LOCAL

Library program uncovers early Topeka, Kansas history

Topeka Constitution will be unveiled Wednesday

Ann Marie Bush
Replicas of the Topeka Constitution will be presented Wednesday at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library.

Tucked away in Washington, D.C., and not seen for 150 years, the Topeka Constitution will be unveiled during a special program Wednesday at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library.

Despite its name, the constitution isn’t one for Topeka, but for the state. It is one of four such constitutions to be written before Kansas ultimately was granted statehood.

Wednesday’s program, “Connecting to Our Past,” will begin at 6 p.m. in Marvin Auditorium of the library, 1515 S.W. 10th Ave., with the explanation of its genealogy services.

Attendees also can view a small patriotic village created by Nedra Spingler, of Topeka. She will include her latest creation, a miniature version of Constitution Hall.

The original Topeka Constitution remains in Washington, D.C., but what will be available Wednesday is a replica.

The event marks the 158th anniversary of the Topeka Constitutional Convention at Constitution Hall, said Don Lambert, of Kansas City, Mo., who is involved with a group trying to preserve Topeka’s Constitution Hall, 429 S. Kansas Ave.

R. Crosby Kemper III, chief executive of the Kansas City Public Library, will attend the event to accept a replica of the Topeka Constitution. Kemper is the great-great-grandson of Rufus Crosby, who at age 21 was the youngest signer of the Topeka Constitution at the convention in 1855.

Replicas also will be given to representatives from the office of Gov. Sam Brownback, the city of Topeka and from the Topeka Room of the local library.

The Topeka Constitution, a 26-page handwritten document, was officially called the Constitution of the State of Kansas, Lambert said. Researchers were unable to find the original first of the four Kansas constitutions. The Topeka Constitution was discovered recently at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., as documents were being placed on the Internet, Lambert said.

A copy was given to the Friends of the Free State Capitol, a local organization restoring Constitution Hall.

“We have only known about it for a few months,” Lambert said of the discovered document. “It was anti-slavery, which was a very brave stance to have taken on the Kansas Territory. It shaped the state. It allowed Free Staters a voice. I think it was quite remarkable.”

The Kansas-Nebraska Act became law on May 30, 1854, Lambert wrote in a news release. Within months, it appeared that pro-slavery Missourians would succeed in making Kansas a slave state. Newly arrived settlers, many from New England, devised “a bold but peaceful plan,” Lambert wrote.

“They would write their own state constitution and to form Kansas,” he wrote. “They elected 40 delegates to attend a convention lasting three weeks in Topeka. They wrote an anti-slavery constitution. Topeka had a population of 350 at this time, less than a year after town founding.”

While it passed the U.S. House of Representatives, pro-slavery forces prevented the vote in the Senate, according to the Constitution Hall website.

The constitution stated, “There shall be no slavery in this state.” It also granted married women property rights, Lambert said.

The 40 signers included Cyrus K. Holliday, founder of Topeka, Charles Robinson, first governor of Kansas, and James Lane, president of the convention.

Following the Topeka Constitution, there were three other Kansas constitutions, Lambert said. They were the Lecompton (pro-slavery), Leavenworth and the Wyandotte, under which Kansas finally entered the Union as a Free State in 1861.

Construction began on Constitution Hall, a native stone building, a few months after Topeka was founded. It is the city’s oldest building, Lambert said. From 1863-1869, it was the first Capitol for Kansas. It is currently being restored by Friends of the Free State Capitol and has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.