The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1904-08-06
Stories of a
Kansas Pioneer
LBy G.. F. Kimball.l

mention that w. F. Boyakin, of Mar
shall county, now SO years old, declin-
ed a denomination for the Office of cor
oner, after service of a quarter of a
century.
TO the ordinary reader the announce
ment had the usual interest that at
| taches to unusual facts. But the life of
DIR. Boyakin has been so full of adven-
| ture, travel and usefulness, and has
covered such an unusual period of time
| that a full sketch of his life would
not only read like a romance but would
merit a place in our national history
Fifty years ago he was more widely
known than al present. He was at that
time a prominent preacher-a pioneer
in the Baptist church in Missouri and
Illinois. In 1857 he naturally become
| the successor of the Rev. John M. Peck,
| the pioneer Baptist missionary of the
Mississippi valley, so far as his work
was then left incomplete. Mr. Peck was
| to the early BaptiSts of that section of
/ the country what Peter Cartwright was
to the Methodists. For some unknown
! reason, Mr.. Peck has failed to receive
| that popular recognition in our national
encyclopedias and biographies that has
| been accorded to Peter Cartwright. Yet
we have the emphatic statement of
DR.. Lyman Beecher that John NJ. Peck
had led more valuable settlers into the
northwest than any other ten men. And
certainly his labors and his preaching
were as effective as those of the noted
Methodist pioneer. DR.. Peck went from
Connecticut to ST. Louis while William
Clark of Lewis and Clark fame was
territorial governor of Missouri. In
Clair county, Illinois, where he took up
a claim. Later on he established a
Baptist seminary at that place which
was afterwards burned, and which was
the origin of Shurtleff college, the now
celebrated Baptist institution at Upper
Alton.
For some years before the death of
DR.. Peck. in 1857, ME-. Boyakin had been
his coadjutor and friend, and at his
death he was expected to take up the
unfinished task, and for a time did so,
having charge of a church in Belleville.
But those were times of great politi
cal excitement. The panic of that year
demoralized business. Kansas was still
in the throes of uncertainty, and a few
years later brought on the civil war.
Mr.. Boyakin was then Douglas
Democrat. AS will be seen later on, he
had not been without some experience
in connection with the slavery question
Although southern born he did not SYM
pathize with the slavery system, nor
did he have confidence in the success of
the then prevailing anti-slavery move
ments. In 1858 he established the Belle
Vile Democrat as a conservative Doug
las paper which he edited with marked
ability The paper is still published.
But when the crisis came. Mr.. Boy
akin allied himself with the cause of
the union He was then 55 years old,
but was made chaplain of an Illinois
regiment end served as such for four
1QenIlHeQ
with the Republican party.
In 1869 he removed to Kansas. set
tied on Il farm near Blue Rapids in
Marshall county, where he served for
several years as an effective superin-
tendent of schools, putting himself in
close touch with every district in the
country and for rest of his 35 years ne
has acted as coroner, and now at the
age of SO asks to be retired that he may
spend his remaining days on his farm.
During all these years he has not been
outside of his county.
w. F. Boyakin is perhaps the last
of those able men who were the con-
meeting links between the slow pio-
neer days of the west and the busting
present. Born about the time that
Lewis and Clark returned from their
celebrated expedition across the con- |
tinent he was three years older than |
Lincoln. He was in mature manhood |
when Webster made his celebrated |
reply to Haynes and was far past the |
military age when the Civil war broke |
out. His memory antedates the bat
tie of Waterloo, and JacksOn's victory
at New Orleans
He was man grown when John
Adams and Thomas Jefferson died in
1926. He was 26 years old when
Charles CarrNll of Carrollton, the last
surviving signer of the Declaration of
independence, and Walter Scott and
twice the age of Queen Victoria when
she was crowned and even then had
lived through the entire reigns of
William w George " and more than
a dozen of the last years of George
III. He was youth of 5 when Ma
poleon died in st. Helena. +
These facts and figures may serve
to give one some idea of what the
life of one Kansas citizen has wit
messed. The life of no one man in any
other like period of the worlds his
tory has ever seen the progress in
CIVIL religious, political and scientific
Id IL r.t
long life of Mr.. Boyakin. No one
man, unless his full contemporary has
ever been a personal witness to such
an advance in civilization, and there
are but few men now living on this
earth, of his age, enjoying the full
benefit of all their faculties to a de- /
gree that fits them for the perform
ance of the judicial duties of coroner
Fewer yet there are capable of
writing with such strength, lucidity
and humor at the age of ninety-eight I
1t is said of Pope, and deemed worthy
of record. that he lisped in numbers, s
when but four years from his birth.
1t is certainly no less remarkable
when one lives and retains all his I
mental powers, for nearly genera
ton beyond the allotted three score {
years and ten. But Mr.. Boyakin, al
though so near the century mark.
seems to possess all the Genital vigor {
of early mani God.
Mr.. Boyakin's life covers one-third of {
covers more than One-half all the pro- :
gress made in American history. In our :
OWN history he has been a factor of no :
little Importance. and he alone survives
those who first gave impetus to the anti
slavery cause. especially in the Baptist
A sketch of Mr.. Boyakins early life is
most interesting. He was born in North
Carolina. In 1908. when he was two years
Did, his parents moved to Tennessee.
where he grew to manhood: He. studied
aw with L. NJ Bramlet in 1S26-27.
In Pulaski on July A. 1926 the day that
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died,
he made his first popular Fourth of July