By Diane Euston
At the very beginning of its existence, Kansas City has had a plethora of people who have ensured its success. One well-known missionary, physician, capitalist and translator to the Native Americans chose to spend his later life in Kansas City, and his presence was prolific to the city’s development.
Many of Kansas City’s earliest pioneers were attached to Native American tribes, choosing a spot at the confluence of the Kaw and Missouri Rivers to settle. Men such as Dr. Johnston Lykins (1800-1876) used their connections with Native American tribes to build their livelihoods. As Native American tribes moved to Indian Territory, many men, including Lykins, shifted from Native American interests to capital investment. And, none of this could have been possible without the infrastructure that had been built in the Town of Kansas.
Lykins Life in Indiana and Michigan
Johnston Lykins was born in 1800 in Franklin County, Va., the second oldest of 12 children born to David and Jemima. While still a child, he and his family moved to Kentucky and then to Indiana. At 16 years old, Johnston left his family and moved to Vincennes, Ind. where Johnston apprenticed with a doctor.
Another well-known future Kansas City resident was also living in Vincennes. Baptist minister Isaac McCoy (1784-1846), father to Kansas City and Westport founder John Calvin McCoy, was given the assignment to administer to the Native American tribes and also lived in the area.
By 1819, Lykins agreed to teach Native Americans at a school established by McCoy. But, he was not yet a Christian, nor did he understand the lack of resources he was given to do his job. The Native American tribes he was tasked with teaching were, in his opinion, not given the supplies to be successful.
This led Lykins to quit this work on multiple occasions. From 1820 to 1822, Lykins abandoned this teaching, but when he returned, he was finally ready to accept Christianity and what he also deemed his primary mission in life. He was baptized by Rev. Isaac McCoy in June 1822, accepting his calling as a missionary.
McCoy and Lykins worked together to establish the Carey Mission in southwestern Michigan at the urging of the Potawatomi. Lykins, a whiz with other languages, learned to read and write in the Potawatomi language. There, six mission buildings were established along with a school for the Native American tribe.
Lykins wasn’t just tasked with educating the Potawatomi; he also taught the McCoy children. By 1825, he was appointed the official teacher of Native Americans in Michigan.
His outreach didn’t end with the Potawatomi; Lykins also traveled as a preacher to other tribes, including the Ottawa.
In 1828, Lykins set his eye on a young, beautiful pupil – Delilah McCoy. At 19 years old, Delilah married Lykins, nine years her senior.
At this time in history, the Native American tribes were under intense pressure to relocate yet again by the federal government. Lykins could sense their uneasiness at relocating and privately knew that their treatment was unfair.
He wrote in his diary, “Commissioners at treaties held for the purpose of removing them promise with the idea they are to trust for nothing. . . They came to this country under the expectation of being well fed, but have suffered to starve, days in succession, until on the eve of killing horses to save their families – which has suggested the idea of quitting the place and seeking a more remote situation.”
In May 1829, Rev. Isaac McCoy reported his fate of the removal of Native Americans from both Indiana and Michigan. “The board have instructed Mr. Lykins and myself to go west,” he wrote.
Under the Indian Removal Act of 1830, both McCoy and Lykins were working with the federal government to relocate tribes, but Lykins felt his reach could be much stronger with medical training. In 1829, Lykins traveled to Transylvania College in Lexington, Ky. where he studied medicine for a year.
Rev. Isaac McCoy was hired with his son, John, to conduct a surveying expedition in Indian Territory (Kansas) to see the condition of the lands and decide where each Native American tribe would make their home. After receiving a letter from Isaac, Lykins reported, “[Isaac’s] surveying tour was successful. The country was found to be good and he says the opening for missionary labour is uncommonly promising.”
Into Indian Country
In 1831, Rev. Isaac McCoy and Lykins were instructed by the Board to work in Indian Territory with the Shawnee tribe. At the time, the only authorized people to live and work with tribes were allowed through the federal government. So, both Rev. Isaac McCoy and his son-in-law, Lykins, opted to purchase land in western Missouri where white settlement was legal.
Near current-day St. Luke’s Hospital just south of where it stands today, Rev. Isaac McCoy and his son-in-law built log cabin homes adjacent to one another.
Work within the Native American tribes wasn’t taken lightly; Lykins took his limited medical career and worked to vaccinate tribes against harmful diseases brought to them from white settlement. In July 1831, he wrote from the Shawnee agency, “I vaccinated a considerable number [of Indians] for which the chief appeared grateful.”
In the late summer of 1832, McCoy and Lykins established a Baptist church and a school near present-day 55th and Lamar Ave. This mission was used as a jumping-off point for all missionaries working out west.
