March Gleanings #1: The Pottawatomie and Home For Friendless Women

-

     



If you read any of the other “ Gleanings,” posts, you might recall that these “seen-around-town” sort of items were a regular column in the Coffeyville newspapers, and many newspapers, in the 1870s and 1880s. I am compiling samples for each month. This time, all the samples are from one year. I enjoy gathering these so much and researching items from out ancestor's lives that I actually did two "gleanings" for this month.


3 March 1877


Spring is here.

Farmers are hopeful.

Grasshoppers appearing. 

Boys have gay times in these moonlit nights.

Children are enjoying pleasant weather playing on the prairies.

New plows and cultivators already block the sidewalks. The spring trade opens lively.

Grasshoppers are hatching out again and if we have another cold snap it will dispose of them quickly.

Fourteen Pottawatomie from Shawnee County passed this place last Sunday on their way to the Nation.

Forty-nine barrels of salt were lying in the walk in front of Barndollar’s store Monday. Mr. B. does a very heavy Indian trade…

Miss M. Tallman now enjoys the pleasure of having her own piano. This makes the eleventh piano in Coffeyville. [She was the daughter of a doctor in town.]

The Swiss Bell Ringers are to appear at the Eldridge House tonight. They are a chaste, cultivated company, capable of rendering the best music and performing the choicest comedies. Let’s give them a full house. 


     This page also had a school report from Miss E.B. Lovejoy, Teacher, as to who had perfect attendance and who was never tardy. Like many teachers today, I have a fascination with names and how they change every ten years or so. Here is a list of those with perfect attendance: Girls –  Fannie, Hattie, Ida, Lida, Emma, Mary, Nyra, Ella, Katie, Lillie, Minerva, Etta. Boys – Willie, Jimmie, Elmer, Willie, Willie, Charlie, Cresap. Gotta love a name like “Cresap!”


     Many have heard of the “Trail of Tears,” the forced Match of the Cherokee from Georgia to “Indian Territory” in what became Oklahoma. Fewer have heard of the Potawatomi “Trail of Death” in which nearly 900 tribal members were forced to march to Kansas over a 60-day period in November and December. They were settled in Linn County.


17 March 1877


Croquet season advancing.

Wild geese going north.

What makes butter so scarce?

Masten shipped upwards of 200 hides north Wednesday.

A considerable number of pupils have advanced to higher classes in our town schools this week. 

Wagons are going every day to the various Indian agencies from Coffeyville laden with all kind of freight. 

A very fine, well-preserved buffalo head may be seen any time at the office of Mr. Masten, this city. 

Mrs. Smith, matron of the Leavenworth “Home for Friendless Women” was in the city last week and delivered a lecture to the people. 

The Coffeyville Dramatic Club will give an entertainment at the school house next Tuesday evening.

From the County Superintendent: The following school districts show less than twelve weeks of school for the school year and consequently are entitled to no part of the State or county funds: [12 districts listed. A state law mandated at least twelve weeks of school to be eligible for taxpayer funds]. 


     Homes for friendless women referred to “fallen” women. That was the most common term used for prostitutes, and homes were eager to reform women from the life of a sex worker. But homes for the friendless served larger numbers of unwed women who were unfortunate enough to get pregnant and not have a man agree to a hasty marriage. Their sisters, marrying three or four months pregnant, were spared “the worst fate that could befall a woman.”

      An unwed mother was considered “ruined” and was socially ostracized. Middle-class reformers founded homes for friendless women to “protect, care for, and restore to virtue;” to help them regain usefulness in respectable society. As with all the institutions of the day, including orphanages, they were called “inmates.” They were treated as inmates during their time there. It depended on the institution, and the time period as to what happened to their babies. In some cases, they were boarded at the home while their mothers went to work. In other cases they were adopted. 

     The home in Leavenworth was established in 1868. It also assisted poor women who had fallen on hard times - for example, a pregnant widow. It helped place the women’s children in “good, Christian” homes since it was unlikely their mothers could support them. The Mrs. Smith who gave a lecture in Coffeyville was Mary Perkins Blair Smith, an educator, social reformer and temperance advocate.


24 March 1877


Farmers all busy.

Health very good.

Garden plowing in progress.

 A man was arrested here Saturday by Deputy Sheriff McLees, charged with horse stealing…Thursday he was tried in District Court and convicted. It was Paris Owens of Parker.

Last Sunday many of our citizens were out riding enjoying the spring air. 

Strangers in town nearly every day looking at the country.

