By Diane Euston
Prior to the commencement of the Civil War in 1861, the vicinity around Kansas City was a hotbed of activity due to pro-slavery and anti-slavery sentiments igniting along the Missouri-Kansas border.
The beginning of what would become known as Bleeding Kansas was generated by white settlement starting in 1854 in what was once Indian Territory. Most early settlers opted to lay their roots close to Missouri in Johnson County, named after Methodist minister and politician Rev. Thomas Johnson (1802-1865).
These early settlers also opted to create towns to generate business activities. Now the county seat of Johnson County, Kan., Olathe has an interesting and surprising early history that hosted a plethora of colorful characters, indicative of the unsteady early beginnings of statehood.
Before White Settlement
The lands comprising what would become the state of Kansas were the native lands of the Kansas, Pawnee and Osage tribes.
In 1825 in St. Louis, Mo., the Kansas Indians signed a treaty with the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, William Clark (1770-1838). This ceded all their lands west of the state of Missouri. In that same year, a band of the Shawnee near Cape Girardeau agreed to move to these newly-acquired lands (now part of Johnson and Douglas Counties).
In July 1828, Rev. Isaac McCoy (1784-1846) received his orders from William Clark to survey Indian Territory. McCoy enlisted three Potawatomi and three Ottawa Indians to go with him to survey the lands in what is now Kansas.
Because the land lacked timber, the government inaccurately believed that the land was worthless – another reason that they were willing to hand the lands over to the tribes.
McCoy went on several more expeditions, and in January 1829, he submitted 18 pages of detailed notes on the land. For seven months, Isaac remained in Washington so he could help negotiate the terms and suggest where tribes should live in this new country. This would become the infamous Indian Removal Act of 1830 where Congress specified “an exchange of lands with the Indians residing in any of the states or territories, and for their removal west of the river Mississippi.”
Rev. McCoy was employed by the Department of War in June 1831 “to adjust the boundaries of tribes in some instances, and to cause actual surveys to be made in others.” He brought his family along with him, and his son, John Calvin McCoy – a trained civil engineer – accompanied him as a surveyor. John C. McCoy would later go on to found Westport in 1833 and was one of the 14 original founders of the Town of Kansas (Kansas City) in 1838.
In 1831, the Shawnees living in Ohio relocated to their lands in what would become Johnson County, and in 1843, the Wyandot from Ohio moved to present-day Wyandotte County, Kan. Other tribes, including the Delaware, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Miami and Sac and Fox were forcibly relocated to these lands.
The original Santa Fe Trail traveled through Shawnee lands in Indian Territory, entering the area at the town of New Santa Fe (current-day 121st and State Line Road) and traveled a western course. A second route, established when Westport replaced Independence as the primary outfitting towni, traveled past the Shawnee Methodist Mission (current-day 3403 W. 53rd St. in Fairway, Kan.) in a southwesterly direction, joining with the original route four miles south of Olathe, Kan.
When Native American tribes were forcibly removed from their lands to the east to Indian Territory, it was expected that this would be their permanent settlement; however, the influx of white settlement westward led to yet another broken promise.
In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act opened up these lands to white settlement and opened the door to expanding slavery. This meant that these tribes, some only relocated a decade earlier, were forced yet again to move in new treaties signed.
The Shawnee Tribe originally held 1.6 million acres, but a new treaty ceded all but 200,000 acres of land.
This so-called “permanent Indian frontier” disappeared virtually overnight, and within a generation most of these Native Americans were gone from their ancestral lands.
The Founding of Olathe
As white settlement pushed into Kansas Territory, the question of popular sovereignty emerged. Northerners wanted to ensure that the government in this new territory was formed with antislavery sentiments. The money behind the mission came from the New England Emigrant Aid Company, established to help offset the travel expenses for people willing to move to Kansas. They paid up to 25 percent of the expenses associated with the move.
