Memorial Day, previously referred to as Decoration Day, is a federal holiday that has been observed on the last Monday of May each year since 1868 in remembrance of those who have died in military service.

Newspapers often published special “Decoration Day Editions” that memorialized members of the community and chronicled local activities. Click the newspaper images below to read the articles and explore how the holiday has historically been celebrated across the country.  

Kansas Memory also has digitized photographs depicting the Memorial Day parades in Garnett, Hutchinson, and Dorrance, as well as hundreds of military photographs and letters.

The Forces of Nature exhibit currently on display through January 9th at the Kansas Museum of History in Topeka showcases our state’s extreme weather conditions--including tornados, droughts, floods, and fires--and how Kansans have responded to them. The exhibit features an audio booth where visitors can record their own Kansas weather stories. Five of these stories are now part of the Historical Society's permanent historical collections and are featured here on Kansas Memory. Click on the audio icons below to listen to the stories. For more audio and video recordings on Kansas Memory see Collections--Audio-visual.

Topeka resident David H. Fisher, Jr. relates his experience during the June 8, 1966, tornado in Topeka.

A fireman in Mullinsville, ten miles west of Greensburg, in Kiowa County, Ron Clayton describes his experience as a first responder to the May 4, 2007, EF5 tornado that destroyed Greensburg.

Thomas Holmquist describes a 2007 flood on his farm in Saline County near Smolan.

Marlysue Esping-Holmquist, wife of Thomas Holmquist, farms in Saline County near Smolan. She describes the history of their farm and the chance involved in its allotment in a flood plain near Dry Creek in 1868.

Teresa Bachman of El Dorado gives a first hand account of the June 10, 1958, tornado in El Dorado. The tornado killed thirteen people and destroyed or damaged more than 100 homes.

Additional audio recordings will appear on Kansas Memory as we add new content. Use the category Type of Material--Audio or Collections--Audio-visual to check back for new audio uploads.

The magnitude of the dust storms sweeping across southwest Kansas in the mid 1930s was truely unbelievable. In Ness City, Kansas, in 1935, Lillian Foster wrote:

 "The idea of a dust scrap book occurred one evening when the 'very worst' storm swooped down upon us. Each storm seemed worse than any previous ones so I decided on newspaper stories and pictures to prove the seriousness of our famous 'black blizzards.'"

 Lillian Foster's entire dust storm scrapbook is now available on Kansas Memory.  

Washington Elementary School was one of four Black elementary schools in Topeka, Kansas, prior to the U. S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. The Board of Education (1954) that called for the desegregation of public schools. This silent film from the late 1930s or early 1940s documents a day at Washington School and follows each grade level through various activities. The complete film, Spirit of Washington, is now available on Kansas Memory. 

See African American Teachers in Kansas for a description of the effect of the Brown v. Board ruling on Black teachers. 

For more information on the Brown v. Board case and segragation, select the category People - African Americans - Discrimination - Segregation

For oral histories on the Brown v. Board case, select the category Collections - Oral History - Brown vs Topeka Board of Education

Beginning in June 1897, a recurring column first appeared in the Wichita Daily Eagle, signed by the anonymous "Bab." The columns, often titled "Feminine Facts and Fancies," "Woman's Ways and Woman's Work," "The New Woman and the The Old," and "Woman at Home and Abroad," covered such topics as fashion, interior design, marriage, and childrearing. Was this a nickname for an actual female columnist named Barbara or a mocking representation of women's supposed "babbling" and gossiping? You be the judge.                                                            

Fashion accessories and other personal artifacts from the time period can also be found on Kansas Memory, including this dress and purse, in addition to photographs of some fashionable women.

By subscribing to a category or search feed, you can now receive updates of new content on a specific subject.

First, conduct a word search or category browse that returns the results you want.

Then click the RSS icon in the dialog box located above your search results. 

Last, select a feed reader from the subscription menu and click “Subscribe Now.”

Any new content added to Kansas Memory that satisfies your query will automatically appear on your feed. Reviewing your feed periodically from your favorite feed reader, web browser, or mobile-device will keep you abreast of new digital collections relevant to your research.

Working at his father's candy shop in 1908, 15-year-old L. W. Halbe of Dorrance, Kansas, discovered a small box camera among the shelves. Curious, he began to take pictures and thus embarked upon a four-year stint as a commercial photographer. In the process, Halbe produced a visual record of rural and small-town life in the pre-World War I Midwest that has few equals.