Establishing a Baptist mission school within Native American lands wasn’t without its challenges. Lykins wrote in October 1832, “Our school had partially been in operation for some time, but on account of not being authorized to furnish a meal a day (as others do) for the scholars, the school has not been properly put into operations. Having written the board on the subject, an answer was received today, in which the Board has direct[ed] us to ‘try’ and get along without feeding the children at all.”
Lykins felt hopeless as he attempted to work to educate the children of the Baptist mission on Shawnee ground. In 1833, he expanded his mission reach by preaching among the Delaware. He even established a small mission school there.
In 1832, Lykins had purchased 40 acres in Jackson County, Mo. for $80 where he built his log cabin. Two years later, he sold half of the plat of land to his brother-in-law, John McCoy, for $100. John McCoy took this land and platted the town of Westport.
Prior to the establishment of Westport and its post office, a spot on the Santa Fe Trail called Shawnee was selected to be a westernmost post office – and their postmaster was Johnston Lykins.
Lykins wanted to ensure that every Native American had the ability to read the Bible and had access to the news, but translation of Native American tongue was always tough. There was no written language, so Lykins worked as a translator to develop an orthography for the Shawnee language that allowed for their native language to be written.
Lykins took it a step further and established with printer/evangelist Jotham Meeker the first printing press in what would be the state of Kansas. In 1835, the two men worked together to edit the first newspaper ever printed in Kansas (and the second ever paper to be written in Native American) called the Sinwiow Kesibwi (Shawnee Sun). Until 1844, this paper circulated among the Shawnee and gave them access to the news of the day.
He didn’t limit his contributions to the Shawnee. In 1837, Lykins wrote an Osage Indian grammar book from the Baptist mission, and in 1844, he translated the New Testament into the Potawatomi language. In all, Lykins printed books in the languages of the Kansas, Delaware, Potawatomi, Musee, Otoe, Osage, Iowa, Piankehsaw and Shawnee languages.
Back to the Potawatomi
The Potawatomi that Lykins developed a close relationship to at the Carey Mission in southwestern Michigan finally made their way to their new reservation lands in Spring 1843. Lykins opted to leave the Shawnee Baptist Mission so he could attend to his old friends.
West of current-day Topeka, Lykins established a mission among the Potawatomi and acted as their official physician.
Before much more success could be garnered, tragedy struck the family. In September 1844, his wife, Delilah McCoy Lykins, passed away two months shy of her 35th birthday from tuberculosis. Three children survived them: William, Julia and Sarah.
In 1847, Lykins focused his efforts on establishing a trade school, or manual labor school, at the Potawatomi mission; he was given $1500 for this purpose. Finished in 1849, the building, complete with native stone, still stands today and is the home of the Kansas Historical Society.
Children began attending the trade school at the mission in 1850; 17 Native American children attended the school with Lykins working as both physician and teacher. Just one year later, attendance reached 90 students.
The school conducted itself under a strict schedule. Students were required to pray and study. Girls learned how to cook and sew while boys worked in the fields and learned trades such as blacksmithing. The school was in operation until 1861.
Going to Kansas City
In about 1850, Lykins opted to live in Kansas City and semi-retire from missionary work. There, he became actively involved in civic duties of the newly established town.
When Lykins enrolled his youngest daughter, Sarah, into a boarding school in Lexington, Mo. in 1851, he fell in love with his daughter’s young teacher. Martha “Mattie” Livingston, just 26 years old and newly arrived from Kentucky, married 51-year-old Kansas Citian, Johnston Lykins.
The couple first settled in the exclusive Pearl Hill neighborhood of Kansas City at the northwest corner of 2nd and Walnut in a home first built for Christiana McCoy, Isaac’s widow. Slowly but surely, city leaders were carving away at the bluffs around Pearl Street, and this left well-to-do Kansas Citians in search of a new, exclusive neighborhood.
After abandoning missionary work and focusing on city development, Lykins quickly found his place in his adopted home of Kansas City. He helped found the first newspaper and the first Chamber of Commerce. He was elected president of the first city council. William S. Gregory (1825-1877) was elected the city’s first mayor in 1853, and he helped write the first charter. In that charter, it was established that the mayor must live within the city limits.
Ironically, that charter is what ousted Kansas City’s first mayor from office when it was “discovered” he lived outside the city limits. Thus, Lykins, president of the council, served out his term. The following year, Lykins was elected mayor, and he is considered to be Kansas City’s first “duly elected mayor.”
In 1855, Johnston and his wife, Mattie helped to establish the First Baptist Church in Kansas City.
Controversy Over Slavery
In 1857, Mattie, Johnston’s wife, oversaw the building of what would be considered Kansas City’s first mansion on 12th Street between Broadway and Washington. At the time, this new neighborhood coined “Quality Hill” had a breathtaking view of the newly formed city and the bluffs. This classic Greek revival mansion was said to have been “separated from the city limits by cornfields.”
