Remembering the Women of Early Kansas

This is the first in a series of blogs for National Women’s History Month

“I tell you but for the women of Kansas, it would have been abandoned in one week . . .”

On September 15, 1879, James Rogers spoke these words at the Old Settlers meeting in Bismarck Grove, Kansas. The gathering celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of Kansas settlement. He went on to describe the character of a woman in Kansas Territory:

“It seems to me that she must have been inspired of heaven during all those hours of our distress, for when the man grew weak, the woman grew strong. When the men became timid, the women became the more brave. When the men despaired, the women inspired them with hope.”

One of those women, Julia Louisa Lovejoy, attended the meeting. Mrs. Lovejoy traveled with her husband, Reverend Charles Lovejoy, and their three children, to Kansas in 1855. Shortly after arriving, the couple’s youngest daughter, Edith, died after contracting measles. At the settlers’ meeting, she expressed her thoughts about those early days and her feelings about Kansas:

“In 1854 we christened Kansas and oh! I remember it well. Everybody seemed to be enthused with the spirit of freedom’s crusade . . . We mothers have passed through a trying ordeal, but we can look back over the ground with a swell of pride in our hearts when we think of the glorious results as we have them before us now.”