Codell | Cresson
| Damar | Motor
| Palco | Plainville
| Stockton | Webster
| Webster Dam | Woodston
| Zurich | Rooks
County Courthouse
Homesteading In Rooks County
In 1867, the Kansas Legislature defined
the boundaries of Rooks County with twenty-three (23) townships.
The county was named for a private, John C. Rooks, of the 11th
Kansas Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, who died from a wound suffered
during the savage December 7, 1862, Battle of Prairie Grove, Arkansas.
Rooks County is the only county in Kansas named for a private.
The first settlers in Rooks County were ten persons
engaged in the stock business named James, Thomas, John and Francis
NcNulty (originally from Massachusetts), Tunis Bulis, John Wells,
John Powell, Seal Northup and Capt. J Owens. They arrived in January,
1871, and all took the first claims made in the County, in what
afterwards became Stockton Township. They came from Washington
County, Kansas and with the exception of James McNulty and Capt.
Owens, all became permanent residents.
Soon after these settlers followed John Shorthill
who resided on a claim in Lowell Township. Mrs. Robert E. Martin,
who came with her husband and family in the fall of 1871, was
the first woman who settled in Rooks County. She also resided
in Lowell Township. Following these early settlers soon came Thomas
Boylan, Henry Purdy, S.C. Smith, M.M. Stewart, G.W. Patterson,
Henry Hill, George Steele, John Russell, Lyman Randall, John Lawson,
W.H. Barnes, George W. Beebe, the Dibbles, Parks and others.
The first house erected in Stockton Township, and
Rooks County, was erected in February, 1871, by the McNulty Brothers,
two and one half miles south of town on the south side of the
South Solomon. The first marriage occurred in Lowell Township,
January 1, 1873. William E. Newton was married to Mary M. Young,
by B.M. Cooper, a Justice of the Peace.
The first child born in the county was Myrtle Maud,
daughter of Thomas McNulty, born Christmas night, 1871, on Elm
Creek, three miles east and south of Stockton. The first death
in the county was Erastas Foster, two miles from Stockton, in
the spring of 1878. He was buried in the Stockton graveyard.
Books on the history of Rooks County
-
Pioneers of Western Kansas by Myrtle
D. Fesler
-
Palco Centennial Book - September 1988
-
St. Ann's Church Book - 2000
-
Damar History Book - 1988
-
Lest We Forget by Leo Oliva
-
Bird, Kansas by Tony Parker
-
Pioneer Naturalist of the Plains by
David M. Bartholomew
-
Stockton Heritage in Wood, Stone and Brick:
The Town and its Historic Structures by Leo Oliva
-
Plainville Centennial Book - 1988
-
Woodston: The Story of a Kansas Country
Town by Leo Oliva
-
Plainville: Its Early Beginnings by
Margaret Houser
Sources
Information from Roger Hrabe,
Rooks County Economic Development Director
