Gove County KS Archives History - Books .....The Shifting Population 1930 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ks/ksfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher sdgenweb@gmail.com July 24, 2005, 1:04 am Book Title: History Of Gove County, Kansas, Part II CHAPTER II THE SHIFTING POPULATION Since its first settlement Gove county has had several waves of population, increasing and diminishing, and there has been a considerable shifting about of the settlement within the boundary. And this forms an interesting study. Here is one way of writing history—without mentioning any individuals we can construct from the census returns the story of how our population has shifted, and why. The northern part of Gove county is, in general, a beautiful plain, well fitted for agriculture, with no outcrop of rock, and through it runs our only railroad, following the divide between the Saline river and the Smoky Hill. The central part is rougher, for through it flows the Hackberry and its branches and there are outcrops of rock in places. (Also, the best alfalfa lands are on the Hackberry bottoms.) South of the Hackberry is another beautiful plain which soon shades off into the valley of the Smoky Hill and its tributary Plum Creek. The roughest land in the county is along the Smoky, and this part of the county is also farthest from the railroad and market. The first permanent settlements were along the railroad; the first homesteads taken were adjoining the townsite of Buffalo Park; but before the day of the settlements the cattlemen with their organization, the Smoky Hill Cattle Pool, had squatted with their herds along the Smoky where they could get water without digging for it. The county when organized was laid off into eight townships in what looks like a very arbitrary fashion. Probably because each and every ambitious little town in the county had to have a township carved out to fit it. Baker and Payne townships each got seven miles of the railroad, but ran south eighteen miles into the Hackberry country. Gove township was carved out of the central part or the county. Grinnell township got the northwest part of the county and a panhandle down along the west side. Grainfield, smallest of all townships, got what was left in the north part of the county. The south was divided into Larrabee, Jerome and Lewis, each twelve miles square. And such the arrangement has remained, except that in 1903 Gaeland township was formed out of the west part of Gove and the south part of Grinnell. I have not been able to find the roll of the census of 1886, taken at the time the county was organized. The oldest we have is the census of 1887, taken the year after organization. On this roll I find the names of about forty adult male citizens who were residents of the county at that time, forty two years ago, and who are still with us. The list may not be complete but here it is: Gust Anderson, J. B. Beal, L. E. Bigbee, D. A. Borah, A. B. Brandenburg, W. T. S. Cope, C. D. Eastlack, John Fahey, W. C. Fullmer, Jacob Hansen, W. J. Heiney, A. W. Hendrickson, J. M. Hockersmith, J. W. Hopkins, D. H. Ikenberry, George S. Ikenberry, Lee Jones, W. G. Jones, R. S. Kim, Karl Kuhl, George Luckcuck, Henry McCloney, R. B. McNay, J. F. Mendenhall, B. A. Meyers, A. J. Mitchell, John Norton, J. W. Purdum, Geo. W. Rhine, Geo Rhodes, J. C. Roesch, T. L. Smith, C. S. Stansbury, Nels Steanson, R. J. Stevenson, John Suter, A. K. Trimmer, I. S. Wigington, H. C. Williams, Simon Wright. The first settlers were homesteaders. For twenty miles north and south of the railroad the even-numbered sections, except the school lands, were government land, open for settlement to the first comer. The odd-numbered sections were part of the U. P. land grant. But south of the "railroad limit" the whole country, except the school lands, was homestead land. The first wave of settlement passed by the railroad and school lands to take up homesteads in the remote parts of the county; and the first census after the organization shows the population spread fairly evenly over the county, with Grinnell township leading in population and Jerome second. It seems strange that Jerome should have more population than Baker, or Larrabee more than Payne, but such was for a time the case. For several years Jerome township had two voting precincts, Jerome and Goodwater. But now the population began to decrease. It might be noted here that this was a phenomenon not confined to Gove county alone. All over the Great Plains the wave of immigration slowed down, stopped and ebbed away. Most of the western counties were hit much harder than our own. The country was inhospitable, the rains uncertain and the settlers "starved out." Many stayed just long enough to prove up on the claim, perhaps get a mortgage on it, and leave the country. All parts of the county suffered equally, but ten years after the organization of the county the population had fallen away approximately one half, the country along the Smoky was almost depopulated and nearly half the set-lers remaining were in Gove and Grinnell townships. Those were the days of which the Old Settlers love to tell, when they "knew everybody in the county;" there's a reason— the country, was dead, no new settlers coming in, we had little to do except get acquainted with our neighbors. Again, recovery begins and the population starts on the upgrade once more. But this is no boomers' rush like that of the eighties when three thousand people came into the county in a single year, most of them to go out again as soon as they had lost a crop and proved up on their claims. Land was of more value now than in the former decade, and this new wave of settlers was determined to stay. This movement included many of the original settlers, who had been unable to stay but had held onto their land and were now coming back to try it again. Now the remaining homestead lands were taken up, and for a time Lewis and Larrabee trebled their population; but the railroad lands and school lands were purchased also, and the settlers