Records from Seward County

Abstract: The majority of the records from Seward County at the State Archives are microfilmed records from the County Superintendent of Public Instruction's office. These records include some of the various annual and other reports teachers and other local officials had to create and send to their higher-ups; school district censuses and boundary records; and various examination scores. While the records appear to cover approximately a century of Seward County's history, they are very spotty and mostly focus on the last quarter of the nineteenth and first quarter of the twentieth centuries.

Administrative History: Seward County, in the southwestern edge of the state of Kansas along the Oklahoma border, was established in 1873. Another Seward County in southeastern Kansas had been created out of Godfrey County in 1861 but became defunct when Howard County was established in 1867. The modern Seward was named after Secretary of State and Senator William H. Seward of New York, a prominent abolitionist with the Whig and Republican parties and most famous for buying Alaska from Russia.

The county seat for Seward County is Liberal. Fargo, Liberal, and Seward are townships still existing in the county; Morris Township is defunct.

[Kansas State Historical Society. "Kansas Counties -- Seward County, Kansas." http://www.kshs.org/genealogists/places/counties.php?county=SW (accessed 15 June 2009).]

[Kansas State Historical Society. "Kansas Counties -- Seward County [defunct]." http://www.kshs.org/genealogists/places/counties.php?county=SE (accessed 15 June 2009).]