Between the Lines: Family History and Quirky Stories From Our Forgotten Past

       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, Kansas newspapers, and many newspapers, in the 1870s and 1880s. I am compiling samples from Coffeyville for each month. One change I made is that if I am commenting on an item, I highlighted it.  17 June 1875 The war on dogs continues. The county has thirteen paupers. Plenty of new potatoes in market. Ice wagon prompt – he yells at your chamber window just when you get started on that nap. Montgomery county is the first of the counties in Southern Kansas to prepare for a county fair. There will be a grand pic-nic at McLeary’s Grove, four and a half miles northwest of this place on Saturday, July 3rd.       I ’m not sure what a war on dogs entailed exactly, but dogs were often mentioned in summer, with great concern, understandably, for rabies. With no vaccination, there was no...

       H is sister killed herself. His brother was convicted of child rape, and murdered in prison. Two of his sons were shot to death by police. His wife was killed in a car accident. John Dilling Harkins had more than his share of tragedies.              D illing, as he was called, was a little boy when his father Asbury was conscripted into the Confederate Army from their Gilmer County, Georgia home. Asbury was captured and held as a prisoner of war until his release in January 1864. Some years after the war he moved his family to Indiana, then Missouri, then to Montgomery County, Kansas. By that time, Asbury’s four children - Mary Ann, George, Dilling and Columbus - were all adults. In 1887, Dilling, at age 26, married a neighbor girl, Mary Ann “Mollie” Patchett. In 1892, Dilling’s niece Nancy, known as Nanny, married Mollie’s brother Andrew.        Just days before Dilling and ...