Description
"A Noted Negro Settlement" - - Someone has said that the inhabitants of the hills are always honest, hard-working and thrifty; that the dreamers and idlers come from the plains where the fertility of the soil demands no great effort in making a living. The history of nations, it is said, will bear out the statement. Perhaps this explains in a degree the many qualities that go to make good citizenship that are found in the colored settlement, 10 miles south of town. Their land is the roof of the county, hilly, almost inaccessible, rocky and hard to farm, but they have made a good living out of it by the hardest of labor; they have comfortable homes, well-stocked farms, big orchards, bank accounts, and are giving their children that which they missed, a good education. Grubbing out trees and clearing out rocks, in addition to the regular routine of sowing and harvesting, leave no time for dreaming, loafing, and the consequent train of shiftlessness and bad habits. The families who make up this remarkable settlement, and the number of acres they own, follow: H. C. Buchanan, 160 acres; Charley Ingram, 220; Jeff Richardson and his mother Mrs. Sarah Richardson, 60; Pryor and Henry Dickey, 300 acres or more; Dave and Charley Wallenford, and Will Ingram; Charley Ferguson, 100 acres; Mrs. Ewing Potter, 30; Mrs. Jane Williams, 30; Joe Crockett, Mat Robertson, Anson Spencer, Peter Lee, Henry Corporal, 40; Eugene Bell, 20, and George Ross. The last named has added 20 children to the community and hasn’t had time to buy land. If the list is not accurate, it is at least the best that H. C. Buchanan could remember, one hot Sunday afternoon. when accosted in the road by a reporter. He was riding horseback; Sunday school would begin as soon as he (the superintendent) and the pupils got there, and it was time he was on his way. An hour later, the reporter passed the school house, and Mr. Buchanan was sitting out in front studying the lesson while waiting for the pupils to appear. The land owned by these colored people was originally largely school land, and the first colored person to take advantage of the opportunity to get cheap land was Ann Brown. She was born in slavery in Logan County, Kentucky, 74 years ago (born ~1834), and moved shortly before the war to Springfield, Missouri, where she and her mother were carried off by Northern soldiers during the Springfield skirmish. They were not unwilling captives: The men who carried them away were fighting for their freedom, and it was little enough that two colored women could do to cook for them, and give them strength to carry on the fight. Besides, bring with the army, they calculated they would be right on the ground when Freedom was handed over. They were 3 years in the army, cooking solely for the officers, and Ann Brown says her “can flitters” gave many an officer the courage to fight. She cooked for Dr. Grimes and Colonel Graham, and Major Woodworth, all of Atchison, and learned to be such an expert with a camp-fire that to this day she can cook better meals out of doors than in. She received no pay at first, but got $15 a month later, always taking her mother with her. At the close of the war she found employment in the family of Dr. Eagles, southwest of town, and 5 years later bought 40 acres in the hilly district, ten miles south. She was the first colored person there, and lived there for over 30 years. Upon the death of her husband, Harrison Brown, she married Henry Potter, and moved with him to a tract of land in the Sumner neighborhood. Here, she has found life a little harder: Her husband's first wife was sick a long time, and Ann Brown's honeymoon has been spent in helping to pay off the debts that attended her illness and death. The celebration of the 101st birthday of her mother, now dead, was made an event in her old neighborhood. There is a politeness and gentility about an aged ex-slave that awakens the deepest respect in the white people, and Mrs. Sarah Richardson is a fine example. She lives alone in her little cabin, having turned all her worldly affairs over to her son, Jefferson Davis Richardson, who lives farther down the hill, with his wife and five children. Mrs. Richardson and her husband ran away from their masters in Platte County, at the time of the war, and reached a boat landing across from Leavenworth. It was with some difficulty that they got across to freedom, and Mrs. Richardson recalls that she hid in the bushes all day and cried. Their first home in Kansas was in Leavenworth, and, when the husband found work with an outfit crossing the plains, his wife worked in a kitchen in Leavenworth at $1.50 a week. “The lady of the house” of the settlement is the description given Mrs. Charley Ingram. They live in the finest house in the settlement, have a splendid farm, and Mrs. Ingram's decisions on social matters are regarded as final. She was a girl in Atchison, though her hair is turning gray, and picked hazelnuts where Commercial Street is now laid out. She worked for Colonel Ege and was married to John Farmer while in his employ. They bought land south of town 37 years ago, and, when Mr. Farmer died, 7 years later, she was married to Ingram. Pryor Dickey, one of the big land owners and men of influence in the neighborhood, is a bachelor, and his sister and his aged mother live with him. So far as his mother knows, she is about 78 years of age, and never leaves the place any more except on her “night rides.” This was a puzzler. “What do you mean by that?” she was asked. “Oh, a night ride, honey, is when I go to bring the babies into the world.” Though at such an advanced age. she still officiates when the babies come. They send for her instead of a doctor, and she regards it as a sign that the Lord is with her; that she has never brought a cross-eyed or a disfigured baby into the world; she has never had a death, and she has been engaged in this work for 45 years. Mrs. Dickey charged $5 for assisting the stork away back in Kentucky, but she has charged only $3 since coming to Kansas, which is cheap enough. It must be worth something in time of sickness to hear her fat-shaking laugh. The interesting part of the story of the settlement, from a white man's point of view, is that the colored people, predominating in No. 20 school district, elect a colored teacher, and the white folks send their children to the school, and make no objections. There are three school directors: J. E. Remsburg, the only white member, and Eugene Bell and H. C. Buchanan, colored. This would always insure a colored teacher, according to the whites’ view of political rights and justice, but the colored people are more fair: The fitness of the candidate is alone considered and if a white person is proven a more fitting candidate than the colored applicant, his color does not stand against him. The school opens October 5, the pay is $35 a month, and the teacher has not been elected for this year. Last year Miss Grace Ingram, colored, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Charley Ingram, and a graduate of the county high school, was teacher, and the school numbered 12 colored pupils, and 4 white. The whites predominate in the adjoining school district. No. 64. and white children in No. 20 can attend in No. 64, and the colored in 64 can go to No. 20 if they like, but there is little of this swapping done. Everyone, white and black, seems content. The colored people have their own cemetery, the Mt. Zion, and only two white persons are buried in it, and it is kept in better condition than the historic cemetery at Sumner, where only whites are buried, and where many of the early day aristocrats are taking their final rest. They have their own church with 21 members, and, as they are all good Baptists, the community knows nothing of religious dimensions. The young people do not drink: the language of craps is unknown to them: they seldom give a dance, and their chief enjoyment is an occasional church social. The town offers no allurements for them, and, after an occasional visit here, they are glad to get back to the more peaceful delights of the country. The rugged character of the hills, and the gentility and thrift of the older residents, have left an impression upon the generation coming up that is bound to count for their good. There has never been a race problem in No. 20 settlement: So long as the influence of the fine old ex-slaves in that vicinity lasts, there never will be.Date(s) of Creation
9/25/1908