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St. Patrick's Church The Rise and Fall of Sumner Old Sumner

St. Patrick's Catholic Parish

Mt. Pleasant, Atchison County, Kansas

The following is taken from a clipping found at the Kansas Historical Library, Topeka, Kansas, in a book of clippings about Catholic Churches in Kansas. This one does not give the name of the newspaper where it was published, but the date is Spring, 1947.

40 Families; mostly Irish, constituted St. Patrick's parish of Mt. Pleasant, South Atchison, when the rock church was built in 1866. The church is still in use, and the pastor, Father Ambrose Keating, O.S.B., lives in the rectory. The church replaced an old log structure (20 x 30 feet) which served for several years as both a church and school.

In the spring of 1857 Benedictine monks were sent West by their American founder, Abbot Boniface Wimmer, O.S. B., to establish a priority in the Eastern part of Kansas. They settled in the hills of Doniphan and from there founded and attended the missions in Doniphan, Atchison, Brown, Nemaha and Jefferson counties. Among the very first parishes founded by these pioneer Benedictines was St. Patrick's, established by Father Augustine Wirth, O.S. B., near Mt. Pleasant in Walnut township, about seven miles directly south of Atchison. This district was known as Mt. Pleasant because its post office was in the little village two miles to the southwest, which had been founded by the Mormons in the early '40's. In 1858 the Catholic population of the settlement known as St. Patrick's consisted of some 30 Irish families, for the most part emigrants from Philadelphia and Baltimore.

Father Augustine's first visit to St. Patrick's was a memorable one. He came all the way from Doniphan, a distance of about 14 miles, over the prairies and through dense timber on foot. The few Catholic settlers decided that he must not walk back or again venture the distance on foot. After the services they quietly collected money to pay for a horse, a saddle, and a bridle. They then purchased the outfit from a man in the neighborhood, brought it to Father Augustine, and said: "Father, this pony, saddle, and bridle are yours; accept them as a small token of our appreciation for your sacrifice in our behalf. Hereafter you must ride when you come to us for divine service."

Father Augustine visited the Mt. Pleasant district about once a month in the fall of 1857 and very often in the two succeeding years. Occasionally Father Edmund Langefelder, O.S.B., took his place. Mass was said in the humble log cabins of Catholic settlers, usually in the homes of John Knowles, Owen Grady (now the J.J. Weinmann place), Ned Cotter (now the M.F. Owens place), Bernard Lee, James McArdle, and others.

The first marriage on records was that of James Barry and Catherine Hennessy on May 9, 1858, in the home of Edward Cotter. The first Baptism on records was that of Mary Honorah Clare on Sept 28, 1858. That same year the following were also baptized: John Durkin, Elizabeth Anna Clare, Patrick Dorrigan, Margaret Kinney, and Martha Sabina Cotter.



'Balloon Church' Blows Away

Late in the fall of 1859 Father Augustine suggested the erection of a small church, and the proposal met with the approval of his humble flock. Within a few months the congregation erected out of native lumber the long and narrow building that later came to be known as the "Balloon church." A windstorm that destroyed Sumner, Kansas, in June 1860, also razed St. Patrick's first church. People said: "Our church went up like a balloon." Mass was said in private homes again until the summer of 1861, when a log church was built on the old church site.

The log church was 20 by 20 feet. In the winter of 1860-1861 men of the parish had cut the timbers from the best trees on their places and hauled them to the church site. Early in the spring they came with axe and saw to prepare the logs for the building; others who knew the art of log construction built the church. The blessing of the new church was a very simple ceremony. Father Augustine, vested in alb and stole, sprinkled the walls inside and out with holy water and then invited the people to come in for Mass. This building served the faithful as church and school until the present rock church was erected in 1866. The old church then became a district school.

The early settlers who contributed labor, material, and money to the erection of the first two churches were Owen Grady, John Cotter, Dan Dorrigan, William Hassit, Edward Cotter, Thomas Kinney, John Glancy, Bernard Lee, Big and Little Michael Hegarty, Daniel Hanley, Patrick Hegarty, Patrick Manix, Patrick Murphy, Pat Quirk, William Meany, John Knowles, Jeremiah Flynn, John Hannahan, James McArdle, Peter Limney, Nicholas Greiner, John Weber, Patrick Dirkin, James McCarroll, James Barry, and Peter Penning. The last two persons were residing in Sumner. There were 40 families, mostly Irish, in the parish in 1864.

