Henry J. Adams (1816-1870) - Lawyer, Free-State advocate, politician and soldier, Adams was born at Rodman, New York on February 10, He was educated in the public schools, spent a short time at Oberlin College, in Ohio, then read law and graduated from the Cincinnati Law School. He came to Kansas in March, 1855, and during the summer located at Lawrence. The next winter he was elected a member of the senate of the Free-State Legislature, and from that time took an active part in public affairs. During the session of 1858, the Territorial Legislature made him chairman of the committee to investigate the Oxford, Kickapoo and other election frauds. He took a prominent part in the Leavenworth Constitutional Convention and under that constitution was elected governor, but as Congress failed to admit Kansas as a state, he was never installed in office. Before the convention in 1858, Adams received an equal vote with Marcus J. Parrott for delegate in Congress, but Parrott was declared the nominee and was elected. Under an act passed by the legislature of 1859, Adams was appointed a member of a committee with Judge S. A. Kingman and F. S. Hoogland, to audit the claims against the United States government, for losses sustained by citizens of Kansas in the Kansas-Missouri Border War. Next to Governor Charles Robinson he was the most popular candidate before the Republican convention which nominated the first governor of the state. Soon after the outbreak of the Civil War he was appointed paymaster of the army and served in that capacity until the close of hostilities. He died at Waterville, Kansas on June 2, 1870.

John Alexander Anderson (1834-1892) - Minister, congressman, and president of the Kansas State Agricultural College, at Manhattan, Kansas, Anderson was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania on June 26, 1834. He was educated at Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio and graduated in 1853. Benjamin Harrison, afterwards president of the United States, was his roommate while in college. He began work as a pastor of a church at Stockton, California in 1857, and preached the first Union sermon on the Pacific Coast. He was elected as the trustee of the California State Insane Asylum in 1860. Two years later he was appointed chaplain of the Third California Infantry. In this capacity he accompanied General Patrick Connor's expedition to Salt Lake City, Utah. Anderson's desire to be always investigating something led to his appointment to the United States Sanitary Commission as California correspondent and agent. His first duty was to act as relief agent of the Twelfth Army Corps. He was next transferred to the central office at New York. In 1864, when General Ulysses S. Grant began moving toward Richmond, Anderson was made superintendent of transportation and had charge of six steamboats. At the close of the campaign he served as assistant superintendent of the canvas and supply department at Philadelphia and edited a paper called the Sanitary Commission Bulletin. When the war closed he was transferred to the History Bureau of the commission at Washington D.C., remaining there one year collecting data and writing a portion of the history of the commission. In 1866 he was appointed statistician of the Citizens' Association of Pennsylvania, an organization for the purpose of mitigating the suffering resulting from pauperism, vagrancy and crime in the large cities. In February, 1868 Anderson accepted a call from the Presbyterian Church of Junction City, Kansas, and during the years spent in this town, he developed power as an orator and took an active part in politics. He was on the school board most of the time he was in Junction City. In 1870, the morning after his mother was buried out on the open prairie, where all the dead had been laid, he remarked to some of his friends, "This town must have a cemetery," and as a result of his efforts, the Highland Cemetery was established. In 1870-71, there was much interest throughout the country in narrow gauge railroads, it being argued that there was economy in them. Anderson concluded that the idea was not practicable and determined to oppose the issue of the bonds asked for in Clay County. His ideas prevailed, and the track was re-laid with standard gauge. In the summer of 1872 Benjamin Harrison secured him a call from a church in Indianapolis, but his wife and family persuaded him to remain in Kansas. In the fall of 1873, Anderson was elected President of the Kansas State Agricultural College at Manhattan. There, he made radical policy changes which resulted in placing the college near the head of the list of such institutions in the United States. Anderson remained president of the college until 1878, when he was elected to Congress and served as representative from the First and Fifth districts until 1891. In March of that year he was appointed Consul General to Cairo, Egypt, and sailed for his new post on April 6th, but his constitution was already impaired and he was unable to stand the change of climate. The following spring he determined to return, but died on his way home at Liverpool, England on May 18, 1892. He was laid at rest on the hill top he had chosen years before, near the town where he said the happiest days of his life had been passed, and where seven of his family are also interred.

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