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- Sage Family of Shawnee County, Kansas
A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans - (1918)
Sage Family of Shawnee County. The name of Sage has been very prominently identified with Shawnee County, particularly in the community around Dover, for a half century or more. The family is one that would prove a valuable contribution to any community. They have been upright and conscientious citizens, have done their share of the development work connected with the raising of a new country to the best standards of civilization, and there is probably not a single member of the family who has not pulled his own weight in the world.
The first of this particular family to come from Somersetshire, England, the original seat of the family, to America was Arthur Sage. His parents were Samuel and Elizabeth (Davis) Sage. Arthur located in Onondaga County, New York. His experience in the New World was very gratifying, and the reports he sent back home caused his father Samuel to also come to America. He too was favorably impressed, and about the year 1849 he sent for the other members of the family to join him. Samuel Sage was twice married. None of the children of his first wife ever lived in America. One son of the first marriage was named Aaron and he gained distinction by being selected a member of the Queen's Guard.
The children of Samuel Sage by his second marriage were: Arthur, Ann, who married Simon Mayne; John, Alfred, Mark, Samuel, Aaron, Elizabeth, who married Edward Stock; and Walter. The only one of these children who never lived in Kansas was Walter. Walter enlisted in Battery F of the Third New York Light Artillery early in the war, and died of typhoid fever at Newbern, North Carolina, unmarried.
The first of the family to come to Kansas were John and Alfred Sage, who arrived during the decade of the 1850s, when Kansas was still a territory, and preempted land at Dover. That land is now owned by John R. Tomson. These brothers when they came west were what was known as "tenderfoot". They left their families in Topeka until they could build shacks and start farming operations around Dover. They went out into the country in a wagon, and the first night was one of very great discomfort. They were frightened by the howling of wolves, and not knowing to what extent those animals were dangerous they remained in the covered wagon all night, one of them occupying the front end with a gun and the other the rear with an ax. They had no sleep, and early the next morning they suffered a great deal of chagrin when they found, instead of a pack of ravening wolves, only two or three loud but practically harmless coyotes. Later John and Alfred developed into very substantial and forceful men of early territorial days. They became associated with James H. Lane and John Brown and other leaders of the noted free soilers, and had some worthy share in making Kansas a free state.
After John and Alfred came Mark Sage, who settled on Mill Creek, where he kept a stage station. Following him was Samuel, Jr., who settled at Dover, and after the war came Aaron, with his father, and Elizabeth, the wife of Edward Stock, was the last to come.
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Bassett Family Association Database
