Martha Knudsen

Martha Knudsen, 93, died Sunday, September 20 2020) in Newton.

She was born February 19, 1927. She was the adopted daughter of Rex Moody, Newton, KS. She spent most of her childhood years with her foster family, Jacob & Marie Dester of Newton.

Martha graduated from Moundridge High School and went on to Northwestern University in Chicago where she graduated as a Dental Hygienist. She worked 40 years in dental offices in Memphis, Tennessee; Wichita and Newton, Kansas before retiring in 1986.

She married Ivan Knudsen on September 1, 1956

After retiring, Martha, who was a self-taught artist, found her passion for drawing, her specialty being pen and ink. She started with barns and windmills because they had straight lines and very little shading. Over the next couple years, she developed more of an architectural style of drawing. This led to a series of Kansas things: stone houses; schoolhouses; courthouses; churches; windmills and three sets of barn notes. She became known as the Kansas Barn lady. In 1991 she published her first Kansas Barn Calendar. She started with four different barns from different counties and then set out to find eight more barns from an additional eight counties She ended up publishing 20 annual calendars, every barn different. She developed and published 4 Kansas Barn Book with barns from her calendars and as many histories as she could find. Barns from every county in Kansas were represented in her books. Martha was featured as one of “Hatteberg’s People” in 1993 and was included in his book, “More Kansas People”.

We have Barn Books II and III