Muncie (Kansas City, Kansas)

Muncie is a small historic community on the north bank of the Kansas (Kaw) River in western Wyandotte County, now a neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas. Its name comes from the Munsee, an Algonquian-speaking band affiliated with the Delaware (Lenape), who settled here in 1839 and built a village remembered as Munseetown.¹² Muncie is best known outside the county as the site of the train robbery of December 8, 1874, attributed to the James–Younger gang.²³

Overview

County	Wyandotte County, Kansas
Status	Neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas; formerly an independent hamlet4
Location	North bank of the Kansas River, roughly 8 miles west of Kansas City56
Post office	1870–19674
Population (1910)	405
Nearby landmark	Grinter Place (Grinter Heights), on the National Register of Historic Places2

The Munsee origin

The Munsee band of the Lenape arrived in 1839 and settled along the Kansas River just east of Moses Grinter’s ferry at the Delaware Crossing, in the vicinity of present 78th Street and K-32. Their settlement was known as Munseetown; after the Delawares were removed to Indian Territory, Munseetown became the town of Muncie, Kansas.¹

Many of these Munsee were Christian converts under Moravian missionaries. Rev. Jesse Vogler and John Kilbuck arrived with 72 Christianized Munsee aboard the steamboat St. Peters, establishing the Munsee Moravian Mission in the Westfield settlement, positioned along what became the Union Pacific line roughly halfway between Edwardsville and Kansas City.²

A nineteenth-century account places the Moravian Munsee town “near the Kansas River, near the present town of Muncie, in Wyandotte County.” Under the Treaty of May 6, 1854 with the Delaware Nation, the band received a reservation of four sections; they occupied it only about four years before Congress authorized a sale, after which they relocated into Leavenworth County — the tract later associated with the National Military Home and Mount Muncie Cemetery.⁷ Most of the remaining Christian Munsee eventually consolidated with the Swan Creek and Black River Chippewa on a reservation near Ottawa, Kansas, under an 1859 treaty.⁸

The place-name is therefore an anglicization that outlived the community it named — the village kept the Munsee name after the Munsee themselves had been moved on.

The 1874 train robbery

On December 8, 1874, robbers stopped a Kansas Pacific Railway express near Muncie. Accounts agree on the method: gang members forced railroad section hands to pile crossties on the track, then flagged down the approaching train — with a red scarf, in one telling — and took the express car’s contents.³¹

Figures vary by source. HistoryNet reports five gang members and a haul of “at least $30,000, perhaps as much as $55,000.”³ Wikipedia gives $30,000.² A local-history account describes the robbers entering the Union Pacific depot at Muncie, robbing the station agent of $20, forcing him to flag the train, and taking about $25,000 in currency and gold from a Wells Fargo safe plus roughly $5,000 in money and jewelry from passengers.¹ This wiki does not adopt a single figure; the range is the honest statement.

Attribution to the James–Younger gang is traditional rather than proven — Wikipedia phrases it as the gang being “believed to have” committed the robbery.² Only one man, Bud McDaniel, was ever captured and charged. He neither confessed nor implicated anyone, escaped jail before trial, and was shot and killed during the pursuit that followed.³

Railroads, decline, and absorption

Muncie’s whole existence was a railroad function. The 1912 Kansas Cyclopedia lists it as a “post hamlet” on the north bank of the Kansas River and the Union Pacific line, 8 miles west of Kansas City, with a money-order post office and telegraph and express facilities, and a 1910 population of 40.⁵ A gazetteer of vanished Wyandotte County towns places it on both the Chicago, Rock Island and Kansas Pacific roads, six miles west of Wyandotte, and dates its post office 1870–1967; it also notes the Chouteau brothers’ 1825 trading post directly across the Kansas River.⁴ The Kansas Geological Survey’s 1935 county bulletin still calls it “a small village.”⁶

Early-twentieth-century Muncie had depots for the Union Pacific and for the Kansas City–Leavenworth interurban trolley, plus a small business district. When Highway 32 bypassed the town in the 1960s, the community faded and was subsequently absorbed into Kansas City, Kansas.¹ The 1967 closing of the post office is the tidiest marker of that end.⁴

Boundaries and present day

Muncie has no defined municipal boundary and none is asserted here. Sources locate it by river and rail rather than by streets: north bank of the Kansas River, along the former Kansas Pacific / Union Pacific alignment, roughly eight miles west of the old Kansas City, Kansas, core, west of Turner and east of Edwardsville.⁵⁶ The immediate area is dominated today by rail and industrial land use along the K-32 corridor. Adjacent Grinter Heights holds Grinter Place, the 1857 Moses Grinter house, which is listed on the National Register and operated as a state historic site.²