In 1859 the Benedictines moved their headquarters to Atchison. The community had been reinforced with young priests from the mother-house in Pennsylvania, and St. Patrick's was attended at different times by the following priests until the year 1865; Fathers Edmund Langenfelder, Casimir Seitz, Phillip Vogt, Emmanuel Hartig, Tomas Bartl, and Severin Gross. Two secular priests, Fathers Koening and Koch, who were staying in Atchison awaiting orders from their Bishop, also attended St. Patrick's on several occasions.

In the early fall of 1865 Father Timothy Luber, O.S.B., was appointed first regular pastor of St. Patrick's church. He soon saw that the log church was too small. The membership of the parish had grown so that there was hardly seating room for the women and children and men had to remain outside and hear Mass through the window.

In a meeting of the men of the parish it was decided to build a permanent rock church. Good building stone was near at hand, and there were excellent stonemasons among the members of the parish. There was some division of opinion as to the location of the church. Some wished to build on the Jacob Wienmann place, and others favored the old McNally place. Finally Father Augustine, superior of the Atchison priory, came out, stepped off the location for the corners of the church, and ordered excavation begun on the foundation, 28 by 80 feet.

The foundation was finished before winter, and the walls were begun in the spring. The stonework was let to Edward McCourt for his bid of $3.25 per perch in the wall. The entire building contains about 950 perches. By the fall of 1855 the walls were completed. Thomas Wallace from Atchison constructed the roof of native lumber. Although the stone walls were two feet thick and only 20 feet high, no one would venture to go up to fasten the rafters. Finally three prominent Irishmen--Patrick Durkin, Patrick Quirk, and a helper--having taken out life insurance from Father Timothy, climbed up and fastened the rafters while Contractor Wallace remained on "terra firma" and sighted the green timbers. The town was covered temporarily with boards and left unfinished until its completion in 1871 by Jack Wagner and Peter Weins. The circular window above the altar, the only one with art glass, was donated by the family of Michael Glancy.

Though the new church was under roof, it was without any interior finishings. Yet it was necessary to use it for divine services because the old log church could not contain the congregation. Consequently the church had to be dedicated. Because Bishop Miege was unable to come for the blessing, Father Augustine, assisted by Father Timothy and another priest from Atchison, blessed the new church on Dec. 8, 1866. The occasion was a grand event, and old settlers speak of it with considerable enthusiasm. Father Augustine preached the sermon and Father Timothy took up a big collection. Some three years later, Bishop Miege solemnly dedicated the church and at the same time blessed the cemetery.

St. Patrick's church is 28 by 80 feet inside and 25 feet form floor to center of ceiling. It has a spire measuring 45 feet from the ground; ten large Gothic windows, one circular window over the high altar, a gallery extending 18 feet, a vestibule six by eight feet, and a basement 20 by 20 feet. Through 45 persons subscribed $2,308, there was debt of some $3,000 on the new church. Money had to be borrowed at 10 and 12 per cent interest.

In these pioneer days St. Patrick's congregation had no resident pastor, and services were held only on certain Sundays. It was only in the early '80's that the people began to have Mass on all Sundays and holy days. Before 1869 no parish records were kept at St. Patrick's. Baptisms, marriages, funerals, and confirmations ere entered in the books of St. Benedict's parish, Atchison. These early records, however, are now entered in the registers of St. Patrick's parish.

The property belonging to St. Patrick's consist of 20 acres. The first seven acres were donated to Father Augustine by Bernard Lee. The deed was made in Bishop Miege's name and filed away in the archives of the Leavenworth Chancery. Jeremiah Flynn donated three acres for the cemetery. Later Phillip Knowles gave five acres, and about the same time Edward Cotter donated five acres.

The original burying ground for the deceased pioneers of St. Patrick's and vicinity was the southeast corner of what is at present the district school lot. Bryant McCourt, John Hannahan, and others from Atchison were interred there. This was the Catholic cemetery for Atchison county before St. Benedict's cemetery north of Atchison was laid out. In the early '60's Father Augustine received a donation on one acre from Jeremiah Flynn ("Jerrie"s Acre")-a narrow strip of land extending from the northeast corner of his farm several rods farther south than the present cemetery. Some years later two more acres were donated by the same benefactor, and Father Timothy, assisted by Jeremaiah Flynn and W. S. Purcell, surveyed and staked off the present cemetery. The remains of most of the deceased buried in the school lot were transferred to the new cemetery soon after.

