MAPLE HILL HISTORY AND MEMORIES ….continued

The first of these is an old shot of downtown Maple Hill, circa 1910. The streets look muddy! Today we can thank God for pavement! One building on the right is still standing. On the far right is the former bank building, which
presently houses Hier Insurance. Just over from it is the recently-razed building that was the American Legion post.

These two pictures are of the old town well, that stood at the intersection of 3rd & Main, across from the present Hier Insurance building, until the early 1960s when it was removed. It was a local landmark and a source of water for many years, but as traffic increased on Main Street it became a road hazard."

Maple Hill's finest hotel was the "Windler". W.B. Small built the hotel in 1888 after his residence on his farm southeast of Maple Hill was destroyed by fire. He was encouraged in this enterprise by George B. Fowler who wanted a place where he could entertain Eastern friends who came to Maple Hill to fish in the summer and hunt in the winter.
The Windler Hotel was a large frame three-story edifice with porches on three sides and a porch on the second floor on the east side. This hotel was located on the SW corner of 4th & Main, and it had 36 rooms that were gas lighted and steam heated. The immense size of the structure can be seen by studying the number of rooms on each floor. On the first floor there were ten large rooms. The main rooms were the kitchen, dining rooms, recreation room and show rooms. Billiard and card tables were in the recreation room, and it was said that many high stakes poker games were played there. The show rooms or display rooms were used by salesman who brought their merchandise to be shown to merchants from Maple Hill, Dover, Willard, and Paxico. Several large glass showcases could be filled with wares.
The kitchen of the hotel was quite large and always employed one or two cooks. Many young girls were employed to wait on tables and serve the meals. Mrs. Frank Butefish came to Maple Hill as a girl to work in the hotel for her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Williams Sams who operated the hotel for several years. Frank Butefish often told of courting Miss Carrie as she kneaded bread for the next day's meals during long evenings at the hotel.
A laundry was situated at the back of the the hotel where all the laundry for the hotel and the traveling salesmen was done. The second floor consisted of bedrooms for guests. On the third floor were spare rooms used on rare occasions and the rooms for the hired help. There were triple dormer windows on the third floor.
The hotel first opened in 1890. "Jersey" Small gave a gala opening ball called "The Ball to the Elete" and most of the Maple Hill residents attended the dance. W.B. Small managed the hotel until he moved to Oklahoma at which time it was run by O.R. Rutledge until 1902. Mr. and Mrs. Sams operated the hotel for several years. The hotel closed, but was reopened in 1912 by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Sparks. The Windler Hotel was closed for the final time in 1915 and razed by the son-in-law of the Smalls, Mr. R.T. Updegraff. He build modern bungalows on the site using the lumber from the hotel. These homes are now occupied by Dorothy Leggitt and Rick & Tonya Twombly, respectively. Small boys of that time enjoyed taking a walk up the steps to the porch of the hotel, down the length of the porch and back to the wooden sidewalk on the other end as they sauntered home from school. Guests who stayed at the hotel marveled at the beautiful view to the east as they could see the timbered Mill Creek and the rolling hills and prairies beyond where herds of cattle grazed.

This was the old Methodist Church building. On January 26, 1888, the Methodist Episcopal Church filed incorporation papers. The Methodist Church was finished in 1889. The first child born in Maple Hill was baptized in the Methodist Church. She was Isabel Maple Hill Oliver.
In the fall of 1921 the Methodist group was united with the Congregational Church. The old Methodist Church building became the Community House used by church and civic groups. The Ladies Aid women under Mrs. Glogau, president, were instrumental in paying for the building. The old Community House was used until 1960 when the new fellowship hall was built.

This is an old picture of our mother church in Newton, Mass. - a building long since destroyed by fire.

More from Nick Clark:
Reading about the Ice Cream Social brought back lots of memories. The church used to own a two-gallon ice cream freezer and several one and one-half gallon freezers. Before we had the parish hall in the 1960s, the church youth would come to the old Methodist Church, which MHCCC used as its community building. Steele Romick and other farmers who had milking cows would bring in cream which they had separated from milk. I remember Steele Romick's because it always so thick that you had to spoon it out of the quart jars, it wouldn't pour! The ladies would make the ice cream mix. There was a big locker freezer unit between the post office and what was then Mote's Store. We would take our wagons down there and bring 50# blocks of ice back. Then the men would put them in gunny sacks and break up the ice with sledge hammers, after which we kids would take turns turning the cranks on the freezers until they were done. We usually did this about 2:00 or 3:00pm in the afternoon because you had to let the freezer sit for a while to make the ice cream really firm. Everyone who had a freezer at home also made a freezer of ice cream. All of the women would be busy baking pies and cakes for the social.

