Not your typical "love birds" you say? Why not? The bride is dressed in white, and the groom is wearing tails--well, tail feathers--in the ever popular gray.
Once again Valentine's Day has arrived, and for those of you who follow this blog regularly, you know that I write a blog yearly to recognize this special day for lovers. If you have missed reading them, you can go to the inventory at right, click on the year, and then scroll down to February to read those past blogs.
In doing my research for the manuscript, I found an article in the local populist newspaper of Isaac's time, the County Capital, in which the local reporter in his community praised Isaac's farm for its neat, prosperous appearance. The reporter could not resist teasing Isaac a bit by concluding the article with this comment: With such a nice farm, "we think the rooster of the prairie should take a young lady under his wing."
Isaac Werner's journal mentions his admiration for several young ladies, and a cryptic note refers to "a second refusal," which I assume was an unsuccessful marriage proposal to a lady with whom he was corresponding back in Illinois, after he had lived in Kansas for several years. His journal also mentions a young lady who came to St. John as a Prohibition lecturer, on whom he made a social call one afternoon, but soon after, she left St. John and the romance never had the chance to begin. Although I believe Isaac would have enjoyed a wife by his side during his years on the Kansas prairie, being a farmer's wife was a hard life in the late 1800s, and the well-educated city women he admired may not have been willing to assume the responsibilities expected of a farmer's wife.
So, on this Valentine's Day I have chosen the handsome couple pictured above to remember Isaac Beckley Werner, the Rooster of the Prairie, whose journal inspired my efforts to tell the story of those early settlers who came to Kansas in the late 1800s.
