- Kersey Coates
Kersey Coates (1823 - 1887) was a
Kansas City, Missouri businessman who developedQuality Hill , founded theKansas City Board of Trade , and one of the businessmen who attracted theHannibal & St. Joseph Railroad to the city.He was born a
Quaker in Pennsylvania and moved to Kansas City in 1854 a year after it was formally incorporated. He purchased land on the bluffs above the Missouri River on Quality Hill to develop an upscale neighborhood.He was active in the
Free State Movement during theBleeding Kansas skirmishes with neighboring Kansas. During theAmerican Civil War he became a colonel in the Missouri Militia. He turned his planned hotel at 10th and Broadway into a Union Cavalry stable. After the war the stable was to become theCoates Hotel .Future
Secretary of War Stephen B. Elkins served under Coates in theBattle of Lone Jack , the only battle in which Elkins served. Elkins was to say that the experience at Lone Jack was to fill him with disgust about war. [ [http://books.google.com/books?id=jw1ExqwyW-4C&pg=PA629&lpg=PA629&dq=%22emory+s+foster%22+pdf&source=web&ots=eoMkdiTb3E&sig=m7RdI2XSOhP-Upf3L2YSURFIXo0#PPA630,M1 Centennial History of Missouri By Walter Barlow Stevens - S.J. Clarke Publishing Company - 1921] ]After the war, he along
Robert T. Van Horn andCharles E. Kearney persuaded theHannibal & St. Joseph Railroad to build the first bridge across theMissouri River in Kansas City at theHannibal Bridge . The bridge made Kansas City rather thanLeavenworth, Kansas the dominant city of the region.References
* [http://kcpl.lib.mo.us/localhistory/media.cfm?mediaID=34857 Kansas City Public Library profile] ]
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