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The construction of the Kansas division of the Union Pacific railroad was begun at Kansas City in September 1863. It had a government grant of $16,000 per mile and every alternate section of land for twenty miles on either side of the track. Construction was slow and the road seems not to have reached Gove county till 1868. A report issued by the company July 3, 1868, stated that the road was then completed to Fort Wallace near the Colorado line. It was finished to Denver August 15, 1870. The legislature of 1868 created two new counties, Gove and Wallace. Evidently an influx of settlers was expected, though the railroad was not yet finished; but the settlement was not to come for ten years yet. The original boundaries of Gove county were the same that it has today. *The county, like a score of others in the state, was named after a Union soldier. Here is all the information I have been able to collect about him: Blackmar's History of Kansas says: "Gove, Grenville L., soldier, was a son of Moses Gove, who was one time mayor of Manhattan. At the breaking out of the Civil War he enlisted in Company F, Sixth Kansas Cavalry, as a private, but was soon made corporal. In the summer of 1862 he was assigned to duty as a recruiting officer and raised Company G, Eleventh Kansas Cavalry, of which he was commissioned first lieutenant. In May, 1864, he was promoted to Captain and remained in command of the company until his death at Olathe, Kan., Nov. 7, 1864. Gove county and a Grand Army Post at Manhattan have been named in his honor." My friend George A. Root of the State Historical
Society writes me: "Mr. William W. Denison, assistant adjutant general of Kansas G. A. R., was a member of
the 11th Kansas. He says that "Lew" Gove (doesn't remember whether it was Louis or Lewis) was a man of
medium size, and as an officer made a very fine personal appearance. His company was said to have been the best
drilled company in the 11th Kansas. and when the other companies saw it getting ready to drill, they all stood around to watch them. He was in the Price raid campaign from start to finish, and died soon after of brain fever at Olathe. When Major General Samuel R. Curtis took command of the Western Department he looked about for a cavalry company as a body guard, and was not long in requisitioning the services of the company commanded by Gove. Gove was promoted captain May 19, 1864."* The government began the survey of Gove county in August, 1868. The county was laid off into townships six miles square at this time but for some reason, perhaps on account of Indian troubles, the subdivision into sections and parts of sections was not made till 1869. By the way, this survey was a very slovenly piece of work; the courses of the streams are not indicated correctly, they being marked down in some cases a mile away from where they should be; some of the section lines are crooked and the corner stones several rods out of line. Evidently the surveyors were more interested in finishing the job and drawing their pay than they were in doing their work well. Gove county was too far west at this time to attract settlers. No one lived in the new county except the buffalo hunters and the railroad employes. Weston's Railway Guide says of Buffalo Park in 1872: "There is a telegraph office, soldier's quarters, turf house and tank here." At Grinnell were "section house, railway tank, six dug outs and two large turf houses." The first bona fide settler in Gove county was George Von Dehsen, who came to the county from Colorado with a party of buffalo hunters in 1871. Instead of following the buffalo after they were driven from the county he settled down at Grinnell and lived there till killed by a stroke of lightning in 1913. The next settler was Charles Johnson of Grain-field township, who came to the county as a section hand in 1874. The new county must have been a very lonesome place
indeed in those days. The Indian, the buffalo and the buffalo hunter had vanished, and grass grew in the ruts of
the abandoned Butterfield Trail. The only signs of animation were along the railroad where the trains hurried through without stopping except for coal and water and the section crew went forth on its daily round to keep the track in order. Charles A. Sternberg, the noted fossil hunter,
who has Gove county for one of his regular hunting grounds, made his first trip here when a very young man, in
1876. He tells about it as follows in his book, "The Life of a Fossil Hunter": "As soon as the frost
was out of the ground, having secured a team of ponies and a boy to drive them, I left Manhattan and drove out
to Buffalo Park, where one of my brothers was the agent. The only house, be-sides the small station building, was
that occupied by the section men. Great piles of buffalo bones along the railroad at every station testified to
