A few stories from Corwin, Kansas

To read more on Corwin, click here.

Fight with house wife

A heated argument in the general store of Corwin ended in an amputated finger and court battle in the 1910s. 

Mrs. John E. Cartmill, wife of a section hand at Corwin, went into George McMicheal's general store one day to settler her account. After reviewing the figures, she decided she had not received credit for a pound of bad butter she had returned. 

Both parties got into an argument. One of McMichael's daughters pulled out a knife and ran it into Mrs. Cartmill's hand. 

The lively fight ended in court, as Mrs. Cartmill had her finger removed, several hospital visits and wanted to recover her loss. McMichael left the mercantile business shortly after that. 

Bank robberies

The Corwin bank was built in 1916. Six months later, it had its first robbery.

It was just past 9 a.m. when two young men entered the bank and pointed their guns at Lloyd Glasgow, the cashier, and three customers. The robbers - Sam Mayfield and Jim Dunlap, had arrived in a big Buick roadster that Mayfield had stolen in Wichita two nights before.  

The customers and cashier were locked in a vault. When the robbers realized the cash drawers were empty, they released the prisoners and forced them to bring the money out with them. 

The robbers, with $780 in hand, made a quick getaway. 

The cashier called the sheriff, who put an alert out to every town and hamlet on every road that the car might pass. They were eventually caught by the Alva, Oklahoma, barber. The barber pulled a gun on the robbers, whose vehicle had ran out of gas. 

The next robbery occurred in the 1930s, which were desperate times. "Every day there were robberies on the front page of the papers," wrote Hewitt. 

Another robbery occurred in August 1930. The robbers locked the bank cashier and a woman in the vault.

Then, the Monday after New Years in 1938, cashier, Russell Goodan, never showed up for work. A few days later, it was discovered there was a shortage of $16,595. Goodan later surrendered in California, but with less than $3 in in his pocket. 

The embezzlement proved to be too much for the bank, and it closed not long later, merging with Waldron's bank.

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Timeline

• Oscar Corwin is is given a post office appointment, putting an office in his country store in Harper County.
• 1886 - Railroad starts laying tracts toward Corwin. 
• Jan. 17, 1887 - Corwin Town Co. is organized.
• 1904 - Corwin starts to receive telephone connections
• 1893 - Cherokee Strip Land Rush hurts Corwin's population.
• 1919 - A fire destroys Pryor's Store, as well as a lumberyard.
• 1920 - The Farmers Co-op was chartered.
• 1928 - Construction begins on compressor plant by Empire Gas Pipeline Corp.
• 1957 - Post office closes
• 1963 - Last full-time railroad agent leaves Corwin.
• 1966 - School is consolidated.
• 1972-1973 - Depot closes.

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Other tibits

• Oscar Corwin grew his own farm to 300 acres, which included a grain farm and an orchard. 
• Business began to move to Corwin as the town started. By March 1887, the Andrew House was open for business, renting rooms for $1 a day. H.H. Funk sold hardware and implements. 
• Mr. Hittle settled at the new Corwin where he built a residence and a store. Mr. Hittle bought prairie chickens from the early settlers for 20 cents each and shipped them to Kansas City and St. Louis.
• Jim F. Andrews built a hotel and was the second postmaster. At one time Corwin boasted a race track. The track was built by G. R. Landers at the southwest corner of town.
• Dutch Andrews, Jim's grandson, gave the following account: "G. R. Landers became a big cattleman and many farmers in the area sold corn to him for 10 cents per bushel. In the blizzard of 1903 all of Lander's cattle froze to death. Facing financial ruin, he boarded a train and was never heard from again. J. F. Andrews and others skinned the cattle and sold their hides for $2.50 apiece."

Source: "Corwin, Kansas the way it was" by Gay Hewitt.

Corwin, Kansas - this is downtown. It once was bustling. Today just the elevator sees much action. (Amy Bickel)

Corwin, Kansas, a dead town in Harper County

Rice County farmer Delmar Conner dropped by a book a couple years ago on the history of Corwin, Kansas.
He wasn't from Corwin, but he thought it sounded interesting.


So, on a hot June morning, on my way to a wheat field near Kiowa, I ventured to the tiny ghost town.

There isn't much there. And what is there is blocked out by trees. That includes the school and a few homes.


I was greeted by an elevator employee, who said he had been interviewed once before, when the nearby town of Hazelton was evacuated for a gas leak (or something to that affect.) He directed me down the road to Monty Whitaker, who has lived in the town for more than 20 years.


