This is a photograph of Thomas Sears Huffaker who was born March 30, 1825, in Clay County, Missouri. Huffaker's father was George Smith Huffaker, an ordained minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church South.

Thomas Huffaker joined his father and was employed by the Methodist Episcopal Church South in 1849 as a teacher of Native American students, primarily of Delaware and Shawnee tribes. He was teaching at the Shawnee Mission when he and partner H. W. Webster contracted with the church for the management of the Kaw Mission school and farm in Council Grove, Kansas. Huffaker was to be in charge of the school and Webster would supervise the farm. In May 1851, they traveled from the Shawnee Mission to Council Grove via the Santa Fe Trail. The school opened in May 1851, with approximately 30 Kaw boys aged 6 to 17 years. The boys lived in the mission and were educated on academic subjects, farming, and Christianity.

Huffaker began courting Eliza, the daughter of Mrs. Joshua Baker, a housekeeper at the Kaw Mission. On May 5, 1852, 12 months after the mission school opened, they were married in the mission. The wedding was said to be the first of Euro-Americans in Council Grove.

Eliza helped with the instruction of the Kaw students and the white pupils as the two separate schools co-existed in the Kaw Mission from 1851-54. In 1854 the U.S. government, acting on the advice of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, closed the school for the Kanza.

The Huffakers continued to reside in the mission until 1862 when they moved into a new house one-quarter mile northeast. In 1907 Thomas and Eliza Huffaker moved back into the Kaw Mission. There the elderly couple resided with the new owners of the historic building, daughter Anna Huffaker Carpenter and her husband Homer. Thomas died on July 10, 1910 and Eliza on July 5, 1920.

Date: Between 1890 and 1899