David Hicks Overmyer - Bourbon County District Courthous Mural

Lady Justice (Justice Enthroned) by David Hicks Overmyer (1889-1973) decorates a courtroom in Bourbon County, Fort Scott, Kansas.

Lady Justice or Justice Enthroned, by David Hicks Overmyer

Born in Topeka, Kansas in 1890, Overmeyer studied art at Reid-Stone Art School in Topeka, (now Washburn University), then studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, and, finally, at the Art Students' League of New York.

He painted Lady Justice in 1929. In her right hand, Lady Justice holds Corpis Juris (the body of law), along with a sword to enforce the law; in her left arm, a scale to balance competing claims.  In the right background  is the Washington Capitol.

In 1934, the Works Progress Administration commissioned four murals in the Hale Library at Kansas State University. The murals — titled Agriculture, Mechanics, Arts and Home. In 1937, Overmyer painted for Topeka High School, his alma mater, The Pageant of England. In 1951 he received a commission from the Kansas Legislature to paint eight scenes on Kansas history for the capital rotunda: The Coming of the Spaniards, Battle of Arickaree, Battle of Mine Creek, Building a Sod House, Lewis and Clark in Kansas, Westward Ho, Arrival of the Railroad, and Chisholm Trail. The murals were completed in 1953.

Other works by Overmyer are on permanent display at the Mulvane Art Museum in Topeka Kansas.

History of Wichita - 1888

In 1887, a bill was passed by the Kansas Legislature giving Kansas women the right to vote at school, bond, and municipal elections. Empowered, Wichita women would help to elect George W. Clement mayor of Wichita to replace then serving Joseph Allen. John A. Martin still served as governor of the state, advocating state-wide Prohibition.

In the US presidential election,  the incumbent Democrat Grover Cleveland wins the popular vote in November, but loses the Electoral College vote to Republican Benjamin Harrison, thereby losing the election.

Wichita is booming.

Some of the descriptions of the city included "Winning Wonder of the West," "Peerless Princess of the Plains,” “Windy Wonder," and the “Magic Mascotte (sic) of the Meridian."  This and other facts were noted by Dr. Edward Tihen (Tihen notes) in his review of the Wichita Eagle and other papers. Wichita Eagle 1888.

Wichita Street Railway, 1884, North Main Street

Image Wichita Public Library, WichitaPhotos.org

Wichita began in 1870 with a population of 270, now has an estimated population of 40,000. Eight years earlier, the population of Wichita was only 5,482.

A detailed map of Wichita dated 1887, compiled by the publishers L.H. Everets & Co. of Philadelphia reveals the extent of Wichita. David Rumsey Map Collection. On the map, College Hill begins at Hillside and Douglas Avenues. Today's College Hill was then described as Merriman Park, named after original landowner George Merriman. Read Jeff Roth's article on College Hill.

Citizens get around by horse and buggy. Public transportation is mule drawn railway cars. The several railway companies in the city were considering using something other than mules, one idea being electric railways which were being used in other cities. One such railway was the Strang Car Line, then in use between Kansas City and Olathe. The largest of the railway companies - the Wichita Street Railway company,  has 40 miles of lines and 46 cars, providing five minute service on major streets. The railway line on Douglas Avenue ends at Hillside.

January 12th, 1888 - a blizzard suddenly and without warning strikes Kansas, and all of the Midwest from Texas to Minnesota. The violent storm leaves 235 dead, mostly children on their way home from school. In March another blizzard would hit the east coast causing power outages and killing more than 400.

The winter blizzard was fresh in the minds of the several  railway companies, a push was under way to get cars heated by stoves, making them comfortable no matter how fierce the weather.

Wichita Interurban Railway

 Image Wichita Public Library, WichitaPhotos.org 

As Tihen notes in an article from the Eagle dated January 13, 1888, travel was not without mishap:

A few days ago a street car driver on the Emporia line lighted one of the lamps of the car and then dropped the still burning match into the straw bottom of the car. It ignited and caught the dress of a lady passenger, but fortunately was extinguished with a nearly bucket of water.

Border Gateways by Oscar Berninghaus

Fort Scott Federal Courthouse Mural by Oscar E. Berninghaus

Tucked away in courtroom now used for storage on the second floor of the Federal Courthouse in Fort Scott Kansas is a mural by Oscar E Berninghaus titled “Border Gateways.”

