The series contains original affidavits of registration that record personal information about each registrant, their photograph affixed to the majority of documents, and the registrants fingerprints. All of these are specific to Kansas, and most have the actual documents attached.
The settlers along Dragoon creek received their mail at the post office of Wilmington until the fall of 1869, when a new mail route was established from Burlingame, running up Dragoon creek, to Alma, the county seat of Wabaunsee county, a distance of about thirty-eight miles. A post office was located on the northeast quarter of section 28, township 14 south, range 13 east. The Post-office Department at Washington, D. C, requested the settlers to designate a name for the post office and nominate a postmaster. At a called meeting of the settlers the name New Lexington was selected for
I kept in correspondence with Thompson Blair, and in one of his letters he minutely described the trail from Leavenworth to the settlement where he and his brother Willard were located, and I determined to join them at my first opportunity. After earning a little more than one hundred dollars above expenses, I left my home in Iowa for Kansas, on the morning of September 1, 1857. The nearest railroad station was Dyersville, distant about thirty-five miles west from Dubuque, so father hitched up his team and took me and my trunk some ten miles from home to a point
In 1858 and 1859, during the period of the Pike’s Peak gold excitement, large numbers of gold hunters passed over the trail for the new diggings. Some of these were driving good teams and wagons, some were on horseback, others had small push carts, and some even wheelbarrows, loaded with all their earthly possessions tied in a small roll. During one day in 1859 three hundred and twenty-five vehicles by actual count crossed at the ford on Elm creek, near the old mail station. At the height of the gold excitement it was not unusual thing for five hundred vehicles
Early births in our settlement were Samuel M., son of Isaiah and Nancy J. Harris, born August 11, 1858; Frank L., son of Jehu and Mary A. Hodgson; Mary E., daughter of Samuel and Dency E. Woods: Lincoln, son of Allen and Joanna Hodgson. Early marriages as I remember them were Edward B. Murrell and Mary J. Harris, married by Allen Hodgson, justice of the peace, January 26, 1860; Burgess Vanness and Eliza Spencer; Ephraim (?) Jellison and Eliza Bailey. After the rejection of the Lecompton constitution, as previously mentioned, the legislature of 1859 provided for the framing of another
As a result of the admission of Kansas as a free state and the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, seven of the southern states seceded and organized an army in rebellion against the United States government. April 15, 1861, President Lincoln made the first call for soldiers to put down the rebellion, and for the war which followed Kansas furnished more troops according to her population than any other state in the Union. Dragoon creek settlement furnished a large proportion. All the able-bodied men were in the volunteer service, the militia against Price and his
Among the families coming into the Dragoon creek settlement after the spring of 1865 may be mentioned Jeremiah Fields and wife Betsey, with their two married sons and son-in-law: Joseph Fields and family of six persons; John L. Fields and family of five persons; James M. Johnson and family of four persons; they all came from Ohio in September, 1865. Caleb J. Harvey, formerly of Ohio, but later a teacher at the Quaker Shawnee Indian mission, came in December, 1865. Squire Cantrill, unmarried, came from Ohio in 1867; he later married a Miss Burroughs. Upon her death he married her
In 1860 Jehu Hodgson and wife had a tract of land surveyed and platted for cemetery purposes, James B. Ingersoll and assistants doing the work. This tract as finally platted consisted of eighty burial lots, each twelve by forty feet in size, ample for eight graves. The tract was deeded in trust to the County Commissioners of Wabaunsee County, and their successors in office, for a free cemetery. Eight conditions were named; the first provided that the cemetery should be under the care of a superintendent who might be appointed by the county commissioners, or by friends of the deceased.
During my stay at Mr. Blair’s my health improved, and on the 21st of September I started for Dragoon creek. After walking about four miles I passed through Brownsville, following the Leavenworth branch of the Santa Fe trail, which passed through this place and united with the old Santa Fe trail from Westport at a point where the town of Wilmington was later located. I followed the trail until it was crossed by the road from the Dragoon creek settlement to Council City (later called Burlingame). Into this road I turned, and following up Dragoon creek for about two and
The experiences of Charles J. Buckingham in Kansas cover almost half century. He came to the state in 1868, was for many years successfully identified with the farming, stockraising and public life of Leavenworth and Wabaunsee County, but in 1912 retired and moved to Topeka, where he enjoys the comforts of a city home at 1029 Lane Street. He was born in 1837, in Clermont County, near Miamiville, Ohio. His people were among the earliest and most prominent pioneers of this section of Southern Ohio. His gradfather, Enoch, a native of Pennsylvania, was one of the first white men to
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