Submitted 11/02/2002- by Micheal Mathews, the great-great-grandson of Mae Barnes and Marshall Channel, and daughter of William Barnes who settled on Bills Creek in southwestern Chase County in what is Wonsevu.

A post office on creek of the same name which was a branch of Cedar Creek. Located about eight miles south of present Cedar Point. Postmaster in 1871 was William BARNES for whom the creek may have been named. Bill’s Creek was probably succeeded by Wonsevu. (References: Agr. Rept. 1876, p. 260; Gaz. 1878, p. 797, 1880, p 942; U. S. Off. Reg. 1871, p. 587.)

William, was also postmaster of Wonsevu, and later his daughter and Mae's sister, Maria, would become postmistress.

Thanks goes to Micheal for his contribution.

     Written by Mae Barnes Channel Hood

     I was born March 19, 1858 in Coles County Illinois. "On the banks of the Wabash far away."

     When I was four years old my parents moved to Knox County and stayed there for a year and then started for Kansas in September 1863.

     We crossed a river on a ferryboat - I suppose it was the Mississippi River - and came on into Missouri and stopped in Andrew County at Mother's brothers - my Uncle Adrian Higgins. We were there for a week or 10 days.

     Then we started on for Kansas. We had three teams, two of horses and an ox team and some extra horses and about thirteen head of cattle. We only made about 10 miles a day. There were eight of us: my two sisters, Nancy and Maria; two brothers, Will and Marion; and a grandson of my parents, Willie Ellis. His mother, my sister Ann, died when he was two years old.

     As we came through Missouri we passed a rebel encampment. There were hundreds of men and they were all shouting, "Hurrah for Jeff Davis." Marion yelled, "Hurrah for the Devil," and they almost mobbed him. I think he kept a civil tongue in his head 'til we got away from that rebel camp anyway.

     We came on and crossed a river at Kansas City, which was just a small village then. Maybe just a post office-I don't remember. We had to ford the river and the boys had trouble getting the cattle across.

     We landed in Kansas the 25th of October and a snowstorm was raging. Dick VanDeren and his family came with us.

     One day we ran onto a small herd of buffalo. My two sisters and Dick's wife got quite excited and ran after them like they thought they could catch them.

     I don't remember all the towns we came through but we came through Emporia and Cottonwood Falls.

     There wasn't much of Emporia but Soden's Grist Mill.

     Cottonwood Falls had just a few log cabins. Emporia was our trading point for several years.

     Cedar Point at that time was one mile east of where it is now and consisted of one house. The Drinkwater family lived there and had the post office.

     We came up on Cedar Creek to James Renfro's, a cousin of ours and stayed there until father located a claim about 4 miles farther up the creek where we lived until I was grown.

     There were just two families at that time on the creek above us: Phillip Franks and William Barringtons.

     Father also bought 160 acres from Phillip Frank just east of his homestead and gave an acre of ground for the Wonsevu Cemetery. Also land south of the cemetery for a schoolhouse.

     The first school house was a little log cabin and was built when I was about seven years old as near as I can remember. We had three months of school that winter taught by a man named Bird Ferguson. He used to sit for hours in the school and whisper to himself. I don't think the pupils learned very much that term.

     Of course there were several more families moved in by that time.

     There were still a good many Indians in Kansas at that time but they were all friendly to the whites. There was an Indian reservation several miles north of us and the Indians used to go back and forth from the reservation to the Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. When they were going from one place to the other, that is from the territory to the reservation, they would be strung out on the road for miles. They were Kaws and Kickapoos and would stop at every house and beg for something to eat or anything else they saw and would steal anything they could get their hands on.

     Those were great times. There would be an Indian scare every once in a while and a man would come riding across the country yelling, "The Indians are coming killing and burning." I don't think they ever got closer to Chase County than 150 or 200 miles but the neighbors would gather all their household goods into their wagons, (they didn't have much) and start for Cedar Point.

     We could hear them in the middle of the night going down the road as hard as they could drive, cowbells jingling. They would stay two or three days, dancing all night and laying around all day. The Indians could have scalped the whole bunch if there had been any of them around.

     Every fall the men would gather up a crowd, go west onto the plains and kill enough buffalo meat to last a year but the buffalo were soon driven so far west that it was too much of a trip.

     We had lots of excitement those days. There was a band of horse thieves that used to work from Nebraska to the Indian Territory.

     Dick Pratt, who lived on South Fork was a spotter for the band. Some of them stayed at our house several times and when they did my brother Will would take our horses and hide them in the timber and stay with them all night.

     One of the men who used to stop at our house was a near boy. I don't think he could have been more than twenty-one. He used to pet me and tell me he was coming back to marry me when I got grown. He went by the name of May. I was sure stuck on him and believed every word he said but he never came so I expect when the band was broke up maybe he was killed. So that was my first romance.

     My childhood was a happy time. I roamed the prairies and played in Cedar Creek and didn't have a care in the world.

     October 24, 1937. Well it has been several years since I have written anything in this book. Things have happened as they always do, both momentous and otherwise.

     I went to school, played and fought and had a good time and wasn't much interested in gaining knowledge.

     As I look back I can see that experience has been a good teacher. What one learns from experience one does not forget and if one does not profit by it, it is their own fault.

Chase County Host Lorna Marvin

Return to Chase County Submitted Historical Sketches

---

Background and KSGenWeb logo were designed and are copyrighted by
Tom & Carolyn Ward
for the limited use of the KSGenWeb Project.
Permission is granted for use only on an official KSGenWeb page.
The USGenWeb Logo was designed by Linda Cole.

---

Last updated 11/10/2003

---

Check out these links!