Growing Bookworms or the Blessings of Community Libraries

Watching how much my two-year-old granddaughter loves books reminds me of a seven-year-old,  toothpick-legged child who thought she was a big girl when her momma handed her her allowance on Saturday mornings. Along with that shiny dime, that little girl’s mother permitted her to trek uptown-- first to the dime store and then to the library. The coin was spent in no time.  It took much longer to wander up and down the bookshelf aisles searching for the perfect three or four titles to carry home so she could escape into those well-turned pages for a week of exciting adventure.

Yes, that scrawny little gal was me. I loved my weekly visit to the library. Spending that dime occupied a half hour or so of exploring the toy department from top to bottom. I combined this with obsessing over an old-fashioned candy counter where glass compartments housed chocolate stars, jawbreakers, licorice, and caramel clusters among other treats a clerk scooped onto a scale before bagging my treasure. Munching on gooey chocolate all the way home was satisfying,  but showing off my book selections to my mom highlighted the morning.  And the best was yet to come. . . .

Hours of joyous escape and new knowledge patiently awaited me as I examined each cover to decide where my escapades would begin.  After I piled the books in reading order, I’d curl up in a sunny, warm spot in the house—maybe in the living room or on my bed where I could escape into other lands and other lives.  My grandma’s house had a great walk-in closet I could turn into my secret domain for hours while words danced off pages into pioneer wagons or princess castles or Nancy Drew mysteries.

When I had little girls, they, too, loved trips to the community library where they could scan shelves just their height until they found books that begged to go home with them in their little totes. When they entered their toddler years, our local librarian hosted a scheduled event that made this place even more appealing.  It was a terrible day when you were too sick to go to story hour.

Every time I open the door to a library, I never know what journey I’ll experience. I’ve traveled through the ages in a page-filled time machine. I’ve met kings and queens, famous soldiers and presidents, along with some rock stars.  I’ve read tales that drew tears and sighs and those that made me laugh until I had hiccups.  I discovered the key to avoiding boredom amongst all those silent friends.

What would life be like without public libraries? As a lifelong card owner, I can’t imagine.  What I have learned doing research inside those walls is that not every town had a library.  It took a zealous ladies’ organization or a combination of clubs to start libraries in prairie communities.  In Logan Kansas, women recognized the need for a library in their little town and, with rustling skirts, got to work establishing one that still exists today. 

Ellis Kansas can thank the Union Pacific and a specific employee, Mr. Dorrance, for starting their library.  It seems appropriate the city fathers named a street after the person who made such a difference in his world. Hays, Plainville, Stockton and 56 other Kansas towns can thank Andrew Carnegie  and local taxpayers for their fine libraries. 

The first Carnegie Library in Scotland had the adage “Let There Be Light” above the door. I like to imagine such a motto exists in some form above every library entrance. 

Ellis, Kansas—Nicodemus Settlers' Introduction to The Promised Land

                                             Re-enactment of 1st migration to Nicodemus
                                              performed in front of Ellis Depot 10/6/2012

In September of 1877, a group of former slaves, many from Vice-President Richard M. Johnson’s Kentucky plantation, traveled by train to Ellis, Kansas. Land speculator W.R. Hill, Hill City’s namesake, along with five black men, including Reverend Morris Bell, created the Nicodemus Township Company to attract these brave souls to western Kansas.

After paying $5.00 to join the town company and buying train tickets, this first group of Kentuckians and their luggage pulled away from the Sadieville, Kentucky Depot.  Each of these resilient pioneers left behind family, memories, and a familiar landscape to come to the prairies of Kansas, their promised land.

Following their journey, the immigrants arrived in Ellis, where W.R. Hill met them.  They exited the train at the small, wooden depot and viewed a dusty main street and the not so distant train yard.  Probably they heard cattle that had traveled the Western Trail lowing in the stockyards west of the depot. What they didn’t see were the trees and dense greenery of their recent home.

Hill provided wagons to carry their belongings across the undeveloped grasslands to Nicodemus. Each family loaded their goods and followed horse-drawn drays out of town to their first resting place at Happy Hollow, just north of what locals call the Irion Hills. This was their introduction to two days of walking across the plains to their new place of residence.

