Recently I had the pleasure of meeting Jerry Thorpe and his beautiful wife, JoAnn, of Eagle, Idaho. Jerry is the great-grandson of E.R. Thorpe, a Kearny county pioneer who invested greatly in the development of this county. Jerry graciously shared with me some photographs and information about the Thorpe family. Some of these photographs are a perfect complement to a story written in 1984 by Jerry’s aunt, Dorothy Thorpe Weber. Dorothy’s story, nine pages in length, is a bit long to share in its entirety; however, I have picked out some excerpts that I think our readers, especially those who live in Lakin, will find interesting.
Edgar Robinson Thorpe was born in 1861 and grew up in Ross County, Ohio. On April 4, 1881, he married Irene Zink at Hillsboro, OH. Not long after their wedding, E.R.’s parents decided to move west to Kansas, and they invited the young newlyweds to go with them. The Thorpe family first settled in south central Kansas. E.R. and his bride lived on a cattle ranch not far from Medicine Lodge where he worked as a superintendent of the ranch and where Dorothy’s father, Thornton Clarence Thorpe, was born in 1886. In 1888, an opportunity came to move further west, and E.R. and Irene moved into a sod hut on land in Kearny County just south of Lakin.
“In every family I think there is usually one very strong character who stands out from all the others. In the Thorpe family it was my grandfather, Edgar Robinson Thorpe,” wrote Dorothy. “Although my Grandfather Thorpe had only a high school education, he had a burning ambition to become an attorney. My Grandmother used to tell us stories about how he studied law at night after the farm work was done and the cattle taken care of. There was no electricity so they studied by lamp light. Sometimes my Grandmother read the books to him; sometimes he studied by himself. Finally, all the hard work and determination paid off, and he passed the Kansas Bar Examination and was admitted to the Kansas Bar Association. He opened his own Law Office in Lakin and specialized in searching land titles and preparing Abstracts of Title. There was a great demand for this work, from the government as well as from private firms and individuals. All the money that Grandfather could spare was put back into more land, or the purchase of mineral rights.”
Eventually, E.R. and Irene moved their family to town into a house on the northwest corner of Lincoln Avenue and Main Street. “The house started small. There were just four rooms in 1890 when they moved in. Two more bedrooms were added after my Aunt Georgia and Uncle Glen were born. Then a few years later, there were some major changes and a library was added on the south end of the house and a billiard room was added at the north side of the house. A wide concrete porch ran across the entire front of the house for easy access to any part of the house. A small bedroom, utility room and porch were added off the kitchen on the west. The small bedroom was used by the girls who came to live with my grandparents while they attended high school in Lakin. In return for board and room and a small salary, each girl would help my grandmother with the housework and laundry.
“Grandmother’s sewing room had a big picture window that looked out on Main Street, and every afternoon she would sit in the wicker rocker by that window and sew and watch for my Grandfather to come home from his office. He always walked. I can remember how he looked – very tall and slim and a little bit stooped. When I was in High School, and the year after I was at Chillicothe Business College, I worked in his office and we would walk to work and back home together. Through most of those years, I lived with my grandparents.
“My Grandfather had had cataracts removed from both eyes and his glasses had very thick lens. He had the kindest blue eyes I ever saw. He was always there when we needed him. My Grandmother had very thin hair, and she wore a “transformation”. It was a hairpiece that pinned into her own hair. She used to curl her hair, around the front of the hairpiece, every morning right after breakfast. She wore a little white cap with lace around it until she had her hairpiece on. I still remember the good smell in her bedroom when I would go in and sit beside her while she fixed her hair. The smell was a combination of the coal-oil lamp that heated the old-fashioned curling iron, and the cold cream that she used on her face, and her powder.
“My grandparents’ home in Lakin played an important part in my life. It was a kind of security blanket,” Dorothy recalled.
This fondly remembered home is still a part of the Lakin landscape. In the spring of 1947, the structure was moved in three parts to Campbell Street and used as apartments. Originally known as Clements Apartments, they were managed by Dorothy’s sister and brother-in-law, Edith and John Clements. In next week’s article, learn about Dorothy’s childhood home.
SOURCES: Dorothy Thorpe Weber; History of Kearny County Vol. I; Ancestry.com; Archives of The Lakin Independent; and Museum archives with special thanks to James Clyde (Jerry) Thorpe, son of Edgar Wright Thorpe.