City, county have anniversaries this year
Staff writer
Reunions of Marion High School classes celebrating graduation years evenly divisible by five or 10 will dominate this year’s Old Settlers Day,
But 2025 also is a year in which both the city and county will celebrate similar anniversaries.
This year marks the 165th anniversary of the settlement of Marion, the 160th anniversary of the organization of Marion County, and the 150th anniversary of Marion’s incorporation as a city.
In lieu of our normal Memories column, which will return next week, we this week offer a special Old Settlers Day summary of historical firsts and other noteworthy developments in the early history of the city and county.
Material is reprinted from original accounts the Record first published in 1883 in anticipation of one of the first Old Settlers Days and updated information gathered in anticipation of Old Settlers Day in 1941, when original settlers and their close descendants still were around to document early history.
1858
The first European settlements in Marion County appear to have been made by French people who came to the southeast corner of the county in 1858
Alfonse Bichet, one of the earliest settlers, was long connected with life in the county.
1859
Moses Shane, regarded as the first American settler in the county, located on the present site of Florence in spring.
In autumn, Thos. Wise Sr., the second American settler and really the first permanent one, located in what is now Clear Creek Township.
Patrick Doyle also located near the present-day town of Florence.
A family named Welch recorded the first birth to a settler family in August.
A trading post was established near present-day Lost Springs for travelers on the Santa Fe Trail.
1860
Wm. H. Billings, George Griffith, Wm. Shreve, and their families, possibly along with others, located in August at what is now Marion.
The historic spring in what is now Marion’s Central Park was where they set up camp.
The year had been especially dry, and many springs — including the fabled Lost Spring on the Santa Fe Trail, had temporarily dried up.
Among the reasons for locating in what’s now Marion is that the spring in Marion continued to supply fresh water.
1863
Pioneer life may not have been exactly like what later was portrayed in cowboy-and-Indian westerns, but there still were clashes between settlers and the native people being driven off their land.
A young Marion man named Miller was scalped and killed by Indians between Marion and Durham Park.
1864
The first schoolhouse, belonging to School District No. 1, later Unified School District 408, was erected in spring.
The schoolhouse was a log cabin just north of the present town of Marion. Rebecca Shreve (later Mrs. Edson Baxter) was the teacher.
Some contend that the school was predated by a temporary school, taught by a Miss Wentworth who came from Cottonwood Falls and taught in a lean-to on the side of a home near town, but no documentary reference to that school has been found.
1865
Marion County officially was organized, and it covered a very large, rectangular territory.
The county’s boundaries extended to the present south line of Kansas and to the crest of the Rockies to the west in what is now Colorado. School District No. 1 covered the same territory.
Taxes were collected as far west as Dodge City, when anything to tax could be found, and students traveled to Marion from such far reaches to attend classes here.
The first board of county commissioners was composed of W.H. Billings, T.A. Wise, and Levi Billings.
This board divided the county into three townships: Marion, which took in nearly all the north half of the county; Cedar to the southeast, which was the smallest of the three; and Santife (perhaps a misspelled reference to Santa Fe), which comprised the southwest portion.
The county seat officially was located at Marion Centre, later to be known simply as Marion.
“In was a long time before the honor amounted to much, however,” Record editor E.W. Hoch wrote in 1883.
1866
Marion Centre was laid out, and Lank Moore started the first store in Marion in a stone building that stood for several decades afterward on the south side of Main and 1st Sts.
Settlers gathered, essentially circling their wagons, near Moore’s store for safety during a later Indian raid on the town.
1869
Six prominent citizens — J.N. Rogers, J.H. Costello, A.E. Case, Levi Billings, W.H. Billings, and A.A. Moore — set out to secure a newspaper for the county.
An arrangement, including what was billed as a small “bonus,” was made with A.W. Robinson to move his Western News from Detroit, which had just lost a county seat vote in Dickinson County, to Marion Centre.
The newspaper soon afterward was sold to John E. Murphy and renamed the Western Giant, then was sold to C.S. Triplett, who renamed it the Marion County Record.
In 1874, associate editor E.W. Hoch purchased the paper, which remained in the Hoch family until 1998, when the Meyer family, which had worked at the paper since 1948, purchased it.
It remains as Marion’s second oldest business and the oldest one still in the same line of work. The oldest business, Case and Son Insurance, originally was a real estate firm.
1872
As the city and county grew, both pride and tragedy followed.
A grist mill, later owned by Peter Funk, was erected in the county in the same year that the dirt roof of a house in which E.D. Hunt lived caved in, smothering to death Mrs. Hunt, two girls, and a baby boy.
A mail carrier riding between Marion Centre and Junction City also was robbed and badly frightened by Kaw Indians.
1875
County bonds totaling $10,000 (the equivalent of nearly $300,000 in 2025) were approved March 10 for the relief of farms invaded by grasshoppers, but the bonds never were sold. A law under which they were approved was declared unconstitutional.
Marion Centre officially incorporated as a city Aug. 17.
1877
The Cottonwood River and Muddy Creek, now known as Luta Creek, overflowed May 19 and June 8 in harbingers of things to come.
A slight shock of an earthquake also was felt Nov. 15 in Marion.
1881
In an election on re-locating the county seat, Marion received a 416-vote majority of all the votes cast April 27.
By a majority of 271 votes, county voters decided June 14 to complete a $5,000 courthouse and jail cells in Marion.
The rest of Marion’s history, from 145 years ago onward, will continue to be told each week when our regular Memories column resumes publication next week.