In the summer of 1868 Father Timothy announced that a big debt was hanging over the congregation at a heavy rate of interest and that he must hold a fair to raise the interest. The proposition wad taken up by the people with lively enthusiasm. When the date of the fair arrived the men pitched a large tent, erected seats, bowling allies, shooting galleries, etc., and the women came with baskets filled all manner of eatables. For miles around the people came to have a grand old time. That fair, the first in the parish's history, netted the surprising sum of $800.

In the fall of 1875, St. Patrick's had it first mission. The missionaries were two Benedictines from Atchison, Fathers Peter Kassens and Timothy Luber. The services lasted Sunday to Sunday, and at the end the entire congregation had received the sacraments and had been enrolled in the Scapular Society of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. The people were undecided with of the fathers was the better preacher. "Father Timothy," they said, drove home his points, but Father Peter was the more interesting."

THE RISE AND FALL OF SUMNER



Excerpted from "Collections of the Kansas State Historical Society, 1911-1912", Edited by Geo. W. Martin, Secretary. Vol XII., State Printing Office, Topeka, Kansas 1912, pages 434-437.

submitted by Teresa Lindquist (merope@radix.net); (copyright) 2001 by Teresa Lindquist

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KSGENWEB INTERNET GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In keeping with the KSGenWeb policy of providing free information on the Internet, this data may be used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. These electronic pages cannot be reproduced in any format for profit or other gain. Copying of the files within by non-commercial individuals and libraries is encouraged. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author.

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THE RISE AND FALL OF SUMNER.(15)



Three miles south of Atchison, Kan., is the site of a dead city, whose streets once were filled with the clamor of busy traffic and echoed to the tread of thousands of oxen and mules that in the pioneer days of the Great West transported the products of the East across the Great American Desert to the Rocky Mountains. It was a city in which for a few years twenty-five hundred men and women and children lived and labored and loved, in which many lofty aspirations were born, and in which several young men began careers that became historical.


This city was located on what the early French voyagers called the "Grand Detour" of the Missouri river. No more rugged and picturesque site for a city or one more inaccessible and with more unpropitious environments could have been selected. It was literally built in and on the everlasting hills, covered with a primeval forest so dense that the shadows chased the sunbeams away. It sprang into existence so suddenly and imperceptibly it might almost have been considered a creation of the magician's wand. It was named Sumner in honor of the great Massachusetts senator. Its official motto was "Pro lege et grege" (for the law and the people).

This would, in the light of subsequent events, have been more suggestive:


"I shall fall Like a bright exhalation in the evening."


Sumner's first citizens came mostly from Massachusetts, and were imbued with the spirit of creed and cant, self-reliance and fanaticism that could have been born only on Plymouth Rock. They had come to the frontier to make Kansas a free state and to build a city, within whose walls all previous conditions of slavery should be disregarded and where all men born should be regarded equal. The time--1856--was auspicious. Kansas was both a great political and military battle-field, upon which the question of the institution of slavery was to be settled for all time.


The growth of Sumner was phenomenal. A lithograph printed in 1857 shows streets of stately buildings, imposing seats of learning, church spires that pierced the clouds, elegant hotels and theaters, the river full of floating palaces, its levee lined with bales and barrels of merchandise, and the white smoke from numerous factories hanging over the city like a banner of peace and prosperity. To one who in that day approached Sumner from the east and saw it across the river, which like a burnished mirror reflected its glories, it did indeed present an imposing aspect.


One day the steamboat Duncan S. Carter landed at Sumner. On its hurricane deck was John J. Ingalls, then only twenty-four years old. As his eye swept the horizon his prophetic soul uttered these words: "Behold the home of the future senator from Kansas." Here the young college graduate, who since that day became the senator from Kansas, lived and dreamed until Sumner's star had set and Atchison's sun had risen, and then he moved to Atchison, bringing with him Sumner's official seal and the key to his hotel.


Here lived that afterwards brilliant author and journalist, Albert D. Richardson, whose tragic death some years ago in the counting room of the New York Tribune is well remembered. His "Beyond the Mississippi" is to this day the most fascinating account ever written of the
boundless We t [sic].


