More Images of 1119 Polk St

These are the photographs of the Walker home from the street. The first photograph is part of the series that I have posted earlier. The second photograph with the caption about EA and Edna's wedding seems to be from a different time. The flowers look strikingly similar, but if you look closer the front steps are different. It's an exciting difference for those of us who love minutiae. In the photo with the caption about EA and Edna's wedding, the front steps are bare. But in the other photo, there is what I would call an Indian blanket covering the front steps. In one of the earlier photographs I published on this blog, the blanket or a similar blanket appears in the photograph of the room with the college pennants.

From what I have been able to learn the Walkers moved into this house in the late 1880s or early 1890s. One thing that makes this harder to track down is the destruction of the 1890 census records. The Kansas census of 1875 lists the Walkers as living in Ohio township in Morris County, but the next census record I can find for them is the Kansas 1895 census. In that census they are living in Topeka. Gussie was born in Morris County in 1888, but Ada was born in Topeka in 1893.

My thought is that they probably moved to Topeka in 1890 or so and into the house on Polk. They wanted better schools for their children, although at that point, Lily, their oldest who was born in 1873 was probably out of school. She is the only one of the seven children who didn't graduate from college.

After Edward died in 1911 Betsy continued to live in the house probably until her death in 1927. In 1917 Ada married Bill Smith and they took up residence in the Polk house. As has already been noted, the house has been torn down and replaced with a parking lot for an apartment complex. I've begun to wonder if the house was destroyed by the 1966 Topeka tornado. Mom and Helen don't remember, but I'll see what I can find out.