Maple City, Kansas

Like a prairie flower, once fresh, picked and placed in a book long forgotten, is the story of Maple City, Kansas. When one finds such a flower preserved, one wonders what it once meant to the one who once held so dear. I found such a flower in the Chapman Center Research Collections.

Dried Prairie Rose

Before Statehood

Kansas was once once the home of many Indian tribes. These included the powerful Osage who ranged far and wide. Smaller tribal groups like the Kansas and Wichita lived here too. Western Kansas include the Kiowa, the Cheyenne, and the Pawnee, and occasionally, the Comanche. Other tribes were moved here from the east, most notably, the Cherokee.

The end of the Civil War created a renewed demand for Indian lands in the former Kansas territory and now the State of Kansas. By 1871, lands once reserved for the Osage and Cherokees was opened for settlement. Robert P. Goodrich and his family took this opportunity to move to Cowley County and purchase 160 acres as allowed by law. Goodrich sold his farm but kept a portion of his land and this became for a short while Maple City.

Robert P. Goodrich

Robert P. (Phares) Goodrich was born in 1825 in Greene County, high up on the Hudson River, and raised in Union County, Ohio, northwest of what is now Columbus. In 1847, he married Miss Oroline Bell, of Steuben County, N. Y.. She would give birth to nine children.  In 1855, at the age of 30, they moved to central Illinois where he farmed for 18 years and took up the trade of wagon-making.

Finally, in 1873, the family left for Kansas where Goodrich purchased a farm of 160 acres near the Oklahoma border in Silver Creek Township. He also purchased a spacious lot in Maple City, a mile to the south. Here he built a home and planted an orchard with peach, apple and pear trees, assorted berries, along with vegetables and flowers. An industrious man, that same year he built the town’s first schoolhouse, which stood until 1918. And the following year, in 1874, he built a shop and began again the business of wagon making. It was, however, a sorry year for Kansas. Grasshoppers arrived in Biblical proportions and the what crop there was failed. He aided in distributing relief to the devastated farmers in his community.

In 1876, Maple City was a village of five or six houses.

Goodrich sold his farm and became the Mayor of Maple City, a little place in the midst of pastures and homesteads.

Maple City, Kansas Atlas, Cowley County, 1905

Maple City

In 1879, Goodrich built a one and a half story addition to his home and opened it to the public for accommodations as the Maple City House. In addition to his business of wagon making and operating a hotel, he acted as mayor of Maple City and Director of the School District. By 1886, Maple City had four general merchandise stores, one hardware store, Goodrich’s wagon shop, two blacksmith shops, a lumber yard, one livery stable, Goodrich’s hotel, barbershop, two real estate and loan agencies, a couple of carpenters, a painter, and one doctor. In the 1880s the wagon making business changed names from Goodrich and Davis to Gooch and Goodrich.

He was a Republican of good standing. In 1876, the nearest railroad being quite distant, the Republicans of the township including Goodrich lobbied the state for the issuance of bonds to build a railroad. The railroads came, but all passed by Maple City, which hindered its growth. Today, Maple City lies far off or Highway 166, east of Arkansas City and south of the highway, not too many miles from the Oklahoma border. A few homes dot the landscape and the Maple City Community Church, but not much else. The cemetery is a mile north.

He died in 1898, at the age of 73, and is buried in the Maple City cemetery. His wife Oroline died in 1906 and is buried alongside him.

Maple City, Kansas, intersection, original image Google

Sources

William Cutler’s History of the State of Kansas, Cowley County, 1883

https://ausbcomp.com/~bbott/wortman/Goodrich.htm

https://ccrsresearchcollections.omeka.net/items/show/169

The little old log cabin by the road

“Look! There is an old log cabin by the road.”
Drivers would say before they crossed Grouse Creek north of Cambridge.

old log cabin north of Cambridge, Kansas

In the summer of 1874, Alonzo “Doc” Wilkins, his wife and two sons, decided to join brother Henry in Cowley County, Kansas. Henry, at the time lived in a dugout 14 foot by 16 foot on Grouse Creek .

Henry and Alonzo put up a 14 by 20 foot log cabin in three days using nothing more than a cross-cut saw and axe. Clay and mud filled the cracks between the logs from the variety of nearby trees. The Wilkins brothers used a froe (a modified narrow axe blade usually about 16 inches in length) to make the shake shingles for the roof. There was a loft in the cabin, accessible by ladder, for the boys to sleep in.

Who needs a doctor?

January 1886, with the cold weather came sickness. In McPherson County, 13-year-old Bessie contracted diphtheria.  With no doctors nearby nor money to pay one, her mother treated the illness.  Two years later, the same disease took the lives of four children of a nearby family – all within nine days. A visit to an old cemetery shows that sickness and accident often took young lives. Lila Day Monroe.

Doc Wilkins lived in the cabin for several years administering to the sick before moving on. The Wilkins family name was still there in 1885 when an atlas was made of the township and its land owners.

Several years ago, the cabin was lovingly restored. Families driving by can still say, “Look! There is an old log cabin.” Better yet, stop.

 

old log cabin north of Cambridge and ice house

About a mile to the north was a one room school, District. no. 16.

Cowley County history records the presence of  Henry Depew Wilkins and  his son L. G. Wilkins, as well as S. M. Wilkins. People of Windsor Township. Also, the 1885 Windsor Township map shows S. Wilkins in possession of the land on Grouse Creek north of Cambridge. Note that F. Wilkins owned land a mile or so to the west. C. M. Wilkins, owned land north of that and next to the home of John W. Tull, pioneer settler of the township.

