The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1896-02-02
A DEAD CITY OF KANSAS.
Once the Home Of Many Prom,n..
People.
From the Kansas CITY Vines

From tine Kansas City Times
Three miles south of Atchison ia -.
site OF a dead city, whose streets oDcs
were filed with the clamor of busy trae.
and echoed to the tread of thousands :.
oxen and mules that in the pioneer day,
OF the great west transported the produce
OF the east across the great American
desert to the Rocky mountains.
1t was a city in which for a few ,,....
$500 men and women and children li,,l.,
and labored and loved, in which NJ
lofty aspirations We're born. and in 49,!
several young men began careers " IN
have become historical mat
= This city was located on what the esr,.
trench Vcyatsers called the grand ~
tour" of the Missouri river II srr. ue-
into existence so suddenly and innercl-s
ubly 1t might almost have been consi5
cred creation OF the magicianis wand N-
1t was named Summer, in honor of -
great Massachusetts senator It's ofyi. eit5
motto was PRO lege ct grege'' dor tba
law ana the people,. 7
summers first citizens came mcsp,
from Massachusetts. They had COM =.
the frontier to make Kansas a free sfat 70
and to build a city within whose 49,
an previous conditions of slavery shoniS
pc uisregarded, and where all men born
should be regarded equal 'oiH
The growth of Summer was phenornor.,
A hthograph printed in 1857 shows straats
of stately buildings, imposing seats -
learning, church spires that pierced ~
ha
river full of floating palaces, its leyse
lned with bales and barrels of merchan
disc, and the white smoke from numerous
factories hanging above the city, like q
banner OF peace and prosperity
One day the steamboat Duncan : o.
ter landed at Sumner. On its hurricane
deck was John j. Ingalls,, then onIv y
years old AS his eye swept the bor{zon,
his prophetic soul uttered these words.
Behold the home of the future senator
Here the young college graduate nh,
since that day became a senator from
Kansas, lived and dreamed, until sum.
ner' star mad set and Atchison's sun had
risen, and then he moved to Atchison
bringing with him Summers official seal
and the key of his hotel
Here lived that afterward brilliant an.
thor and Journalist, Albert d. Richardson
whose tragic death some years ago in fbe
eounting-room of the New York Tribune
Is well remembered. His Beyond tbe
Mississippi" is to this day the most fasci.
mating account of the boundless west ever
written.
Here lived 9-year-old Mirmie Hauk WIN
was one day to become u prima-donna
ana VINO was to wed Count Wartegg
Minnie was born in poverty and Graded
in adversely. Her mother was a moor
washerwoman in Sumner.
Here lived John E. Remsburg the now
noted author-lecturer and free thinker.
Mr.. Remsburg has probably delivered
| more lectures in the last thirty years than
any man in the United States
Here Walter A. Wood, the big manu-
\
lived and made and mended wagons.
Here Ioyejoy, THE yankee preacher"
| preached and prayed and invoked Gods
wrath upon the slave-owner.
| Here lived Brother and SISTER"
Newcomb. from whom have descended
long line of Jealous and eminent Meth
Sumner was "abolitionfst." Atchison
| was border ruffian." In Atchison the
| Niger was slave: in Summer he was
/ a fetch. 1t was in Atchison that the
| abolition preacher" Pardee Butler, was
| a raft in the river.
Jonathan Lang, alias -'shang," the
hero of Senator Ingalls, Catfish ArIs-
| tocracy'' and the Last Mayor of Sum-
ner,' lived and died in Sumner When
| all his lovely companions had faded and
''Shang" continue to live in Sumner
J long after every other citizen had moved
/ away, and until every house save his
| miserable hut had vanished like the
| baseless fabric of IL VISION leaving no
wreck behind. He claimed, and was
proud Of the title" the last Mayor OF
He died a few years ago, and little
later lightning struck his cabin and 1t
was devoured by flames. And thus passed
away the last relic of Sumner.
| Atchison secured its first railroad. This
smoke from the locomotive engines
drifted to Sumner and enveloped it like
| a pail.
One day there was an exodus Of cit-
| zens; their houses were torn down and the
| timbers thereof carted away, and founda-
ton stones were dug up and carried hence.
The forest, again unvexed by ak or saw,
| asserted its dominion once more, and to-
| day, beneath the shadows cast by mighty
| oaks and signing cottonwoods, Sumner
| lies dead and forgotten.