page_title: Morris County, Kansas
section_title: 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: Morris County, Kansas / History / 19th century
caption_attribution_description: English: Stouffer's Railroad Map of Kansas, 1915-1918, Morris County.
context_page_description: Morris County is a county located in the U.S. state of Kansas. As of the 2010 census, the county population was 5,923. The largest city and county seat is Council Grove.
context_section_description: The county was established on ancient grounds of the Kaw American Indian tribe.  Settlers and the Kaw lived in increasingly uneasy relationship as settlers encroached on native lands.
  Council Grove, established by European Americans in 1825, was an important supply station on the Santa Fe Trail. The town was also the site of an encampment by John C. Fremont in 1845 and in 1849 the Overland Mail established a supply headquarters there.
  From 1821 to 1866, the Santa Fe Trail was active across Morris County.
  The county was originally organized as Wise County in 1855. The county was named for Virginia Governor Henry A. Wise.  When Wise presided over the hanging of abolitionist John Brown at Harpers Ferry in 1859, abolition supporters renamed it to Morris County in honor of Thomas Morris, a former United States Senator from Ohio who was an opponent of slavery.
  From 1846 to 1873, a Kaw Indian Reservation was centered around Council Grove, Kansas on 20 square miles of land.  In 1851, the Methodist Church established an Indian Mission in Morris County.
  Between 1877 and 1879, Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, a former slave who escaped to freedom in 1846, staked out a settlement in Morris County for freedmen known as "Exodusters".  Thousands of families migrated from the post-Reconstruction South to seek more opportunities and better living conditions in the Midwest.
  In 1887, the Chicago, Kansas and Nebraska Railway built a main line from Topeka to Herington.  This main line connected Topeka, Valencia, Willard, Maple Hill, Vera, Paxico, McFarland, Alma, Volland, Alta Vista, Dwight, White City, Latimer, Herington.  The Chicago, Kansas and Nebraska Railway was foreclosed in 1891 and taken over by Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railway, which shut down in 1980 and reorganized as Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas Railroad, merged in 1988 with Missouri Pacific Railroad, merged in 1997 with Union Pacific Railroad.  Most locals still refer to this railroad as the "Rock Island".
  In 1887, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway built a branch line from Neva (3 miles west of Strong City) to Superior, Nebraska.  This branch line connected Strong City, Neva, Rockland, Diamond Springs, Burdick, Lost Springs, Jacobs, Hope, Navarre, Enterprise, Abilene, Talmage, Manchester, Longford, Oak Hill, Miltonvale, Aurora, Huscher, Concordia, Kackley, Courtland, Webber, Superior.  At some point, the line from Neva to Lost Springs was pulled but the right of way has not been abandoned.  This branch line was originally called "Strong City and Superior line" but later the name was shortened to the "Strong City line".  In 1996, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway merged with Burlington Northern Railroad and renamed to the current BNSF Railway.
caption: 1915-1918 railroad map of Morris County
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