History of Atchison County, Kansas

by Sheffield Ingalls

Section 36 requires officers to give official bonds, in such manner as the secretary of treasury may prescribe.

Section 37 declares all treaties, laws and other engagements made by the United States Government with the Indian tribes inhabiting the territory to remain inviolate, notwithstanding anything contained in the provisions of the act.

It was under the provisions of the above act that those coming to Kansas to civilize it and to erect their homes were to be guided.

Edward Everett Hale, in his history of Kansas and Nebraska, published in 1854, says, “Up to the summer of 1834, Kansas and Nebraska have had no civilized residents, except the soldiers sent to keep the Indian tribes in order; the missionaries sent to convert them; the traders who bought furs of them, and those of the natives who may be considered to have attained some measure of civilization from their connection with the whites.” So it will be seen that at the time of the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act, Atchison county was very sparsely settled.

All movements in the territory, or elsewhere, made for its organization, were provisional, as they were subject to the rights of the various Indian tribes, whose reservations covered, by well defined boundaries, every acre of northeastern Kansas, except such tracts as were reserved by the Government about Ft. Leavenworth, and other military stations, but with the move for the organization of the territory came an effort to extinguish the Indian’s title to the lands and thus open them to white settlers. One of the most interesting books bearing upon the history of Kansas of that time was “Greeley’s Conflict.” He makes the following statement with reference to this subject:

“When the bill organizing Kansas and Nebraska was first submitted to Congress in 1853, all that portion of Kansas which adjoins the State of Missouri, and, in fact, nearly all the accessible portion of both territories, was covered by Indian reservations, on which settlement by whites was strictly forbidden. The only exception was in favor of Government agents and religious missionaries; and these, especially the former, were nearly all Democrats and violent partisans of slavery. * * * * Within three months immediately preceding the passage of the Kansas bill aforesaid, treaties were quietly made at Washington with the Delawares, Otoes, Kickapoos, Kaskaskias, Shawnees, Sacs, Foxes and other tribes, whereby the greater part of the soil of Kansas, lying within one or two hundred miles of the Missouri border, was suddenly opened to white appropriation and settlement. These simultaneous purchases of the Indian land by the Government, though little was known of them elsewhere, were thoroughly understood and appreciated by the Missourians of the western border, who had for some time been organizing ‘Blue Lodges,’ ‘Social Bands,’ ‘Sons of the South,’ and other societies, with intent to take possession of Kansas in behalf of slavery. They were well assured and they fully believed that the object contemplated and desired, in lifting, by the terms of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, the interdict of slavery from Kansas, was to authorize and facilitate the legal extension of slavery into that region. Within a few days after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act, hundreds of leading Missourians crossed into the adjacent territory, selected each his quarter section, or a larger area of land, put some sort of mark on it, and then united with his fellow-adventurers in a meeting, or meetings, intended to establish a sort of Missouri preëmption upon all this region.”

Immediately following the passage of the territorial act the immigration of Missourians to Kansas began, and, indeed, before its final passage the best of the lands had been located and marked for preëmption by the Missourians. This was true, apparently, in the case of George M. Million, whom the records disclose was the first settler in Atchison county, after Kansas was made a territory. Mr. Million was of German descent and came to the vicinity of Rushville in the hills east of Atchison from Coal county, Missouri, prior to 1841, where he was married to Sarah E. Dixon before she was fifteen years old. In 1841 Million occupied the present site of East Atchison as a farm. At that time the bottom land just east of Atchison was covered with tall rushes and was known as Rush bottom. The town of Rushville was originally known as Columbus, but the name was subsequently changed to Rushville because of the character of the country in which it was located. During the winter Million eked out his livelihood by cutting wood and hauling it to the river bank, selling it in the spring and summer to the steamboats that plied up and down the Missouri river. Sometime subsequent to 1841, Million built a flat-boat ferry and operated it for seven or eight years and did a thriving business during the great gold rush to California. He accumulated considerable money and later operated a store, trading with the Indians for furs and buying hemp, which he shipped down the river. In June, 1854, he “squatted” on the present townsite of Atchison, and built a log house at the foot of Atchison street, near his ferry landing, and just opposite his cabin on the Missouri side of the river. Following Million, in June, 1854 came a colony of emigrants from Iatan, Mo., and took up claims in the neighborhood of Oak Mills. They were F. P. Goddard, G. B. Goddard, James Douglass, Allen Hanson and George A. Wright, but the actual settlers and founders of Atchison county did not enter the territory of Kansas until July, 1854. On the twentieth day of that month Dr. J. H. Stringfellow with Ira Norris, Leonidas Oldham, James B. Martin and Neil Owens left Platte City, Mo., to decide definitely upon a good location for a town. With the exception of Dr. Stringfellow they all took claims about four miles southwest of the present city of Atchison. Traveling in a southwesterly direction from Platte City the party reached the river opposite Ft. Leavenworth and crossed to the Kansas side. They went north until they reached the mouth of Walnut creek, “and John Alcorn’s lonely cabin upon its banks.” They continued their course up the river until they came to the “south edge of the rim of the basin which circles around from the south line of the city, extending west by gradual incline to the divide between White Clay and Stranger creek, then north and east around to the northern limits of the city.” It was at this point that the Missouri river made the bend from the northeast, throwing the point where Atchison is now located, twelve miles west of any locality, north, and twenty miles west of Leavenworth, and thirty-five miles west of Kansas City. When they descended into the valley, of which Commercial street is now the lowest point, Dr. Stringfellow and his companions found George M. Million and Samuel Dickson. Mr. Dickson followed Million to Kansas from Rushville, and while there is some dispute as to who was the second resident in Atchison county after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, the best authorities lead to the conclusion that to Samuel Dickson belongs that honor. Mr. Dickson erected a small shanty near the spring, which bore his name for so many years, on the east side of South Sixth street, between Park and Spring streets. His house is described as a structure twelve feet square, having one door and one window and a large stone chimney running up the outside. As soon as Dr. Stringfellow arrived he at once commenced negotiations with Mr. Million for the purchase of his claim. Mr. Million, apparently, was a shrewd real estate speculator and only surrendered his claim upon the payment of $1,000. Dr. Stringfellow considered this a very fancy figure for the land, but he and his associates were firm in their decision of founding a city at this point on the Missouri river and they gave Mr. Million his price. The organization of a town company which followed will be discussed in a subsequent chapter of this territory.