the countless numbers of the animals slain by the white man in his craze for pleasure and money. A buffalo hide
was worth at that time about a dollar and a quarter. tended across the country, striking Hackberry Creek where Gove City now stands, and led over Plum Creek divide, whose high ledges of yellow chalk served as a landmark for twenty miles. From this point we could see Monument Rocks, and near them the remains of a one-company post on the; Smoky Hill Trail. Our trail then led up the Smoky Hill to the mouth of Beaver Creek, on the eastern edge of Logan County, and followed the old road as far west as Wallace. Prairie dog villages extended west along all the
water courses, and open prairies to the state line, and we were rarely out of sight of herds of antelope and wild
horses. Near the present site of Gove City, on the south side of Hackberry Creek, there is a long ravine with perpendicular
banks ten feet or more in height. This ravine at that time was used as a natural corral by some men who made a
business of capturing these wild ponies by following them night and day, keeping them away from their watering
places, and giving them no chance to graze, until they were exhausted. They were then easily driven into the ravine
and roped; after which they were picketed on the prairie and soon became tame. These wild horses were swift travelers,
and the most graceful of all the wild animals of the west; being distinguished for the beauty of their flowing
manes and tails. But in 1878 the wave of immigration struck Kansas and flowed far out on the plains before it spent its force. Of course the vacant lands in central Kansas were taken first, but by 1879 Trego county had attained a population of 3500 and settlers were pouring on west into Gove county. The first homesteads taken in Gove county were
the southwest quarter of section 8-11-2 7 and the northeast quarter of section 18-11-27. These tracts adjoin the
townsite of Buffalo Park. They were both taken the same day, December 10, 1877, the former by W. A. Lewis and the
latter by J. C. Burnett. Settlers came in at a lively rate in 1878 and 18 79. Among those who It is impossible after a lapse of forty years to
give much account of the earliest settlers. The majority of them were gone again within a couple years, leaving
no trace on the history of the county. Only a few of the men and women of 1878 and 1879 survive to this day and
none of them, so far as I know, have ever written their experiences. It will probably take an Old Settlers' organ One group which left a record of the date of its arrival was the "Bristol colony," from Bristol, Bucks Co.. Pa., which arrived March 4, 1879, at Buffalo Park. This consisted of *Note 5 Richard E. Shaw, Joseph Moulding, W. and R. Scott, and Messrs. Smith, Wood, Robinson, Peterson, Long-worth, Bennett and West. These families all settled in town 11, range 28, a few miles southwest of Buffalo Park. A write up of the colony appears in the Grainfield paper the following year. The "colony" is not heard of afterward and probably most of its members soon left the county. Joseph Moulding seems to have been the only stayer. What was known as the Locket colony settled on
the Hackberry about twelve miles south and three west of Grainfield in 1879. The first arrival was Thomas Locket,
March 8. 1879. Later came the Maxwell, Dan-naker, Tenan and Swaer families, and a postoffice known as Locket was
established with Thomas Locket as postmaster. All these families soon left the county. Of these Kryn Van Zee and members of the Verhoeff, De Boer and Van Marter families are the only ones who still live or have lived in the county in reeent times. It would be interesting to know what has be-come of the following families: Platz, Rheitz, Van Stenwyk, Van Gorkon, Brinker, Pas, Schimmel, Booi, Van de Verre, Ruiter, De Yong, Van Kooy, Rhyneburger, K a m p, Brenklander, Vanderlinden, Walra-ven, Boombower, Van Loon, Faasen, De Wild, Kraag, Rap, Vanderwilt, Notenboom, Glanzevoort, Muillenburg, Vanderhorst, Vanderpool, Bennink, Koffers, Vanderkreek, Den Burger, De Bondt, Ten Hagen, Veenstra, Vanderwerf and others. Kryn Van Zee tells me that it was the intention of the Hollanders to start a town on section 2-11-29, but the move got started too late and the establishment of Grainfield two miles east of the site they had selected put an end to the project. Most of the colony seem to have returned to Iowa in 188 0, where perhaps some of them are living to this day. In the list of "first happenings" in Gove county history it may be well to include here the following: The first wedding of which we have any record is noticed thus in the Buffalo Park paper: "William Watcher and Corneila Den Burger, both of Buffalo Park, were united in the bonds of holy matrimony July 10, 1880, by