Lietzenburger & Co., blacksmiths, wagon makers, etc., Cedar street, between Third and Fourth streets.
D. Newcomb. M. D., office in postoffice building, corner of Third street and Washington avenue. Mr. Newcomb also dealt in lime, and on September 24, received a large and select stock of hardware, stoves, etc.
When the Territorial legislature of 1858 met, a bill was introduced, incorporating the Sumner Company, Cyrus F. Currier, Samuel F. Harsh, J. W. Morris, Isaac G. Losse and John P. Wheeler, their associates and successors, constituting the company. The act also provided that the corporation should have the power to purchase and hold, and enter by preëmption and otherwise, any quantity of land where the town of Sumner is now located, not to exceed one thousand acres, etc.
A ferry at Sumner was also incorporated by the legislature of 1858, J. W. Morris, Cyrus F. Currier and Samuel Harsh being the incorporators. This boat plied between Atchison and Sumner and the Missouri side.
In 1858 Samuel Hollister built a steam sawmill, adding a gristmill later.
By the end of 1858 Sumner had outstripped its rival, Atchison, in population, and steps were taken looking towards the incorporation of the town. Early in the beginning of the legislature of 1859, articles of incorporation were passed and received the approval of Governor Samuel Medary on February 9. These articles of incorporation were later amended by an act passed by the first State legislature, which was approved June 3, 1861.
The decline of Sumner began with the drought which started in the fall of 1859 and prevailed through the year 1860. In June, 1860, a cyclone struck the town and either blew down or damaged nearly every building, this calamity being followed in September by a visitation of grasshoppers, all of which were potent factors in wiping Sumner off the map. Some of the houses which could be moved were taken to Atchison, and some to farms in the immediate vicinity.
One of the most interesting accounts that appeared about Sumner was written by H. Clay Park, an old citizen of Atchison, who for many years was editor and part owner of the Atchison Patriot. It would not be just either to Mr. Park or to Sumner, were this account not perpetuated in this volume, and it, therefore, appears in full as follows:
“THE RISE AND FALL OF SUMNER.
“Three miles south of Atchison, Kansas, is the site of a dead city, whose streets once were filled with the clamor of busy traffic and echoed to the tread of thousands of oxen and mules that in the pioneer days of the Great West transported the products of the East across the Great American Desert to the Rocky mountains. It was a city in which for a few years twenty-five hundred men and women and children lived and labored and loved, in which many lofty aspirations were born, and in which several young men began careers that became historical.