The plans for this 14-room home with 10 fireplaces was said to be “so pretentious that no one in Missouri would attempt to erect the structure.” They hired architects and craftsmen from Cincinnati to complete the work. The brick walls were laid in cement and painted red. The circular staircase took the breath away of those visiting, and the crystal chandeliers set this mansion aside as someplace special.
The main hall was 15 feet wide and steel beams from Pittsburgh were shipped in to ensure its sturdy construction.
The Lykins home was memorable to everyone who had the chance to be a guest. Laura Coates Reed, daughter of civic leader Kersey Coates, wrote, “Half concealed in a grove of stately forest trees, this typical Southern home, with his spacious halls and apartments, presided over by a host and hostess of the old regime of Southern hospitality, is associated with many of the happiest hours of my childhood… Its retinue of slaves, among whom I had my own especial favorites; the brick smokehouse; the commodious comfortable outdoor slave apartments; the venerable parrot, Florita, whose profanity both shocked and delighted me; the general air of magnificence and the stock of goodies always in readiness for my childish palate, afforded a degree of enchantment of which the most exaggerate fairy tale certainly has no prototype.”
The Lykins did enslave people. In 1860, the family held a 33-year-old female, eight-year-old female and two-year-old male in enslavement. Although Lykins was never a proponent of slavery, his wife, Mattie, was a Southern woman through-and-through.
By the time the Civil War broke out in 1861, city leaders such as Dr. Lykins tried to stay neutral in a time of crisis. This worked for him, but it didn’t work as well for his Southern-sympathizing wife.
The area around Kansas City was filled with guerrilla activity, and cutting these bushwhackers off at their source became a priority so that the area would be safer and less violent. When Gen. Order No. 11 banished people living outside of the city limits in Jackson, Cass, Bates and part of Vernon Counties who couldn’t prove their loyalty to the Union, some Kansas Citians also were targeted.
This included Mattie Lykins.
Johnston Lykins was spared from banishment, but he still had to watch from the levee as his wife was carried away on a boat. According to Daniel Geary who was present that day, he “remembered her calling back to the doctor on the shore parting directions where he could find his underwear and to be sure it was quite dry before he put it on.”
Saving the Past
After the end of the Civil War, Mattie returned to Kansas City and settled back into their stately mansion. Lykins continued to serve in various leadership roles throughout the city as his wife established the Orphans for Confederate Soldiers at 31st and Locust, partially funded with her own money. This was later operated by the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Dr. Lykins continued his work as a prominent civic leader, serving as president of the Kansas City, Galveston & Lake Superior Railroad aimed at getting the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad to Kansas City. Under his leadership, the city voted to have $200,000 allocated to bring the “Cameron Road” to Kansas City – thus connecting the city to all railroad hubs in operation.
After a prolonged illness of “softening of the brain,” Johnston Lykins died on August 15, 1876 at the age of 76. Even after living in Kansas City, his Native American friends would often call on Dr. Lykins to have them help them in their fight for fair negotiations. His second wife, Mattie, went on to marry famed artist George Caleb Bingham a year later.
Even after Dr. Lykins passed away, his home at 12th and Washington stood for years as a reminder of the evolution of Kansas City landmarks. The home was revered for its importance to the city’s history, and in 1889, the home was moved across the street by George W. Strope. Its original site became the home of the Hotel Washington.
The former mansion of Dr. Lykins at 1204 Washington remained a showpiece. Miss Barstow originally operated Barstow School from this location, and the house – miraculously- survived for decades even as the exterior was altered and a fourth floor added when it served as a hotel.
In 1989 the home, albeit a shell of its former beauty, was slotted by the city’s Redevelopment Authority to be torn down. The operation was delayed in order to give the Historic Kansas City Foundation time to raise the funds to save the structure. If they couldn’t raise the money to save the oldest structure surviving in the Quality Hill neighborhood, it was to be demolished.
The city knew the significance of a structure owned by one of Kansas City’s first civic leaders – a man who got his start educating Native American tribes and translating texts for them.
Regardless, the half million dollars to save a treasure of Kansas City’s history wasn’t raised, and the home was demolished to make way for another parking lot.
It’s hard today to envision what Kansas City was like over a century ago, and more often than not, our city opts to destroy rather than repurpose. We have lost so much of our city’s character because of this, and it becomes harder and harder to tell the stories of people such as Johnston Lykins without the structures, memories and provenance of what could be standing today. His name should be recognizable to us today, as he was a prominent person who, like so many, took multiple risks to stand on our soil as one of the city’s earliest supporters.
When Dr. Lykins passed away, his obituary stated, “The memory of Dr. Johnston Lykins will remain fresh and green in the hearts of those who knew him, for many years to come.”
Diane writes a blog on the history of the area. To read more of the stories, go to www.newsantafetrailer.blogspot.com.