Above is the timeline I drew on my sketchpad this afternoon. I know you can't see it very well. I might make a digital one at some point. This just looks more historical and cool. I'm doing this as a way to collect relevant information and put all of my sources together. As I mentioned before, much of my information either comes from local history books or family "diaries" that were written many years after the events took place. Surprisingly, much of the information from my primary sources (like the diaries) line up with the secondary sources, which is a good thing.
There are two main points to gather from this timeline. First, these communities built themselves up very quickly. The first wave of Catherine settlers travel from Topeka on February 25, 1876, rent spaces in Hays to live in March 1876, and then build their home in Catherine and move into them by April 1876. After that, a corporation for land was started in 1878 and the Catholic Church was built by 1892. A school was also built in 1893. While it looks like it took a long time to build these structures, with the resources and time available, this was a very quick pace. The second point to notice was how accurate the memories of some of settlers were. Athanasius Karlin, Jacob Schmidt, and August Walter (all are original settlers) kept very detailed dates of when they left and arrived. If these diaries were written later or added to, the detail is amazing.
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