NEWTON WILL BE A LIVELY LITTLE PLACE
NEWTON – A gentleman who returned from the Southwest a day or two ago, gives the following description of the new town of Newton, which is to be a point on the A.T. & S.F. railroad: He says there are two buildings completed and four under way. In the two that are completed whisky is sold. Two of those that are under way are to be used for whisky shops. There are two tents in the town in which whisky is sold. At Florence he met a man going out to put up a building in which he was going to start a saloon. From the indications so far Newton will be a right lively little place.” The Emporia Weekly News, Emporia, Kansas. May 19, 1871. Page 3.
CLOTHESLINE JUSTICE
“Judge C.S. Bowman erected one of the first houses, and many others soon began settling and building, so that in a short time there was quite a village. When the first cowboys arrived in town the streets were still covered with grass and the prairie-dogs barked at them from their native kennels.
“A clothes-line was stretched from Bowman’s little frame shack to another building about one hundred feet distant. A cowboy came galloping by the house one evening about dusk, and not seeing the line, attempted to cross that way, but the wire caught him under the chin. The pony continued along the even tenor of its way without pausing, but the cowboy was left hanging to the line and when he got on his feet and recovered his breath, his language was forcible and violent and filled the air with oaths and curses, and everybody hid out to escape the bullets which he was firing in every direction. The First Baptist Church now occupies the ground where he stood and the baptistry is located at the exact place where he fell.” Circle-Dot: A True Story of Cowboy Life Forty Years Ago by M.H. Donoho (1907). Page 176. Information provided by C.S. Bowman to Donoho and to The Evening Kansan-Republican, Newton, Kansas. February 7, 1912.
