This Day in Kansas History - November

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.

November

1 - [1919] - Ten thousand coal miners struck. They asked for a six-hour day, a five-day week and a 60 percent raise. Most of the state had only two weeks' fuel supply. Institutions and schools were closed. Through a receivership order from the Supreme Court, the state took charge of the mines, arbitrated futiley, then called for 1,000 volunteers. During November and December 10,000 college and ex-service men responded. With them went Governor Allen and the Fourth Regiment of the Kansas National Guard. Working in sub-zero weather in a wholly-unionized district, pits filled with water, and machinery out of repair, the volunteers mined 700 carloads of coal and relieved emergencies in 200 communities.

2 - At Topeka the Twentieth Kansas Volunteers home from the Philippines, were greeted with a 13-gun salute, a nine-band parade, a reception and banquet staged by 75,000 persons. High-lighting the occasion was the presentation of a jeweled gold and silver sword to Brig. Gen. Frederick Funston with the inscription of Funston's famous reply to Gen. Arthur MacArthur: "I can hold the line until my regiment is mustered out." The Twentieth was organized in April, 1898, and was sent without uniforms to Camp Merritt, Calif., where its "greenness" was ridiculed by San Francisco newspapers. After Santiago fell and the Spanish fleet had been destroyed, it was sent to the Philippines. After five months on the front line, the regiment earned the name, "the Fighting Twentieth." Hand-to-hand fighting, swimming rivers under fire and other hazardous feats were part of the 30 engagements, in which it lost more men than any other regiment. MacArthur wired Washington: "Kansans a mile ahead of the line. Will stop them if I can." He declared they were the "backbone of my division" and submitted ten names for the Congressional Medal of Honor.

3 - [1914] - Teh election was a Republican landslide. Women voted for the first time in a state general election. Mrs. Eva Morley Murphy, Goodland, who ran for U.S. Representative on the Progressive ticket, received over 6,000 votes but was not elected. Officers elected, all Republican, were: Arthur Capper, Topeka, Governor; Charles Curtis, Topeka, U.S. Senator; William Y. Morgan, Hutchinson, Lieutenant Governor; J.T. Botkin, Galena, Secretary of State; W.E. Davis, Dodge City, Auditor; Earl Akers, Stafford, Treasurer; S.M. Brewster, Troy, Attorney General; W.D. Ross, Oskaloosa, Superintendent of Public Instruction; Carey J. Wilson, Topeka, Superintendent of Insurance; W.R. Smith, Columbus, State Printer. The recall amendment passed.

4 - [1913] - The fastest time made by any railroad in Kansas was on the Santa Fe track between Hutchinson and Kinsley. This was the "race track" in Kansas railroad circles.

5 - [1916] - Only one woman in 1,908 at K.U. chose to marry, according to a questionnaire. Sixty-five percent planned to teach. Other vocations chosen included banking, pharmacy, medicine and journalism.

6 - [1907] - A hundred persons from McPherson and Marion counties went to Saskatchewan to attend the annual meeting of the German Mennonite Brethren Church of the United States adn Canada.

7 - [1825] - Treaty with the Shawnees. The United States give them a tract of land equal to fifty miles square, situated west of the State of Missouri, and within the purchase made from the Osages on the 2d of June, 1825.

8 - [1901] - Mrs. Mary "Mother" Bickerdyke, 84, Civil War nurse, died at her home in Bunker Hill. She was in 19 battles in the department of the Ohio, Tennessee and Cumberland armies as a nurse, cook and laundress, often violating procedure, but always sustained by superiors. After the war she influenced 300 soldiers and their families to come to Kansas. She opened a hotel in Salina under the patronage of the Union Pacific. In "grasshopper years" she secured relief for sufferers.

9 - [1908] - The case of Fred D. Warren, managing editor of Appeal to Reason, Socialist paper at Girard, was continued until the next term of federal court. Warren was charged with sending "threatening and scurrilous" matter through the mails. His attorneys were Clarence Darrow, Chicago and Louis C. Boyle, Kansas City, neither of whom was present when the case was ordered continued.

