This is the fourth in a series of columns by Dr. Sam Dicks, university historian, concerning the history of what is now Emporia State University and the people who helped the university get to where it is today. The name of his column, "Wave the Old Gold," is taken from the title of a song that served as an alma mater (school song) in the early years of the institution.

EMPORIA, Kansas - Emporia State has welcomed returning veterans from every American war since the Civil War. Corporal Maximilian Fawcett was among the Union soldiers who enrolled at the Kansas State Normal School in the fall of 1865, the first year of its existence.

Emporian Max Fawcett had enlisted June 20, 1861, in Company K of the Second Kansas Regiment, which soon merged with Company C of the Kansas Eleventh Volunteer Cavalry. He was wounded in action on December 7, 1862, at Prairie Grove, Arkansas, while assisting his injured commander, Captain Lemuel T. Heritage, from the battlefield. Left partly deaf from the war, he was mustered out on September 20, 1865, just in time for fall classes.

His four younger sisters also enrolled in the Normal School; Clarissa, who later married William Sherburn Hunt, was one of the "original 18" present on the first day of class, February 15, 1865. Margaret, Mary Rebecca, and Lavina all enrolled in the fall. Margaret later married William Hammond. Lavina and Mary Rebecca soon died of typhoid fever. Miriam, his oldest sister, had married Captain Henry Pearce of Company C, 11^th Kansas Cavalry, shortly before the war began.

They lived during the war with their parents, John and Lucy Fawcett, near the Rinker bridge on Burlingame Road; their stone house was later razed when the Hoch dairy farm was located there.

John Fawcett, who had a saw and grist mill on the Neosho River just north of the Normal School, believed the school was so important to his family and to the community that, during the summer of 1865, he erected a one-story frame building, 14-by-20 feet for the free use of the new school. This was adjacent to the temporary structure furnished by the Emporia School District until classes could move to the new campus.

A plank walk connected the two small structures and the frame building was used in the fall of 1865 and during all of 1866 for classes and other activities. Although its life was brief, this gift was the second building used by KSN faculty and students.

Max Fawcett operated the Neosho Valley Nursery and by October of 1866 he was advertising the sale of young maple trees. He put out the first trees in Emporia's Fremont Park and, in March 1868, shipped 1,000 young maple trees to Junction City.

There was a great demand for shade trees and fruit trees on the barren prairie. Orchards and nurseries were popular businesses in the early years of Emporia. Perhaps there were too many other orchards and nurseries in the region, or it may have been that the young soldier was restless and the lure of adventure and profit on the frontier was too strong.

Fawcett was one of the earliest Emporians to travel to the proposed town of Delphi. He returned to Emporia in January of 1870 with specimens of native grasses, from three to eight feet high, and proclaimed that the soil would produce abundant crops of wheat.

He sold his Emporia business to his father, John Fawcett, and his brother-in-law, William S. Hunt, in March of 1870, as he joined other Emporians 125 miles to the southwest on the Arkansas River at the new town of Delphi, also briefly called Creswell, and then Arkansas City.

Arkansas City, named after the nearby river, was founded by Emporians. KSN science professor Henry B. Norton and his brother, Captain Gould Hyde Norton, had scouted the townsite. The town company, consisting of people from Lyon and Chase counties, included such investors as Preston B. Plumb, Charles Vernon Eskridge, Jacob Stotler, as well as Lyman Beecher Kellogg, the KSN president, and the Norton brothers.

Professor Norton had left his position at KSN in the spring of 1870, and he and his brother, Captain Norton, opened a general store in Arkansas City. Kellogg, already an investor, followed a year later in 1871, and was briefly the editor and co-owner of the Arkansas City Traveler. Kellogg had also been reading law at the Emporia law firm of Ruggles and Plumb as he prepared to become an attorney during his last year at KSN.

Max Fawcett's claim, about one-half mile west of Arkansas City, was soon a showpiece in the region. Henry Norton wrote in April of 1870 to the Emporia News that his claim on the north bank of the wide Arkansas included a 30 foot bluff of magnesian limestone "washed by the river a part of the way, but bending in such a manner as to enclose a bottom of some thirty acres, covered with a splendid growth of timber and grape-vines. Out of this bluff pour three beautiful springs."

"A few rods from this is a cave about ten feet wide and four feet high at the entrance, larger within, and passable to the depth of about one hundred feet; beyond that too small to conveniently penetrate, but of unknown extent. Here is a most perfect natural cellar for meat, fruit, and vegetables."

Max Fawcett wrote to the Emporia News in April that "On the third of this month I planted two weeping willow trees by my spring on the side of the hill by the river. I think I can safely claim the honor of planting the first tree in Cowley County."

Another visitor in July described Fawcett's claim in glowing terms. A path led down the hillside with stone steps from a cabin to the fresh pure cold spring water. Nearby was a view of an artificial stone reservoir which emptied water into wooden troughs and lower basins. Nearby were two natural rock chairs, one in which "you sit as comfortably as on the softest easy chair in your parlor at home."

Max Fawcett was soon selling large amounts of nursery stock to the new settlers near Arkansas City. William Speers, who operated a saw mill on his claim in a sandy area near the juncture of the Walnut and Arkansas Rivers, purchased about $175 worth of apple tree stock in the spring of 1871.

Almost all of the trees sold to Speers died during the summer and he refused to pay. Max Fawcett went to Kellogg's newspaper office and asked his former teacher to take his suit. Kellogg was victorious before a justice of the peace jury in his first legal case.

Speers next appealed to the Cowley County District Court. A strong letter of endorsement by Judge Ruggles of Emporia ensured that Kellogg would be admitted to the bar, a necessary step before he could represent a client in district court.

Kellogg was admitted to the practice of law in Kansas on April 27, 1872. The district court jury that summer found in favor of Max Fawcett. Speers quickly paid the bill.

Kellogg abandoned journalism for a career in law; 16 years later he would be elected Kansas Attorney General.

Max Fawcett married Mary Alice Kirkpatrick in Grant County, Wisconsin, on May 20, 1874. He and his family returned to Emporia from Arkansas City in 1876 following the death of his father in late February. In 1882, still restless, he moved to Florida where he operated an orange grove. As he explored the area near Tallahassee, he collected "several hundred geological and zoological specimens, mostly marine," which he presented to Emporia High School to be a part of their science cabinet.

He died in 1892 and his wife and children returned to Emporia where his mother and other relatives still lived. Numerous descendants of the early Fawcett families continued to make important contributions to Emporia and other parts of Kansas; some are also among the later alumni of Emporia State University.

Max Fawcett's contributions to the lives of early settlers in Cowley County were significant. Some were fearful their land claims might be across the nearby Kansas state line in Indian Territory where such claims were not allowed. Max Fawcett is remembered by those in the Arkansas City area as the one who made clear for other settlers the exact location of the boundary.

Only one of many Kansas veterans who returned from defending the Union to enrich the lives of early Kansans, he is remembered most of all in the Arkansas City area as the pioneer who provided an abundance of trees and other plants to the region.

Many of the early oak, maple, and other trees in the Emporia area and other parts of the state are the inheritance he left to all of us.

CONTACT: ESU Media Relations, 620-341-5454

Last Updated July 2, 2007>