Rev. J. A. Hahn. The happy couple will go to WaKeeney where Mr. Watcher is employed by the railroad company." It is contrary to nature that the county had been settled two years before there was a wedding, but if there were any before that date they never got into the papers. The following record of the first sermon is taken from successive issues of the Grainfield paper in 1880: Feb. 13-A little over a year ago the first sermon ever preached in Gove county was delivered at Buffalo Park by a Presbyterian clergyman, Rev. Mr. Schermerhorn. It was preached in a railroad car to a respectable audience. Feb. 20-Our correspondent whose record of the first sermon preached in Gove county appeared last week was mistaken. The Rev. Mr. Schermerhorn is a German Reformed minister and till recently was pastor of the church at Pella, Iowa. Mr. S. was passing over the Kansas Pacific railroad when the Indians made their raid through this country a year ago last fall. As the passengers feared to proceed the train remained at Buffalo station over 'the Sabbath which gave the zealous minister an opportunity to preach and he improved it. But the most important result of the immigration of 1878-7 9 was the founding of Grainfield and the growth of the older towns, Buffalo Park and Grinnell. The townsite of Grainfield was laid out by the
U. P. Railway Co. in June, 18 79. The station was first opened for business August 23. John B. Beal and George
S. Dryer were among the first arrivals; they put up the Occidental Hotel and engaged in Page 14 was the Grainfield Republican, A. J. R. Smith editor, which made its first appearance Jan. 28, 1880. It was newsy and well patronized but we look in vain in its columns for names which are familiar to us today. John A. Lewis .was postmaster, A. J. Ayres seems to jiave been the leading merchant, Mjiskelly & Sons-probably relatives* of the young man killed in the Indian raid-were dealers in live stock, JDut Beal & Dryer were the only firm whose name is known to the present generation. The population of Grainlield is not given. The Kansas Gazeteer for 1880 mentions Grinnell as having a population of 75.- It says of Grinnell, "it ships cattle and banks at WaKeeney." Joseph Corette was postmaster. Buffalo Park had 250. L. J. Bliss was postmaster and J. H. Miskelly was listed as "hotel and live stock dealer." Grainfield and Buffalo Park were good trading points at this time, as not only did they handle the freight for Gove county but goods were hauled from them as far as Oberlin on the north and Dighton on the south. These towns as yet had no railroad and the official record books for Decatur county and a 4000 pound safe in which to keep the records were unloaded at Grainfield and hauled to Oberlin, a distance of fifty miles. The first frame houses in both Oberlin and Dighton were. built of lumber hauled from Grainfield. The legislature of 1879 changed the boundaries of Gove and a number of other unorganized western counties. Just why this was done is not clear-perhaps the interests of local politicians and ambitious would-be county seat towns had something to do with it. This act dropped two rows of townships from Gove county on the west and one row on the south, and added one row of townships on the north. It reduced the county in size to twenty four miles east and west and thirty miles north and south, with an area of 720 square miles instead of 1080 as before. The Saline river was included within the new boundaries and the Smoky was given to Lane county. The county was attached to Ellis county for judicial purposes. As long as the county was sparsely settled it got along very well without organization and without taxes; but now with the increasing population naturally came a demand for a county organization. There was considerable lawlessness, which is hard to deal with in a county without government, but the school question was the big, problem now confronting the settlers. An unorganized county could not levy taxes, and the new setlers had to get along without schools or contribute the money direct from their own pockets to establish them. The first meetings among the settlers were school meetings. Buffalo. Park was first theirs is still known as School District No. 1. The second was in the Hollander settlement. Grainfield established a school the winter after the town was started, but we find that six years later the town had no school building. The schools of that day must have been very primitive affairs without equipments, having very short terms. and taught in sod houses or any old makeshift of a building. It would be interesting to hear about it from some of the pupils who attended them, a number of whom doubtless still live in the county. March 11, 1880, the board of commissioners of Ellis county made Gove county a township of Ellis county under the name of Gove