Significance to Kansas City

Muncie compresses three chapters of Wyandotte County history into a few hundred acres: Indigenous displacement (a Lenape band named the place, then lost it), railroad-era outlawry (the county’s one nationally known Jesse James episode), and highway-era erasure (a bypass in the 1960s, a post office closed in 1967, a name that now survives mostly on maps and in a cemetery in another county). For a wiki whose Kansas-side coverage skews toward the industrial bottoms and the annexed cities, Muncie documents the rural riverfront line running west from Kaw Point — the corridor of ferries, missions, and rail sidings that predates all of it.

Sources

See also

• kansas-city-kansas
• wyandotte-county
• kansas-river
• delaware-lenape-in-kc
• grinter-place
• jesse-james
• edwardsville-ks
• turner-kck
• kaw-point

Footnotes

1. The Clio — “Muncie, Ks.” — asserts: Munsee band of the Lenape arrived 1839 and settled along the Kansas River just east of Moses Grinter’s ferry at the Delaware Crossing, near 78th and Highway 32; reservation spanned parts of Wyandotte, Leavenworth, and Douglas counties; settlement known as Munseetown became the town of Muncie after Delaware removal; robbers entered the Union Pacific depot, robbed the station agent of $20, and took roughly $25,000 from a Wells Fargo safe plus about $5,000 from passengers; early-20th-century Union Pacific and Kansas City–Leavenworth interurban stations and a small business district; Highway 32 bypass in the 1960s and subsequent absorption into Kansas City, Kansas. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

2. Wikipedia — “Muncie, Kansas City.” — asserts: neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas, on the north bank of the Kansas River in Wyandotte County; name derived from the Munsee, an Algonquian-speaking Delaware group; Rev. Jesse Vogler and John Kilbuck arrived with 72 Christianized Munsee aboard the St. Peters; Munsee Moravian Mission in the Westfield settlement along the Union Pacific, halfway between Edwardsville and Kansas City; on December 8, 1874, the James–Younger gang are “believed to have” robbed a Kansas Pacific Railroad train of $30,000; Grinter Place in adjacent Grinter Heights on the National Register, at a ferry crossing on the Fort Leavenworth–Fort Scott military route. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

3. HistoryNet — “When the James Gang Ruled the Rails.” — asserts: five gang members forced section hands to pile ties on the Kansas Pacific track near Muncie on December 8; a red scarf was used to flag the express; the take was at least $30,000 and perhaps as much as $55,000; Bud McDaniel was the only man captured and charged, never confessed, escaped jail before trial, and was shot and killed during pursuit. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

4. Legends of Kansas — “Extinct Towns in Wyandotte County, Kansas.” — asserts: Muncie was on the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad and the Kansas Pacific Railroad, six miles west of Wyandotte; named after the “Muncee” Indian band; post office 1870–1967; the Chouteau brothers established a trading post opposite, across the Kansas River, in 1825; today a neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History (1912), via KSGenWeb — “Muncie.” — asserts: post hamlet of Wyandotte County on the north bank of the Kansas River and the Union Pacific R.R., 8 miles west of Kansas City; money-order post office, telegraph and express facilities; population 40 in 1910. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

6. Kansas Geological Survey, University of Kansas — “Geology of Wyandotte County, Kansas: Geography” (Bulletin, May 1935) — asserts: Muncie described as a small village on the north bank of the Kansas River about eight miles from Kansas City. ↩ ↩² ↩³

7. Kansas Genealogy — “Moravian Munsee Indian Tribe.” — asserts: the Moravian Munsee settled on the Delaware reservation and established a town near the Kansas River near the present town of Muncie in Wyandotte County; the Treaty of May 6, 1854, with the Delaware gave them four sections; they lived on the reservation about four years before Congress authorized a sale; they later occupied the Leavenworth County land associated with the National Military Home and Mount Muncie Cemetery. ↩

8. Wikipedia — “Christian Munsee.” — asserts: a small band of Christian Munsee migrated to Kansas Territory to join Lenape kin, settling in Wyandotte and Leavenworth counties; by 1857 most other Kansas Lenape were removed to Indian Territory; fewer than 100 Christian Munsee purchased a Franklin County reservation from an Ojibwa band, and the Treaty of 1859 combined the Swan Creek and Black River Chippewa with the Christian Munsee on a twelve-square-mile reservation near Ottawa, Kansas. ↩