Springfield
This town site was chartered on
September 18, 1885, and platted the following spring. Located
just north of Fargo Springs, Springfield soon became a bustling
town with a school, two hotels, and businesses that were placed
around the public square. Many of its first residents moved here
from Carthage, a town in Meade County that was abandoned in the
spring of 1886.
Governor John Martin named Springfield
the temporary county seat in June 1886. However, Fargo Springs
wanted the county seat, which set things in motion for what was
eventually a six year county seat war.
Commissioners arranged an election
that was held on August 5, 1886 to determine which town would
be the county seat. The election board was in a closed-off room
in a building in Fargo Springs, and the ballots were passed from
the outside through a raised window. The Springfield folks didn't
like that method, so a wagon with a soapbox was put in front of
the voting place. They placed their ballots in the soap box, but
the next day those ballots were not counted when the county commissioners
met to canvass the votes. Only the ballots cast through the window
were claimed to be legal.
The citizens of Springfield took
the case to the Kansas Supreme Court and after ten months of litigation,
the court declared that the "soapbox" ballots were the
legal ones. Springfield won the right to be the county seat.
Even though the county seat war
appeared to end peacefully, there was still bitterness in Springfield
because of the county seat conflict and court decisions in Seward
and its neighboring counties. On February 18, 1888, suits were
filed in the Kansas Supreme Court against Seward County officials
allegedly involved in fraudulent claims, receiving bribes, and
robbing the people of the county.
In neighboring Stevens County,
the bitter county seat war between Hugoton and Woodsdale had resulted
in dissenting factions, as well. Theodosious Botkin was a district
judge who had been involved in a lot of disputes in southwest
Kansas. In Seward County, his rulings had been primarily in the
favor of Fargo Springs which made some Springfield citizens so
angry that they plotted to ambush and kill him in January 1892.
However, one of the plotters told
the undersheriff, H. P. Larrabee, a few hours before the plot
was to be carried out in the early morning hours of January 3rd.
Sheriff Samuel Dunn and six other men left Springfield the night
before and walked to the Cimarron canyons where they waited for
the would-be assassins near where the plot was going to take place.
When the men who had planned the assassination and interested
bystanders came to the area several hours later, the sheriff told
one group to disperse and leave. The rest of the sheriff's group
went to warn the judge, and they came upon the second group of
troublemakers. When one of the sheriff's men, Sid Nixon, turned
and began to run after a period of shouting between the group
and the sheriff's men, the gang started firing. The men who were
still talking to Sheriff Dunn heard the shooting and fired upon
the sheriff who was fatally wounded. No one was ever convicted
for the murder of Sheriff Dunn.
In 1887, the county commissioners
purchased $100,000 in stock in the Kansas Southern Railroad, using
bonds that were voted for the purpose of getting a railroad to
the town. However, the railroad bypassed Springfield and built
its tracks to Liberal. The end result was a decline in the businesses
of the town, and by 1893, the county seat was moved to Liberal.
There are no buildings of the town remaining today.
The ethnicity of its settlers is
unknown.
Sources
Seward County Historical Society,
Inc. "Seward County Kansas". Liberal, KS: K.C. Printers,
1979.
Fitzgerald, Daniel. "Ghost
Towns of Kansas". Lawrence: University Press of Kansas,
1988.
"6-Year War in Kansas:
Bloody 6-Year Ghost Towns Feud Recalled." The
Denver Post, 28 December 1958, pg. 2A.
