Elam Bartholomew: An Ordinary and Extraordinary Kansan

In many ways, Elam Bartholomew was a typical Kansas settler as he encountered most of the challenges facing those settling on the Great Plains. He is an extraordinary Kansan because he recorded his life's events for 60 years in his daily diaries. He settled in Kansas in 1874. He returned to Illinois to marry and returned to Rooks County, Kansas, with his new wife Rachel in 1876. This podcast is based on excerpts from the diary for 1877 and 1878. It details his farming activities and those of his neighbors, with whom he traded work. It includes his comments on the birth of his first child, a land dispute among neighbors, organizing literary societies and a church, fighting prairie fires, and reports of an Indian raid. Though not documented in the diary, Bartholomew is also extraordinary because he was nationally known as a naturalist who studied fungi that grew on grain products. He is credited with identifying several hundred new species.