April 1
1858–The House votes to resubmit the Lecompton Constitution to a popular vote in Kansas.
1938 – Rural electrification reaches Kansas. This allowed Kansas farms to have the same technology, like sewing machines and milk machines, as cities across the nation.
April 2
April 3
April 4
1861 – The first U.S. Senators from Kansas — James H. Lane and Samuel C. Pomeroy, are elected.
April 5
April 6
1832 — The Wyandot Indians sell their lands in Ohio to the Government, and remove to the junction of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, in Kansas. They number 687 people. The Wyandots are of the Iroquois family; are called Hurons by the French, but call themselves Wendats or Yendats. When the French settled in Canada, they were on the Island of Montreal and numbered 40,000. A part of them went to Quebec and a part south of the great lakes. In 1829 a small band lived on the river Huron, in Michigan, but the principal portion was collected on the headwaters of the Sandusky River.
April 7
April 8
April 9
1682 – Rene Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle, reached the mouth of the Mississippi River and claimed all the territory drained by the river and tributaries in the name of France, calling it “Louisiana.”
1842 — Capt. Benj. Moore and Dr. Mott, U.S.A., select Camp Scott as a military post. The name changed to Fort Scott in 1843. Hiero T. Wilson went there in September 1843 and was the first white settler. The Fort was occupied by United States troops until 1855.
1865 – General Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox, effectively ending the Civil War.
April 10
1858–The House and Senate compromise on the Lecompton Constitution, agreeing to admit Kansas to the Union as a slave state if the Constitution wins a popular vote.
1865 – Fort Dodge was established near the present-day site of Dodge City to protect the Santa Fe Trail from Indians.
April 11
April 12
1861–Shots were fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, between Confederate and Union troops. Kansas had been fighting years earlier, with the first casualties between pro-slavery and free-state fighters occurring at the Battle of Fort Titus on August 16, 1856.
April 13
April 14
1861 - In Washington D.C., rumors were afloat that President Abraham Lincoln was to be kidnapped or assassinated. James H. Lane, a senator from Kansas, recruited 120 Kansas men who were in the city and organized them into the "Frontier Guard." For nearly three weeks they were billeted in the White House to protect the president.
1865 – President Lincoln is shot and dies on April 15, 1865.
1935 - A massive front darkens the entire Midwest in clouds of dust on Black Sunday. The Dust Bowl was devastating to farmers across the plains and they eventually changed their farming practices.
April 15
April 16
April 17
April 18
1802 - Jefferson writes to Livingston that the intimated cession of Louisiana to France:
"Completely reverses all the political relations of the United States, and will form a new epoch in our political course. We have ever looked to France as our natural friend — one with whom we could never have an occasion of difference: but there is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of three-eighths of our territory must pass to market; and from its fertility, it will ere long yield more than half of our whole produce, and contain more than half of our inhabitants. Fronce, placing herself in that door, assumes to us the attitude of defiance. Spain might have retained it quietly for years. Her pacific dispositions, her feeble state, would induce her to increase our facilities there, so that her possession of the place would be hardly felt by us, and it would not, perhaps, be very long before some circumstance might arise which might make the cession of it to us the price of something of more worth to her. Not so can it ever be in the hands of France. . . . The day that France takes possession of New Orleans fixes the sentence which is to restrain her forever within her low-water mark. It seals the union of two nations, who, in conjunction, can maintain exclusive possession of the ocean. From that moment we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation. We must turn all our attentions to a maritime force, for which our resources place us on very high ground; and having formed and connected together a power which may render reinforcement of her settlements here impossible to France, make the first cannon which shall be fired in Europe the signal for tearing up any settlement she may have made, and for holding the two continents of America in sequestration for the common purposes of the united British and American nations." The whole letter was an argument that it was in the interest of both countries for France to cede Louisiana to the United States. (Source: The Annals of Kansas by Daniel Webster Wilder, Available at Internet Archives)
April 19
April 20
1861 – The first military action of Missouri State forces occurred with the seizure of the Federal arsenal at Liberty, Missouri.
April 21
April 22
April 23
1541 - Coronado left the Tiguex country and marched toward the northeast, to the plains where the rich land of Quivira lay. "By the summer of 1541, he had reached the Arkansas River in Kansas, crossing it near present Dodge City and continuing northeast to a site now called Coronado Heights, a hill northwest of Lindsborg, Kansas. Having found no gold in Quivira, Coronado, and his men returned to New Mexico." (Note: According to the KSHS's entry about Father Juan de Padilla the expedition began on May 3, 1541.)
1860–The Democratic national convention in Charleston, South Carolina, fails to nominate a presidential candidate. This convention ended on May 3, 1860.
April 24
April 25
April 26
1854 – Eli Thayer of Worcester, Massachusetts, founded the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society to promote the settlement of anti-slavery groups in Kansas, with the ultimate objective of making the state a Free-State. This company helped to found Lawrence, Kansas, which was named for Amos A. Lawrence, a promoter of the Emigrant Aid Society.
April 27
April 28
April 29
1847 — Rev. John Schoenmakers arrives at the Osage Mission, now in Neosho County, accompanied by Rev. John J. Bax and Rev. Paul Ponziglione. The school for boys was established on May 10th. Several Sisters of Lorette arrived on October 5th and established a school for girls.
April 30
1803 — Treaty concluded at Paris between the United States and the French Republic. France cedes Louisiana to the United States. The treaty was negotiated by Robert R. Livingston, James Monroe, and Barbe-Marbois. (Source: The Annals of Kansas by Daniel Webster Wilder, Available at Internet Archives)
1884 – Several cowboys, including Henry Brown (later Caldwell City Marshall), attempted to rob a Medicine Lodge bank.
April 31