Lincoln County

Builders: Mrs. Jessie (Gilpin) Smith

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By Thelma J. McMullen
Lincoln Sentinel-Republican, November 9, 1939

Mrs. Frank Smith, the former Miss Jessie Gilpin, came to Lincoln, Kansas, from Illinois in 1871. Since she was about nine when her family settled here, she remembers many historical events pertaining to the organization of Lincoln county and the trials endured by the early settlers.

Mrs. Smith's father, the late Dr. J.D. Gilpin, with his two oldest sons came to Kansas in 1870 and had a house ready for Mrs. Gilpin and the younger children when they arrived the following year. Having come as far as Salina by train, the family was met in Salina by Mr. Gilpin who brought his family to their home in Abram, with a team and wagon, the trip from Salina to Abram taking the Gilpins three days. According to Mrs. Smith, they saw and heard many prairie dogs. The Gilpins' last night on the road to Abram was spent in the Morg Green home. The children got to "picnic" to their hearts' delight on big watermelons enroute to Lincoln. Mrs. Gilpin brought to Kansas 3 big barrels of cherries which she had canned before leaving Illinois. As might be expected, the cherries were consumed in short order, and the Gilpin children did not see another cherry for several years.

Having settled in the little house which was eventually moved from Abram to Lincoln, Mrs. Gilpin kept boarders, including the following: Myron Green, merchant; Fred Buckner, John Cleary, saloon keepers; Ira Buzick, Pat Cleary; Harlow Walker, blacksmith. J.H. Barnum, school teacher, and his wife and two children lived upstairs in the Gilpin house, their son, Walter, now lives in Beverly, and their daughter Emma is deceased. Other residents at Abram included: E.B. Bishop, Garver, a young lawyer who moved to Salina from here; Hugh O'Connor and his family. A doctor, Mr. Vernon, came to Lincoln and was heartily welcomed by Dr. Gilpin who was glad to have a fellow member of his profession close at hand.

We are told that the second epoch of Lincoln county began with its organization into a county in 1870. Despite the dangers to be dealt with on the then-open frontier of Kansas, the fertile valleys filled with settlers ' many of whom pastured the hills with large herds of cattle, so that four years after the first claim was staked the territory now known as Lincoln county boasted the presence of 516 people. As has been previously noted, the Gilpin family located here during the organization of Lincoln county.

The legislature defined the boundaries of Lincoln county in 1867. Until a petition headed by Tom Boyle, Martin Hendrickson, George Green, H.J. Wisney, and Isaac DeGraff, asking for separate county organization, met with success in Topeka, this territory was called a township, first of Ottawa and later of Saline county.

The results of the election in November, 1870, were as follows: Representative, I.C. Buzick; Commissioners, Cornelius Dietz, James Wild, John S. Strange; County Clerk, A.S. Potter; Treasurer, Vollany Ball; Probate Judge, D.C. Skinner; Register of Deeds, T.A. Walls; Sheriff, R.B. Clark; Coroner, Francis Seiber; County Attorney, Myron Green; District Clerk, J.A. Cook; Surveyor, P. Lowe. The victors of this election were among those who desired to change the location of the county seat from the place established by Gov. James M. Harvey on the northwest quarter of section 35, township 11, range 8 (about where Lincoln Center now stands) to the temporary townsite of Abram to which it was carried bodily. In order to make business legal, the county officers were obliged to meet and organize court on the bare and bleak townsite over the hill one cold day in January, 1871. They adjourned to the house of Ezra Hubbard, at which place the newly elected County Commissioners met in February, 1871. In spite of Mr. Strange's dissenting vote, a license permitting the sale of liquor was granted. Three petitions for county roads were accepted. The clerk was instructed to procure seals for the probate Judge and Register of Deeds, and to advertise for porposals to build a court house. The bids were to be filed up to 12 M. on Saturday, April 1, and the court house was to be completed by July 1, 1871. The Legislature had provided for court in Lincoln County in March, 1871. James H. Canfield, Junction City, judge of the Eighth district, presided over Lincoln county's first court on November 6, 1871.

The buildings were erected the summer of [can't read; assume it's 1871]. The county effects were housed on the second floor of Myron Green's store. The county Clerk, A.S. Potter, never got over the anger which he felt at having to issue a license to sell liquor which had been granted to Fred Buckner and John Cleary.

There was still considerable agitation concerning the permanent location of the county seat, and a tragic incident involving several deaths actually settled the argument.

Ezra Hubbard, who was building a mill at Rocky Hill, killed John Haley in a disagreement over property rights. Having evaded his enemies and given himself up to the law, Hubbard was first put in the store building at Abram, and later was confined in a building used for boarding house. Hubbard's son-in-law, John Cook, who was present at the shooting, was arrested and kept with Hubbard.

A mob of forty men in all degrees of intoxication surrounded the place. They shot at Hubbard through the window and later entered the building and shot again. Suffering from nine wounds, the man crept up the cleats on the wall to the loft where he was beaten to death in the night with a carpenter's mallet. Dr. Gilpin had been called to take care of the wounded man and was away after some medicine when Hubbard's life was taken. The mobbing occurred in Hez Graham's kitchen. The Graham family sought refuge upstairs during the shooting, and Mrs. Graham "who was subject to having fits" became so frightened she was sick for several days during which time Dr. Gilpin was called to take care of her. A trial which resulted from the Hubbard episode cost Lincoln county $10,000 ' cause enough to rouse the indignation of citizens which gave vent to grumblings for quite some time.

Mob violence was used as an argument for changing the location of the county seat. Lincoln Center received 323 votes and Abram, 176, at an election held February 18, 1872.

