Silkville, Kansas

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Coordinates: 38°27′00″N 95°29′21″W / 38.45000°N 95.48917°W / 38.45000; -95.48917
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Silkville
Silkville's school house
Silkville, Kansas is located in Kansas
Silkville, Kansas
LocationWilliamsburg Township, Franklin County, Kansas
Nearest cityWilliamsburg, Kansas
Coordinates38°27′00″N 95°29′21″W / 38.45000°N 95.48917°W / 38.45000; -95.48917
Area6 acres (2.4 ha)
Built1870
NRHP reference No.72000504
Added to NRHPDecember 15, 1972

Silkville is a ghost town in Williamsburg Township, Franklin County, Kansas, United States.[1] It was located approximately 2 miles southwest of Williamsburg at the intersection of U.S. 50 highway and Arkansas Road.[2]

The settlement was founded in the late 1800s by a Frenchman named Ernest de Boissière, who believed in Fourierian utopian socialism. Silkville was a sericulture-based settlement, and remuneration was based what each settler could produce. Silkville's silk was praised at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, but loss of settlers and difficulty in selling the silk resulted in the settlement's collapse. Today, only a few buildings remain.

History

Silkville was established in 1870 by a Frenchman named Ernest de Boissière, who was born in 1810 to an ancient French aristocratic family.

came into power in 1851 and named himself emperor of the Second French Empire. Soon thereafter, Boissière was forced into exile and moved to America, where he first settled in the port city of New Orleans.[4][5] In this new city, he set up a shipping line. However, because he poured some of his money into supporting orphaned black children, he garnered heavy criticism from wealthy whites; desiring to escape the hostile opinions of his neighbors, Boissière was left with no choice but to leave the American South.[5][6] He then decided to move to Franklin County, Kansas, an area he believed was well-suited for establishing a utopic community. In 1869, Boissière purchased between 3000 and 3500 acres of land in the county from the Kansas Educational Association of the Methodist Episcopal Church and went about setting up his intentional settlement.[4][5]

An 1884 photograph, showing students and teachers gathered at the Silkville school house.

After operating under myriad names, including Kansas Cooperative Farm, Prairie Home, and Valeton, Boissière's colony came to be known as Silkville, as it was intended to be a Fourierian commune that survived via

mulberry trees to feed his silkworms.[4][7] These groves were later joined by hundreds of peach, apple and ailanthus trees, as well as over a thousand grape vines.[9] To educate the children of the colony, Boissière established a school that, according to author and historian Daniel Fitzgerald, was "the first in Kansas in which the instructors attempted to teach the contemporary world literature of the day".[6]

Boissière structured his colony so that

Topeka. In 1916, a fire hollowed out the "Chateau," only part of which was ever reconstructed.[12][13]

Remains

Today, the Silkville Ranch exists upon the former settlement.

Today, little remains of Silkville, and only three stone structures survive: the settlement's school house, and two barns.[4] The original chateau that Boissiere constructed—which, at the time of its construction cost US$10,000—was destroyed in the aforementioned fire, and a modern home was built over the west end of the ruin, utilizing some of the stone from the original.[14] One of the modern day barns was once the settlement's cocoonery, although it was reduced to a one-level building after a tornado damaged the top floor.[11] In 1972, these buildings were added to the National Register of Historic Places because of their significance in the history of Kansas.[15] The aspects of the community seen as most significant historically were its nature as an intentional community and its practice of sericulture.[16]

Geography

Its elevation is 1,161 feet (354 m), and it is located at 38°27′0″N 95°29′21″W / 38.45000°N 95.48917°W / 38.45000; -95.48917 (38.4500149, -95.4891477).[17]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Silkville, Kansas", Geographic Names Information System, United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior
  2. ^ Kansas Atlas & Gazetteer (2009), p. 52.
  3. ^ https://esirc.emporia.edu/bitstream/handle/123456789/456/41.pdf?sequence=1 [bare URL]
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Pankratz (1972), p. 2.
  5. ^ a b c d Tollefson (2015), p. 80.
  6. ^ a b c d e Fitzgerald (1988), p. 67.
  7. ^ a b Richards, Catherine Jane; Barker, Deborah. "Southwest Franklin County". Franklin County Historical Society. Retrieved March 22, 2015.
  8. ^ Pankratz (1972), p. 3.
  9. ^ Fitzgerald (1988), p. 68.
  10. ^ Tollefson (2015), p. 83.
  11. ^ a b Tollefson (2015), p. 84.
  12. ^ a b Pankratz (1972), pp. 3, 5.
  13. ^ Fitzgerald (1988), p. 70.
  14. ^ Pankratz (1972), pp. 2–3.
  15. ^ "Silkville". National Park Service. Retrieved September 28, 2015.
  16. ^ Pankratz (1972), p. 5.
  17. ^ U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Silkville, Kansas United States Geological Survey. Retrieved September 28, 2015.

Bibliography

Further reading

See also: List of books about Franklin County, Kansas

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Silkville, Kansas.
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