A fascinating window into the past was published Dec. 14, 1901, in the Topeka State Journal. The story features the reminiscences of John Armstrong, an anti-slavery activist who had been in Topeka since its founding in 1854.

Armstrong spoke of the efforts of Cyrus Kurtz (C.K.) Holliday, Dr. Charles Robinson and himself to select a new townsite in Kansas Territory. Robinson was an agent for the New England Immigrant Aid Society. Holliday had come to Kansas Territory to build upon the railroad fortune he had launched in his home state of Pennsylvania.

The men were inspired by a newspaper article published in the Parkville, Mo., Luminary. The story described the region along the Kansas River going west to Junction City. The report gave the location of the town of Tecumseh, already thriving, as a favorable townsite for the capital of the future State of Kansas.

Additional information was found in Armstrong’s obituary, published in the Dec. 20, 1911, Topeka Daily Capital. At the age of 30, Armstrong was stirred to come to Kansas to help make Kansas a free state, arriving in November 1854. At Lawrence, he found Holliday and Robinson preparing for a journey west to locate an acceptable townsite for a permanent capital.

Armstrong persuaded the group to include him in their survey. Six additional men joined the party. They represented a cross-section of New Englanders. Rev. S. Y. Lum, a Congregationalist minister, had come from Massachusetts. Frank Billings was from Vermont. Captain Eoles was from Providence, R.I., and Rev. Mr.

Clough was a Methodist minister from Maine. Two men remained unidentified.

“All had been strangers to each other before becoming acquainted at Lawrence. Six of the men made the trip in Dr. Robinson’s two-seated spring wagon while three others rode horseback.”

The travelers found the Tecumseh site inadequate for the development of a large city. Five miles further west along the Kansas River they crossed over Shunganunga Creek on a split-log bridge built by Joseph and Louis Pappan. The Pappans operated a ferry over the Kansas River.

The date was Nov. 23, 1854, a beautiful Indian summer day. Passing through dense brush and high weeds, the party suddenly emerged from the brush to find a promising valley of rolling prairie. To the right, the Kansas River flowed on its perpetual course eastward.

As Robinson seemed entranced by the scene, Armstrong walked down to examine the river bank for a possible landing site for boats navigating the river. Holliday could barely contain himself, bursting forth with the lilting strains of “My Old Kentucky Home.”

They were soon at the crossroads of the California Road and the New Mexico Road, today’s Topeka intersection of 6th Avenue and Clay Street.

Pausing for a moment to look about, Holliday voiced a prediction, “Here where we stand, two great highways cross, one going to New Mexico and the other to California, and I predict that at this spot there will be the junction of the two great railway systems going in the same directions.”

Armstrong noted in his 1901 interview that “Holliday lived long enough to see his prediction realized, though we laughed at him then.”