Edward and Betsy Move to Topeka

      Edward Walker and Betsy Sharpe sailed from Liverpool in England about the same time. Edward traveled alone and Betsy with her parents and her nine siblings. Through the fates they both ended up living in Kansas. Edward, according to memories of Edna, worked as a pharmacist in Junction City. Betsy’s youngest sibling, the infant Herbert, died when the family reached Junction City. The Sharpes then decided to homestead in Morris County.

Notice that appeared in the Junction City Union, June 3, 1871

Betsy and Edward married on May 30, 1871 - a date that was two days before Edward's 24th birthday and a month before Betsy's 18th. They setup their home near her parents in Parkerville in Morris County, Kansas. Edward was a well-educated Englishman who had apprenticed in England as an apothecary before deciding to emigrate to the U.S.

Junction City Union, Oct 7 1871

The Walker children circa 1890
from left: Percy, Edna, Lily, Eula, Fred and Grace

Their first child, Edward, lived only nine months, but the children kept coming, starting with the birth of Lily in 1873, and then Fred the following year. By the time Percy was born in 1879 they had moved a few miles north to 160 acres southeast of Dwight. Over the next ten years, four more children were born, Eula, 1884, Grace, 1886 and the twins, Edna and Ethel in May 1888. Edward & Betsy Walker's homestead - Morris County as it appears today

In the late winter of 1889, after almost 18 years of marriage and the births of eight children, Edward and Betsy moved to Topeka from Morris County. Lily and Fred were now teenagers and they wanted to give them a better education than was possible in rural Kansas. 

Edward opened the Walker & Co at 111 East Fifth Street in March of 1889. (Or at least that is when the notices first appear in the Topeka papers.

Council Grove Republican, March 8, 1889

     

Go to Walker & Co's, druggists No. 111 East Fifth street,
to see the finest twin-babies in the city,
and while there ask for Lactated Food, the best food
in the market for babies - Topeka State Journal, June 12, 1889

     The family moved to the Fifth Avenue Hotel and Edward opened his store, Walker & Co, at 111 East Fifth Street near the post office in Topeka. Unfortunately Ethel Bessie died the following January. 

      More misfortune occurred on Betsy and Edward's 19th wedding anniversary, May 30, 1890. That night Edward locked the store up at 10 o'clock to return home. Shortly after that, the store was on fire. According to the article on page 1 of the Topeka State Journal: 

      The fire was in Walker & Shane’s drug store at 111 E Fifth Street, just opposite the post office. Two or three people in the vicinity saw a blaze suddenly flash up in the rear part of the front room and in half a minute the whole room was ablaze. The fire burned with such intensity that the fire department was unable to do much more than confine it to the one room. The contents of the room were soon totally destroyed and the walls and front of the building were badly burned. The loss is placed by Messrs. E. B. Walker and D E Shane the owners at $3500. The insurance was $2000. The fire was not in progress over thirty minutes. Mr. Walker had locked up and left the building only a few minutes before the fire broke out. He says he is unable to account for it.

This seems to be a fated spot. It was on this site the first fire in the history of Topeka occurred, June 10, 1859. It nearly wiped out the whole city of Topeka which then contained very few houses. It burned up the first corn bought and stored in Topeka. A year ago another fire occurred in the building, doing serious damage.  

      The store reopened in a month, but the partnership between Edward and Mr. Shane dissolved in the fall of 1890. 

      In the week after the fire, Edward became a registered pharmacist - certified by the State Board of Pharmacists.

There were fifty-six applicants for registration and of these an unusually large proportion passed the examination, namely 32. Before being eligible for registration as a complete pharmacist a man must have had four years’ experience of work in a drug store, and to be registered as capable of being an assistant in the are of a pharmacy he must have had two years of experience. Topeka Daily Capital - page 1, June 6, 1890.

The Edward and Betsy Walker Family circa 1899
Thanksgiving because the store was closed.
Lily, Percy, Edward, Ada, Eula, Betsy, Edna, Fred, and Grace.

Curtis and Otis Get Involved in a Set-to

John and Edith McClenny raised their four children on a farm near Dunavant, KS, a small town in Jefferson County near Topeka. Their children were the two boys, Curtis and Otis, born respectively in 1891 and 1893, and the two girls,  Vala and Helen, born in 1897 and 1900. In the summer of 1913, John was kicked in the head by one of his horses and lingered for a month before dying in September.

In November 1915, the Valley Falls New Era ran the following article:    

Curtis, on the left, and Otis McClenny, pictured in 1917.

