Grant Cemetery, Victoria, Ellis County, Kansas

Grant Cemetery, originally called Saint George Cemetery, was named in honor of George Grant, the founder of Victoria, Kansas. He donated this land for a church and a cemetery and was the first person to be buried here.

George is responsible for bringing the first Angus cattle to the United States from Scotland. Today, Angus and Angus cross breeds represent the majority of cattle found in America.

“This is the final resting place for a pioneer in the cattle business. George Grant imported four Angus bulls from Scotland to the middle of the Kansas prairie in May of 1873, as part of the Scotsman’s dream to create a colony of wealthy, stock-raising Britishers. Grant died five years later, and many of the settlers at his Victoria, Kansas colony later returned to their homeland. However, Grant’s legacy on the U.S. cattle industry remains to this day.”

“What began as a dream for George Grant on the Kansas prairie has allowed the Angus breed to have a major influence on the U.S. beef industry and beyond.”

A monument honoring George’s contribution to American livestock was erected in 1943 next to his burial spot at the front of Grant Cemetery. It is topped with a statue of an Angus bull.

The monument has a memorial plaque on the front that says George owned 100,000 acres in Kansas, which may not really be true.

A plaque on the back tells when the monument was dedicated. It was re-dedicated in 1973 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of George bringing Angus cattle to Kansas.

George was buried in front of St. George’s Chapel, a church he founded that was named after him. He was said to be buried “beneath the stair” of the church, which was located around here somewhere.

George has two gravestones in front of the monument. One made of red granite says he was born in 1823.

His second gravestone made of gray granite says he was born in 1822.

George’s “dream to create a colony of wealthy, stock-raising Britishers” died with him. Victoria began to decline after his death, and the colony merged with the nearby Volga German settlement of Herzog in 1914.

George Grant (1822-1878)

George Grant came to America in 1872, allegedly with a fortune he made cornering the black silk market in London. As the stories go, when he saw the prairies of eastern Kansas, “the most beautiful lands he had ever seen,” he had a vision of an an English colony on the prairie.

“This,” said Mr. Grant, “shall be mine, for myself and my fellowmen. We will inhabit it, cultivate the soil and live here.”

George Grant, date unknown

George purchased a large amount of land in Ellis County from the Kansas Pacific Railway in 1872, but the amount of land purchased varies by source. Reports ranged from 50,000 acres to 100,000 acres to a whopping 700,000 acres. Some speculated it was the largest purchase of land ever made by a single person.

Reports of his land ownership were probably grossly inflated. According to a past president of the Kansas Historical Society, his actual initial land purchase from the railroad was 25,244.99 acres, which later expanded to 31,165 acres.

The Atchison Daily Champion, Dec 8, 1872

To realize his dream, George went back to England in 1873 and convinced more than thirty people to come back to America with him and populate the colony he named Victoria, after the Queen of England.

Atchison Daily Patriot, Atchison, KS, May 6, 1873

George also brought back “several Aberdeen Polled bulls of beautiful shape, hornless and as black as sloes.” These were the first Angus cattle in America, and George claimed they were from Queen Victoria’s herd.

The first progeny of Aberdeen Angus to reach the Chicago stockyards, called “Polled Angus Durhams.” Source

Victoria had a promising start along the railway. The Kansas Pacific Depot, also known as Victoria Manor, was a “very fine stone depot” that housed the colonists when they first arrived.

Source

Victoria Manor was the hub of the colony. It had a general store, a hotel, a post office, and a large room for colonists to dance, dine, and socialize.

Victoria Manor aka Kansas Pacific Railway Depot. Source

George made a lot of promises to the people that joined his colony. Cheap lumber, free schools, special lower train rates, and land plowing provided personally by him were all incentives that he offered to anyone wanting to come to Victoria. There was one catch: no one could buy less than one square mile (640 acres) of land.

Victoria Manor in the background along the Kansas Pacific Railway sometime in 1873. Image credit: DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University

George was reported to have built his own home five miles south of Victoria in 1876. Dubbed Windsor Villa by one reporter, Grant Villa was a two-story structure with a basement, and was the site of many parties and gatherings for the people of Victoria.

George Grant Villa became the center of social and agricultural activities when Grant brought the first Aberdeen-Angus cattle to the area. Used with permission, Copy and Reuse Restrictions Apply. kansasmemory.org, Kansas State Historical Society, Source

But Kansas historians have found evidence suggesting that George didn’t build the house. Most agree that the house was built by Walter Shields, but some say Walter built it for himself, not George, and that George conned him out of it and took credit for building it. None of this information came out until after his death, and it may or may not be true.

