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.
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