From 1908 to 1912, Halbe created more than 1500 images of agriculture, businesses, machinery, homes, recreation, and people in and around Dorrance, resulting in a remarkable portrait of Kansas during the transition from the 19th to the 20th century. KSHS staff have scanned each image directly from the original galss plate negatives making Halbe's entire photograh collection available on Kansas Memory for the first time. 

The Halbe collection on Kansas Memory is available at L. W. Halbe collection. 

A special exhibit featuring the photographs of Kansas photographer Omar Hawkins is now on display at the Kansas Museum of History. The exhibit, Backward Glance: Images from Marshall County, is also available to view online at Kansas Memory.

Based in Marysville, Kansas, Hawkins captured scenes of his town and the surrounding communities in the early twentieth century. The images reveal the quaint pleasures of small town America and the emergence of the automobile, among other scenes.

Eighty-seven photographs by an unknown photographer emerged in Sherman County, Kansas, in the early 1980s. Richard Gannon found the photographs in a building on his property and donated copies of the photos to the Kansas Historical Society. The photos reveal an intimate portrait of farming and ranching in Sherman County in the first two decades of the twentieth century. See the entire Gannon photo collection on Kansas Memory.

The photographs include images of sod houses and other residences, barns and outbuildings, many children and farm and ranching families, tractors and other farm machinery, horses and cattle, people doing farm chores, cowboys, and early automobiles and motorcycles. The John L. Veselik residence near Ruleton appears in many of the photographs and likely bears some relation to the photographer.

For additional materials on Sherman County select category Places—Counties—Sherman. Or browse our Kansas county map for materials on your own county.

The people of the Blue River Valley in Kansas produced this short film as part of their campaign against the construction of the Tuttle Creek dam on the Big Blue River in the Flint Hills of Northeast Kansas, north of Manhattan. Despite heavy local opposition, construction of the Tuttle Creek dam began in 1952 and it became fully operational by July 1962. The dam displaced 3000 people and ten towns including Stockdale, Randolph, Winkler, Cleburne, Irving, Blue Rapids, Shroyer, Garrison, Barrett, and Bigelow. The complete Tuttle Creek Story film is now available on Kansas Memory.

Additional historic films are available on Kansas Memory under the category Collections--Audio-visual. 

Posted by musuem curator Laurel Fritzsch:

Irish immigrants and their descendants’ devotion to Ireland has created an enduring sense of Irish identity throughout the world.   In no case is this more apparent than in the U.S. whose celebration of St. Patrick’s includes the saying “everyone’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day!” 

Most Irish immigrants who settled in Kansas came between 1870 and 1900.  Irish already settled in Kansas, like Leavenworth priest Thomas Butler, often encouraged their fellow countrymen to move to Kansas over other U.S. states.  Read Butler's pamphlet on Kansas Memory. The Irish typically worked on the railroad, as farmers, and as coal miners. 

Most notably through food, music and politics, first, second and third generation Irish Americans maintained ties to Ireland and influenced U.S. culture and politics.  Writing in 1871, Father Butler writes that:

" [Irish Americans] have learned many of the traditions of 'the old land' from their Irish mothers, and their American love of Liberty fills them with enthusiasm for the welfare of Ireland."

During Ireland’s War of Independence (which became the civil war that continues today in Northern Ireland) many Americans provided financial support.  Also, many Kansans with Irish ancestry traveled to Ireland to reconnect to their heritage.  One Kansan who traveled to Dublin in the 1930s was newspaper editor William Allen White.

St. Patrick’s Day, Irish music fests, and films about Ireland continue to make Irish cultural identity a part of American cultural identity. So if you’re looking to celebrate this St. Patrick’s Day by settling into your couch instead of dancing the night away, tuck into any of my following top 5 favorite Irish films.

Your feedback is welcome, so if you want to argue for or against something on my list, please leave a comment here or on our facebook page.

1) The Wind That Shakes The Barley (PG-13)

This dramatic film follows two brothers first during the brutal fighting that occurs during War of Independence (1919-1921), and the controversial partial independence peace deal offered by Great Britain. The deal would be equivalent to the British offering independence for 7 of America’s 13 colonies.  After the long years of intense fighting portrayed during the first portion of the film do the brothers decide that independence for part of Ireland is better than none and support peace, or that there should be independence for all or none and keep fighting? The acting, setting, and plot are all fantastic, and the film will help you understand how the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland were created.

