This story comes from an old book I just found that I thought was interesting. I'm not related to any of these people, just being nice. I know nothing further about these people. THE CLAIM THAT GREW AND GREW Bessie Reed Thomas arrived in Kansas in 1871, a bride of 18, with a shotgun across her knees. Her husband, William K. Thomas, a veteran of the Civil War, was coming west to settle on his soldier's claim, 160 acres in Ellis County. In their two wagons, they carried a Ben Franklin stove and provisions to last a year: a barrel of apples, flour, sugar, dried fruit, and smoked meat. One of their wedding gifts, a wonderful sewing machine, one of the first to be marketed, never arrived in Kansas; on the way the young groom had persuaded his wife to trade it for a cow, which was to be the beginning of their Hereford herd. By fall the family had moved from the wagon to a new dugout. Bessie papered the dirt walls with copies of the Louisville Courier and later, in 1879, she added a layer of the Weekly Capital, a paper that would later be named Capper's Weekly. The newspapers not only kept the dirt from falling into the room, but they served as a barrier to snakes, centipedes, scorpions, and the huge spiders common in the country. Countless settlers had abandoned claims in Kansas. Indian massacres, tornados, blizzards, and grasshopper plagues had taken their toll, and an epidemic of diphtheria had wiped out entire families. To bring more settlers to the region, the government offered a deserted claim to anyone who would sleep on it for six months. A quarter section adjoining the Thomas's original claim was acquired in Bessie's name; she slept in a sod house there, a house similar to the one which now stood on her husband's claim as a replacement for the dugout. The government made still another bid for new settlers, offering a timber claim to anyone planting and nurturing a thousand young trees on the land. To qualify for this additional claim of 160 acres, the Thomases traveled 16 miles to the Saline Rover bottoms to obtain cottonwood saplings which they planted and tended, hauling water from their windmill. With this new claim they were the possessors of 480 acres of Kansas prairie ---hardpan, buffalo grass and tumbleweed, a plant Bessie often mistook for a crouching Indian. The ranch continued to grow. William added 1,360 acres at a cost which was less than the asking price for one of those acres today. Between 1871 and 1899, he accumulated 2,200 acres. A 10-room stone ranch house on the property was the birthplace of their sith child, the writer of this account. Marie Reed Thomas Titcomb - 1831 West Algonquin Road Hoffman Estates, Ill 60195 You must remember that this article is nearly 40 years old. The chances of them still living at this address are slim to none.