Born in 1874 in St. Louis, Berninghaus was largely self-taught, but also attended night classes at the School of Fine Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. In 1899, he took a train west and, on a lark, stopped in Taos, New Mexico. During his 8 day stay, he met and befriended Bert Phillips, another artist who had taken up residency in Taos the year before. Berninghaus would return to St. Louis to resume his commercial work, but he continued to return to Taos in the summer to pursue his interest in fine art. In 1915, he became a founding member of the Taos Society of Artists, along with his friend Bert Phillips and four others.

Border Gateways, Oscar Berninghaus, 1937

In 1937, Berninghaus won the commission for the Fort Scott Kansas federal court mural. Incorrectly identified as Works Progress Administration art, the courtroom mural was commissioned as a project of the U.S. Treasury Department. The painting includes familiar themes of the westward passage of American settlers - Indians, wagontrains pulled by oxen, and a stagecoach.

The Enabling Act of 1854 that Berninghaus refers to accompanied the Kansas-Nebraska bill was approved by then President Benjamin Pierce, May 30, 1854. The idea of admitting two states at the same time - one a free state, Nebraska, and the other a slave state, Kansas - in order that the political balance should be maintained in the United States Senate. The bill provided for Popular Sovereignty, that is, a vote by the territory's inhabitants to determine the status of free or slave. This bill set the stage for "Bloody Kansas", the presidential election of 1860, and eventually the Civil War.

detail Border Gateways, wagon with oxen and stagecoach

Berninghaus' painting of the Kansas landscape depicts the flood of immigrants from all over the United States, both north and south, to determine the issue of free or slave state.

Fort Scott was one such "border gateway". In 1853, the US military abandoned Fort Scott. The public buildings were sold at auction. One building, a former officer's quarters, was opened as the Fort Scott or Free State Hotel. And located directly across the parade ground was the Western or Pro-Slavery Hotel, a former infantry barracks.

detail, Border Gateways, Indians and wagontrain

The Fort Scott Kansas Courthouse is decommissioned, meaning that it is no longer used for public business. One gains access by going to the still active post office and asking for permission to view the painting.

Mullinville

Mullinville, Kansas is home to American folk-artist, M.T. Liggett, a Kansas treasure - a man who loves living and saying what is on his mind.

M.T. Liggett and KWCH reporter Hannah Davis

M.T. often parodies local figures in his sculptures, especially the town council, making him an object of controversy among the powers that be and a subject for conversation at the coffee shop. His detractors might mumble under their breath that he should raise more corn and less Cain, but this would be unfair, M.T. is a gentle soul who quietly makes his point with his art.

This story is not about M.T.; he deserves a book. Instead, it is about his collection of ancient farm tractors amassed over the years. Once they plowed the fields, now, they stand like the monolithic stones at Stonehenge, silently waiting for some visitor from a thousand years hence to decipher their meaning.

the tractors of M.T. Liggett

The tractor in the foreground calls out to me. Had I the sense, I would have inspected the hood for the maker. Instead, I was overcome by the immensity of M.T.'s work, there are sculptures everywhere - in his barn, on his lawn, and most conspicuously, along the highway where the cars and semis pass by.

old tractor, no tires

Back to the tractor, whose most salient feature is its lack of tires. Tires are now a common feature of every mode of transportation. But it wasn't always so. It was Harvey S. Firestone, a fourth-generation farmer from Columbiana, Ohio, who founded the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in July 1900, in Akron, Ohio – a city later known as “Rubber City", that from necessity created the invention. The invention did not happen until 1932 when he produced the world’s first pneumatic tractor tire.
So, I am left staring at a pre-1932 tractor by an unknown maker. Maybe, someday I will go back to M.T. Liggett's and learn the rest of the story.

Runnymede, Kansas

Runnymede is a Kansas ghost town. It is named after the spot in the English county of Surrey where King John and his English barons met and signed the Magna Carta in 1215.

Today, the Kansas Runnymede lies buried beneath wheat fields. It is located in northeast Harper county, between Harper and Norwich, a 30 minute trip from Wichita, southwest on Highway 42, past Viola and Suppeville, then switch to Highway 2. The route takes you though four counties: Sedgwick Sumner, Kingman, and finally, Harper.

Detail of Kansas map 1900 showing Runnymede

Three miles into Harper County on Highway  (the intersection of 140th Road and 60th Ave.), is a Kansas Historical Marker for Old Runnymede. The marker tells the brief story of Runnymede and indicates that the location of the ghost town is about two miles northeast of the site of the marker.

