PAWNEE COUNTY SOURCE
The organization of Pawnee County is colorful. A colonizer from Chicago, Dr. Samuel Grant Rodgers, had arrived in the Pawnee County area and he and his associates had laid out a town, naming it Petersburg in honor of an official of the Santa Fe Railroad, T.J. Peters. Today it is called Kinsley. Realizing that Petersburg was a threat to Larned, as both towns were within the original boundaries of Pawnee County, Booth and other Larned promoters moved at once toward organization of the county. A law passed that same year by the Legislature prescribing that a petition asking for organization of a new county was to be signed by “40 householders who were legal electors of the county.” There were not 40 legal electors in Pawnee County, but Booth and A.H. Boyd secured the signatures by an extralegal procedure. One report said they stopped an immigrant train that was toiling westward along the Santa Fe Trail and forced the men in the party to sign their petition. Booth forwarded the petition to Gov. James M. Harvey recommending F.C. Hawkins as a good man to take the census. Governor Harvey accepted Booth’s recommendation and appointed Hawkins. Nine days
later Hawkins finished his enumeration and filed his certified report with the governor. It showed a population of 674 men, women and children, an amazing figure in view of the difficulty Captain Booth had experienced in finding 40 legal electors to sign his petition. Dr. Rodgers was in Chicago recruiting settlers for his colony while Booth and his associates were taking the preliminary steps toward county organization. It is assumed that Dr. Rodgers went to Topeka and that he registered a protest with the governor and secretary of state, but they must have convinced him that nothing
could or should be done to delay the organization of Pawnee County. Gov. James M. Harvey’s proclamation admitting Pawnee as the 65th county was dated November 4, 1872 by Henry Booth, A.H. Boyd, Timothy McCarthy, and George J. Cox. Larned became the permanent county seat of Pawnee County in an election held on October 7, 1873. Dr. Rodgers and Booth were opposing candidates for state representative. Rodgers won the seat, but Booth, although denied membership in the Legislature, had considerable influence in that body. The boundaries of Pawnee County were changed, cutting 12 miles
off the south, which left out Dr. Rodgers’ town, Petersburg, and adding six miles on the north, taken from Rush County and six miles on the east, taken from Stafford County. This, Booth observed, “brought Larned nearer the center of the county and strengthened it as the county seat.” It also cut off Petersburg and practically every other town in the county. When in 1874, a petition was presented to the Legislature asking that the original boundaries of Pawnee County be restored, the Legislature again came to the rescue of Booth and his county seat by returning one township to Pawnee – the one containing Garfield – and creating Edwards County from the “orphan townships.” Interesting sites in the county include the nine original buildings at Fort Larned, the Pawnee County Courthouse (former), the Eagle Optic Building, the Masonic Building, the Campbell House (1886) and the Patterson House (circa 1876). The Larned Presbyterian Church was organized on July 15, 1873. The first county fair was held in 1876. Currently it is a 4-H fair. The first school district was Pawnee Number 1, formed in Larned on June 24, 1873.
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