History of Agra
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7/2/2009
My people lived there and I was there every summer and Holiday. I remember walking the dust filled streets for my Aunt Edna. She had sent me to the butcher to pick up some meat. I remember walking past the old post office and the post master coming out to say hi to me and asking me how my father was doing. I have such good memories of Agra Kansas in the 60s and early 70s.
At one point in time it wasn't even on the map! There is an old ancient cemetery that is not listed on any of Kansas's historical cemeteries. There is an unknown soldier (My Aunt always thought from the Civil War) buried there. No one knows what side he was on but he died in Agra (or the land now known as Agra-don't think it was officially Agra yet) and so they buried him in their cemetery (they might have known originally but all of the old timers can't remember which side he was on or what his name was). There is a childs grave with a rusty metal toy model T car buried into the earth on top of his grave. There are a few more graves and that of my Great Grandfather. I think it must be a private cemetery, because whenever I would go visit my Auntie E, which was several times a year, she would take me to the cemetery to look at her father’s grave.
I also remember Auntie E having me collect eggs from her chicken house to be bartered and then we would hop in her model A ford and we would drive around trading eggs for milk and other things farmers had that we wanted. Funny thing was, whenever Auntie E would see a car coming from the opposite way, she would panic and drive in the ditch (the ditches in Kansas are way big and deep on both sides of the road) and then when we would pass the car she would hop back up on the road. Needless to say I was terrified of learning how to drive when I got older as I had grown up riding next to my sweet lovely Auntie E tearing up the roads on the Kansas plains. Oh, and there is nothing next to Agra, just land and more land. Wheat fields as far as you can see. You have to drive to the next town, 10 miles or so and even then they might not be open (as was often the case when I was little, (I thought it funny that a whole town could just up and close itself up because of a fair, carnival, circus or some goings on), so it was best to just drive a little further to Phillipsburg.....
My Great Uncle and Great Aunt owned a farm right outside of Agra and I would go there and hang out, they had horses and pigs and grew wheat. It was an interesting way for a City girl to spend summer and winter vacations.
Many a time we would be having Thanksgiving dinner at Aunt Edna’s and would have to run outside and down into the dirt cellar because of Tornado's, and yes, her dirt cellar door looked just like The Wizard of Oz's, Dorothy’s Auntie Em's. In my family every year that Wizard of Oz would come on TV we would make a big production of it. My father would cook a roaster full of popcorn and everyone would sit around and watch it until over. They especially liked the fact it was from Kansas, and the farm house looked a lot like my Aunt Edna's house.
There just isn't much history on Agra Kansas on the internet or in the history books, but the people that populated it when I was growing up were full of stories of crossing the plains in covered wagons, fighting,....and marrying the native Indians of the land, gun fights and outlaws drifting through, the railroad commotion. I was always told that my people were pioneers and not only fought the Indians but also married into them.
A colorful strong farming community with many stories yet to discover.
Karen | ,