History of Atchison County, Kansas. Sheffield Ingalls

settled in the bluffs, northeast of Atchison, but afterwards moved to a tract of land owned by a man named O. B. Dickerson, who afterwards built the first livery stable in Atchison. Dickerson sold his claim to a man named Adams, B. T. Stringfellow’s father-in-law, for $600.00, but Adams did not comply with the law and Taylor jumped it. For a while Taylor and Adams lived on the same quarter, and became acquainted; then Taylor discovered that Adams paid $600.00 for the claim, and gave him his money back. Taylor said he never had any short words with Adams about the claim, but once. They met on the hill, overlooking the river, one day, and were looking at the wreck of the old “Pontiac,” which is now said to have contained several hundred barrels of whiskey. “Well,” said Adams, “when are you going?” “Going where?” asked Taylor. “To Nova Scotia,” replied Adams. “I am not going at all,” was Taylor’s response, which Adams understood to mean that he was not going to leave the claim, but intended to fight. A compromise soon followed.

      Taylor says the “Pontiac” was carried off by Atchison people, and put into their houses, and that years afterwards, the writing on the wheel house could be seen around town. There was no whiskey left in the hold; indeed, the hold was carried away.

      The Taylor place was considered a great deal more valuable in 1855 than it is now; people felt sure that within four or five years John Taylor would cut it up in town lots and sell them at fabulous prices, and go abroad.

      John Taylor’s sympathies were always with the South Carolinians, who made this section so warm in 1856, but said that only one in ten were good citizens; the others were toughs. One of them, a man named Newhall, was killed in the fight at Hickory Point. John Robinson, captain of a southern party at Hickory Point, was an Atchison man, and was shot in the hip.

      Mr. Taylor said that in 1844 and several years later the country was full of bee trees, and that cattle turned into the rush in the river bottom in winter, came out fat in the spring. In 1844 there was a settlement of fifty Kickapoo families on the flat just above the island on the Kansas side. They made a great deal of maple sugar. In summer these Indians went out to the buffalo grounds, sixty to eighty miles west of the river, returning in the fall, to be near the Missouri settlers. There never was an Indian village on the site of Atchison, although Mrs. Joe Wade, who was George Million’s daughter, claims to have remembered coming to this side of the river when she was a little girl, and seeing a dead Indian strapped to a board and leaning against a tree on the present site of Commercial street. The body was surrounded with totem poles. There was no game at that time on this side of the river. Indians themselves hunted deer on the Missouri side in winter, and were very friendly with the whites.

      John Taylor died on March 7, 1897.

JOHN M. CROWELL.

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      John M. Crowell was mayor of Atchison three terms, coming to the city in 1858 from Londonderry, N. H., where he was born October 22, 1823. For ten years he was a merchant here, afterwards being appointed Government storekeeper, and having charge of a distillery below town. From 1870 to 1885, he was United States postoffice inspector for nineteen States and Territories, and in that capacity visited every section of the country. He resigned to become a mail contractor, although solicited by a Democratic postmaster general to remain. His record in Washington was as good as that of any man who ever worked for the Government. Mr. Crowell was a forty-niner, crossing the plains during the great rush of that year, and engaging in sluice mining. He made four trips to California, but never by railroad. From San Francisco he visited China, South America, the Sandwich Islands, and was a great traveler in his time. He was the father of Frank G. Crowell, who was born in Atchison, and for many years a prominent citizen here, but later resigning his position as county attorney of Atchison county and moving to Kansas City to engage in the grain business, where he now lives.

      John M. Crowell’s daughter became Mrs. F. M. Baker, who accumulated a fortune in the grain business in Atchison. Mr. Crowell died on the eleventh day of October, 1902.

      GEORGE MILLION

      WILLIAM SCARBROUGH

LUTHER DICKERSON.

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      Luther Dickerson came to Atchison county in June, 1854, immediately after Kansas was opened to settlement, from Saline county, Missouri, where he had lived ten years. He went to Missouri from Washington county, Ohio, where he was born in 1825. After looking over the country Mr. Dickerson returned to Missouri, but came back to Kansas the following October, and “squatted” on a tract of land a mile north of the State Orphans’ Home. From 1854 to 1857 were the squatter sovereignty days, during which period a settler could have no title to land, further than the fact of his settlement on the land he selected as his home. Land offices were not established until in 1857, when the squatter filed his claims, and began fighting over them. The first land office in this section was at Doniphan. John W. Whitfield, who was afterwards in Congress, was the register. About a year later the land office was removed to Kickapoo, just below Atchison.

      When Mr. Dickerson squatted on his claim in 1854, three-fourths of the land around him was taken. Welcome Nance, Peter Cummings, John Taylor and Widow Boyle had farms at that time. Andy Colgan did not come until 1857. The settlers of 1854 were mostly from Missouri. In 1855 came an organized band of South Carolinians, whose object was to make Kansas a slave State. Then followed the fierce and relentless fight with the Free State men, which ended in 1857, as far as this section was concerned. That is, in 1857 the Free State men won control, and have practically kept it ever since. In the fall of that year the Free State men elected their county ticket, and Luther Dickerson was chosen as one of the four commissioners and was made chairman.

      Luther Dickerson was a Free State man and was fought by all the Missouri and South Carolinians. His land was contested, and he was beaten in the land office, but he finally won before the secretary of the interior, by proving that the woman who was contesting him was a foreigner. Hiram Latham, a Free State man, who lived across the road from Dickerson, was murdered in Doniphan, and because of this murder Frank McVey left the country and never came back. The men who killed Latham were ferried over Independence creek by Dickerson, and, noticing that they were armed, he asked where they were going. They said they were going wolf hunting. In 1858 Luther Dickerson was elected a member of the house of representatives, which met at Lecompton, and then adjourned to Lawrence. In the same year, while still a county commissioner, he built the old court house, which occupied the site of the present court house.

      Luther Dickerson raised the first company of soldiers ever organized in the State of Kansas, in May, 1861. The first military order issued in the State was directed to him, signed by John A. Martin, assistant adjutant general.

      But while his company was the first organized, it happened that Dickerson’s commission as captain was the second issued, and was signed by Governor Charles Robinson, before the State had an official seal. Afterwards, Mr. Dickerson served in the regular volunteer service, as first lieutenant.

      He lived on his land, north of town, for many years, and died in Atchison on the thirteenth day of December, 1910.

LUTHER C. CHALLISS.

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      Luther C. Challiss came to Atchison in 1855 from Boonville, Mo., where he was engaged as a merchant. He remained here continuously until 1861 as merchant, banker, ferry operator and real estate owner. Luther C. Challiss’ addition, the east line of which is at the alley between Seventh and Eighth streets, was preëmpted by Mr. Challiss in 1857, and was originally