Abram was literally loaded on wheels and brought to Lincoln along with county's archives. Instead of being allowed to die a natural death, Abram was given the distinguishing honor being translated while yet in body; all the buildings were moved. Mrs. Smith recalls that the Gilpin family rode to Lincoln inside their house which is now used by F.E. McDonald for a blacksmith shop.

The county headquarters was in the upstairs room of the Webster building in 1873. The rent on this room was $300 per year.

Bonds to the amount of $4,000 were voted for building a court house on April 1, 1873. We quote the following from an earlier-day historican's account: "There was much opposition to these bonds, and after the blanks for the bonds had been ordered, County Clerk A.S. Potter was warned that an injunction would be served on him to prevent his signing them. Accordingly, the blanks were taken from the express office at Salina by another man so that County Attorney Beatty would not know they had come. They were privately handed to Mr. Potter, who, with John S. Srange, retired after night to the lonely habitation of Tom Malone, northwest of Lincoln, where they each signed their names one hundred and seventy-six times to bonds and coupons. The bonds were not sold for face value, but the balance of three hundred dollars was made up by private subscription. The court house, which was built at that time, was burned in 1898. The present fine building was then built in 1900."

A building, 10x22 feet, was erected for a newspaper by a deaf and dumb man; only two issues of the paper came out. This 2-room building, after being removed to Lincoln, became the resident of Mr. and Mrs. W.S. Wait and later was turned into a shoeshop.

Mrs. Anna C. Wait, beloved by her scholars, was Mrs. Smith's first teacher. Mrs. Wait taught Lincoln's first school in her own residence, and continued to teach for a number of years in the first stone school building erected on the Central school grounds. Mrs. Wait kept a bed in the room used for classes; and when the little youngsters went to sleep in school, she would place them on the bed.

On one occasion when Mrs. Smith's sister, Mrs. Eva Barnhart, now living in Nebraska, came to visit in Lincoln, the two sisters planned a surprise party for Mrs. Wait which was attended by a number of their former schoolmaters who presented the honoree with a lovely wicker rocker. Showing her surprise, Mrs. Wait exclaimed, "Well, you are the prettiest lot of children I ever saw!" Because Mrs. Wait's home was too small to accommodate her erstwhile pupils and their husbands and wives, Columbus Hendrickson opened the Christian church for the party. Mrs. Wait was asked to sit in front as school teacher once again. She called each pupil by his or her given name. They, in turn, threw paper wads and coaxed, "Teacher, may I please pass the water?" After they had enjoyed a pleasant evening in reunion, refreshments were served to Mrs. Anna C. Wait and son, Alf H. Wait, and to the families of the following pupils, who were in attendance: Mrs. Eva Barnhart, Mrs. Rome Maher, Delia Maloy, Anna Ryan, Mrs. Jessie Smith, Albert Achterberg, U.G. Britegam, "Rusty" Britegam, Bill Heady, Columbus Hendrickson, Dave Hendrickson, John Riley Hendrickson, Ed Ryan, George Strange, John Whalen.

Mrs. Smith remembers having accompanied her father, Dr. J.D. Gilpin, to see A.S. Potter when the latter was very ill. Mr. Potter, Lincoln county's first clerk, lived in Pottersburg, a community west of Denmark, which was named after Mr. Potter who generously gave a land grant for the Pottersburg school.

One of the first business establishments which Mrs. Smith remembers having seen in Lincoln Center was a grocery and dry good store about where the Model Cash Grocery now stands.

When Mrs. Smith was about fifteen her family moved east of town into a new three-room log cabin built on the 80 acres homesteaded by her father. Lewis Bosch now lives on this land.

On one occasion, some antelope strayed in and mingled with the cattle on the Gilpin homstead. Jessie and her little brother were the only ones home at the time. Leaving her brother in the house, the excited Jessie hurried to the home of Ogden Greene a quarter of a mile south of Gilpins'. Dan Day, visiting Mr. Greene, accompanied the latter to their neighbor's farm where they killed one or two of the antelope.

Some thieving parties once caused the word to be passed that a band of Indians was on Bullfoot making their way toward Lincoln Center. Mrs. Smith's father and two eldest brothers were attending a granger lodge at Rocky Hill when one of the neighbors came after Mrs. Gilpin and her four young children. They went to Mr. Corbin's home east of Mrs. Smith's grandfather's farm known as the "old Repshire place." The families were preparing to go on to Salina when they learned that a false alarm had been spread merely for the sake of getting the people to leave their homes unprotected. During the family's absence, Dr. Gilpin was robbed of a large barrel of pickled pork and everything else that could be found on the spur of the moment. All of their neighbors also had the misfortune to lose provisions.

Mrs. Smith has a vivid recollection of the famous period in the annals of Kansas history  namely, the "grasshopper year," 1874. A diary written by E.E. Johnson in August, 1868, tells of grasshoppers coming from the north and cleaning his corn field as they went. They made their big raid, however, throughout the state of Kansas in 1874. Naturally, times became very difficult for the new settlers who depended solely on their crops for a living.

Many people received government aid and could easily be identified as "grasshopper sufferers" for years afterward by their army overcoats and blankets. Private parties in the east also sent relief to their Kansas friends. The grasshoppers had "cleaned out" every green leaf and garden product in sight; they drew the line only when they came to castor-beans.

In view of the drastic experiences through which Mrs. Smith's family and friends lived, we sometimes wonder if the old timers are serious when they speak yearningly of "those good old days" ' we wonder if the wonderfully good times they enjoyed came often enough to compensate for the frequently dull hard times. Be that as it may, we are thrilled by the daring romance, which pervaded those reckless hectic days, and our admiration goes out to those who survived the most heartbreaking experiences.

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