Dr. Ernst F.

Tonsing
P.O. Box 2001
Thousand Oaks, CA 91358-2001
May 25, 2004

Library
Kansas State Historical Society
6427 SW Sixth Avenue
Topeka, KS 66615-1099

Dear Sirs:

At long last I have located two photographs of my mother, Dorothy Tonsing,

wearing the Kansas-made silk coat and blouse of her husband’s grandmother, Ida
Challiss Martin, wife of pioneer governor of Kansas John Alexander Martin. These are
the only known images of the costume. The occasion was her talk at the Topeka
Woman’s Club in June, 1960 on “Did You Know?” in which she described the career of
the governor and the inauguration on January 11, 1887, during which Ida Martin wore the
ensemble. For the talk, Mrs. Louise Corrick, wife of Kansas Reviser of Statutes,
modeled them.

I took the photographs with a little “Brownie” camera behind our home on 105
North Courtland, Topeka, after asking my mother to wear them. The writing on the back
in ink is that of my father, the late Rev. Dr. Ernest Frederick Tonsing, for nearly thirty
years pastor of First Lutheran Church at 1234 Fairlawn, Topeka. He was the son of the
Rev. Paul Gerhardt Tonsing and Ruth Martin Tonsing of Atchison, Kansas. His mother,
my grandmother, Ruth Tonsing was the daughter of the woman who wore the dress, Ida
Challiss Martin.

The accompanying article is one that I wrote for the Earhart-Challiss-Martin-

Tonsing family to document the dress. Sadly, the over-eager men who cleared my
father’s house when he moved into the Presbyterian Retirement Home on west Sixth no
doubt stuffed the precious blouse and coat into a plastic bag and either sent it to the
Salvation Army store or set it out on the curb for removal to the dump. I still have awful
moments in which I recall the terrible loss.

Sincerely,

Ernst F. (Fred) Tonsing, Ph.D.

(805) 492-4427