California Lutheran University

60 West Olsen Road

Thousand Oaks, California 91360-2787
805/493-3237 s*

Dr. Ernst F. Tonsing

Professor of Religion and Greek
April 27, 1999

Kansas State Historical Society

6425 SW Sixth Avenue
Topeka,KS 66615-1099

Dear Sirs:

Recently I ran across the Kansas State Historical Society's web-site and
discovered two photographs from Atchison, Kansas, of the Martin-Tonsing house
(FK2/.A3/A.75/.M, 073/3-e) accompanied by brief descriptions. These were rather
imprecise. As an historian, I am always bothered this, so I hope that you will excuse me
if I add to the data. As a grandson of Ruth (Martin) Tonsing, I lived in that house while
my father, the Rev. Ern(e)st F. Tonsing, later of First Lutheran Church, Topeka, was
serving as an U. S. Army chaplain in World War Two. We paid frequent visits to the
home during the 1950's and 60's until it was sold.

The structure was located at 315 North Terrace, overlooking the Missouri River.
According to a letter that my grandmother, Mrs. Ruth (Martin) Tonsing wrote to me,
October 27, 1955, the house was on "The Hill," at the site of the first printing office in
Atchison, the old Squater Sovereign, "the Rebel paper that Grandpa bought and changed
its name to Freedoms Champion." It was Italianate in style, with the characteristic
modillions, or decorative horizontal brackets under the eaves of the roof. The house was
built by Colonel John Alexander Martin, editor of The Freedom's Champion, and later
Mayor of Atchison, and then Governor of the State of Kansas (1884-1889). It was
finished in time for the Colonel and his new bride, Ida Challiss, daughter of Mary Ann
and William Challiss, M.D., to take up residence after their marriage on June 1, 1871.
The couple's seven children were born in the mansion. It was passed, in turn, to their
daughter, Ruth, and her husband, the Rev. Paul Gerhardt Tonsing, and she owned it until
her death.

The building was built of locally-made bricks. These bricks were of a dark red
color, much different than the rather orange-red color of the bricks in the adjacent homes
built some twenty to twenty-five years later. The double walls of the exterior enclosed an
air space to prevent the penetration of moisture and cold or heat from the outside. The
windows were tall, with two panes of glass, and were arched at the top. In a letter to me
from grandmother Ruth Tonsing, May 14, 1960, she mentions a storm: "Many yrs ago
we had similar hail here, and lost 30 window-lights on the side of the house..." The
south, oriel window illuminated the dining room. Next to it, the chimney held a trellis
with orange, "trumpet-flowers" that always gave delight to the children who could pick
them, bite off the ends, and run about tooting through the hollow blossoms.

Nearby was the well that furnished water for the house. Once, I was curious, and
opened the three and one-half foot high, metal, tombstone-shaped apparatus. I was able
to discover that it operated by a mechanism consisting of a chain with little, triangular
buckets. One turned the crank, and, soon, a stream flowed through the spout extending
from the front panel. It was getting a bit rickety by the 1950's, and we were told not to
walk on the wood platform that held the wellhead. But, of course, grandmother's
warning was not enough to stop a little boy from stepping up gingerly and giving the
crank a turn just to hear the chain rattle and echo up from the depths.

The front porch was located on the east. Access was gained by ascending steps in
the middle of the porch on its east, Missouri River side. Sometime later the steps were
moved over to the south side and the banister on the front side was added. This open
porch held a swinging seat that, too, provided amusement and some cooling during the
hot, Kansas summers for the Martin and Tonsing children and their cousins, including
members of the Challiss families and Amelia Earhart who lived nearby. From there one
could observe the rapid currents and eddies of the Missouri River far below the cliffs.

There was a doorbell on the front and two back doors. They were attached to the
middle, wood panel, just below the frosted glass panes, and made a loud noise when one
turned the butterfly handle. As one entered the front, entrance hall, a door to the right
gave access to the library, and one on the left to the parlor. Straight ahead was the dining
room, and, further, a little hallway held the hat and jacket rack, and doors to the outside
and to the kitchen. The ceilings throughout the house were twelve feet high, and the
rooms were decorated with wallpaper with rich, Victorian designs and colors. The front,
entrance hall had stairs that ascended along the left wall and wrapped around to the right
to give access to the upper floor. The steps and turned banisters were identical to those of
the Amelia Earhart House, one house and a street away to the south.

