This Day in Kansas History - December

These entries are taken from The Annals of Kansas, 1541-1885 by D.W. Wilder, The Annals of Kansas, 1886-1925 edited by Kirke Mechem, and contributed by staff members of the Kansas State Historical Society (these entries are marked with an *). Other sources used will be noted. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of events in Kansas history.

December

1 - [1859] - Abraham Lincoln arrives in Elwood, and makes a speech that evening. He was met at St. Joseph by M.W. Delahay and D.W. Wilder. His speech was substantially the same he made soon afterward at the Cooper Institute, New York, and one of the ablest and clearest ever delivered by an American statesman.

2 - [1859] - John Brown executed [at Charles Town, Virginia].

3 - [1886] - Chautauqua county grew 100 bales of cotton in 1886.

4 - [1923] - Sousa's band gave a concert at Emporia.

5 - [1925] - The skeleton of a fish measuring 13 1/2 feet and known as "Portheus" was found in Logan county by George F. Sternberg of Hays.

6 - [1920] - In ten months federal officers had seized 700 stills and $52,000 worth of whisky in Kansas.

7 - [1897] - Coffeyville voted $17,000 in bonds for an electric light system. The Post Office Department experimented with rural free delivery in thickly populated areas of the state. Previous experiments on a small scale had been unsuccessful.

8 - [1874] - The Kansas Pacific train robbed at Muncie, a few miles west of Kansas City, at 3 P.M. Five masked men flagged and stopped the train, cut off the passenger coaches, moved the engine and express car some distance forward, and robbed Wells, Fargo & Co.'s safe of about $27,000.

9 - [1890] - The American National Bank of Arkansas City closed as the result of the cattleman's withdrawal from the Cherokee Strip.

10 - [1909] - The Kansas Equal Suffrage Assn. met at Topeka.

11 - [1895] - Three bodies, found at the Kansas Medical College, had been stolen from Topeka cemeteries. The college was guarded from expected mob violence by 25 policemen. Two National Guard companies were called out. The Governor offered rewards for information of the grave robbers.

12 - [1913] - A series of auto polo games between American and British teams was played at Topeka. Auto polo was said to be a Kansas game promoted by Ralph Hankinson, Topeka.

The Santa Fe was building farm houses for a Russian colony of 27 persons in Finney county. Forty quarter sections were secured for colonization, and irrigation would be directed by the Santa Fe.

13 - [1850] - By the proclamation of the President, the territory ceded by Texas, November 25 (under act of Congress of September 9), comes under the control of the Untied States. The part of this cession south of the Arkansas river and west of the one-hundredth meridian, which became a part of the State of Kansas, embraces 7,766 square miles.

14 - [1844] - The Wyandots purchase of the Delawares 23,040 acres of land at the junction of the Missouri and Kansas rivers. This contract was ratified by the United States July 25, 1848; on the 1st of April, 1850, they agree to pay the Wyandots $185,000 for the lands promised them.

15 - [1855] - At the election on the adoption or rejection of the Topeka Constitution, at Leavenworth, the Pro-Slavery men carried off the ballot-box. They also destroyed the office of the Territorial Register, a Free-State paper, at Leavenworth, edited by Mark W. Delahay.

16 - [1870] - The Lawrence Journal says that during the past two years the Kansas Pacific Railway has sold 700,000 acres of land, for $2,000,000. The Swedish colony, in Saline county, has taken 22,000 acres; the Scotch colony, in Dickinson county, 47,000 acres; the English colony, in Clay county, 32,000 acres; and the Welsh colony, in Riley county, 19,000 acres.

17 - [1891] - German-Russian settlers in Ellis county had sent over $10,000 to aid sufferers in Russia. they had also sent an agent to bring more families to Kansas.

18 - [1917] - The United States, as a war measure, seized the old Fort Leavenworth bridge across teh Missouri river. It was to be repaired and used by the government.

19 - [1925] - Dr. Charles M. Sheldon said Kansas churches should close their pulpits to the Anti-Saloon League until charges against it were answered.

20 - [1858] - John Brown and his men go into Missouri and liberate fourteen slaves. The Governor of Missouri offers a reward of $3,000, and President Buchanan $250, for the arrest of Brown. Brown goes north through Kansas with his negroes. At Holton an attempt by men from Atchison to capture him ends in failure. The retreat of the Pro-Slavery men is called "The Battle of the Spurs."

21 - [1935] - Greatest Kansas wheat acreage sown this fall, total 14,103,000 acres, breaks all previous records despite crop control plan. New Deal Wagner Labor Relations law is held unconstitutional in its entirety by Federal Court. [Ives, Footprints on the Sands of Time]

22 - [1896] - The Salvation Army opened a "shelter depot" at Kansas City. It consisted of 35 bedrooms, a bathroom, eating room and fumigating room. Beds and meals were five cents each.

23 - [1854] - The first Free-State meeting, reported in the Herald of Freedom was held at Lawrence. Rev. S.S. Snyder was chairman, and Charles Robinson secretary. Resolutions were reported by John Speer and Samuel N. Wood. John A. Wakefield, C.K. Holliday, S.Y. Lum and James S. Emery took part in the meeting.

24 - [1847] - Lewis Cass first promulgates the Squatter Sovereignty dogma, in a letter to A.O.P. Nicholson, of Nashville, Tennessee. He says:

"The Wilmot Proviso has been before the country for some time. It has been repeatedly discussed in Congress, and by the public press. I am strongly impressed with the opinion that a great change has been going on in the public mind upon this subject--in my own as well as others'; and that doubts are resolving themselves into convictions, that the principle it involves should be kept out of the national legislature, and left to the people of the Confederacy in their respective local governments.


"Briefly, then, I am opposed tothe exercise of any jurisdiction by Congress over this matter; and I am in favor of leaving the people of any territory which may be hereafter acquired the right to regulate it themselves, under the general principles of the constitutions."

25 - [1856] - A meeting was held in Lawrence "to institute a university."

26 - [1858] - Dickinson county organized this year; it is named for Daniel S. Dickinson, of New York.

27 - [1909] - The director of the experiment station at Hays said few prairie dogs were left in western Kansas between the Union Pacific and the Santa Fe railroads.

28 - [1900] - Tom McNeal's Fables, illustrated by Albert T. Reid, was published by Crane & Co. They had first been published in the Topeka Mail and Breeze. An example is The Jack Rabbit Who Had Profited by Example:

A Jack Rabbit which had been captured in its infancy, afterward escaped and returned to its native haunts. It was noticed thereafter that no other jack rabbit on that stretch of prairie was in it with the first-mentioned when it came to dodging and doubling and getting out of tight places. An interested contemporary called on the first-mentioned rabbit and besought him to tell where he had acquired his skill. "That is easy," said the first jack rabbit as he fanned himself gently with his left ear; "I was captured while young, and trained by a Kansas politician, who tried to keep on both sides of the prohibition question."

29 - [1910] - Governor Stubbs called a conference at Kansas City on sewage pollution of the Missouri river. He invited delegates from Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska.

30 - [1891] - Kansas was the only state producing sorghum-sugar, according to teh commissioner of internal revenue.

31 - [1904] - The annual old fiddlers' contest was held at the Whitley Opera House, Emporia. Dudley Smith, blacksmith, won the gold medal. Tunes played included Money Musk and Old Zip Coon. Proceeds went to the needy.