Iuka--a Marketing Town for Isaac

An early store in Iuka, Kansas

Iuka...the name itself tells a great deal of history.  Union soldiers who fought to preserve the nation during the Civil War were given credit for their years of service toward meeting the five years required to mature a homestead claim, one year subtracted for each year served.  As a result, many Union veterans came to Kansas to stake their claims.  When the town of Iuka was formed, a former soldier who had fought in the Battle of Iuka suggested the name, which came from a Chickasaw Indian Chief.

Isaac B. Werner mentioned traveling to Iuka regularly, both to purchase supplies and to market his potatoes.  He also had friends in the town, specifically the Eggleston brothers.  Bob Eggleston ran a stable and Arthur Eggleston had a real estate business.

Pratt County was organized in 1878, and more than a few people have suggested that anything that walked--on two legs or four--must have been counted to meet the minimum population of 600 required to establish a county, most probably being of the 4-legged variety!  Two towns vied for the county seat, Iuka and Saratoga, and continuing the chicanery involved in organizing the county, citizens of both towns employed all sorts of rascality to gain the advantage.  (See "Cemetery on the Hill," 2-7-2013 in the blog archives.)

The story is told that when the governor came to investigate the legitimacy of the county, Iuka showed him such a good time that he never made it to Saratoga.  Instead, he named Iuka the temporary county seat while improprieties in the county's organization were investigated.  Having the temporary designation proved to be a great advantage, for each time there were voting and petitioning irregularities in the selection of the permanent county seat, Iuka retained the status quo.  As the roguery continued, another town joined the contest.

Early Iuka Methodist Church

Part of Iuka's advantage rested upon its claim to be the center of the county, but during the contest for the county seat, the boundaries of the county changed.  Seizing upon that change, the new town called itself Pratt Center and claimed the central location.  The investors living elsewhere who organized Pratt Center dressed their trickery in a more sophisticated veneer than the chicanery that had been employed by Iuka and Saratoga, but none of the three contenders could claim entirely 'clean hands' in the battle for the county seat.  (See "How Investor's Created Pratt," 9-27-2013 in the blog archives.)  The advantages of being by the Ninnescah River and especially the first rail lines passing through the other towns, ultimately resulted in Pratt gaining the prize from Iuka.

A few businesses and residences were moved into Pratt Center, but Iuka did not disappear, as many Kansas prairie towns did.  Instead, they built their reputation on service to the rural communities surrounding the town, especially as the place where farmers brought their grain for shipment.

It is an interesting conclusion to this bit of Iuka's history that in the 1940s the town named after a Civil War battle gained as a close neighbor the Army Air Base, which is now the Pratt Municipal Airport.  A stroll through the cemetery on the north side of Iuka is the best way to remember some of the early settlers who established this town on the prairie.


(Photo credits go to CardCow.com, where many interesting vintage postcards can be viewed.  Thank you, Eric Larson.)

Neighbor "Doc" Dix

When I was a girl, I often heard my father refer to "the Dick's Place," at least, that is what I thought he was saying.  As I began doing the research for the manuscript about Isaac B. Werner's journal, I discovered that the land to which my father referred had actually belonged to Dr. Isaac Dix, whom neighbors called Doc.

 

Dr. I. H. "Doc" Dix

Doc Dix was one of Isaac's best friends.  Doc had not only the local post office but also a small store in his home.  He and his wife Susan had lost three children in early childhood before coming to Kansas to claim both a homestead and a timber claim in the north half of a section a mile west of Isaac's claims.  Their daughter, Mabel, thrived on the Kansas prairie, and the Dix family remained on their land long enough to mature their claims.  Apparently Doc wasn't too handy with tools, as he often hired Isaac to install windows and doors in the family soddy, as well as help with outbuildings.  Isaac exchanged that labor for merchandise from their store. 

 

With his claims matured and his daughter getting old enough to attend school, Doc began thinking about moving into Saratoga to resume his medical practice.  He believed his wife would prefer living in town with other ladies to visit nearby, and he felt the year-round school in Pratt would offer Mabel a better education than she could get in a country school with the short winter and early spring sessions.  In addition, Dr. Dix thought the Pratt County seat would be a good place to resume his practice, whether Pratt or Saratoga were ultimately chosen.  (Isaac uses Pratt and Saratoga interchangeably as the location of Doc's new home, but it is certain that Doc eventually lived in a house on the north side of Pratt, near the water towers, as an old photograph identifies a house in that location as belonging to Dr. Dix.  When Saratoga lost the county seat battle to Pratt Center, many residents and businesses literally moved their houses and business structures into Pratt, and that might also be the explanation for the confusion about the location of Doc's home.)