township, and ordered an election March 2 6 to choose township officers. The order commanded the township records ta be kept at Grainfield. At a caucus held at Grainfield on the 13th B. H. Ten Hagen was nominated for trustee, J. A. Lewis for clerk and A. J. Ayres for treasurer. Presumably these officers were elected, though I have failed to find an account of the election. There seems to have been some doubt of this, for in the following fall the commissioners called an-other election at Buffalo Park October 23, at which the following were elected: Trustee, Marion Brinker; clerk, J. H. Fosdick, treasurer, Thos. Locket. Just why a special election should be called, so close to the state and national election, is not clear. But Kansas loved elections in those days and had not yet reached the point where they could be satisfied with only one election every two years. Under the law as it stood then Page 15 a population of 1500 was sufficient to organize
a county. Trego county was organized in 1879 with about twice that number. By the summer of 1880 there was some
reason to believe that Gove had the necessary population, and Buffalo Park started A memorial praying for., organization was circulated and received 254 signatures; it was presented to the governor June 29, 1880. The Buffalo Park faction circulated a petition asking for the appointment of Ed-mund H. Hibbard as census taker; Grainfield got into the game and circulated one for the appointment of A. J. R. Smith, editor of the Republican. Hibbard's list was the longest and he got the appointment. To complicate matters the attorney general of the state handed down an opinion that the act of 1879 changing the boundaries of Gove county had not been properly passed, and that the true boundaries of the county were those fixed by the law of 18 68. In order to be on the safe side Hibbard proceeded to enumerate the population of all the territory in dispute-taking the census of the county as fixed by the law of 18 68 and also by that of 1879. This brought a protest from Sheridan county, whose officials wrote the governor claiming the row of townships along the Saline as a part of Sheridan county and threatening trouble because Hibbard was taking the census there. Many settlers were leaving the county because of the drouth, and Hibbard's opponents wrote the governor that he was enumerating nonresidents and those who had left the county; the matter even reached the affidavit stage. One of the most active citizens of the county at this time was the Rev. J. Q. A. Weller, the Congregational minister at Buffalo Park, who had a voluminous correspondence with Governor St. John. He wrote the governor warning him against the Grainfield crowd. "The trouble with Grainfield," wrote Mr. Weller, "is that it is a Democratic outfit and wants to put off organization in hopes of making this a Democratic county, which God forbid!" With so much opposition it would have been difficult to organize the county even if the census had shown the required number of inhabitants; but when Hibbard made his report showing several hundred short of the necessary fifteen hundred the whole scheme of organization fell to the ground. There was now no danger of a county seat fight and Grainfield and Buffalo Park could make up and be friends once more. The United States census of 1880 had shown a population of 11-97 in Gove county. Hibbard's census was as follows: In the county as defined by the act of 1868, 1184; by the act of 1879, 1227. The four townshipsf along the Saline had a population of 241; the six along the railroad, 670. The four townships now included in Larrabee township had a population of 23; the four in Jerome had 9; and not a single inhabitant was found in Lewis. It may be interesting to know who were in Gove county in 1880. Upon the census roll appear the names of the following who still are, or within recent years have been, citizens of; the county: J. B. Beal, Geo. S. Dryer, E. H. Borah, Christian Schaefer, Andrew Christensen, Joseph Moulding, F. W.; Martin, George Kriegh, J. K. Moore,. George Van Dehsen, Joseph Lengel, M. O. Wrighter, Wm. Hamilton, C. J. Ellithorpe, F. B. Strong, Charles Johnson, P. J. Gubbins, Frank Sharp/ John Verhoeff, George Rhodes, John De Santos, Hiram Crippen, Jacob Hansen, A. B. Brandenburg, J. C. Houser, Alex Haney, Gus Peterson, Kryn Van Zee. The year 18 78 was one of good crops in western Kansas. Yields of thirty bushels of wheat and seventy five of corn per acre were reported, and these stories had much to do with the flood of immigration which set in for the west in the following year. But the fat year of 1878 was Page 16 followed by a series of lean ones; and the successive
crop failures fell very hard on the new settlers in the western counties.. The pioneers were industrious, energetic
