Allana Saenger, from Riley County Historical Society, will be presenting “Forming a Free-State Manhattan,” at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 26, in the Community Room.

Kansas Territory opened for settlement in 1854 under the Kansas-Nebraska Act that mandated “popular sovereignty” in the territory. This allowed settlers to decide whether slavery would be allowed within the borders of Kansas. Seeking to establish Kansas as a Free-State, anti-slavery settlers such as Isaac and Ellen Goodnow and Reverend Charles and Julia Lovejoy traveled with the New England Emigrant Aid Company to settle in Manhattan in the spring of 1855.

In this presentation, she will look at Bleeding Kansas history through the dairies of these early Manhattan pioneers and their determination to form a free-state.