Oscar E. Learnard.
Oscar E. Learnard was a lawyer, journalist, and soldier who fought to make Kansas a Free State.
Leonard was born in Fairfax, Vermont, on November 14, 1832. Learnard attended Bakersfield Academy and Norwich University and graduated from Albany Law School in 1854.
In 1855, he came to Kansas and settled in Lawrence. The following year, he commanded a “mounted regiment” of the Free-State forces in the Kansas-Missouri Border War. In the spring of 1857, he helped to locate and lay out the town of Burlington, where he built the first mill, the first business building, and a building used for school and church purposes.
He was a member of the council in the first Free-State Legislature in 1857, president of the convention that met at Osawatomie on May 18, 1859, and organizer of the Republican Party in Kansas. After the state government was established, he was made a Judge of the Fifth Judicial Circuit.
He resigned from this position during the Civil War to enter the army as a lieutenant-colonel of the First Kansas Infantry. He served on the staff of Generals Hunter and Denver until 1863, when he resigned his commission.
When Confederate General Sterling Price undertook to enter Kansas in the fall of 1864, Colonel Learnard again joined the forces defending the state and took part in the Battle of the Blue and the engagement at Westport, Missouri.
Oscar E. Learnard, soldier.
He served two terms in the Kansas State Senate, was superintendent of the Haskell Institute for one year, and was special attorney and tax commissioner for the Kansas City, Fort Scott, and Memphis Railroad Company for a quarter of a century. In 1884, he bought the Lawrence Daily Journal, which he published for many years.
Learnard died at Lawrence on November 6, 1911.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of Kansas, updated June 2025.
Also See:
See Sources.