A Time-Line History of Kansas, details down to when the cattle towns were formed and famous lawmen of Kansas came and went.
Cutler's 1883 History of Kansas is on-line. An exhaustive county by county history of the state of Kansas.
The Kansas Collection. A collection of original articles, memoirs and other written documents pertaining to Kansas History:
Visit the Kansas GenWeb Site, the site to start looking for Kansas ancestors. Select your county to visit, or tour the Kansas links available here.
The Kansas Civil War Page presents Kansans who fought, Kansas troops, and Kansas battles. Many listings of names and general information.
Searching for a name or a place about Kansas history or genealogy? Try the Kansas Books Collection Search Engine. It'll search that big data base for ya!
Kansas State Historical Society. Their inventory of micro-films is on-line for you to see which one you want. Then, you write that down and go to your nearest library or LDS Family History Center to order it. Start with 1855-75 here, links to later years are at the bottom of the page.
Quantrell's Raid of Lawrence, Kansas. The first of our Kansas Pioneers to settle in Kansas was Edwin Taylor, in 1871. Just eight years before, on August 21, 1863, Quantrell had raided Lawrence in one of the most dreadful events of the Civil War. With 3-400 men, he raided Lawrence, with a population of 2,000 civilians, and killed 150 men, virtually all unarmed, many of whom had surrendered. Lawrence is maybe 50 miles south and 150 miles east of Concordia, where our Kansas ancestors settled just eight years later. During this time, John Millirons and some of Martha Jane Earhart's brothers were serving in the Missouri militia chasing these ragamuffins around Missouri. Although Yankee troops pursued them into that night in 1863, they all got away. Quantrell was not much heard of again after the following spring and is thought to have died, maybe in battle, in 1864, but there is no documentation of that.
General George Custer - Our Taylor ancestors came to Cloud County in 1871, the Millirons in 1877, and Johnston's in 1881. Cloud County is just below the Nebraska state line, relatively close to the Indian country that was last being held onto by the plains Indians. In 1876 was when General George Custer met his Waterloo at the Battle of the Big Horn in Montana. Cloud did have newspapers, so they must have carried the news to our pioneers of the troubles with the Indians and the battle. The newspapers probably got their news of this type over the telegraph wire. Custer and his troops had spent time at Fort Larned, Kansas, maybe 75 miles south and 150 miles west of Cloud County, before they went on their Indian chase.
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