Page:Kansas A Cyclopedia of State History vol 1.djvu/75

 from Colony in the southwest, crosses the southwest corner. The Missouri, Kansas & Texas crosses the southeast corner.

The county is divided into the following townships: Indian creek, Jackson, Lincoln, Lone Elm, Monroe, Ozark, Putnam, Reeder, Rich, Union, Walker, Washington, Welda and Westphalia. Garnett, the county seat, is the largest town and railroad center. Other important towns and villages are Colony, Greeley, Harris, Kincaid, Lone Elm, Selma and Welda.

The U. S. census of 1910 reported the population of Anderson county at 13,829. The total value of farm products for that year was, according to the report of the state board of agriculture, $1,437,654.37. Corn led with 1,355,223 bushels, valued at $691,163.73. Next to this was the hay crop, valued at $394,779, and oats stood third in the list with 362,907 bushels, valued at $134,275.59. The wheat crop amounted to 38,187 bushels, valued at $35,339.05. Flax and Kafir corn were also important crops.

 Anderson, John Alexander, clergyman and member of Congress, was born in Washington county, Pa., June 26, 1834. He was educated at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, graduating in 1853. Benjamin Harrison, afterwards president of the United States was his roommate while in college. He began work as pastor of a church at Stockton, Cal., in 1857, and preached the first Union sermon on the Pacific coast. He soon began to take an interest in all matters of general welfare, and as a result the state legislature of California elected him trustee of the state insane asylum in 1860. Two years later he was appointed chaplain of the Third California infantry. In this capacity he accompanied Gen. Connor's expedition to Salt Lake City. Mr. Anderson's desire to be always investigating something led to his appointment to the United States Sanitary Commission as California correspondent and agent. His first duty was to act as relief agent of the Twelfth army corps. He was next transferred to the central office at New York. In 1864, when Gen. Grant began moving toward Richmond, Mr. Anderson was made superintendent of transportation and had charge of six steamboats. At the close of the campaign he served as assistant superintendent of the canvas and supply department at Philadelphia and edited a paper called the Sanitary Commission Bulletin. When the war closed he was transferred to the history bureau of the commission at Washington, remaining there one year collecting data and writing a portion of the history of the commission. In 1866 he was appointed statistician of the Citizens' Association of Pennsylvania, an organization for the purpose of mitigating the suffering resulting from pauperism, vagrancy and crime in the large cities. In Feb., 1868, Mr. Anderson accepted a call from the Presbyterian church of Junction City, Kan., and during the years spent in this town he developed power as an orator and took an active part in politics. He was on the school board most of the time he was in Junction City. In 1870, the morning after his mother was buried out on the open prairie, where all the dead had been laid, he remarked to some of