GEORGE J. REMSBURG.
George J. Remsburg was born in Atchison county, Kansas, September 22, 1871. His life has been devoted mainly to horticultural, journalistic, archaeological and historical work. He spent many years on a fruit farm, removing to Atchison in 1892, where he engaged in newspaper work on the Daily Champion, the oldest newspaper in Kansas; he was a reporter, city editor, and even did editorial work on that paper up to 1900, when he returned to the farm on account of ill health. In 1894–95 he was editor of the Missouri Valley Farmer, now the leading agricultural journal west of the Mississippi. During the winter of 1905–6 he was on the reportorial staff of the Leavenworth Daily Post, and editor of Western Life, published in that city. He has also acted as special correspondent of the Leavenworth Times, St. Joseph Gazette, Kansas City Journal, Topeka Mail and Breeze, Topeka Capital, Atchison Globe, and other well known western newspapers, besides having been an editorial contributor to many different magazines and other publications.
He has spent many years in archaeological explorations, principally in northeastern Kansas and northwestern Missouri, has opened a number of ancient mounds and identified and explored old village sites of the Kansa Indians, visited by Bourgmont in 1724, and Lewis and Clark in 1804, on the Missouri river. He has published a pamphlet describing one of the more important of these old villages, entitled, “An Old Kansas Indian Town on the Missouri.” In all, he has discovered and examined more than 100 old Indian village, camp, workshop and grave sites in the region mentioned and gathered one of the most extensive private archaeological collections ever assembled in Kansas.
In 1897 he was elected a corresponding member of the Western Historical Society upon the unsolicited recommendation of United States Senator George G. Vest, of Missouri. In 1901 he became associated with Hon. J. V. Brower, of St. Paul, Minn., in important archaeological investigations relative to the ancient Indian province of Quivira, visited by Coronado in 1541, and upon the organization of the Quivira Historical Society by Mr. Brower, he was made a life member. In 1905 he was elected president of this society to succeed Mr. Brower, deceased. The Quivira Historical Society erected a number of costly monuments to commemorate historical events of Coronado’s time in Kansas.
At the annual meeting of the McLean Historical Society of Illinois at Bloomington in 1909 he was elected an honorary member in recognition of his researches regarding the Kickapoo Indians, of which tribe the McLean society is making a special study. He has thoroughly explored the old village of the Kickapoos near Ft. Leavenworth, occupied from 1832 to 1854, and visited these Indians on their reservation in Brown county, Kansas, on several occasions, gathering a vast amount of ethnologic and historic material pertaining to the tribe. He is also a member of the Kickapoo Club, of Bloomington, Ill.
Mr. Remsburg is a member of the National Geographical Society, having been elected at the annual meeting of the society in Washington in 1911. He has been a member of the International Society of Archaeologists since its organization in 1909; was appointed an associate editor of the Archaeological Bulletin, official organ of this society, in 1910, and elected vice-president of the same society in the same year. In 1901 he was elected a member of the American Society of Curio Collectors; was elected vice-president of the same in 1902, and appointed a contributing editor of the society’s official organ in 1906. He is also an active member of and contributor to the Kansas State Historical Society, and is a member of its committees on archaeology and Indian history.
Brower’s “Memoirs of Explorations in the Basin of the Mississippi,” Volume VII, contains a summary account of Mr. Remsburg’s archaeological work, and says of him: “He has long been a capable and painstaking archaeological explorer in the Missouri Valley.” Chappell’s “History of the Missouri River” says he is an acknowledged authority on early western history and the archaeology of the Missouri valley.
He has held a number of local offices, such as justice of the peace, member of school board, and secretary of various clubs and societies. He was at one time a member of the Kansas National Guards. He is now connected with the staff of the Potter Weekly Kansan and doing special correspondence for several newspapers. His home is at Potter, in this county. He is a son of John E. Remsburg, whose sketch appears elsewhere.