1862 |
Jacob F. Ensor was born in Sam’s Creek, MD. |
1875 |
Bill McCabe built a cabin on the 80 acres of land 6 miles south of Olathe he bought from the State of Kansas for $750.00. |
1876 |
McCabe built the North Barn (“Peg Barn”) using mortise and tenon construction. |
1882 |
Jacob Ensor and his brother Luke left the family farm in Sam’s Creek as teenagers to seek their fortune in the West, stopping in Kansas. |
1885 |
Luke went to Washington Territory to homestead. |
1890 |
Bill McCabe built a farmhouse in the Italianate style. He completed everything except the trim. |
1891 |
McCabe died of pneumonia, and the property passed to other owners. |
1896 |
Construction of the center part of the dairy barn began. |
1898 |
Jacob Ensor traveled from Kansas to Maryland to marry Ida DeVilbis, and they moved to Johnson County, Kansas. Their first leased farm was near what is now 87th and Antioch. |
1899 |
Marshall Hamilton Ensor was born June 22. |
1900 |
The center part of the dairy barn was finished. |
1900 |
The trim of the farmhouse was completed by owner Mr. Bill Smith. |
1904 |
Loretta Ensor was born April 22. |
1909 |
Jacob and Ida Ensor purchased the 120-acre farm for $12,000. |
1910 |
The north basement of the farmhouse was finished with a concrete floor. |
1910 |
Marshall started woodworking. His cousin gave him a hand scroll saw that he used to craft miniature furniture items from cigar-box wood. |
1912-16 |
Jacob and Marshall added the front and back porches to the farmhouse. They extended both 1st and 2nd stories of the house to the west with bay windows. |
1915 |
Marshall designed and built a kitchen cabinet using wood grown on the Ensor farm. It was entered in a national high school woodworking contest sponsored by the SIMONDS SAW COMPANY. Of 1000 entries, he won the first prize, a woodworker’s tool set worth $35.00. |
1916 |
During his junior year, Marshall was a paid teaching assistant in the Manual Arts courses. In the fall of his senior year, he built a radio receiver and a spark-gap transmitter. It was battery powered. |
1917 |
Marshall graduated from Olathe High School. He took a course at the Sweeney Automotive School and graduated. He traveled to Maryland to visit relatives and arrived back home the day before Christmas. |
1918 |
Marshall attended Kansas State Teachers College part time. In the fall, he was hired to teach Manual Arts at Olathe High School. |
1920s |
The machine shed was built on the Ensor farm. |
1921 |
Marshall formed a Radio Club and Leon Harris was a Charter Member. |
1922 |
Loretta played center on the girl’s basketball team during junior and senior years. She won a Silver Cup for her performance. Marshall built a transmitter and receiver and set up an operating station in a cabinet in the kitchen of the farmhouse. Power was supplied by batteries in the basement. An 80-foot tower just east of the driveway held the far end of the “cage” antenna. He used callsign 9MHE. |
1923 |
In April, Loretta earned her 1st Class Radio Operator’s License. She celebrated her 19th birthday. |
1923 |
Sometime in the late spring or early summer, Marshall received notice from the Department of Commerce that his radio station at the farmhouse had been assigned the callsign 9BSP. In June Loretta graduated from OHS. Later that year or early in 1924, the radio station at Olathe High School, whose trustee was Loretta, was assigned callsign 9UA. This station was the first permanent school radio station in Kansas. |
1924 |
The 4-horsepower 1911 Cushman Engine became the new motor for driving the generator. The generator charged the lead-acid batteries. |
1925 |
On January 18, amateur radio station 9UA was received by Lawrence “Jack” Conner in Sydney, Australia. Jack wrote to Loretta that she was the first woman to have crossed the Pacific Ocean by radio. Marshall began building the Radio Room onto the house at the east side of the kitchen. The wood, windows, and door came from the dismantled Eureka Baptist Church at 175th and Pflumm. |
1926 |
H.C.C. McCabe reported in the January issue of Radio that he had recently received 9UA. McCabe lived in Wellington, New Zealand. |
1927 |
The prefix “W” was added to the callsigns of amateur radio stations in the United States. Thus, 9BSP and 9UA became W9BSP and W9UA, respectively. |
1929 |
In December Marshall answered a call for volunteers from the ARRL to transmit lessons in CW and basic electrical theory. He called his course “Teaching Radio by Radio.” He acquired a 2nd tower to increase the height of the 246-foot-long wire antenna and thereby increase the reach of the “Radio by Radio” lessons. |
1929 |
A new powerful transmitter was built and Marshall began using it to teach radio listeners the Morse Code and radio theory so they also could become Amateur Radio Operators. The American Radio Relay League sanctioned the work. Only a few stations did this free effort to gain operators. |
1930 |
On June 18, Marshall married schoolteacher and librarian Miss Ina Dana. |
1930 |
Marshall built the concrete stairs to the basement. |
1932 |
Marshall earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Kansas State Teachers College, Pittsburg, KS. |
1935 |
