Joseph L. Crawford

[This is for the most part a recreation of Joseph L. Crawford’s bio in William G. Cutler’s History of the State of Kansas, Chase County, published in 1883 by A. T. Andreas, Chicago, IL.]

JOSEPH L. CRAWFORD, farmer, Section 23, Township 20, Range 6, Cottonwood Township, Crawfordville (Clements).

Chase County Atlas, 1901, Section 23, Township 20, Range 6

Coming to Chase County

Joseph L. Crawford was born on a frontier farm in Huron County, Ohio, May 3, 1826. In 1840, fourteen-year-old Joseph left the family farm and went to Plymouth, Ohio, where he was apprenticed to a wagon-maker for six years. In 1846 he moved to Evansport and set up business as a wagon-maker. In 1847, he married for the first time. In 1849, he moved to Lee County, Illinois, farming for ten years.

In the fall of 1859, he moved to Morris County, Kansas, staking a claim of 160 acres of land on what was the Kaw Indian Diminished Reserve. By the spring of 1862 he relinquished his claim.

Now 36 years old, he settled in Chase County, pre-empting 160 acres of land along the Cottonwood River, in Cottonwood Township. He build a log cabin and began improvements, eventually buying an additional 160 acres.

In early years, the Kaw and the Pottawatomie still crossed Chase County on their way to hunt buffalo. Prairie fires raged, hail poured forth from the heavens destroying crops, locusts were a plague, drought was a constant worry, rustlers roamed at large, and a man kept a pistol and rifle for his own safety and that of his family.

Death might come from a kick by a horse or more often disease, but there were good times too.

In 1874, the Chase Couty Leader newspaper was happy to report that:

“The Christmas dance given at Joseph L. Crawford’s at Hunt’s Station is pronounced a success. 33 couples are present. J. L. Crawford and Frank Barrington played violins and N. Patton and John Crawford call-off. The supper is pronounced “splendid” – Annie Patton and Hortense Crawford “looked after that”.”

Crawfordville

In 1881, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad came to the Cottonwood River Valley, following the course of the river from Emporia to Florence and Peabody, then on to Newton.

In 1882 Crawford laid out the village of Crawfordsville, situated on the line, at a station first called Hunts Landing, or simply Hunts, then Silver Creek, then Crawford. Finally, in 1884, it was renamed Clements to honor an ATSF railroad official.

Clements Depot, ATSF Railroad, source Kansas Memories

Spurred on by the railroad and the influx of farmers and ranchers, the little town grew. Within a few years it sported a bank, barber shop, blacksmith, dance hall, general store, grocery, library, livery stable, restaurant, and sawmill.  Corrals were built to handle the arrival and departure of Longhorn cattle from Texas. But by 1885, Kansas quarantined Texas Longhorns and local stock ranchers switched to pure-bred herds.

The Flint Hills were quarried for limestone for town buildings and as well the Clement Arch Bridge that was built in the autumn of 1888.

Kansas Atlas, Chase County 1901

Joseph L. Crawford

Joseph Crawford was an enterprising man. By 1883, William G. Cutler would report in his History of the State of Kansas:

“He operated the first threshing machine, the first sawmill and the first gristmill in Marion County. He has at present two steam sawmills, one located at Crawfordsville and the other on Cottonwood River, below Cottonwood Falls. Mr. Crawford has held the office of Justice of the Peace two years in Cottonwood Township. He has been married twice, first to Miss Annie Columbia, of Fort Wayne, Ind., March 13, 1847; she died May 29, 1871, leaving eight children, all now living. He married Miss Mary E. Watson, of Diamond Creek Township, December 29, 1871, by whom he has three children, all living.”

Neighboring towns grew up along the railroad, competing for settlers and business.  Elmdale to the east and Cedar Point to the west, but time itself proved the greatest threat to the town of Clements. The depot remained until the 1950s, now it is gone. Clements is almost a Ghost Town, just a couple of homes and the gateway to the Clements Arch Bridge on the south side of the former community.

Kansas Memories

Note. Joseph L. Crawford died on November 15^th, 1893 and is buried in the cemetery on the hill to the north of Clements.          

Sources:

William G. Cutler’s History of the State of Kansas, Chase County, published 1883 by A. T. Andreas, Chicago, Illinois.

Miller, Phil (2010). “Cattle and Railroads – The Flint Hills Connection,” Symphony in the Flint Hills Field Journal. https://newprairiepress.org/sfh/2010/flinthills/4

Chase County Leader newspaper, 1874

Guess what they wanted this to be?

