History of Atchison County, KansasIngalls, Sheffield
History
History of Atchison County, Kansas
Ingalls, Sheffield
Atchison County (Kan.) -- Biography; Atchison County (Kan.) -- History
“Here lived the nine-year-old Minnie Hauk, who was one day to become a
renowned prima donna and charm two continents with her voice, and who
was to wed the Count Wartegg. Minnie was born in poverty and cradled in
adversity. Her mother was a poor washerwoman in Sumner.
“Here lived John E. Remsburg, the now noted author, lecturer and free-
thinker. Mr. Remsburg has probably delivered more lectures in the last
thirty years than any man in America. He is now the leader of the Free-
Thought Federation of America.
“Here Walter A. Wood, the big manufacturer of agricultural implements,
lived and made and mended wagons. Here Lovejoy, ‘the Yankee preacher,’
preached and prayed. Here lived ‘Brother’ and ‘Sister’ Newcomb, from
whom has descended a long line of zealous and eminent Methodists. Here
was born Paul Hull, the well known Chicago journalist.
“And Sumner was the city that the Rev. Pardee Butler lifted up his hands
and blessed and prophesied would grow and wax fat when the ‘upper
landing’ would sleep in a dishonored and forgotten grave, as he floated
by it on his raft, clad in tar and feathers. The ‘upper landing’ was the
opprobrious title conferred by Sumner upon Atchison. The two towns were
bitter enemies. Sumner was ‘abolitionist;’ Atchison was ‘border
ruffian.’ In Atchison the ‘nigger’ was a slave; in Sumner he was a
fetich. It was in Atchison that the ‘abolition preacher,’ Pardee Butler,
was tarred and feathered and set adrift on a raft in the river. He
survived the tortures of his coat of degradation and the ‘chuck-holes’
of the Missouri river and lived to become a prohibition fanatic and a
Democratic Presidential elector.
“Jonathan Lang, alias ‘Shang,’ the hero of Senator Ingalls’ ‘Catfish
Aristocracy,’ and the ‘last mayor of Sumner,’ lived and died in Sumner.
When all his lovely companions had faded and gone ‘Shang’ still pined on
the stem. The senator’s description of this type of a vanished race is
unique:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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