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HISTORY -- Hiawatha was founded in 1857. John M. Coe, John P. Wheller, and Thomas J. Drummond were instrumental in organizing the town company, and the town site was staked out February 17, 1857. B. L. Rider reportedly was responsible for naming Hiawatha, taking the young Indian's name from Henry W. Longfellow's poem, "Song of Hiawatha." The main street was designated Oregon Street after the Oregon Trail. Parallel streets north of it were named after Indian tribes north of the Trail, and streets south carried tribal names of those south of the Trail. Hiawatha became the Brown County Seat in 1858, and the first school opened in 1870. Announced as a city of third class in 1871, its first bank was opened, and by 1875 Hiawatha had a fire department.

LOCATION -- The county seat of Brown County, Hiawatha is located in northeast Kansas, 95 miles northwest of Kansas City, 65 miles north of Topeka, 45 miles west of St. Joseph, Missouri, and 116 miles south of Omaha, Nebraska. Major highways serving Hiawatha are east/west U.S. Highway 36 and north/south U.S. Highways 73 and 159.

POPULATION -- Hiawatha, 3603 (the largest town on U.S. Highway 36 between St. Joseph, Mo. and Denver, Colorado); Brown County 11,955.

INTERESTING SITES:

TOWN CLOCK:

Located at 700 Oregon Street; in the downtown area, is the only such clock between Indianapolis and Denver on Highway U. S. 36. It was built in 1891 as part of the First National Bank building and is listed on the Kansas Register. The clock is owned by the City of Hiawatha and the building by a local businessman.

BROWN COUNTY HISTORICAL MUSEUMS:

Owned and operated by the Brown County Historical Society, their headquarters is located downtown at 611 Utah street, south of the Courthouses square. This building is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Hours 10-4 Tuesday thru Saturday. There is an admission charge.

BROWN COUNTY AG MUSEUM:

Located on east Iowa street near the Davis Memorial, is under development. It will resemble a 1900 farmstead when completed with a paved windmill trail for sightseers and joggers to use and enjoy. There is a log cabin replica that is the office, wash house, barn, brooder house, corn crib, cabinet shop, horse drawn implement building, antique tractor building and many windmills and wind chargers. Hours are: 10-4---Tuesday-Saturday. There is an admission charge.

DAVIS MEMORIAL

John Milburn Davis erected this memorial to "the sacred memory" of his wife, Sarah. After she died in 1930, he almost immediately commissioned the work to begin. 

    In every sense, it was a monumental project. 

    The lifesize Italian marble statues of the Davises were striking in their detail and their accuracy. The cost of the memorial was staggering in a small town during The Great Depression. The stubbornness of Davis toward his project in the face of public criticism was prelude to a legend.

The story began when Kentucky-born John Davis followed some other Kentuckians to Brown County in 1878. He met and married Sarah and they settled on 260 acres north of Hiawatha. They were hard-working, frugal and childless. They moved to Hiawatha in 1915 and lived ordinary lives of quiet routine.

    When Sarah died, the script changed. John Davis suddenly became a big spender He removed a simple "Davis" headstone from his wife's grave in Mt. Hope Cemetery, and began to erect a massive memorial.

    First, a 52-ton canopy was erected on some stone pillars surrounding her grave. In 1932, marble statues began to arrive from Italy.

    In a few years, 11 marble or granite statues were positioned beneath the canopy or surrounding it. These included an empty overstuffed chair, a winged angel-version of Sarah in prayer and figures of Davis without his left hand, which he lost to infection.

As the memorial grew, so did the dismay of towns-people. Hiawatha was without a hospital and swimming pool. Community leaders wanted Davis to underwrite those projects -- and they told him so. He ignored their requests.

    Roving American reporter Ernie Pyle, who later won a Pulitzer Prize for his work, interviewed Davis in the late 1930's. Davis told Pyle he was unmoved by the community's appeals.

    The eccentric Davis continued to watch over his memorial into the 1940's. He had a marble and granite wall erected to discourage visitors from walking among the statues. He visited the memorial weekly and sometimes personally greeted tourists.

    Through it all, Davis never wavered in voicing devotion to his Sarah, though others were skeptical. Nor did he and the townspeople ever come to terms about his decision to sink money into the memorial instead of investing in the town. What is not as widely known is that he secretly gave away tens of thousands of dollars to the needy, a few hundred dollars at a time.

    Davis died in 1947 and was buried next to his wife under the marble canopy. The funeral was poorly attended and the Baptist minister conducting the service gently scolded Davis' fellow citizens for not accepting the memorial-builder as he was.

Today an air of mystery hangs over the memorial, sort of a second canopy of skepticism and resentment. 

    Some of his peers insist that Davis never treated his wife as royally in life as he did in death. They suspect his generous gift was intended more as a slap in the face to his wife's heirs than it was a tribute to Sarah. And resentment lingers over Davis' refusal to be a benefactor to Hiawatha in its hour of need.

Yet the irony is that the Davis Memorial has benefited.the community. Every year tens of thousands of visitors come to Mt. Hope Cemetery to view the marble statuary and to hear the story of the memorial's eccentric creator. Built in memory of Sarah, the imposing work has become an enduring public attraction.

    The Hiawatha Cemetery Association renovated the memorial in 1994-95 in cooperation with the Kansas Historical Society. The outer wall was raised and stabilized. Statuary was restored and sealed. A sidewalk ramp now makes the memorial accessible to all visitors.

    The Davis Memorial is today a piece of history -- and of mystery. Hiawatha knows whodunit: John Milburn Davis. The question remains...why?

Memorial Facts

Most of the lifesize statues were commissioned, crafted in Italy and positioned at the memorial between 1931 and 1934.

All but one of the stone figures is carved from Italian marble, which was deemed most suitable for a woman's delicate facial features.

Estimated total cost of the memorial was $200,000, an extravagant sum during the Depression.

The marble canopy over the main section of the memorial weighs 105,000 points -- more than 50 tons!

The memorial has been featured in Newsweek, Life and People magazines and on a TV version of Ripley's Believe It or Not.

The marble-and-granite display is visited annually by 20-30,000 people from across the United States and around the world.

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