This step-by-step familiarization with their new existence must have stunned folks who had grown up among forests and verdant fields of tobacco.  Even the dry air inhaled differently than the humid air of their Southern origin. The birds were different, the flowers were different, and the buffalo grass was different.  This was a brave new world to these hardy people.

Unfamiliar to these newcomers, the route they traveled north to their homes began what locals eventually titled the Ellis-Nicodemus Trail.  For the next few years, this critical trade route between the two communities enabled Nicodemus to grow and thrive.

Farmers in Nicodemus would bring broomcorn, produce, and grain to trade for necessities at businesses such as Tom Daly’s store in Ellis’s well-developed business district.  Nicodemus did not have a blacksmith until 1879 so those needing such services traveled the 35 miles to Ellis to utilize the local smithy. Ellis had some of the nearest medical services for those in need. Finally, Ellis’s railroad was essential connection for delivery of necessary supplies and mail to Nicodemus consumers.

Today, Nicodemus, “the oldest and only remaining Black Town west of the Mississippi River” is a designated National Historic Site with the U.S. Park Service.  Each year Nicodemus descendants gather to celebrate Homecoming at the end of July and Pioneer Days in early October. 

Ellis Rivaled Dodge City as a Cow Town

After this year’s drought, it’s hard to imagine pastures around Ellis supporting  tens of thousands of Texas longhorns.  However, for a span of time in the 1870s, Ellis and her Kansas Pacific stockyards rivaled Dodge City as the destination for Texas drovers.  Grasslands between the Smoky Hill and Saline Rivers fattened herds while cowboys plumped local merchants’ accounts.

Before the establishment of the Western Cattle Trail in 1874, the L.B. Harris New Trail to Ellis, a subsidiary trail from Texas to Kansas, was identified on A.W. Ziegalasch’s Chisolm Trail map.  According to Margaret and Gary Kraisinger’s The Western/The Greatest Texas Cattle Trail 1874 -1886, Harris’s new trail had three spurs: Hays City, Ellis, and Trego Tank.  Captain Lytle soon founded The Western Trail, which followed a similar route to Ellis prior to railheads at Buffalo Park and other western towns.

 Ellis was desirable due to the Kansas Pacific’s excellent stock pens located north of the railroad in the vicinity of the current ball diamonds and fair grounds on the west side of Big Creek.  According to Ellis County Star articles, the Kansas Pacific offered competitive shipping rates.  Old photos confirm trails leading into and out of this area, possibly from traveling herds.

According to the May 29, 1876 Ellis County Star article, thousands of Texas cattle began arriving in the Ellis vicinity.  The Hickey herd numbered 1,500, joined by the 1,000 strong Taylor herd. These longhorns pastured south of town for several weeks before shipping out.  Halstein and Murry delivered over 4,000 head to summer on the Saline a few days after the first throngs arrived.

Livestock business boomed that May as another 20,000 longhorns in 10 different herds arrived within a few weeks.  In June, Captain King’s South Texas drovers delivered two herds totaling over 4,000 head to Ellis. The Hays paper reported over 100,000 head of Texas cattle delivered  to the Ellis railhead that summer and suggested Ellis stockyards and transport fees were better than Dodge City’s.

By July, The Star described a thriving cattle business in Ellis.  New businesses had opened and existing ones were doing well.  An August 3 article states, “Our cow-boys are still with us, and a better or more civil set of men, we have never met.” In September, the boom continued with additional cattle shipments.

All good things end, which was true of Ellis’s days as a business rival to Dodge City.  The legislature moved the deadline—a designated quarantine line for Texas herds—west of Ellis, making 1877 Ellis’s last year as a shipping point for Texas cattle. 

Local articles from those years are missing.  To find historical accounts requires visiting Hays Public Library or Kansas Historical Society Archives to read old newspapers. Few photographs of this time exist, and they reveal little of Ellis’s role in the cattle business.  Perhaps an undiscovered photo trove exists that will expand information about this part of Ellis’s history.

Those of us with active imaginations walk down 9^th Street, once Edwards Street and the main business district, to listen for ghostly boot steps and clinking spurs.