Detail Windsor Township, Cowley County, Kansas

The town of Lazette which appears north of Cambridge is a ghost town, which lost out to Cambridge when the railroad came.

Homesteading wasn’t easy

The following is inspired by the family story of Stephen Douglas White who bought a farm west of Atlanta, Kansas in 1891, as told by Lorne Daggett, and recorded in Cowley County Heritage book, Page 321. http://www.ksgenweb.com/cowley/people/pages/pg321-325.html

A bend in the road in Cowley County, Kansas

“A bend in the road is not the end of the road…Unless you fail to make the turn.” Helen Keller

Homesteading in Kansas wasn’t easy. No sir, no ma’am.

No roads and no stores meant that each homestead had to be self-sufficient. Clothes were not store bought and hand-me-downs were the rule. “Making do” meant something in those days and a stick whittled into the shape of a spear or a rifle might be a favorite toy. For fuel and heat, settlers collected buffalo chips and housewives delighted when the supply was gone and they had to burn ear corn, which was clean to handle and quick to light. As buffalo disappeared and coal was dug out of the earth, settlers found that they traded one dirty source of fuel for another. Trees and timber appeared only when graded roads and plowed fields tamed the prairie fires.

We take doctors and hospitals nowadays for granted. Back then, Mr. White said, “If you need a doctor get the best for he’s not too good.” Medicine was in short supply and techniques were rustic. Mortality rates tell the tale. There were ten children born into the White family and five died in childhood. Small-pox and diphtheria epidemics decimated communities and even so-called “childhood diseases” like whooping cough could take a life. This is why when you visit an old cemetery, one sees an abundance of small headstones with gentle lambs telling the sad story of the loss of a dear child.

 

 

Of the joys of prairie life, none could surpass the frequent Sunday dinners with the multitude of available aunts and uncles and dozens of cousins.

The grandchildren looked forward to the opportunity to play cowboys and Indians along the creek, and then, exhausted and hungry, eat Grandma’s famous cooking. It was a joy temporarily dampened each meal for it was the custom for children to eat at the “second table” in the kitchen or parlor. Imagine watching your favorite pieces of fried chicken “forked” off the platter piled high with the best pieces before grandma got around to the kids with a selection mightily reduced. It was an excellent lesson in deferred gratification. In summer, the kids were rewarded when they were first in line at the opening of the ice cream freezer. No one worried that the golden chicken had been fried in home rendered lard, the same ingredient that produced the delicious, flaky crusts on the many pies. Ice cream was aptly named for it was cold and the main ingredient was thick cream.

Cholesterol was not a problem when you worked or played the day long.

Lorne Daggett

Cambridge, Kansas

As happens, computers crash. So, with nothing to do and no particular place to go, I hop in my car and set out along Highway 160 east of Winfield, Kansas, destination the two small towns of Burden and Cambridge.

Approaching Burden, Kansas

The music to listen to is of course Chuck Berry, No Particular Place to Go, released as a single in May of 1964, reaching the top ten on  Billboard’s R&B singles.

 

Ridin’ along in my automobile
My baby beside me at the wheel
I stole a kiss at the turn of a mile
My curiosity runnin’ wild

Cruisin’ and playin’ the radio
With no particular place to go…

I chose Burden on a lark, having heard from the guide at the Kansas Tourist Information Booth that “Doc” from the television show Gunsmoke was born and raised there. Milburn Stone (July 5, 1904 – June 12, 1980) played “Doc” (Dr. Galen Adams), a salty no-nonsense doctor. When I came to Burden, I was struck by fact this small town didn’t mention its most famous citizen, that is, until coming back to civilization and I find that Doc was from Burrton and not Burden. Oh well.

Cambridge is east of Burden on Highway 160, on the way to Moline and then Independence.

The town of Cambridge owes its existence to the railroad wars of the 1860’s and 70’s, especially the Santa Fe and Missouri and Pacific railroads. After the Civil War, a host of competing railroad companies in Kansas were formed and consolidated. It was the Kansas City, Lawrence and Southern Railroad which built a line through Cowley County laying tracks in Windsor Township that prompted the creation of Cambridge in May of 1880. Cambridge replaced the unfortunate town of Lazette, a mile and a quarter to the north, off the path of the railroad. Lazette’s buildings were dismantled and reassembled in the newly created Cambridge.

Santa Fe locomotive 1880

[This image and others of Cambridge, Kansas are available online at http://www.eccchistory.org/cambridgealbum.htm#Note%2045 The Santa Fe Railroad owned the stock of the Kansas City, Lawrence and Southern Railroad. To complicate things, the railroad was merged in November of 1880 with another railroad to form the Southern Kansas Railroad.]

The businessmen of Cambridge in 1880 were: McDonald Stapleton, C.W. Jones, and F. Henrion, who owned the General Store; P.G. Rule, Pharmacy; Joseph P. Craft, Cambridge House hotel and livery; P.T. Walton, lumber; Benjamin H. Clover, Flour Mill; Cass Patterson, Blacksmith; Dr. J.P. Pleasants, physician; Henry F. and R.E. Hicks, Cambridge Commercial newspaper.

People of Windsor Township

Newspaper accounts of Cambridge, Winfield Courier

Cambridge Grade School 1927

High School Gym 1936 and plaque

Instead of continuing on Highway 160 east to Moline, I took the road north where I discovered the Old Log Cabin, but that is another story.

 

Road north of Cambridge, Kansas