Gray County Seat War; 2021-01-03

In the late 1800s, the land boom which had driven growth in Western Kansas went bust and dozens of small towns faced unexpected elimination. During this time, a town's designation as a county seat could mean the difference between survival or extinction and attempts to secure that designation could lead to corruption or violence. These conflicts became known as the county seat wars. Join High Plains Public Radio and documentary maker Brendan Merrick Lynch for an in-depth look at one of these historic confrontations. The county seat war in Gray County, Kansas. Why in the world would honest, hardworking, law abiding, Kansas pioneers get involved in a shooting war with their neighbors. They're trying to win a county seat. That was the whole thing. Whoever had the county seat in any county is the town that grew. I understand the fight was over where to place a courthouse. Okay. And somebody was killed, I guess. I know everybody wanted it at their town. And so there's always been a fight between ankles and a rivalry, I guess I should say, between ankles and simmering.

There was a fella from simmer on killed. There are some of the graves you're still up to the cemetery of some of the people that were killed in the seat fight. He was back in the days of, oh, that master's in Luke Short. Guys from Dodd City came over. For High Plains Public Radio, my name is Brendan Lynch. This is the Gray County seat war. Principal funding for this program is provided by the Kansas Humanities Council, a nonprofit cultural organization encouraging the appreciation of history, heritage, and values. This program was produced in conjunction with High Plains Public Radio with support from listeners like you. I'm in New York City in the Bronx at Woodlawn Cemetery standing at the grave of Bat Masterson, one of the most notorious lawmen of the Old West. In his headstone are carved the words loved by everyone. Now his nicest sentiment is this mix. These words aren't exactly true as the citizens of Simuron Kansas certainly didn't love Bat Masterson. I know because my great-great-grandfather was among the men of that town who hated him most.

This is a story about bad blood leading to needless bloodshed. Oh, it was a great sport. Yes, so contrary to what we come to expect about the behavior of people in small towns. On my drive west to Gray County, Kansas, I stopped to talk with the county seat war expert, Indiana State University Professor Emeritus James Schellenberg. He used a criterion of violence in some of my studies that would involve death or injury, or a forcible removal of county records by armed people, or policies, or citizens' armies. And I found about 50 cases. And the patterning was quite clearly a line from along a line from Dodd City, Kansas, to Fargo, North Dakota. It was the county seat war zone. That is, that's where most of them occurred.

And in particular, South Dakota and Kansas. And in Kansas, of course, Western Kansas. On my way out to Simran, I also went to Wichita State University to talk with the eminent Kansas historian Craig Meiner. This was a latter day frontier, which developed rather suddenly. One historian has called these kinds of towns, instant towns, or instant communities. They developed rather suddenly, partly because Kansas had been Indian territory earlier, and all of a sudden everything was opened up. And also because it was this latter day frontier, you didn't have to come out by wagon and walk, and all that. There were railroads, criss-crossing the place, and people could come up quickly. This phase of excited town building began on the high plains around 1885, as go-getting homesteaders and entrepreneurs flocked to Kansas. Craig Meiner explains that some town leaders in Kansas believed securing the county seat

could transform their rural boom towns into vast prairie metropolises. Courts, probably that was the main source of the activity, a district court, but also land office, very likely the federal land office would be located in the county seat town. All the activities, the legal activities of the courthouse, the registration of lands, and those sorts of things would go on there. And the record keeping elements, a certain number of employment for clerks and those kinds of people. And I think just, you know, the idea of having the attorneys' offices around and the judges around and so on gave it a kind of a prestige. Every little town could dream that it would be another Wichita, at least, if not another New York or another Chicago. So, at the time, they had newspapers and they had tremendous ambitions. And I think they wanted to add one thing to another, so they needed a railroad and they thought being the county seat and so on would give them this momentum,

which would then allow them to become fabulous, great places of tremendous wealth. Simuron, Kansas is typical of all these ambitious high plains railroad towns. It is the first town west of Dodge City on the Addison, Topeka, and Santa Fe line. It had been years since I was last here, so when I arrived in town, I parked and took a walk around. Despite drought and outmigration in western Kansas, today Simuron is quietly prosperous. Late model pickup trucks crowd the parking lot of the big regional high school. The town has two stoplights, a new golf course and dozens of small businesses. I checked in at the landmark Simuron Hotel. Today it's one of the oldest and most cherished buildings in Gray County. For the last 25 years, the hotel's owner has been Kathleen Holt. All the little towns in this area have much the same history.

