Cowboys, Quacks, and Carousels
Stories of Kansas
Spring 2012, Vol. 44, No. 1
By Dee Harris
Wheat . . . sunflowers . . . wide open spaces . . . but Kansas is so much more. The state has been home to cowboys, quacks, carousel-makers, and many more individuals whose legendary stories have become lasting vignettes in the timeline of Kansas and American history. In honor of Kansas’s sesquicentennial last year, the National Archives at Kansas City featured an exhibit titled “Cowboys, Quacks, and Carousels: Stories of Kansas.” Using a variety of records in the Kansas City holdings, the exhibit introduced a few of the ordinary and not-so-ordinary people who have called Kansas their home over the past 150 years.
“Buffalo Bill” Cody: Cowboy and Showman
Kansas has long been known for its reputation as part of the “Wild West.” Home to famous cowboys and infamous cow towns, Kansas helped build many a reputation rooted in both myth and reality.
William F. Cody is one such cowboy who called Kansas home. Cody came to Leavenworth, Kansas, with his family as a young child.
At age 11, Cody began a lifetime of exploits that would soon become the stuff of dime novels and front-page news. He herded cattle,
drove a wagon train, mined for gold, trapped for fur, joined the Pony Express, served in the Seventh Kansas Cavalry during the Civil War, and made his reputation as a scout for the U.S. Army after the Civil War.
In 1867 Cody set out to fulfill a contract with the Kansas Pacific Railroad to provide buffalo meat for the company’s employees. Cody killed more than 4,000 buffalo in eight months—thus earning the nickname of “Buffalo Bill.”
When most people think of Buffalo Bill, however, the name conjures up thoughts of “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.” Cody’s show entertained audiences throughout the United States and Europe between 1881 and 1915. He staged colorful parades, demonstrations of feats of skill, and sharpshooting exhibitions by the likes of Annie Oakley and Frank Butler.
His shows included dramatic reenactments of Pony Express rides, train robberies, and Indian attacks on wagon trains. Cody often hired Native Americans to participate in his shows, and many documents relating to his shows exist in the Bureau of Indian Affairs records in the National Archives at Kansas City.
“Buffalo Bill” died in 1917 and was buried atop Lookout Mountain in Golden, Colorado.
“Wild Bill” Hickok: Lawman-Gunfighter
"Wild Bill" Hickok filed a complaint in the District of Kansas against several men for cutting oak and cottonwood trees. (National Archives at Kansas City)
Another famous Kansas cowboy is “Wild Bill” Hickok. A national celebrity for exploits as a scout during the Civil War, James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok cemented his place in history on the plains of Kansas.
As a scout and lawman, Hickok’s daring and skill with a pistol made him a legend in his own time. Biographer Joseph G. Rosa indicates that Hickok’s time in Kansas and Missouri did much to influence his growing reputation as a gunfighter. Colorful and sometimes inaccurate reports about his prowess with a gun and willingness to use it in any situation enhanced his renown.
Among the many positions Hickok held in Kansas were constable in Johnson County, scout at Fort Harker, deputy U.S. marshal at Fort Riley, sheriff and city marshal in Ellis County, and marshal of Abilene.
Hickok tried to cash in on his fame by acting with Buffalo Bill Cody in a play called Scouts of the Plains. He found the life of an actor to be dull, however, and left the show for the real thing once again.
Cody did not die in a gunfight, but rather from an assassin’s bullet to the back of his head in Deadwood, Dakota Territory. Among the National Archives records in the holdings at Kansas City are the Yankton court records of Jack McCall’s trial for Hickok’s murder, which resulted in the hanging of the defendant. As explanation for the crime, McCall said he was drunk when he murdered Hickok and further cited the rough nature of the territory and a rumor that Hickok had intended to kill him.
Fred Harvey: Meals for Travelers
A movie advertisement for The Harvey Girls (1946), which immortalized Fred Harvey's chain of restaurants, is among the documents in a copyright case. (National Archives at Kansas City)
The iron horse came steaming into Kansas during the heyday of cattle drives and cowboys. Although the territorial legislature authorized more than 50 railroad charters, the first tracks in Kansas were those of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway, founded by Cyrus K. Holliday in 1859.
