Kansas Historical Society

Following the end of the Civil War, Kansas newspaper editors and publishers sought a way to record the founding of the state and its heroic role in the fight against slavery. A committee of the Kansas Editors' and Publishers' Association met December 13, 1875, and formed the Kansas Historical Society to collect newspapers and manuscripts on the territorial period.

Publishers became members of the Historical Society by donating issues of their newspapers. For all others, the annual membership fee was $2.

At first the Historical Society was able to store its small collection in a bookcase on the fourth floor of the south wing of the Kansas Statehouse. In 1879 the state enacted legislation that recognized the Historical Society as "the trustee of the state" for the purpose of maintaining the state's history. Within 10 years, the Historical Society had collected more than 16,000 books and pamphlets and more than 3,700 bound volumes of newspapers and periodicals.

"Kansas has the fullest collection ever made by any state in its early years, because this was the first Society that began its career by collecting and preserving every copy of every newspaper published in the state," said Secretary George Martin, in his 25th annual address of the Historical Society in 1900.

The Historical Society collections continued to grow. In 1893 the legislature authorized the Historical Society to occupy three rooms in the south wing of the statehouse. The board of directors reported that collections filled "every nook and corner of the main room of the Society from floor to ceiling; they occupy cases in the corridors, and they occupy three rooms in the cellar of the State House."

"The Kansas Historical Society is a good deal of a junk shop . . . It had the gall last year to ask that the entire east wing of the state house be turned over to it to be filled with car loads of rubbish . . . ," reported the Clay Center Times in 1897.

A $90,000 Civil War claim from the federal government and a legislative appropriation helped to solve the Historical Society's immediate space concerns. In 1911 United States President William Howard Taft was the honored guest at the laying of the corner stone of the new Memorial Building. Built as a monument to the Union veterans of the Civil War, the building opened in 1914. The Historical Society moved more than 440,000 objects and effects to the new quarters, shared with the Grand Army of the Republic, a Civil War veterans organization.

The Historical Society added a new type of collections in 1927 with the acquisition of two state historic sites. The annual meeting report celebrated the addition of "Shawnee Mission in Johnson County, [and] the old Capitol at Fort Riley. . ."

In addition to growing collections, the Historical Society expanded its programs. Archeology, historic preservation, and museum services were added. By the 1980s, the Historical Society was outgrowing the Memorial Building.

In 1984 the museum moved to a new building located in northwest Topeka. Situated on 80 acres, the museum joined one of the state-owned historic buildings, Potawatomi Mission. In 1995 the State Archives & Library also moved to the complex. In January 2001 a third storage bay was added to the State Archives building, providing an additional 22,000 square feet of space for storing mainly library and archives collections.

Because of the foresight of those earlier publishers, the Kansas Historical Society has one of the most comprehensive collections of state newspapers in the nation.