A Message From the Project Director,
Dr. Steve Collins.
To be useful, history must be made accessible. The students of Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society at Kansas City Kansas Community College have done just that in indexing the Quindaro Chindowan Newspaper.
Quindaro is the site of a group of Underground Railroad stations serving escaped slaves from Missouri. African, European and Native Americans combined their efforts to free slaves and make Kansas a free state.
Though the town flourished for only five years from 1857 to 1862, its leading citizens, Guthrie, Armstrong, Johnson, Zane, Nichols, Gray, Sortor, Storrs, Robinson, Smith and others helped make Kansas history.
The Territorial Newspaper Project includes the index/transcriptions of the Chindowan as well as PDF images of nearly all the Territorial Kansas Newspapers. The navigation bar at left leads the viewer to the index, transcriptions and the images of the actual newspapers of Territorial Kansas.
Chindowan means 'pilot' or 'leader' and the free state town's spirited people led many slaves to freedom. The town's important history is alive in its only surviving newspaper. From the start, the paper reflected the free state character of the town. The model of multicultural cooperation that Quindaro exhibited then is still worthy of study today and we have designed this index research and publication of new perspectives on the Territorial Period to make the history of Quindaro and other towns and events available to everyone.
The name "Quindaro" is taken from Quindaro Nancy Brown, a Wyandot Indian who along with her European husband, Abelard Guthrie, began helping slaves escape as early as 1844.
Because she assisted the town company in securing the 693 acres of Wyandot land from her tribal members, the town was named after her. The name means "bundle of sticks" and was translated as "in strength there is union."
J.M. Waldon, Editor of the Chindowan, and Clarina Nichols, Assistant Editor, are part of the second wave of "New Bloods". These editors built upon the successes of the 'pioneer' editors who weathered the border storm of 1854, 55, 56. Waldon and others helped transform the Free State party into the Kanzas branch of the National Republican Party.
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