and full of hope for the future. Every man felt himself an independent land owner when he had put his homestead
papers on a quarter section of land on the boundless plains of Sunny Kansas. But few of them had any money or anything
else to fall back on and were from the start dependent on their labor and their crops for the support of themselves
and their families; so when the crop failed in 1879 the settlers were confronted with the problem of what to do
to keep themselves and their families through the winter. All sorts of makeshifts were resorted to. A few found
work on the railroad; some went west and some east to work at anything they could find to do. This disruption of
families fell hardest, of course, on the women and children who had to stay in the lonely sod house or dug-out
home on the claim while the father was away at work. Those who stayed gathered up the bleached and scattered bones
of the buffalo and hauled them to the railroad where they found sale at four to six dollars a ton. Loads of bones
were hauled to the U. P. station from as far away as Rawlins county, a distance of sixty miles. By these and other
makeshifts many of the pioneers weathered the storm. But as winter came on it became evident that many would be
unable to get along without outside help; and so the call for aid went forth. The largest single contributor to the aid fund for western Kansas was Jay Gould, then in control of the Union Pacific. In response to an appeal from the governor he contributed §5000, specifying that it should be expended "in the counties of Trego, Gove, Wallace, Sheridan, Graham and the northern part of Ness," along the line of his railroad; the railroad also offered to haul all donations free of charge. The governor appointed R. S. Coldren of Topeka to handle the Gould contribution; Mr. Coldren made several trips to Gove and other counties with provisions. Gov. St. John raatle a personal visit to the western counties in May. 1880, to investigate conditions. On his return to Topeka he invited a number of prominent citizens to a meeting in his office; at this meeting, May 25, a State Aid association was formed for the relief of settlers in western Kansas. Most of the aid received during the year 1880 was handled through this committee. The secretary of ttie committee reported that 16 00 people in western Kansas were destitute. His list was prepared by counties and showed 400 des-titute in Gove, 1000 in Sheridan. 1000 in Graham, 1600 in Ness, etc. Gove's number was smaller than any other county except Wallace, which reported 200. On July 3, 1880, at a meeting in Buffalo Park Rev. J. Q. A. Weller was appointed to visit the east and solicit aid. Rev. Weller was very active in the aid matter. The Grain-field paper was very spiteful at Mr. Weller, charging him with sensationalism and with grossly exaggerating the amount of destitution existing, and even insinuated that he was a grafter. A meeting at Grainfield in January, 1880, adopted a resolution that there were only twenty eight destitute families in the county at that time and that there were enough provisions on hand for these at Buffalo Park. Grainfield gave but little encouragement to the aid proposition and continually threw cold water on it. It must be remembered that the organization movement was under way at this time and a county seat fight was brewing, and perhaps it was natural that Grainfield should be suspicious of any movement coming from Buffalo Park, and vice versa. The legislature of 1881 appropriated $25,000 for the relief of western Kansas and I. N. Holloway was Page 17 appointed commissioner to adminis-the fund. He made his report June ter 30, 1881. He said the destitution was not so great as reported but that he found many persons greatly in need of help. He estimated that ninety five per cent of the suffering was due to the drouth of 1879-80 and the other five per cent to various causes such as sickness, loss of teams and the destruction of growing crops by roving droves of unherded cattle. He bought 750,000 pounds of supplies, which were transported free by the railroads. The total cost of supplies was $14,817.05, leaving a balance of over ten thousand dollars of the appropriation to turn back into the treasury. A vast amount of distress was caused by the drouth
of 1879-80 in the way of personal suffering, loss of crops and the abandonment of homes. What was the total amount
of aid rendered can never be known but it was small compared to the total loss; and it has long since been made
good by contributions from western Kansas to the unfortunates of other localities. It is probably no exaggeration
to say that western Kansas contributed more to the flood sufferers of the Kaw valley at the time of the flood of
1.9 0 3 than all eastern Kansas contributed to the west in the time of the Great Drouth. |
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