If public minded citizens of Kingman hadn’t said something, the old city building would have been razed and made into something else.

Guess what?

Kingman is for the most part situated on the north side of the Ninnescah River. The town site was surveyed and platted in March, 1874, and a few small frame houses and a small frame mercantile store popped up. Main Street points due north and south and intersects with Highway 54 which was the route of the old Cannonball Express. The Cannonball began service in 1876 , running through Pratt to Coldwater and later to Greensburg. In 1877, the last buffalo in the county was killed.

Had civilization arrived?

detail Kingman Kansas 1883 birds eye view, source Kansas Memory

By 1883, Kingman, a sleepy town on the Ninnescah, boasted a “population of about 350, and the business of the place … represented by four general merchandising stores, two hardware, two groceries, two drug stores, two millinery establishments, one furniture store, one jewelry, one bank, two hotels, one restaurant, one harness and saddlery, one lumber yard, three livery stables and two newspapers.”

By 1884, everything changed with the arrival of the first train that roared into town. In the following years there were booms and busts, good crops and bad, but mostly settlers kept coming full of hope. The First National Bank of Kingman was organized the same year and a three-story building was contracted to be built.

 

kingman county kansas 1887

 

By 1887, the Cannonball Express was no more, but two railroads hauled passengers and crops north and south, east and west. The plots of land still owned by the US government were down to a few.

Kingman needed a city building.

A special election was held on February 13th 1888 and the project for a new city building was approved by a 63 vote majority. In March the city council considered the six bids submitted for construction and unanimously accepted the highest bid submitted by John A. Cragun of the Kingman National Bank. The cornerstone ceremony was held in June and the building completed in December. The two-story brick and stone structure housed the city offices, jail, and fire department. The front tower originally housed a bell that was used for special occasions and fires. The second tower was used to dry fire hoses after use.

This was all fine and good until 1967.

Kingman decided to build new city offices. The Sinclair Oil Company stepped in and offered $25,000 for the old building, and later reduced that amount to $15,000. Their plan was to raze the gorgeous building and build a gas station.

Thank goodness, public spirited citizens raised a ruckus and squashed that horrible idea.

The Kingman County Historical Society saved the day.

Kingman 1883

 

Railroads

The buffalo were gone when my wife’s great grandfather came to Butler County, Kansas in the 1870s. And the tall, proud Osage Indians, who had hunted the buffalo for sustenance from time out of mind, were mostly gone. They came on ponies with bow and arrow in the spring and fall to hunt the herds that migrated through the Walnut River Valley and the larger Arkansas River Valley.

Much of Butler County will be found in the Flint Hills, a rolling tapestry of streams, rivers, and the Little Bluestem grass that the buffalo came to eat. So massive were the buffalo herds that when they stampeded the horizon was one long continuous brown, the air was thick with dust and mites and grass and the sound of the thundering hooves.

The farmer came to tame the land. Fences were put up, roads plowed, and cities built. But it was not the farmer who killed off the buffalo. It was the iron horse.

The iron horse brought the hunters and traders. And the hunters killed as many buffalo as the skinners could skin. But it became sport to shoot the animals from the train cars and leave the carcasses to rot. And it was the trains that took back east the hides and the bones and the horns.

KATY steam engine

One can follow the quick progress of the railroads and the demise of the buffalo.

The Union Pacific Railroad was organized in 1863 in the midst of the Civil War. But Indian troubles pushed the track lines north through Nebraska instead of Kansas and Oklahoma. The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway began laying track in 1868. By the April of 1869, the first excursion was made over the new line from Topeka south to Wakarusa. Tracks were also laid heading west and reached the Colorado border by 1872. The Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad was incorporated in May 1870 in Junction City, Kansas and laid tracks at a furious pace, crossing the Kansas border into Oklahoma Territory in June of 1870. Cities sprouted on the prairie like wildflowers after the rain. Each city demanded a railroad and many got their wish.

As the settlers came, the Indians left and so too did the buffalo.

The last buffalo in Kansas was killed in 1879 at Point of Rocks north of Elkhart. Others say the last buffalo killed was in April of 1887 in the north western corner of the state in Cheyenne County. Perhaps it had gotten lost and wandered across the state line from Nebraska or Colorado. No one wants to take credit for the kill. It was the end of an era when bison roamed the Great Plains in herds approaching 25 million animals.