Runnymede, Kansas

Runnymede was the brain-child of an Irishman by the name of F. J. S. Turnley. In the late 1880's, he bought 1500 acres in Township 33 of Harper County and Canton Township, Kingman County. The land was located on the west side of the Chicaskia River. Turnley's goal was to recreate an English village in the Kansas countryside and teach modern farming to English gentlemen. For $500, the lords and ladies of England could send their sons to Kansas to learn farming and live in a Dry Kansas (In 1880 Kansans amended the constitution to ban the sale of liquor). The sons came, but their activities were confined to the steeplechase, football, and riding the stage between Norwich and Harper.

The Wichita Eagle chronicled the short life of Runnymede. In June of 1889, Turnley arrived in Runnymede with 18-20 English investors. By November of 1889, the city was up and running and the cornerstone of the Episcopal church was laid. In addition to a hotel and livery, Turnley planned other businesses including a milling company, creamery, soda water manufactory, and sugar plant.

The year 1891 was pivotal for Runnymede as the Wichita and El Paso railroad planned a route from Wichita to the newly opened Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma. Despite the fact that the Eagle was reporting on New Year's Day 1891 the coming of the railroad, it never came.

Detail Wichita Eagle New Years 1891

The train bypassed Runnymede, the English gents soon tired of horse races, and by 1893, the Eagle was reporting the demise of Runnymede. The St. James Episcopal church was taken to Harper, where it still stands. The hotel was hauled off to the Cherokee Strip to serve settlers pouring into new boom-towns. By July of 1903, the now Wichita Daily Eagle was writing a reminisce of old Runnymede.

Detail Wichita Daily Eagle July 1903

A less flattering reminisce was reported in western Kansas by the Kinsley Graphic on December 26, 1902.

"Runnymede was created by a north of Ireland agitator who lost money in the cotton business in the United States. His son Edward bought 1,700 acres of land in Harper County and began advertising that he was lord of a western paradise where golden birds sang in the trees and silver rivulets ran tinkling to the sea.

For $500 a year he engaged to teach the sons of English gentlemen, the mysteries of farming and stock raising, and provide for their physical needs and administer such educational tonics as would enable them to hold the winning hand wherever they might be."

Lest you believe every word you read, remember the adage that "success has a thousand fathers, failure is an orphan." 

Visit http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov.

An Overland Journey by Horace Greeley

"Go West young man." Advice given by Horace Greeley to young men seeking a future in America.

In the summer of 1859, Horace Greeley founder and editor of the New York Tribune made a trip west.

The first leg of his overland journey was to Kansas to attend the first Republican Party political convention in the newly created Territory of Kansas. The convention was to be held in Osawatamie.

Osawatamie was a symbolic choice. Settled in 1854 by those favoring abolition of slavery, including the Reverend Samuel Adair, his wife Florella, Osawatamie was a center of conflict in "Bleeding Kansas." The Adair cabin a few miles northwest of the town was a station on the Underground Railroad and Florella's half brother, John Brown, used this cabin as his headquarters during his bloody stay in Kansas. In 1856, during the Battle of Osawatamie, John Brown and 30 free-state defenders held off 250 pro-slavery militia from Missouri. However, the town of Osawatamie was burned to the ground.

Detail map of eastern Kansas 1856
Red circles indicate stops by Horace Greeley
E. B. Whitman, Lawrence, Kansas
KansasMemory.org

The distance from Atchison to Osawatamie is 80 miles as the crow flew and, in reality more like 100 because of the terrain. The party journeyed south and east. There were no railroads. Stagecoaches ran between major cities. Roads then were more like trails. Streams were forded, rivers crossed by ferry.

After Osawatamie, Greeley intended to continue his trip to San Francisco to highlight the need for a transcontinental railroad.

Monday morning, 6 a.m., May 16th, 1859, Horace Greeley, in a party of four, left Atchison, Kansas  intending to reach Osawatamie, Kansas the next evening. The party rode in a wagon drawn by two horses. On the prairie they were greeted by hills covered in green grass with dots of color here and there from the fresh spring flowers. "From the high level of the prairies, little but a broad sweep of grass on every side was visible but soon we were descending into a new ravine, and now belts and spurs of timber were seen, generally widening as they tend toward the Missouri." The annual prairie fires kept the timber confined to the areas near the rivers and streams.

Atchison county, Kansas Atlas,1903
Published Geo. A. Ogle, Chicago

"Twelve or fifteen miles south of Atchison, we struck the great California trail from Leavenworth, and thence followed it east by south into that city, some fifteen to eighteen miles." Greeley described the many settlers with their Conestoga wagons pulled by oxen, as so many ships with billowing sails "giving the trail the appearance like a river though the great meadows." Because of the pouring rain the night before, the westward bound emigrants were encamped trying to dry out their clothes and give the oxen a rest. Greeley observed that the traffic west was one way, and that both wagons and cattle were sold at their point of destination for whatever they would fetch, and continue on eventually to California.

