Lenexa: Birth of a Town
Lenexa came into being in the hectic days of railroad expansion and land speculation following the Civil War. Although the railroad was directly responsible for the establishment of the town, other elements of early county history affected its founding.
The greatest issue facing the new territory of Kansas in 1854 was the availability of land. In 1854, when the Kansas-Nebraska Act opened these areas to settlement, not one acre in what is now Johnson County was available for sale. The land was allotted to the Shawnee Indians in return for ceding over one million acres of their Kansas Reservation to the United States government. Each Shawnee man, woman and child was given two hundred acres with the stipulation that the land could not be sold without the permission of the President of the United States. This restriction was intended to protect the Shawnee, but the result was that it tied up the titles to the land for more than thirty years.
Between the establishment of the county in 1855 and the finalization of the Shawnee land selection in 1857, Johnson County remained in the hands of the Office of Indian Affairs. A county government was not formed until that office submitted to the General Land Office a census of the Shawnee Indians and a survey of lands allotted to them. Only then could speculators, settlers, and squatters legally enter the area. It appears that many Shawnee were eager to sell to the newcomers. One traveler, writing anonymously to his hometown paper in Pennsylvania, said: “...they [the Shawnee] are becoming discontented, owing to the rapidly accumulating numbers of paleface. They are selling their lands and are removing to the Indian territory....”
An example of land being granted by patent to the Shawnee and quickly sold can be found in the deed records of the section that became Lenexa. The first entry lists George Daugherty, a Shawnee, as principal owner of the northern half of the section. By 1874, Daugherty’s patent lands were owned by John Earnshaw, David Brickley, and N.C. Crout.
Purchasing Shawnee patent lands was one way to gain entry to the land in Johnson County. Other patents were for sale through the Lecompton General Land Office. These were military bounty land warrants. The practice of granting land for military service dated to the Revolutionary War. Used instead of payment and to encourage enlistment, Congress passed several acts between 1788 and 1855. Most veterans sold their patents, never claiming the land. Using the law of 1855, three military warrants were filed on two section of land that became Lenexa. Two warrants were granted to veterans of the Mexican and Indian Wars and one was granted to the heir of a Creek Indian who had served in the Creek War in 1836. The initial purchasers of these warrants appear to have been speculators because they quickly sold the land.
Land issues also greatly affected railroad construction. New settlers demanded railroad expansion to make them competitive in national markets. Speculation in railroad construction was widespread; the Panic of 1857, however, dried up the capital needed. As the economic crisis spread, the government flooded the market with millions of acres of land for general sale, driving down the values of property already settled. Land values plummeted as did crop prices, driving settlers into debt. Then the draught of 1859-60 so devastated the already crippled territory that 30,000 Kansans abandoned their land and left the territory.
Because of the economic crisis, railroads that were trying to construct roads into and through the new territories put increasing pressure on the government to grant lands to help pay the enormous costs of construction. Southern conservatives had effectively blocked land grant legislation during debate over the route for a transcontinental rail line. Generally, Southern legislators opposed any change in land policies because they feared more accessible land would favor abolitionist settlers and result in more free states. With the secession of Southern states and the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Congress passed a number of acts aimed at helping the railroads and providing free land in new territories. Immediately following the war, a period of railroad expansion began as companies were formed to take advantage of the new land laws.
One such company, the Kansas and Neosho Valley Railroad, was organized in Olathe in 1865 by Kersey Coates. Coates was a Kansas City real estate speculator who represented a group of speculators in that city. his plan was to build a railroad south from Kansas City to Ft. Scott and on to the Gulf of Mexico at Galveston. Coates proposed to fund construction by means of bonds issued by the state and individual communities and the sale of lands granted by the state and federal governments. Coates attracted Chicago railroad developer James F. Joy. With the backing of Coates’ Kansas City investors and Joy’s east coast ones, the company launched an intensive lobbying campaign in Washington, D.C., for the route and land grants. Congress granted the company the route and the right to build a bridge over the Missouri River. In 1868, Joy was named director of the company and the name was change to the Missouri River, Ft. Scott and Gulf Railroad. Joy had delayed construction of the line until he was able to purchase 800,000 acres known as the Cherokee Neutral Tract for future speculation by the company. The delay caused much criticism of the railroad, but Joy claimed that through land grants, bonds and land sales the company would reap a profit of $2 million before operating a single day.
During the delay, agents for the railroad negotiated right-of-way concessions through the county. One agent negotiated with C.A. Bradshaw who had moved to Johnson County in 1867. In 1869, Bradshaw deeded the right-of-way to the railroad for the sum of $1 and the stipulation that the railroad build a depot on the property. Furthermore, Bradshaw stipulated that if the depot was ever closed or removed, the land would revert to Bradshaw or his heirs. In the same year, Bradshaw sold 10.5 acres to Octave Chanute, an engineer for the railroad. Chanute platted the town and then sold it to three men from Jackson County, Missouri, one of whom was on the board of directors for the railroad. it is interesting to note that, after the initial speculation on the town lots, most of the buyers became lifelong residents of the area.
Certain factors contributed to the success of the new community. Most likely the presence of the depot was responsible for the location of a post office in the new community. The area’s post office had been established in 1865 at a place identified as Sherman. An early map of the proposed rail route showed it passing through Sherman. However, when the line was actually constructed, it went west of Sherman through Bradshaw’s land. At the time the town was platted, the post office was moved to the new community. The post office was located in L. Freeman's general store and he is listed as the first postmaster for Lenexa.
Other businesses were attracted to the new community. Another general store and a drug store opened within a year of the founding of the town. A young doctor from Shawnee, G.M. Bower, opened the drug store and served as doctor for the community. He and David Brickley, to whom Bower was related by marriage, bought most of the new town lots. The area also attracted John Earnshaw, who opened the Fountain Head Mill providing another service for the farmers in the area. By 1883, A.T. Andreas reported in his History of the State of Kansas that “Lenexa contains at present time two stores, two blacksmith shops, the grist mill, and about seventy-five inhabitants.” The town also had two churches and a cemetery.
As to the name of the town, there are a number of traditions but little fact as to its selection. One account relates that the town was briefly called Brickley, but no other documentation exists to support this version. Another tradition states that the railroad company wanted to name the new town for Charles Bradshaw, but that he modestly refused the honor. The name Lenexa was then selected. Why the name Lenexa was chosen is explained only by legend. One tradition says that a railroad representative spied a lovely young Shawnee woman, and being so taken with her beauty, he named the town for her. There is no evidence to support this story. There was a Shawnee woman named Ia-nex-se in the area, but the Shawnee census of 1856-57 lists her as being sixty years of age. That she was well respected by her neighbors is reported by several sources, including William Johnson, son of Thomas Johnson. She was also the widow of Thomas Blackhoof, one of the Shawnee chiefs, and her name, spelled in various ways, appears in several places — the Shawnee Patent Book, the Shawnee census, and the Shawnee payment records. Why the spelling was changed and why the name was adopted are not known.
Many things affected early Johnson County — the availability of land, land speculation and railroad expansion. Although Lenexa is not the oldest town established in Johnson County, it shares with earlier communities those elements that helped shape early county history.
--ALBUM vol. 4, no. 1 (winter 1991)