In today’s busy world, people seem to always be in a hurry to get where they are going. They don’t take time to take in the beauty around them or the history.
A man in New York told me just last week that all he knows of Kansas is that it is flat. I said, Oh, you must travel across the state on I-70. I tried to tell him some of the things he would see if he would drive hwy. 400 or through the middle of the state on hwy. 54. Lots to see if he could only take the time. There are so many interesting places and stories that make up our Kansas history.
Have you ever heard of the Beecher Bibles and Rifles? The Beecher Bible and Rifle Church is in Wabaunsee, Kansas. It was organized June 27-28, 1857 and the church was built in 1859-62.
Until 1854 when the Kansas- Nebraska Act was passed in May of that year, and the area was opened for settlement, the area had been a quiet peaceful spot where the church now stands. There was a vast ocean of tall prairie grass under ever-changing skies. A few miles east was spectacular beauty as the prairie rolled to the south and west. Sounds were the winds, songs of the birds and night animals. However, the passage of this new Act changed all of that forever as the race to stake claims was on and the battle to be a free or slave state began.
In 1856 there were already about sixty people living in Wabaunsee, an Indian name meaning “Dawn of Day.” It was 100 miles west of Kansas City. New England “Kansas Fever” ran high and people in New Haven, Conn. raised money to send sixty or more colonists to Kansas. The men were highly educated with professional training. They weren’t adventurers but men making a sacrifice for their ideals. Before the Connecticut- Kansas company left for Kansas, a meeting was held in North Church, in New Haven. Professor Silliman, of Yale, pledged $25 for a Sharp’s rifle for the company. Then Henry Ward Beecher, the great minister from Brooklyn pledged his congregation would give the money for twenty-five rifles if the audience would give another twenty-five. The crowd responded and soon twenty-seven were promised. A few days later Mr. Beecher sent $625 for the rifles and with the money came twenty- five bibles, shipped with the guns.
After a torch-light parade across New York the group left by steamboat, then the next day they boarded a train for a very uncomfortable 3-day journey to St. Louis. Then it was up the Missouri River to Kansas City. After buying thirty wagons and sixty oxen as well as farm supples, tents and provisions they started on the Oregon trail. They stopped briefly in Lawrence then continuing on to present day Willard, KS. Here they veered left and went west until they reached the place their scouts had selected, Wabaunsee. This group helped make Kansas a free state. That is where you will find The Beecher Bible and Rifle Church today. They have weekly services.