In the summer and fall of 1854, droves of emigrants crossed the country into the unknown. The New England Emigrant Aid Company established mills in makeshift settlements that turned into the towns such as Lawrence, Osawatomie, Manhattan, Topeka, and Burlington.
But pro-slavery Missourians just to the east weren’t going to stand by and just watch as these antislavery settlers establish residence, and many of them were enticed by the cheap lands in Kansas.
In March 1855, Kansas Territory was set to host its first election to appoint men to the Kansas Territorial Legislature. Thousands of pro-slavery men left the Missouri border counties of Jackson, Cass, Lafayette, Platte and Clay to vote illegally for the day. They elected a pro-slavery government coined the “Bogus Legislature.”
One enterprising young man, Dr. John Thomas Barton (1830-1896) joined a group of mostly pro-slavery settlers to form a town company in 1857 that was recognized by the Bogus Legislature. In addition to Dr. Barton, the town company consisted of Charles A. Osgood, Albert Gallatin Boone, R.B. Finley, William Fisher, Jr. and Henry W. Jones.
Dr. Barton, a Virginian by birth, was described as “a man of fine personal appearance, an accomplished physician, with a learning head and good judgement, and altogether a person who would attain more than ordinary local importance in any community.” By 20 years old, Barton finished up medical school in Pennsylvania and joined his parents and siblings in Missouri.
He was assigned as a physician and surgeon to the Shawnee.
While deciding where to place a town, Dr. Barton looked for a central location in Johnson County, Kan., established in 1855. With him was a Shawnee Indian named Dave Daugherty who was hired to carry the chains needed for platting “and in case of necessity [Dave] could act as interpreter.”
Dr. Barton pointed toward the future town site, and “Dave straightened himself up – took one good look- gave a few of his Indian grunts and then exclaimed in Shawnee, ‘O-la-the,’ which in the Indian language means ‘beautiful.’”
Thus, the name of the town site was coined “Olathe.”
Founders Charles A. Osgood and Dr. Barton built a frame house, 12×14, “of rough lumber hauled from the Kaw River” on the north side of the town square that served various functions, including a post office.
In the summer of 1857, John Polk Campbell, an attorney from Tennessee, bought interest in the Olathe Town Company and acted as the town’s first lawyer and judge. The first marriage in Johnson County, Kan. was performed by Campbell and occurred between founder Charles Osgood and Caroline Roberts in June 1857.
Dr. Barton was an enterprising man with connections. Before land claims available were formally filed, Dr. Barton knew about them. A pro-slavery surveyor from Jackson County, Mo. named Lott Coffman (1815-1880) who surveyed and platted the town of New Santa Fe was also involved in early surveys of Johnson County.
Coffman would alert Dr. Barton of what lands would be for sale before anyone else knew. Dr. Barton’s business partner, Edwin Nash, a man of “Yankee proclivities” would show what parcels were available to potential buyers. Then, Dr. Barton would tend to the paperwork. For between $10 and $25, squatters could get a jump start on purchasing their lands in Johnson County.
Another early settler was Jonathan Millikan (1827-1917). Born in Indiana, Jonathan came to the area in Spring 1857. He built the first substantial frame home in Olathe on Poplar Street and brought the first team of horses to the town. In 1858, he married Emily Whittier, and he stayed in the town until his death. He would later offer “a box of good cigars to any man who settled in Olathe before he did.”
Another early settler was James Beatty Mahaffie (1817-1908). He along with his wife, Lucinda and children arrived in 1857 from Indiana. They established a 340-acre farm on the Westport route of the Santa Fe Trail. They served travelers along the Santa Fe Trail, and by 1864, their farm was used by the Barlow, Sanderson and Company Stagecoach Line as a stop.
Today, 20 acres of their farm along with their stone house (finished in 1865) is now operated by the City of Olathe as a museum and historic site.
In March 1858, Pat Cosgrove (1830-1916), born in Ireland, was elected the first sheriff of Johnson County. These early appointments were made, for the most part, by pro-slavery settlers “and the free state men made no attempt to elect officers.”
