LE ROY PENNYSAVER & NEWS - SEPTEMBER 17, 2023 by Lynne Belluscio In 1869, a group of men met at Starr Hall on Main Street in LeRoy. W.W. Jerome and Jason Yurmann of Irving, Kansas had been correspondingwith Solomon Parmelee of LeRoy and Rev. C. F. Mussey of Batavia. They were encouraging the men from Genesee County to relocate to Kansas. Jason Yurmann had been born in Lancaster, New York and had moved to Irving, Kansas in 1865. He returned to Batavia in 1868 and spoke to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, telling them of the wonderful land in Kansas. At another meeting in Batavia, the Genesee Colony was organized. Rev. Mussey was elected President and Mr. Holbrook, was elected vice president. Mr. Parmelee from LeRoy was the treasurer and Channing Brown was the secretary. It was decided to send Mr. Parmelee to Irving to select a site for settlement but he returned three weeks later and said that the decision was too important for one man, so a commission of three men, Rev. Mussey, Mr. Brown and Mr. Bovee returned to Kansas to purchase land. On January 1, 1870, they decided to purchase land at the junction of the Big Blue and Little Blue Rivers. It was an area rich in natural resources and had abundant and good tasting water. Within two months, thousands of acres were purchased and the Blue Rapids Town Company was organized. A town site was surveyed and by March 1, the first fifty families began to arrive. First, they erected “Colonial Hall” which served as a temporary home for the colonists. The dining room was used for a church school and general meeting room. The Genesee Colony wrote in its charter, a clause prohibiting the sale of liquor and this clause was included in every deed. A violation of the clause mandated that the land would revert to the local school district. The Kansas Supreme Court upheld this action and Blue Rapids remained a dry town. Channing Brown, who served as secretary of the Colony, had been born in Oakfield in 1847. He attended Hamilton College and practiced law. Channing and his three brothers and two sisters and his father and mother, all moved to Kansas. Father Channing was appointed the first city clerk when Blue Rapids was incorporated as a city in 1872. Two years later, Brown at the age of 27 was elected to the lower house of the legislature and two years later was in the Kansas State Senate. He became clerk of the Kansas Supreme Court in 1879. Another of the Genesee County settlers was Albert Sweetland. Before moving to Kansas, he worked as an accountant for a large wholesale house in Buffalo. When he arrived in Blue Rapids, he went into a mercantile business with John Loban. Sweetland was one of the organizers of the Tuesday Afternoon Club and saved the Blue Rapids Opera House from financial disaster. Carlos Olmsted, from LeRoy, was also involved with Blue Rapids. He had already made a fortune in the flour milling business in New York and was the head of a brokerage firm in Chicago that dealt in grain, flour, and feed. It was said that Olmsted was worth a quarter of a million dollars. Olmsted built an impressive stone building in 1870 as a private bank in Blue Rapids and a year later it became the Bank of Blue Rapids. He built a large limestone flour mill that produced 300 barrels of flour a day. He also owned a real estate business, headed by Channing Brown. Olmsted built the Masonic Temple, the Public Library, and he installed the public water works at his own expense. It is interesting to note that Olmsted installed the “Holly System” which had been developed in Lockport, New York. Olmsted had one of the Holly pumps attached to his flour mill. The main pipe ran from the River to the public square over half a mile away. Side pipes conducted water to homes along the route. A stone fountain was built in the center of the town square and fire hydrants were located around the square providing fire protections for the center of town. Natural disasters, one after the other, hit the town of Blue Rapids and the Genesee Colony. In 1873, a great prairie fire swept across the county to the east bank of the Blue River. One man, “Grank” Ewing wrote later that he remembered the fire well. His mother carried her children to the middle of a 4-acre field of wheat and threw blankets over them. The following year, 1874, the locusts arrived. They devoured anything green in sight except peach leaves. The locusts were everywhere – “even on the handles of hoes and rakes.” For two years, 1879 and 1880, Blue Rapids experienced a severe drought. On May 30, 1887, a tornado hit the little town and roofs were torn off most of the buildings, but no one was killed. In 1888, the worst blizzard ever to hit Marshall County hit in January. Thermometers read 34° below zero and there were 10-foot drifts. In 1903, the great flood hit. The River was 32-34 feet above normal. Five years later, on June 9, 1908, another flood hit. Three years later, in 1911, the town was inundated with an ice jam which covered the Union Pacific railroad tracks. But midst all of its disasters, the old Genesee Colony still exists out on the Kansas prairie. Their historical society continues to send news letters to LeRoy, and their Centennial history is recorded in a book which is in the library at the Historical Society. The Genesee Colony, Kansas
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTQ2MjM=