Kansas City, Kansas
First Burial in Old Quindaro Cemetery
January 1852
by William Connelly
When the Methodist Church split on the slavery question it brought trouble to the church in Wyandot (Wyandott City- or Modern day Kansas City, Ks). The church that the Wyandots had brought from Ohio, when the Nation moved to Kansas, was split in twain. Two separate organizations were maintained and two church buildings were erected. The adherents of the Methodist Episcopal church, or the church North being shut out of the brick church, built before the split, built a log church just north and east of the present junction of the Parallel and Louisa Smith roads, and within the territory that was afterwards incorporated as Quindaro. It was known as the log church to distinguish it from the brick church which was in possession of the church South.
By the treaty of 1855 the Wyandot Nation reserved two acres of land for each branch of the Methodist church. The part reserved for the Methodist Episcopal church was a strip 26 2-3 rods north and south and 12 rods east and west in the South west quarter of Section 31, Town II, Range 23, and was designated on the official report of the Commissioners as allotment No. 283. It is bounded today on the south by the Parallel road and on the west by the Louisa Smith road and is universally known as the “Old Quindaro Cemetery.”
April 8, 1856, both church buildings were burned by vandals. The Methodist Episcopal church never rebuilt on this two acre tract. The church moved elsewhere and the ground was given up wholly for cemetery purposes. many prominent Wyandots are buried there. Among them is Matthew R. Walker, and Lydia, his wife. The distinguished couple occupied a very important place in the early history of Masonry in Wyandotte County. It was at the Walker home, now the site of the North East Junior High School, where the preliminary meetings were held which culminated in the organization of Wyandotte Lodge No. 3, A.F. + M. Later when the Eastern Star was organized Mrs. Walker became the first Worthy Matron and the newly organized Chapter took her Indian name, Mendias, as its own.
Lucy B. Armstrong, one of the outstanding figures of the Wyandot Nation is buried here, together with her children.
Here, also is buried Rev. Eben Blachley, the Presbyterian minister, who started the school for negroes at old Quindaro, which has grown into the present Western University.
Here, also, is buried Vincent J. Lane, one of the best known and most distinguished of all the pioneers who settled Wyandotte County and shaped its early day history.
The first burial in this hallowed ground was in January, 1852, when Eliza S. Witten, wife of Rev. James Witten, the missionary, was buried near the log church. A plain white stone marks her grave, but the letters on the stone are scarcely legible, but they disclose that she died Jan. 3, 1852, aged 53 years, 6 months and 14 days.
The next burial, of which there is a record, was that of Katie Sage, alias Sally Crane (Tarhe), alias Sally Between the Logs, alias Sally Frost. The story of Katie Sage is gathered from ten letters written by her brother Charles, bearing dates from April 2nd, 1848 to April 16, 1853. When a small child she was stolen from her Virginia home, by horse thieves, out for revenge, and given by them to the Indians. In 1848 her brother, Charles Sage, was a resident of Van Buren, now Cass County, Missouri. He tells in one of his letters of his reelection to the office of Magistrate and in another he describes himself as follows: “I am a Jeffersonian Democrat in pollitick and for Cass and Butler and my Religious principles is Northern Methodist of Weslian stamp.” In 1848 Sage was at Fort Leavenworth and while there “a half breed Wyandot Indian” told him there was a white woman living with them that had a nose (spelled Noise) and features resembling his. Thinking this might be his long lost sister “Caty,” Sage made the journey, 32 miles from his home, to visit her. He found her unable to speak English and ignorant of her origin. It was with difficulty that he talked to her through an interpreter. A brother, Samuel, who lived at Foresethe, two hundred miles away, was sent for, and on his arrival he recognized the woman, by a burn on the thigh, and some other marks, as his long lost sister. She had been adopted into the Turtle tribe and claimed the whole tribe by adoption and they claimed her as a grandmother. She had been married three times. Her first husband was named Crane (Tarhe) the head chief of the Nation. By him she had one child, which died in infancy. Her second husband was Between the Logs, who was also a head chief. Her third husband was named Frost. She had been a widow for about twenty years. The oldest Indian in the Nation told that between fifty and sixty years before the “Cherrykee Indians” in one of their annual visits to the country brought her to them as a present, as was usual in that day with the Indians, and that when they got her she could not talk.
There was some talk about Katy going to visit her mother in Virginia but she finally declined to go partly on account of the distance and because it would be no satisfaction to see her people and not be able to talk with them.
Sage tells of his arrangement with a half breed of the tribe to write the history of his sister for him. Later in the correspondence it develops that this half breed was William Walker, now known as Governor Walker. In the early part of 1851 an epidemic of sore eyes spread among the Wyandots. Walker was among those afflicted and so the work was not commenced. Sister “Catty” was also afflicted, and went blind. Sage made various efforts to have Walker write her story, but without success.
On January 21,1853, Katie Sage died at her residence in Wyandot of “newmony fever,” aged 66 years and 14 days. In his closing letter, Sage writes: “I went to her grave, alone, and viewed her last resting place and felt thankful that I had the privilege of seeing her grave. Tell Sister Anna she was buried by the side of the wife of James Witten that rode the circuit in Lee County when her and Sister Pegga was in Lee County. She was truly a pious woman and a Methodist, and through all the changes of the Church adhered strictly to the old Church and is buried at the Church of the old Methodist in the Wyandot Nation.”
One of the early burials in this cemetery was that of Marcia Lane, the infant daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Vincent J. Lane, in November, 1857. The Lanes were residents of Quindaro and members of this church. On the death of the daughter they were assigned a burial lot in the cemetery by the church, and here the daughter was buried.
In 1874, the Quindaro Cemetery Association was organized. It platted five acres of ground adjoining the Old Wyandot Burial Ground, to which it annexed the two acres of the old cemetery. It said in its dedication plat it did this “for the purpose of preservation and improvement.”
In January, 1905, Mrs. Lane died and was buried by the side of her daughter in the Old Wyandot Burial Ground. The Quindaro Cemetery Association demanded pay from Mr. Lane for her grave and threatened to have the body removed unless the demand was met. Mr. Lane went into court and asked for an injunction to restrain the cemetery association from carrying out this threat. This injunction was granted, the court finding that Mr. Lane had title to the property and that the cemetery association had no right to exact from him the payment of any sum of money whatever or to interfere in any manner with the bodies there buried or with his possession of the burial lot.
When Mr. Lane died, some years later, he was buried in this historic ground by the side of the daughter and the wife.
On January 20, 1926, the Quindaro Cemetery Association held a supplemental plat of its cemetery grounds in which it included and asserted its ownership of this two acre tract.