photo by: Contributed by Historic Lecompton

The Frederick P. Stanton mansion's entrance from the south.

This summer, would-be archeologists can get a taste of fieldwork — looking for bottles, buttons and many other artifacts — at the ruins of a home built by a former acting territorial governor of Kansas in the 19th century.

The Kansas Archeology Training Program is currently accepting enrollees for this summer’s field school, which will explore the ruins in Lecompton known as the Mount Aeolia mansion. The mansion was built in 1857 and has sat abandoned since the 1940s.

The home was built in 1857 for acting territorial governor Frederick P. Stanton and his family, but there’s far more to its story than just them. Paige Bump, project and outreach coordinator with the Kansas Historical Society, said the field school participants will be helping uncover clues about the building’s inhabitants from throughout its entire history.

“We are hoping to find anything left behind by the various occupants of the mansion from 1859 to the 1940s to learn more about their lives,” Bump said.

Stanton only served as acting governor of the territory for two short periods in 1857, first from April 15 to May 27 and again from Nov. 16 to Dec. 21. He had the mansion built in hopes that Lecompton might become the state capital and the town would develop around the property.

During Stanton’s latter stretch as acting territorial governor, the crisis between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions over the Lecompton Constitution was escalating. In December 1857, according to the Historic Lecompton website, Stanton called an extra session of the legislature, which now had a free-stater majority, to address the issue. But later that month, the Lecompton Constitution with slavery was approved in a public vote in which free-staters did not participate, and Stanton was removed from office.

Stanton and his family would stay in Kansas for a few years after this; they left the state in 1862 after Kansas had entered the Union and Topeka, not Lecompton, had been chosen as the capital.

Through the rest of the 19th century and into the 20th, the mansion would change hands several times, and it was slowly falling into disrepair. In the 1940s, a former Kansas governor, Harry Woodring, bought the property and attempted to renovate it, Bump said. But the project was never completed, and the property has been abandoned since that attempt.

photo by: Contributed by the Kansas Historical Society

Ruins of the Stanton Mansion

Now, in the 21st century, the Mount Aeolia site has begun to attract the attention of historians. It was added to the state’s historical register in 2015, and Bump said many bits and pieces of history are waiting inside it to be excavated, cleaned and cataloged.

The field school, which is open to both youth and adults, will be looking for all sorts of materials left by the previous inhabitants, whether whole or in pieces, Bump said — “dishware, bottles, ceramics, buttons, hardware and more.”

Each day, participants will spend the morning learning about the site’s history and the basics of archeology. In the afternoon, participants will get to do hands-on work, whether at the excavation site or in the archeology lab, Bump said.

There’s room for people with many kinds of talents in archeology, Bump said. She said working in the field involves “archeological surveys, mapping, recording the archeological material, photography and excavations,” while the lab work involves the sorting, cleaning and cataloging tasks.

The field school program runs June 6-15 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day, and registration is open until May 31 at kansashistory.gov/p/2025-kansas-archeology-training-program-field-school/14622. Participants can sign up for just one day of the program or a weekend if they choose, or they can take part in all 10 days. The fee to register for the field school is $35 for members of the Kansas Anthropological Association, $90 for non-members and $15 for middle- and high-school students. Participants must be 12 and older, and those 17 and under must be accompanied by an adult.

Bump said the training program has been visiting Kansas archeological sites and training future archeologists for over 50 years. This year’s program will work with Laura Murphy, an associate professor of sociology and anthropology from Washburn University.

If you don’t want to participate in the field school itself but still want to learn more about the site and its history, there will be two opportunities for the general public to view the site for free. They will be June 7 and 11 at 2 p.m. each day.