Ottawa Founder C. C. Hutchinson Visits Kansas

["Ottawa Weekly Republican," 07 Mar 1895, page 4, column 2]

Mr. C. C. Hutchinson, well known as one of the founders of Ottawa, and later on of Hutchinson, who has for the last eight years been making his home in California, was in Topeka Tuesday says the Capital.

Mr. Hutchinson is an old-timer in Kansas, having come here in May 1856, a week before the first sacking of Lawrence. He came to Ottawa when it was only the "Ohio City crossing" of the Marais des Cygnes and was principally instrumental in obtaining the land grant for the city and for the Ottawa university, on what was then an Indian reservation.

Afterwards Mr. Hutchinson went further west and helped to found the city which now bears his neame. For years he was a banker there in association with W. E. Hutchinson and helped start the Hutchinson News, with Houseton Whiteside as editor.

Mr. Hutchinson wrote the first book about Kansas, a volume which for years found a prominent place in all fo the Kansas libraries. The edition has now passed almost out of existence, with the exception of a small boxful which was recently discovered in the Hutchinson News office. Mr. Hutchinson says that they were sent there twenty-one years agoa nd were only brought to light a few days since-about the time fo the visit of the Legislative committee to the Hutchinson reformatory, when a number of them were distributed.

While in Ottawa Mr. Hutchinson assisted in establishing the Western Home Journal, which was the first paper published in Franklin county and which was afterward taken to Lawrence and consolidated witht he Lawrence Journal. This Western Home Journal was in fact the beginning of the Ottawa Journal which still exists. The first agricultural department in any Kansas newspaper was in the old Lawrence Republican and Mr. Hutchinson, who then lived on a claim a mile south of the foot of Mt. Oread was its editor.

Since leaving Kansas, Mr. hutchinson has been somewhat of a wanderer. He spent some time in North Carolina and of late years has made his home in California. For six weeks past Mr. Hutchinson has been visiting his old haunts in Reno county and has bcome greatly interested in the development and possibilities of that and other western Kansas counties. he has always had great confidence in the splendid outcome of Kansas agriculture but syas that since his return from California, he has even more faith in Kansas than he had ten or fifteen years ago.

Alfalfa holds a prominent position, in Mr. Hutchinson's estimation. he believes that it is bound to be one of the most important factors in making western Kansas agriculture profitable.