For a brief time these diverse cultures coexisted, even complemented one another. One was Methodist Episcopal, the other Catholic one was white, the other mixed blood one a staunch Republican, the other ineligible to vote. The Pappans and Curtises were related to virtually every living soul in North Topeka, and more than anyone else Charley’s grandmothers shaped his life. They brought 6-year-old Charley with them. In 1866 she and her French-Canadian and Potawatomi husband left Topeka to claim their allotment and join relatives in Council Grove on the Kaw Indian Reservation. Julie-of French, Kaw and Osage ancestry-was among the grantees of the “half-breed” lands (stretching from Topeka almost to Lecompton) outlined in an 1825 treaty between the U.S. It was Permelia, though, who reportedly ruled the family with a strong but gentle hand.Ĭharley’s maternal grandparents, Louis and Julie ( née Gonville) Pappan, resided nearby. In time he gifted it to his 14 sons and daughters.

William had come to Kansas Territory in 1859 and gradually acquired a large tract of land. After his mother died and his father rode off to war, Charley and sister Elizabeth stayed with his paternal grandparents, William and Permelia ( née Hubbard) Curtis, in North Topeka. The first words he spoke were in Kansa and French, not English. Louis convent, and she had her son baptized at the Catholic mission at St. 25, 1860, the year before Kansas became a state. Charley never lived with his father again. When Kansas Jayhawker Colonel Charles “Doc” Jennison recruited men to respond in kind, newly remarried Orren enlisted. On August 21 Confederate guerrilla Captain William Clarke Quantrill and some 400 of his Missouri border raiders sacked and burned Unionist Lawrence, Kansas, murdering more than 150 townsmen and boys. The widower and his wards lived on the north banks of the Kansas (or Kaw) River in Topeka.

Orren Arms Curtis was descended from Pilgrim stock, though in his case their puritanical ways had skipped a generation. His French-Indian mother, Ellen ( née Pappan) Curtis, died in April, leaving Charley and baby sister Elizabeth ostensibly in their father’s care in war-weary Kansas. (Kansas Historical Society)īy year’s end 1863 3-year-old Charley Curtis was effectively an orphan. Charley Curtis: From Tepee to Capitol Dome CloseĬurtis’ own strength of character, bolstered by the loving guidance of his grandmothers, propelled him to Herbert Hoover’s right hand in 1929 as 31st vice president of the United States.

Strange Country Day by Charles Curtis