10 - [1923] - Walter P. Chrysler, who had been made head of the Maxwell and Chalmers Motor Car Corp., was born in Wamego and educated at Ellis. He started his career as a machinist's apprentice in the Ellis Union Pacific shops.

11 - [1883] - In June, '77, there were three Posts of the G.A.R. in Kansas; June, '82, over fifty Posts; June, '83, 177 Posts and 8,398 members.

12 - [1890] - Every mail at Medicine Lodge contained a pair of socks for "Sockless Jerry" Simpson, representative-elect from the Seventh District.

13 - [1880] - Publication, in teh Junction City Union, of an "Owl Club" letter from Geo. W. Martin: "I want to say to the boys of Junction City, under the age of twenty-five, for God's sake don't follow your seniors into Owl Clubs. The sociability and conviviality they furnish is a fraud; it is a matter of taste, and the Owl Club taste is a very bad taste. The Owl Club weakens; most any other form of sociability strengthens. the doggery will never make a drunkard of you, young man, because there is something repulsive about it; but the Owl Club, and similar 'social' and glittering insitutions, will."

14 - [1911] - Billy Sunday held a revival at Wichita. Two-day attendance was 29,000.

15 - [1865] - Telegraph completed to Topeka. Prof. Swallow discovers marble at Fort Scott. The Eighth Kansas is at San Antonio, Texas. Grading in progress on the railroad between Leavenworth and Wyandotte.

16 - [1864] - Joseph Bond starts the Herald, at Humboldt--the first paper printed there. J.H. Young soon became one of the publishers. John R. Goodin was one of the editors. The Herald lived a year.

17 - [1917] - Koon C. Beck, Hutchinson, processed rabbit meat, which he sold for 12 cents a pound. Hunters received three to five cents per rabbit for bounty and eight cents a pound for meat.

18 - [1909] - Dwight Eisenhower, 19 years old, spoke on "The Student in Politics" at a Democratic banquet at Abilene.

19 - [1916] - Of 2,918 women employees in 375 business establishments in Kansas, only 126 were working under the eight-hour system, the State Industrial Welfare Commission reported. One fourth worked over ten hours a day, and two-thirds received less than $8 a week.

20 - [1897] - Fort Scott dynamited the Marmaton river bed in an effort to replenish the town's exhausted water supply.

21 - [1919] - Dr. John R. Brinkley, Halstead, claimed to have performed successful goat gland operations on both men and women.

22 - [1889] - A Cottonwood Falls merchant, who received a carload of wagons from Toledo, O[hio]., paid $40.80 freight from Toledo to Kansas city, a distance of 700 miles, and $105.20 from Kansas City to Cottonwood Falls, 148 miles. He wanted someone to "rise and explain."

23 - [1905] - Work progressed on the new State Fish Hatchery near Pratt. There were five large dams and plans for five more.

24 - [1913] - Russian thistle, bull nettles and other tumbleweeds, rolling in the November winds, piled up against fences and in railroad cuts. Trains carried crews to remove the thistle for fear the engines would set fire to them. They were a menace in prairie fires. Frequently houses burned when they piled against the wall and caught fire from the chimney.

25 - [1855] - "Lane's Thanksgiving" proclamation, as it was called, issued. It was brief and political, and made Christmas the Thanksgiving day. It was "given at the office of the Executive Committee of Kansas Territory, in the City of Topeka;" signed by J.H. Lane, Chairman, and attested by J.K. Goodin, Secretary.

26 - [1888] - A colony of English people settled near Runnymede, Harper county, and bought farms and cattle ranches. F.J.S. Turnly's farm was their headquarters.

27 - [1865] - Major O.B. Gunn leaves Atchison to survey the A.T.& S.F.R.R.

28 - [1864] - First excursion train from Wyandotte to Lawrence.

29 - [1894] - Coal thieves at Wichita used sacks, wheelbarrows and wagons. The Rock Island lost 16 tons in one night.

30 - [1803] - Laussat takes possession of Louisiana. Casa Calvo and Salcedo, the Spanish commissioners, present to him the keys of the city, over which the tri-color flag floated but for the short space of twenty days.