If you’re one of the 16,600 serious or casual history buffs who are members of the popular Facebook group Wichita History from Our Perspective, the name Mike Maxton will likely sound familiar.
Maxton, 70, is one of the most active members of the group, and he regularly authors posts about Wichita history, sharing old newspaper clippings about the city’s earliest postal route or then-and-now photos of recognizable local buildings.
He’s also usually the first person to hop in the comments when members of the group ask for help learning about the history of their houses or are curious which business originally occupied a certain building. Maxton is an expert at tracking that information down, and he loves discovering the answers to those questions as much as the people who posed them.
But Maxton has taken his love for Wichita’s past a few steps further than the typical keyboard historian. In addition to spending hours researching online, he also is the founder of a group of Wichita’s most devoted history buffs that regularly gets together for behind-the-scenes tours of historical buildings and then discusses what they saw over lunch.
Informally called “Lunch Bunch,” the group includes many of the city’s other most active amateur historians, including Wichita history writer Jim Mason; postcard enthusiast Hal Ottaway of the “Joyland” family; Janiece Baum Dixon, whose uncle Ralph Baum founded the local Ralph Baum’s Burger House chain in the late 1930s; Sara Joy Harmon, the creator of a few documentaries about Wichita’s past, including 2019’s “For Your Amusement: The Wonderland Park on Ackerman Island”; and Niki Conrad, photographer and president of Old Cowtown Museum.
Tours and postcards
The first Lunch Bunch gathering was in November of 2017, when Maxton invited a group of about seven like-minded members of the Facebook group to get together at The Monarch, 579 W. Douglas, for a lunchtime show-and-tell. The gathered group gabbed about local history and shared old photos and postcards. Eventually, the group began arranging building tours, starting with the Old Mission Mausoleum at 3434 E. 21st St.
Since then, the group has also toured more than a dozen sites, including the Swope Apartments, the old Dockum building at Douglas and Seneca, the Hillcrest apartment building at 3241 E. Douglas, the old Sedgwick County Courthouse at 510 N. Main and the Broadview Hotel at 400 W. Douglas.
‘I did not like history’
Maxton wasn’t always interested in history. When he attended Phillips University in Enid, Okla., as a young man, he was not excited to learn that he’d have to take a history course.
But the teacher of the first class he took was a talented lecturer.
“I did not like history,” Maxton said. “But I loved that guy, and I loved that course. So I signed up for another course.”
Over three years, Maxton took four courses from the teacher, and that was the first time he realized that stories from the past actually did interest him.
Maxton, who grew up in Wichita, served in the United States Air Force then went on to build a successful career with the United States Postal Service, starting as a part-time employee in 1981 and working his way up to an executive position. His career took him all over the country, and in 2009 he was working in Dallas as an executive manager of plant support when he was offered the chance to retire early.
He decided to move back to Wichita to be closer to family, including his father, who was in the early stages of dementia. Maxton was going through some of his parents’ belongings when learned something he didn’t know: His paternal grandfather, who Maxton thought was from North Dakota, actually had been born in Southeast Kansas.
“Dad never really wanted to talk about it, and I don’t know why,” Maxton said. “But I started wanting to know how I could find out about my granddad and my great granddad.”
His research introduced him to the website newspapers.com — which is a collection of PDFs of old newspapers — and to ancestry.com.
Soon, Maxton was spending hours online and in the Wichita Public Library, piecing together his family history. Through the course of that research, he also learned more about Wichita history and was fascinated.
Over time, he became an expert in tracking down all kinds of historical information using public databases and history websites. That kind of detective work appealed to him, he said, likely because of his past with the postal service.
“For 15 to 20 years, my job was real technical. It was taking raw data and turning it into what I always called ‘actionable items” or “actionable results,” he said. “I got to be pretty good at figuring out how to get that and do something with it. And I recognize that’s what I’m doing: Where are the data sources, and how can I use them?”
In 2014, Maxton was deep into his local history obsession when Barb Myers, who at the time was a local history graduate student, started a Facebook group she called “Wichita History from My Perspective.” (The name has since been changed to “Wichita History from Our Perspective.”)
It quickly attracted people from around the city who shared Maxton’s passion and who would post photos and historical data they found interesting. The page also allowed local history buffs to connect with each other, both online and in person.
The site is also one of the reasons Maxton has become recognized as a go-to for historic information about Wichita. Not only is he willing to help individuals who are looking for information, but he’s also become a volunteer mentor to large groups. He’s an unofficial adviser to a tiny historical society in the small northeast Kansas town of Onaga. It’s made up of about six people in their 80s who started their own Facebook page and began posting pleas for help finding information.
He couldn’t resist digging up the details they wanted, and over the years, he’s continued to help the group, even though he’s never met any of the members in person. “That one sort of turned into my little pet project,” he said.
Hillcrest history in works
Nearly three years ago, Maxton got in touch with the manager of the Hillcrest apartments and offered to do a historical presentation about the building for its residents. Maxton had always been interested in the building, and it became one of his favorite research topics.
The manager accepted the offer, and Maxton eventually put on two Hillcrest presentations. He then was asked to write a history of the Hillcrest to be published for the building’s 100th anniversary in 2027. He’s working on it now.
Maxton says he’s not sure if he’ll ever be able to stop helping people answer their historical questions. He has the knowledge, he said, so why not?
Just this month, he helped a woman who posted on Wichita History from Our Perspective that she was trying to research her grandmother’s house. He found information for another woman searching for descendants of a woman whose embroidery work she’d inherited. And he clarified for another person that the photo of Don’s Restaurant she had in her possession was likely not the Don’s Restaurant that once operated in Wichita.
“I’m just addicted to it,” he said. “I like anybody’s family history story, and if they’re sincere, I’ll try to figure out whatever. I have fun doing it.”
He’s also still devoted to the Lunch Bunch, which now meets about every three months, anytime a member can arrange a tour of an interesting building. And there are still plenty of interesting buildings left for them to tour, he said.
Maxton suggests that anyone interested in diving into local history join the Wichita History from Our Perspective Facebook page.