Because in that sort of boom town development, many of the little towns had the fake wooden fronts on the front of the buildings to make them look more prosperous. Many of the little towns had brick factories right away, because once you got brick buildings, those were substantial buildings. Those were not boom town buildings. That meant you were going to be here. The hotel was certainly not the first building in town, nor was it the first brick building in town, but it's a three-story brick building. It did mean we're here and we're here to stay and we're prosperous, and this is where you should come and settle. By 1887, the local population had grown enough to where Gray County was organized by proclamation from Kansas Governor John Martin. A quick election was held with Simuron, the county's pioneering biggest and most energetic settlement, emerging victorious as the temporary county seat. The town had the new county's biggest population, roughly 1500 people, plus a vast trading territory to the south.

It had become known as a farmer's town, where homesteaders plowed almost every quarter section of land. Most importantly, for its hopes to become the permanent county seat of Gray, Simuron was located bullseye on the Santa Fe Railroad, near the geographic center of the new county. In response to this election victory, the young editor of Simuron's newspaper, Ellis Garten, Joyce Lee wrote, To secure the object of her heart, Simuron is long watched, worked, and waited to secure Gray County. To become her capital has been the fondest anticipated joy and pride of her heart, Kathleen Holt. Looking forward to what Simuron would look like in the future, and this vision of it being a thriving metropolis, I think people had that vision. They had this sort of idea that they were going to come here, start new, and build something that was very big. I mean, they thought in big terms. Simuron was led by a group of local businessmen and county commissioners headed up by Jake Shoupe, a railroad landman who'd come out west in 1878.

Other prominent Simuron leaders were AT Riley, the county clerk, and JW English who ran the town's extensive tree nursery. My ancestor, FM Luther, had a stake in the success of the growing town too, having established a flourishing real estate and insurance business on Main Street. He soon brought out his own wife and children from Indiana, seeing only blue skies on the horizon from Simuron. My forefather was certainly not alone in plunging into the profitable real estate business, since during the boom years of the 1880s, buying and selling land was a quick way to get rich, Kathleen Holt. Like any other endeavor, you know, land was wealth and land was seen as wealth. That was the opportunity to make money. And if land was money, then there was plenty of land here. So to develop it and then to get other people to see that as value and to sell that to other people was the idea. Professor Craig Meiner.

So literally everybody in Kansas had two occupations. They were a farmer and a real estate agent or a lawyer and a real estate agent. There are more real estate licenses per capita than probably anywhere in the world and certainly more than any time and sense in Kansas, because that just seemed like a no-brainer way to make money. These Simuron town officers and real estate men, like leaders of any startup Kansas Boomtown, were hardworking and ambitious. They relished creating new communities from nothing and felt patriotic pride in their new growing towns. Professor Jim Schellenberg elaborates. The idea of small town boosterism and the image of success and progress and somehow their particular piece of the world is blessed along with the emphasis upon democratic action. The roots of democracy with local determination of issues

it just became more exaggerated in places like Western Kansas in the 1880s. Kathleen Holt, owner of the Simuron Hotel. Simuron was already fairly well established by the time the county seat worked and the assumption was that Simuron would be the county seat. In fact, I think many of the people who served in official functions or served any kind of official function already resided in Simuron. Many of the records have been collected here. The land office was established here and so the treasures office and that sort of thing would have naturally grown out of those records. And so I think that Simuron probably just assumed that this town would be the county seat. But then these developers came in with other ideas and said, no, let's rest the county seat away from them, put it in angles and ensure the survival of angles and our prosperity there. In 1885, a self-made multi-millionaire from Rochester, New York

named Aza T. Soule came to Western Kansas looking to invest some of his fortune. Soule was colorful and controversial. Part P. T. Barnum-style promoter and part 19th century robber baron. By 1885, when he came out to Kansas as part of the investment fad, Soule had already amassed some 11 million dollars by manufacturing patent medicines and promoting them worldwide. James Schellenberg has written on Soule and the Grey County War. Mr. Soule, as I call him, had a lot of money and he won the play with it. He was Donald Trump of his time who made his money with hop bidders and felt that helping to boost his empire, he'd like to adopt a town out west that could become a metropolitan center of the west. And he chose Ingalls, Kansas. And unfortunately, there was Simuron that also wanted to be a capital of that area.

And so there was a bitter conflict between the two towns and their backers. Aza Soule's wildly popular patent medicine was known as hop bidders. It promised to cure almost anything, although it was, in reality, composed of mere green alcohol and flavoring. This was, let's remember, in the Victorian age. Medicine was far less advanced and alcohol consumption was frowned upon in polite society. And yet it was somehow deemed acceptable to keep a bottle of such alcohol-laced patent medicine nearby for quick relief. Soule, who was considered by some a promotional genius, personally wrote all his own ad copy for hop bidders. If you are married or single, older young, suffering from poor health or languishing on a bed of sickness, rely on hop bidders. Whoever you are, wherever you are, whenever you feel the your system needs cleansing, toning or stimulating, without intoxicating, take hop bidders.