He estimated about 10 people live in Corwin, which includes a son and family.


Corwin once had grocery stores, blacksmiths, church and the bank. It had a school and an assortment of houses with families. The elevator, however, is the only business remaining.

To read about Corwin, visit our website, KansasAgland.Com. Here's a link to the story and photos.

Corwin ball team

Here's a little ditty about the Corwin, Kansas ball team. Corwin is a dead town in Harper County.

Yes, Corwin has a ball team
A crack jack nine.
They've swept the country over,
Are working mighty fine.
They've played twelve games this season,
And taken everyone.
They are a jolly lineup,
Chuck full of pep and fun.
With Silcot for a twirler,
And Paul behind the bat,
They rattle the other fellows
'Til they don't know where they're at.
They have a reputation
For playing classy ball,
And if their luck stays with them,
They can't be beat at all.

To read more on Corwin, click here.

Cimarron Library's tour of Ravanna, Kansas March 22, 2015

Standing amid the ruins of Ravanna, it was hard to imagine the location once was bustling with activity.

Or that children once frequented what remains of the school here, which except for corner pillars that reach toward the sky, is nothing but rubble.

It was my second trip to the sight of what once was one of the county seats of Kansas' 106th county of Garfield.

Yes, a ghost town in a ghost county. 

Yet, thanks to a great program by the Cimarron Library, I ventured here again on March 22, 2015 - along with more than 100 other folks who wanted to learn more and tour a Kansas dead town.

The event, planned by the library's Executive Director Candis Hemel, was a success. Candis sent me an email more than a year ago telling me of her idea and asked if I would be interested in presenting. 

As people poured into the library room for the presentations, she admitted she hadn't planned on a packed house.

Kiowa County dead towns: Reeder, Janesville, Brenham

Greensburg resident continues search and digging around several long-dead towns

GREENSBURG - Traveling down a dirt path sandwiched between a wheat field and pasture, Ed Schoenberger abruptly motions to stop the car.

"You're now in downtown Reeder," he says as he steps out of the vehicle - facing the cold wind that whips across the wide-open prairie on this early March day.

But all around him, there is nothing here but farmland and grass. Reeder, once a bustling community where residents dreamed of a railroad, has disappeared.

Underneath the ground, however, the memory of Reeder still exists. Reeder began in 1885 but only lasted a handful of years, with the post office closing in 1891. The railroad never came, and the community eventually died with its remains buried in shallow graves below the prairie grass.

Schoenberger pulls out his metal detector and begins finding century-old trash - largely sardine cans that settlers left behind.

Reeder's tale mirrors countless towns across Kansas, including several in Kiowa County. Schoenberger has been working to preserve those memories through his research and amature archeolgoy.

Meanwhile, Schoenberger is also researching the towns of Janesville, Brenham and others, finding artifacts along the way.

Greensburg resident and historian Ed Schoenberger uses a metal detector to find items at at the townsite of Reeder. 

Sardine cans and fruit cans were common in the 1880s and are often found when metal detecting around townsites.

Redwing, Kansas

Anyone ever been to Redwing? It'll probably be the next thing I will research. I visited here this summer.

Saunders, Kansas, a dead town in Stanton County

Looking into Kansas. Saunders is in the background

Saunders, notice the dust storm haze.

The little border stop greets you as you enter Kansas -- along with a windshield of dust.


And on this late summer day, it seems, the dust is especially bad at Saunders, which sits right next to the Colorado border along a stretch of Highway 160 that, for miles, is nearly empty of people.


But for Minnie Watson, the whirling earth she experienced here during the 1930s was much worse than today. She and her family moved to Saunders in 1937. She was in second grade.


Her family had left Plains, Kansas -- an area still plagued by dust storms, although it wasn't quite in the heart of it like Stanton County. In a time when jobs were hard to come by, her father had secured the position of elevator manager for the Collingwood Co.


They moved into Saunders' single residence, which also was the elevator scale house and office.


Here, their power was from the wind, she said. While they had enough for lights and radio, it wasn't enough, though, to power a refrigerator or washer, which they had left behind at Plains.


It took a little while for the family to adjust to the stark landscape. Upon seeing their new home, "my mother cried and cried."


"It wasn't quite as dusty at Plains," Watson, 86, of Manter, recalls. "But at Saunders, it was just dirt."

To read the full story on Saunders, click here.