EDWARD P. HARRIS

EDWARD P. HARRIS was born June 11, 1834, at Hudson, N. H. He learned the printer's trade before he was twenty years old, and has been a printer and proofreader from the time he first entered a print shop until to-day.

In 1856 Mr. Harris was at work in Boston, where a party was made up to go to Kansas. He joined the party and came to Kansas through Chicago. He was a member of Lane's Army of the North, and came into Kansas over the old Lane trail, crossing the state line from Nebraska, August 7, 1856. Two miles over the line sixty men dropped out of the company and established the town of Plymouth. Twelve miles further down another party, including Mr. Harris, laid out the town of Lexington. Still a third party founded the town of Holton. Mr. Harris came on to Topeka shortly after the founding of Lexington. Topeka was then a little village of three hundred people. It was unsafe to venture far out without a revolver, rifle or bowie knife. Mr. Harris said that you never knew what tree, bush or clump of grass might hide a border ruffian.

Mr. Harris has known every governor of Kansas from Andrew H. Reeder down to Governor Capper. He is one of the pioneer printers of the state. He worked on the Herald of Freedom in 1856. In the fall of that year Preston B. Plumb was foreman of the office. Mr. Harris saw the free-state legislature dispersed in 1856 at Topeka. He was foreman of the state printing office in 1873, which position he held until 1891. He was associated with all the old-time newspaper men and printers of Kansas. In 1891 Mr. Harris became the proofreader for Crane & Company, Topeka, where he has remained to this day.

It is hard to realize that there is yet living, in active service, a man who staked out a claim two and a half miles east of Topeka, but such is the case. He is still in good health, and has seen the state grow from the small fringe of settlements along the eastern border to one of the great states of the Union.

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