Wichita home of the original Buffalo Bill to be auctioned

Many passersby probably don’t realize they’re driving past history on North Market Street, but that’s where the original Buffalo Bill once lived, and his house is now up for auction.

William Mathewson lived at 1047 N. Market St. from about 1906 until his death in 1916.

McCurdy Real Estate & Auction is auctioning the 1904 house, which today is a duplex. Bidding opens at 2 p.m. on July 26th and closes at 2:30 p.m. on Aug. 11.

Even though Buffalo Bill Cody went on to become the better known of the two Buffalo Bills — he was a showman who was adept at self promotion — even he acknowledged that Mathewson was the original Buffalo Bill.

“Mathewson was a modest man and did not like to promote himself,” said McCurdy auctioneer Rick Brock.

The New York native’s work trapping and trading for the Northwestern Fur Co. brought him to the area that became Kansas.

According to his 1916 obituary in The Wichita Beacon, Mathewson was the first known white settler in Wichita.

He earned his nickname by hunting buffalo — killing as many as 80 in one day, reports say — to help other settlers who were starving in late 1860 and early 1861.

The Kansas Historical Society said he also was given an Indian name: Long-Bearded Dangerous Man. That was bestowed on “him by the Kiowa chieftain, Satanta, after the warrior had received a severe beating from the trader at the Cow Creek post in 1861.”

The Historical Society said that “Mathewson used the trust he had cultivated with the Indians to gather delegations of them in 1865 to negotiate the Little Arkansas Treaty and in 1867 for the Medicine Lodge Council meeting, the latter resulted in Indian lands being consolidated into smaller tracts and opened up Kansas for railroad expansion.”

Mathewson, who became a banker and a civic leader, once owned a homestead at East Central and Hydraulic.

“That residence was known to everyone in Wichita as Mathewson’s Pasture,” Brock said.

Within that area today there is a short road called Mathewson Lane, and Mathewson Street is just north and south of the property.

Mathewson lived at the homestead from 1869 to 1906, when he sold it for $75,000. That January 1906 sale included the last 38 acres of the original 160-acre quarter section.

“It would appear that is the point he moved over to the Market property,” Brock said.

Mathewson died at his home on March 21, 1916.

Brock isn’t sure when the house was converted to a duplex.

“It still has a lot of the traditional architecture,” he said. “It is kind of also a bungalow style because you do have the second story to it.”

There’s a covered front porch, an elliptical attic window and old stone foundation.

On one side, there’s a bedroom, a bathroom, a formal dining room and access to a basement and the covered back porch.

On the other side, there are two bedrooms and one bathroom along with what Brock called a “roomier layout.”

He said a buyer could convert the 2,432-square-foot house back to a single-family home.

“I don’t think that would be . . . very difficult to achieve.”

The home’s original owner was Walter Minick, a physician who went on to become mayor of Wichita.

A Beacon story from 1901 reported that Minick purchased two North Market lots where he planned to build a house for himself and another to either sell or rent.

“They will be modern to the smallest detail,” he said, with “. . . all the little convenient turns which can be put into a house.”

He listed luxuries such as electricity and indoor plumbing.

He said that if “any one knows of any convenience in the city of Wichita that I haven’t got when they are finished” to be sure to let him know and he “shall put it in.”

There’s a sign on the front porch that says Minick-Mathewson House 1904.

Brock said the area immediately surrounding the house is interesting, too.

“There are some beautiful homes of stature up and down both sides of that block.”