Weston Family

Thomas Weston was born July 20, 1839 in Clinton, Illinois and was first married to a woman named Melissa. They had two daughters: Ella (Weston) McGoveny (born in Iowa) and Maggie (Weston) Harrington (born in Illinois). The family moved to Sedgwick County, Kansas in the 1870s settling in Ninnescah Township. A one-room school house was built on Weston’s property and was named after him. They moved to Topeka Ave in Wichita in the 1880s. Thomas Weston later moved to Ford County in late 1885 to build the Weston & Bates general store with Sanford Bates in Ryansville, KS and brought his wife and youngest daughter Maggie to the area in 1886. Bates then sold his share to J. H. Byrns, changing the name to Weston & Byrns, but the name change didn’t last as George F. Bryant bought them both out in late 1887. Thomas and Melissa parted ways sometime in the early 1890s.

After struggling for several years because of crop failures from drought and the grasshopper invasion, they decided that western Kansas was not going to work out for them, so they sold 320 acres of land and moved to Sedgwick county, settling east of Wichita in the fall of 1901 on land purchased from Walter Morris. Their son Miles Howard was born Sept. 5, 1902. In the spring of 1903 the farm in Minneha Township was sold to Henry Davaney and the Westons purchased property just west of Friends University. In August 1903 Thomas traded land with Lewis Faas; Weston’s 240 acre farm in Ford County for the 80 acre farm on South Hydraulic owned by Faas. The family hadn’t quite moved to the Salem Township farm when a catastrophic flood in 1904 wiped out their crops and produce. It was time for the Westons to try something else. 

They found a hotel for sale in Derby and bought it on July 16, 1904 from Samuel H. Smith. They sold the lots on Meridian and Phillips (now called Richmond) located in Wichita near Friends University, to Samuel Smith but kept ownership of the farm on Hydraulic. The building located on the corner of Washington and Baltimore in Derby had been allowed to run down and was in need of a thorough cleaning. Tom and Mary Weston moved in with their six children. Mary’s son Robert Elliott had moved back to Delaware to live with his uncle Thomas Maclary, Mary’s brother. Tom Weston began repairing the hotel while Mary and the girls scrubbed down everything in the place. It took a while, but they got the facility looking pretty good and filled it with tenants.Their family expanded one final time with the birth of their daughter Grace Eulala July 26, 1905 in Derby, Kansas. During most of the time Thomas was in Kansas, he had been elected Justice of the Peace for each area he lived in. 

Mary was a good cook, baking fresh bread each day and pies for the evening meals. She soon became well-known for her culinary skills which supplemented the hotel business. Railroad crews would time their schedules to be in Derby for the evening meal. Installation of telephone lines and natural gas utilities brought work crews to Derby in the early part of the 1900s, creating a short “boom” era in the small town. The Westons rented a house close to the hotel to provide extra rooms for construction crews. When crewmen needed sack lunches to take to their worksites, Mary Weston hired local women to come in early and help prepare the lunch bags.

Laundry for the hotel was sent out and help with the ironing was provided by local ladies. The older Weston girls would assist with any mending that was required. Refrigeration was nonexistent, so things that needed to be kept cool were put into a bucket and lowered into the well behind the hotel.

Although the Westons made the hotel a successful business, they only stayed with it a few years before moving to their farm on Hydraulic in 1908. They sold the hotel to Herman O. Foulk in November 1909. The family sold their farm at the end of 1911 and settled in Oviedo, Florida to grow oranges. Thomas Weston was in good health until January 1914. He died on Oct. 1, 1914 from what the newspapers called “nervous prostration” (extreme exhaustion from stress) and was buried in Oviedo, Florida. Mary Weston and their children eventually moved back to the Derby area around October of 1915. Mary Weston died on July 7, 1941 at her son, Charles Weston’s, house on South Hydraulic and was buried in the El Paso Cemetery in Derby, Kansas.

Some of the above information was provided by the Derby Historical Museum. Read more about Derby history on their blog here: www.derbykshistorymuseum.org/blog