Have you dyspapsia, kidney, or urinary complaint? Disease of the stomach, bowel, blood, liver, or nerves? You will be cured if you use hop bidders. Aza T. Soule. Soule was also a visionary with advertising techniques. Back in 1879, he'd already been the creator and owner of one of the first professional baseball teams featuring a product tie-in, naming the team the Rochester hop bidders. Plus, Soule pioneered the use of the American flag in advertising following the Civil War. In this effort, thousands of small American flags had been handed out at public gatherings proudly in blazing with the words hop bidders. Soule enjoyed giant profits on his well-liked patent medicine. By the time he arrived in Western Kansas, traveling by his own private train, Soule was hungry for new horizons, Kathleen Holt. They were the jet setters of their day in the sense that they would come here and it was very popular thing to come to the Wild West and go on a buffalo hunt, or to come to the Wild West and see the cattle drives or to take part in it.

Also, those same entrepreneurs were here where let's come and invest in the Wild West. I think it was also an element not only of economics but of romance. What happened when Aza Soule came to my understanding is that he was an entrepreneur and had dreams and visions and wanted to own a town, wanted to own a river, so he started the Soule Canal. Aza T. Soule was the county seat fight. He is the one that incited the whole thing. Had he not been in there doing the things he was doing, there wouldn't have been a county seat fight. After a few days in Simuron, I'd befriended a fellow border at the Simuron Hotel, Marshall Allen Bailey. I was thrilled to discover that Bailey was raised in Simuron and was an expert on the Seat War and Soule having learned much from an earlier generation of gray county residents, including some of my relatives. Today, he's the official Marshall of Dodge City, Kansas. Soule wanted Simuron to die on the vine that was his idea.

You don't have to study him very long before you find out. He was a talker and he was a persuader. And in that light, he was dangerous. Professor Craig Minor explains. Well, Aza Soule was a good example of an Easterner. Somebody with some capital. He made money in a patent medicine, I think, but anyway, it probably wasn't a very responsible thing to do, but he made a lot of money at it. So he had money to invest and he was looking for, I don't know, maybe he's looking for something more honest to do or something more salt to the earth to do. In Western Kansas, Soule would plunge headlong into the business of land speculation, land irrigation, town building and local politics. How will millionaire Aza Soule impact the Kansas High Plains? Will the money from his hot bidders patent medicine be enough to buy a county seat? Tune in tomorrow for part two of the Gray County Seat War here on High Plains Public Radio.

Meanwhile, photography, documentary transcripts, audio, research links and an essay by Brendan Merrick Lynch are all available on the Gray County Seat War website. You can reach the site through the High Plains Public Radio website at www.hppr.org. Principal funding for this program was provided by the Kansas Humanities Council, a nonprofit cultural organization encouraging the appreciation of history, heritage and values. My chickens, they are polymerthrock, my horses, Clyde's, Dale Norman's, Doc, my cattle, Durham, very fine, and Poland, China, are my spinal, Kansas land, sweet Kansas land, as on the highest hill I stand. I look at the pleasant landscape or for acres broad, I'll sign a war till Gables Trump in loud command says I must leave my Kansas land. The Gray County Seat War was written and produced by Brendan Merrick Lynch.

Principal funding for this program was provided by the Kansas Humanities Council, a nonprofit cultural organization encouraging the appreciation of history, heritage and values. This program was produced in conjunction with High Plains Public Radio with support from listeners like you. Last time on the Gray County Seat War, the leaders of Simuron, Kansas had high hopes for the future of their little town. It had been named the Temporary Gray County Seat and residents there believed the town would grow and prosper once the designation was permanent. But a millionaire from back east had other ideas. Here's Brendan Lynch. Asa Seule formed the Eureka Irrigation Canal Company. He then bought huge tracks of land in Gray and Ford counties and began construction of a narrow six foot deep ditch that would begin west of Simuron and wind eastward some 90 miles to Spearville, Kansas. Simuron Hotel owner Kathleen Holt.

His idea was if you dug a canal from the Arkansas that the water would flow that way and he would not only own a town, but he would also own a river and that way he could sell irrigation rights off the canal. Seule aim to help build up the region with his millions and to quench the dire thirst of local homestead farmers for a price, Professor Craig Minor. There was no dream that might not possibly be reality. It may look ridiculous 100 years later. The canal system was pretty incredible. I mean there were hundreds of miles of these things and that took enormous labor and enormous capital and enormous engineering. The Eureka Canal might create a series of farms growing something entirely different which would be a high value crop and make lots of money on relatively few acres and people then would be glad to pay the canal company for the water. That's how the Seule would have made money.

