According the the Franklin County Historical Society, the Bakers settled in Pottawatomie Township in 1855 and built this stone house on the edge of Lane, Kansas.
This old stone house sits on the edge of the old town of Lane, Kansas, in a triangle of land outlined by Virgina Road (which turns into Kansas Avenue, the main road in Lane), First Street (which turns into Fourth Street in Lane) and the railroad tracks. The house is mentioned in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s On the Way Home: The Diary of a Trip from South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894. She and her husband, Almanzo, and their daughter, Rose, reached the town of Lane 118 years ago this month.
We reached Lane at 4 o’clock and had old Pet shod.The blacksmith came from Kentucky two years ago and looks just like the pictures of a Kentucky man. He has 130 acres of bottom land running down to Pottawatomie River, and a stone house as lage as any house in De Smet [South Dakota]. It is very handsome and perfectly finished. The house stands on Main Street in Lane and the land lies northwest from it. He is going back to Kentucky and wants to sell. Asks $4300 for shop, house and land. — August 17, 1894.
Originally called Shermanville for the pro-slavery brothers who founded the town, the settlement was renamed for the abolitionist James Lane after the Pottawatomie Massacre on May 24, 1856, during which several pro-slavery men were killed by John Brown‘s posse.
Diana Staresinic-Deane 