When antislavery politician Jim Lane made a fiery speech in DeSoto, the sheriff Pat Cosgrove was present. Early Johnson County historian Ed Blair wrote in 1915 that “Lane called him a border ruffian and a thief and everything mean you could think of.” Irate, Sheriff Cosgrove went to confront him the next day. When he caught up with him, Lane balked at him and said, “Pat, don’t you know I was a making a speech? Come and let’s have a drink.”
They did.
Slowly but surely, the dusty town of Olathe was settled by men from all over the country. In 1858, a blacksmith shop was erected. The first newspaper, the Olathe Herald, was established in 1859 and a photography studio opened. A drug store, a saloon, a bakery and mercantile shops all built of wood popped up in the settlement, and in October 1859, Olathe was named the county seat.
Despite all these advances in Olathe, the population of the town was only 341 in 1860, and early historian Ed Blair proclaimed, “Public amenities did not exist, and streets were left to the imagination.”
The Civil War Era and the Sacking of Olathe
The early days of Olathe were surprisingly peaceful, likely due to the pro-slavery tendencies of the town. Because the early residents shared the same political leanings as their border ruffian neighbors in Missouri, they were relatively safe.
Kansas was admitted as a state in January 1861, and the climate drastically changed.
The influx of new settlers changed the political future of Olathe, and many of the early settlers of the town, including Sheriff Pat Cosgrove, enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War.
Olathe founder Dr. Barton didn’t stick around to see his town prosper, and his disappearance had Olathe residents scratching their heads.
In about 1860, Dr. John Barton was set to marry 20-year-old Josephine Wilkinson. The date was set, but two days before the wedding, Barton sold off all of his land and disappeared from Olathe for good. According to the 1874 Atlas of Johnson County, “The matter furnished the usual nine days’ talk for the town, but the mystery was never solved.” The atlas went on to state that he was a surgeon in the Confederate Army and was at Independence, Mo. with General Sterling Price.
“[Barton] did not visit Olathe, however, and his career was unknown,” the atlas reported.
This is only partially true; Dr. Barton ended up moving to Texas and enlisted in the Confederate Army as an assistant surgeon where he served near Galveston. He stayed in Texas until the 1880s when he moved to Kansas City for a period of time. He was then “confined in the Missouri insane asylum” in Fulton where he died in 1894. He never married.
By the fall of 1861, the political leanings drastically changed across the county, and all Republicans were elected to offices. In addition, the population also allegedly shifted with only 15 people in the 1860 census still residing in Olathe just a year later.
During the Civil War, some Southern sympathizers living in Missouri didn’t comfortably “fall” into the Confederate ranks; their ideals, ethics and morals were more questionable. In the southern Jackson County area, many families merged themselves into a much, much deeper connection that grew under the principles of a notorious leader.
These families, many living minutes from the border between a free and slave state, followed, protected and praised an Ohio-born school teacher named William Clarke Quantrill (1837-1865). His group of pro-slavery border ruffians became known as Quantrill’s Raiders, and they wreaked havoc along the border, storming into Kansas to enact violence against anyone who got in their way.
In March 1862, the Union Army was closing in on Quantrill and his men near Red Bridge at the David Tate farm. A skirmish ensued when Union troops closed in on about 25 to 30 of Quantrill’s men. Quantrill got away, but they captured one of his early recruits, Perry Hoy.
In late July 1862, Quantrill read in the newspaper, “A member of Quantrill’s band, named Hoy, was shot at Fort Leavenworth last Monday, having been found guilty of the charges of bridge-burning, accessory to a murder, and treason.”
William Quantrill vowed to avenge this execution of Perry Hoy, and he set his sights on Olathe, Kan. where a large recruitment of Union officers was underway.