 

Isaac was very disappointed when his friend first mentioned the possibility of moving, but he did understand the reasons Dr. Dix gave for the move.  On December 29, 1887, Isaac made this entry in his journal:  "At 7 degrees I off early to Emerson, Dix decided finally to move.  We loaded up on my hayrack, & women bedded down warm & comfortable.  Back to my place with load by noon, fed & chored.  P.M. at 22 [degrees] & up 32 thawing, but clouding up from S. made it soon colder, we off again.  Roads in places snow in ruts makes hard pulling.  By sunset passed Iuka & by 7 to Pratt Center.  I had to stop twice on road, warm up.  Unloaded our 2 loads of goods into Dix's Saratoga house.  A disagreeable cold S.E. air & wind during night, we all roosted in new house."

 

Several times I have put out the call to visitors to my blog to search old albums and other keepsakes for photographs and information relating to my research about Isaac and his community.  Imagine what a thrill it was for me when Marsha Lynn Brown at the Pratt Historical Museum sent me a photograph of Dr. I. H. Dix!  Thank you Marsha!!  For the rest of you, keep your eyes open for photographs and information that I might use.

How Investors Created Pratt

Lyn in Pratt County Museum lobby near books for sale

Pratt County lay alongside the south boundary of Isaac's homestead, and its earliest towns were Iuka and Saratoga, both of which Isaac visited.  Iuka was established in 1878, the year Isaac came to Kansas, and although Saratoga was not incorporated until 1884, the settlement existed earlier.  Pratt Center was also incorporated in 1884; however, the method of its creation differed from the earlier towns.  Rather than evolving naturally from a cluster of settlers at its core, Pratt Center was formed by a syndicate.  In fact, the early town site was mockingly called "Dog Town," because the only genuine residents were the prairie dogs.

 

Briefly, Kansas required all counties to set aside land to be used for schools as the population grew and families with children settled the area.  Frequently, however, families preferred to donate an acre from their own homesteads for building a school nearer their homes.  With these small one-room schools dotting the countryside, one or two in each township, the land reserved for schools was often unusued.  Predictably, settlers chose to run the risk of treating these lands as homesteads, planning to make an official claim when the land was released from the school set aside requirements.  It was just such land that became involved in a legal scandal when Pratt Center was formed.  Leaving the details of that legal dispute for a later post, or to read in my book, for now it is enough to say that Saratoga settlers alleged a fraudulent conspiracy to get their lands, while Pratt investors claimed they had utilized proper legal actions available to businessmen to develop their town.  Ultimately the pre-emptive settlers lost their farms and the businessmen created a town.

 

Having entered the battle for the county seat late, Pratt Center nevertheless gained the prize in 1888.  Many Iuka businesses and residents chose to move into Pratt Center, and the remaining Iuka businesses focused on services for surrounding farmers, becoming a center for marketing and shipping grain.  Saratoga, however, disappeared, having lost its post office in 1895, and so many businesses and residences having been literally moved into Pratt Center by 1900 that few landmarks of the town that Isaac had known remained.  



The North School Building with its basement

 

Part of the problem was the close proximity of Pratt Center and Saratoga, so close that Isaac seemed to use the two names interchangeably in his journal.  After getting the patents to his homestead and timber claim, Isaac's friend Doc Dix decided to move into town to resume his medical practice, and Isaac referred to the location of Doc's new residence by both names.  In December of 1887, Isaac helped the Dix family move, and when he finished helping his friends, he went over to Pratt Center to ride the new street cars which had been operating for only two weeks.  However, there is an old photograph showing the house of Dr. Dix in Pratt.  These and other clues make it seem likely that Dr. Dix did move his family to Saratoga but participated in the subsequent exodus to Pratt Center.

 

Pratt Center thrived.  In his journal entry of April 27, 1887, Isaac wrote:  "Pratt Center laboring under a new boom, outfit at grading Rock Island R. R.  W. of road at town water tank, lots of new buildings going up all round along main street digging out foundations for several brick business blocks." 

 

Many of Isaac's trips to Pratt Center were to Blaine Bros. Implement Dealers.  He bought implements from them and they carried his notes given in partial payment.  When Isaac invented a 3-horse cultivator, he turned to them for advice about patenting his invention.  The 1993 publication by the Pratt County Historical Society, a re-publication of a 1911 book published by the Pratt Commercial Club, contains a picture (at left) of the distinguished D. W. Blaine, who was then engaged in the automobile business.  In 1888, with a population of 3,000, Pratt Center had twenty brick buildings; a city waterworks, electric lights, and a street railway; five churches (Methodist, Christian, Presbyterian, African, and Catholic); four banks, three newspapers, and a 3-story school that included a high school.  The long list of businessmen included proprietors of about every business that could be imagined for a bustling prairie town. 



Lyn beginning the museum tour

The name Pratt Center had been adopted during the county seat battle to refute Iuka's claim that it was the best choice because of its central location.  (A change in the county's boundaries impacted Iuka's claim and allowed Pratt Center to assert its own location advantage, although neither town was actually the geological center of the county.)  After winning the county seat battle, Pratt Center no longer needed to assert the distinction of occupying the center of the county, and "Center" was dropped from the town's name in 1893 after a newspaper poll indicated that citizens favored the simpler name of Pratt.

