Holliday Park Fountain

Given to the city of Topeka by the National Humane Alliance--a foundation created to provide fountains to horses (and other animals) in high-traffic areas--this fountain was originally planned to be installed at Gordon and Kansas in North Topeka. Ultimately, Lewis Sever, the person from the NHA who had the final say, decided the fountain should be placed at 6th and Quincy.

In 1929, deemed a traffic hazard--it was in the middle of the street after all--it was moved to the warehouse district near the river and many other places according to news reports. In the 1970s, it was given to the Topeka Round-Up Club to be restored but that never happened. In 2000, it was given to the Holliday Park Neighborhood Improvement Association for restoration and reinstallation in Holliday Park.

Boswell Square Park

Boswell Public School was constructed in 1922 on Boswell Avenue in the College Hill neighborhood of Topeka, Kansas. In 1928, the school began the junior high program and starting with the 1929 school year, it became Boswell Junior High School. The school colors were red and white and their mascot were the Wildcats.

Due to consolidation, Boswell Junior High was closed down and then demolished in 1981. Due to be replaced by apartments, the neighborhood stepped up to turn the land into a park, Boswell Square. The date stone of the school was incorporated into the wall of fame and a gazebo from Menninger's was installed along with a flower garden, playground equipment, and a basketball court. The gazebo was recently replaced with a new one as was the playground equipment but the park continues to be a centerpiece of the Historic College Hill neighborhood.

Boswell Square Park entrance sign with flower garden and playground
equipment in the background.

Boswell Junior High School

Remains of the front entrance and columns during demolition.

Vanity plate for the Boswell Junior High Wildcats

The 1922 date stone in the wall of fame.

A memorial for the school and the original gazebo.

The wall of fame and the new gazebo with Westminster Presbyterian Church in the background.

Wilberforce Doesn't Have to Spend Anything

December 24, 1965

Hmm. I don't think that ketchup is coming out.

Waitaminute. Euclid Beach Park closed back in 1969. Are the Thornapples visiting an abandoned and haunted amusement park in which they might get killed? Cool!

Euclid Beach Park, in an effort to appear family-friendly, refused to admit people who were intoxicated and African-Americans. The park began admitting Black people on certain days around 1915 and they were not permitted to comingle with the white people. The park had a special police force to keep Black people out. Numerous riots and protests occurred at Euclid Beach Park. I'm glad Chip has some fond memories of Euclid Beach Park, but some people do not.

Uniontown

Uniontown was originally established in 1848 as a stop on the Oregon Trail on the south bank of the Kansas River in what is now Shawnee County by Richard Cummins and Alfred Vaughan. The small trading post became a decent sized trail town thanks to the Oregon Trail traffic and the Potawatomis who lived just north of the river. The Potawatomi would come into Uniontown to receive and cash their government payments and it was soon recorded that Uniontown had a population of over 300 people and over 60 buildings.

However, after a cholera outbreak in 1849 and 1850, the town was swiftly abandoned but not before hundred of people died, including some Potawatomi. 22 were buried in a mass grave and the town was burned to make sure that a cholera outbreak would never happen again. Uniontown was reestablished in 1851 and quickly regained its status as a major stop on the Oregon Trail. When Kansas Territory was opened for settlement in 1854, it was the beginning of the end for Uniontown. New towns along the Kansas River sprang up like Lawrence, Lecompton, Tecumseh, and Topeka. Competition was stiff and Uniontown just couldn't compete. When Topeka became the major city in the area, traders and settlers moved there, or elsewhere, and by 1858, Uniontown was again abandoned.

John Green and his family acquired the land that Uniontown sat on in the 1870s and farmed the land well into the 1960s. Most of the land was then given to the Kansas Department of Wildlife to use as a nature preserve. The Uniontown Cemetery, with the mass Potawatomi burial, has been well-preserved and is commonly known as Green Cemetery since the Green family began using it as a family cemetery.

Uniontown Cemetery is currently privately owned and maintained by the Citizen Band Potawatomi out of Oklahoma and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Recently, ground-penetrating radar was used to search for the mass grave and it's believed the location has been found. The Citizen Band Potawatomi and relatives of those in the cemetery are hoping to place interpretive signs in the cemetery in the near future.