Kansas Governor Harry Woodring created the Kansas Federal Relief Committee in July of 1932 to obtain and administer federal emergency loans made available to states through Herbert Hoover’s Emergency Relief and Construction Act of 1932. President Franklin Roosevelt expanded on this act with the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) in 1933, leading the Kansas committee to change its name to the Kansas Emergency Relief Committee (KERC). Under the direction of Kansas’s new governor, Alf Landon, the KERC managed direct and work relief programs in Kansas including emergency education, transient relief, rural rehabilitation, drought relief, and a slew of public works projects including the construction of farm ponds and lakes, and the renovation and construction of public buildings, roads, and quarries. A movie made by the KERC in 1936 to highlight its accomplishments is now available on Kansas Memory as the Kansas Emergency Relief Committee accomplishments movie.

Chapter 11 documents women's work projects including the Pittsburg Sewing Rooms, the Wabaunsee African American Ladies' Exhibit, the Wichita Weaving Institute, and the Leather Coat Factory in Kansas City. This chapter lasts eight minutes.

Chapter 4 documents the creation of lakes through the water conservation program including the Bourbon County Lake, Paola City Lake, Atchison County Lake; Whiting City Lake, Holton City Lake, Wellington City Lake, Jetmore State Lake, Pleasanton City Lake, Anthony City Lake, Graham County Lake, Decatur County Lake, Yates Center City Reservoir, and Woodson County Mission Lake. This chapter is divided into two clips and lasts twenty-five minutes.

Chapter 6 documents transient services including the Eskridge Transient Camp, Wabaunsee County; and the Gardner Transient Camp, and Transient Hospital, Johnson County. This chapter is divided into two clips and lasts twenty minutes.

Chapter 12 documents recreational projects including parks in Wichita, Topeka, Manhattan, Chanute, Galena, Independence, Sterling, and Kansas City, and the Oswego Swimming Pool, Paola Athletic Field, and Wichita stadium. This chapter is divided into two clips and lasts fifteen minutes.

Chapter 5 documents the creation of farm ponds and shows the Elrick Smith farm in Barton County; the H.B. Stout and F.L. Oliver farms in Harper County; the Earl Davis farm in Stevens County; and the F. T. Ashcraft farm in Kingman County.  This chapter lasts two minutes.

 Additional materials on the New Deal in Kansas are available by selecting the category Thematic Time Period—Great Depression and Dust Bowl, 1929-1941. For more information on specific relief projects see the KERC bulletins Public Welfare Service in Kansas. For a history of the New Deal in Kansas see Peter Fearon’s “Kansas History and the New Deal Era,” Kansas History 30 (Autumn 2007): 192-223.

When the London Circus came to Lawrence, Kansas, on July 30, 1879, its most conspicuous guests were six Northern Cheyenne Indians: Wild Hog, Old Man, Blacksmith, Left Hand, Run Fast, and Meheha. The audience started at first sight of these men, and two women grabbed their children and rushed out of the tent. Seated in a row, a guard at each end, the six Cheyenne men puzzled over elephants, lions, tigers, and camels, laughed at the antics of clowns, and drank lemonade. But this moment of levity was a rare instance in a long train of unfortunate events. While in jail awaiting trial for their involvement in the “last Indian raid in Kansas” the previous fall, these men would leave an intriguing record of their people and culture at a devastating time in their tribe’s history. Select sources on the Cheyenne people and Native Americans in Kansas are now available on Kansas Memory.

The "raid" occurred in September 1878 when a band of some 300 Cheyenne, led by Chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolf, fled sickness and starvation on a reservation in Indian Territory [now Oklahoma] for their homeland north of Kansas. On their flight through the state, forty settlers were killed and a great deal of property was stolen or destroyed. After surrendering to military authorities in Nebraska, seven of Dull Knife's followers were turned over to civilian authorities and taken to Dodge City, Kansas, to stand trial. The Dodge City jailers gave the prisoners notebooks, pencils, crayons, and paint to create ledger art – the drawing of pictographs on the pages of ledgers – a common practice among Native American men as Indians were being moved onto reservations by the federal government in the 1870s and 1880s.

The Kansas Historical Society holds two of these ledgers. The first came as a donation in 1922 from Sallie Straughn of Denver, Colorado. Mrs. Straughn was matron of the Dodge City jail in 1878 during the Cheyenne’s incarceration when her husband, John W. Straughn, was the Dodge City jailer. This notebook includes drawings of people in patterned blankets and headdress, men on horses, and animals.

