History of Boyle, Kansas

From The Winchester Star, October 9, 1942 (copied by Raymond Riley)

Boyle, Kansas, is located 25 miles west of Leavenworth, the highest point between Leavenworth and Valley Falls. The first post office was located one fourth mile east of the present office; and Mrs. Nancy Kendall was the post-mistress. The office was in the Kendall home, a log cabin, which stood for many years after the post office was established in the early 1860s.

On June 4, 1872, the first train arrived in Boyle with the first mail pouch containing letters and the Leavenworth Times, The Toledo Blade and an Atchison paper. By this time the post office had been moved to Mr. Jack Bates’ store, which had just started. Boyle now had its narrow gauge railroad, running thru a fine farming country in the northwest and east and timber and coal in the hills to the south; and its future looked very bright. Business was good, as lots of corn was shipped out and more hay was shipped out of Boyle than any point between Valley Falls and Leavenworth. Coal was shipped in and sold for ten cents per bushel or ten dollars and fifty cents per ton, on the track. The load limit of a coal car was 16,000 lbs. or 8 tons.

On August 14, 1875, the grasshoppers came. The sky was clouded with them and they left little behind them when they left. There was not much to ship out that year, but a daily train carried the mail, news and friendly good cheer. The two conductors on the run were Al Stokes and Jim Hall, and they were Al and Jim to the Boyle folk. If any of the boys were in Winchester they just got on the train with no cash and were never thrown off, but if the train was not traveling too fast they hopped off in their own yard, otherwise the train stopped in Boyle.

The last day of March, 1876, a great snow fell, drifting and blocking the railroad for two weeks. The store got low on staple goods and so the farmers that could, took their shovels and helped the railroaders clear the track. Mr. Bates had been helping at this work and had shoveled snow all morning, and in the afternoon he dropped dead with a heart attack. Six men, George Griffin, John Sowers, and Bob Kirkpatrick being among them, walked to Valley Falls and carried a casket out on their shoulders. The next day it took four horses hitched to a sled and several men to lay him to rest in Spring Grove cemetery.

There were several changes after Mr. Bates’ death, with different persons operating the store and post office, among them being John Boyle Sr. and John Boyle Jr., W.T. McClure, Frank Carr, Sam Heney, Newton Henry, a Mr. McCreary, and now Mr. C.A. McNeal and wife, who have been there forty years, and can sell you anything from a paper of pins to a gang plow. So Boyle still has the post office, general store and a good Methodist Church where Sunday School and church services are held every week. I always had respect for the Lord’s day and a community of generous people, and always enjoyed being at my hometown and birthplace.

John J. Ingalls once said, “God could have made a prettier place and a better place to live in, but I am sure he never did.”

—W.S. Fulton in the Valley Falls Vindicator

This story appeared in "Yesteryears" in October 2014.