Commercial electric lines came to the farm, making it possible to increase transmitter power to 500 watts. |
1936 |
William S. Paley, President of CBS Radio Network, began the special Amateur Radio Awards program. |
1937 |
Marshall used several power line transformers (pole pigs) to get 2400 volts to power his new homebrew 1000-watt transmitter. |
1937 |
Marshall designed and built the first electric basketball scoreboard used at Olathe High School. |
1937 |
Marshall designed and built a bench drill stand to carry a Black & Decker hand drill. Alonzo Decker was awarded a patent for a Bench Drill Stand on April 21, 1936. It is not known if Marshall’s device predated the patent or if Marshall communicated with Decker about it. |
1941 |
In a letter dated February 18, Assistant Secretary A. L. Budlong of The American Radio Relay League informed Marshall Ensor of his nomination to receive the 1940 William S. Paley Amateur Radio Award for having taught “Radio by Radio” for 10 years. |
1941 |
The Olathe Chamber of Commerce, on May 27, gave a dinner in honor of Marshall Ensor’s winning the Paley award. |
1941 |
On June 2, Marshall Ensor received the 1940 William S. Paley Amateur Radio Award at a luncheon at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. He and Loretta Ensor, because she helped, were flown there on a TWA airliner. |
1941 |
Marshall Ensor suffered severe injuries including fractured skull, pelvis, and arm when he fell while coming down a ladder from the gymnasium roof where he had just installed a new antenna for the high school’s radio transmitter. His recovery, after eight weeks, was complete. |
1943 |
Marshall became Chief Electronics Officer at the Naval Air Station in Seattle, Washington. He taught radio operators, oversaw repairs and helped in research of RDF. He was a Lt Commander. |
1946 |
Marshall returned to Olathe, Kansas, and resumed teaching at Olathe High School. |
1953 |
Throughout the 1950s, the woodworking projects entered by students of Marshall into the Ford Industrial Arts Competition regularly won or placed in their divisions. |
1954 |
Marshall and others organized the first Civil Defense group in Kansas at the Olathe City offices. |
1959 |
The entire Woodworking Class at Olathe High School won national awards for various projects. |
1962 |
Thomas Brown, one of Marshall’s woodworking students, made a platform rocker whose design was based on the rocker that Jacob and Ida Ensor had brought to Kansas from Maryland. After placing in a national competition, Thomas presented the chair to representatives of President John F. Kennedy in a ceremony on the grounds outside the White House. |
1965 |
Marshall H. Ensor retired from teaching and set out to put things in order around the farm so that some day it might become a place where others could see what farm life, a long career in the teaching of industrial arts, and early amateur radio were like. |
1969 |
In October, during the halftime of the high-school football game between Olathe and Ottawa, Dr. Melvin Winters, Superintendent of Schools, named the athletic field Marshall H. Ensor Field. Officials from the Olathe Naval Air Station assisted in the ceremony. |
1970 |
After 70 years of farm life, 46 years of school teaching, 3 years in the Navy and 54 years of amateur radio operation, Marshall H. Ensor died after a short illness. |
1973 |
Loretta did not renew her Amateur Radio License, content to have operated for 50 years. |
19?? |
After considerable planning, the Ensor Farm was deeded over to Johnson County, Kansas. Loretta Ensor was able to keep living on the farm even after it became a Museum. After a length of time and operating disagreements, Loretta got a legal withdrawal of the agreement with Johnson County and regained ownership. She then decided to operate the Ensor Museum with aid of hired help. She created a Trust that included three lifelong family friends and a bank. She continued to live in the farmhouse that had become part of a museum. She showed guests around the historic site with pride. Loretta Ensor continued being her gracious self and from time to time gave interviews as well as attended social events. |
1991 |
Loretta was plagued with deforming arthritis; she used a cane to get around. Upon her death in 1991 the long enduring story of two generations of the Ensor Farm Family came to a close. Not to be forgotten, the memories are kept alive at the ENSOR PARK and MUSEUM. |
1995 |
The Museum re-opened as the non-profit Ensor Farmsite and Museum, operated by the Trustees. |
2004 |
The Museum property was accepted as a Kansas Historic Place and then approved as a National Historic Place. |
2006 |
The City of Olathe worked with the nearly insolvent Loretta Ensor Trust to assume ownership and operation of the historic site. |
2008 |
Marshall Ensor was inducted into the Olathe Public Schools “Alumni Wall of Honor“. (see Marshall’s bio page) |
2013 |
W9BSP 1 kW transmitter originally built by Marshall Ensor was restored to working order by Harry and Joe Krout. |
2023 |
Ensorfest 23 was held at the Ensor Park and Museum celebrating 100 years of amateur radio on the Ensor Farm. The radio station at the farmhouse had been assigned the callsign 9BSP in 1923. |