“The founder of Sumner was John P. Wheeler, a red-headed, blue-eyed, consumptive, slim, freckled enthusiast from Massachusetts. He was a surveyor by profession, and also founded the town of Hiawatha. He was one of the adventurers who came to Kansas as a result of the excitement of 1855–’56, and was only twenty-one years old when he came West. Most of the men who had much to do with early Kansas history were young.
“The town was not named for Charles Sumner, as is generally supposed, but for his brother, George Sumner, one of the original stockholders. At that time Atchison was controlled by Southern sympathizers—P. T. Abell, the Stringfellows, the McVeys, A. J. Westbrook and others—and abolitionists were not welcome in the town. It was believed that a city would be built within a few miles of this point, as it was favorable for overland freighting, being farther West than any other point on the Missouri river. On the old French maps Atchison was known as the ‘Grand Detour,’ meaning the great bend in the river to the westward.
“Being a violent abolitionist, John P. Wheeler determined to establish a town where abolitionists would be welcome, and Sumner was the result. The town was laid out in 1856, and the next year Wheeler had a lithograph made, which he took East for use in booming his town.
“Among others captured by means of this lithograph was John J. Ingalls. Wheeler and Ingalls were both acquainted with a Boston man of means named Samuel A. Walker. Wheeler wanted Walker to invest in Sumner, and as Walker knew that Ingalls was anxious to go West, he asked him to stop at Sumner and report upon it as a point for the investment of Boston money.
“Mr. Ingalls arrived in Sumner on the 4th of October, 1858, on the steamer Duncan S. Carter, which left St. Louis four days before. The town then contained about two thousand people, five hundred more than Atchison; but Sumner was already declining, and Mr. Ingalls did not advise his friend, Walker, to invest.
“A hotel building costing $16,000.00, had been built by Samuel Hollister. A famous steamboat cook had charge of the kitchen in the old days, and the stages running between Jefferson City and St. Joe stopped there every day for dinner. Jefferson City was then the end of the railroad—the Pacific Railroad of Missouri, now the Missouri Pacific—which runs through the deserted site of Sumner, and directly over the foundation of the wagon factory built by Levi A. Woods. This wagon factory was one of the results of Wheeler’s audacious lithograph, and few wagons were actually manufactured. The factory was heavily insured, and burned.
“Albert R. Richardson was a citizen of Sumner, when Mr. Ingalls arrived there; also James Hauk, the father of Minnie Hauk, who has since become famous as a singer in grand opera. James Hauk was a carpenter, whose wife operated a boarding house. Minnie Hauk waited on the table, and was noted among the boarders as a smart little girl with a long yellow braid down her back, who could play the piano pretty well. The next year Hauk made a house boat and floated down the river to New Orleans.
“When John J. Ingalls went to Sumner, a young man of twenty-four, he took great interest in such characters as Archie Boler and Jonathan Grander Lang. Lang was a jug fisherman in the river, melon raiser, truck patch farmer and town drunkard. Ingalls says that Lang was really a bright fellow. He had been a dragoon in the Mexican War, and his stories of experiences in the West were intensely interesting. Ingalls used to go out in Lang’s boat when he was jugging for catfish and spend hours listening to his talk. Finally Ingalls wrote his ‘Catfish Aristocracy,’ and Lang recognized himself as the hero. He was very indignant and threatened to sue Ingalls, having been advised by some jackleg lawyer that the article was libelous. Lang lived on a piece of land belonging to Ingalls at the time, and Ingalls told the writer of this the other day that it was actually true that he settled with Lang for a sack of flour and a side of bacon. Lang served in the Civil war, and long after its close, when his old friend was president of the United States Senate, he secured him a pension and a lot of back pay. But this he squandered in marrying. His pension money was a curse to him, for it only served to put a lot of wolves on his trail.
“When the war broke out the Atchison men who objected to abolitionists settling in their town were driven out of the country, and this attracted a good many of the citizens of Sumner. But its death blow came in June, 1860, when nearly every house in the place was either blown down or badly damaged by a tornado. This was the first and only tornado in the history of this immediate section.”
Reference is made in both of these articles to John J. Ingalls, who arrived in Sumner from Boston, Mass., October 4, 1858. Mr. Ingalls was a graduate of Williams College a short time before, and at the time he decided to go West he was a student in a law office in Boston, where his attention was first called to Sumner by an elaborate lithograph of the town displayed by Mr. Wheeler, the promoter. The impressions of Mr. Ingalls upon his arrival in Sumner are, therefore, pertinent and convey some idea of the shock he received when he landed at the Sumner levee. In a letter which he subsequently wrote describing the event, he said: