Concordia

By Dena Bisnette and Joe Gilliam

In 1869, Concordia, Kansas, was declared the county seat of what would become Cloud County. At first, the town existed only on paper as a project being pushed by James M. Hagaman and a small group of partners. Once development started, Concordia rapidly grew to become a center of commerce south of the Republican River that eventually attracted four railroad lines. It became a town of landmarks, including several famous hotels, two opera houses, Nazareth Convent, and a thriving downtown area. Characters in the story of Concordia include French Canadian immigrants, nuns, pilots, quarreling newspaper editors, German prisoners of war, and politician Frank Carlson. Readers can enjoy visiting the community's past in the pages of Images of America: Concordia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Feb 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781439649497

Dena Bisnette

Dena Bisnette is a native of Concordia with a background in newspaper journalism. She is a member of the Cloud County and Harvey County Historical Societies and enjoys history-related volunteer work. Joe Gilliam is her husband and technical assistant. They currently reside in Newton, Kansas, the subject of their previous Arcadia Publishing book, Images of America: Newton.

Book preview

Bisnette.

INTRODUCTION

I was three days short of 12 years old in 1971 when Concordia, Kansas, celebrated its centennial. That was when I first asked dad how Concordia came to be, and he told me about James Manny Hagaman.

Having heard stories about settlements based on discoveries like good drinking water, oil, and gold and about special-purpose places like factory towns, railroad towns, mining towns, cowtowns, and the like, I expected a similar tale. I did not expect a story about a man who got angry at another town and founded his own town as a result, but that is exactly what J.M. Hagaman did, and he did not even name it after himself.

Concordia lies on the south side of the Republican River in Cloud County in the hills of North Central Kansas, which the locals just call NCK. Today, it is a neat, compact town full of churches, schools, shops, small industries, and mostly older homes. It has a hospital and a college. In Hagaman’s day it was just prairie, grasses on rolling hills, rocks, a few homesteads along creeks, and that sometimes-wild river, which was even mentioned in Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne.

Nearby, across the river, is another town called Clyde. Hagaman came to Kansas in 1860 with his wife, son, and two friends, J.M. Thorpe and August Fenskie. They had settled near the river by the time Clyde became temporary county seat for a new county called Shirley County in 1866. Hagaman was appointed county clerk but wanted to be the first state representative for the new county. John B. Rupe defeated him and then promptly tried to do two things Hagaman hated. Rupe was unsuccessful in the first one, which would have split the county in half and let the halves be absorbed by Ottawa County and Republic County, but he was successful in changing the name of Shirley County to Cloud.

Hagaman took another shot at political office, running and winning by a slight margin in 1868. He decided to buy land in Clyde and build a hotel on the government road through town. Clyde was the obvious choice for permanent county seat, and visitors would need lodging. Local leaders liked the idea and offered him the land he wanted at a price that pleased him, but before arrangements were finished, they raised the price and substituted an acre that was not as good. Hagaman was angry and declared that he would personally make certain Clyde would never become county seat.

First, he chose and bought a quarter section of land south of the Republican River in Lincoln Township. He knew most voters lived in the smaller section of the county north of the river and decided to build a road from Junction City to his own homestead to make traveling to the southern part easier. He paid for the survey himself but used his political skills to get the state to pay for construction. Called 64 Milepost Road because it was 64 miles long, it would bring in stagecoaches and settlers and give farmers a way to market their goods without crossing the Republican River. With partners G.W. Andrews and William English, Hagaman planned his town on paper. Now, they needed a name.

Already campaigning for county seat votes, the partners approached a Solomon Township resident, Cap Snyder. He promised votes, so they let him suggest a name. He had once worked in Concordia, Missouri, and liked that name. Hagaman liked it too.

Next came a petition for a county seat election, set for December 21, 1869. There were three candidates: Clyde, a now extinct town called Sibley, and the paper town called Concordia. Although the people of Clyde seemed confident their town would be chosen, no one got a clear majority, so a second election was set for January 4, 1870, and Concordia won. Six months later, the US government helped the new county seat prosper when Congress decided to move the Republican District Land Office to Concordia. It officially opened January 16, 1871, to a crowd of hopeful settlers who had camped overnight. One local legend states that a particular settler was so eager to file his claim before anyone else that he took hold of the door handle at dawn and did not let go until the office opened.

The official beginning of Concordia was March 3, 1871, the date the plat of the townsite was filed in the Cloud County Register of Deeds.

Hagaman had indeed kept Clyde from becoming county seat by starting his own town, Concordia, but that was only the beginning of the story. What followed was a period of frantic building and development.

The first real building was a hotel, actually a family home dragged in from elsewhere, and the first thing built was the land office. A French Canadian who had been living in Illinois showed up with his sawmill, and more French followed. The Concordia to Waterville stage line brought all kinds of people into town and then not one, but four, railroads came through. Soon, former New Englanders, many from Vermont, joined the earlier arrivals in town. Germans, English, Swedes, and others arrived, and Concordia was off to a bustling start. Men interested in starting businesses and getting rich arrived and brought their women, because everyone knew that women helped bring culture to a young town. Churches formed, and their congregations met wherever they could until they could afford to build houses of worship, and opera houses opened to make certain everyone was amused.

Fine hotels opened, along with eateries, banks, saloons, public offices, and stores of nearly every kind. Farmers who had settled the land around town brought in their wares to sell, had their corn and flour ground at local mills, and did their shopping. Doctors, lawyers, and politicians opened for business. Fairs, circuses, and traveling acting companies made the town a regular stop. Newspapers came and immediately went to war—with each other.

Concordia certainly was not just a paper town any more.

One

CONCORDIA BECOMES

A TOWN

Concordia before 1900 was