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From: "Jim Laird" <>
Subject: Part 2 of 4: A History of Burlingame: by Frank M. STAHL..
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 10:52:13 -0400


The Burlingame Enterprise Chronicle
Osage County
Thursday
April 2, 1931

Part 2 of 4: A History of Burlingame, by Frank M. Stahl.
There was much unrest during the summer and fall of 1856. Robberies and burnings were frequent and occasionally murder was committed. Trade was precarious. All supplies were brought from the Missouri River--Kansas City or Leavenworth. It took six days to make the trip with horses, seven with oxen. It was dangerous, both going and coming. Small parties of ruffians would loot the wagons and sometimes take teams of horses. It became so dangerous that the settlers in and near Council City became entirely without provisions from the outside and had to depend on corn that they grated on a perforated tin can.
Things were in turmoil through the years 1857-58 and up to the Civil War. Burlingame was directly on the Great Santa Fe Trail and the frontier city except for Council Grove. There was quite a trade during the grass season furnishing supplies to the great trains constantly going and coming.
Old accounts that I have seen state that the trail was a well traveled road some sixty feet wide, the wagons drawn by from sixteen to twenty yoke of oxen or six to ten mules, and that often there were three trailers loaded with about four tons each of merchandise. The writer knew the trail well from early 1857, having driven heavily loaded wagons over it.
The regular government train consisted for twenty-six wagons with six yoke oxen to each wagon. There was considerable freighting done by traders. Occasiionally there were mule teams on the trail, six mules to the wagon. There was a heavy Mexican trade.
Heavily loaded wagons contained hides, wool and tallow. Often the oxen had to be shod, the wagons repaired and wood workmen made yokes and bows for the ox trains. Also there was considerable trade with the Indians. They were all peaceable but every annoying beggars. They had beaded moccasins, furs and buffalo robes for sale or trade. They wanted sugar, meal, flour, butcher knives and bright colored calico. The Indian was willing to give a tanned and painted black robe for two cups of sugar.
There were some things raised along the streams. Corn planted on the sod did well. The sod was heavy and the usual way of planting was done with an axe. A deep cut was made in the upturned sod and two or three grains inserted. That was all. Often thirty or even forty bushels an acre was harvested.
Wheat was sown in the spring. There was no fall sowing of wheat until after the 50's. It, as a rule, also did well, yieldinorm fifteen to twenty bushels an acre. There were no threshing machines. The wheat was spread on the ground, tramped or beaten out by oxen or the old fashioned flail and winnowed after the way ot two thousand years ago. The earliest mills for grinding wheat were at Grasshopper Falls, the Lawrence windmill (a genuine Duch windmill brought direct from across the water) and the Missouri River. Potatoes did well.
Grass was cut with a scythe and raked by hand. The first mowers came in 1857 and grass was cut for $10 a day. There was wild fruit in season. Plums of good size and quality were abundant. Plenty of gooseberries grew along the streams. There were also lots of wild grapes and strawberries and some blackberries and raspberries. All of these fruits were carefully gathered and in addition, there was some garden stuff.
There was some wild game. Prairie chickens were plentiful. They were here in large flocks. There were a few deer, but unlike those further east, which lived in the timbered places, the Kansas deer kept their feeding and sleeping haunts on the open prairie, using the deep ravines for hiding places. Three kinds of squirrels, red, grey, and black were plentiful along the streams as were cotton tail rabbits. All were quite a help to the early day household.
There were no jack rabbits until after the Civil War. There was a long-legged and long-billed bird that came with the robin and killdeer. They were a little larger than quail, went in small flocks and were fine eating. There were not many quail. Antelope were found occasionally. There were fish to be had in both Switzler and Dragoon Creeks.
Late in the fall or early winter, it was customary for a few of the early residents to go out to the buffalo range and load up with buffalo hams. Several men would go together--usually with ox temas. Occasionally small bands of buffalot could be found near Diamond Springs some twenty miles west of Council Grove, but generally they were old bulls-derelicts-that had been driven out of the main herds and were poor in quality. The large herds were not found short of a hundred miles.
One tragic event took place on one of these trips for meat out of Burlingame. A man named Price Perrill was killed near Wheeler's Ranch on the Little Arkansas River, now Little River. There is nothing absolutely certain as to who killed him. Some Burlingame people though he was killed by a man with whom he had had trouble near Kansas City.
He was found some two miles west of the ranch. A little dog that had been with him was found lying near with an arrow in his body. The belief that a plainsmen and trappers was that he had killed by Indians to carry out a religious duty. Two Indians had been hung at Council Grove and death by hanging barred the Indian from the Happy Hunting Grounds until the bar was removed. And that cost the death of a white man. Perill's body was borught back home and rests in the Burlingame cemetery.
Raccoons were plentiful along the streams, living in hollow trees and differing from the Eastern coon, in holes in the ground. Up to the middle of the 60's, there were no opossums as far west as Burlingame. Muskrats and minks were here.
Burlingame was really a frontier town but was comparatively free from the lawlessness that characterized the towns of the frontier. As usual, most of the trouble was the result of whiskey which was to be had easily. Up to the time when Kansas went dry, there were from one to six places where whiskey and beer were the main articles for sale. Also some of the early hotels had bars and drinks could be obtained at the drug stores. Many arguments ended with black eyes and bloody noses.
What kept Burlingame much cleaner than many other towns was the character of her first settlers. They were picked men, coming from back East with a fixed purpose in their minds. There were two great predominating reasons for the their coming--to make homes and to keep Kansas Territory form the curse of slavery. Many came with families. Mature, solid and thinking men were included in their number which included preachers, lawyers, mechanics, teachers and cultured men and women. Many came armed with "Beecher Bibles"--Sharpe' rifles.

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