Dodge City Marshall Allen Bailey and I drove out into Gray County's short grass prairie. He showed me where Aziti Seule's Eureka irrigation canal began. And they would pump the water then from the Archandas River into Seule's ditch pumps into the Eureka irrigation canal which runs all alongside this road we're at right now. It just looks like odd little hills and things and you wonder, man that's funny because you know why would there suddenly be all these little hills that go pump, pump, pump, pump, pump, pump, and maybe two sets of them run inside my side but you don't really think of the history and the drama that went with what we're looking at. The men on Seule's generous payroll moved fast cutting the irrigation canal through many miles of sod using horse drawn ditchers adding insult to injury. Seule's battalion of workers carved the ditch through the heart of Simmeron splitting the township in two. Simmeronites found Seule's project a ghastly nuisance full of quick sand and labeled it an irritating ditch instead of an irrigating ditch.

The whole county seat thing and all these emotions and hatred and gunfire and death and everything, the political mess, the name calling and everything is directly associated with what we're looking at. For the town officers and others with investments in Simmeron, already the temporary county seat, Asa Seule's new water project amounted to a hostile takeover of Grey County, the Simmeron newspaper charged. There probably never was on the history of irrigating ditch building in the United States such a farce and a fraud as the Eureka irrigating ditch. Craig Miner explains their attitude this way. The key to the whole west is who controls the water. Otherwise the land is not worth very much. Kansas is sort of a mixed thing. You can somewhat get along but you can't get along tours totally without water. And the fact that Seule was getting a water empire built up which he might control was maybe something that was particularly disturbing because it was there were not that many alternatives.

In 1886, Seule established a new township at the head of his ditch project meant to compete with Simmeron for political control of the county. Seule named his new town Ingalls, Kansas, perhaps to capitalize on the popularity of the state's then senator John Jay Ingalls. Ingalls was laid out just six miles west of Simmeron that Seule intended for Ingalls to be Grey County Seat from the beginning, there can be no doubt. If any man will tell me how to buy the county seat, I will freely pay for it. Ace of Seule. But Simmeron's determined founders weren't about to seat control of their territory to Seule without fighting. By October 1887, the Simmeron Jacksonian was on the attack. Old Seule is awfully loving and kind and wrapped up in the dear people of Grey County just before he wants her votes to feather his nest. Voters of Grey County beware of an old villain slimy kiss.

Kansas County seat wars often were rivalries between the economic elites and political leadership of each town. Naturally, those who stood the most to gain by winning county seats were land speculators and town lot title holders, Professor Craig Minor. Usually the founders of these towns had big investments in town loss. That's why they were so community minded. It wasn't just pure altruism that they wanted to advance the community. They stood to make a lot of money on it because they owned a good portion of the town. So any development, of course, would make them money. And if they could make it into a real live town where lots would sell for maybe several thousand dollars, then they could make a fortune. So I'm sure that yes, whether that town was the county seat, whether that town got a second railroad, meant big money to the certain clique within the town you own property. Soule, already in his early 60s, was rapidly becoming a celebrity in Dodge City due to his enormous wealth. Faithfully, Soule was also hard-nosed enough to understand the value of employing Dodge City lawmen as mercenaries to further his business ambitions.

There were a lot of men from Dodge City that were involved in this county seat war involving Ingalls and Shemran. I drove to Dodge City to find out more about the Mastersons and other Dodge City lawmen in county seat mercenaries. There I met with Jim Shira, who runs the Kansas Heritage Center. Well, Neil Brown, Bill Tillman, Charlie Bassett, Matt Masterson, these lawmen had served as posse members and deputy marshals and so on whenever needed, putting up with the cowboys and everything through the cattle drives. They knew how to handle people. So they knew how to do that type of job. In 1887, with the election for permanent county seat on the horizon in Gray County, Soule quietly gave Matt Masterson $775 worth of real estate in Ingalls and planted a headline in the paper saying, quote, bat thinks Ingalls will be the permanent county seat.

Matt Masterson was elected as Shira at the early age of 23 in 18, actually the election was in 1876 in the fall and served from 1877 through 1878 and ran for election again but was defeated. Both brothers were involved and they served as deputy marshals, marshals and Shira, deputy sheriffs and so on. Ed Masterson, who served as the marshal of Dodd City, was killed in 1878 in a shootout James Masterson, he was a good lawman. He all of them were good. Besides the Masterson brothers, Asa Soule's payroll included other Dodge lawmen, most notably Bill Tillman. Bill Tillman had kind of an illustrious career in his younger days. He was arrested, well as a member of a group that held up a train and was later acquitted and exonerated but in any also was arrested for stealing horses but was later acquitted. As formidable a force as Soule, his lawyers, business partners and hired gunfighters were,

they had a fight on their hands with the leadership of Simuron Kansas. Along with my ancestor, FM Luther, a long list of leading town landmen, merchants and farmers of that area vowed to fight Soule for the county seat with any means at their disposal. FM Luther's great granddaughter, my mother Nancy Miller, gives the Simuron perspective. We came here first and this is our land and we're willing to fight for it. You know, we're not going to be scared off by you or anybody else. And that's very American quality. The great county seat fight really shows that. You know, there's a good example of that. It's particularly American. People don't cave in. With my great-great-grandfather FM were his brother, J.A. Luther, Jake Shoupe, the Evans brothers who were grocers and odd job men, Mayor Parlin, Jack Bliss, Ed Fairhurst, Colin Keating, and even the shy John Wesley English, who sided with his Simuron neighbors even though his extensive fruit and walnut tree orchards would be watered by Soule's ditch. Many others from Simuron were ready to stand up for their town rather than be bulldozed by the patent medicine king from Rochester.

