These gentlemen put their purchase into lots and blocks and called it "Kansas," but very little was done toward founding a city until some eight years later, when a new company was organized by H. M. Northup, who is still living; John C. McCoy, who died within the past few months; Fry P. McGee, Jacob Ragan, William Gillis, Robert Campbell, who have been dead but a few years respectively; Henry Jobe, W. B. Evans, and W. M. Chick, who have been dead much longer.
The first sale of lots was had in April, 1848, at which sale 150 lots were sold at an average price of $55.65 per lot.
The business of the city was confined almost entirely, for a number of years, to the levee, and was of the general character of that done in all river towns in their early history, pretty rough, pretty miscellaneous, and not altogether unmixed with "wet goods." Prohibition was an unknown element in social science, and the proportion of whisky consumed in the retail trade, compared with that of tea or coffee, was very like that described by Shakespeare in referring to Falstaff's "intolerable deal of sack to the half penny worth of bread." But very few men of those days remain nowadays; yet, as I have said, H. M. Northup still lives, vigorous and active. Dr. I. M. Ridge still continues to practice his profession, although less extensively than forty years ago. John Campbell traverses our streets, but has long since turned his well-known and faithful old sorrel mule out to grass. William Mulkey looks hale and hearty, but has discarded his former buckskin suit, though he still maintains a portion of his farm in the center of the city. Once in a long while one of the old French settlers of those early days, or even an old plainsman, ventures into the busy city and looks about him in a bewildered sort of way for a day or two, and then disappears again into the nearest wilderness or prairie, as being far more congenial to his tastes and habits of life. Not all of them, however, are of this character and disposition. It is but a few weeks since I met one of our most noted pioneer plainsmen and freighters across the prairies of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico, in the earliest of the days I have been speaking of. In those times no name was better or more widely known than that of Seth E. Ward, the post trader at Laramie.
The descendants of most of the original owners of the "Town of Kansas," as it was first called, or "Westport Landing," as it was nicknamed later, still remain there, and are among its most prominent and respected citizens to-day.
Ten years later the "western fever" struck Ohio, and hundreds of young men of my acquaintance left there for Kansas and Nebraska. Omaha was a favorite objective point, and a town named Columbus was founded still farther west than Omaha, which was almost entirely colonized by people from Franklin County, Ohio. One of my friends, Dr. Theodore S. Case, also holding the rank of colonel, was studying medicine at the time in Columbus, Ohio, and resisted the fever until the following year, 1857, when, with a few books and a sheepskin authorizing him to write M. D. after his name, and to commit manslaughter without being called to account for it, started for the West. He knew nothing of the West, but had a general idea that he would go to St. Louis, or Keokuk, or Des Moines, or Omaha, or Council Bluffs, or possibly to "Carson City," Kan.; for a sharper, originally from Columbus, had been out West and came back with a lithographic map of a city by that name, fixed up very attractively, and with all the modern improvements of court house, city hall, depots, churches, colleges, steamboats, etc., and he bought some $15 worth of lots on one of the principal thoroughfares of the city not far from the depot. However, before he got as far west as St. Louis, he had learned the manners and tricks of such gentry, and did not go to "Carson City." By some accidental circumstance his attention was called particularly to the geographical location of Kansas City, and he at once determined to give it a look anyhow. There being no railroad nearer than Jefferson City at that time, he took the steamer Minnehaha at St. Louis, along with some other 299 fellows who were going "out west to grow up with the country," and four days afterward landed at Kansas City, May 1, 1857, almost thirty-five years ago.
The first view of Kansas City was by no means prepossessing, as it consisted principally of a line of shabby looking brick and frame warehouses, dry-goods stores, groceries, saloons, restaurants, etc., strung along the levee from Wyandotte Street to a little east of Walnut Street, the whole backed up and surmounted by a rugged and precipitous bluff, from 100 to 150 feet high, covered with old dead trees, brush, dog fennel and jimson weeds, with an occasional frame or log house scattered between and among them, and a few women and children, principally darkies, looking down at the boats.
To a young man, however, the levee, with its three or four steamers, huge piles of Mexican freight, prairie schooners, mules, greasers, Indians, negroes, mud clerks, roustabouts, Frenchmen, consignees, emigrants, old settlers, tenderfeet, hotel drummers, brass bands, omnibuses, etc., presented attractions not easily resisted. Notwithstanding all the tooting for hotels, there were really but two in the place, one on the levee, then known as the American Hotel, now remembered more familiarly as the "Gillis House," and the other the "Farmers' Hotel," on Grand Avenue, between Sixteenth and Seventeenth streets. The first was technically known as the "Free State Hotel," having been built by the New England Aid Emigrant Society, and the other as the "Pro-Slavery," or "Border Ruffian House," as it was or had been the headquarters of the pro-slavery party in the border war of 1854 and 1856 between the free state and pro-slavery contestants for the possession of political control of the Territory of Kansas.
LEE'S FERRY, ON THE COLORADO.
All travelers, however, who knew the ropes dodged both these hotels and took the omnibus for Westport, where two really good hotels were kept. To show the amount of travel toward Kansas at that time I may say that at the American Hotel alone there were 27,000 arrivals in the year 1856-57.