Some Walker-Burkhardt Potpourri

      This is a small assortment of items I've come across lately in my searches on newspapers.com.

      Edward Walker died in February of 1911 and I was able to find an obituary for him. The obituary says that the family requested no flowers at the behest of the deceased, but I'm not sure why as the photos of the house seemed to show flowers.

Edward Walker obituary-February 9, 1911

The Walker twins are born

     But the obituary did send me on a search in the Council Grove Republic to see if I could find a notice or something about the Walker family moving to Topeka. I didn't find that, but I did find this blurb about the Walker twins.Their father's name is wrong, but it seems highly unlikely there was another set of Walker twins born near Dwight in the same week as the Walker girls. As is often the case, the story is related from the father's point of view with no mention of Betsy who had with the birth of the twins given birth to eight children or the sex of the babies.

     I've included the link to the page because reading these newspapers from 1888 are fascinating. In this case there's a remarkable story about a runaway horse. To quote: The horse seemed to become perfectly frantic, and

Helen Louise_1921

run about the streets scattering dismay on all sides. But fortunately, no one was hurt. Then there are the railroad schedules - four different passenger trains served Council Grove on a daily basis, covering north, south, east and west.

    And now jumping ahead to 1921 is an article about Edna and EA's daughter, Helen, and her first birthday. Helen and Ada's son, Walker, were born on October 6, 1920 in Topeka so it was big news when they had their first birthday. Their cousin, Bernice, daughter of Ada and Edna's sister, Grace, was born in July of 1920, but was only an invited guest at the birthday party.

Helen and Walker's first birthday
Topeka Daily Capital, Oct 8, 1921

The Shop

     Last but maybe most interesting is this ad in the Capital announcing the opening of the Shop. For those of us who are grandchildren of EA and Edna, Gussie to us, knew what the Shop was. Unfortunately not many of us were old enough to know the Shop with EA in charge, but we knew what was meant when people said that.                                                                                                                      Mary Grace wrote about her dad:

     My father worked his way through school—both high school and college.  I think he threw the paper for the Topeka Daily Capital. His route was in North Topeka.  I remember him telling me how in 1903 when the Kansas (Kaw) River flooded that the only way to get to North Topeka to throw the paper was across a railroad bridge.  My mother said he used to go to sleep a lot in class.  . . One year he was ready to pay his tuition and two of his brothers got drunk and he had to pay his $50.00 tuition money to get them out of jail. 

 For a time after his marriage to Edna, EA worked for the Santa Fe Railroad as a fireman, but eventually he was offered a Willard Battery distributorship. And in 1921 with the help of three of his brothers-in-law, EA opened his shop. (This article ran after the shop had been opened for a year.) Edna's brother Percy, Ada's husband, Bill and Grace's husband, George, all were partners in the shop. Mary Grace said he paid everyone back, but he had a hard time convincing Bill, who eventually did allow him to pay him.