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Tonganoxie Community Historical Society monthly program is Tuesday

By Staff | Aug 28, 2023

Contributed photo

This is a photo of the cooling cave at Quindaro Brewery where it is said John Brown met with abolitionists.

This month’s Tonganoxie Community Historical Society program has been pushed back a week due to the excessive heat.

The meeting will be 7-8:30 p.m. this Tuesday. It will start with a brief business meeting followed by the program at the museum, 201 W. Washington St.

TCHS will welcome Dr. Steve Collins for his program “In the Eye of the Border Storm: The Under Ground Railroad at Quindaro, Kansas Territory 1857.”

The presentation will focus on the history of this Free State town (in Wyandotte County) and its Underground Railroad from the arrival of the Wyandot Natives to the issue of the final copy of The Quindaro Chindowan newspaper in the summer of 1858.

Collins was project manager/grant administrator of the only official stabilization of the Quindaro Ruins, implementing a $400,000 Save America’s Treasures Grant in 2006.

He was chair of the sociology department at Kansas City Kansas Community College where he taught for 35 years. He has led students and the public in more than 25 tours of the ruins and he has presented numerous times in the past twenty years about the history of the site. He was the first community college instructor in Kansas to be awarded the Carnegie Foundation Instructor of the Year award in 1998 in recognition for his early stabilization work and teaching about the history of Quindaro, and his pioneering of student internet development.

The historical society normally has different monthly programs the fourth Tuesday of each month at the historic site campus.