History of Atchison County, KansasIngalls, Sheffield
History
History of Atchison County, Kansas
Ingalls, Sheffield
Atchison County (Kan.) -- Biography; Atchison County (Kan.) -- History
There are two other members of the Thirteenth Kansas buried at Sumner.
They are, John Scott, of Company D, and Albred Brown, of Company F.”
Another article relating to Old Sumner, which is entertaining and
instructive, was written by E. W. Howe, and is taken from the Historical
Edition of the _Atchison Daily Globe_, issued July 16, 1894:
“The founder of Sumner was John P. Wheeler, a red-headed, blue-eyed,
consumptive, slim, freckled enthusiast from Massachusetts. He was a
surveyor by profession, and also founded the town of Hiawatha. He was
one of the adventurers who came to Kansas as a result of the excitement
of 1855–’56, and was only twenty-one years old when he came West. Most
of the men who had much to do with early Kansas history were young.
“The town was not named for Charles Sumner, as is generally supposed,
but for his brother, George Sumner, one of the original stockholders. At
that time Atchison was controlled by Southern sympathizers—P. T. Abell,
the Stringfellows, the McVeys, A. J. Westbrook and others—and
abolitionists were not welcome in the town. It was believed that a city
would be built within a few miles of this point, as it was favorable for
overland freighting, being farther West than any other point on the
Missouri river. On the old French maps Atchison was known as the ‘Grand
Detour,’ meaning the great bend in the river to the westward.
“Being a violent abolitionist, John P. Wheeler determined to establish a
town where abolitionists would be welcome, and Sumner was the result.
The town was laid out in 1856, and the next year Wheeler had a
lithograph made, which he took East for use in booming his town.
“Among others captured by means of this lithograph was John J. Ingalls.
Wheeler and Ingalls were both acquainted with a Boston man of means
named Samuel A. Walker. Wheeler wanted Walker to invest in Sumner, and
as Walker knew that Ingalls was anxious to go West, he asked him to stop
at Sumner and report upon it as a point for the investment of Boston
money.
“Mr. Ingalls arrived in Sumner on the 4th of October, 1858, on the
steamer Duncan S. Carter, which left St. Louis four days before. The
town then contained about two thousand people, five hundred more than
Atchison; but Sumner was already declining, and Mr. Ingalls did not
advise his friend, Walker, to invest.
“A hotel building costing $16,000.00, had been built by Samuel
Hollister. A famous steamboat cook had charge of the kitchen in the old
days, and the stages running between Jefferson City and St. Joe stopped
there every day for dinner. Jefferson City was then the end of the
railroad—the Pacific Railroad of Missouri, now the Missouri Pacific—
which runs through the deserted site of Sumner, and directly over the
foundation of the wagon factory built by Levi A. Woods. This wagon
factory was one of the results of Wheeler’s audacious lithograph, and
few wagons were actually manufactured. The factory was heavily insured,
and burned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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