Ellis Garten, editor of the Simuron Jacksonian, summed up his town's attitude towards Soule and his new pretender town. Poor old granny Soule dolefully says he never was so mistrusted in his life. As since he came into great county seat fight, probably the old rooster never before went to stick his nose into other people's affairs, supposing that because they were away out here, they did not have sense enough to protect their rights. And over his old carcass if need be, this fight will give him enough. He will go back to the bitters. Professor Craig Miner explains that Simuron's founders were typically industrious and intelligent West Kansas settlers. Furthermore, they could be pretty hotheaded when they felt their homes were threatened. And they may have been suffering from testosterone poisoning or something. They may have been particularly tending toward aggressive violence. Most of them were young in. So even the mayor and the district judge might be 25. That adds an element of rowdyism maybe.

And they also drank pretty regularly even though Kansas had prohibition beginning in 1880. And so that land also an aerial legality to the whole thing, the good young boys network maybe. Often these groups of unruly town leaders were in charge of running county seat elections. It was like the Fox running the hen house. Indiana State University professor emeritus James Schellenberg explains. Elections of course in the county seat wars were supposed to be central. But of course appeals to the courts were often very common because the elections had many questionable features. The underhanded campaign and polling practices in gray typified these rigged county seat elections. When a special election to choose the gray county seat was called for Halloween 1887, the leaderships of both Simran and Ingalls swung into action. Schellenberg says hard fought local elections often resulted in controversy. It's all part of the package of American what makes America unique.

And the emphasis upon local government combined that with the sense of citizen participation. All the good things of our democracy can foster a great deal of conflict. Professor Craig Miner, if you can't have an election in the United States that's honest, then what can you have? Kansas had started out with a lot of election passion and problems. We almost were almost started out our history as a bunch of people who were revolutionaries and refused to accept an established government based on the idea that there was fraud, that there was voting fraud of some sort. Simran Boosters charged that Sule's fraud was bribing the county for votes. They watched as Sule went on a mammoth spending spree around the county in region, promising public works projects and jobs everywhere. In garnering votes for Ingalls, as a Sule was to be as resourceful as he was in selling his famous hop bidders medicine. I have only started doing things for you people.

I paid you people for your work and I've helped you stay on your claims. And I have not asked you for one cent. All I want is your good will. This is only the beginning. I have many more projects in mind for your benefit, which will be started shortly. They will be for your benefit and won't cost you a cent. As a T-Sule. Hurting Simran's county seat hopes, Asa Sule struck deals with leaders of Montezuma and Enzine to important voting towns in southern Grey County. In a quid pro quo, Sule would construct these communities a free railroad line to Dodge City and, in exchange, the townspeople of both Montezuma and Enzine would vote unanimously to make Ingalls the county seat. As the grading of the line began, both townships threw themselves behind Sule's Ingalls for county capital with enthusiasm. The Enzine newspaper, named the Razoupe, declared, quote, hurrah for AT Sule in the railroad. Everyone was happy but Simran. Sule's Dodge City, Montezuma and Trinidad Railroad

got built in record time with an extravagant celebration to mark the opening. He built a railroad from Dodge City, no small thing, from Dodge City to Montezuma, with all the trouble of getting the bonds and all this to have this thing built to win the votes for Ingalls for Grey County. Marshall Bailey and I drove into southern Grey County and climbed one of the big railroad grades that remained from Sule's railroad, built as a bribe for the votes of Montezuma and Enzine townships, both of which hoped to grow with the increase in railroad traffic and jobs. This is not my first time being here. I've come out here often and stood on these old grades and you're standing on a place where the old steam engines actually ran, and you're standing on a place where Sule, Chuck Beeson in his band, all the dignitaries rode this train out with the big hoopla that Sule was famous for and

it happened right here. Oh, very spot. All for the county seat of Grey County. All for the county seat of Grey County. That's correct. The shadow of Sule's new empire began to spread over Ford County too. Here was a man who got things done. In Dodge City, Sule established the region's first four-year college, called Sule College, naturally. He also founded the first national bank and put money in a Dodge street car system. For each new project, Sule garnered more publicity, political influence, and steam behind his town's bid for Grey County seat. Meanwhile, he also constructed homes, businesses, and churches and ever growing ingols. Calling himself the people's friend, Sule also published editorials in the Ingalls Union, defending himself from Simmeron's nasty personal attacks. They don't even believe a word they say. For if I would only do a small part for them what I'm doing for you, or would not do anything to help you get the county seat at Ingalls,

