Thomas Huffaker lived in Clay County until the age of 24, when he was employed by the US Government to take charge of the Manual Labor School for Indians. He first went to Johnson Co., KS, to run the school. In 1850, he removed to Council Grove to take charge of the Indian school for the Kaw Indians. While at the school, he taught the Kaw Indian boys about Christianity and also basic academics. In addition to the school for the Kaws, Thomas and Eliza Huffaker operated a school for white children in the Kaw Mission in the early and mid-1850s. The burgeoning Huffaker family lived in the Kaw Mission until 1863, when Thomas, Eliza, and their five children moved one-quarter mile northeast to a new fourteen-room house. After holding the teaching position, he engaged in the mercantile business in Council Grove and then began farming and stock raising.

Entry: Huffaker, Thomas Sears
Author: Kansas Historical Society
Author information: The Kansas Historical Society is a state agency charged with actively safeguarding and sharing the state's history.
Date Created: January 2012
Date Modified: May 2012

Thomas Sears Huffaker was born March 30, 1825, in Clay County, Missouri. Huffaker had deep roots in the Methodist Episcopal Church South. His father, George Smith Huffaker, was an ordained minister of the church and established ministries in several Missouri towns, including Haynesville, Lawson, and Liberty.

Thomas Huffaker was employed by the Methodist Episcopal Church South in 1849 as a teacher of American Indian students, primarily of Delaware and Shawnee tribes. He was teaching at the Shawnee Mission when he and partner H. W. Webster contracted with the church for the management of the Kaw Mission school and farm. Huffaker was to be in charge of the school; Webster would supervise the farm. In May 1851 they traveled from the Shawnee Mission to Council Grove via the Santa Fe Trail. Mrs. Joshua Baker, a housekeeper at the Mission, and her 15-year-old daughter, Eliza Ann, were already living at the Mission when Huffaker and Webster arrived. The school opened in May 1851, after the Kaw families returned from the bison hunts. Approximately 30 Kaw boys aged 6 to 17 years lived in the mission and were educated on academic subjects, farming, and Christianity.

Huffaker began courting Eliza and on May 5, 1852, 12 months after the mission school opened, they were married in the mission. The wedding was said to be the first of Euro-Americans in Council Grove. Reverend Nicholson, a missionary traveling through Council Grove on the Santa Fe Trail, conducted the ceremony.

Eliza helped with the instruction of the Kaw students and the white pupils as the two separate schools co-existed in the Kaw Mission from 1851-54. In 1854 the U.S. government, acting on the advice of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, closed the school for the Kaws.

The Huffakers continued to reside in the mission until 1862 when they moved into a new house one-quarter mile northeast. On May 14, 1872, tragedy struck when their daughter Susie drowned in the Neosho River within 100 yards of where she had been born.

In 1907 Thomas and Eliza Huffaker moved back into the Kaw Mission. There the elderly couple resided with the new owners of the historic building, daughter Anna Huffaker Carpenter and her husband Homer. Thomas died July 10, 1910. Eliza died July 5, 1920, in the same room in which she and Thomas had been married 68 years before.