On September 6, 1862, about 140 of Quantrill’s Raiders rode into Olathe. While about six miles east of Olathe near current-day 127th and Nall Ave., the bushwhackers stopped at the David M. Williams farm where his son-in-law Jacob Franklin “Frank” Cook, 26, was sleeping for the night. Frank had enlisted in the 12th Kansas less than a month earlier.
Frank was taken prisoner and was found later in a ravine with two bullet holes to the chest and a crushed skull.
As they approached the town, Jonathan and Emily Millikan were lying in bed fast asleep when they both woke up briefly when they heard shots fired.
“[We] didn’t think anything of it as there was lots of shooting going on in those days,” Jonathan recalled.
It wasn’t until the next morning that a neighbor found John Judy, 28, and his brother, James, 17, shot dead on the prairie east of town – on the edge of the Millikan farm. Both brothers had just enlisted in the 12th Kansas.
At about midnight, Quantrill’s gang rode into Olathe and found a good crowd of citizens at a saloon on the east side of the square. As they approached on horseback, Olathe resident Jiles Milhoan turned to his friends and said, “Boy’s, them’s bushwhackers.”
He tried to mount his horse and was quickly ordered to stop.
Hiram Blanchard, 21, was in town visiting from Spring Hill. He stepped out of the saloon, untied his horse from a post and began to mount when “the bushwhackers shot him through the head.”
Quantrill and his men spread quickly throughout the town, entering all houses and bringing men to the public square. Some recruits from the 12th Kansas were inside a building on the square sleeping. There, Philip Wiggins, 41, grabbed a bushwhacker by the throat and tried to take the man’s gun away. Suddenly, “he was shot through the head and instantly killed.”
Another recruit named Josiah Skinner, about 25 years old, was sound asleep on the floor, and after a bushwhacker tried to shake him awake, he shot him and sarcastically said, “Lay there if you won’t get up.” He died several days later of his injuries.
After men were dragged into the town square, they separated the 12th Kansas recruits, had them undress down to their underwear and marched them out of town. Everyone was concerned they’d be killed, but as they marched toward Spring Hill, they were released.
Jonathan Millikan recalled the destruction of the town. “The town was badly riddled. Most of the windows had been broken, and many of the doors smashed in.” Fifty horses and mules were taken from area residents along with food, furniture, blankets and other valuables.
The two newspapers at the time, The Olathe Herald and Olathe Mirror, were ransacked “and their contents demolished.” The only business that was left unmolested was a hotel run by the parents of one of the bushwhackers riding with Quantrill.
While examining the destruction of Olathe the next day, Jonathan Millikin recovered a small flag Quantrill’s Raiders dropped on the southeast corner of the town. It was a prized possession of his until it was presented to the Kansas State Historical Society where it remains in their collection.
The event had long-lasting effects on Olathe; many of the citizens felt unsafe and moved away. In addition, over half the buildings standing in 1861 were moved or destroyed by the close of the war.
Olathe’s Ongoing Importance
By the close of the war in 1865, the total population of all of Johnson County clocked in at just over 6,000.
Compare that to the most recent census data where over 607,000 people now call Johnson County home.
After the Civil War, Olathe transitioned from a war-torn frontier town to a growing community marked by railroad development, increasing population, and economic stability. While still influenced by its violent pre-war and wartime experiences, the town embraced its role as a key part of the expanding American West.
The town was able to remain a stop on the Santa Fe Trail, and when the railroad reached Olathe in 1868, the economy received a much-needed boost. Olathe’s population may have suffered during the Civil War, but by 1870, just over 2,000 residents called this place home.
Today, Olathe and its surrounding area, much increased since the original town plat, is the home to over 149,000 people.
To think that its origins are linked to proslavery men and a Shawnee word is quite ironic, as many of those founders quickly found they didn’t match the evolving political landscape and the Shawnee were victims (yet again) to removal.
Despite these early challenges, Olathe, Kan. has survived and thrived on the western frontier – a town which blossomed into a central hub of the most populated county in the entire state.