Osawatomie - John Brown Country

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Located in the southwest Miami County, on the Marais des Cygnes River, this historic Kansas town sits in the midst of numerous trees and rolling hills. The town was established by agents of the Emigrant Aid Society when Kansas was trying to become a state. It was surveyed in February, 1855, and the name was formed formed by combining Osa, of the Osage Indians, with "watomie" of Pottawatomie tribe.

The first building was erected by a man named Samuel Geer, who used it as both a dwelling and boarding house. The Emigrant Aid Company established a sawmill about ½ mile below the town site on the south bank of the Marais des Cygnes River, from which came much of the lumber for more new buildings.

Osawatomie, early 1900s.

These were soon followed by a blacksmith named Mr. Holdridge and a drug store was opened by Dr. Darr, Samuel Geer opened the first store and hotel in 1855 and was appointed the first Postmaster in December when a post office was established in the store.

The first church organized was the Congregational, in April, 1856, by Reverend Samuel L. Adair, John Brown's brother-in-law, but it would be several years before a church was built. A Methodist Church congregation would also be established that year, meeting in private homes.

The settlement, established during the years of the Kansas-Missouri Border War, quickly became a target of the pro-slavery faction. The first attack was made on the town on June 7, 1856, when a party of about 150 Missourians, under command of John W. Whitfield, learning that most of the men of the Free-State forces were occupied elsewhere, converged on the settlement. No resistance was made, and beyond plundering some houses and running off horses, no great damage was done. The village, at this time, consisted of about thirty buildings, actual population about 200. But, this was to be just the first attack.

On the morning of August 30, 1856, Frederick Brown, son of abolitionist John Brown, left Osawatomie before sunrise to travel to Lawrence. On his way, he was killed by men of the pro-slavery faction. Messengers were at once dispatched to notify the people in the village, including Captain John Brown, who quickly made plans for defense of the settlement. John Brown, with 41 men took a position in the timber on the south side of the Marais des Cygnes River. As the Missourians passed by the settlement, the Free-State men fired upon them. Armed with a cannon, the pro-slavery men returned the fire, and Brown’s men were forced to retreat. The Missourians then entered the town and commenced to pillage and burn it. They first fired the blockhouse, in which several men were stationed, and only four houses escaped being destroyed. When the ruffians left they had two wagons filled with their wounded and ten loaded with the plunder taken from the homes of the citizens.

The Free-State men lost about six men killed or captured, and several more were seriously wounded. It is supposed that the Missourians suffered about the same number in dead and wounded, although it was never definitely known.

Notwithstanding these battles and the general troubles of the times, Osawatomie grew and prospered, and in 1857 had grown to about 800 people. The first school was taught in the winter of 1857-58 by Mr. Squires, in a frame schoolhouse. The Congregational Church also met in the school building. The first newspaper in the community also was established in 1857, called The Southern Kansas Herald.

The Old Stone Church was built by Reverend Samuel L.

Adair in 1861, Kathy Weiser, May, 2004.

Having lost his original hotel in the Battle of Osawatomie, Samuel Geer built a larger two story frame hotel in 1858. It was here, that Horace Greeley, Republican Party founder and New York Times editor, made a speech to an assembly of about 5,000 people at the first convention of the Kansas Republican Party in the spring of 1859.

In 1860, the town’s only newspaper, the Southern Kansas Herald, was sold and moved to Paola. It would be several years before another was established in the community, In 1861, the Reverend Samuel L. Adair built a new stone Congregational Church.

In 1866 the first state hospital for the insane was established about a mile northeast of Osawatomie. It would eventually become one of the largest institutions in the state. Though no longer called the "Kansas Insane Asylum," the psychiatric hospital still exists, and since 1901, has been called the "Osawatomie State Hospital."

Before the Civil War, the mentally ill had been placed in poor houses, workhouses, or prisons when their families couldn't take of them. However, by the 1860s, Americans wanted to provide better assistance to the less fortunate, including the mentally ill and between 1825 and 1865, the number of insane asylums in the United States increased from nine to 62. "The Lodge," as it was familiarly called in the beginning, was simply a farmhouse that admitted its first patient on November 5, 1866. It grew to an average patient population of 13. In no time the two wards, which could accommodate 12 patients each plus the employees who cared for them was filled. Two years later, construction of the Main Building began. When it was fully completed in 1886, the large brick structure ranged from two to five stories, contained two wings, in which the patents lived. In the center were the administrative offices, pharmacy, dental clinic, canteen, and patients’ library. Afterwards, the "Lodge" was used first as an isolation building for patients with smallpox, then as a farm building before it was torn down.

The Kansas Insane Asylum was established in 1866. It is still

in operation today as a psychiatric hospital now called

the Osawatomie State Hospital, photo early 1900s.

Continued Next Page

An old building remains on the Osawatomie State Hospital campus, Kathy Weiser, May, 2010.

Osawatomie downtown today, Kathy Weiser, May, 2010.

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