Portable Transit c. 1860
The Bogus Legislature created dozens of roads but funded none.
R. L. Kirk was born in Kentucky in 1818 and was 36 years old in 1855. He listed his profession as "Farmer" on the rolls of the Legislature. He left very little mark in his time in Kansas. The Seneca, Kansas Courier Tribune in its anniversary edition of 1938 wrote of the 1855 election:
"Nemaha County free-staters capitulated to the slavery men in the first election... A day or so previous to election, one R. L. Kirk, a Kentuckian stopped over night in the Central City on the old Richard Bloss farm and told all sundry he would be a candidate for membership of the House in the election at Moorestown. He then took a claim to establish residence. He was a pro-slavery man."
Central City, founded in 1855 in Nemaha County, is now a ghost town. [Seneca Courier Tribune, Vol. 75]
After serving in the Legislature, Kirk was appointed in 1856 as a road commissioner to locate a Territorial road between Atchison and Marysville. He and his fellow commissioner, Henry Adams, were paid $104.25 for their surveying work through Brown County, but were denied their request for expenses in the amount of $12.93 for a tent, cooking utensils and provisions. [Morrill, Brown County, June 1856]
Kirk disappears from the record after 1856. There is an 1880 Census entry for one R. L. Kirk, born in Kentucky in 1818 living with his daughter and son-in-law in Grayson County (north-central) Texas. His occupation was listed as "Miller" and his marital status as widowed. His daughter, Georgia Bowen was born in 1856, died in 1887 and is buried in Grayson County. [Cannon Cemetary, Grayson County, TxGenWeb]
