Nicodemus, Kansas

As I have related in the past some of my family left Illinois to settle in Kansas. This is the story of a small town in Graham County Kansas near the area where my ancestors settled. Nicodemus was established in 1877 near the end of the Reconstruction period in the South. It is in northwestern Kansas and settled by African Americans from the South.

Why Kansas? H. L. Vanderwall a settler at Nicodemus stated that at the end of Reconstruction they saw the day where a black man could no longer get property in the South. The U. S. Army had surveyed Kansas and opened it to settlement. African Americans felt welcomed in Kansas because so many of its citizens had fought against Missouri before the Civil War so Kansas could enter the Union a free state. Blacks were being denied property rights in the South and the offer of free land in Kansas under the Homestead Act was a strong incentive. The Nicodemus Town Company was formed by W.H. Smith, Ben Carr, S. P. Roundtree, W.R. Hill, Jerry Allsay, Jeff Lenze and WIlliam Edmonds. W.R Hill was the lone white man in the group. The name Nicodemus was chosen to resonate with black farmers. The mythical Nicodemus had been described as a slave of African birth who struggled for freedom and hoped for good times ahead according to a popular Civil War era song "Wake Nicodemus". The first group of settlers arrived in Spetember 1877 with additional groups arriving in the spring and summer of 1878 and the final group in February 1879. A leaflet had been distributed in the Lexington and Georgetown areas of Kentucky entitled "The Largest Colored Colony in America". It stated by September 1, 1877 the colony would have houses erected and businesses opened for settlers. It gave glowing descriptions of the rich soil, wild horses that could be tamed for farm work and the abundance of game and timber. The reality was much different. The first settlers arrived to find the families there living in dugouts. The settlers were determined and made a life for themselves. They sold buffalo bones for six dollars a ton, worked on the railroad and farmed on the side. They broke the prairie with hand tools. The land was almost treeless so they cooked and heated their dugouts with dried cow and buffalo ships, corn cobs or wood salvaged from the nearby Solomon River. In 1879 or so they began to build sod houses.


The picture above is of a sod house on land our family still owns in Western Kansas. This picture was taken in 1965 and now almost 50 years later the structure is almost disappeared. The picture gives you some idea of the conditions the settlers endured and the isolation of that part of the state.

Construction of sod houses in Nicodemus continued into the early 20th century. They were often two room structures, one to cook in and one to sleep in. Dugouts and sod houses existed in Nicodemus through the 1940's. In 1879 Nicodemus had 35 homes, a livery stable, two churches, a general store, post office, hotel, real estate office and two schoolrooms. By 1886 it had 15 stone buildings, 14 farm buildings, 7 sod structures, 2 churches, 2 hotels, 1 newspaper,1 schoolroom, 1 land company, 1 bank, a society hall and 150 residents. In 1887 two coal yards came to town in anticipation of the railroad coming through town. The Union Pacific line ended up running six miles away. Hard times followed with droughts and grasshopper plagues. Residents took wage paying jobs in other towns like Bogue and Nicodemus became a quiet farming town.

Nicodemus is the oldest surviving black pioneer town west of the Mississippi River and was designated a National Historic site in 1196. The National Park Service is working with the people of Nicodemus to preserve the town's historic structures. It remains a symbol of the pioneer spirit of African Americans who dared to leave the only region they had known to seek personal freedom and take a chance on making a new life.