2023 Fall Newsletter

KANSAS MUD Roads were a lot different back in the mid - 1800s. No two- lane blacktop, four lane paved, or turnpikes. The only thing a horse could pull it’s wagon over was grass, dirt, or in rainy weather—MUD. If you were lucky enough to have grass in your yard, you may not have had such a problem unless you had bare ground for a garden. This aspect of life seemed to affect John James Ingalls so much that he wrote a letter to his fa ther about this very thing. Ingalls was a Kansas sena tor from 1873 to 1891. The following is his letter. “The worst feature here in Kansas is the mud. It is incomparable; in the mud line it is perfect triumph slippery as lard, adhesive as tar, cumulative as a mi ser’s gold, and treacherous as hope, it forms a com pound unique and peculiar that defies description. There are three colors (black, red, and clay), differing in no respect except chromatically. It sticketh closer than a brother, entering every crevice, and then accu PAOLA’S MILITARY POST This U.S. Army Post was located in Miami County. It was located in the area of what is now College and Tow er St. and it was established around December 1861. It was one of the more important posts for the union because it was established along the Kansas-Missouri border during the Civil War. In 1863, it was designated a district headquarters, but later in December 1864, it was moved to a sub-district headquarters. This came about because the district headquarters was moved to Lawrence, Kansas. The post always had some im portance because it was on the military road that ran through Paola from Fort Leavenworth to Fort Gibson. Some of the past commanders were Lieut. Col. Wil liam R. Judson, Major Thomas Kennedy, Col. Edward Lynde, and others including Col. Thomas Moonlight. During the Civil War the number of troops varied sev eral times at the post. It was temporarily abandoned at one time and that resulted in a raid by some Con federate guerillas in 1863. This happened the same day that William Quantrill led his men on a raid to Lawrence. The few troops that were at the post heard that Quantrill was then moving south towards Paola so they moved into Paola to defend the town. With nobody at the post, William T. Anderson (later named “Bloody Bill Anderson”) took some men into the post to steal supplies as it was well stocked.

Vincent Thorpe

mulating in varied laminae and strata, many shaped and many colored, that can neither be kicked off nor scraped off, nor in any way avoided. It dries as hard as a mortar wall. A brush glides over it as it would a lapstone or the Farnese Hercules, leaving a hammer and an old case-knife the only resource. The usual method of cleaning boots here is to take them by the straps and bang them against a brick wall. It is quite efficacious, the only objection being that would soon bury the house as effectually as Vesuvius did the city of Pompeii. I have an idea that they (the boots) might be put in a large vat and boiled with great success, the notion having been suggested to me by the fact that our drinking water here looks and tastes very much as if the operation had been performed in it.” Kansas has a state bird (meadowlark), state flow er (sunflower), state tree (cottonwood), state insect (honey bee), and believe it or not a state soil (Harney silt loam). This must be the MUD. In 1864 Confederate Maj. Gen. Sterling Price was raiding Missouri and that caused Paola’s Post to get more active. Men were moved in and out of the post during the month of October. It was feared that Price’s army would raid the post because it had con siderable amount of supplies. When Price was de feated at the Battle of Westport he retreated south along the Kansas-Missouri border and passed within 10 miles of Paola. The post still had a few troops to defend the area, but they would have been no match for Price if he would have come to Paola. During the remainder of the Civil War, the post had usually one to three companies of soldiers. In August or September of 1865, the post was deacti vated because the Confederate guerrillas finally laid down their arms the previous June 1865.

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