they would call me an angel. And instead of showing me as an elephant unloading, they would represent me as a peacock. I say believe what you please of me, but don't let these Simmeron sharks make you lose your grip on what you have got. Use your own good sense and get your county seat at Ingalls where you want it. Ace of Sule. Marshall Bailey says that in addition to his payroll of ditch and railroad workers in Grey County and gunfighters in Dodge City, Sule wielded the power of popular imagination and great political influence, coming to be known as the one man boom. The average citizen of Dodge City elected Sule as being somebody from back east with barrels full of money and he hadn't even got to the bottom of the first one yet. Because Sule was pouring money into Dodge City, the economy and stuff. He put the first bank over there, he put the first college over there, the first water works. He just, well, he, matter of fact, he also put the first bank in Spearville, Kansas and Ingalls, Kansas too. He spent a fortune in this land out here

because he saw something that the average fella did not see. But Sule also hoped to realize big profits for himself. By the late 80s, Ace of Sule was widely said to own so much land in Grey and Ford Counties that both New York City and Boston could fit inside his property. Will all the money Ace of Sule has poured into Ingalls and Dodge City be enough to influence the county seat election? Tune in tomorrow for part three of the Grey County Seat War here on High Plains Public Radio. Meanwhile, photography, documentary transcripts, audio, research links, and an essay by Brendan Merrick Lynch are all available on the Grey County Seat War website. You can reach this site through the High Plains Public Radio website at www.hppr.org. The Grey County Seat War was written and produced by Brendan Merrick Lynch.

Principal funding for this program was provided by the Kansas Humanities Council, a nonprofit cultural organization encouraging the appreciation of history, heritage, and values. This program was produced in conjunction with High Plains Public Radio with support from listeners like you. Last time on the Grey County Seat War, millionaire Ace of Sule has spent big money in Grey County to influence residents to vote for the city of Ingalls as the permanent county seat. But citizens of Simmaron have vowed not to give up the county seat without a fight. Here's Brendan Lynch. Craig Miner describes the money making possibilities, Sule and Big 19th Century financiers like him may have seen in Western Kansas. And fundamentally, these people were developers. And his railroad, and just as the case in his ditch, would make money if he could develop the region. And if he could develop the region by providing it with water and making it a different kind of place, then the land that he owned in the region, and I'm sure he did.

I don't know this, but I'm sure that was the way they usually, if they're going to invest in the railroad in the ditch, they want to get in the ground floor and buy the land for a dollar and acre when there's no canal in no railroad, then build the canal in the railroad and then wait five years and wait for all these people to come in and have good businesses and then sell the land for $100 an acre or something. And then the railroad, of course, would have business and the canal would have business. So both of those would be money making enterprises plus the general development of the area would make him money on land speculation. The town of Ingalls, Kansas, earned Ace of Soule money too, which was incentive enough for him to spend freely for its rapid construction. When stung by charges that Ingalls was prefabricated, Soule complained to an Ingalls town officer about the lack of any real community. A town is not a town unless it has a church and a minister. I want a church built here within 60 days and a minister hired.

Select a representative to hire one and my people will take care of the details. Ace of Soule. To counter Soule's pro-Engalls spending, Simuron's leadership developed anti-Soule and anti-Engalls themes for the county seat election in the Simuron newspapers, especially the Jacksonian. The Jacksonian charge that Soule was a shyster, a profiteer out to create a personal empire and thwart democratic rule in western Kansas. As evidence, they pointed to the ill-gotten gains of his patent medicine empire. As for Ingalls, it is merely a question of time when angles will be knocked out and the friends that knew her once will know her no more. The town was started for no other purpose upon Earth and to drown Simuron and feather the nest of a lot of the biggest shysters ever born. A.T. Soule is merely work in the dear people for suckers. The Jacksonian and Simuron made high sport of attacking and ridiculing Soule. The paper referred to Soule as Bealzebub and when they did print his proper name,

they refused to capitalize it. In fact, they labeled Soule worse things than can be repeated over the airwaves a century later. Marshall Allen Bailey has read through these old Simuron newspapers. Their idea was to put out as much anti-Soule propaganda as possible because even though Soule was supposedly doing a big favor for the citizens of Southern Great County, Simuron wanted to downplay that and let them know that they were being ripped off. It was not in their favor. As soon as the voting was done and everything, they would find out that they were getting ripped off. Professor Jim Schellenberg explains the involvement of the local press in these wars. Oh, that's a beautiful one. In those days, the newspaper was a representative of the interests of the town and in these young towns, it was very closely tied to the future of growth of that town. And those little newspaper men were intemperate to say the least.

