Janzen Family Farms Inc

Beef Inquiry & Order Form Slaughters, Cuts & Cooking Diagram of Beef Cuts Slaughters, Cuts & Cooking About Us Newsletter Our History Our Favorites Media History of Janzen Family Farms & It's Land The history of our immediate family goes back more than 135 years in Kansas. Our tradition of working with livestock and mixed grains is equally long. While the land on which Janzen Family Farms currently sits has been in the family since 1898, our forefather Herman J. Janzen began farming elsewhere in the area when he arrived almost twenty years before that. Today, the Henry Creek still runs through our farm, which straddles the Marion-Butler County line. The Janzens arrived in the American West in the wake of the Homestead Act of 1872, which gave title to a quarter section (160 acres) of land to people seeking to settle there, as long as they followed certain guidelines. Amid a frenzy of settlement activity, the Janzens immigrated in part looking for economic opportunity. But, as Mennonites from northern Europe, they were also seeking religious freedom, and they joined many other members of their Protestant religious community upon their arrival. Since that time, our family has struggled to manage the native prairie habitat, alternatively yielding to its terms and stroking it into productivity. Our Farmland Prior to Janzen Ownership Prior to the Homestead Act and the arrival of settlers, mostly from Europe, the land that later became our farm was likely seasonally hunted by sedentary farmers of the Wichita from the south, the Pawnee from the north, and the Osage from the east. The terrain was treeless upland watershed of the Henry Creek and Whitewater rivers to the south, and the Doyle Creek - which flows into the Cottonwood River -  to the north. The official homesteader of the farm was James F. Gleason, who claimed the southeast quarter of Section 32 of Peabaody Township in Marion County, KS, in 1872, where the Janzen Family Farms farmhouse lies today. Keeping the land for only a short time, Gleason sold it to Quincy Vaughan in 1874. Vaughan, who had trained as a civil engineer and had been engaged on the Western frontier prior to the Civil War, came west from New Hudson, New York, in spring 1874 to develop the farm and prepare for the later arrival of his wife Lizzie Eaton and their three boys. When he got there, some acres had already been plowed and a first crop harvested. In the absence of a grainery, he found the house full of oats, obliging him to live at first with the neighbors in very cramped quarters. (The details of this adventure are preserved in Vaughan’s correspondence with his wife and family, now in possession of his great grandson Cleland Mc Burney of Kingman, KS.)Vaughan described the farm site as a wind-swept prairie, accessible from Peabody along the north-south dirt road; with prairie chickens coming right up at the front door and a covey of quail singing happily nearby; a 12x18 homestead claim house with hand-dug well; an orchard with peach trees, grapes, some cottonwood trees, and several acres of osage orange seedlings for laying out hedges; lots of rabbits, rattlesnakes, and a Henry Creek with bass fishing. (See photo below.) A month after Lizzie’s arrival in July, 1874, the region experienced a disastrous grasshopper plague, so severe that many trees and hedges needed to be replanted. The Vaughans’ 480-acre farm included the homestead quarter and two quarters to the east on Section 33. Quincy’s letters include a drawing of an addition to the homestead house, in the form of a kitchen and a porch facing south, as seen in the photo (below). Quincy also mentions the need for a shelter for his horses. No doubt he built the all-purpose barn seen in this photo for horses and cows, with hay mow, grain bins, and a lean-to shed for machinery. In 1886, after 12 years on the prairies in Kansas, Lizzie returned to New York with the boys to assure good schools for them, leaving Quincy behind. Unfortunately, Lizzie died in 1887