Overview The J.B. Whitaker collection contains primarily 19th century property deeds, Civil War pension claims, and related correspondence of James Barnes Whitaker, a surveyor and early settler in Kansas Territory and a pioneer in the early development of Shawnee County and the city of Topeka. Included are papers from his partnership in the 1860s with Alfred L. Winans in the Topeka law firm of Winans & Whitaker. The collection also includes the first three volumes of a memoir by Whitaker's...