About Greenwood County, KS

My great-great aunt, Amelia Willis, married Edwin Tucker, the founding father of Eureka, Kansas, on August 15, 1863, just 4 years after each of them had arrived in Greenwood County. Mr. Tucker, through hard work and investing properly, had become one of the wealthier men in town. He built a sturdy two bedroom stone home in 1861, in preparation for the time he would get married and start a family. They were the envy of everyone in town, and the stone house became known as the "mansion". By today's standards, it would be considered barely habitable. It had no running water or electricity when it was first built, and the children and two parents had to share the two bedrooms until they added a third bedroom sometime around 1870. In 1883, shortly after the birth of their seventh child, they moved into a new, much larger Victorian home they had built a couple hundred feet from the original stone home.

Here is a picture of the house I took while in Eureka for the family reunion in 2003.

The stone "mansion" was the largest home in Eureka for many years, and, since the town did not have a hotel, it was often the place where distinguished visitors would stay. Horace Greeley, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Kansas Governor Crawford were some of the well known people who stayed with the Tuckers in the mansion.

It's really a matter of perspective. To many home owners, their home is indeed their mansion.

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