The matter of keeping Otis and Curtis McClenny under a peace bond came up before Judge Raines Monday, and the boys were discharged. [The boys were 24 and 21]

A month or two ago Marion Smith, of southeast Valley Falls, went before Justice of the Peace Lord at Valley Falls and swore to a complaint that these two boys had threatened his life and that he was in fear they would carry out their threat and asked that they be put under a peace bond. This Justice Lord did, fixing the bond at $500 each and the bonds, duly executed were filed with the Clerk of the Court. The matter of hearing whether or not these bonds should be continued came up for hearing Monday as noted above. 

 It seems the whole trouble between these parties started over the fact that some of the McClenny’s hogs had gotten into Smith’s corn and some of Smith’s chickens had gotten into the McClenny’s wheat. The matter of damages to the two crops was settled some time ago after the property had been appraised. At the time the McClenny’s came to the Smith home to get their hogs, which had been taken up by Smith, a quarrel ensued in which the boys “invited Smith out into the road saying they would brain him.” 

Gladys McClenny nee Jones 1907

Later when the boys were returning some tools they had borrowed from Smith he alleged they had threatened to murder him. And again, later, when Curtis McClenny came to the Smith home with a check in payment for the damage done to his corn a quarrel started which ended in Smith throwing a large stone (the stone was introduced in evidence) at the McClenny boy; and the two clinched and at this time Smith says he stated that “if my brother [Otis] was here, we’d murder you.” 

The court, after hearing denials from the boys and their witnesses, decided that he could not believe that the boys intended to injure Mr. Smith and accordingly dismissed them. 

The McClenny boys were farming some of Smith’s land at the time of the trouble. The court, in rendering his decision, stated that in his opinion the case was one for the county attorney and that the Justice of the Peace had not jurisdiction in the matter, any more so than he (the Judge) would have, had Mr. Smith appealed to him in the first place; and that instead of the boys being put under a peace bond in view of the testimony, it looked like it should have been a case against Smith on grounds of assault and battery; (he having thrown a stone at the boy.)

Glenna and Ferol McClenny nee Howard 1917

      Within a year the McClenny boys had each married and moved to Topeka.

Ray Morgan Plays Base Ball - August 30, 1914

 
   One hundred years ago, 18-year old Ray Morgan played catcher for the Valley Falls team. The following is the story as it appeared on Thursday, September 3, 1914 in The Valley Falls New Era.

The best ball game ever pulled off on the Valley Falls diamond was the one played last Sunday when the Home Team won, 5 to 2, against the fast Winchester team.

For three and a half innings not a score was made. None had reached first base, except Ray Morgan in the third.

There was tense anxiety in the grandstand. Something would happen. And it did.

McKinney sent the ball over the fence in right and landed safely on third. Everybody shouted. Harding followed with another three base hit, scoring McKinney. Delk got a hit and scored Harding. In the fifth and sixth there was nothing doing. The Home team was 2 to the good. In the 7^th Goddard scored one for the visitors. Our boys drew a blank. In the 8^th Yeck scored another for Winchester tieing the score. Now it was anybody’s game.

But when the Home team went to bat they faced a new pitcher—though Housh had been doing fine, Stoeffler taking the mound. And that’s where our boys forged ahead, knocking out three scores. How the fans shouted! And so it ended 5 to 2. It was a great game. The winner took all the receipts, by previous agreement.

										R	H	E
Winchester	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	0	2	6	2
Valley Falls	0	0	0	2	0	0	0	3	X	5	6	1

Line Up

Valley Falls	R	H	E
Newman, lf	0	0	0
Lillie, ss	1	0	0
Chapman, 3b	1	2	0
McKinney, rf	1	2	0
Harding, p	1	1	0
Delk, 1b	0	0	1
Evans, 2b	0	0	0
Morgan, c	0	1	0
Figgs, cf	1	0	0
	5	6	1
Winchester	R	H	E
Royer, 3b	0	1	0
Wallace, 1b	0	1	0
Goddard, 2b	1	1	0
Stoeffler, ss	0	1	1
Thomas, cf	0	0	1
Kiernan, c	0	1	0
Thompson, rf	0	0	0
Yeck, lf	1	0	0
Housh, p	0	1	0
	2	6	2

Struck out by Housh 10; by Harding 11. Batteries for Winchester Housh and Kiernan; for Valley Falls, Harding and Morgan. Umpire Triggs. Time 2 hours.

The fast Mayetta Indians will come for a game next Sunday.

Winchester is a small community about 12 miles east of Valley Falls. It's tricky to read the box score because the hits and runs are to me reversed.

Ray Morgan 1916