J/P Noah Webster H. Harman

Noah H. Harman
BIRTH 24 Jan 1829
Pendleton County, West Virginia, USA
DEATH 16 Nov 1897 (aged 68)
Valley Falls, Jefferson County, Kansas, USA
BURIAL
Harman Family Cemetery
Valley Falls, Jefferson County, Kansas

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/143832175/noah-h-harman

Children
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Noah Webster Harman
1856–1932

Charles Fourier Harman
1859–1894

Colfax Burgoyne Harman
1869–1939

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Hortense H Harman Patten
1875–1951

Noah worked hard in the mountains cutting timber, grubbing and employed his spare moments educating himself. He committed to memory all the then known rules and formulae of spelling, grammar, mathematics, and philosophy and up to the time of his death could quote verbatim more authority on texts and excerpts from standard literature than perhaps any university graduate of his day.

    After obtaining a certificate, he taught school 17 years in WV, OH,and KS, to which latter state he and his wife and child [one year old] moved, together with other free-state pioneers, traveling by steamboat down the Ohio River and up the Missouri, arriving at what is now Kansas City, March 28, 1857.  There was no railroad to Kansas City then.Travel, except by boat, was in covered wagons and by stages drawn by from two to eight horses.

There were a few small stores on the Kaw River at the east end of Minnesota street where the trade was chiefly with Indians. The present industrial district was covered with slough grass four to six feet high, cut up by Indian and cattle trails. 640 acres could have been bought in the hilly section on which Kansas City's tallest buildings now stand, for two thousand dollars, and he had two thousand earned by teaching school, but there was little promise of the construction of an industrial center at the mouth of the Kaw. There was no railroad and no bridge. So, he went by boat to Leavenworth, bought a government wagon and an ox team, drove west 30 miles through Indian country and settled on a claim one-fourth of a mile from an Indian camp, three and one-half miles southwest of what was later called Grasshopper Falls, Kansas. The Santa Fe Railway came through there in 1872 and in 1875 the town's name was changed to Valley Falls, after the grasshoppers had devoured everything but the name.
He acquired 1440 acres at the old homestead and dealt extensively in livestock. Many winters were spent in teaching school. He supplied work and material for the first schoolhouse in that district, which was built on his farm.
Though never seeking office, he was, for years, Justice of the Peace, and during his entire residence in Kansas he was an arbitrator for the many disputes and difficulties of his neighbors. There was an unselfishness and congeniality of spirit about him which made him liked by all. His ideas were broad and liberal and he was generous to a fault. In points of difference he always yielded the odds and arbitration took the place of litigation, in such complications as were forced upon him.
He was a thinker, a good speaker and an essayist. He took great delight and an active part in the many debates at the Harman school house on his farm and in the Philomatic Hall in Grasshopper Falls in which laymen and clergymen had equal opportunity. An earnest champion of free speech and of free press, and an advocate of the universal and equal rights of man--a believer in the religion of humanity, and a confessor of his inability to grasp the infinite--the future--he was denounced by the clergy as an agnostic and a so-called infidel, and there were many interesting discussions on the freedom of the will, the trinity, the immaculate conception, the divinity of Christ, the inspiration of the Bible, the veracity of the Red Sea, the Jonah and the Lion's den stories when he, Moses Hull, O.A. Phelps, Gen. Artz and Moses Harman met such men as Clark Braden and other religious debaters at these local arenas.
Out of these discussions and as an advocate of free speech and general personal liberty, grew a new publication at first named the Valley Falls Liberal, financed by Noah Harman and edited by Moses Harman, a cousin. This paper was continued by Moses Harman as "Lucifer, the Light Bearer" throughout his lifetime--later years as a magazine. Moses Harman was an ordained minister, a brilliant speaker, a deep thinker and a fearless martyr to his belief in many reforms ardently advocated. A pioneer in eugenics and a champion of the rights of women, especially their marital rights, and a foe of " hyde-bound orthodoxy," he was in serious conflict with the clergy which took advantage of his publication of an article written by another which discussed the abuses under marital so-called rights, and succeeded in convicting him under the Comstock laws. In this fight for free speech, Moses employed such men as David Overmeyer and other famous legal talent, and the severity of the Comstock law was condemned by the press of the world. Thus were these pioneers martyrs to the cause of eugenics, now taught in many of our modern universities.
In 1890, Noah founded the Farmers' Vindicator which he edited the remainder of his life, to Nov. 26,1897. This weekly paper was a fearless champion of the cause of the oppressed, of free speech, and was a bitter foe to the oppression of the masses by organized wealth.