Wagonmaster's House
Richard Williams
Richard Williams was born in Tennessee in 1830, son of Judge Arthur Williams. As a young man, Richard came to Johnson County in the 1850s, employed as a surveyor by the U.S. government. During the 1850s and early 1860s, Dick Williams was a "wagonmaster", escorting wagon trains from Kansas City to Santa Fe and other western destinations.
Sometime in the 1850s, Richard Williams hired the Garrett brothers, stone masons, to build his two-story limestone house on a site allotted in 1857 to Shawnee Indian John Pumpkin. Williams' family tradition says the house was built in 1853, although most likely in 1857-1860. The house became known as the "Wagonmaster's House" on the southeast corner of Shawnee Mission Parkway and Nieman Road. The old house survived some 100 years until being dismantled in 1959, its limestone rocks removed to Shawnee Mission Park for possible future reconstruction in Old Shawnee Town.
Marker is on Shawnee Mission Parkway near Melrose Lane, on the right when traveling east.
Courtesy hmdb.org
