On Saturday, Oct. 25, the Kansas Oil Museum hosted their yearly cemetery tour, where attendees learned about a handful of people who lived in El Dorado and were buried in the Sunset Lawns Cemetery. On this tour, the actors told the story of the disappearance of Milton Bradley, a county treasurer who unexpectedly went missing in 1890. His wife, Sara J. Kline, was on the search for him, trying to find any clue as to his whereabouts.
“I was unaware of this guy who disappeared and went missing, and that's one of the things that I will carry forward and continue to think about,” attendee Melissa Winter said. “It's weird to think about what he did when he was gone and why he ended up in Kansas City and not home.”
Seth Knowles, the actor that played Morrell D. Seymour, is a big fan of mysteries, being drawn in by the mystery of the past and being able to learn about them today. He finds it interesting that even though Bradley was important to El Dorado, he left without a trace.
“This dude was a big part of El Dorado’s foundation, and he just disappeared, like that,” Knowles said. “No one knows why he did what he did, and no one knew what was going on. It's a mystery.”
Though this cemetery tour is normally hosted at the Sunset Lawns Cemetery, located at 2100 W. Sunset Road, because of weather concerns, the tour was hosted inside the oil museum, located at 383 E. Central Ave. There, the actors kept the same routine, with the characters’ tombstones drawn out to still give the tour group a good visual.
“I think the weather considerations were fine,” attendee Mike Reed said. “I think the atmosphere would've been better if we could have been at the cemetery, but I totally understand why they didn't do that. I think they improvised well, and I like how they made the tombstones, so you could still get a perspective and an idea on what their headstones look like.”
Milton Bradley was just one of the many important people in El Dorado’s long history and reintroducing him to newer generations undeniably helped his memory and his legacy live on.
“In the simplest and smallest places, like El Dorado, you can find mysteries and stories that people would just take to the grave,” Knowles said. “If that's just one example of the number of people that live here, that means that everyone’s life has just a little bit of unique mystery to it, and honestly, sharing that is beautiful.”