|
Osage County Museum
The Osage
County Historical Society Museum houses a collection of artifacts donated
primarily by former and present residents of Osage County. Exhibits are
arranged so that the viewer gets some insight into business, occupational
and family life of bygone eras.
Burlingame
is the oldest continually occupied town in Osage County, having been
founded in 1854. At about the same
time, the Sauk and Fox nations were removed to the southeastern part of the
county. The Indian Agency was located near the present-day town of Quenemo. Other
towns quickly sprang up throughout the county as the presence of coal became
known.
For many
years, the major economic forces in Osage County were coal mining,
railroading and farming. As the coal
fields were depleted, the railroads followed suit. Farming remains and is supplemented with
recreation as both Pomona Lake and Melvern Lake
are situated in our county.
Because of
the mining and farming opportunities, a variety of ethnic groups came to
Osage County. Immigrants from
England, Wales, Ireland, Sweden, Germany, France and Italy quickly settled
in, were assimilated, and these ethnic surnames remain today. They settled in among whites, who could
trace ancestries to American colonial times, African-Americans seeking
opportunity in a Free State after the Civil War and the Sauk and Fox who
did not allow their people to be removed easily to Indian Territory in
present-day Oklahoma.
Our museum tries to represent the wide
variety of historic, economic, cultural and ethnic aspects of Osage County,
Kansas, from early settlement in the 1850s onward. We hope that you will include our museum
and family research center in your Kansas travel plans.
|