Throughout the house were fireplaces with decorative tile-surrounds. These tiles
were mostly very dark green or very dark brown. They had stamped flower and
geometric designs under the glaze, and the tiles glittered in the light of the rooms. The
fireplaces in the parlor and the dining room were built at an angle facing the center of the
rooms, and both used the same chimney. On the glass transoms above the doorways in
the house were painted bouquets of various flowers. Above the entrance to the library, I
recall, was a cluster of red roses. The library had huge walnut bookcases, eight feet high
and five feet two inches wide. They were of oak, and were divided into a lower section
with two, wide doors which opened onto wide, deep shelves, and an upper section which
held two doors, each having two panels of "wavy" glass, the upper panels having a
scalloped top. In more rooms of the house there were other bookcases, also eight feet
high, but five feet wide. Low drawers with oak-leaf pulls were below, and the high,
arched doors above held two panes of "wavy" glass. Circles and lozenges decorated the
dark wood of these cases. At Governor Martin's death in 1889 the shelves held some six
thousand volumes, the largest library of any kind in the state.

The kitchen extended the full width of the west side of the house. Access was
gained from a small hallway on the south, as well as a screened porch and the "back
steps" on the north. The room had gleaming, white wainscotting of wood. The sink,
stove and "icebox" were along the west wall. Several steps and a door on the right side
of the south wall gave admittance to the stairs that led left, up to the master bedroom. In
the mid-1950's a door was added with its own little porch so that a woman who was
renting a room could enterfromthe outside without disturbing the family.

A door on the right side of the east wall of the kitchen led to the steps which
descended into the "root cellar," and another door on the left side of the east wall led to a
pantry to the left, and the bathroom to the right. From here one could continue through
another door back to the library. Upstairs were four spacious bedrooms, two rooms and a
bathroom on the north side, two on the south, and the huge, master bedroom with its own
stairs down to the kitchen below. From the master bedroom a door in the east wall led to
a large closet and a dressing room with its built-in dressing table facing a north window.

To the south of the house was a large lot that was tilled for a vegetable garden and
the beautiful roses so beloved by Ida Martin and her daughter, Ruth. Grandmother Ruth
recalled in the May 14, 1960 letter, that, "Grandma Martin and I watched the hail tear
our flowers to shreds." She also recalled in her letter to me from May 12, 1961, that
there was a mulberry tree in the yard: "Usually I get enuf for jelly, but none last yr." Her
letter of November 5, 1962, also mentions the death of the old cherry tree. I remember
the wonderful cherry pies grandmother made from the fruit of that tree planted by
Colonel Martin.

The carriage house was located some forty feet to the northwest of the house, and
was accessible from the alley. East of this and parallel to it and the house was a
gymnasium, entered by a door opposite the back steps of the house. This large structure,
too, was built of brick, but had windows continuing around the four sides for light and
ventilation. When I was a child it still contained parallel bars, rings hanging from the
ceiling, and an assortment of the peculiar bowling-pin-shaped weights that were popular
athletic equipment in the late nineteenth century. This building was pulled down and its
equipment taken to the town's dump in the late 1940's.

The Martin house had a central place in the attention of Kansans during the years
that Colonel John A. Martin was governor of the state. My grandmother, Ruth, mentions
in her letter of June 12, 1962, that, "And we saw so little of him the last 4 years of his life
as he was in Topeka all the time. There was no Governors mansion there then, so he
went back and forth on that old Sfe plug train Mondays and Saturdays."
 While the Martin-Tonsing manse served as a home to the family for nearly one
hundred years, as none of the immediate family were living in Atchison at the time of
Grandmother Ruth's death on March 20, 1967, it was put up for sale. The asking price
was $800. The house's restoration and refurbishing was a condition of the transaction in
1968. Sadly, the person who purchased this venerable, historic house hoped to sell the
bricks. Without removing the elaborately paneled doors, tile fireplaces and those
beautifully painted transoms, he soon demolished it with a wrecking ball. However, a
market for bricks did not exist, and the large pile of rubble lasted a long time. Now, only
the large ash trees planted by the newly married couple who built the home some one
hundred thirty years ago remain to mark the site.

Sincerely,

Ernst F. Tonsing, Ph.D.