Interesting that both small town Kansas and KC gun shows seemed to have more vintage Parkers than "The Yankee Sidelock" Smiths. New England Puritan roots must have run deep.
William Allen White, “The Sage of Emporia”'
Kansans are marked by Puritanism. The first Kansans were crusaders, intellectual and social pioneers, conventers of various sorts...Slavery being abolished your Kansans had to begin abolishing something else. Abolitionism was more than a conviction; it was a temperamental habit.
Abolition, Prohibition, Populism, and Bull Moose, the Blue Sky law...these things come popping out in Kansas like bats out of hell. Sooner or later other states take up these things, and then Kansas goes on breeding other troubles.
http://www2.ku.edu/~jschool/school/w...editorals.html
“What’s The Matter With Kansas?” 1896
http://projects.vassar.edu/1896/whatsthematter.html