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photograph by D. Kanzeg

Deep Creek/Riley County,
Kansas

(formerly
Davis County*)

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In April of 1855, Horace Tabor arrived in the area of Deep Creek, which flows north from the heights of the Kanza plain down into the lush Kansas River valley. Tabor had come to the area from Boston, as a member of a party of anti-slavery "squatter sovereignty" settlers sponsored by Eli Thayer's New England Emigrant Aid Society. Tabor's brother John had preceded him to Kansas, settling in Lawrence about 1854.


Horace constructed a lean-to next to a stream (now Tabor Creek) on 160 acres of land that he pre-empted, just up the hill from Pillsbury Crossing, a broad natural ford; stable enough to allow wagons (and today cars) to cross Deep Creek safely. Local lore associates it with the Oregon Trail, which traversed the area. Horace purchased another 320 acres soon after arriving.


He spent that first summer clearing the land and planting corn. And though he had an excellent crop, there was no market for corn in Kansas at the time. In December of 1855 Tabor marched the 100 miles to Lawrence to help defend the town against pro-slavery men. His courage got him elected to the so-called "Free-Soil" territorial legislature, which convened in Topeka in March of 1856.
During Tabor's second summer in Kansas, the lack of a market for a second bumper crop forced him to take a job in his original trade, as a stonecutter, at nearby Ft. Riley. (To this day, much of the original "campus" of the military installation contains structures made with the native stone from the surrounding countryside.)


In early January of 1857, Tabor was appointed to a three-man committee of the "Free-Soil" Legislature to draft a memorial to Congress asking for admission to the Union. By the end of the month, he was back in Maine, ready to marry Augusta.


Augusta got her first look at the trackless landscape that was to be her home in April of 1857. She was heartbroken by the desolation and loneliness. As time went on, she added fear of Indian raids and rattlesnakes. Tabor continued his work in the legislature, as well as his work at Ft. Riley, walking the twenty plus one way miles each week. It was just as well, since a lack of rain that third summer had made farming especially tough. At one point starvation was a very real possibility for the newlyweds.

Their son Maxcy was born in October of 1857. The winter of 1857/58 was mild, followed by another good summer and third abundant harvest. Once again, though, the lack of a market for the fruits of a farmer's hard labor left Augusta feeling strangely restless and gloomy. The only way to prosper was to have railroads to carry produce to markets back east. But the Panic of 1857 had stopped railroad construction in its tracks (so to speak), leaving no immediate hope for relief of any kind for the Deep Creek pioneers.

Around about this time Horace decided to build a new home; perhaps to placate Augusta's yearning for more comfort. Constructed with stones Horace himself cut

from a hill on his land, that house still exists (as of 1996), though just barely. Locals call the hill "Mt. Tabor."


The Kansas winter of 1858/59 was apparently too much for Augusta, though. Bitter cold and snow had both Tabors paying close attention to the fantastic stories from farther west. And by early April, Horace had rented his land on Deep Creek, and was ready to set off for "Pikes Peak Country" via the Republican River trail. It took six weeks for the five of them--Horace, Augusta, their son Maxcy and their friends Nathaniel Maxcy (after whom their son had been named) and Samuel B. Kellogg, both of them also New England emigrants--to make the trip from the Kansas River Valley to Cherry Creek (Denver).


Kansas continued to mean something to Horace long after having left it far behind. By the end of 1860, the Tabors had made enough money in the mining camps (reportedly about $5000) to send Augusta back to Maine for a visit. Along the way she paid off the mortgage on the Deep Creek property and purchased some more.


County tax receipts show assessment payments made by a Tabor into the 1890s. In addition to the Deep Creek land, Horace's name shows up on ownership records for various residential lots in the city of Manhattan (the Riley County seat), despite his never having lived there. Tabor's sister Emily became a resident, and carried on regular correspondence with Horace throughout his life. Their father Cornelius died there in 1888.


Today, just down the hill from the remnant of the house that Horace built for Augusta, sits the only other Tabor site in Riley County. Square at the corner of Tabor Valley Road and Tabor Lane (just down the road from Tabor Creek Lane) is the Tabor Valley School, a one-room stone building constructed in 1882, and used until the 1960s as a school and community center.


A marble marker sits on the school house property and carries the following unpunctuated description:

Tabor Valley School

IN MEMORY OF AUGUSTA PIERCE TABOR A PIONEER MOTHER WHO WITH HER HUSBAND H.A.W. TABOR SETTLED HERE IN 1856 AND GAVE THIS BEAUTIFUL VALLEY THE NAME "TABOR VALLEY"

IN MEMORY OF AUGUSTA PIERCE TABOR A PIONEER MOTHER WHO WITH HER HUSBAND H.A.W. TABOR SETTLED HERE IN 1856 AND GAVE THIS BEAUTIFUL VALLEY THE NAME "TABOR VALLEY"
IN 1859 THEY MOVED ON TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS AND FOUND THE RICHES OF GOLCONDA AND THEIR HISTORY WILL BE LEGEND IN COLORADO FOREVER


THIS MONUMENT ERECTED TO HER MEMORY BY THE CENTENNIAL COMMITTEE OF MANHATTAN KANSAS APRIL 1955

*This section of Riley County, was originally attached to Davis County, which was named for Jefferson Davis, U.S. Senator from Mississippi at the time of the settlement of this part of Kansas, and later President of the Confederacy. In 1869 Davis County was renamed Geary County.