History

The Majors House

The Alexander Majors House is one only four surviving antebellum houses in Kansas City, Missouri, and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Built in 1856 for the family of Alexander Majors, the house served as both a family home and as the headquarters for Majors’ successful freighting company. The Majors House was built facing westward, overlooking what was then the Kansas Territory.

Alexander Majors’ farm ran alongside a dirt road leading from Westport Landing to the original Santa Fe Trail. That dirt path is now known as State Line Road – the boundary between Kansas and Missouri. Majors deliberately built his home mere feet from what was then the national border of the United States, symbolically looking westward. His house’s strategic location enabled him to conduct business on leased property in the Kansas Territory. On this leased property Majors had huge corrals, grazing lands, oxen pens, barns, and wagon and blacksmith shops. Family legend has it that Majors did this because goods in the Territory were not taxed, making him a very shrewd businessman.

It is likely that enslaved people performed much of the construction of the Majors House, as was the case for many similar homes in Missouri. The house is T-shaped, built of heavy oak timbers and square nails. The home is a modified Greek revival style and its facade features an unusual two-story, recessed porch. Although census records reveal that Majors and his family owned 16 or 17 slaves in 1860, we have no way of knowing where on his large farms their dwellings would have been located.

Originally, the Majors House had nine rooms and nine fireplaces—one in each room. It boasts original floors of virgin white pine—non-existent today. The walls were originally plastered with white lime and hog-hair. The house’s main rooms consisted of an office, parlor, and dining room on the first floor, and three bedrooms and a family parlor on the second floor. Before the rear additions were constructed in the early 1900s, the Majors family’s kitchen was a detached outbuilding or lean-to.

The house stayed in the Majors family (through his oldest daughter Rebecca and her husband, Samuel Poteet) until 1904, when it was sold to the Ruhl family. The Ruhls made several additions to the house, including a large bay window on the south and a two-story addition that gave the house two additional rooms and an indoor kitchen.

In 1924, the Majors farmstead was sold and divided up to make way for a new “suburban” housing development. The old mansion was then converted to a schoolhouse for three years. As the population in the area grew, there were plans to demolish the house, but it was determined to be too costly to tear down because of its sturdy construction. By the late 1920s, the Majors house was vacant and deteriorating.

In 1930, Louisa Johnston, a great granddaughter of Alexander Majors, bought her family’s decrepit mansion from the school district for $2,500 (roughly $36,000 in today’s money). She began to slowly restore the house, replacing windows and patching the roof. Louisa lived in the house for nearly 50 years. Upon her death in 1979, she willed the house to a long-time friend, architect Terry Chapman. As trustee of the Majors Historical Trust, Chapman undertook a major restoration of the house and opened it for tours in 1984. Terry Chapman and his wife Victoria managed the house museum for more than 25 years until his death in 2010. In 2011, management of the house merged with the John Wornall House Museum to create Wornall/Majors House Museums, one non-profit organization dedicated to caring for both historic structures.

Alexander Majors & His Family

Alexander Majors was an entrepreneur who played a prominent role in the economic growth of early Kansas City. He made his fortune in wagon train freighting and co-founded several business ventures, including the Pony Express.

Alexander Majors was born in Kentucky in 1814 to a family of farmers. His father and mother decided to move to the Missouri Territory when Majors was just four years old – five years before Missouri would become a state. Majors was married twice and had 13 children (of which 11 survived to adulthood). He married Katherine Stalcup in 1834, when he was 20 and she was 14. They had nine children together; at least three died before reaching adulthood. Katherine died of unknown causes in early 1856, the same year the Majors House was built. A year later, Majors married Susan Wetzel, who was 23 years his junior. Susan gave birth to four children, one of whom was stillborn.

In 1858, Majors moved his business, family, and six enslaved individuals to Nebraska City. The house, and the remainder of Majors’ slaves, were left to Majors’ oldest daughter Rebecca and her husband Samuel Poteet, who was also Majors’ assistant and head wagon master.

Majors and Susan remained married, but were living separately as early as 1873. They may have had a fundamental difference in what they expected from their marriage. Majors appeared to want to travel throughout the United States, reliving his glory days as one of America’s most famous frontier freighters. Susan, on the other hand, seemed to want to live quietly at home with her oldest daughter in the comfortable life she was accustomed to.

Majors died in 1900 and his buried next to his first wife, Katherine, in Kansas City’s Union Cemetery. Susan died in California in 1915. Before her death, she unveiled the Pony Express monument in St. Joseph, Missouri as Majors’ widow.

Majors’ adult children scattered across the United States, working as printers, miners, and politicians. Majors’ oldest son, Benjamin traveled with his father after the failure of Majors’ businesses, and was living in poverty in Oklahoma in 1904. In 1934, Majors’ great-granddaughter, Louisa Johnston, invited her great uncle to live with her in the Majors House, which she had purchased in 1930. Benjamin lived the rest of his life in his boyhood home and died there in 1938. Louisa lived at the house for the rest of her life, moving into a small caretaker’s cottage when it became uninhabitable. She passed away there in 1979, but not before setting up the Majors Historical Trust and doing much to raise awareness of Majors and his national and local significance.

[Source: wornalmajors.org]