Good Evening Blogging Friends,
It's the 11th. of February and time for another entry in my blog. As I told you in the last blog, I'm going to write a few of my impressions of James Richard Mead. After reading some of his personal letters that he wrote to his dad, mom, and sister from 1859 - 1861; which have been in trusted to the Kansas Historical Society and found on the Kansas Memory web site,(http://www.kansasmemory.org), I have both good and not so good feelings for the man. My first impression was that he was an egotistic, self absorbed man. He seems to be bragging to his dad about killing buffalo's. He had always liked to hunt, so I suppose he was good at it alright. He told his dad about killing 30 buffalo one day, but being an animal lover and thinking it sad that the buffalo was hunted almost to extinction, largely for their hides was a crime and a shame. He did cure the meat though and that's honorable of him.
James Mead was a very busy man and was a man of passion. He quickly had a vision for the frontier and the Southern Plains of Kansas. After he came to Kansas and saw the buffalo, the Indians, other settlers and later on the Union soldiers he quickly knew that they would need places to buy supplies.
He set up several trading posts around the area, and traded with the Indians. One near todays Salina, Towanda, Wichita, and maybe another one of two that I can't think of right now. He was a sheriff, a businessman, hunter and trader, and adventurer, and finally a husband. It was interesting how he told his dad about the woman he was going to marry. He said," she isn't pretty, but she likes me and I like her, so we should be able to work together to build a life." His first two wives died and shortly after the second wife died, their infant son died too. James Mead was grief stricken for quite a while, but eventually married a third wife and he also out lived her. I will give more detail on all of these things soon. I know that all of tonight's blog is short and vague, but I can hardly keep my eyes open tonight, so please forgive me for making this a less than my usual long winded blog.
Thank you for popping in and have a very good night.
Cheri