Echo Of History Rings True In Present

By Corey Preston, Coreypreston@miconews.com

The diaries of Mound City settler James Findley Harrison recount his move to Linn County in the late 1860s. The diaries include portrayals of the difficulties of farming during that time, along with descriptions and even sketches of the Mound City area, which Harrison praises throughout the diaries. (Photo by Corey Preston / Coreypreston@miconews.com)

The pages are frail and yellowed, the scribbled handwriting tiny, practically illegible at times, and the language is hopelessly outdated, but there are portions of James Findley Harrison’s diaries — which describe Harrison’s move, after serving during the Civil War, to the Mound City area in the late 1860s — that could just as well have been written by local farmers and landowners in Linn County today.

“Far too damp for plowing,” Harrison writes over and over again during April and May 1869, a sentiment shared by many in this area this past spring, nearly 140 years later.

That same year Harrison describes the threat of flooding — “Waters higher! Higher!!” — and, just a few days later, decries the onerous duty of traveling to Mound City to pay taxes, two annual inconveniences all too familiar still.

Harrison’s two diaries — the first detailing his efforts to purchase land and build a homestead in 1866 and the second a day-to-day account of his farming efforts and his role in Linn County government in 1869 and 1870 — are stored at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas.

The volumes are written by a man with a West Point education and close ties to two U.S. Presidents, but this lofty upbringing is barely alluded to in the diaries. Rather, they reveal the perfect forebear to Linn County residents today — a man committed to his family, obsessive about the weather and the crops that his family was dependent on and very much in love with the open countryside he decided to make his home.

FROM THE WHITE HOUSE TO MOUND CITY

James Findley Harrison, who was the grandson of President William Henry Harrison and first cousin of President Benjamin Harrison, moved to Linn County from Ohio in 1866, settling in the Mound City area after serving as a Union colonel in the Civil War, according to an obituary published Feb. 22, 1907, in the Linn County Republic.

For someone who, according to that obituary, spent time at the White House during his grandfather’s brief tenure there, the move to a relatively uninhabited area outside Mound City had to have been a significant change, but Harrison’s diaries display a steely determination to succeed in his new home.

Not an entry goes by without note of the weather and the effect it had on farming activities. In the later diary, Harrison includes a monthly tabulation of weather conditions, “for future use,” as he notes in one of the margins.

A week-long gap in entries in April 1869 is explained by a “violent attack of pleurisy,” while an entire summer is devoted to worries about a son, Scott, who is bedridden with sickness.

The most poignant reminder of the difficulty of that time period, however, is an entry dated Oct. 29, 1866, marking the death of a daughter: “At 4.35 this morning our darling little daughter was taken to God,” Harrison writes. “Oh God the blow is terrible. Grant us resignation! For Jesus’ sake!”

Despite the hardships, Harrison frequently makes note of the “absolute beauty” of his new homestead and, even when dealing with unwelcome rain, refers to the days as “remarkably pleasant.”

AN EARLY PLAYER IN LINN COUNTY POLITICS

According to Harrison’s obituary, he was active in county politics, serving as surveyor for a number of years and “won a high praise in the regard of a wide acquaintance and throughout Linn County.”

The later of his two diaries, which is significantly more legible than the earlier diary and includes entries on almost a daily basis, show a man struggling with the realities of life on the plains, but eager to bring change and development to the area.

“Lying in bed this morning, I heard the whistle of the Locomotive!!!” a Sept. 6, 1869, entry reads. “A great change is coming fast upon us!”

That spirit is echoed just a week later in a Sept. 14 entry that briefly discusses bringing two neighbors to a county commission meeting in Mound City to advocate for a road to Harrison’s more rural area.

“Several houses have been moved from Md City,” Harrison notes, justifying the request.

A March 25, 1869, entry discusses a school meeting at the nearby “Carpenters,” at which Harrison helped enact a new tax.

“Ordered a tax of one fourth of one cent on the dollar for Teacher’s wages and (general fund) ... I find a good deal,” Harrison’s entry reads.

Harrison goes on, in that same entry, to say that he’d suggested at the meeting moving the county seat from Mound City to another area. That suggestion may have been significant as, according to William G. Cutler’s “History of Kansas,” Linn County voted two months later on moving the county seat, but it ultimately remained in Mound City.

Still, while Harrison may have had some sway in county government, he clearly wasn’t above paying taxes, as evidenced by an April 10, 1869, entry that reads, “to Md City where I paid up my taxes for ‘67 and ‘68 ... the taxes amounted for both to $99.75.”

Harrison’s diaries, which are far more expansive than could be reported in this story, are available for review at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas.