By Wendi Bevitt

You probably haven’t heard of her, but Aunt Emily Ford was one of the most beloved citizens of Burlingame, Kansas. At a time when prejudice and segregation ran rampant throughout most of the country, the color line however did not exist for Aunt Emily in her adopted community, and she held a special place of honor and respect there.

Aunt Emily Ford was a spry little figure, with toil-scarred hands and a kindly face. “To know her [was] to love her” and later in her life, the local newspapers would run lengthy articles on the occasion of her birthday celebrating her many years, or an interview inquiring about her past.

“I shouldn’t think anyone would want to hear about slaves and slavery,” she said, but the reply was, “Yes, but everyone especially those of the younger generation know little of slavery and such an article would be of interest to the readers.”

This is her story.

Emily was born in North Carolina in 1813. Her family was owned by a family named White. The Whites treated their slaves harshly and used them for hard manual labor clearing trees and grubbing out shrubs when they moved to Tennessee.

As was the custom for slave owners, when Mr. White’s daughter was married to a man by the name of Farmer, she was given Emily as part of her dowry. Emily was two years older than her new mistress, and the two had shared a childhood together. Because of this familiarity, Emily found herself in a much more hospitable environment in her new home. Emily served as a cook in the Farmer household. The family moved to the Springfield, Missouri, area in 1837. It was there that she was allowed to marry another local slave, Daniel Ford.

When the area was invaded by Union soldiers in 1861, the Union forces freed slaves on the farms they encountered. Daniel Haney, of Burlingame, was with the 1st Kansas regiment when their company came upon Daniel Ford hauling potatoes in from the fields with his master’s wagon.

“Come with us to freedom!” was the call. Daniel Haney helped the Fords load all their children, earthly possessions, and even the feather mattress from the big house into the master’s wagon and the family followed the soldiers to a new life.

Their eventual arrival in Burlingame found the family without much means to start their new life. Instead of letting them remain relegated to their poor status, the people of Burlingame gave them a fair shot at success in their new life.

By Wendi Bevitt

If only for a moment in time, Melvern was famous, made that way by the ingenuity of the Warner family and the farm equipment empire they began there.

Priscilla Warner and her husband Emery began their married life in Tazewell County, Illinois. When the Civil War began, Emery signed up to fight for the Union and served as a drum major with an Illinois regiment. Tragedy struck the family and Emery perished from fever in New Orleans in 1863.

Not long after the war ended, newly widowed Priscilla Warner was looking for a place to start over. Flat broke; she packed up her possessions and her five boys and headed from Illinois to the newly opened Indian lands in Kansas. In 1870, she settled on Sand Creek near Waverly. She spent the last of her limited funds on a cook stove, sack of flour and strip of meat for her family.

A strange twist of fate connected a Burlingame man’s patent to the town’s early temperance movement.

By Wendi Bevitt

Carry Nation, the hatchet bearing opponent of saloons and liquor, made her first raid on an establishment selling liquor in 1894. It was 20 years earlier in Burlingame, Kan., however, that two hatchet-wielding women with the same goal of protecting their homes from the abuses of drink, marched up Santa Fe Avenue and took out their aggressions on the local saloon.

By 1830, the average American over 15 years old consumed seven gallons of pure alcohol a year (three times of what is consumed today). This led to the beginnings of a push on restrictions of intoxicating drink. The momentum was stunted by the Civil War, but resurged afterward.

The town of Burlingame passed an ordinance in 1871 to “restrain dram shops and taverns and to regulate the sale of intoxicating liquors”. There was only one saloon, owned by Samuel H. Schuyler, which was licensed to sell liquor in the city, and for this privilege the city charged $300.

A group of concerned women began meeting in Burlingame in 1873 to bring about the end of liquor sales in the city. This had been spawned by the Women’s Crusade began that same year as an effort to give women, who had no direct political or social power, a chance for direct action with prayer vigils, petition campaigns and demonstrations. The women sought to persuade saloon keepers to destroy their beverages and close their doors and thereby protect their homes from the evils of liquor.

Mr. Schuyler was put on notice for his liquor sales by the ladies of Burlingame in August of 1873. Similar notices had gone out to all the establishments in Topeka which read like this: “Sir, you are hereby notified and warned that unless you desist from your present nefarious and soul-destroying business of selling whiskey, to the ruin of businesses and souls of this community, we shall visit your place of crime in a body … and invoke the aid and blessing of Almighty God to so enlighten your mind that you may be enabled to realize the great sin you are committing and forever abandon your present wicked business.”

