By: Ethan Anderson, Government Records Archivist
Recently, I was asked to weigh in on a question which instantly piqued my interest: did one of the country’s most famous Civil War generals, William Tecumseh Sherman, once live in Shawnee County? Though the question seemed like Topeka’s equivalent of “George Washington slept here,” I immediately started investigating.
The logical first step was to consult Sherman’s memoirs, which proved the legend’s authenticity. After his career in the U.S. Army and a four-year stint as a bank manager in California, Sherman came to Leavenworth, Kansas, in the fall of 1858 to join the law firm of two of his brothers-in-law. He related, “Our business continued to grow, but, as the income hardly sufficed for three such expensive personages, I continued to look about for something more certain and profitable.” The following spring, he agreed to develop 1,100 acres of land owned by his father-in-law, Thomas Ewing, for Ewing’s grandnephew and grandniece. This land lay along Indian Creek, roughly four and a half miles north of Topeka. Within a few months, Sherman had erected a small, 11’x12’ house as well as a barn and fencing for 100 acres. By May 1859, Ewing’s relatives arrived and Sherman returned to Leavenworth. Ultimately, he wrote, the construction project “helped to pass away time, but afforded little profit.”(1)
Sherman’s letters from his time in Shawnee County can only be described as bleak. In an April 15th letter to his wife Ellen, he lamented, “It is so cold I can hardly hold my pen. San Francisco can’t hold a candle to the prairies of Kansas for wind.” With few career prospects in sight he wrote, “I am doomed to be a vagabond, and shall no longer struggle against my fate…I look on myself as a dead cock in the pit, not worthy of further notice, and will take the chances as they come.” (2) Six years later, Sherman would be a household name.
Having answered whether Sherman ever resided in Shawnee County, two questions still remained: where was Sherman’s house located and was it still standing? Thankfully, numerous newspaper articles from the turn of the 20th century provided clues. According to the Kansas Farmer and Mail and Breeze, the house was located in the southwest quarter of section 4, township 11, range 16. The Topeka Daily Herald even traced the ownership of the property, stating that Ewing’s grandnephew and grandniece only lived in the house one year before selling it to a man named Carpenter. It was then owned by a Plyley, David Shellabarger, and Peter Moyer. This information allowed me to compare the names with the names of property owners listed in plat maps and atlases in the Kansas Historical Society’s collection. Shellabarger’s name is listed in the 1873 Atlas of Shawnee County, Kansas and Moyer’s name appears in both the Standard Atlas of Shawnee County, Kansas (1898) and the Plat Book, Directory and Survey of Shawnee County, Kansas (1913). These maps indicate that the cabin was located not in the southwest but northwest quarter of section 4, township 11, range 16, just north of what is today Indian Creek Elementary School.(3)
By the early 1890s, the log barn was in disrepair and was torn down. The home was in good enough shape that the Topeka Mail argued for its inclusion in the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. However, in the following decades it too fell into disrepair and was demolished in 1936. Today, no buildings or historical markers bear witness to William T. Sherman’s brief stay in Shawnee County. (4)