Here lived the nine-year-old Minnie Hauk, who was one day to become a renowned prima donna and charm two continents with her voice, and who was to wed the Count Wartegg. Minnie was born in poverty and cradled in adversity. Her mother was a poor washerwoman in Sumner.


Here lived John E. Remsburg, the now noted author, lecturer and freethinker. Mr. Remsburg has probably delivered more lectures in the last thirty years than any man in America. He is now the leader of the Free-thought Federation of America.


Here Walter A. Wood, the big manufacturer of agricultural implements, lived and made and mended wagons. Here Lovejoy, "the Yankee preacher," preached and prayed. Here lived "Brother" and "Sister" Newcomb, from whom has descended a long line of zealous and eminent
Methodists. Here was born Paul Hull, the well-known Chicago journalist.


And Sumner was the city that the Rev. Pardee Butler lifted up his hands and blessed and prophesied would grow big and wax fat when the "upper landing" would sleep in a dishonored and forgotten grave, as he floated by it on his raft, clad in tar and feathers. The "upper landing" was the opprobrious title conferred by Sumner upon Atchison. The two towns were bitter enemies. Sumner was "abolitionist"; Atchison was "border ruffian." In Atchison the "nigger" was a slave; in Sumner he was a fetich. It was in Atchison that the "abolition preacher," Pardee Butler, was tarred and feathered and set adrift on a raft in the river. He survived the tortures of his coat of degradation and the "chuck-holes" of the Missouri river and lived to become a prohibition fanatic and a Democratic presidential elector. (16)


Jonathan Lang. alias "Shang" the hero of Senator Ingalls' "Catfish Aristocracy," and the "last mayor of Sumner," lived and died in Sumner. When all his lovely companions had faded and gone "Shang" still pined on the stem. The senator's description of this type of a vanished race is unique:


"To the most minute observer his age was a question of the gravest doubt. He might have been thirty; he might have been a century, with no violation of the probabilities. His hair was a sandy sorrel, something like a Rembrandt interior, and strayed around his freckled scalp like the top layer of a hayrick in a tornado. His eyes were two ulcers, half filled with pale-blue starch, A thin, sharp nose projected above a lipless mouth that seemed always upon the point of breaking into the most grievous lamentations, and never opened save to take whisky and tobacco in and let oaths and saliva out. A long, slender neck, yellow and wrinkled after the manner of a lizard's belly, bore this dome of thought upon its summit, itself projecting from a miscellaneous assortment of gent's furnishing goods, which covered a frame of unearthly longitude and unspeakable emaciation. Thorns and thongs supplied the place of buttons upon the costume of this Brummel of the bottom, coarsely patched beyond recognition of the original fabric. The coat had been constructed for a giant, the pants for a pigmy. They were too long in the waist and too short in the leg, and flapped loosely around his shrunk shanks high above the point where his fearful feet were partially concealed by mismatched shoes that permitted his great toes to peer from their gaping integuments, like the heads of two snakes of a novel species and uncommon fetor.

This princely phenomenon was topped with a hat which had neither band nor brim nor crown:


"If that could shape be called which shape had none'."


"His voice was high, shrill and querulous, and his manner an odd mixture of fawning servility and apprehensive effrontery at the sight of a damned Yankee abolitionist,' whom he hated and feared next to a negro who was not a slave."


The only error in the senator's description of "Shang" is that "Shang" was "abolitionist" himself, and "fit to free the nigger."


"Shang" continued to live in Sumner until every house, save his miserable hut, had vanished like the baseless fabric of a vision. He claimed and was proud of the title, "the last mayor of Sumner." He died a few years ago, and a little later lightning struck his cabin and it was devoured by flames. And thus passed away the last relic of Sumner.


In the flood tide of Sumner s prosperity, 1856 to 1859--for before that it was nothing, after that nothing--it had ambition to become the county seat of the newly organized county of Atchison. J. P. Wheeler, president of the Sumner Town Company, was a member of the lower house of the territorial legislature, and he "logrolled" a bill through that body conferring upon Sumner the title of county seat, but the Atchison "gang" finally succeeded in getting the bill killed in the senate. Subsequently==October, 1858--there was an election to settle the vexed question of a county seat. Atchison won; Sumner lost.


