Benjamin "Pap" Singleton - Singleton Colonies

Singleton Colonies

In the summer of 1877, Singleton led approximately seventy-three black settlers to Cherokee County near the town of Baxter Springs. Once the settlers arrived, they began negotiating with the Missouri River, Fort Scott, and Gulf Railroad for land to build their proposed Singleton Colony. Unfortunately, rich lead deposits had been discovered in the area the previous year, which led to a mining boom and caused land prices to rise too high. Without the ability to buy land, they could not create a colony in Cherokee County. Singleton began looking elsewhere.

Singleton began looking for government land which his settlers could acquire through the 1862 Homestead Act. He found some available land on what had been the former Kaw Indian Reservation near the town of Dunlap, Kansas, on the borders of Morris County and Lyon County. Dunlap was situated along the tracks of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, familiarly called the Katy Railroad. The land was marginal, but in the spring of 1878, Singleton's settlers left middle Tennessee for Kansas via steamboats on the Cumberland River. The following year they officially established the Dunlap Colony. More than 2400 settlers emigrated from the Nashville and Sumner County areas. Most settlers lived in dugouts during their first year on the Great Plains. They stuck it out and made the colony a success.