However, some say that it was “Meals by Fred Harvey” that made the Santa Fe Railway a success. Kansas entrepreneur and restaurateur Fred Harvey partnered with the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway in 1876 to develop a chain of restaurants at stops along the railroad.
The first restaurants were built in Topeka and Florence, Kansas, but Harvey’s empire eventually stretched from Chicago to Los Angeles. Known for their signature “Harvey Girls,” Harvey Houses offered superior service, quality cuisine, and impeccable environs.
The Harvey Girls were immortalized in a 1945 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie The Harvey Girls, starring Judy Garland and Angela Lansbury. Their story, along with several movie scripts, photographs, and depositions, became part of the records of the National Archives when writers Lyman Anson and Clifford Funkhouser filed and lost a copyright infringement suit, claiming the movie had plagiarized their work titled Old John Santa Fe.
Harry Sinclair: Fill It Up, Please
While Fred Harvey and the Santa Fe Railway cared for customers traveling along the rails, another Kansas man was building an empire that would soon serve customers traveling along the nation’s highways.
Oilman Harry F. Sinclair grew up in Independence, Kansas, as the son of a pharmacist. Following in his father’s footsteps, Sinclair graduated from the University of Kansas School of Pharmacy and went to work as a pharmacist.
But he soon realized he wasn’t cut out to run a drugstore and instead began investing in the oil industry in 1901. Over the next 15 years, Sinclair became a highly successful oilman, forming Sinclair Oil from the assets of several small petroleum companies. By World War I, Sinclair owned the largest independent oil company in the country and supplied hundreds of small gas stations across the country under the now-famous logo of a green dinosaur.
Sinclair also invested in baseball’s Federal League and gained a high-profile reputation as a respectable business leader and oilman. His involvement in the Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s, documented in Department of Justice files, tarnished that reputation and resulted in a charge of contempt of Congress in the U.S. Senate that sent him to a District of Columbia prison for six months.
Walter and Olive Ann Beech: Flying High for Years
As Kansas rails and roads were growing across the wide-open prairies, the state’s clear blue skies were home to another form of transportation: the airplane.
Following in the footsteps of the Wright Brothers, many Kansans began experimenting with flight in the early decades of the 20th century. Quickly becoming known as the “Air Capital of the World,” Kansas was home to dozens of aircraft manufacturers in the 1920 and 1930s, some of the most prominent being Swallow Airplane Company, Travel Air Manufacturing Company, Stearman Aircraft Corporation, Cessna Aircraft Corporation, and Beech Aircraft Company.
Walter and Olive Ann Beech founded Beech Aircraft Company in Wichita in 1932. Walter Beech was a product of the barnstorming era of flying—an adventurous daredevil who participated in (and won) races and cross-country flying contests to promote his fledgling company.
Although Beech Aircraft was founded during the depths of the Great Depression, the company literally took flight with Walter as president and Olive Ann as secretary/treasurer. Over the next 50 years, Beech Aircraft would become a highly successful manufacturer of personal, business, and military aircraft, creating such iconic American models as the classic Staggerwing and the Beech Bonanza.
Beech Aircraft saw strong growth in the production of military aircraft during World War II. It was then that Walter Beech shows up in federal records on a draft card for the fourth registration in 1942.
Just eight years later, Beech Aircraft lost its innovative leader. Following Walter’s death, Olive Ann took over as president and guided Beech Aircraft for 30 more years, tripling sales and supplying products for NASA’s space programs.
Olive Ann became the first inductee into the Kansas Aviation Hall of Fame in 1986. She also received the Air and Space Museum Trophy for Lifetime Achievements in Aviation in 1993 and was ranked by Fortune magazine as one of the “Ten Highest-Ranking Women in Big Business” in both 1973 and 1978. Both of the Beeches were inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio—one of only two couples accorded this honor.
Charles W. Parker: Carousels for Carnivals
Charles W. Parker's letter to the Kansas attorney general concerning a potential patent infringement. (National Archives at Kansas City)
Many other colorful characters dotted the landscape of Kansas history over the past 150 years, including Charles W. Parker, Abilene’s own “Carnival King.”
Parker’s interest in carnivals and amusement parks began at the age of 17 when he bought a striking device to test the strength of cowboys visiting Abilene. A few years later, he also purchased a shooting gallery, but it was in 1892 that Parker discovered his true calling.