Schuyler ignored their pleas, and in March of 1874, after the women’s group held a prayer vigil, two of the women greatly affected by the problem of excessive liquor use by their husbands decided to take action. Kate Wortz and Lizzie Allison, armed with hatchets, headed down Santa Fe Avenue towards Schuyler’s Saloon.

When the women arrived, they proceeded to smash the saloon’s front windows, Schuyler and staff watching the attack in shock from the inside. When the housewives finished their work outside, they continued inside, with Kate Wortz leading the charge. She determinedly headed next to the bar with its decanters and mirrors declaring, “I came down here to show you how my husband acts when he comes home drunk from your whiskey!”

By Wendi Bevitt

You might not recognize his name, but if your family lived in Osage County more than 100 years ago, you might have Harry Ford to thank for capturing your ancestors’ likenesses, or just glimpses into Osage County’s past.

Harrison “Harry” Ford came from the small town of Wright, Mich., which is near Grand Rapids. He served his country during the Civil War with Michigan cavalry and infantry units. He mustered out at the end of the war, having been promoted to the rank of first lieutenant.

Ford’s photo of a local family possibly includes the sister of Wyatt Earp (anyone who can verify this is asked to contact the author); photo published with permission of Paul Butler.

Harry’s arrival in Kansas was first noted in 1880 when he stayed at Patton’s boarding house in Burlington, Kan. Residents of boarding houses at this time would expect to pay from about $2.50 to $3.50 per week. While in Burlington, Harry made a name for himself as an exceptional artist and photographer, prompting some to declare him the best artist in the state.

By 1882, Harry was making trips north into Topeka with his photo car. Photo cars could be quite large at 10 by 28 feet and eight feet high on the inside, but lightweight enough to make travel easy on the mules that would be pulling the car. Sometimes photo cars were rented railroad cars converted for this purpose. Photo cars would be furnished with props, fashioning a portable studio. Skylights allowed for natural light and dark curtains were used to block light coming in from the sides. One side would be the location of the photographer’s sleeping quarters and the other a photo lab.

Julia Goodell, right, and her adopted daughter Fannie Baker both made their marks on the Sac and Fox tribes’ history in Osage County.

By Wendi Bevitt

Prior to their removal to Kansas around 1845, the Sac (or Sauk) and Fox tribes were located in Iowa. Most often they are mentioned together, but had originally been two distinct groups.

During the 1700s, French attacks on the Foxes (the Fox Wars of 1712 to 1733) in the Great Lakes Region caused the two tribes to join forces and form a close alliance that helped to affect unification.

The Sac and Fox reservation in Kansas was 435,200 acres located at the headwaters of the Osage River, the first agency being in Franklin County. In 1859, the agency was moved into Osage County, at Quenemo, with Perry Fuller (former employer of Frank James) as agent. The agency also employed an interpreter, John Goodell, to assist in government negotiations with the tribe.

John Goodell was of European descent and raised in New York. He became familiar with the language and customs of the Indians, and served as an interpreter for the government in both Iowa and Kansas.

In 1840, Goodell married Julia Mitchell. Julia was a member of the Sac and Fox tribes and was a survivor of the Black Hawk War. This war was an attempt by Sauk leader Black Hawk to lead the Sauk and associated tribes to resettle lands in Illinois that had been ceded by the tribes in an 1804 treaty. Finding a place to call home that was both acceptable to the tribe and the government was something that would plague the tribe continuously, and translating during these negotiations was the main responsibility for John Goodell.

John and Julia Goodell’s home at the Quenemo agency was an asylum for orphans, the sick, and needy. They adopted twins Fannie and Isaac Baker, children of Indian trader Isaac Baker and his Fox wife, who died after their birth. Mr. Baker pursued the fur trade, and eventually became a prominent banker in St. Louis, Mo.

In 1859, the Sac and Fox tribe paid for Fannie and a handful of other young people, including the daughter of the Indian agent, to attend Baker University. Baker University was the first college in Kansas territory having opened in 1858. Perry Fuller, the Sac and Fox Agency representative, was also living in Baldwin City at the time.