Lieutenant Caleb S. Pratt, Namesake for Pratt County, Kansas




Caleb S. Pratt was a Boston, Massachusetts merchant who migrated to Kansas and located at Lawrence, Kansas where he became active in civic and political affairs.

He established a ferry on the Kansas River and also dealt in real estate.

The public records indicate that he served as penitentiary commissioner, city clerk, and county clerk.

Early in 1861, he was mustered into Company D of the 1st Kansas Infantry as a 2nd Lieutenant.

He was with General Nathaniel Lyon of the United States Army who headed the Union forces at the celebrated and bloody battle of Wilson Creek, near Springfield, Missouri.

The Federal troops were defeated in that battle, but inflicted such heavy losses on the Rebel forces that the state of Missouri, and consequently the state of Kansas, were saved to the Union.

Lieutenant Pratt was one of the twelve hundred Union men who died on May 10,1861 on "Bloody Hill" at the battle of Wilson Creek. He was only twenty-nine years old when killed.

In 1867, the Kansas legislature passed a bill naming this county in his honor.

Pratt County is situated in the central part of the state in the second tier of counties from its southern border. A rectangle in shape, twenty-four miles north and south, and thirty miles east and west, the county is seven hundred and twenty square miles in area.


E-Mail N. Dale Talkington at: daletalkington@hotmail.com

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