Elizabeth homer explains how the to learn about pioneer james turner in his role in getting the city ready for the legislatures arrival. James turner was pioneer. It wasnt until the state legislature designated this area as the new capital that he came with these other folks and helped build the capital. State had a slightly more expected, i approach. We had nothing here. There was no transportation. They had several months to build the capital city. That was the very interesting, exciting and unique story of lansings beginning. The legislature established a state in about 1836, about a year before we became a state. They designated detroit as the capital but they were fearful that detroit could be easily attacked from the lake erie, and that they should move the capital inward but couldnt decide where. So they put in the constitution that the first session of the legislature of 1848 should be held in the new capital, which should be inland, and so they had ten years to decide and they waited until they had ten months left, every little town in the whole state wanted it to be by them because that would mean a great boom for their community. And so they kept voting and voting and nobody could decide, and finally the people who were thinking about this area, in putting a dam and a mill and they decided they would try to attract the legislature to this area. And james turner was one of those who led that one of those who led that. The persuasion, the lobbying, but it was james seymour, his friend who made a map, but a dot this is michigan, on the peninsula. Put a dot here and said, look, if we put it here it will be this many miles, showed all the number of miles, it passed the legislature, some people were quite surprised because they had been voting so many times and everybody thought it would be the last time but it was. And that is how they decided on lansing. James turn er is from western new york. He became a land agent, starting off working for a man who had a star in jackson. When they came hereafter, people came, they said over a thousand people came here to this spot, which was nothing so they had to figure out ways where they could have them sleep, eat, and he had a store, and he got the supplies and sold them from there the first thing he did was chop down all the trees. So they were going through about three or four boxes of a dozen axes each, every day to get rid of all the wood. And then that left a bunch of stumps and marsh watery ground, and so it wasnt really dont get in the idea it was great little town. There were people who lived in ingham county, extremely excited about having the capital be here. When they heard where it was going to be here in the woods they would come like on their sleds with a horses and watch the capital come in. Once the y cut down a tree that was hundreds of feet long, huge, huge tree, and they pulled it all the way up to the capital and started cheering and yelling and having a party. Over the fact it was come here. They built a hotel, james seymour, which is where the legislators could live. They had to walk a mile from the capital down. They were 66 members of the house of representatives and 22 of the senate, and all their flock of lobbyists that came with them, and so they built a white framed two story capital there, which became the Meeting House and the library and Everything Else for this community because it didnt have anything. So, that was the first building. It was number of years later before the capital that we see today was built. The first middle easting of the legislature in their new Capital Building was in january of 1848. And that was in their order of business was plank roads, developing charters, which are given out to private groups within the city. There was no department of transportation in those days so if your town wanted a road you head to figure out a way to get it. So, they were issuing charters to build plank roads and after a while, the city of lansing received a charter and james turner became the organizer. The plank road and the plank roads were amazing. You could never build one now because it took so much wood to build it. It was all logs lined up. They had everybody working on it, the farmers who had land close to road. The Business People who came out and worked on it. I was a major enterprise and when the plank road was finally built they had a party on the plank road. At the beginning, the people who lived here, they had invested in the like having a store or a home, they were constantly afraid the legislature would get fed up with the inconvenience of having this capital in the middle of a forest and would vote not to have it, and so it was really not until the 1860s when they finally decided to have the permanent state capital where they really at ease but the fact they were north going to move away. Youre watching American History tv all weekend every weekend on cspan tv. Next, from the Kansas City University of, north dakota professor cynthia color prescott talks about her book, pioneer monuments, constructing cultural history. She highlights statues of the pine or mothers in the kansas city area. Well,. Welcome everyone. Thank you for being here. Managerjeremy derouen, of the Missouri Valley special collection. The local History Department in and archives of the kansas city public library. Our Research Room was headquartered just across the hall from this auditorium. In our collection you will find books, manuscripts and journals and other Research Materials documenting kansasit
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