The second notebook came as a donation in 1939 by Dora A. Clayton, also of Denver, Colorado. Her husband, James Clayton, was clerk of the Indian Claims Commission created by the Kansas legislature in 1879 to investigate the losses resulting from the 1878 raid. The drawings in this notebook are especially captivating with rich colors and textures, balanced arrangements, and stark forms; including people, hunters on horseback, various animals, and decorative tipi.

Both books are supposed to have been drawn by the Cheyenne prisoners during their incarceration in the Dodge City jail. The trial venue was later moved to Lawrence, Kansas, and the men were ultimately acquitted. Some acounts give the names as listed above, other accounts list the men as Wakabish, Maniton, Old Cow, Left Hand, Wild Hog, Old Man, and Muskekan, or Wild Hog, Run Fast, Frizzly Head, Young Man, Old Man, and Crow. Some accounts refer to six men, others to seven.

See People--American Indians--Tribes--Cheyenne to access additional sources on Cheyenne Indians in Kansas. See Native American Ledger Art and Modern Ledger Art for more information on this practice.

Sources:

Kansas State Historical Society, Twenty-Third Biennial Report, 1921-1922 (Topeka: Kansas State Printer): 50-51.

Kansas State Historical Society, Twenty-Fourth Biennial Report, 1923-1924 (Topeka: Kansas State Printer): 90.

Kansas Historical Quarterly, 10 (1941): 211.

Dora Clayton to KSHS, 6 August 1939, Administrative Correspondence, State Archives, Kansas State Historical Society.

The cased photograph collection in the State Archives & Library Division of the Kansas Historical Society includes more than 200 one-of-a-kind daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes. These are some of the oldest and most unique photographs owned by the Historical Society. In order to help preserve and improve access to these photos, we scanned the entire collection, which is now available on Kansas Memory.

Many of these photographs were created prior to, or during, the Civil War. Making them available now contributes to our understanding and celebration of Kansas statehood and the Civil War.

Follow the links below to review the collection.

Daguerreotypes

Ambrotypes

Tintypes 

When Kansas governor Lyman Humphrey issued a proclamation in August of 1890 recognizing Labor Day in Kansas, he was heralded by many as being the first head of state, anywhere, to do so. See an original copy of the proclamation on Kansas Memory.

The proclamation established September 1, 1890 as Labor Day in Kansas. It recognized the need for improving the working conditions of laboring people and asked business to be suspended on Labor Day so that working people could enjoy the holiday. In an equally pioneering gesture, and at the urging of Governor Humphrey, the Kansas Legislature made the first Monday in September a legal holiday in Kansas in 1891. Labor Day was not recognized as a federal holiday until 1894.

Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, praised the move and encouraged other states to follow the example of the Kansas governor. Gompers reportedly wrote Humphrey to express his appreciation for the governor’s recognition of organized labor.

In 1938, when an Ohio labor organization was seeking to establish a memorial in Governor Humphrey’s honor, Lyman L. Humphrey (the governor’s son) searched through his father’s papers at the Kansas Historical Society but could not locate any letters from Gompers. An exhaustive search of the papers by archives staff did not locate any such letters either and archivists noted that the letters were not included in the official register of letters received by the governor’s office. 

However, Humphrey's executive clerk, D. O. McCray, noted in an article in volume 9 of the Kansas Historical Collections: “Governor Humphrey was the first chief executive of the United States to thus speak in behalf of labor, and he holds letters from President Gompers recognizing this action.”

If Governor Humphrey did receive such letters, it appears he did not file them with the official papers of his office and the whereabouts of the letters are unknown. Reference: Mechem to Humphrey, L. L., Nov. 4, 1938. Lyman L. Humphrey Papers, Coll. 11, Box 1, Folder 1930-1938, Kansas Historical Society. 

For more primary sources on Kansas labor history, select the category Government and Politics - Reform and Protest - Labor movement. 

Family historians often visit Kansas looking for their ancestor's homestead. The lure of cheap or free land guaranteed that many families had ancestors who lived in Kansas in the 19th century, though they might not have stayed long. One day, I helped a family go through land records to pinpoint the location of great-grandfather Johnson's 40 acres near Randolph, Kansas. We located the land on an old plat atlas of Riley County, Standard Atlas of Riley County, 1909 then went to a modern road atlas for directions and found, instead, a big lake--a reservoir called Tuttle Creek.

