Girard History Museum
St John’s Episcopal Church
National Register of Historic Places
Circa 1886 – 1888
The official organization of St John’s Protestant Episcopal Church took place in May 1871. Dr. William H. Warner and Mark Elliot were wardens, and the vestrymen were C. Dana Sayrs, Thomas C. Patterson, C. G. Hawley, Percy Daniels, and M. M. Flint. The incorporation papers were signed by Franklin Playter. In July 1873 two lots at the southeast corner of Summit and Buffalo were purchased, and a house on this location was used as a temporary chapel for several years. Henry Albert Schmidt was the Architect who drew up the plans and in 1886 the construction of a new stone church was begun. The stone was purchased at 75 cents per perch of 2100 pounds from George Priestly’s stone quarry, near the cemetery southwest of town. The church completed in 1888, was 30 X 60 feet, and 40 feet high at the peak of the steep roof. Inside it is filled with oak and has oak floors. The stained-glass windows were shipped from St Louis and are quite valuable today, giving the building much character. In 1917 a pipe organ was installed as a gift from Harriet Nye Towne of Marietta, Ohio, in memory of Capt. John Dana Barker and his wife were from Marietta too. The organ was built by the Vogel-Barker-Cisler Company of Marietta.
Col. Quentin Pease, originally from Pittsburg, who was married to Sallie Flint, whose family had been connected with the church since its beginning, retired in Girard and headed a movement to acquire the beautiful little church as a museum for Girard and the surrounding area.
The Museum of Crawford County’s deed was transferred to the Friends of Historic Girard in 2015 and the name was changed to the Girard History Museum.National Register of Historic Places 2007
Raymond Community Home
Given to the city by Mrs. J. E. (Mary) Raymond
CIRCA 1893
The Raymond Community Home is a large and beautiful Victorian home built by J. A. Raymond in 1893. By terms of his will, his widow was given life estate, and then at her death, it was to become the property of the City of Girard for a community center, administered by a committee from the ladies’ clubs. Ellen Kirkpatrick, nee Cloyd, Mrs. Raymond’s niece, for who they had built a home on the back part of the lot, was given the privilege of buying their large home, but she declined.
In May 1931, Mary Raymond offered the downstairs of her home to the Chamber of Commerce, which was accepted unanimously. Late in the year she gave up her life interest in the property and deeded it to the City of Girard. The house lost some of its original features when the upstairs screened-in porch was added.
Grocery of R. T. Grant 1904
Father of Jane Grant
Co-Founder of the New Yorker Magazine
Circa 1874
Jane Grant was born in Girard in 1892, the younger daughter of R. T. and Sophronia (Cole) Grant. Grant and his wife’s parents, Gideon P. Cole and Elizabeth Brown, came from Canada. Gideon P. Cole at the age of sixteen went to sea with his older brother, a sea captain, for five years. Later he farmed in Illinois and was again employed as a sailor before coming to a farm southeast of Cato in 1868, where he had 530 acres of land. In 1883 he moved to Farlington, and a few years later to a farm at the edge of Girard. He was a road supervisor, justice of the peace, school board member, and a devout Baptist. His first wife Elizabeth Brown, by whom he had nine children, was said to have been a relative of John Brown and Roger Williams, who was driven from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and founded Providence in 1636. By his second wife, Gideon Cole had seven more children. Both wives were redheads. George E. Cole, county clerk several times and Kansas state auditor was a child of the first wife, as was Sophronia, who became the mother of Jane Grant.
Sophronia Cole was a teacher, and according to her daughter’s recollection, she was the first female in Kansas to hold a first-grade teaching certificate. At her death, she left two daughters, Edith, 14, and Jane, 6. Jane excelled at music and gained a reputation for singing and performing as a small child. Her teacher, Mrs. Volney Boaz, planned to retire from teaching, so it was suggested that Jane might go East to study for a year, return to Girard, and take over as music teacher. However, Jane had other ideas, knowing that if she went “East” she wanted to stay and become a singer or actress. At the age of 16, after graduating from the three-year course at Girard High School, Jane was on her way to New York to study music. That spring, Miss Willie Warner, who had married and lived at Roselle Park, a short distance from New York City, finally returned to visit Girard after many years’ absences. When she heard Jane sing, invited her to come live with her and her husband and study music.
