NESS CITY, Kan. (AP) - In a corner of the Ness County Historical Museum, Margery Frusher pointed with pride to the display of newspaper clippings and photos.
“He’s the most famous person who ever lived in Ness County,” she told The Hutchinson News (https://bit.ly/1R49h1g ).
Not that the county didn’t have other famous people born here, she said. Governor and U.S. Senator Andy Schoeppel was from Ness, and the county also claims two early 20th century baseball players - Smoky Joe Wood and Chief Hogsett, both of whom have a display honoring them inside the old limestone building.
None of these men, however, were as influential as George Washington Carver.
This is the man known - most famously - for the many uses he devised from peanuts. He was an early proponent of crop rotation - mixing in peanuts, soybeans and others crops that provide nutrients into the soil. He also created products from pecans, soybeans and sweet potatoes.
Yet those searching for traces of Carver’s short presence here won’t find much, except for the museum display and a rock pillar marking a swath of prairie where the famed agricultural scientist once homesteaded.
It was 130 years ago that Carver came to Ness County. The 22-year-old took up a 160 acres through the government’s homestead act.
For about two years, he planted crops and did other jobs.
“A lot of people didn’t even know he came out here,” said Kelle Goodman, a member of the historical society who also has an insurance business in Ness City, adding they take a display on Carver to the Kansas Sampler Festival every year. “It amazes people - many people have no idea.”
Carver was born a slave in Diamond Grove, Missouri, around 1865. But at age 13, he came to Kansas with a quest for knowledge.
He first moved to Fort Scott, then to a few other communities before finishing high school in the north-central Kansas town of Minneapolis, according to the Kansas State Historical Society.
He was accepted into Highland University, in northeastern Kansas, by letter.
“I was admitted, went, but when the President saw I was colored he would not receive me. I had spent nearly all of my money, and had to open a laundry here,” Carver would later say, according to a National Park Service study for the George Washington Carver National Monument in Diamond, Missouri.
Carver stayed in Highland about a year, working for the Beelers, a white family, according to the book “George Washington Carver: Scientist and Symbol,” by Linda O. McMurry.
McMurry notes that one of the sons, Frank Beeler, had gone to the newly settled Ness County and opened a store. Meanwhile, the park service study indicates the entire Beeler family, including patriarch Bolivar Beeler, platted what they called Beelerville, owning the store and hotel. The family worked to recruit residents of Highland.
The settlement that grew up around the store became known as Beeler, according to McMurry’s book. Carver came to Ness County in the summer of 1886, finding employment helping a white settler named George Steeley.
Ness County was part of the great migration west as pioneers took up the government’s free land. Under the Homestead Act of 1862, a person could file a claim at the nearest land office for 160 acres. After five years of residence, the settler could get the full title to the land.
Carver bought a relinquishment on a claim located just south of Beeler in August 1886 and began improvements on the 160 acres, according to the National Park Service. In October, he paid a $14 filing fee for his homestead application at the Land Office at WaKeeney.
On the treeless prairie, he built a sod house, which he completed in the spring of 1887. Carver moved in a cookstove, bed, cupboard, table and chairs and washtub and flat iron into the 14-square-foot soddy. He tried to dig a well for water, and couldn’t find any, according to McMurry. He hauled water from neighbor Steeley’s farm, as well as borrowed his farming implements, as Carver only had a spade, hoe and corn planter.
Carver broke 17 acres of the land, planting corn, vegetables and rice corn and had 10 hens. He also planted 800 forest trees and 50 fruit trees, according to the park service study.
Carver left an impression during his short time in Ness County.
“Everybody liked him,” former Ness County settler, L.L. Scott, told The News in 1939. “He was young and alone. He homesteaded a mile south of Beeler where he built a sod house where lived alone. I used to see him in town on Saturdays, and got pretty well acquainted with him.”
Wayne Stiawalt, 88, of Ness City said his grandfather, who also homestead near Beeler, passed down stories of befriending Carver.
“I don’t know if they had any kind of get-togethers or if they just met when they went to town for supplies,” he said. “But they would get together and play cards, croquet and softball.”
He’d play his accordion at local dances, according to the book “George Washington Carver: Scientist and Educator” by Dennis Abrams and Gene Adair. He also was a member of the Ness County literary society.
But besides his musical talent, Carver also was gifted artistically, said Kelle Goodman. He would sketch the county’s plants.
He also observed them, said Margery Frusher. He could tell from the plants what minerals were growing underground, including oil.
The county today is one of the state’s top oil producers.