He bought a used Armitage/Herschell track carousel, which he operated and studied for two years before building his own version of a carousel. Parker had a highly successful career manufacturing carousels, shooting galleries, carnival show fronts, and Ferris wheels—all of which he traveled across the country on carnival trains.
In 1911 he moved his operation to Leavenworth, where it continued to grow. Parker was known for his “Carry-Us-Alls” and built hundreds of small traveling carousels, as well as several large “park” machines. Parker shows up numerous times in federal records, from a letter to the Kansas attorney general relating to a potential patent infringement to a U.S. District Court case relating to the contracting of one of his carnival shows.
John R. Brinkley: The Radio Doctor
While Parker was providing amusement to the people of Kansas and beyond, another individual was providing controversial medical care that eventually earned him the label of quack from the Kansas City Star.
John R. Brinkley received his medical degree from the Kansas City Eclectic Medical University in 1915 and his license to practice medicine in Kansas through a reciprocity agreement with the State of Arkansas, where he had passed the state medical board examination.
In 1916 Brinkley began operating a clinic in Milford, Kansas, running both a successful surgical practice and a radio station known as KFKB (Kansas First, Kansas Best), which Brinkley established to “entertain his patients.”
But Brinkley’s medical reputation would come as a result of his controversial medical practice of transplanting goat glands into humans as a cure for masculine infertility and impotence, giving him the title of “Goat Gland Doctor.”
A brilliant promoter of his work, Brinkley spread accounts of the stunning success of his goat gland operations and treated patients from all over the United States. Ultimately, Brinkley came under fire from the Kansas State Medical Board and the Federal Communications Commission for both his controversial medical practices and his habit of prescribing medicine to patients over the air. As a result, his medical and radio licenses were revoked.
He then ran three unsuccessful campaigns for governor of Kansas and eventually moved to Del Rio, Texas, where he died in 1942. A series of court cases held by the National Archives at Kansas City document Brinkley’s life extensively through records relating to libel and medical suits.
Every state in the Union has its characters—the ordinary and not-so-ordinary individuals who define a place or event with such magnitude that they have been written into the annals of history. The stories of the Sunflower State’s characters still resonate 150 years after statehood, and you can learn more about Kansas and its diverse citizenry at the National Archives at Kansas City.
The home and office of John R. Brinkley in Milford, Kansas, where he operated both a surgical practice and radio station. (National Archives at Kansas City)
Dee A. Harris is an exhibits specialist at the National Archives at Kansas City. She earned her B.A. and M.A. degrees in history from Wichita State University.
Note on Sources
The records described here all come from the National Archives at Kansas City.
William F. Cody’s May 8, 1891, letter to Capt. Charles Penney, the Acting Indian Agent at the Pine Ridge Agency, Pine Ridge, SD, is in Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Group (RG) 75.
Court records relating to James Butler (“Wild Bill”) Hickok are in Records of the U.S. District Court for the First (Topeka) Division of the District of Kansas Criminal Case Files and in U.S. v. Jack McCall, Criminal Case 16, Criminal Cases October Term, 1876, U.S. District Court for the Dakota Territory, Records of District Courts of the United States, RG 21.
An advertisement for the film The Harvey Girls as well as three screenplays, photographs, articles, and hundreds of pages of depositions by Fred Harvey Company executives and key staff from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures are in a copyright infringement case file, Civil Case 5713, Records of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri (Kansas City), Records of District Courts of the United States, RG 21.
A road map published by Sinclair Oil is in the Records Pertaining to Recreation, Land Use, and State Cooperation, Region II, Records of the National Park Service, RG 79. Walter H. Beech’s draft registration card for the Fourth Registration is in the record of the Kansas State Headquarters, Records of the Selective Service System, RG 147.
C. W. Parker’s correspondence about patents is in Letters Received by the U.S. Attorney, Office of the District of Kansas, Records of the Office of the U.S. Attorney, RG 118. Advertisements, equipment inventory lists, and contracts relating to one of Charles W. Parker’s carnival shows are in Parker v. The Independent Order of Owls, Equity Case File 278, Records of the U.S. District Court for Southern District of Iowa (Keokuk), Records of District Courts of the United States, RG 21.
Court case files involving John R. Brinkley may be found in Records of the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas (Topeka), Records of District Courts of the United States, RG 21.