Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Osawatomie, KS

Osawatomie is a city in Miami County in eastern Kansas, about 61 miles southwest of Kansas City, on the Marais des Cygnes River near Pottawatomie Creek, and part of the Kansas City metropolitan area.

Its name is a portmanteau of the two streams — 'Osa' from the Osage River (the former name of the Marais des Cygnes) and 'watomie' from Pottawatomie Creek — echoing the Osage and Pottawatomie peoples of the area.

Osawatomie was settled in October 1854 by abolitionist Free State settlers brought to Kansas Territory with help from the Emigrant Aid Society.

Abolitionist John Brown made Osawatomie his Kansas headquarters, based at the cabin of the Reverend Samuel Adair, whose wife Florella was Brown's half-sister.

On August 30, 1856, Brown and about 40 Free State fighters defended the town against several hundred pro-slavery raiders in the Battle of Osawatomie; the town was burned, but Brown's stand earned him the nickname 'Osawatomie Brown.'

The Kansas Republican Party was organized at Osawatomie in May 1859.

John Brown Memorial Park, on the battle site, was dedicated in 1910, when former President Theodore Roosevelt used the occasion to deliver his famous 'New Nationalism' speech.

President Barack Obama gave a major economic address in Osawatomie in December 2011, a visit widely linked to Roosevelt's speech there a century earlier.

The John Brown Museum State Historic Site in the park preserves the Adair cabin, one of only three buildings to survive the Battle of Osawatomie.

Osawatomie State Hospital, which admitted its first patient on November 1, 1866, remains one of the city's major institutions, today a 174-bed psychiatric hospital.