Seth Millington Hays (April 23, 1811 – February 3, 1873) was the first white settler and a civic leader in Council Grove, Kansas.

Life

Hays was born in Callaway County, Missouri, and moved to Kansas in 1847 to open a trading post on the

Santa Fe Trail The Santa Fe Trail was a 19th-century route through central North America that connected Franklin, Missouri, with Santa Fe, New Mexico. Pioneered in 1821 by William Becknell, who departed from the Boonslick region along the Missouri River, th ...

. While he originally worked for the mercantile company Boone & Hamilton, he owned his store outright by the early 1850s. The flood of trail travelers brought by the 1858 Pike's Peak Gold Rush both enriched Hays and spurred settlement in Council Grove, which was incorporated the same year. In 1859, Hays and business partner G. M. Simcock opened a new two-story store and restaurant in Council Grove under the name S. M. Hays & Co. Hays moved to

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...

in 1862, selling his store to Simcock, but he returned to Council Grove in 1865. He took over his 1859 store from Simcock the next year. In 1970, Hays founded a newspaper, the ''Council Grove Democrat'', and the Council Grove Savings Bank, the town's first. Hays enslaved a woman named Sarah Taylor, nicknamed Aunt Sally, while living in Missouri. As the Kansas Territory still allowed slavery at the time, Hays brought Taylor with him to Kansas, where she remained a slave. After Kansas gained statehood and abolished slavery in 1861, Taylor stayed with Hays as a housekeeper. Also in 1861, Taylor and Hays began caring for the infant Kittie Parker Robbins, whose mother had died in childbirth while her father was delivering mail on the route through Council Grove. Hays formally adopted Robbins in 1867 with her biological father's consent. Hays died in 1873, one year after Taylor; they are both buried in the same plot of Council Grove's Greenwood Cemetery. The S. M. Hays & Co. store is still in operation as a restaurant under the name Hays House; it bills itself as "the oldest continuously operating restaurant west of the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...

". Hays' 1867 residence in Council Grove is now a county history museum and is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hays, Seth 1811 births 1873 deaths People from Council Grove, Kansas People from Callaway County, Missouri Businesspeople from Kansas Editors of Kansas newspapers