Atchison County Biographies
E. W. Howe's Historical Edition of the Atchison Daily Globe
These biographies were originally published in 1896 in the Atchison Daily Globe, written by the editor and publisher, E. W. Howe. In 1916 the biographies were reproduced in Sheffield Ingall's "History of Atchison County, Kansas," with a few updates such as death information.
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JOHN TAYLOR.
John Taylor, who for many years lived on a farm immediately south of
the State Orphans' Home, was a resident of Missouri, a mile and a quarter
above East Atchison in 1844, ten years before Kansas was opened for settlement. His father,
Joseph Taylor, came to the Platte Purchase in 1838, from
Pennsylvania, settling near Weston. At that time most of the best claims
were taken. John Taylor's recollection was that the very earliest settler in
that vicinity was in 1837. Joseph Taylor did not secure a very good claim,
and afterward removed to Andrew county, finally locating a mile above East
Atchison, in 1S44. John Taylor said that George Million was living on the
present site of East Atchison when his father's family settled in the bottom.
It was Mr. Taylor's opinion that George Million settled in East Atchison in
1842, and that he did not start his ferry until 1850. In the spring of that
year John Taylor crossed the river on George Million's flatboat ferry, and
went to California, in company with his brother, Joe. There was no wagon
road running west from Atchison at that time. John and Joe Taylor mined
in California for eighteen months, never making over $20.00 per day, and
usually only $5.00. They returned home by the way of the Isthmus of
Panama, and John Taylor got the small-pox at Glascow, Mo., which did not break
out on him until he reached East Atchison. This was supposed to he the
first case of small-pox in this section of the country. All the other members
of the family got it, and the wife of Jim Stultz, who came in to help his
mother, also got it. Their physician was a Doctor Ankrom, who lived in the
Narrows, near Rushville, and he got it, too. This was in the winter of 1851
and 1852. In September, 1854, ten years after settling in East Atchison, Mr.
Taylor came to this side of the river. When he arrived Ladd Yocum was
running a hotel in a tent; there was nothing else on the town site. Late in
the fall George T. Challiss completed his store, which was the first building
of any kind in Atchison, according to Mr. Taylor. He says that George Million did not erect his claim shanty until the following year.
Mr. Taylor first settled in the bluffs, northeast of Atchison, but afterwards moved to a tract of land owned by a man named O. B. Dickerson, who
afterwards built the first livery stable in Atchison. Dickerson sold his claim
to a man named Adams, B. T. Stringfellow's father-in-law, for $600.00, but
Adams did not comply with the law and Taylor jumped it. For a while Taylor and Adams lived on the same quarter, and became acquainted; then Taylor
discovered that Adams paid $600.00 for the claim, and gave him his money
back. Taylor said he never had any short words with Adams about the
claim, but once. They met on the hill, overlooking the river, one day, and
were looking at the wreck of the old "Pontiac," which is now said to have contained several hundred barrels of whiskey. "Well," said Adams, "when are
you going?" "Going where?" asked Taylor. "To Nova Scotia," replied
Adams. "I am not going at all," was Taylor's response, which Adams understood to mean that he was not going to leave the claim, but intended to fight.
A compromise soon followed.
Taylor says the "Pontiac" was carried off by Atchison people, and put
into their houses, and that years afterwards, the writing on the wheel house
could be seen around town. There was no whiskey left in the hold; indeed,
the hold was carried away.
The Taylor place was considered a great deal more valuable in 1855 than
it is now; people felt sure that within four or five years John Taylor would
cut it up in town lots and sell them at fabulous prices, and go abroad.
John Taylor's sympathies were always with the South Carolinians, who
made this section so warm in 1856, but said that only one in ten were good
citizens; the others were toughs. One of them, a man named Newhall, was
killed in the fight at Hickory Point. John Robinson, captain of a southern
party at Hickory Point, was an Atchison man, and was shot in the hip.
Mr. Taylor said that in 1844 and several years later the country was full
of bee trees, and that cattle turned into the rush in the river bottom in winter,
came out fat in the spring. In 1844 there was a settlement of fifty Kickapoo
families on the flat just above the island on the Kansas side. They made a
great deal of maple sugar. In summer these Indians went out to the buffalo
grounds, sixty to eighty miles west of the river, returning in the fall, to be near
the Missouri settlers. There never was an Indian village on the site of
Atchison, although Mrs. Joe Wade, who was George Million's daughter, claims to
have remembered coming to this side of the river when she was a little girl,
and seeing a dead Indian strapped to a board and leaning against a tree on
the present site of Commercial street. The body was surrounded with totem
poles. There was no game at that time on this side of the river. Indians
themselves hunted deer on the Missouri side in winter, and were very friendly
with the whites.
John Taylor died on March 7, 1897.
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