Business is healthy. Our merchants are selling more goods this spring than at any time since the panic of ‘73.

Col. May of Fawn Creek caught two beavers last month, one weighing 33 and the other 51 pounds. They were taken on Onion Creek near the Col.’s place. 

We hope we’ll have a better season for vegetables. We haven’t had a taste of cabbage in a month.


     In a story that repeated in state after state, beaver were hunted to near extinction for their valuable fur. It was regarded as a bonus by farmers to rid their property of the large mammals, as beaver habits often conflicted with farming plans. By the 1890s beaver had almost vanished in the state. Not until 1911 did the Kansas State Legislature enact laws protecting fur bearing animals and ending the harvest of beavers and otters. Beaver were reintroduced and their populations successfully rebounded. 


31 March 1877


To-morrow is Easter.

Early trees are in leaf.

Now, finish the church.

A good rain fell Thursday.

Daniel Swartz of Fawn Creek had five cattle stolen Monday night last. One yoke of oxen –a pale and a dark red; two 2-year olds and a roan cow.

Col. May brought two beaver skins to market last Saturday. They were taken from the bodies mentioned in the last issue of this paper. 

The attention of our school board is called to the defective condition of the roof of our school house. It leaks and the walls are being injured. A stitch in time saves nine.

Four more weeks of school. 

Paris Owens escaped from prison last Saturday night but was retaken Sunday…he was taken to Leavenworth.

I have three yoke of large work cattle, one breaking plow and one wagon for sale. Inquire at the Keg Saloon. J.M. Sturm. 


Sources:


     Erby, Kelly. “The Hull Baby Case and Women in 1870s Kansas,” Kansas History, (Autun 2017) https://www.kshs.org/publicat/history/2017autumn_erby.pdf

     “Beaver Damage Control,” Cooperative Extension Service, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas Fish and Game Commission, https://www.wildlife.k-state.edu/doc/beaverdamagecontrol.pdf


Copyright Andrea Auclair © 2023

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dearing, Kansas

-
     When I was fourteen and asked my grandmother what she knew about our family history, she had her older sister Vera write down what she knew. When I read through Aunt Vera’s one-page paper I saw Dearing, Kansas listed as their mother’s birthplace. This was long before there was an internet to turn to for more information, but even now, Dearing doesn’t have much of a presence on the internet. I’ve since learned it is not actually Melissa J. Patchett’s birthplace. She was born on a farm in Fawn Creek Township, Montgomery County in December 1876. Dearing did not yet exist. Later, it was the closest hamlet near her father’s homesteaded farm and became the place to say she was “from.”  Beginnings      Montgomery County was Osage Country. It was opened to white settlement in 1870 after the Osage were forced off their land in 1869. It is located in Southeast Kansas and borders Oklahoma, which was then the I.T. - Indian Territory. Deari...
Read more

Nothing But An Old Maid

-
Image
     English author Eliza Lynn Linton was harshly critical of women's rights and independent single women. Ironically, she supported herself as an independent, single woman most of her life -- and looked like the stereotype of the old maid.  It was a dreaded fate for a woman. Old maid. Short of being a “fallen woman,” it was the worst fate that could befall her. They were pitied and reviled. She was a “tragedy,” a “leftover,” a “public and private nuisance,” “a failure of womanhood,” an object of derision, scorn, and ridicule. “Superfluous; “redundant, pathetic.”      “What girl can hear this opprobrious title in connection with herself and not feel an instinctive shudder and an involuntary shrinking from the very name?” asked a writer in the Bolivar, Missouri newspaper in 1867. “Old Maid; how fraught with meaning those two monosyllables; and yet how often we hear it fall in tones of derision from both sexes, “oh, she’s nothing but an ol...
Read more

Wedding Gift Must-Haves of the 1870s and '80s

-
Image
                                      Pickle castors seemed to be the must-have wedding gift. If you were a middle-class Protestant couple getting married in the 1870s and ‘80s, there were three nearly certain things: you were marrying at the bride’s parents’ home; everyone would sit down to a dinner cooked by your mother, and you were getting at least one pickle castor as a gift. Most likely, you were getting four or five.       What was a pickle castor? What were other typical gifts? Long lists of gifts accompanied many wedding announcements in the newspapers, giving us a glimpse into what was valued by middle and upper-class folk. It was common to state that the gifts were “numerous and costly,” or “useful and costly.” Useful was in the eye of the beholder - or the time period, as the majority of gifts were t...
Read more