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Exoduster letters
In 1879 and 1880, freedmen (former slaves) from the South sent Kansas Governor John St. John around 1,000 letters seeking information on a possible migration to Kansas; a migration generally known as...
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Doctor Brinkley
In the annals of Kansas history no episode better proves the axiom “truth is stranger than fiction” than the bizarre story of Dr. John Brinkley. From goat glands to country music, Doctor Brinkley...
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Letters of hardship and difficulty
One of the great things about a digital repository like Kansas Memory is that it gives us the opportunity to feature materials that might not be noticed otherwise. A letter written by a poor farmer...
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Capital punishment, 1870-1907
At noon on August 9, 1870, at the county jail yard in Leavenworth, the State of Kansas hanged convicted murderer William Dickson in a public execution before a large audience, including many children....
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Omar Hawkins exhibit
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...
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New printing feature
Our new printing option delivers a pdf document that formats the item and description for easy printing. Now you can print multi-page items, like this rare Populist pamphlet, in its entirety with only...
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The Weapon
In 1912, Effie Frost was living in Verdi, Kansas, a rural village in southeast Ottawa County. Her home was in Junction City but she stayed in Verdi as a missionary to local residents who favored pool...
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Black Blizzards
During the 1930s, Frank Conard and other trick photographers poignantly captured the surreal character of the natural disasters then plaguing the southern Great Plains through a series of humorous,...
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Frontier Doctor
In mid-December, 1905, a Professor E. H. S. Bailey of Lawrence, Kansas, received an express shipment from Topeka. The bundle contained two bottles of vanilla extract, multiple packages of ham sausage,...
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Joplin's lost trunk
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...
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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...
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Video
Two new video selections are now available on Kansas Memory. Bob Beatty, Political Science Department, Washburn University, produced both videos as part of the Kansas Governors Recorded History and...
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Ledger art
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...
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Slackerism
When a flag appeared near the home of Phil Crab of Ada, Kansas, in 1918, it wasn’t in celebration. The flag read SLACKER and meant to shame Mr. Crab into a donation to support the war, a request he had...
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Weather stories
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,...
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Cowboy Band
Hear the phrase “cowboy band” and you might think of singing cowboys like Gene Autry or maybe a western string band beating out jigs and reels on fiddles and guitars for a country dance. But in Dodge...
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The Governor's Records
The archives of Kansas governors’ records held by the State Archives at the Kansas Historical Society are a great resource for primary sources on important issues in Kansas history. The Kansas State...
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Strike!
In 1919, A. M. Fury managed the Robinson Grain Company in Palco, a small town in northwest Kansas. On December 18, he wrote Kansas governor Henry Allen of Topekato say that his threshing operation...
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Peffer's scrapbook
In May of 1912, the famed ex-Populist senator from Kansas, William Peffer, lay on a couch in Christ’s Hospital, Topeka, Kansas, dictating to a stenographer. With only a short time to live (he would...
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Kansas emergency relief movie
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...
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