Meanwhile, it is said Carver set up a greenhouse of sorts in his sod house, growing plants, said Rex Borthwick, a Ness County farmer whose great grandfather, Fred, would eventually own Carver’s homestead. Carver was featured in the Ness County News in March 1888, which noted his knowledge of geology, botany and sciences as remarkable.
The article also stated that Carver had a “collection of about 500 plants in a conservatory adjoining the residence of his employer, besides having a large geological collection in and around the place.
“He is a pleasant and intelligent man to talk with, and were it not for his dusty skin - no fault of his - he might occupy a different sphere to which his ability would otherwise entitle him,” the editor printed.
Carver did want to occupy a different sphere.
On June 21, 1888, Steeley testified in court that Carver was a good homesteader. Mark Horchem, the Ness County Register of Deeds, said his information shows Carver mortgaged his land on June 25, 1888, to a man named JC Develle.
According to the National Park Service study, Carver borrowed a total of $300 from Rex Borthwick’s great uncle George, who operated a Ness County bank with his brother Fred. The park service states he used the sod house and land as collateral.
Carver had decided, as some homesteaders did, that rather than waiting five years to receive full title to the land, he would instead buy the 160 acres at $1.25 an acre. He paid $200.00 to secure the title.
However, for whatever reason, he didn’t stick around to get his official title from the government. He left Ness County in fall 1888.
“It is more likely that he found farming inadequate to satisfy his intellectual curiosity, not to mention his basic substance needs,” Adair wrote.
Carver kept the $100, according to the park service document. Rex Borthwick said it was always told to him that he used the money to go to college.
Whatever he used the leftover for, Carver drifted to Iowa where he worked as a cook in a hotel, according to the park service document. Carver did enroll in Simpson College in 1890 and finally Iowa State University.
He kept the deed to the land until 1891. He had trouble making his loan payments, which forced him to turn it over to his creditor, Fred Borthwick, according to the park service document.
Horchem, however, notes that, according to his county records, Carver “sold it Jan. 1, 1891.” Moreover, he said, Carver never defaulted on his mortgage. The land was deeded to Rex Borthwick’s great grandfather, Fred.
Rex Borthwick said the family owned the land for a short time. A banking crisis in 1893 put the bank out of business and the land was sold sometime after that.
While Carver was an Iowa State faculty member, Booker T. Washington offered him a position at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He moved there in 1896 ? leading the African American college’s agriculture department, according to the Kansas State Historical Society.
He served the college for nearly 50 years, teaching and pursuing his scientific studies, which included what he is most famous for ? finding 300 uses of the peanut.
Also, among Carver’s many inventions was a way of turning soybeans into plastic, according to the historical society. He also turned wood shavings into synthetic marble and cotton into paving blocks.
But he never returned to Ness County. Some who knew him got the occasional letter, including George Borthwick, who received this letter in 1932, according to a book written by Gary Kremer.
“My dear Mr. Borthwick:
How your letter astonishes me. Yes I am the same Geo. W. Carver. I do indeed remember you so pleasantly, when you came to the Steely (sic) home. My, how I would love to see you and those other dear boys as well as some of my old haunts.”
In 1935, he wrote the editor of the Ness County News following the papers’ coverage of the county’s “Old Settlers Reunion.” He noted he enjoyed the paper, but “There is only one article that I see that could be improved, and that is the one entitled ’George Washington Carver,’ which is overestimated 75 percent.”
He did add he wanted to say to “the good people of Ness County that I owe much to them for what little I have been able to accomplish, as I do not recall a single instance in which I was not given an opportunity to develop the best that was within me.”
It’s not easy to find traces, but there is some of Carver’s history here for those who look hard enough. Stop by the state historical marker sign near Beeler, which tells of Carver’s time in Ness County. Travel the dirt road south of Beeler, and a stone monument stands. In 1950, Elma and Leonard Ward donated a small track of the Carver homestead to the Ness County Historical Society. A monument was dedicated on Oct. 11, 1953.
Locals continue to find more snippets about his time in Ness. Horschem said the Trego County Courthouse was preparing to do a renovation and cleaned out the old land office records, shipping him three and a half boxes of Ness County’s land documents.
He and his co-worker, deputy Connie Schwindt, sorted all the documents last fall.
“When we got those boxes in - I told Mark ’I hope we find a document signed by George Washington Carver,’” said Schwindt, noting she came across the original homestead application - complete with Carver’s signature. “It was pretty exciting.”
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Information from: The Hutchinson (Kan.) News, https://www.hutchnews.com
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