Pictures In Early Day in Elk County II

[T. Sackett]

     These were scanned from a Handbook of Elk and Chautauqua Counties of Kansas, C. S. Burch Publishing Co. Chicago, 1886

[W. Gray]

I am thinking that the building in the third picture, Momma & Burchfield, was located next to the old bank on north Wabash and is the building that was torn down in August 2005.

[Wilma]

It does look a lot like that old building.  Does anyone remember what was on the gound floor?

[Janet Harrington]

For some reason, in all my research, it comes to mind that the Burchfield building was on the west side of Wabash.  It seems to me that it burned down.  I'm not sure, though.

[W. Gray]

J.C. Burchfield's general store and hardware store was in the old county courthouse on the west side of Wabash sometime after 1886. 

It burned in 1896 along with the Welbourn House.

Burchfield had traded his farm to the county in exchange for the old courthouse, which he turned into the Temple of Justice, a general store and hardware.

His former farm subsequently became the county poor farm, which I can just barely remember on K-99 north of town.

The illustration of the J.O. Burchfield Hardware and N. Momma building constructed in 1884 that Santa Claus put on the forum has different window spacings and treatments.

That building looks frail in relation to the old courthouse picture in the Elk County history book.

Pictures in the Elk County history book of the building that was torn down do not have the triangular treatments on the roof or the name Momma or Burchfield on top but otherwise look the same from the cornice down.

The building that was torn down was on about lot 125 in block 80. It is too bad Neva Walters at the courthouse does not do computers.