Carl C. Lamb supplies the energy and enterprise for the principal garage and automobile agency and also for the editorial management of the principal paper at Dunlap, where his father John B. Lamb is president of the Dunlap Farmers Bank and an extensive landholder, and his grandfather A. B. Lamb was one of the early settlers in that section of Lyon County. Thus three successive generations have been identified with that part of Kansas and have materially influenced its development and progress.
This branch of the Lamb family came from England to North Carolina in colonial times. A. B. Lamb, the founder of the family in Kansas, was born in North Carolina in 1826, was reared and married in his native state and in 1866 moved to Indiana and in 1868 to Cherokee County, Kansas. In 1878 he established his home in Lyon County and spent his last years at Dunlap. He was a farmer and stockman, and though a native of the South was both a republican and a Quaker, and though drafted for service in the Southern army he paid $500 for a substitute. He married Jemima Pickett, who was born in North Carolina in 1830 and died in 1869. A. B. Lamb died at Dunlap in June, 1913. Their children were: Martha, wife of W. E. Harvey, a farmer and a minister of the Quaker Church living in Cherokee County; Emily, wife of F. M. Fulkerson, who for many years was a prominent grain dealer and elevator owner and also owner of cotton gins in Oklahoma but is now retired; the next three children in order of age died from diphtheria when very young; John B. Lamb was the sixth in order of birth; V. C. Lamb is a farmer near Dunlap and also an extensive dealer in horses and mules; Flora is the widow of W. M. Morgan, who had a plantation near Los Angeles, California, and she still resided there.
John B. Lamb was born in Chatham County, North Carolina, February 11, 1863, and had lived in Kansas since he was about five years of age. He grew up on his father’s farm and at the age of twenty-one started out to make his own way in the world. He is one of the most successful men in that part of the state and he had encountered and successfully overcome many of the difficulties which poor men have to struggle with. For a year he worked on a farm at wages of $12.50 a month. With his small capital he bought a farm on credit, and tireless industry for a number of years finally brought him well along the road to prosperity. At the present time he had a farm of 240 acres south of Dunlap, another 600 acres in Case County, and his holdings altogether aggregate 1,200 acres. He also had one of the handsomest residences in Dunlap, owned a large interest in the general store there, and for the past fourteen years had been president of the Farmers Bank. He had also taken an active part in local affairs, had served as township trustee and on the school board, is a republican, a trustee in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and is affiliated with Dunlap Lodge No. 50 of the Knights of Pythias. In 1884 near Americus, Kansas, John B. Lamb married Miss Kate Morgan, a daughter of the late J. B. Morgan, who was a Lyon County farmer. Of the six children Carl C. is the oldest. The second, Chloe, graduated from the Dunlap High School, had a three years’ course in the State University at Lawrence, then taught for four years, and is now the wife of Steele Spraul, an electrician living at Lacon, Illinois. Clyde, the third child, is on his father’s farm south of Dunlap. Flora is the wife of R. Campbell, a railway man living in Kansas City, Kansas. Lola is a graduate of the Dunlap High School and received a life teacher’s certificate after completing a course in the Kansas State Normal at Emporia, and is now a teacher in the Dunlap High School. Pearl, the youngest of the family, is a junior in the Dunlap High School.
Carl C. Lamb was born at Dunlap January 4, 1886, and was given a liberal education as preparation for his life’s duties and had made himself an efficient factor in the local citizenship. He attended the public schools, graduating from the academic department of Baker University and some years later took a two years’ course in the Kansas State University Law Department, though he had not carried out his earlier ambition to engage in practice as a lawyer. He gave up his law course in 1912 to return to Dunlap and had since been one of the leading merchants. His principal business is operating a fine garage which had a floor space of 100 by 80 feet. He had the exclusive agency for selling several well known makes of automobiles in Morris, Lyon and Case counties and had distributed many good cars in these counties. He is also editor of the Dunlap Rustler, a weekly paper. As a republican he had served as a member of the county central committee, and is a member of the city council of Dunlap. He also belongs to the Methodist Church. On April 10, 1906, at Dunlap Carl C. Lamb married Miss Myrtle Weaver, a daughter of Isaac and Elizabeth Weaver, now living retired at Dunlap. They have one child, Carl C. Jr., born May 1, 1915.