Nearly all the original surface water in Kansas is in the form of creeks and rivers. After the record-breaking floods of 1951, the Army Corps of Engineers proceeded with a plan to build a network of major reservoirs on rivers across Kansas and other Missouri River basin states, for flood control and to hold water that can be released during the dry summers to artificially raise the river levels for barge shipping. From 1948 to 1981 the Army Corps completed 21 major dams on Kansas waterways, drastically altering the landscape that the 19th century farmers had homesteaded. Tuttle Creek alone covered 12,350 acres

Construction of the Tuttle Creek dam began in 1952 and the government began acquiring the surrounding farmland. The project faced heavy opposition from local landowners. It displaced 3000 people and 10 towns: Stockdale, Randolph, Winkler, Cleburne, Irving, Blue Rapids, Shroyer, Garrison, Barrett, and Bigelow. This Big Dam Foolishness Sign posted in Randolph, Kansas and this letter, written by Ruby M. Johnson to Governor Arn in July 1951, illustrate the unsuccessful local opposition to the dam. The dam began full operation July 1, 1962. 

For decades ragtime aficionados have been searching for a lost trunk supposedly containing unpublished music manuscripts by Scott Joplin. Edward Berlin, author of King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era, suggests Joplin may have lost the trunk in Pittsburg, Kansas, in 1903. Selected sources on Pittsburg and other cities and towns in Kansas are now available on Kansas Memory under the category Places--Cities and Towns.

Here’s the story. Joplin, the African American composer of the Maple Leaf Rag (1899) and other popular piano rags, had recently finished composing his first ragtime opera, A Guest of Honor. The year was 1903.

Joplin was on a Midwestern tour with his Ragtime Opera Company scheduled to play shows in Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. A misfortune in Springfield, Illinois, possibly left Joplin without money to continue. But Berlin suggests Joplin may have continued the tour to recoup his losses. A poor showing at the Pittsburg [Kansas] Opera House, which Joplin was scheduled to play on September 17, may have left him unable to pay his hotel bill resulting in the confiscation of his trunk. According to Joplin’s wife Lottie, the trunk contained photos, letters, and unpublished manuscripts of a Guest of Honor and other music. Joplin never recovered the trunk. This photo shows the Pittsburg Opera House at left.

Berlin’s scenario is hypothetical, but it is a plausible explanation to a mystery that has confounded researchers for decades. Other accounts have placed the trunk in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, around the same time. This photo shows the Pittsburg National Bank located on the corner opposite the Pittsburg Opera House.

More than any other composer, Joplin raised instrumental ragtime, with its foundation in itinerant piano players and African American folk melodies, to the level of classical music and launched a craze for syncopation that dominated popular culture in the early 1900s. Still, Joplin’s success was continually dogged by the racial prejudices of his time and the stereotype of the blackface minstrel, as represented in this photo of Haverlaff’s Minstrels performing in a White Cloud, Kansas, opera house. James Scott and Brunson S. ("Brun") Campbell were but two Kansas ragtimers who had a close relationship with Joplin.

While we do not hold Joplin’s lost manuscripts (regrettably), selected materials on Pittsburg and other cities and towns in Kansas, music, and African American history are available on Kansas Memory.

Sources: Edward Berlin, King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

In the 1980s, Ethel Ann Hickok, the last surviving niece of James Butler (“Wild Bill”) Hickok, donated fifty-four family letters and five photographs to the Kansas Historical Society. She donated two letters to historian Joseph G. Rosa. In total, the fifty-six letters document the adventures of the Hickok children in California, Kansas, Missouri and Dakota Territory among other places, and the Hickok family in Troy Grove, Illinois, between 1851 and 1904.

James Butler Hickok, eventually known as “Wild Bill” Hickok, is one of the most legendary and elusive figures in the history of the American West. Hickok’s legendary status as the West’s preeminent scout, lawman, gunfighter and gambler was built as much on myth as it was on fact. Wild Bill wrote five of the letters in this collection and many others give accounts of his activities, death and burial. Read the entire Hickok family collection with transcriptions on Kansas Memory.

 For more on Wild Bill Hickok select the category People - Notable Kansans - Hickok, James Butler, 1837-1876 in Kansas Memory. 

The KSHS staff are very excited to announce a new feature to Kansas Memory: Integrated Search and Browse.

This new feature allows you to search for a term, or choose a category from our category browser, and then continue to refine your results by adding search terms or choosing more categories.

Additionally, when you use our search engine, we'll try to suggest a few categories that may help you find what you're looking for. Keep an eye out for those, they'll be right above your search results.

Feel free to try it out.