out of town, put a guard over the place to keep visitors away, made up a slate of candidates and marched the delegates to the convention next day in a body. A lot of swapping had to be done, some candidates who had announced themselves for one place were switched to another, some officials who were asking for a second term were ruthlessly turned down. In the convention the court house crowd filibustered and laughed and enjoyed themselves but could accomplish nothing, and the slate went through without a break. At the election the results were mixed, some Republicans and some Democrats were elected, but they were all an-ties. Not a single county official or candidate who had favored the new court house was successful. The rout of the courthouse crowd was complete. Years later, after the court house fight had been fought out and had become but a memory, the writer met a man in the East who told this story: "I went to your county once to make a land trade. My purchaser was with me, all ready to sign the papers and complete the deal. We got off the train at Grainfield, and while waiting for the hack to take us down to Gove City we picked up on the street a paper which proved to be a remonstrance against building a new court house. We hunted up the man who had lost the paper and turned it over to him, but my land deal was off. My man declared he would never buy land in a county which had a county seat fight; so there was nothing left for us to do but wait for the next train and come home." That man had heard about county seat fights long ago in western Kansas or somewhere, and imagined that civil war was raging in Gove county and murder about to be committed. Imagine it! I have called it a "fight," but it never reached the stage of hostilities-we never even quit speaking to each other. The amount of business necessarily transacted by
the county officials has increased greatly in recent years, and so has the revenue of the county; and the law
relating to the building of court houses has been changed. Some six years ago the Board of County Commissioners
enlarged and remodeled the old court house till it doesn't seem like the same place, at a cost of about $20,000,
ana paid cash for it and there was no grumbling. A new generation has grown up in Gove county, which looks at things
differently, and which will probably read with astonishment this story of how a quarter of a century ago our county
was all worked up over an attempt to build a new court house. |
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