Background Sources for Kansas
This entry was originally written by Marsha Hoffman Rising, CG, FUGA, FASG and Mary Clement Douglass, CGRS for Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources.
- Anderson, Lorene, and Alan W. Farly. 'Bibliography of Town and County Histories of Kansas,' Kansas Historical Quarterly 21 (Autumn 1955): 513-51.
- Andreas, Alfred Thayer (with William G. Cutler). The History of the State of Kansas. 2 vols. Chicago: A. T. Andreas, 1883. Reprinted in 1976 with an index of names from the 15,000 sketches found in the original volumes, this provides important access to early county and community histories.
- Barry, Louise. The Beginnings of the West: Annals of the Kansas Gateway to the American West, 1540'1854. 1972. Reprint. St. Louis: The Patrice Press, 1988. Chronological exploration in encyclopedia format of the pre-territorial lives and times of those who lived in Kansas.
- Cutler, William G. History of the State of Kansas. 2 vols. Chicago: A. T. Andreas, 1883.
- Collections of the Kansas State Historical Society. 17 vols. Topeka: Kansas State Historical Society, 1881'1928. Historical documents for the state.
- Napier, Rita, ed. A History of the Peoples of Kansas. Lawrence, Kans.: University of Kansas, Continuing Education, 1985. These scholarly essays discuss ethnic and minority group experience in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
- Owen, Jennie, and Kirche Mechem, eds. The Annals of Kansas 1886'1925. 2 vols. Topeka: Kansas State Historical Society, 1954, 1956. This is a continuation of Wilder's book (see below).
- Report of the Special Committee Appointed to Investigate the Troubles in Kansas with the Views of the Minority of Said Committee'Report No. 200 to the 34th Congress. Washington, D.C.: Cornelius Wendell, 1856. This book was indexed in a two-volume separate publication by Robert Hodge, An Index to the Report of the Special Committee Appointed to Investigate the Troubles in Kansas, vol. 1 (A'L) and vol. 2 (M'Z), published by the author (Vicksburg, Va., 1984). Testimonials and voting records regarding the slavery question in the settlement of Kansas.
- Richmond, Robert W. Kansas: A Land of Contrasts. 3d ed. Arlington Heights, Ill.: Forum Press, 1989.
- Rydjord, John. Kansas Place Names. Norman, Kans.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972.
- Shortridge, James R. Peopling the Plains: Who Settled Where in Frontier Kansas. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995. With a large number of maps and census data, the author provides an exceptional cultural geography detailing the origins and thus the ethnic diversity of nineteenth and early twentieth century settlers.
- Socolofsky, Homer E., and Virgil W. Dean. Kansas History: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Greenwood Press, 1992. The bibliography has 4,565 separate entries, a chronology, and indexes.
- Socolofsky, Homer E., and Huber Self. Historical Atlas of Kansas. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972.
- Stratton, Joanna L. Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981. Diaries of women in the early period of Kansas settlement.
- Wilder, Daniel W. The Annals of Kansas. 1886. Reprint ed. Topeka: Kansas State Historical Society, 1975. Covers the pre-1886 era in Kansas. A new edition is in progress.