About this time Atchison secured its first railroad. The smoke from the locomotive engines drifted to Sumner and enveloped it like a pall. The decadence was at hand, and Sumner's race to extinction and oblivion was rapid. One day there was an exodus of citizens; the houses were torn down and the timbers thereof carted away, and foundation stones were dug up and carried hence. Successive summers' rains and winters' snows furrowed streets and alleys beyond recognition and filled foundation excavations to the level, and ere long a tangled mass of briers and brambles hid away the last vestige of the once busy, ambitious city. The forest, again unvexed by ax or saw, asserted his dominion once more, and to-day, beneath the shadow cast by mighty oaks and sighing cottonwoods, Sumner lies dead and forgotten.

===

NOTE 15.--This article was written by H. Clay Park, an old citizen of Atchison. Mr. Park was editor and part owner of the Atchison Patriot from 1875 to 1890.

NOTE 16.--Rev. Pardee Butler was placed on a raft at Atchison, August 17, 1855, branded on the forehead with the letter R [rogue] in black paint, and sent down the river. A member of the mob, one Ira Norris, said to Mr. Butler: "N-e-ow, Mr. Butler, I want to advise you as a friend, and for your own good--when you get away, just keep away." In Mr. Butler's own words, "We parted under a mutual pledge: I pledged myself that if my life was spared I would come back to Atchison, and they pledged themselves that if I did come back they would hang me." True to his word. he returned to Atchison in November, 1855, but was not molested in any way. In April of the following year he came back again, however, and was at once seized by a mob, and this time tarred and feathered. He was stripped to the waist, his body covered with a coat of tar, and, for lack of feathers, cotton was applied. He was then put into his buggy, his clothes tossed in beside him, and again with threats of hanging if he returned, he was allowed to depart.


The raft on which Mr. Butler was sent down the river was made of two logs; one sound, the other rotten. At the end of the raft a small sapling was placed, from which floated a flag bearing this inscription around a picture of a white man riding at full gallop, on horseback, with a negro behind him: "Greeley to the rescue; I have a nigger. The Rev. Mr. Butler, agent for the underground railroad." The Historical Society has a facsimile of this flag in its museum; the original is owned by the Butler family.


OLD SUMNER


Excerpted from "Collections of the Kansas State Historical Society, 1911-1912", Edited by Geo. W. Martin, Secretary. Vol XII., State Printing Office, Topeka, Kansas 1912, pages 437-438.

submitted by Teresa Lindquist (merope@radix.net); (copyright) 2001 by Teresa Lindquist

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KSGENWEB INTERNET GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In keeping with the KSGenWeb policy of providing free information on the Internet, this data may be used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. These electronic pages cannot be reproduced in any format for profit or other gain. Copying of the files within by non-commercial individuals and libraries is encouraged. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author.

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OLD SUMNER. (17)


The founder of Sumner was John P. Wheeler, a red-headed, blue-eyed, consumptive, slim, freckled enthusiast from Massachusetts. He was a surveyor by profession, and also founded the town of Hiawatha. He was one of the adventurers who came to Kansas as a result of the
excitement of 1855-'56, and was only twenty-one years old when he came west. Most of the men who had much to do with early Kansas history were young.



The town was not named for Charles Sumner, as is generally supposed, but for his brother, George Sumner, one of the original stockholders. At that time Atchison was controlled by southern sympathizers--P. T. Abell, the Stringfellows, the McVeys, A. J. Westbrook and others--and abolitionists were not welcome in the town. It was believed that a city would be built within a few miles of this point, as it was favorable for overland freighting, being farther west than any other point on the Missouri river. On the old French maps Atchison was known as the "Grand Detour," meaning the great bend in the river to the westward.


Being a violent abolitionist, John P. Wheeler determined to establish a town where abolitionists would be welcome, and Sumner was the result. The town was laid out in 1856, and the next year Wheeler had a lithograph (18) made, which he took east for use in booming his town.


Among others captured by means of this lithograph was John J. Ingalls. Wheeler and Ingalls were both acquainted with a Boston man of means named Samuel A. Walker. Wheeler wanted Walker to invest in Sumner, and as Walker knew that Ingalls was anxious to go west, he asked him to
stop at Sumner and report upon it as a point for the investment of Boston money.