located in greatest numbers in the townships along the railroad, close to market. Such has become our permanent condition, and today it might be said that half the people of Gove county live within sight of the railroad; and there are now more people in our live little towns than live in the whole south half of the county. The people of Gove county have come from nearly every state in the Fnirn and from the older parts of our own state. Knud Knudsen. a native of Norway, was the first foreign born citizen to take out naturalization papers in the district court of Gove county. The foreign born element is not large. The census of 1925, our latest authority, gives the number of foreign born as 341; of these 197 were born in Russia, 30 in Germany, 30 in Canada, 27 in Sweden, 25 in England, the balance scattering. The number of colored people was 37. Most settlers have come without any special inducement or influence. There have been few attempts savoring of colonization or organized effort; but this chapter would not be complete without reference to some such "settlements" which were made. In a previous chapter dealing with the settlement in 1880, before the organization of the county, reference was made to the Holland Dutch settlement south and west of the town of Grainfield. These families would no doubt have had an important influence upon the county if they had stayed, but they left in a body as they came; the Verhoeff and Van Marter families were the only ones which remained. The Boom of '86 brought to the county many Swedish families, most of which settled in Lewis and Jerome townships, in such numbers that that part of the county was popularly known as "Sweden" for many years. These settlers brought to the county such names as Johnson, Nelson, Hanson, Larson, Danielson, Swanson, Peterson, Pierson, Anderson, Bredson, Olson, Velen, Thoren, Soderstrom, Youngdahl, Lofgren. Holler, Novell, Nordell, Lillia, Lundgren and others. The "Old Swede Church" still stands in Lewis township with the date "1887" carved in stone on its front, but the congregation is long since dissolved and most of the Swedish families are gone. The church is now a dwelling house, occupied by an up to date citizen who has equipped his home with that latest great invention and can sit in the old church and listen to a sermon every Sunday —by radio. A congregation of the Brethren or Dunkard denomination was established at Quinter in 1886 and has increased in numbers and strength ever since. Prominent in this community are the following families: Jamison, Ikenberry, Flora, Crist, Wertz, Wolfe, Blickenstaff, Bowman, Long, Roesch, Lahman, Eisenbise, Mohler, Eller and Jarboe. Of this "settlement" it is sufficient to say that it is beyond praise. Here are found the best farmers in the county and the best improved farms. This community is the backbone of prosperity for Quinter and Baker township; and it is due to them first of all that Baker has taken the lead over all the other townships in population, production and wealth, a leadership which it is likely to hold for a long time to come. Beginning with about 1900 a "Russian" settlement has grown up around the town of Park in Payne and Grainfield townships. These people are not Russians, except that they came from Russia—they are Catholics in religion and Germans in race and language, who having good cause for dissatisfaction with life in Russia under the Czars left that country to seek new homes in America. A few of them are still so new in this country that they have not yet learned the language, but most of them are of the second or third generation, born in America. They take to American ways so readily that there seems to be nothing foreign about them but their names, which are as yet a trifle hard to get used to. Here are a few of the family names they brought with them: Depperschmidt, Walschmidt, Linneberger, Schwarzenberger, Kinderknecht, Waldman, Wildeman, Leiker, Heier, Ochs, Goetz, Selensky, Rueschhoff, Kaiser and Zerr. Their settlement contains some of the best wheat land in Gove county, as they have abundantly demonstrated. Before the coming of the Russians Buffalo Park was a deserted village and its vicinity an empty waste, but these settlers have brought Payne township to the front and made it second only to Baker in population and productiveness. (The writer is reluctant to close this chapter with such a brief and utterly inadequate account of these two excellent communities, at Quinter and Park. They deserve much fuller treatment, but I will leave this duty to some future historian. After all, this chapter was not written to tell of individual or community achievement but of The Shifting Population.) Figures may be dull reading, but the reader's attention is invited to the following table which shows the shift in our county's population by five year periods, beginning with the first year after the organization of the county. Note how the population of the river townships fell and rose and fell again, and how in recent years the population has gravitated to the railroad townships. Note how the total fell away one half in the first five year period. The figures for 1911 are placed alongside those of 1912 to show how the county lost twenty per cent of its settlers in one calamitous year, and where the loss fell. 1887 1892 1897 1902 1907 1911 1912 1917 1922 1927 Baker Township 497 328 299 427 701 1290 995 1114 1250 1299 Payne " 552 245 263 363 699 856 772 840 845 937 Grainfield " 330 375 197 286 458 581 489 597 690 728 Grinnell " 743 473 454 565 728 665 587 628 704 764 Gaeland " 284 305 230 229 251 267 Gove " 501 375 469 503 477 607 539 538 563 623 Larrabee " 480 267 168 330 449 453 313 360 364 313 Jerome " 687 222 193 227 370 354 301 278 300 320 Lewis " 304 110 102 125 533 529 290 288 242 216 Additional Comments: History of Gove County, Kansas by W. P. Harrington Gove City, Kan. 1930 File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ks/gove/history/1930/historyo/shifting33ms.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/ksfiles/ File size: 12.6 Kb