Lincoln County, Kansas Map by L.H. Everts & Co., 1887.
Abram, Kansas, was the first county seat of Lincoln County. The town is extinct today.
Though the county was created in 1867, there was no attempt to organize it until 1870. At that time, Governor James Harvey established a temporary county seat in Marion Township, about a mile and a half west of present-day Lincoln.
However, in an election held on January 1871, the voters favored a change of the county seat. Soon, the county officers met on the open prairie, decided on a location about three miles east of the place designated by the governor, and called it Abram. The Abram Town Company gave the county a deed to lots for a courthouse.
The location of Abram was on a ridge sloping in all directions, with the courthouse on the highest point. O.N. Greene supervised the work on every building erected on the townsite. Myron Greene, the founder of the town, built the first building, a structure 25 by 60 feet, one and one-half stories high, the first floor of which was used for a general store and post office, while the upper story was used for community gatherings.
On February 19, 1872, an election was held to re-locate the county seat, at which 408 votes were cast. Lincoln Center received 232; Abram, 176. On February 26, 1872, the post office was moved from Rocky Hill to Abram.
When the last election was pending, a quarrel arose between Ezra Hubbard and John Haley regarding a stick of timber that Hubbard was about to place in the mill he was building just below Abram. The dispute grew fierce, and Hubbard seized a carbine and shot and killed Haley. Hubbard was arrested and placed under guard at Abram, and that evening, a mob of 40 men in several degrees of intoxication forced open the doors, wounded Hubbard, and left him to die. Ascertaining shortly after that he was likely to recover, they again entered the building and, placing a stone under the wounded man’s head, beat his brains out with a mallet. This incident was used as an argument for removing the county seat. Honorable Ira C. Buzick was tried for the murder of Hubbard and acquitted.
Three years later, the armed guard who was in charge of Hubbard was murdered and thrown in a well, where his body was discovered nearly three weeks after his disappearance. This murder, however, had no connection with the Haley-Hubbard affair of 1872.
On December 5, 1872, the post office was removed from Abram and moved back to Rocky Hill.
When the town of Abram was abandoned, the native stone courthouse was sold to John Ryan, who built a house on Beaver Creek.
On April 1, 1873, bonds in the amount of $4,000 were voted for to build a courthouse in Lincoln, Kansas.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of Kansas, July 2023.
Also See:
Extinct Towns of Lincoln County
Sources:
Blackmar, Frank W.; Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History, Vol I; Standard Publishing Company, Chicago, IL 1912.
Cutler, William G; History of Kansas; A. T. Andreas, Chicago, IL, 1883.
Kansas GenWeb
Lincoln Sentinel-Republican, September 8, 1955