William T. Soden, for whom Soden’s Grove is named, is one of only a few early settlers of Emporia whose family stayed here through the generations and are still involved in the community.
Soden was 1 year old when he and his family emigrated to New York from Ireland. At 21, with savings of $3,000, he left New York and arrived in this area in 1857. En route, he traveled with three other men who were going to Cottonwood Falls, according to a history written by Soden’s great-grandson, John P. Brockhouse. Soden awoke one night as they camped to find one of the men trying to steal his money belt.
He left those men and joined a Quaker named Joel Hayworth, who lived two miles south of Plymouth. He worked for a salary for two years at Hayworth’s sawmill and, in 1860, moved to Emporia and married Frances Jane (Franny) McCormick. In November of that year, he bought land on both sides of the Cottonwood south of Emporia and built a dam that created a pond 7.5 feet above the normal water flow level. He acquired rights to the water flow and built a mill capable of processing 250 bushels of wheat a day, and expanded it frequently until it processed 650 bushels per day. To that he added a saw mill, a woolen mill and a furniture factory, according to information from Emporia historian Robert Hodge.
Through default, he also had to take half-interest in Hayworth’s sawmill, when Hayworth was unable to repay the $3,000 he had borrowed from Soden.
Both Brockhouse’s and Hodge’s documents were provided to The Gazette by Soden’s great-great-grandson, John Kretsinger, one of several Soden descendants who still live in the area.
After the sawmill burned, he returned to New York briefly, where he sold 80 acres of ground and used the proceeds to build a frame house north of the present Soden dam.
Soden served his community well. He was a member of the county commission, the agricultural society, the Normal boarding house, a charter member of the Emporia National Bank board, the Lyon County Militia, the Farmers’ Home Guard, the Board of Trade, the Baseball Association, the fire company, the Emporia Manufactured Gas Company, the Emporia Telephone Company, the Emporia Packing Company and the Millers’ Association.
He built the Kynaston Hotel at Fifth Avenue at a cost of $22,000 and owned $20,000 worth of buildings in the National Bank block.
He also participated in Republican conventions, the Odd Fellows lodge, the Ancient Order of American Workmen, the Grand Army of the Republic and the Old Settlers meetings.
His first wife, Franny Soden, died in childbirth, and her newborn died shortly thereafter, Soden later married Jane Weaver, who became the mother of Justin, Halcyon (Hallie) B. and Harry. Harry died of typhoid in 1884 at the age of 12. Jane Sodan died after a brief illness. Soden eventually married his third wife, Sarah Lockerman, widow of Nick Lockerman, for whom Lockerman bridge and road are named.
Before that marriage, however, Soden needed someone to care for his children. He hired a housekeeper, “Auntie” Barnes, to help, though he “made many trips each day between his mill and his house to check and see if all was well at his home,” Brockelman wrote.
When Barnes’ health failed, he gave her a home and, when she died, he buried her in a lot near the Soden family plot in Maplewood Cemetery.
His marriage to Sarah Lockerman brought her adopted daughter, Minnie, into the family.
About that time, word came to Soden that his sister had died, leaving three daughters whose father had bound them out to other families.
“This made William Soden furious,” Brockelman wrote, and he made a trip to Illinois and bought the two older girls out of bondage.” The youngest girl had been taken by people who loved her, and she chose to stay with them. His two nieces lived with the Sodens until they married.
Soden loved to tell stories on himself, Brockhouse wrote, and the ill will between Doc White (W.A. White’s father) and Soden was well known. White refused to buy flour from Soden and always bought it in Leavenworth, where most Emporians shopped for their other groceries.
On his return to Emporia, a group of men gathered to see Doc White’s groceries, and he was “almost bursting with pride as he threw back the tarpaulin that covered the groceries, but low and behold, on top of all the groceries were huge sacks of ‘Emporia’s Patent Flour,’ ” Brockhouse wrote. “The big joke was that he had forgotten to tell the grocer what kind of flour he wanted.”
Brockhouse wrote briefly of the many stories surrounding Soden, “some of them are true and some not.”
The theft of county records from Americus, the county seat, has several variations and all say that Soden was one of four men who went to Americus to get them.
“He never returned to Americus because he said laughingly that people of Americus might not like to see him.”
noel_stanton (anonymous) says...
Emporia's best, like Mr. Soden, would do well to establish another "Manufactured Gas Company."
The company would use local animal and agricultural wastes to produce bio-gas.
Why must Emporians go to a "Leavenworth in Arabia" to get energy from the sheikhs when local resources and technology can sever this dependence?
noel stanton
moerlenbach, germany
July 11, 2007 at 5:51 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )