Kansas.
1891. I have heard these other nicknames:… Kansas, the Sunflower State.—Mr. L. Fairweather, in American Notes and Queries, vii. 132/1.
1899. “While it is easy to speak of our Twentieth, Twenty-first, Twenty-second, and Twenty-third, this does not include the boys from the Sunflower state engaged in all branches of the service.”—‘Kansas Hist. Collections’ (1900), vi. 130.
1900. “Let the service of the Sunflower state, when the scars of a warring conflict are still unhealed, be remembered in the fact that she never gave room for draft or conscription.”—Id., p. 374.
1909. In the light of recent dispatches from Chanute, Kan., it would appear that the sunflower State is to be blamed if no successor is found to occupy the high post of chief humorist, now filled by Mark Twain.—Denver Republican, Nov.
