John H. Stringfellow.
John H. Stringfellow was an early physician of Kansas, one of the founders of Atchison, a pro-slavery advocate, and Speaker of the House in the First Territorial Legislature.
John was born in Culpeper County, Virginia, on November 14, 1819. He was educated at Caroline Academy in Virginia and Columbia University in Washington, D.C., and graduated in the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1845. Soon after that, he moved to Carrolton, Missouri, where he married Ophelia J. Simmons, niece of Governor Edwards.
During the cholera epidemic of 1849, when every boat coming on the Missouri River unloaded cholera patients at Hill’s Landing, he converted a large warehouse into a hospital. He devoted three months to caring for them. In 1852, he moved to Platte City, Missouri. Upon the organization of Kansas Territory, he crossed the river, selected a claim, and, in connection with some friends, formed a town company that laid out the town of Atchison. In 1854, he brought his family and lived in Atchison until 1858. He founded and edited the Squatter Sovereign, the first newspaper in Atchison. He was commissioned as a colonel in the Third Regiment of the Territorial Militia by Governor Wilson Shannon.
He was called to Virginia by his father’s death in 1858 and was detained there until after the opening of the Civil War. He entered the Confederate service as a captain of a Virginia company but was at once detailed as a surgeon and acted in that capacity only.
In 1871, he returned to Atchison and remained there until 1876, when he went to St. Joseph, Missouri, where he resided until his death on July 24, 1905.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of Kansas, updated April 2024.
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