George Grant Villa still stands today. It is on the National Register of Historic Places and was recently placed for sale.

The original Victoria colony peaked around 1876, right around the time a few German immigrants settled nearby and founded Herzog, and a few years before George’s death.

“Experience, however, soon taught the colonists that Ellis County was not an agricultural country, and meeting with nothing but failure and disappointment in their efforts at farming, they became discouraged and began to return to England, and now, of all those who came, but very few remain. In 1879, the originator of the scheme, George Grant, died, and his remains are interred in front of St. George’s Chapel at Victoria, while the colony he sought to found has about ceased to exist.”

Victoria didn’t exactly cease to exist, but it was “thinly settled” and never became the bountiful English colony George dreamed of. Just a few of the original colony members stuck around, and some of their descendants are still there.

After George’s death it was discovered that he was bankrupt. People also started talking more negatively about him, like how he was a bad neighbor because his cattle roamed on everyone else’s property, or that he was a lying con man.

George Grant never married and had no known children Photo date unknown.

One man wrote a letter to the Hays Daily Sentential in response to a statement that George owned 100,000 head of cattle and said “if ninety-nine thousand were subtracted, it might come nearer to the actual truth. It is funny how you newspaper men like to boost people up occasionally.”

Herzog grew and eventually consumed Victoria. The two towns merged in 1914 and retained the name Victoria, but Herzog culture definitely took over. A celebration of Volga German heritage can be found everywhere, like in the town’s statues, in buildings like Herzog Haus, and during the annual Herzogfest.

Other Burials at Grant Cemetery

There are just over 20 people buried at Grant Cemetery, including George. The last burial here was in 1910.

All of the gravestones behind George and his monument are contained within five distinct plots, outlined with red brick and filled with river rock. It’s not clear if these were the original burial spots or if the gravestones were repositioned for aesthetic purposes.

The only shady plot in the cemetery

Henry Grocock came to America in 1878 to join the Victoria colony. He died here alone.

Jennie May Gatewood died when she was an infant. She shares gravestone with her mother, Mahala Gatewood. The Gatewood family came to Victoria from Illinois.

Mahala’s husband John is buried here with another daughter, Ida May.

The white bronze gravestone in this cemetery is for Clay and James Gatewood, brothers of John who died a year apart. Clay died in 1881, James in 1882.

“O, brother, first to leave our band, life’s song as yet unsung, while gray hairs gather on our brows, thou art forever gone.”

“We only know that thou has gone and that the same relentless tide which bore thee from us still glides on, and we, who mourn thee, with it glide.”

The next group of gravestones don’t seem to have a familial relationship to one another, but they could. Most of them came from Iowa, and news of Victoria colony made it to Iowa newspapers multiple times.

Basil Robertson Prather III joined the Victoria colony from Iowa sometime after 1880. He was a hospital steward in the Civil War.

Hiram Quillan also served in the Civil War, and he also came to Victoria from Iowa. He has a land claim in Ellis County dated 1882.

Friedrich Ludwig Koch was born in Germany, and the 1885 Kansas census shows him living in a house in Walker with 10 other people.

Martha and David Tucker also came from Iowa. Martha died in 1889, and David (on the other side) died in 1903.

The next group of gravestones are all broken in various ways, and the two in the middle are nearly illegible.

Lydia Margaretta Ingram was an Irish immigrant who came to Victoria in the early days, maybe around 1874.

“She is not dead but sleepeth”

Her gravestone bears a J.W. Stout & Co. mark from Topeka.

Annie Alexander is a child who died in 1878. I couldn’t find out anything about her parents, but based on her death date, they were early settlers nearby.

This gravestone is for another child who died in 1879, but their name is gone. This could be a sibling of Annie since the stones are so similar.

The fourth gravestone in this plot is for Mary Rawson, daughter of Moses and Susan, who died of typhoid fever. The Rawson family came from New York to Victoria in its early days, perhaps in response to glowing editorials of the colony in the New York Times.

Her gravestone also bears a makers mark, this one for J. Shippee in Hays.

The third plot only has two gravestones in it. One of them is just an empty keyway base with no clues as to who it may be for.

The other gravestone is for a son of F.O. and D. Schultz. I wasn’t able to find out anything about this family either, but this boy was born in Oregon in 1885 and died here sometime later.

This plot is for the two children of Peter of Mary Hauschild, German immigrants who came to the area in the 1870’s and stuck around.

Their son John died here in 1891 at age 7.

Their daughter Mary died in 1900 at age 14.

1,970 acres that Peter and Mary owned was passed down to their son Ludwig who held on to it until the 1980’s. He sold the land in 1981 for over $2 million dollars.