Hobbs Park Memorial in Lawrence, Douglas County, United States | Monument

Welcome to Hobbs Park Memorial in Lawrence, Kanses in the United States.
Lawrence, Kansas was founded in the summer of 1854, led by Boston Abolitionists. Many shared a vision of a nation free from the brutality of slavery, which imprisoned nearly four million Africans across the South. Missouri was slavery's western outpost and the new Kansas Territory was to be its next conquest. But the pioneers of Kansas halted the westward expansion of slavery, igniting both the Civil War, and a profound revolution in the way the country was governed.
Today, a few blocks east of downtown Lawrence, Kansas, Hobbs Park Memorial, a new public Monument is emerging, tying our city and state to one of the most dramatic and critical chapters of American history. The Monument enshrines the highest ground on Lawrence's old East Side as an important regional historic site. The 1860s Murphy-Bromelsick house has been relocated to Hobbs Park, as a tribute to the vernacular architectural scale of the surrounding residential and industrial district, the oldest in the city. The park is the home-site of Pennsylvania newspaper publisher John Speer, an unparalleled hero of the free-state cause in the battle over Kansas statehood. Speer, his presses, allies and adversaries made "Bleeding Kansas" the birthplace of what became the battlefield struggle that put an end to the scourge of legal slavery in America.
As icon and artifact, the new Monument at Hobbs Park Memorial will help reawaken a public awareness of Lawrence, Kansas' roots in the drama of our American historical experience. Through the museum markers at the site, and media materials which focus on narratives of the era, the Monument will showcase the tenacity and courage of the people who built our state, defeated the slave system, and preserved the Union. We'll remind residents, visitors, and especially our young, that we are stewards of a hard-won legacy of freedom, human dignity and civil rights.
Through sites like the Hobbs Park Memorial, and a new National Heritage Area, the meaning and significance of our Kansas legacy will be protected, interpreted and promoted, to the cultural, ecological and economic benefit of Douglas County and the entire region.