Milton W. Reynolds
Born: Elmira, Chemung County, New York, May 23, 1823. Married: Sarah Galloway in Livingston County, Michigan, June 14, 1858. Died: Edmond, Oklahoma County, Oklahoma Territory, August 9, 1890.
Milton Wellington Reynold was born to Alexander and Rebecca (Hiles) Reynolds in Elmira, Chemung County, New York, on May 23, 1823. The family moved to Coldwater, Michigan, in 1840, where Milton attended school and worked on the family farm until he was 16. He left home to teach school and attend Albion seminary, before entering the University of Michigan, graduating in 1856. He returned to his hometown and served as editor of the Coldwater Sentinel for a year.
Reynolds married Sarah Galloway in Livingston County, Michigan, on June 14, 1858. The couple moved to Nebraska Territory where Milton worked for five years as editor of the Nebraska City News. He was elected to serve in the Nebraska territorial legislature in 1858. Reynolds’ expressed his pro-Union politics at a Fourth of July event entitled, “Defense of the Union,” in Nebraska City in 1861. He was reelected but lost his bid for speaker of the house. The following year he accepted a job as city editor of the Detroit Free Press.
The Reynolds family moved to Lawrence, Kansas, in 1865, and Milton founded the Lawrence Daily Journal, in the former Herald of Freedom offices, with financial partners Judge James Christian and W. S. Rankin. Reynolds supported Republican ideals in the newspaper’s editorials and commentaries. The elder of the Reynolds’ two daughters, Edwina, was born in Lawrence in 1865.
Reynolds was elected vice president of the Kansas Editors and Publishers Association and served as president of the sixth annual convention in 1871. That year he partnered with Leslie J. Perry and founded the Parsons Sun. In addition to his journalism, he also operated the land office in Humboldt and was an incorporator of Kansas Magazine. He was elected to the first board of directors of the Kansas State Historical Society and a late addition to the Society’s incorporators who filed the official document with the Kansas Supreme Court on December 15, 1875. He continued to pursue public office and was elected state representative in 1876, which led to his selection as a regent at the state university. Reynold’s younger daughter, Susan, was born in Parsons in 1875.
He sold his interest in the Parsons newspaper and purchased the Leavenworth Press, which would be published under the name Leavenworth Times. Reynolds developed a reputation for his editorial skill, the Atchison Globe called him “one of the most competent writers” in the state upon his sale of the Leavenworth Times and expected retirement from the Kansas press in 1883. He soon becomes head of the editorial staff at the Kansas City Times, praised by the Parsons Palladium as a wise addition to secure “the services of such a leading pen as his—one whose long acquaintance with and thorough knowledge of Kansas and Kansas men, can make it tell on every subject, moral, social or political, through the columns of the great daily.”
Reynolds began to use a pen name, “Kicking Bird,” appropriated from a Kiowa peace chief who participated in the Medicine Lodge Treaty in 1867. The real Kicking Bird died in 1875. In using that name, Reynolds developed a journalistic approach that exposed issues of the day. He was a promoter of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railroad, supporting its extension to the south and west. That led to his interest in settlement in Oklahoma, then Indian Territory. The Reynolds moved south in 1889 where he established the Guthrie Herald, one of the territory’s first newspapers, and the following year started the Edmond Sun. Four days after he had been elected as a territorial representative, he died from a short illness, on August 9, 1890.
Entry: Reynolds, Milton W.
Author: Kansas Historical Society
Author information: The Kansas Historical Society is a state agency charged with actively safeguarding and sharing the state's history.
Date Created: March 2025
Date Modified: March 2025
The author of this article is solely responsible for its content.