Mr. Ingalls arrived in Sumner on the 4th of October, 1858, on the steamer Duncan S. Carter, which left St. Louis four days before. The town then contained about two thousand people, five hundred more than Atchison; but Sumner was already declining, and Mr. Ingalls did not advise his friend Walker to invest.


A hotel building costing $16,000 had been built by Samuel Hollister. A famous steamboat cook had charge of the kitchen in the old days, and the stages running between Jefferson City and St. Joe stopped there every day for dinner. Jefferson City was then the end of the railroad--the Pacific Railroad of Missouri, now the Missouri Pacific, which runs through the deserted site of Sumner and directly over the foundation of the wagon factory built by Levi A. Woods. This wagon factory was one of the results of Wheeler's audacious lithograph, and few wagons were actually manufactured. The factory was heavily insured, and burned.


Albert D. Richardson was a citizen of Sumner (19) when Mr. Ingalls arrived there; also James Hauk, the father of Minnie Hauk, who has since become famous as a singer in grand opera. James Hauk was a carpenter, whose wife operated a boarding house. Minnie Hauk waited on the table, and was noted among the boarders as a smart little girl with a long yellow braid down her back, who could play the piano pretty well. The next year Hauk made a house boat and floated down the river to New Orleans.


When John J. Ingalls went to Sumner, a young man of twenty-four, he took great interest in such characters as Archie Boler and Jonathan Gardner Lang. Lang was a jug fisherman in the river, melon raiser, truck-patch farmer and town drunkard. Ingalls says that Lang was really a bright fellow. He had been a dragoon in the Mexican war, and his stories of experience in the West were intensely interesting. Ingalls used to go out in Lang's boat when he was jugging for catfish and spend hours listening to his talk. Finally Ingalls wrote his "Catfish Aristocracy," and Lang recognized himself as the hero. He was very indignant and threatened to sue Ingalls, having been advised by some jackleg lawyer that the article was libelous. Lang lived on a piece of land belonging to Ingalls at the time, and Ingalls told the writer of this the other day that it was actually true that he settled with Lang for a sack of flour and a side of bacon. Lang served in the
Civil War, and long after its close, when his old friend was president of the United States senate, he secured him a pension and a lot of back pay. But this he squandered in marrying. His pension money was a curse to him, for it only served to put a lot of wolves on his trail.


When the war broke out the Atchison men who objected to abolitionists settling in their town were driven out of the country, and this attracted a good many of the citizens of Sumner. But its death blow came in June, 1860, when nearly every house in the place was either blown down or badly damaged by a tornado. This was the first and only tornado in the history of this immediate section.

===


NOTE 17.-This account of Sumner, by E. W. Howe, was printed in the pictorial historical edition of the Atchison Daily Globe, issued July 16, 1894.

NOTE 18.-Ingalls thus describes the lithograph used by wheeler as an advertisement of his town:

"That chromatic triumph of lithographed mendacity, supplemented by the loquacious embellishments of a lively adventurer who has been laying out town sites and staking off corner lots for some years past in Tophet, exhibited a scene in which the attractions of art, nature, science, commerce and religion were artistically blended. Innumerable drays were transporting from a fleet of gorgeous steamboats vast cargoes of foreign and domestic merchandise over Russ pavements to colossal warehouses of brick and stone. Dense, wide streets of elegant residences rose with gentle ascent from the shores of the tranquil stream. Numerous parks, decorated with rare trees, shrubbery and fountains, were surrounded with the mansions of the great and the temples of their devotion. The adjacent eminences were crowned with costly piles which wealth, directed by intelligence and controlled by taste, had erected for the education of the rising generation of Sumnerites. The only shadow upon the enchanting landscape fell from the clouds of smoke that poured from the towering shafts of her acres of manufactories, while the whole circumference of the undulating prairie was white with endless, sinuous trains of wagons, slowly
moving toward the mysterious regions of the Farther West."


NOTE 19.-The Historical Society has in its collections a plat of Sumner. The town was surveyed in 1857 by John P. Wheeler, its proprietor. Sumner was situated on a bluff overlooking the river, and to make traffic easy and the wharf accessible a sixty-per-cent cut was necessary. It is said that laborers and teams were imported from St. Louis and that $20,000 was spent in grading Washington avenue, as the street to the levee was called. This grade, though choked with young timber, is still visible.

 


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