Linn County KS Archives News.....Their Last Appeal to Kansas June 16, 1925 ************************************************ 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@yahoo.com November 19, 2006, 9:31 pm Kansas City Star June 16, 1925 THEIR LAST APPEAL TO KANSAS (On Sunday, June 14, 1925, about a dozen of the "old timers" of Linn County were entertained at a dinner at the Commercial Hotel in Pleasanton by John A. Hall of Pleasanton, Clarence J. Trigg, W. A. Mitchell, and J. Frank Smith, the last three now from Kansas City. On Tuesday, June 16, the following written by Fred Trigg appeared on the editorial page of the Kansas City Star:) A dinner party, given to a group of the oldest pioneers of Linn County at Pleasanton, Kansas, Sunday, must have carried a stirring appeal to all Kansas. The old pioneers were the guests of four younger men, themselves sons of pioneers of that historic Kansas county. The purpose of the dinner was to get in concrete form, and from eyewitnesses and participants in the fight to make Kansas a free state, an accurate account for preservation of some of the Kansas history that once was familiar to the people of the entire country, but which has not been saved either to Kansas or the nation. Kansas has been negligent of its great wealth of historic interest. The state has not preserved its history even in the matter of keeping the record properly, and as to the erection of memorials and markers Kansas has been shamefully neglectful. There is a feature of state-wide interest, therefore, in the dinner that was given to the old pioneers at Pleasanton Sunday, for they begged the people of the state to make some provision for saving the history that is passing with them. Kansas should heed the appeal. The average age of the men who were guests at the Pleasanton dinner party was 82. Some of the guests were 88 years old and one was 89. In all reason they will not for many more years live to tell the story. They are the last of the survivors of the old days in that section of the state, which, next to Lawrence, made more history of vital importance to the state than any other part of Kansas. These men were in the forefront of the great American conflict over the question of human slavery that brought the issue to its final head and ushered in the Civil War. The men at the dinner all played an important part in the Kansas struggle. Some of them were actual leaders in the movement of that day—and afterwards they took the same active part in the peaceful but none the less interesting work of building the state that is now Kansas. What will Kansas do to preserve the heritage these men are leaving? Not a monument has been erected; not a marker placed; not a spot in the territory they offered their lives, a willing sacrifice, to make free, has been set apart as a memorial to their wonderful work. And these now are all that are left. Most of them have gone. Have they been forgotten? At the Pleasanton dinner the pioneers appealed for some adequate and fitting memorial, not for themselves, but for their old friends and neighbors who fought, and died, in massacre, in battle and in other struggles that attended the big conflict of that day. It is the last appeal, doubtless, these men ever will make. It comes to Kansas as from the grave. What answer will Kansas make to them? Additional Comments: Extracted from: LINN COUNTY, KANSAS A HISTORY By WILLIAM ANSEL MITCHELL Written to give and preserve the more intimate knowledge of incidents of world-wide importance and marking an epochal period in the history of the human race. COPYRIGHT 1928 Linotype work done by J. W. Mitchell of the La Cygne Journal Presswork done by Campbell-Gates of Kansas City Bookbinding by Charno Bindery, Kansas City File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ks/linn/newspapers/theirlas158gnw.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/ksfiles/ File size: 4.1 Kb