This Day in Kansas History - September

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.

September

1 - [1869] - The third Price Raid Commission reports to Governor Harvey that it has allowed claims amounting to $72,380.54. These were in part Price Raid claims, and in part claims arising from the Indian Expedition of Major General Samuel R. Curtis, in July and August, 1864.

2 - [1880] - N. L. Prentis, in the Champion: "The Capitol square is surrounded by a dense growth, rods in width, of rampant sunflowers. They grow as big, rank, and yellow as if they were forty miles from a house. The sunflower ought to be made the emblem of our State. Nothing checks it or kills it. It is alwyas 'happy as a big sunflower.' Grasshoppers have never held the edge on it; and in drouthy times when everything else wilts and throws up its hands, the sunflower continues business at the old stand. It probably has some private arrangement with nature for securing 'aid.'"

3 - [1971] - The Kansas Capital was declared a National Historic Site.*

4 - [1883] - First term of the U.S. District Court held at Wichita.

5 - [1922] - Hundreds of white-robed Ku Klux Klansmen held a meeting at Winfield. An airplane dropped pamphlets announcing the meeting.

6 - [1854] - The second New England party arrives at the Wakarusa, under Samuel C. Pomeroy and Charles Robinson. It numbers nearly 200.

7 - [1857] - Meeting of the Lecompton Constitutional Convention.

8 - [1873] - Rich discoveries of lead near Baxter Springs.

9 - [1866] - Northwestern Kansas and Fort Kearny, Neb., overrun with grasshoppers. They are in Nemaha and Marshall counties. The Wyandotte Gazette is quoted in the Conservative as saying: "Between Topeka and Wamego they fill the air like snow-flakes in a winter storm."

10 - [1906] - Fewer than 30 of 400 Negroes of school age in Wichita attended classes because of the separate school system.

11 - [1905] - Twenty-two Negroes presented themselves for enrollment at Kansas City High School to test the law passed by the 1905 Legislature which separated the races. Bonds had been voted for a Negro high school, but until it was built the board planned to hold two sessions, with whites in the morning and Negroes in the afternoon.

12 - [1855] - Bourbon county organized.

13 - [1917] - Birger Sandzen, professor of art at Bethany College, Lindsborg, won the grand prize at the Kansas Free Fair, Topeka, for the best group of five oils.

14 - [1910] - Ezra Meeker was in Topeka with oxen and a prairie schooner which he claimed made a trip over the Oregon Trail in 1850.

15 - [1854] - Appearance of the first newspaper in Kansas, the Leavenworth Herald. It was printed under an elm tree, on the Levee, near the corner of Cherokee street. It was a Pro-Slavery paper.

16 - [1903] - The new Washburn law school opened with four regular faculty members and 23 lecturers.

17 - [1918] - A Lyon county farmer paid a $25 fine for failing to rake his wheat field and for feeding wheat left under the separator to his hogs.

18 - [1907] - C.J. "Buffalo" Jones fattened two carloads of catalo, a cross between cattle and buffalo, with sugar-beet pulp from Garden City.

1920 - [1855] - Convention at Topeka to take measures to form a Free-State Constitution.

21 - [1935] - Santa Fe buys controlling interest in Kansas Stage Lines. [Ives, Footprints on the Sands of Time]

22 - [1873] - Financial panic; banks generally suspend, Kansas City taking the lead.

23 - [1874] - Eleven hundred Mennonites arrive at Topeka [Sept. 8 - Six hundred Mennonites arrive in Topeka, and spend some time there before going to their homes in the southwestern part of the State.]

24 - [1879] - President Hayes and Gen. Sherman arrive in Fort Scott, and make speeches. At Parsons President Hayes said that Kansas was the best advertised State in the Union, "and you come up to the advertisement. When you go anywhere the people naturally show you the best thing they have. In some cities it is fashionable to take you to the cemetery. I was in a city a few weeks ago where they took me to see the pin factory. I wondered what would be the best thing you would show me here. You took me to see your school house. There is no better advertisement for a city or State." Gen. Sherman said: "I don't know what mystery has brought about the rapid development of Kansas, except the mystery of education and industry."

25 - [1905] - During August there were 264 cases of typhoid with 33 deaths and 69 cases of diptheria with nine deaths in the state.

26 - [1856] - James Redpath and Thomas W. Higginson arrive in Topeka with 135 Free-State immigrants.
The foundation of Sabetha was a well dug by one of these overland parties.

27 - [1855] - Sharp's rifles are now mentioned as a part of the baggage of an emigrant to Kansas.

28 - [1910] - Soccer was introduced at Friends University, said to be the first game in Kansas.

29 - [1916] - Emporia Normal showed free movies for students. They included educational and dramatic films.

30 - [1901] - The Kansas State Historical Society dedicated a monument at the Pawnee Indian village site in Republic county where Zebulon Montgomery Pike in 1806 is said to have raised the first United States flag on Kansas soil.