Did You Know This About Geary County History?”
By Dr. Ferrell Miller
Geary County Historical Society Board Member
“Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Thomas G. McKinley”
Thomas G. McKinley had come with his parents from Illinois in 1858 to Geary (Davis) County. The trip was made in wagons. There was one drawn by horses, one by a yoke of oxen and one by a yoke of cows. The cows provided milk for the family and were used to start a herd of cattle on the farm once the homesteaded area was located.
Soon after their arrival, they selected farmland near the mouth of the Humboldt Creek.
Opportunities for an education were meager and Thomas McKinley felt that made life more challenging for him. However, through his natural ability and strong determination, he attracted the attention of his peers, who found him well-qualified to serve his community and country. Thomas served on the rural school board for 34 years and was a justice of the peace and constable.
Virginia Ross, the youngest daughter of the Ross family, came to Kansas from Virginia in 1873.Thomas G. McKinley and Miss Virginia G. Ross were married in 1879.
The McKinley’s enjoyed their retirement years in their home in Alta Vista, where they celebrated their Golden Wedding Anniversary in 1929. Relatives and friends joined them in observance of the joyous event. Among the guests were the bridesmaid, best man and four other members of the original wedding party. Mrs. McKinley wore a black satin dress with a brooch and earrings, which were a gift of her groom on their wedding day.
“The Early History of St. Xavier’s Catholic Church”
Gaylynn Childs wrote a story about the St. Francis Xavier Catholic in the book Set in Stone. This is some of what she wrote: “Father Louis du Mortier, a Jesuit, came to America in 1853 and had been an instructor at St. Louis University until 1859 when he was transferred to the Kansas Territory as a missionary to the Pottawatomies.
It was Father du Mortier who organized St. Xavier’s Catholic parish in Junction City. In June of 1861, the Junction City Union newspaper reported about an organizational meeting Father Mortier held with Patrick, James and Thomas Dixon, John Casper, the Stephan Whites, James Maloney of Dry Creek and a determined young Irish woman, Mary Clarke, who had been left by her soldier husband to run the ferry between Fort Riley and Junction City.
During the Civil War this group met sporadically in homes and borrowed halls whenever a Priest was in the vicinity. After the war, the arrival of the railroad in 1866 brought an influx of Irish immigrants that swelled the ranks of Father du Mortier’s flock.
It had been decided to conduct a three-hour door-to-door campaign on Thanksgiving Day in 1866. The eleven hundred dollars in cash and pledges collected was to be used to build a church.
The first stone church building was constructed in 1867 on West Third Street. Unfortunately, Father du Mortier never saw the first Mass said at his new church held August 11. Several weeks earlier he had learned that soldiers were dying of cholera at Fort Harker and he went to that western Kansas outpost to minister to them. In doing so he contracted the disease and died in a box car alone and unattended just days before the dedication of the church.
Father Fogarty followed Father du Mortier. During Father Fogarty’s tenure the rectory for the parsonage was built south and east of the church. Father Scholl, who came in 1871, raised the money to build a room onto the church and began Junction City’s first Catholic school.
During the pastorate of Father Hurley, who came in 1882 and served St. Xavier’s for 28 years, funds were raised to build a larger church. Father John O’Brien arrived in 1905 and saw that dream to fruition. The corner stone was laid that year with a dedication on May 9, 1906.”
