William Elsey Connelley
William Elsey Connelley (March 15, 1855 – July, 1930), was educator, businessman, author, president of the Kansas State Historical Society (1912), and secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society from February, 1914, until his death in July, 1930. He married Julia Frances Witten in 1873 (d. 1881), and had two children. In 1885 he married Sarah A. Fife and they had two daughters, one of whom lived to adulthood. Connelley was awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree from Baker University in 1911. He also served as president of the Mississippi Valley Historical Society, the Kansas Sons of the American Revolution, and was a member of numerous other civic organizations and a Mason.
Connelley was born in Johnson County, Kentucky, on March 15, 1855, the oldest of five children. During the Civil War his father served in the Union army with the 45th Kentucky Mounted Infantry. His mother died in 1862, leaving Connelley to care for his siblings until his father returned from the war in 1865, “ruined in property and health.” Connelley’s educational opportunities were limited and he was primarily self-educated. Despite his limited formal education, at the age of seventeen he became a school teacher in Johnson County, Kentucky, where he remained for ten years.
In 1881 Connelley moved to Wyandotte County, Kansas, where he taught school until 1882. From 1883 to 1887 he served as the Wyandotte County clerk. Connelley became involved in the wholesale lumber business in Springfield, Missouri, from 1888 to 1892. He was in the banking business in Kansas City, Kansas, and in the land, title, and abstract business in Beatrice, Nebraska. He worked for the Topeka publishing house of Crane & Company until 1902, when he was appointed special pensions examiner. By August of 1903, Connelley was involved in the oil industry in southeast Kansas, around the Chanute area. In 1905 Connelley wrote a call for a meeting of independent oil men in Kansas which resulted in the organization of the Kansas Oil Producers Association. Connelley was an active participant in the crusade against the Standard Oil Company in Kansas, leading eventually to the dissolution of the Standard Oil Trust by the United States Supreme Court.
Connelley authored fourteen major books. From 1899 through 1900 he contributed five volumes to Crane’s Twentieth Century Classics: Provisional Government of the Nebraska Territory, James Henry Lane, Wyandot Folk-lore, Kansas Territorial Governors, and John Brown. Other works include: Overland Stage to California with Frank A. Root (1901), Life of John J. Ingalls (1903), An Appeal to the Record (1903), The Heckwelder Narrative (ed., 1907), Doniphan’s Expedition (1907), Quantrill and the Border Wars (1909), Ingalls of Kansas (1909), Eastern Kentucky Papers (1910), and Life of Preston B. Plumb (1913). Connelley also compiled a five volume History of Kansas (1917, 1918, and 1929) and a five volume History of Kentucky with E. M. Coulter, edited by Judge Charles Kerr (1922).
Connelley contributed numerous articles to journals and magazines. Included in these were articles to scientific journals on the folklore and ethnology of the Wyandot tribe. He is credited with compiling the first ever written vocabulary of the Wyandot language and made extensive investigations into the history and language of the Delaware, Shawnee, and other native American tribes. It was said of Connelley that he “understood the American Negro and the American Indian perhaps better than any other resident of Kansas.” In addition to his pioneering work in the area of Native American studies, Connelley’s work on John Brown, Quantrill, the Civil War on the Border, the Doniphan Expedition, and the Overland Stage were considered by many to be significant contributions to the study and understanding of these subjects.
Although he was not a scholar or a professional historian, Connelley’s writings incorporated many of the now acknowledged principles of historic research. His analysis and conclusions were based on careful research of the documentary evidence as well as extensive interviews with many of the individuals involved in the events under investigation. This style often led him to conclusions that were frequently at odds with the ones currently accepted, as well as with their proponents. Not interested in “waving the bloody flag” or in perpetuating or destroying myths, only in recording what the documentary and oral evidence demonstrated, Connelley frequently found himself embroiled in disputes with various individuals concerning the conclusions he reached. Of course, Connelley was not immune from his own prejudices, which often found their way into his writing, but this is the bane of many writers. One of his unfulfilled goals was to edit a volume of John Brown’s papers because “the time has come when the student demands to see important documents as they were written, and they will tolerate no editing and correcting of important papers and letters.”
Connelley is probably remembered best for his sixteen year tenure as secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society. It was during this time that the Society and museum moved into the then newly constructed Memorial Building at 10th and Jackson in downtown Topeka. He wanted the Society to maintain a reputation as a significant repository of artifacts and records, and worked to continue the growth of the collections and membership. One area he devoted much attention to was the relation between the Society and educators. Connelley attempted to extend the influence of the Society throughout the state through the public school system, and devoted much time and effort to this.
Source: Kansas State Historical Society