Millie Hodge and her husband owned two properties at Cowtown, a discovery unearthed 10 years ago.
Cowtown Executive Director Jacky Goerzen remembers the moment in 2011 when a curator made a significant discovery.
"You guys aren't going to believe what I've found," Goerzen recalled the curator saying.
The curator presented her findings to the Cowtown staff and told them they needed to reinterpret the house.
"We'd been interpreting it as what we were told," Goerzen said, "which was that it was the church and the parsonage that went with the church."
The parsonage at Cowtown was actually a one-bedroom house built by Wesley Hodge, an African-American blacksmith. Wesley and his family moved to Wichita from Mississippi around 1876, about six years after the city was incorporated. Goerzen says the family joined a growing group of people who moved to Wichita.
"There was an African American population in 1875. That was about 3.2% of the city's permanent population," Goerzen said. "And so they might've just been an influx at that time, but by 1880, the census reported that approximately 1% of the residents were African-American."
According to Goerzen, Wesley died in 1885 at the age of 45. He left behind Millie and their two children, 15-year-old Fannie and 13-year-old James. Millie went on to purchase the city's first Presbyterian church, built in 1870 at 2nd and Wichita. She had it moved next to her home at 607 N. Main, where she then converted it into a boarding house.
"And it was considered to be a very fine boarding house," Goerzen said. "The Wichita Eagle in 1887 said it was a first-class hotel for colored people on North Main."
The boarding house was converted back to a church when it was donated to Cowtown in 1952.
Goerzen said the 2011 discovery of the Black property owners led the staff to completely restructure how the house was interpreted at Cowtown and highlight a piece of Wichita history that nobody knew about.
After more research, the staff decided to paint the house olive green and change out the photographs above the fireplace.
"There's a couple of African-American portraits as opposed to what was here before," Goerzen said. "And there is some signage that we put up in the kitchen denoting that this belongs to the Hodge family and kind of explaining their history."
Millie Hodge was considered a real trailblazer. She was active at one of the oldest Black churches in Wichita, Calvary Missionary Baptist Church, where her daughter played their very first organ in 1878.
Goerzen said Millie Hodge was held in high esteem.
"She is considered to be one of the daughters of Wichita," Goerzen said. "Everyone at Cavalry Baptist called her Mother Hodge. She was really popular in the community. She's mentioned in the newspaper several times. Her daughter got married three times and her daughter's weddings are in the newspaper, along with who was at the wedding and what kind of gifts they brought and all that kind of stuff. "
Millie never remarried and died at the age of 97. She and other members of the Hodge family are buried in Highland Cemetery on 9th and Hillside.
Reenactor Sheila Kinnard will portray Millie Hodge during "Women of the West" on Saturday, Sept. 4, at Old Cowtown. Goerzen said Millie should be remembered because she paved the way for other women to do things.
"You need to know what these women went through, what their struggles were to get to where we are today," Goerzen said. "And that's true of all of history. You have to know where we've been, to know where we're going."