 

Visit the Pratt County Historical Society Museum online at http://prattcountymuseum.org or at its location at 208 S. Ninnescah, Pratt, Kansas, to enjoy their wonderful displays or do research from their collection.

 

Remember, you can enlarge the images in this blog by clicking on them.

 

  

 

 



Disappearing Traces of the Past

My best friend from childhood lived in a 2-story, clapboard house not much different from my own. A few years ago, with wiring, plumbing, and water lines deteriorating from age, and few tenants willing to pay even minimal rent for old country homes, her family made the decision to raze the house and barn. It is a pattern many Kansas families have followed as parents who farmed the land retire or die, and their offspring, who have left the farm for careers in the city, lack the ability or desire to take their parents' places on the farm. For a while the empty house is left to await a new occupant, but when no tenant appears, the house begins to sag and vandals break out the windows, hastening its deterioration. At last, the decision to tear the house down is made, and all that remains to tell the tale of a family who once lived there are a few trees clustered around an empty space.

Near my childhood home is a house grayed with age, the roof a skeleton of horizontal lath capped at the peak by a few defiant wood shingles, clinging where they were nailed decades ago. When I was young enough to ride the school bus, a family lived there, and I remember stopping at the edge of the road to await the child who came running out each morning to board the bus. I do not know how long the house has stood empty, but believing it long abandoned, I paused one afternoon to visit a house on the cusp of disappearing forever. I assumed it contained nothing but the debris that had fallen from and through the skeletal roof, but as I peered through a broken window I saw traces of the family who had last occupied the house--clothing and furnishings left behind as if they had only intended a short absence. Soon, I suspect, all of it will be gone, except for what remains in a few memories.

Not only rural homes have disappeared but also entire small towns. My father used to refer to places that were already gone when I was a child. "He lived down around Strickland," Daddy would say, although that meant nothing to me, Strickland having disappeared before I was born. I could not understand why he gave directions using nonexistent places.

Now I find myself doing the same thing. Roads around our farm have been given numbers to facilitate deliveries to country homes and assist 911 responders. I struggle to remember the numbers when I am giving directions, falling back to the names of roads familiar from my childhood--Emerson Road and Antrim Road, references to schools that closed in the 1940s and structures that have been torn down. My father always called the land just north of our home the "Old Dick's Place," or at least I thought that was the name he used. Only while transcribing Isaac's Journal did I learn that it was the "Old Dix's Place." Isaac's friend, "Doc" Dix, claimed the north half of the section as his homestead and timber claim. He was a medical doctor who decided to try his hand at farming. His family home included a store and the community post office, of which he was the postmaster. After living there long enough to mature his claims, he and his family moved into Pratt Center--actually into Saratoga, another disappeared town which in Isaac's day was a bustling commercial community that faded away after losing the battle with Pratt Center for the county seat.

Today, like my father, I refer to land around our farm by the names of farmers who have been dead for decades, even generations--the Dix Place, the Kennedy quarter, the Cotton Place, Southard's Place. My husband, who did not grow up in the community, has learned the names from me, although he has no memories to associate with the names, just as I learned them from my father. Once there were families living on the land to which their names are affixed, with houses and barns and dreams that their hard work was building a legacy for future generations. Today not one of those places is owned by a descendant of the farmer who once lived there, despite those dreams. The buildings are gone and the original trees are old and dying.

Even the land itself has often been transformed by farmers leveling the terrain for irrigation. Isaac wrote about his "pinnacle hill" which he would climb to watch fireworks in distant towns on the 4th of July. I could not identify much of a pinnacle on either his homestead or the timber claim, but recently I spoke with the current owner of the land, who told me there was once an exceptionally high hill on the property. He described the location, which retains a small elevation, and told me that Isaac's pinnacle hill was once at least thirty feet higher before grading.

As our conversation continued, he recalled having to clean up the remains of an old house. I eagerly asked him to describe what he remembered, and he said it was a 2-story, wooden house, fairly large, but in too much decay to describe any details. I asked if it had a cellar, and he confirmed that it had a small one with an exterior entry. He could not tell me whether it also had an interior stair, because of the deterioration of the house. I shared with him Isaac's description of his 2-story, wooden house, and how he added exterior stairs so he no longer needed to carry potatoes through the house when he stored them in the cellar during harvest. As winter approached, he would tramp straw into the exterior stairs for insulation from the cold, using only the interior stairs until spring. The current owner recalled the approximate location of the house, so I learned where to picture Isaac's home although it is long gone.

Nearly all traces of Isaac's life have disappeared--the trees about which he felt such pride reduced to a few scraggly rows at the edges of fields, his dugouts filled, his house torn down, even his land transformed. Only his words survive.