Frederick Funston Papers, 1891-1917
Collection 33
Introduction
The papers of Frederick Funston, Major General of the United States
Army and Kansas hero of the Cuban revolution and the Spanish-American
war, were received by the Kansas State Historical Society in July, 1958.
The collection, donated by Funston’s daughter, Barbara, consists
primarily of the personal and military correspondence of Funston dating
from the Death Valley expedition of 1891 to his death in 1917. Documents,
newspaper clippings, and magazine and journal articles are also included,
recording events of his various expeditions and military experiences.
The unpublished writings of Frederick Funston in this collection are
unrestricted and open to use by the public.
Biographical Sketch
Frederick Funston was born November 9, 1865, in New Carlisle, Ohio,
the son of Edward H. Funston (who later served as Speaker of the Kansas
House of Representatives and President Pro Tem of the Kansas Senate)
and Ann Eliza Mitchell. The family moved to Allen County, Kansas, when
Frederick was young. He graduated from Iola High School in 1886, going
on to attend the University of Kansas. Although not an outstanding student,
Funston was active and well-known, with William Allen White, Ed Franklin,
Charles F. Scott, and Vernon Kellogg numbering among his close friends
during his college years.
As a special botanical agent for the Department of Agriculture, Funston
joined a trip to Death Valley, California, in 1891. He recorded many
of his impressions of the expedition and sent them back to be published
in the Iola Daily Register. In 1892, still an agent of the government,
Funston made his famed Alaskan expedition, including the Yukon, from
which he returned in 1894. From Alaska, he again sent humorous yet informative
reports of the people and places he saw to the newspaper.
After holding several newspaper jobs and working for the Santa Fe
Railroad, Funston heard General Daniel E. Sickles plead the cause of
Cuban independence at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Funston
immediately signed up as a Cuban revolutionary, arriving on the island
in 1896, and served eighteen months under Generals Maximo Gomez, Calixto
Garcia, and others. During this time he was wounded three times, lost
seventeen horses, and was captured once. According to his nephew, he
would have been shot as an insurgent had he not lied about his identity
and swallowed his passport.
Shortly after his return to the States, war was declared on Spain,
and Governor Leedy of Kansas, recalling Funston’s exploits in
Cuba, asked Funston to command one of the three regiments being raised
in Kansas. Funston accepted and the 20th Kansas Regiment arrived in
Manila on November 30, 1898. Less than a month before, at the age of
thirty-three, he had married Miss Eda Blankard; she joined him shortly
thereafter in the Philippines. For his leadership of the 20th Regiment,
Funston was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and promoted to
the rank of Brigadier General Volunteers.
Although the 20th Kansas served only a year, Funston returned to the
Philippines in late December, 1899. He personally led the small cadre
of American soldiers and Macabebe scouts in the capture of the famed
Filipino insurrectionist, Emilio Aguinaldo. Criticized by some for unethically
posing as a spy to bring about the capture, Funston was nevertheless
awarded a commission as a Brigadier General, Regular Army, June, 1901.
The animosity of some of the “regular army” towards Funston’s
success was to continue into later years. At the time, however, Funston,
at 35, was the youngest general in the army.
Although a national hero immediately after the war, it wasn’t
until the San Francisco earthquake that Funston again came to the fore.
On April 16, 1906, acting quickly in response to the tremors that shook
the city, Funston used army troops and his own authority to blast buildings
in the path of the fire, to set up guards against looting and further
destruction, and to organize relief stations for the injured and homeless.
Once again, Funston was the nation’s hero.
After the earthquake, with the exception of brief service with Secretary
of War William Howard Taft’s commission to settle a factional
debate in Cuba, Funston’s assignments were routine. From mid 1908
to 1910, he served as Commandant of the Army Service Schools at Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas; during the next two years he was back at Iuzon.
In 1911, Funston published an adventurous narrative of his experiences
in the Cuban revolution and in the Philippines and his Memories of Two
Wars received rave reviews.
