In mid-March 1856, the first emigrants of the Vegetarian Settlement Company set out for the Neosho River Valley in Kansas Territory. Henry S. Clubb promoted Kansas Territory as a permanent home for believers in vegetarianism, hydropathy, and abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, tea, coffee, and fowl and dairy products. Farms of 102 acres, radiating from an octagon-shaped center, were planned. Clubb's promises of streets, a gristmill, a sawmill, and temporary housing for the 60 families, some 150 settlers, did not materialize, and they received nothing for their $5 per acre investment in the company. Lack of successful crops, mosquitoes, deathly fever, and starvation led to scores of deaths. Four thousand Osage Indians, who traded at Cofachique and lived in the area, could do little to help. Less than 50 survived, and only four remained in the area. West stands a stone house built by brothers Capt. Samuel Stewart and Watson, two stalwart survivors and constant helpers who even formed coffins for the dead from boards, called punchuns, taken from abandoned wigwams. East, one and a half miles away, lies the four and a half mile long Vegetarian Creek. From that point and south two miles, to where it runs into the Neosho River, was the area of the colony. Miriam Davis Colt, in West to Kansas, daily recorded the events of life in the colony. By the coming of winter, her husband, three-year-old son, her sister, father, and mother were all dead, and she returned East. Now all is gone except Vegetarian Creek.