Filter Your Results
- Nicodemus National Historic Site (41)
- Homestead National Historical Park (14)
- Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park (4)
- Fort Larned National Historic Site (4)
- Fort Scott National Historic Site (3)
- Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve (3)
- Andrew Johnson National Historic Site (2)
- Antietam National Battlefield (2)
- Arkansas Post National Memorial (2)
- Show More ...
Showing 52 results for Nicodemus ...
Nicodemus National Historic Site
School District Number 1
- Type: Place
Nicodemus residents saw education as foundational to their community and organized School District No. 1 in 1879, the first in Graham County. After the previous 1887 schoolhouse burned down in 1916, the District No. 1 Schoolhouse was built in 1918 and used by the district until it closed in the early 1960s.
Nicodemus National Historic Site
St. Francis Hotel
- Type: Place
The St. Francis Hotel has lived many lives: first as a place of business operated by early settlers Zachary and Jenny Fletcher, then as private residence and restaurant of the Switzer family. The original two-story limestone structure was built in 1881 and was a successful hotel in Nicodemus. The Switzer family bought the building in 1921 and built several additions while they lived there.
Nicodemus National Historic Site
Nicodemus Newsletter January 2024
- Type: Article
This article is for the Nicodemus Newsletter, January of 2024. It is the information provided in the printed copy we have available in the Township Hall.
Nicodemus National Historic Site
Nicodemus Newsletter March 2025
- Type: Article
This is the March 2025 edition of Nicodemus National Historic Site's newsletter, highlighting 2024 accomplishments and events and sharing plans for 2025.
Nicodemus National Historic Site
Nettie Craig Asberry
- Type: Person
Nettie Craig Asberry is considered the first Black woman to earn a doctorate degree. Her family settled in Nicodemus in 1879, and she taught in town from 1886-1889, teaching both at the District No. 1 School and offering private music lessons. Asberry spent most of her life in Tacoma, Washington where she continued to teach music and advocated for the equal rights of all.
Homestead National Historical Park
Roads to Success, wayside exhibit
- Type: Place
Informational panel discusses ways that roads and rails were instrumental to success for many early homesteaders.
Nicodemus National Historic Site
A.M.E. Church
- Type: Place
The A.M.E. (African Methodist Episcopal) Church formed in Nicodemus in 1879 and met in different buildings until they obtained this building from the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in 1910, which had built it in 1885. The A.M.E. Church worshipped here until around the 1950s when it closed due to a declining congregation. The restored building is open to the public during site business hours.
Nicodemus National Historic Site
Township Hall
- Type: Place
Built from 1937-1939 as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project with local limestone, the Nicodemus Township Hall has served as a central meeting place for the community for decades. Representing the pillar of self-determination in African American communities, this building hosted everything from voting and township meetings to dances and roller-skating. It currently houses the site's visitor center.
Nicodemus National Historic Site
First Baptist Church
- Type: Place
The First Baptist Church was the first church in Nicodemus, organized in 1878 by Reverend Silas Lee. The congregation met in private residences, a sod church, and a smaller limestone church until this building was built in 1907. The First Baptist Church served not only as a religious meeting place, but also a community building. The congregation built a new church north of this building in 1975 and are still active in Nicodemus.
- Type: Person
As an early settler, Zachariah T. Fletcher was instrumental in the development of Nicodemus. He opened a general store, the town’s first business, in the fall of 1877 and opened Nicodemus’s first post office, operating as its first postmaster. Z. T. Fletcher and his family were heavily involved in several aspects of the community including education, businesses, and local politics.
- Type: Person
Charles Page was a veteran and Black homesteader who went west with the Exoduster movement. He homesteaded in the Black colony of Nicodemus, Kansas. He proved up and acquired the patent to his land in June 1887. Between proving up and receiving his patent he moved to Atchison, Kansas. There he made a name for himself and became wealthy working as a houseman.
Nicodemus National Historic Site
Edward P. McCabe
- Type: Person
Edward P. McCabe moved to Nicodemus in 1878 and quickly became involved in local politics, helping establish Nicodemus as a permanent community. With Nicodemus as his political launching point, McCabe became a trailblazer for Black politicians west of the Mississippi River, pushing for equality through legislation and breaking racial barriers in the governments of Kansas and Oklahoma Territory from the 1880s through the 1900s.
- Type: Person
Abraham Hall was a civil war veteran, railroad porter, Nicodemus homesteader, and business owner. Hall enlisted into the Union Army serving in the 117th U.S. colored troops infantry, Company B for three years. He lived in Chicago working as a Porter for the Pullman Palace Car Company before deciding to take a chance out west by filing for a homestead claim in 1885.
- Type: Person
Kirtley arrived in Nicodemus in November 1878. He believed that owning land encouraged self-sufficiency. His passion, however, was education. As a child denied the chance to learn to read and write, he arrived in Nicodemus carrying books. He worked with other community members to organize the community's first school and permitted the students to use the books that he had brought with him.
- Type: Person
In the spring of 1878, Daniel and Willianna Hickman and about 150 other formerly enslaved people left Georgetown, Kentucky. They traveled by train to Ellis, Kansas and then on foot to Nicodemus. Attracted by the allure of what was predicted to be the “largest Colored Community in America”, the Hickmans and others saw homesteading on the frontier of Kansas as a new beginning. As a Baptist pastor, Daniel was leadership figure in the Black community of Nicodemus.
- Type: Person
Albert Fisher filed a homestead claim at the Kirwin, Kansas Land Office in 1879, and worked diligently to prove up on this claim with his wife, Eliza. Albert Fisher was one of the first settlers in the Wildhorse township of Graham County, Kansas and was incredibly involved within his community. Fisher was also a Civil War veteran. In 1885, he was chosen to be a part of Graham County’s Republican convention.
Nicodemus National Historic Site
Nicodemus National Historic Site
- Type: Place
The remains of the only remaining western town established by African Americans during the Reconstruction Period following the Civil War are preserved today as Nicodemus National Historic Site.
- Type: Person
Born into the Tse ni´jiki´ni´ (Cliff Dwelling People) Clan of the Navajo Tribe, Annie Dodge Wauneka was a public health activist who dedicated her life to improving the health and welfare of her people. To make sure her people were informed, she used multiple methods, from writing a Navajo-to-English medical dictionary to regular radio broadcasts in Navajo. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her efforts in 1963.
- Type: Article
Thomas Johnson homesteaded a piece of land just outside of the town of Nicodemus in 1878. Johnson’s grandson, Henry Williams continued to farm it until the middle of twentieth century. Archeology reveals a story of ingenuity, pride, and the struggle to survive in a harsh and punishing environment. The material remains of the farm give glimpses into the web of kinship and community that link not only people and places but also the present and the past at Nicodemus.
Antietam National Battlefield
The North Woods
- Type: Place