Some people made what was called "cooked" custard ice cream, but others didn't cook their mix. I guess no one worried about getting poisoned from eggs in those days. My grandmother, Mildred Corbin Clark, didn't cook her ice cream mix and I still have the recipe. It was 1 quart of cream, 12 eggs, 2 cups of sugar, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla. You'd "beat the Devil" out of that with an egg beater, and pour it into the freezer. Then you'd add whole milk to fill the 1 1/2 gallon freezer and give that a stir with a wooden spoon before putting on the top and placing it in the ice bucket.
Then we would head downtown and string lights across main street and set up tables and chairs right out on the asphalt about 4:00 or 5:00 pm. Everyone would come to town on Saturday evenings in those days. They would start arriving about 6:00pm and stay until 8:00pm or 9:00pm.

Sometime during the early 1960s, a street dance was added to the ice cream festival. Jack and Bill Warren were the Pilgrim Fellowship Youth Sponsors---and I'm not for sure---but I'll give them the credit. Anyway, we kids in PF thought it was a great idea. I don't think we ever had a live band, but he hired disk jockeys who came to Maple Hill and set up their turn tables and loud speakers on Main Street. Usually, the ice cream social was held first, from 6pm to 8pm and then the street dance would be held from 8:30pm until midnight. We had such fun!!
I also remember that a few times, Harold Hoobler had the disk jockey put on great old square dance records, and he would call old-fashioned square dancing. Harold was a very good square dance caller. Some of the dances were "Birdy In The Cage" and "The Sugar Bowl."

So Ice Cream Socials have been held at MHCCC for a long time, at least 100 years, and I'm sure they will go on for much longer.
 
From Pastor Andrew: Black History in Wabaunsee County
As a resident of Maple Hill and Wabaunsee County, I am proud to say that our county shares a portion in the heritage from which the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin grew. It’s the heritage of abolition, a heritage of freedom, a heritage of the Christian faith, and a heritage of black settlements in the state of Kansas.
In 1854 the United States Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, designating that Kansas could become a free state or a slave state depending on how her citizens voted. This was the forerunner to the days of “bleeding Kansas”, a time when competing groups were establishing themselves and struggling for political control of the territory over the slavery issue.

An organization known as the New England Emigrant Aid Company served as the spiritual and intellectual nucleus for much of the Free State movement. Being founded on four principles - freedom, religion, education, and temperance – this entity assisted in founding several Kansas free-state towns, including the town of Wabaunsee. Wabaunsee was situated in the far northwestern corner of what would come to be the county bearing her name – an Indian word meaning “dawn of day”.

The emigrants who founded this town came from New Haven, Connecticut, under the leadership of Mr. Charles B. Lines – one of New Haven’s leading citizens. The group organized itself in 1856, being composed of nearly one hundred people. It was suggested that the new settlers would need some means of self-defense in the rugged and sometimes violent Kansas territory. A professor from Yale University pledged $25 to purchase a Sharpe’s rifle for the group. And then Henry Ward Beecher, the renowned Congregational pastor and abolitionist whose preaching had inspired the crusading fever in the company, topped the professor’s pledge. He offered 25 rifles if his audience would provide funds for another 25. These rifles were later sent to Kansas in crates with 25 Bibles and hymnals. The crates were marked with the words “Beecher’s Bibles” in order to pass the rifles by suspicious pro-slavery settlers. Beecher wrote, “Let these arms hang above your doors as the old Revolutionary muskets do in many New England dwellings. May your children in another generation look upon them and say, ‘Our father’s courage saved this fair land from blood and slavery.’”

