collection may be said to have had its beginning in the year 1895, but nothing definite was accomplished till 1901, when Mrs. W. A. Johnston was president of the Kansas Federation of Women's Clubs, and the executive board accepted a small set of photogravures—the gift of Mrs. Kate A. Aplington of Council Grove—to be used as the nucleus of a state art study collection. A report of the board says: “Later it was thought best to let some district try the experiment of caring for the traveling collection, and as the Fourth district offered to frame the pictures and keep them in circulation in the schools of the district, the collection was placed in their hands.”
At the first board meeting of the Kansas Federation of Women's clubs in 1903, a motion was made to publish a “Book of Quotations,” the profits from the sales to be devoted to the purchase of large size carbon photographs for use by the clubs and schools of the state for public art exhibits. The proceeds from the sale of the book netted over $360, which was used for the purchase of 50 pictures of the Italian, and about 60 of the Dutch and Flemish schools. A small German collection was added later. In 1905 a very full fine French collection was added. The following year a new English collection was added, and during the first three years the gallery was in existence the State Federation held 91 exhibits.
From the first it was intended at some future time to offer this collection to the state, and accordingly, in Feb., 1907, the executive board of the Federation met in Topeka and took formal action regarding this. A bill was passed by the legislature of 1907, authorizing the acceptance of the collection by the state.
Aplington, Kate Adele, for whom the above collection is named, was born in Sugar Grove, Lee Co., Ill., March 1, 1859, a daughter of Henry H. and Elizabeth Melinda (Deming) Smith, both natives of New York. Her father was an educator and from 1854 to 1879 was engaged continuously in school work, being city superintendent of schools in Savannah, Mt. Carroll, Galena, Macomb, Alton, Polo and Ottawa, Ill., and for 12 years was county superintendent of Whiteside county. Ill. As a girl Mrs. Aplington was quite a student, and was of great help to her father in his laboratory work. She was graduated in 1876, and immediately took some post-graduate work, to fit herself for a university course, but failing eyesight prevented. She taught two terms in the Ottawa (Ill.) high school, and while there helped establish a reading room and library. On June 19, 1879, she was married to John Aplington, a graduate of the Union College of Law of Chicago, and in 1880 they moved to Council Grove, Kan., where they have since resided. In 1901 Mrs. Aplington was appointed a member of the Charities Conference committee and with other members visited the Girls' Industrial School at Beloit, making recommendations that domestic science be installed in the school. In 1902 she was made chairman of the manual training committee of the Kansas State Social Science Federation, and wrote hundreds of letters to educators in the larger towns, from whom