John Green, born in Gloucestershire, England.
September 11, 1827 - September 6, 1902

The golden gates were opened wide
A gentle voice said come
And angels from the other side
Welcomed our loved one home

John "Jake" Green came to America when he was 21, originally settling in Indiana. Green married four times and had 10 children. The Green Nature Preserve across from the cemetery is named for his son, Herbert Reinhard Green.

from FindAGrave

Hannah Virginia "Vergie" Jones, nee Miller. She died during childbirth on her in-law's farm south of nearby Willard. Her husband, Leander Emory Jones, remarried and is buried with his second wife, Suzanne, in Maple Hill.

Vergie, born on the Potawatomi Reservation in Jackson County, was buried beside her son, Louis, who died of whooping cough.

from Kansas Historical Society

Joseph Napoleon Bourassa was a half-Potawatomi, half-French interpreter and doctor who lived in the area. His family accounts for many of the early graves in Uniontown Cemetery aside from the mass burial. The Bourassas are in a family plot surrounded by rock wall. J.N. Bourassa was born in 1810 and passed away October 24, 1877. He is buried in Mound City, Kansas.

Mary E. Bourassa

March 13, 1833 - January 30, 1872

Adamantinus Bourassa

January 30, 1872 - April 21, 1872

Joseph D. Bourassa

October 21, 1860 - October 20, 1869

The entrance to the Herbert Reinhard Green Wildlife Area

The bulletin board near the entrance and the grave of an Oregon Trail
traveler.

[Unknown]er
[Born?]
[Fauqui]er Co. VA.
Sept. 24, 1824
Died
June 9, 1851
Aged 26 Years
8 Months.
& 15Days.

The grave of an unknown traveler along the Oregon Trail. I have hunted for the name of this unknown pioneer since learning about the grave. The grave is located in a fenced area of the Green Wildlife Area.

Old farming equipment

Restoration of tall prairie grasses.

Mature post oak trees

Scenic Post Creek valley view

Valley view and dead trees

Post Creek

Site of American Elm Tree

Restoration of native grasses

Woodland/grassland ecotone

Reclaimed prairie grasses

Oregon Trail ruts

Sign marking the Oregon and California trails

Oak-hickory woodland

It's Surprising Seeing Brutus Do This

April 29, 1974

Did people used to do this back then? I'm talking about going to a park to specifically feed the birds, not sleeping on the park bench because I know that happens. One of the few things that hasn't changed in this country in almost 50 years.

I am 99% sure that this isn't Wastrel Gravesite.

It's scientifically proven blah-blah-blah. You've probably seen the meme. It also tastes better being diagonal. I can't explain it--no one can--it just does.

Dr. Eva Harding and the Children's Park

I.

Eva Harding was born September 13, 1857 in Springfield, Ohio. She was educated in Lafayette, Indiana and graduated from Iowa University and Purdue University, where she was one of the first students. She became a homeopathic doctor from Hahnemann Medical College in Chicago. She came to Kansas after graduating from Hahnemann, first settling in Atchison before coming to Topeka in 1892. It was here where she became a huge advocate for children, not just in Topeka but the entire state. Dr. Harding would travel the state visiting children's homes and orphanages and submit a report to legislators.

While she was known for things big and small, her biggest protest was on the Selective Service Act of 1917. She and a group of other like-minded individuals held a protest in the Unitarian Church in May of 1917. The protests even went so far as to try to convince men not to sign up for selective service. For this, Dr. Harding and several others were charged in federal court. When testifying, Dr. Harding argued that the draft law was illegal and harmed children by forcing the removal of their parents. Essentially, that if the man is away fighting in wars, then the mothers usually had to work outside the home leaving the children to fend for themselves. Dr. Harding and her followers lost the case, though weren't punished either, and selective service remained--and remains--the law of the land.

