History of the State of Kansas, by William G. Cutler

[genealogynut]

Well, folks...to the best of my knowledge, all the biographies given for Elk County, that were in Cutler's history,  have now been posted on this genealogy board. So depending on what your attitude is towards genealogy, you can either rejoice or be saddened.  But I thought I never would get finished with some of this mundane stuff, so many of them seemed quite a bit alike. But to those, who are looking for info on their ancestor(s), it's like finding a gold mine.

[Mom70x7]

And many, many thanks go to you!!!

[Dee Gee]

It saddens me to learn that you have posted all of them.  I'm amazed at the number of fruit tree the settlers claimed to have planted and now you don't see very many fruit trees in the area.  Also the size of house they had with the large number kids, they sure didn't have a bedroom for each.  Reminds me of how we were raised all the boys in one room sharing a bed and the girls in the other bedroom.

[Janet Harrington]

Let me echo Mom70X7, Lois, many, many thanks go to you!!!  You are an angel.

[genealogynut]

I'm thinking about taking a break, and then maybe eventually look for more biographies on folks that lived in Elk County.  But right now, it doesn't look very promising of finding very many more.

I could be wrong, but one of the reasons for the early settlers planting so many orchards, fruit trees, etc. may have had something to do with filing additional claims. It may have been one of the requirements, but why,... I don't know.  It seems like I've read somewhere that if a man married, he was eligible to file an additional claim, also.  Don can remember when his grandparents had an orchard on their farm, in the Paw Paw township,  but it all died out a long time ago. I have my doubts if all those trees produced very heavily.  A few years of drought conditions probably killed a number of them.