Wabaunsee went on to become a well-reputed free state settlement; the pro-slavery forces referred to it as a “damned abolition nest.” The Bible and rifle concept served as inspiration for John Stewart Curry’s famous painting in the Kansas Capitol of John Brown – standing with his flowing beard and crazed look, his arms outstretched with a Bible in one hand and a rifle in the other.
Towards the end of 1856 an underground railroad was established through Wabaunsee County. The attic of the William Mitchell home, north of present-day Alma and east of the Wabaunsee settlement, served as housing and a hiding place for escaped slaves on the run. Mitchell and his comrades then escorted them up north and out of the territory. This measure would set the tone for the county being hospitable black settlement ground. Large migrations of black people came to the county in the 1880s, during the midst of “Kansas Fever” for settlement. A large number of recently freed slaves sought to escape the broken economy of the south. Known as “exodusters” (named for their exodus from the south) they settled in many places across the state, including in Wabaunsee County. In celebration of their newfound home and freedom, “Emancipation Day” celebrations were held every August 1st, and excursion trains from Topeka and Kansas City brought other blacks to a camping area near Paxico and Newbury known as Zeller’s Grove. These celebrations continued on yearly through the 1940s.
Black communities developed in several Wabaunsee County towns from this: in Paxico, in Maple Hill, in McFarland, in Wabaunsee, in Eskridge, and in the county seat – Alma. Black families farmed, they worked for the railroad lines passing through the towns, and they worked as hired employment for large farms and industries in Wabaunsee County. Black worship communities developed in these towns too, as there were both black Baptist and Methodist churches for a time in Wabaunsee and Paxico. The cornerstone and bell for the former C.M.E. church still sits in Paxico, displayed on the grounds of the present local Senior citizen’s center, across the street from the county Junior High school.

In the earliest years of the twentieth century a young Church of God in Christ minister began planting churches in Wabaunsee county and surrounding areas. James C. Jackson came out of Manhattan with his family of 13 children, and would drive along the dirt roads for hours to lead worships, visit homes, and begin church communities in surrounding rural and small-town areas. Pentecostal Christianity was a new development back then, emerging from Topeka’s own Bethel Bible College headed by Charles F. Parham. It was a national movement that emphasized baptism of the Holy Spirit evidenced by speaking in tongues, or glossolia. Skeptics sometimes called these groups “holy rollers, ” and they were at times regarded with suspicion even within the black communities.
Yet the Rev. Jackson persevered in his work and it paid off. Churches were established in the Wabaunsee county towns of Paxico, McFarland, and Maple Hill. By 1909 incorporation papers had been filed, and the First Church of God in Christ of Maple Hill was built at the corner of 7th and Main Streets. Many of the older members of my congregation, the Maple Hill Community Congregational Church, remember when the local black church was active in its white frame building until its closing in 1940. Families active in the church were Wallace, Stanley, Bradley, Glenn, Oliver, Helm, Boots, Smith, Martin, Bolton, Davis, and others and later the Swinnie, Hall, and Pinchem families. Of interest today is the fact that one of the Rev. Jackson’s children is Bishop M.P. Jackson Sr. – the prominent Pastor of the Jackson Memorial Church of God in Christ in Topeka.

Unfortunately racism was also a part of life for black families in Wabaunsee County. It probably was no worse than other places, but still it was bad. Historian Daniel Fitzgerald documents the following:…since some people objected to this [Emancipation Day] gathering, violence was sometimes only narrowly averted. On one particular Emancipation Day in the 1890s, a group of white men tried to crash a dance, and when several of the blacks did not take kindly to the intruders, a brawl ensued. One black man was killed, and this tragedy ended the riot, but it left bitter feelings in the hearts of the blacks for many years.

Other experiences of racism happened on into the 20th century. One former resident described a time when, as a 10-year-old boy in the 1940s, he was physically picked up by the Sheriff and placed in the county jail for refusing to give information on broken windows at the McFarland Grade School. Yet even in light of that he was able to say, “There were good times and bad times both; the good times definitely outweighed the bad times, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

This outlook seems to be common among both former and present black residents in the county. Though there were and are a few occasional experiences of racism, the overall outlook is favorable. One young person who grew up in the area more recently said, “Maple Hill is a quiet family community that accepts people, and welcomes all sorts of people… All the people I’ve been around see people as people. Color doesn’t really get into it much. I guess I’ve just been lucky. I know that God’s watching over me.”
Today there are still a few black families in most Wabaunsee County towns. While many others have left because of changes in the economy and job availability, there are still a few around. Also, the Beecher Bible and Rifle Church in Wabaunsee still stands and has an active congregation. It is open for tours by appointment on a regular basis.
We invite of persons all races and backgrounds to come out and visit our county. We think you’ll find it to be a pleasant atmosphere.

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