Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Huron Kansas.

Huron Kansas 1867.
 
Huron a small place in Atchison County, containing a store, blacksmith shop, physician and post office and a population of 80.
 
Huron Post Office.
 
Huron Post office opened December 14, 1857 and ran to May 23, 1992.
 
Business men of Huron, 1867.
 
J. Batsil, Physician.
D. Watson, Blacksmith.
B. F. White, General Store and Post Master.

Hurron Kansas 1883.

History And Biographical Sketches.
http://www.kancoll.org/books/cutler/atchison/atchison-co-p33.html#LANCASTER

Business men who used Huron as their P. O., address as of 1903.

Dr. C. J. Cole, Physician, came to county 1900.
The Huron Times ( News Paper ) Huron.
Huron State Bank, Ed Purdue Pres., John Swarte Vice. Pres., Cashier C. McClain.
J. W. Louthian, Farmer, came to county 1873.
William Matthias, Farmer and Breeder Standard Short Horn Cattle, came to county 1877.
 
Huron Kansas 1912.

Huron, the fourth largest town in Atchison county, is located near the northern boundary on the Missouri Pacific R. R. 16 miles north-  west of Atchison, the county seat. The immediate site and vicinity was owned by D. R. Anthony (q. v.) of Leavenworth, who donated the railroad company 20 acres of land and the right-of-way for a mile.   Within six weeks after the town was surveyed and named five dwellings had been completed or were under way ; stores were erected; the village was well started toward prosperity; a postoffice was established within the year and before the close of 1882 there were at least 50 houses in the town. Two churches were built before 1883, one by the Baptists, the other by the Presbyterians, on ground donated by Col. Anthony.  Huron soon became an important shipping and supply town, and its growth has been steady. At the present time it has good schools, banking facilities, a money order postofifice, several general stores, a cksmith shop, lumber yard, hardware and implement house, express and telegraph offices, etc. In 1910 the population was 300.

Huron History as stated in 1916.
 
Huron is located on the Omaha branch of the Missouri Pacific railway, in Lancaster township, seventeen miles northwest of Atchison. The townsite was originally the property of Col. D. R. Anthony, of Leavenworth. Mr. Anthony donated the railroad company twenty acres of land and the right of way for one mile. The surveys were made and the town named  and platted on May 18, 1882. Within six weeks after completion of the surveys five dwellings were erected and the business interests of the town were well represented. W. D. Starr was the first postmaster, and by the end of the first year there were over fifty dwellings in the town, and among the first buildings to be erected were the Presbyterian and Baptist churches.

Colonel Anthony donated lots upon which to build the churches. J. D. Carpenter opened the first hotel in Huron. Mr. Carpenter came to Kansas in 1874 and located on a farm near Huron, and when the town was organized he moved there and opened his hotel. W. G. Rucker was one of the early lumber dealers of Huron. He came from Corning, where he was engaged in the general merchandise business, and moved to Huron when the town was platted. Capt. George W. Stabler, for many years a resident of Huron, was one of the prominent politicians and characters of the county. He was bom at Stablersville, Baltimore county, Maryland, in 1839, where his ancestors had lived for over 200 years. He moved to Kansas in 1858, settling in Lancaster township. He enlisted as a private in Company D, Second Kansas infantry, in 1861, for 100 days, and at the expiration of that time he re-enlisted in the Second Kansas calvary: was made sergeant and was mustered out in 1865 and returned to his farm, subsequently moving to Huron. In 1866 he was elected to the legislature, and in 187 1 and 1872 served as deputy United States marshal. He had been justice of the peace, at the time of his death, a few years ago, for over twenty years.

Old Huron was the original settlement near the present townsite of Huron, and was an important trading point for many years prior to the establishment of the new townsite following the laying of the railroad to Omaha. There were many early settlers of importance in and around Huron, among whom was Capt. Robert White. Captain White came to Kansas in
1857 and bought the squatter rights of Charles Morgan and preempted a quarter section of land in Lancaster township, near Huron.

The birth of the first white child in Atchison county, of which there is any record, occurreil in Lancaster township. The child was ]\Iiss Frances Miller, who was born May 9, 1855. Her father was the late Daniel Miller, an Ohioan by birth, and lived near DeKalb, Mo., in 1841. In 1854 he looked over northeastern Kansas and settled on Independence creek, twelve miles north of Atchison, early in 1855, near the northeastern corner of Lancaster township. Mr. Miller sold his quarter section in 1838, after he had proven up on it, to Thomas Butcher, a new arrival in Kansas from Brownville, Pa., for $3,000. Mr. Btitcher built a flouring mill on thi's land, which was run by water from Independence creek. Butclier subsequently sold the plant to A. T- Evans, who ran it as a "custom mill" until August, 1865, when it was destroyed by high water, caused by heavy rains.

Samuel Wymore, for whom Wymore, Nebraska was named, was a resident of Lancaster township, near Huron, in the fifties and early sixties, and ran a sawmill by horse power, about three miles north of Lancaster, in 1858. Air. Wymore sold his first bill of lumber to Captain Robert White for $100 in gold, and at that time it was more money than Wymore had
ever seen at one time, and he was so nervous during the following night that he could not sleep and continually stirred the fire in the stove so that he could count the money from the light that it made more was uneducated. He could neither read nor write, and he was said to have been worth over $150,000 before 1875.

Isaac E. Kelly, a young man from Pennsylvania, taught one of the first schools hi Lancaster township, in one of the settlers' preemption cabin, near Eden postoffice in i860. He went to war in 1861 and marched with Sherman to the Sea.

The first mowing machine in Atchison county was brought to Icancater township, two miles west of where Huron now is, by Joel Hiatt, in 1859, who sold it to Capt. Roljert White, who cut hay with it several seasons. The machine was a Ball, and a crude affair. The first reaper to harvest grain in the county was owned liy the late I. J. Cloyes. who also lived in
Lancaster township, not many miles from Huron. Mr. Cloyes bought the reaper in the early sixties. The grain was raked off by a man lashed to a post on a platfomi four or fi\-e feet to the rear of the cycle. This reaper was a Buckeye machine, and was sold by J. E. W'agner, the hardware merchant of Atchison.

The forty acre tract of land upon which the home of Edward Perdue stands, a few miles east of Huron, was traded for a mowing machine by the owner in 1865.

Bethel church, located southwest of Huron, is supposed to be the oldest church in the county, outside of Atchison. It was built by the Methodist Episcopal church (South), about 1870, and is still in use in 1915.

Thus it will be seen that Huron is located in the midst of a very interesting part of Atchison county, and while the town did not reach the proportions that its original promoters had hoped for it, it is one of the good towns of the county. The following are the business houses in Huron in 1915:

J. ]M. Delany, General merchandise.

E. P. Perry, General merchandise.

\\'. E. English, Hardware, implements and furniture.

H. T. Harrison, Grocer.

Dr. Wiley Jones, Diaig store.

John L. Snavh,  Restaurant and postmaster.

Irs. Aha Wilson, Hotel.

C. E. ]\Iathew, Lumber.

Loren Horton, Meat market.

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