Beautiful examples in the Grey County, the Jacksonian of Simuron, particularly I found. And in many other county seat wars, the newspapers of the fludging towns did their best to fan the flames. We are on to the Lop Eard, Lantern John, half bread and half-born whiskey soaked, pox eaten pup, or pretenced to edit that worthless water of subdued outhouse bung fodder known as a single messenger. He just started out to climb the journalistic banister and wants us to knock the hay seed from his hair. Pull the splinters out of his turn and push him on and up. We'll fool him. No free advertising from us. Craig Miner has researched these 19th century newspapers and says they were often used to drum up support both financial and emotional for their hometown. Clearly the newspaper and the newspaper editor represented mostly that town. And the means of communication and the means of faction forming, it kind of came through that daily dose of wild rhetoric in the newspaper.

Sue was going to be a mixed presence on the one hand. You don't want to reject his money, but on the other hand people are jealous and bitter about outsiders coming in with a lot of money and trying to exercise what they think is illegitimate political control. So certainly there's that and who feels sorry for sull. It's really easy to build up this resentment. Also newspapers thrived on some sort of factionalism. Every newspaper had to represent some group. And there was a tendency to really exaggerate the situation in order to play to that group. So there would be a tendency to polarize in that way and to become the champion of some group that was bitter and to make somebody else the Satan of the situation. And probably Grey County was ready made.

There are lots of stereotypes already in place that allow that to happen fairly readily. 1880s were the height of the gilded age. When critics charged, the capitalism had run a mock creating a small elite class of the super rich who prayed on the American masses. The power of their money could skew and taint democracy itself it was charged. Simmeron's editorialists skillfully painted sull with this brush as a menace to democracy, Craig Miner. So this can really rouse passions and people feel that democracy itself is threatened by their enemies, by whoever it is and the other town or county seat candidate. And of course, probably they're all cheating in some way, but usually each side has a feeling that it is the righteous and the other side is evil. The reflection is to decide whether the pioneer town of Grey County centrally located built up by the old inhabitants of the county and now populated by an industrious, intelligent and influential class of people shall campaign over a corrupt set of scheming, shysters who have mapped out a town upon the broad prairies to further their own interests. It is simply a question of right against wrong honesty and law against the brutal and bulldozing.

And that's the last of the people against a favored few in keeper Kathleen Holt explains that sull's irrigation canal was seen as an engineering failure by local farmers and was plagued by accidents. A fact that Simmeron supporters were quick to turn into classic war propaganda in addition to vote buying and fraud. Simmeron's journalist charge sull with atrocities against children. And what happened is before the water flowed, it was reabsorbed into the sand. Now there are people who would say that the irrigation canal never held water, but we know that's not true. It did hold at least standing water and I've read newspaper accounts of a child falling into the canal and drowning. And of course, asa sull was a fairly controversial figure and he evidently had been sued in the past by someone that had taken his hot bitters and had miscarried a baby. So the newspapers and their very flamboyant language of the time called sull now not only a baby killer but also the killer of innocent children because they were drowning left and right in his canal.

At any rate, so we know there was water in the canal at one time. Despite these engineering and publicity problems, sull assumed rightly that his irrigation canal, town, railroad, college and other projects had bought him enough support to win the election for Ingalls, Kansas. By late 1888, most great county residents had been lured to sull's way of thinking. Why stand in the way of a tycoon who wanted to pour millions into the county for the sake of one town? For victory, sull would simply need a clean, uncorrupted county election to confirm this majority view. Unfortunately for sull and Ingalls, Simuron partisans were in charge of the election return tabulations and they planned to cheat. Election day for permanent county seat fell on Halloween 1887. Simuron resembled an armed camp.

Simuronites, rendishing Winchester rifles, milled about the polling places. Ingalls, as promised, sent in Bat Masterson, Bill Tillman, the Gilbert Brothers and other well-known Dodge City gunmen as its designated election observers. But their access to Simuron polling places was denied by armed townspeople. And in at least one case, sull's men were poisoned with laxatives by Simuron citizenry. Kathleen Holt runs the old Simuron hotel. That was also in Simuron and Ingalls poll watchers just refused to leave their poll. I mean, their spots. They were going to stay there. Finally, when they would not leave, the Simuron people sent two kids who were there up to the drugstore and told them to get coffee for the poll watchers. Only they had them lace the coffee with laxatives. So the kids took the coffee back. The poll watchers drank the coffee and pretty soon they were forced to leave their posts. And so the Simuron people could stuff the ballot box.

