First School, Bazaar, Kansas

Professor D. A. Ellsworth abstracted the history of Chase County from the Chase County Leader News, a collection of unbound newspapers rescued from a garage. Ellsworth’s notes are preserved online by the Chase County Historical Society.

The reports are personal: a marriage, a birth, an arrest, a settler arriving, an untimely death. The reports are interesting: in 1860, the swarm of grasshoppers that arrived, the buffalo that crossed the prairie, gunfights, Texas Longhorns passing through, the injury of Dr. Lacy at the Falls, “while drying gun powder in the stove,” a disappearance or two. The news is national: the Civil War, the death of Abraham Lincoln, elections.

January 7, 1860

Included in the “news” on this day is Ann Yeager’s debut as the first teacher in Bazaar, Kansas. The school is No. 7 in Chase County. Nine years later, on Valentine’s Day, 1869, the Leader reports the marriage of Ann Yeager and Lucius Manley.

Three months earlier, Ann left Indiana and the Wabash River, to accompany her brother George to Bazaar. George had visited Kansas in 1858 and likely was returning as the Osage Indian Lands had been opened to settlement. He farmed along Rock Creek a mile or so west of Bazaar on land that once belonged to the Kaw Indians, for which he would have paid $1.25 an acre. Yeagher Creek flows on the north side of his property.

Grace Hays Blackburn, who grew up in Chase County when the Indians were still there, recalled the first schoolhouse, but whether she or her two brothers, Charley and Dick Hays, went or not we don’t know:

“[The first schoolhouse] was constructed of log slabs, the rough bark on the outside with the smooth sides forming the inside walls. Slabs were used also for benches with wooden pegs for legs.”

Maybe like this log cabin near Cambridge, Kansas

The log building would be replaced by a stone building in 1871, and that by the schoolhouse that now stands beside the highway.

Prairie Press, originally from Chase County Historical Sketches, Vol. II, published by the Chase County Historical Society in 1948.

1859

Two months earlier, the paper reported a fierce cold wind and snow. Gold Seekers at Pike’s Peak were returning home. The county board of supervisors ordered the construction of roads. In the June elections for the Wyandotte Convention, the Kansas Press reported that the Bazaar Township should cast 40 votes. The November elections were solidly Republican. On May 30th, The Kansas Press, Volume I, Number 1, was printed at Cottonwood Falls, Samuel N. Wood, editor. His home and his hay crop would be burned that fall.

In the national news, John Brown was arrested at Harpers Ferry.

In February of 1859, Chase County was organized.

What about Ann Yeager

George Yeagher’s life is well documented. He married a girl on a nearby farm, raised a family, lived to the ripe old age of 81. But what of his sister Ann? How long she taught, how many children she had, what became of Ann Yeager is not known. Did she marry and move to nearby Matfield Green or Cottonwood Falls?

Sources

Chase County Plat Book

Find a Grave George W. Yeager

Prairie Press

Return to Silkville

Silkville is a ghost town in Kansas. It is now a place name on Google Maps, lying just inside Franklin County heading north on Old Highway 50. Where once a three store home stood, there is nothing. A mailbox down a dirt road that says dead end marks the site Silkville Ranch and the new home that replaced the dream of Ernest V. Boissiere, a Frenchman from Bordeaux who hoped to create an utopian village.

Silkville Ranch, Silkville, Kansas

In fairness, one has to admit that Silkville was never really a town, but it did possess a farm on 3000 acres that was home to 40 families, equipment to make 224 yards of silk a day, a dairy operation, a blacksmith shop, a winery, and an orchard. It was also a flag stop on the Santa Fe Railroad.

Ernest V. Boissiere owned an estate, Chateau de Certes on the Bay of Biscay in Bourdeaux France. He was successful in harvesting fish from the waters and wood from the land. In the late 1840’s he was involved in politics and sided with the republicans in the formation of the French Second Republic. In 1851, there was a coup by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte overthrowing the republic and establishing the Second Empire. Boissiere, a friend of Victor Hugo, became persona non grata and left for the United States. For a time he lived in New Orleans. During the American Civil War he returned to his estate in Bordeaux. During this time he became acquainted with the Fourierists and the desire to help the “human family”.

Boissiere, with Charles Spears, E.P. Grant, and Albert Brisbane, planed an utopian community along the ideas of the Fourierists. In 1869, Boissiere through agents, purchased 350 acres of land in Franklin County, south of Ottawa. That first year Boissiere wrote, “I am living on the wide prairies … I sleep in the top of a small garret of a rough farm house as cold as the outside temperature… Sometimes immigrants come and ask for shelter. It is a rough life for me, used to the mild temperature and comforts of Southern France, but I think the sufferings of the flesh are nothing and preserve the predominancy of the spirit…

Mulberry tree at Silkville

Over the next several years 40 families from France came to stay and work at the farm. Boissiere imported mulberry trees from Russia and silkworms from California for the production of silk. A winery was started. Later a butter and cheese operation began. But the operation of the farm failed, as the French families found better opportunities  elsewhere. Then too, competition made Boissiere’s farm unprofitable.

In 1883, he deeded the property to the Odd Fellows and returned to Bordeaux. The United States Census in 1900 enumerates the names of several families living on the farm. But even the Odd Fellows could not financially keep up the property and it eventually became the property of lawyers from Topeka. Today, the Silkville Ranch supports cattle.

Today, the only building still standing is a one room school house mad out of limestone that sits just off of Old Highway 50. Below is a photograph of the school along with the class and Boissiere standing in the doorway.

Silkville school and class

Sources:

All Things New: American Communes and Utopian Movements, 1860-1914,  Robert S. Fogarty, pages 61 – 66.

History of Silkville by Janelle Richardson, a descendant of Claude Clair, one of the silk makers. [http://www.franklincokshistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/History-of-Silkville.pdf]

Briles School

Kansas Territory was organized in 1854. Until 1857, Peoria Township in Franklin County belonged to the Peorias, Weas and Piankeshaws Indians. The area was soon settled by immigrants from Missouri and other states.

There are at least two one room schools still standing in Franklin County – Acorn School located on John Brown Highway and Briles School in Peoria Township, located on Highway 68 and Texas Road. Briles School, built in 1868 and operated until 1960, is well preserved thanks to the efforts of the Full O’ Pep 4-H.

Arvonia

Arvonia is located is located along the Marias Des Cygnes River in the southwest corner of Osage County Kansas.

The farmland around Arvonia to the north and east is now part of Melvern lake. To get to Arvonia take I-35 north and east from Emporia. Exit at Lebo and go north a few miles until just before the lake. Take a left at the bait shack and go a short half mile.

Arvonia was settled in 1869 by Welsh emigrants under the leadership of John Mather Jones. In its heyday, Arvonia boasted 150 citizens along with three stores, a steam saw mill, a cheese factory, one hotel, one blacksmith and wagon shop, a post-office, two churches and a schoolhouse. William Cutler’s History of the State of Kansas, 1883, Osage county, part 16. Little remains today but the one room schoolhouse and a few well-maintained homes.

Read about some former students of Arvonia school who returned in 2009.

Hello world!

This blog is a companion to Kansas one room schools in Blogger and to the Wikipedia article on Kansas one room school.

As I live in Wichita and work in Overland Park, the articles will cover schools in the central and eastern part of the state. It would be nice if someone from other areas would join in to make the coverage more complete. Just email me if you are interested.

Those interested in the subject should also follow along on the Kansas Heritage Project on One Room Schools.