By 
A one-time gas station in Dunlap (pop. 82). Dunlap is in southeast Morris County.
According to Wikipedia: In 1878, Dunlap became the home to Benjamin “Pap” Singleton‘s second Singleton Colony, an African-American colony from Tennessee. In the early 1880s, the Presbyterian Church founded the Freedmen’s Academy in Dunlap to provide an education to African American settlers in Kansas. The Academy closed its doors in the mid 1890s.
Some of the Singleton Tennessee Freedmen families eventually moved to Emporia and are part of the Eastside community legacy. Council Grove was considered a pocket of southern sympathizers following the Civil War. The Santa Fe Trail passing through Council Grove carried many southerners to the west for opportunity after loosing the war and the resulting fruit-basket-upset Reconstruction period in the South. Some carried bitter sentiments and defiantly held to a slavery mentality.
William Allen White’s mother insisted on teaching Black children in Council Grove in 1865 but was blocked by the local board. She sued and won according to the White Autobiography. Seth Hays had a Black significant other who is buried beside him in the White section of the cemetery. Her stone says “colored.”
That picture of the gas station is sad somehow.
I tour cemeteries when I get a chance. I’ll go there someday.
Roger, that is an interesting piece of history. The Whites were certainly an amazing family. Evidently Mary White got her grandmother’s feisty and steadfast attitude.
Janet
I think so. The children had a childhood like no other American children. The Whites did not believe in “seen and not heard.” They dined with Presidents and intellectuals for an early age. Mary went to Europe at five years of age for six months.
Hubby’s Mother taught school there for many years!