This is the election. This is the decision that the people have made. And then we're going to have to implement that and leave the records in Simuron. Avesa sull's gunslingers, the Simuron Jacksonian complained. The hired henchmen of sull who boldly infest our town and interest of Ingalls are no better than cup throats and thieves. These curses are on our streets like anarchists. We look upon and treat them all as deadly vipers. All of sull's Dodge City gunmen couldn't prevent Simuron from committing election fraud. Marshall Allen Bailey explained it this way. Simuron stuff the ballot boxes. According to the folks from Ingalls. And a Simuron had its own society of ballot box stuff. And these guys, their sole purpose, the way I understand it was by hook and brick and ballot box stuffing and whatever it took to get Simuron as the county seat. I grew up hearing the story from my grandmother's family about the dozen odd businessmen from Simuron who promised money to a secretive society

of 72 remote farmers from foot and Logan townships. In exchange, these farmers were to give their block vote for Simuron. However, there was a Simuron scam in the works. Kathy Holt elaborates. Simuron promised people if they would vote for Simuron, they would give them a $10,000 bond. And so the people said, yes, we'll take the $10,000 bond for our vote. And then the people offering the bond signed this official document stating that this was the agreement only each man signed the name of the man to his left. So after the vote was taken, then it was revealed that that agreement was also void because it was fraudulent. People hadn't signed their own names. There was yet more evidence of such conspicuous vote fraud. To crown this elaborate hoax of an election, the pro Simuron commissioners counting the ballots came up with a vote total that far exceeded Simuron's population of voters. When asked later by courts to produce registration, tally sheets and poll books, Simuron claimed these records had been conveniently lost or maybe stolen.

I mean, a lot of those ballot boxes and stuff that I understand, the names showed up and stuff were people that had gone on and moved off somewhere else. And, you know, things like that. I mean, it was very hook and crook. In the end, Simuron claimed victory by a scant 43 votes and Suels Legion of lawyers working for Ingalls contested and took the mess into the Kansas courts. Through much of 1888, tensions ratcheted upwards. Lawyers for both townships submitted more than 3,000 pages of briefs containing substantial evidence of vote rigging and bribery on all sides. Again, Dodge City, Marshall, Alan Bailey. The county seat fight itself is so complicated that anybody with even good understanding can read how the court orders how the records were removed to Simuron, how they removed Ingalls, how they removed Ingalls. Simuron and why and all this. And it's confusing. It's really confusing. It was a big fat political mess.

And it's just even to this day, it's not clear. I mean, it's just not. The county seat case progressed up the court system as the townships taunted each other in their newspapers. Eventually, the case went to the Kansas Supreme Court. By the end of 88, George Boulds, a seat war participant on the Ingalls side recalled that, quote, if an Ingalls man wrote into Simuron, he was a marked man. He was in for a beating or he would be cornered until he was forced to draw. But we had desparados like you wouldn't believe. That just didn't go where the two turt and shit shit is. I asked locals about the violent reputation of Old West Kansas. And there was some angolights that aren't here because of that had lead poisoning. It's not who shoots first the matters, but who hits first aim for the Billy.

And what did it gain? Nothing. A lot of deaths, a lot of hard feelings. And God didn't let us on this earth for that. There shouldn't have been a lot of regret. Danny and Dodd City, Kansas where you can still carry exposed loaded weapon legally. It's not against the law here, of course. If any one occurrence triggered the multiple instances of violence over county seats at the close of the 1880s, it was the bursting of the Kansas land and town lot bubble. The cresting wave of settlement that inspired the building craze on the high plains crashed in 1888. Suddenly, the real estate business died. Drought came. Prices fell, credit tightened, railroad companies disappeared. And the collective dream of multiple metropolises on the high plains withered and blew away like a tumbleweed. Professor Craig Miner of Wichita State University talks about the bust. It starts to lose the confidence it goes very rapidly. It just disappears very rapidly.

And it's hard to imagine that if you don't have some historical perspective and have watched it happen before, it's hard to imagine that it can. Because how can this place with all this cash flow for a while and all these fancy offices and all these loans and all this staff and everything? How can it really disappear? Or how can Enron and WorldCom be actually cooking their books? How can all these people actually be dishonest and pulling hundreds of millions of dollars out of a company and leaving it for rent? Well, it's happened a lot of times. And when it does happen, of course, people, it's a terrible thing and they, for a while, become fairly cynical about it. And that's where you get a depression. Due to these dashed investment prospects, county seats all over western Kansas now, paradoxically, seemed more valuable than ever. Losing a seat war in the new shrinking economy could mean the outright death of a town. And today, there's a graveyard of ghost towns on the high plains to prove it. How will the courts decide the voting fraud in Gray County? And if the courts can resolve the county seat conflict, will the citizens of Ingalls and Simuron resort to violence?

Tune in tomorrow for part three of the Gray County Seat War here on High Plains Public Radio. Meanwhile, photography, documentary transcripts, audio, research links, and an essay by Brendan Merrick Lynch are all available on the Gray County Seat War website. You can reach the site through the High Plains Public Radio website at www.hppr.org. Principal funding for this program was provided by the Kansas Humanities Council, a nonprofit cultural organization encouraging the appreciation of history, heritage, and values.