- Greenwood City Sunday School
2x2 This article first appeared in the Topeka Capital Journal and later in The Herald in 1939.
“Most of the people who came to Kansas in the early days were more or less religious, even though at times they acted like heathens. Sunday Schools were started in almost every town before the post office or church was established. In a majority of cases the Sunday School was begun for the purpose usually associated with this kind of institution. In others, however, the Sabbath School was merely a diversion. Take the Greenwood City instance to illustrate.
Greenwood City was started in March, 1871, by J.P. Mitchell, an Irishman, near the Verdigris River between Quincy and Toronto. A full set of municipal officers was inaugurated and being in Greenwood County, the very heart of the cattle country, the new city was the haunt of cowboys and desperadoes. Dissolute women seldom entered the city, but for noise and rowdyism, Greenwood City was in the front rank of the frontier towns. Drunken cowboys and outlaws frequently “shot up the town.”
Among the desperadoes and outlaws who used to rendezvous at Greenwood was splendid. The exercises were carried out enthusiastically, especially the singing. At first the school was attended by men only, then some of the farmers began bringing their wives and children. This Sunday School flourished for many years-long after the ambitious town of Greenwood City had died the natural death of a boom town, and nothing but a memory of its wildness remained.
When the railroad, the Missouri Pacific, was surveyed, Toronto was the lucky candidate for the rails, and Greenwood City soon was a thing of the past. Then law and order came to Greenwood County, and its desperadoes skipped to safer places on the border, now moving farther west. Kinch West was killed in Fort Worth by an officer who tries to arrest him. Most of the others died “with their boots on,” but probably attended Sunday Schools in towns where they congregated before the last summons came.”