After the death of Miss Willie, two of her friends helped Jane with her musical education. Financially it was hard going, so Jane wrote to her father for financial help, but he didn’t wish to help. She then wrote and asked him to sell her mother’s piano and send her the money. A much-needed check arrived, but later when she visited her father, she found her piano still there. Finally, she got a job at the New York Times taking down society items, and from that beginning, she became a journalist and reporter. During World War I she served nearly a year in France with the motion picture bureau of Y.M.C.A., and also entertained troops. There she met Harold Ross, a native of Aspen, Colorado, who had become the editor of the Stars and Stripes. When the war was over she received a promotion from the New York Times and Married Ross. Ross and she then founded the New Yorker magazine. Jane, who retained her maiden name of Grant, became a noted reporter, wrote for the Saturday Evening Post, and interviewed many famous people, including wives of presidents. She also covered the flight of Charles Lindbergh in 1927. When Jane’s relatives and members of the Chamber Commerce of Girard heard that she was acquainted with Lindbergh and that he was planning to fly over several towns and drop greeting scrolls, they bombarded her with telegrams to ask “Lindy” to fly over Girard. She told Lindbergh as a child she had witnessed the unsuccessful flight of the first airship manufactured west of the Mississippi River. He readily granted her request.
Harold Ross and Jane Grant, (as founding president of the Lucy Stoner League, she retained her maiden name), once visited Girard, where Jane introduced her husband to her old and dear friend Marcett Haldeman-Julius, and Emanuel, the noted publisher. One might have expected the two men to have had much in common; yet when Ross found out Emanuel was no longer a Socialist, having made so much money selling Little Blue Books, he rejected any possible friendship.
Jane’s marriage to Harold Ross ended in divorce after nine years, but even after that she had a great influence on the New Yorker magazine and was one of the noted writers of her day.
She later married William B. Harris, editor of Fortune magazine. Upon their retirement, they founded White Flower Farm, a prestigious seed company in Connecticut. She died on March 126, 1972.
National Register of Historic Places 2017
Built by J.T. and Anna Leonard
one of Girard’s leading Families
It is significant for its architecture Circa 1907-08
The house was designed in a late version of free classic Queen Anne style, a building type not widely used in Girard. It was the largest house built in Girard at the time, it was said that a ton and a half of nails were used in building the house, and the wall studs were double two by sixes.
In 1888 the John F. Moore family (J. A. Wayland) home was the 2nd one built just south of John M. Higgie’s home. The style of the building was Victorian. It was larger than John Higgie’s and had a basement 7 feet in the clear, under to the whole structure, which is 37 x 50 feet.
This was a two-story structure; the first floor was 11 feet, second 10 feet. As you enter from the front porch a wide hall, 7 ½ x 17 presents itself; then a parlor 14 x 17; sitting room, 15 x 16; library 14 x 15; dining room 12 x 15; kitchen 10 x 15. The second floor is reached on what are called platform stairs. First bedroom, 12 x 17; 2nd, 8 x 9; 3rd, 15 x 15; 4th, 13 ½ x 15; 5th, 11 x 13 ½; 6th, 10 x 12, all finished in cypress, and having good closets. Below, the hall, parlor, and sitting room have a rich colored redwood finish, trimmed with gum; the library in cypress and redwood; the kitchen and dining room in oak and gum, with walnut trimmings.
All the work is first class and the house is built for the comfort of its occupants. Three mantles, one each in the parlor, library, and dining room, will warm the apartments. The total cost of the building is $5,000. “The Allen Brothers are the contractors for said buildings and John R. Garrison has charge of the entire inside work, and J. W. Ballard of the outside carpenter work.” A local newspaper stated that Mr. Moore of Chicago was finishing a $6,000 mansion in Higgie‘s Addition.
Kansas State Register of Historic Places 1988
Home of Emanuel & Marcett Haldeman-Julius
1918-1951
Publisher of the Little Blue books
Circa 1893
Emanuel Julius was born in a Philadelphia ghetto, a child of Russian immigrants who had changed their name from Zolajefsky to Julius. His father was a bookbinder of fine books, which Emanuel learned to appreciate. At seventeen he struck out for New York and had no contact with his family for 10 years. In 1915 he arrived in Girard to run the Appeal to Reason newspaper at the bidding of those who were trying to operate it after the death of J. A. Wayland. The next year he married Anna Marcett Haldeman, and in 1918 they moved to their 160-acre farm at the east edge of Girard. Nationally famous in the publishing business, E. Haldeman-Julius had conceived the idea of the Little Blue Books, which sold for five cents each, with a choice of about 1500 different titles.