The first territorial appointment for the purpose of inaugurating a local government in Kansas was made in June, 1854. Governor Andrew. H. Reeder, of Easton, Pa., was appointed on that date. He took the oath of office in Washington, D. C., July 7, and arrived in Kansas at Ft. Leavenworth October 7, becoming at once the executive head of the Kansas government. Governor Reeder was a stranger to Kansas. With the exception of Senator Atchison he scarcely knew anybody in Kansas. He was a lawyer by profession, one of the ablest in the State of Pennsylvania. From early manhood he had been an ardent and loyal Democrat and had defended with vigor and great power the principle of squatter sovereignty and the Kansas-Nebraska bill. He was not a politician and was an able, honest, clear-thinking Democrat. Upon his arrival in Kansas he set himself at once to the task of inaugurating the government in the territory. According to his own testimony before the special congressional committee appointed by Congress to investigate the troubles in Kansas in 1856, he made it his first business to obtain information of the geography, settlements, population and general condition of the territory, with a view to its division into districts; the defining of their boundary; the location of suitable and central places for elections, and the full names of men in each district for election officers, persons to take the census, justices of the peace, and constables. He accordingly made a tour of the territory, and although he did not come to Atchison county his tour included many important and remote settlements in the territory. Upon his return he concluded that if the election for a delegate to Congress should be postponed until an election could be had for the legislature, which, in the one case required no previous census, and in the other a census was required, the greater part of the session of Congress, which would terminate on the fourth of March, would expire before a congressional delegate from the territory could reach Washington. He, therefore, ordered an election for a delegate to Congress, and postponed the taking of the census until after that election. He prepared, without unnecessary delay, a division of the territory into election districts, fixed a place of election in each, appointed election officers and ordered that the election should take place November 29, 1854. Atchison county was in the fifteenth election district, which comprised the following territory: Commencing at the mouth of Salt creek on the Missouri river; thence up said creek to the military road and along the middle of said road to the lower crossing of Stranger creek: thence up said creek to the line of the Kickapoo reservation, and thence along the southern and western line thereof to the line of the fourteenth district: thence between same, and down Independence creek to the mouth thereof, and thence down the Missouri river to the place of beginning. The place of the election was at the house of Pascal Pensoneau, on the Ft. Leavenworth and Oregon road, near what is now the town site of Potter. The election which followed was an exciting one. Public meetings were held in all of the towns and villages, at which resolutions were passed against the eastern abolitionists, the Platte County Argus sounding the following alarm:

“We know we speak the sentiments of some of the most distinguished statesmen of Missouri when we advise that counter-organizations be made, both in Kansas and Missouri, to thwart the reckless course of the abolitionists. We must meet them at their very threshold and scourge them back to their covers of darkness. They have made the issue, and it is for us to meet and repel them.”

The secret organizations, of which Greeley spoke, known as the “Blue Lodges,” “Social Bands,” and “Sons of the South,” became very active, and knowing the condition of affairs along the Missouri border, and having learned the needs and wishes of the actual settlers in the territory, Governor Reeder decided that their rights should not be jeopardized. Therefore, in ordering an election of a congressional delegate only, with the idea of a later proclamation ordering a territorial election of a legislature, he knew that much trouble would be spared. In his proclamation for the congressional election, provision was made for defining the qualifications of legal voters, and providing against fraud, both of which provisions were received with alarm by the leaders of the slavery Democracy, who, up to that time had hoped that the administration at Washington had sent them an ally. It was not long until they discovered that they were mistaken.