The party arrived in Leavenworth about 11 am, meaning that the trip from Atchison to Leavenworth, a distance of about 30 miles, was accomplished at the speed of 6 miles and hour, or three times as fast as the speed of an oxen team pulling a wagon, that is when the oxen could avoid the mud and mire and travel at all.

The route Greeley and his party took was altered by the weather. Instead of continuing on to Lawrence, the party shipped horses and wagon on a steamer 50 miles down the Missouri River to Wyandot, near the junction with the Kaw River. From there they debarked.

Detail of Wyandotte County Kansas 1878
Published G. M. Hopkins of Philadelphia

Tuesday, May 17th, the following day they continued on. "We crossed the Kaw on a fair wooden toll-bridge, one thousand two hundred feet long, just erected—or, rather, not quite completed." They passed Shawnee, a village of less than 30 houses and a large hotel.

Johnson County, Kansas Atlas 1874
Published by E. F. Heisler

The road then turned in a more southerly somewhere near a spot marking the crossing of the Santa Fe Trail. Today there is a marker in Downtown Overland Park  at 80th street and Santa Fe Drive. The Santa Fe Trail,  unlike the other trails west, was a trade route with with its white canvas covered wagons pulled by six pair of mules, attempting to make Santa Fe, New Mexico to trade manufactured goods for silver.

Greeley and his party continued to Olathe, then the county seat of Johnson County, then back a mile or so west and south on what is today Highway 169 to Spring Hill, "a hamlet of five or six dwellings, including a store, but no tavern," Marysville, and Paoli. At sunset, they reached the village of Stanton, with 20 to 30 houses, a schoolhouse, two stores and a tavern. There they were halted by the rain and the Marais des Cynges River.

Miami County, Kansas Atlas 1878
Created by Edwards Brothers of Philadelphia

They had traveled perhaps 50 miles in a day. The day's journey from sunrise to sunset, about 12 hours, again means that they averaged about 4 miles an hour.

Wednesday, May 18th, they crossed to Osawatamie.

Notes.

Today's trip by highway takes less than two hours. MapQuest follows a similar route taken by Greeley.

Greeley and his party originally intended to stop in Lawrence Kansas but the heavy rains forced them to Wyandot. In 1856, the city of Lawrence was raided by pro-slavery force headed by William Quantrill. Greeley visited Lawrence after his stop in Osawatamie. Whitman's map of 1856 highlights the fact that in 1856 the territory of Kansas was home to many Indian tribes.

John Brown carried out his raid on Harper's Ferry in the fall of 1859.

The county maps can be found online at various sources including KansasMemory.org.

An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859 by Horace Greeley (1860) can be read in its entirety online at http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/greeley/.

Western Yarrow

Stop and smell the flowers.

I am not sure where the quote originated. Surely, this advice has been around for a long time. And the sentiment that one needs to slow down and enjoy life is good advice.

One source is a misquote of advice from the golfer Walter Hagen. Walter who? He is third on the list of all-time winners in golf, behind Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. In his 1956 autobiography "The Walter Hagen Story: by the Haig Himself," Walter's advice was a little more lengthy, "You're only here for a short visit. Don't hurry, don't worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way."

Western Yarrow, Greenwood County, Kansas, May 2013

In Kansas, the Western Yarrow Achillea millefolium usually blooms in June and July. This photograph taken in Greenwood County, the week before the Memorial Day weekend, is jumping the gun a bit. If you stop and smell the Western yarrow, you will find a spicy aroma. Search for it along the highway and in the fields where cattle graze. It is a perennial 1 to 2 feet tall with erect wooly-villous (that's fuzzy to you and I) stems. Leaves alternate and are pinnated (paired off side by side on a central axis like a fern).  The flower heads are numerous. Each head is about 1/4 inch across with 5 white ray florets about 1/8 inch long. The stamen where the pollen is collected, is white and yellow. The flower florets range from 10 to 50 on a stem.

The Latin name of the Western Yarrow comes from Achilles, who used the plant to heal his warriors' wounds. American Indians used the leaves of this plant as a poultice for spider bites and small wounds. They also used the plant for common ailments such as influenza, gout, urinary disorders, and indigestion.  

Western yarrow contains an alkaloid, which can be poisonous; care should be taken in its use.

If you click on the image to see a close-up, you will see insects busily gathering nectar and fertilizing the flower.