THE SOLARIUM’S DISPLAY CASES

The Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum

Atchison, Kansas

Ernst F. Tonsing, Ph.D.

Thousand Oaks, California
21 July 2009

In passing through the solarium on the southwest corner of the ground floor of the
Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum in Atchison, once the home of the flyer’s
grandparents, Judge Alfred and Amelia Otis, there is much to catch one’s eyes on the
shelves on either side of the large step down to the former kitchen. However, the cases
themselves are of interest. The native walnut cabinets have graceful arches in the glass
doors, and the surrounding molding with the decorative pendants exhibit the style current
when the room was added in the 1870’s or early 80’s.

It is possible that the cases were installed in the sun-room by the Abernathy
Brothers Company of Leavenworth, Kansas. Founded in 1856 by James L. Abernathy,
with his brothers, William and John, the business manufactured bedroom furniture,
dining suites, as well as other house furnishings in Kansas for nearly a century. During
the Civil War (1861-65), James Abernathy served as Lieutenant Colonel in the Eighth
Kansas Volunteer Infantry under Colonel John A. Martin (pioneer editor of the Atchison
newspaper, Freedom’s Champion, and later Governor of Kansas). In 1871, when Martin
built his home at 315 North Terrace just north of the Otis house for his new bride, Ida, the
eldest daughter of Dr. William L. Challiss (whose house stood three doors south on
Terrace), he installed bookcases made by Abernathy in his library to contain what was at
Martin’s death in 1889, the largest collection of books, public or private, in the state.1
Alfred Otis, too, served under Martin in the Eighth Kansas Volunteers.

It would be expected that the house of Judge Alfred and Amelia Otis would
exhibit the refinement of taste that they had known while living in the East. Both of them
were raised in comfort, but had chosen to settle in what was then a rough, frontier town.
It is very likely that they contacted Abernathy, who then paid a call on his old Army
friend, measured the room, designed, and then installed the cabinets.2 His handiwork
delights the eyes even today.

1
Two of these bookcases measuring five feet wide and eight high, are in my home in California. One of
these has the same features as those in the solarium in the Otis house, the arched glass doors and pendant
decorations. The only other existing case from the Martin house that I am aware of is in “The Pink Barn
Antiques & Lamps” across from Atchison at 17600 SW Old Highway Road, Rushville, Missouri, which
measures about sixteen feet wide and eight high. The upper doors are missing, however. It was purchased
in 1946 by David Kottman for his antique shop on Commercial in Atchison from Ruth Martin Tonsing. I
suspect that the particularly spectacular case in the Governor’s Waiting Room in the State Capital in
Topeka was also made by Abernathy, perhaps placed there during Governor Martin’s terms, 1885-89.
2
Because of the similarities of the staircase banisters of the Otis and Martin houses, I would imagine that
they could have been installed by Abernathy as well.