100 years ago in Kansas, June 18 – 30, 1918:

June 18, 1918

  • Topeka business and professional men organized a twilight harvest crew and shocked 20 acres of wheat which belonged to a farmer – soldier in France.

June 19, 1918

  • Pvt. Louis Kopelin, former editor of the Appeal to Reason, Girard, was one of a commission of seven Socialists sent from Camp Funston to allied countries to counteract German influence among laboring classes.

June 22, 1918

  • Eighteen new National Guard companies were authorized by the State Military Board.

June 27, 1918

  • At Aulne, a German settlement near Peabody, the Aulne Telephone Co. prohibited the speaking of German over the phone.
  • Schoolhouse meetings were held over the state to launch the war savings stamp sale.  Kansas had oversubscribed every war fund drive.

June 29, 1918

  • Vernon L. Kellogg, native of Emporia, was made a knight of the French Legion of Honor in recognition of his work in Belgium on the U.S. Relief Commission.

June 30, 1918

  • Dr. S.S. Estey, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Topeka, declared it was time “no public school and no private school . . .shall instruct its pupils in any but the English tongue.”

Blair Tarr is the Museum Curator of the Kansas State Historical Society. He oversees the three-dimensional collections of the Society, but has special interests in the Civil War, Wichita-made Valentine diners, and Leavenworth's Abernathy Furniture. In the last few years he has also done a lot of cramming on The Great War. He is a past president of the Kansas Museums Association and the Civil War Round Tables of both Kansas City and Eastern Kansas. He is currently a board member of the Heritage League of Greater Kansas City.