Samuel J. Reader arrived in Indianola, Shawnee County, Kansas in 1855. As an adult, his occupation was farming but he was a man of many talents and interesting hobbies. He was an avid diarist, drawer and painter until his death at the age of 78. Among his collection available at the Kansas Historical Society are his lantern slides.

Each slide is made from hand-painted glass cased in a handmade wooden frame. The slides depict a variety of subjects including ghastly creatures, like Satan and the Grim Reaper, flowers, people and animals.

Reader used a type of image projector commonly known as the magic lantern to showcase his works of art for members of the community. Lantern slides were first introduced in 1849. By the time Reader began creating his own slides in 1866, they would have been a popular form of entertainment.   

Take this off-year Election Day to revisit the history of the women's suffrage movement in Kansas. Suffrage in Kansas had many important supporters, including Stella Stubbs, the wife of Kansas Governor W. R. Stubbs (1909-1913) and Lucy Browne Johnston, the wife of the Chief Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court William Agnew Johnston (1903-1935). As these newspaper clippings illustrate, the activities in Kansas attracted the attention of national figures in the women's suffrage movement, like Susan B. Anthony.

 The official newspaper of the Kansas Equal Suffrage Association, founded in 1884, is available on Kansas Memory. To explore women's suffrage on the national level, visit Chronicling America for newspapers from across the country covering the climactic years of the women's suffrage movement. Women in Kansas were granted the right to vote in 1912, making Kansas the eighth state to do so, following Utah, Arizona and California, among others.