In 1901, Dr. Harding joined Carrie Nation on one of her "hatchitations" across Topeka where they destroyed at least four saloons before Nation was arrested. But upon her release just hours later, they smashed up two more including a hidden bar in a livery stable. Nation was arrested again shortly after. In 1905, Dr. Harding suggested that all Kansas schoolchildren be uniformed so that there is no differentiation between rich kids and poor kids. Despite saying that there was a Kansas Senator going to introduce the bill, it never was and the name of the senator was ever given. In 1915, Dr. Harding would announce her candidacy for Congress (advert ticket shown above), representing the First Congressional District of Kansas as a Democrat. (The First District, at that time, consisted of Nemaha, Brown, Doniphan, Jackson, Atchison, Leaveworth, and Shawnee counties. There were seven other districts.) She argued that "women are needed in public office" and that the inefficiency of men emboldened her to run for office. Harding would lost the nomination to then-Topeka mayor H.J. Corwine, who would lose the general election to Daniel Read Anthony, Jr. who would represent the 1st from 1907 to 1929 after Charles Curtis was elected to the Senate.

In 1916, Dr. Harding went to the Kansas legislature to demand that Dr. H.W. Charles be removed as superintendent of the Boys Industrial School in Topeka alleging abuse, inhumane conditions, and inefficiency. A committee was appointed to investigate but found no evidence of what Dr. Harding cited. When Harding couldn't produce the names of the witnesses she got her information from, the case was tossed out.

In 1919, her health started going downhill and she was confined to her home in College Hill. In June 1920, Dr. Harding announced her candidacy for U.S. Senate under the Socialist ticket despite being mostly confined to her bed. Sadly, we'll never know how much of the vote she would siphon off from Republican candidate Charles Curtis as she died barely a month later on July 27.

Dr. Harding's funeral was a simple affair with her lying in state and most people just giving statements of her work and friendships. She was interred in Rochester Cemetery in north Topeka in section 2. In keeping with her simple lifestyle, Dr. Harding has no stone.

The current residence at 1416 Boswell. Dr. Harding built her "garden house" at this site in
1913. Apparently, it was torn down in 1922 and this house was constructed by Tom King.

A 1915 photograph of Dr. Eva Harding by Francis & Hodges.

II.

Arguably, the biggest contribution that Dr. Eva Harding gave to the city of Topeka was Children's Park in 1908. Five acres of land that she owned along Ward Creek was given to the city for use as a park. Located at 6th & Washburn (now MacVicar), the land was considered very beautiful especially since Dr. Harding tended flowers and trees on the land.

The park, originally called Ramblers' Park after the woman's group, opened May 1, 1908. For the next ten years, Topeka celebrated the park as one of the best additions to the city. Amenities included playground equipment and swimming pool along with the surrounding woods and flower gardens. Topeka even went one step further than Dr. Harding and said that the park would be open to children of all races. The park was well cared for and surely helped spur growth in the western part of the city near the asylum. The land was even expanded a couple of times.

In 1919, a Reverend Watson, who came from the south, took a group of black boys to the park. When confronted by an attendant of the park saying that people of color could only visit the park during the morning and the afternoons were for the white children. When Rev. Watson asked if it was an actual law, he was told 'no' and walked in with the boys. Immediately, the white children left the park which upset the black boys. Soon, a fight broke out and a white boy was knocked to the ground and had sand shoved in his mouth. After that day, a petition went around Topeka demanding that Children's Park be for white children only.

It was claimed that Dr. Harding said that Children's Park should only be for white children (the May 14, 1908 Topeka State Journal confirms this) but no one remembered her saying that. When Dr. Harding was asked, she was ill and bed-ridden at the time, she did not answer but her sister said that was something she would approve of. The petition was sent to the city commission who discussed it but a city attorney said that there was no law barring black people from using city parks nor could there be. The petition was filed and the matter dropped.

Today, Children's Park is still at the corner of 6th and MacVicar. It no longer has a swimming pool and Ward Creek cuts the park in half. The aging playground equipment sits near 7th Street beneath a small grove of trees. It's a simple, quiet area at an otherwise busy intersection since an interstate exit is located about seven blocks north of the park.

Children's Park sign at 6th & MacVicar.

Ward Creek, running through Children's Park.

A boulder and plaque memorializing Dr. Eva Harding. Installed in 1933, the plaque reads:
"This tablet
erected in memory of
Dr. Eva Harding
An eminent physician and
philanthropist who gave this
park to the city of Topeka
Forever to be known as
Children's Park"

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