In 1913, as commander of the Hawaiian Department, he was instrumental
in bolstering the island’s defenses when a diplomatic crisis seemed
to be bringing the United States and Japan to the verge of war. When
the tension eased in the Pacific theater, Funston was transferred to
another hot spot, the Mexican border. Throughout 1914, he was engaged
as the military governor of Vera Cruz and managed to preserve the peace,
though not without some difficulty. After the withdrawal of troops in
November, 1914, his belated promotion to the rank of Major General finally
came. (The debate over Funston’s promotion had raged for several
years, as the general had been passed over for promotion on a number
of occasions. Joseph Bristow of Kansas was his advocate in the Senate
and his Kansas friends felt the “regular army” was withholding
from Funston the just deserts of his military endeavors, experience,
and standing.) Funston was then appointed as Commander of the Southern
Department, consisting of virtually the entire Mexican border. When
Pancho Villa’s bandits attacked a village in New Mexico, it was
on Funston’s recommendation that Pershing and his troops were
sent after them.
Funston died at the age of 51 on February 19, 1917, leaving his wife
and three children. Eulogies were given in the House of Representatives
by Charles S. Gleed and Charles F. Scott, both personal friends of Funston.
Newton Baker, who was serving as the Secretary of War at the time of
Funston’s death, said later that had Funston lived, he undoubtedly
would have commanded the American Expeditionary Force in Europe, which
became engaged in World War I only months after Funston’s death.
Scope and Content
The Frederick Funston collection consists primarily of personal and
professional correspondence, documents, reports, newspaper clippings
and magazine articles. Although the bulk of the material dates from
1891 until his death in 1917, miscellaneous papers, newspaper clippings,
and correspondence of the General’s widow, Eda Blankard Funston,
are also included and date to 1932. All materials are arranged in chronological
order according to the date of communication or publication with all
undated or roughly dated materials filed separately. The collection
consists of three Hollinger boxes and three reels of microfilm, some
of which duplicates the boxed material.
For the purposes of this description, though all the correspondence
is interfiled, Funston’s correspondence can be divided into three
general categories: personal, military, and general. The personal correspondence
makes up a significant part of the collection and includes letters to
Funston’s mother and father and to his sisters Elizabeth and Ella.
Beginning in 1898 and continuing throughout the remainder of the collection,
letters from his wife Eda are included, many of which are written to
her mother in California. Throughout the years, Funston kept in contact
with several close friends from his university days with letters from
Vernon Kellogg, William Allen White, Charles F. Scott, and E. G. Franklin
(addressed as Buck) interspersed throughout the collection. There is
correspondence from Charles S. Gleed as well. In these letters, Funston
often signed himself “Tim” or “Timmie,” a nickname
apparently used only by close friends. In family letters, Funston sometimes
used the name “Fritz.”
The second section of correspondence is composed of military communiqués,
reports, directions and orders, notices of and applications for promotion,
documents of commendation, etc. In the latter part of the collection,
there is a significant amount of correspondence with Generals Leonard
Wood, James Parker, and Hugh L. Scott. Notes of congratulations on promotions
and military exploits from fellow officers are also included; a notable
addition being several commendations to Funston for his services in
the Cuban revolution from General Calizto Garcia. This section is primarily
military correspondence and, outside of personal documents of promotion,
contains no military records as such.
Funston’s general correspondence includes such items as dinner
invitations, personal property and other tax papers, letters to and
from the publishers of his writing, correspondence with Senator Joseph
Bristow concerning Funston’s promotion, and various letters about
his quarrel with an evangelist minister Dr. Ambriel over the issue of
revivals in the military camps.
Also contained in the collection are clippings about Funston’s
military exploits. Until the Spanish-American war, most of the clippings
are from New York, Topeka, San Francisco, and Chicago newspapers but
later clippings are from various other sources as well. The collection
also includes clippings concerning General Funston’s wife, which
date from the 1890s to a number of years after the General’s death.
Finally, magazine articles, book reviews, poems, and eulogies are also
included.
During the early part of his career, Funston did a great deal of writing
and the collection includes these works. A number of articles written
for the Iola Daily Register by Funston during the Death Valley and Alaskan
expeditions are in the correspondence files in addition to several reports
to Charles F. Scott during the Cuban revolution. Funston’s published
articles on the 20th Kansas Regiment, the capture of Aguinaldo, the
army’s role in the San Francisco earthquake, and others are also
found in this collection.
For more information concerning Frederick Funston, the researcher
may refer to the collections of Eugene F. Ware, Julius M. Liepman, General
J.W.F. Hughes, Joseph L. Bristow, Charles S. Gleed, Charles F. Scott,
and William Henry Sears in the Manuscript Division. The Maps and Photographs
Section of the Manuscript Division has an extensive collection of photographs
of Frederick Funston and his family that is available to researchers.
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