JOHN C. WAYMEYER. Special adaptability to any particular calling in life is the one necessary adjunct to permanent success. No matter the vim and determination which characterizes a man’s start in business, unless he is to the manner born he will find to his sorrow that his line has been falsely cast, and the quicker he draws aside and takes up another calling the better will it be for him. That John C. Waymeyer is especially fitted for the calling that now occupies his attention, that of merchant, cannot be doubted, for he has a large trade which is rapidly increasing.
Mr. Waymeyer is a Hoosier by birth, first seeing the light in Davis County February 18, 1851, and the son of William and Henrietta Waymeyer, both natives of Germany. Led by the promises of the Western prairies of this country, the parents sold out and crossed the ocean to America in 1848, settling in Indiana. There the father followed farming until his death in 1861. The mother is still living, and makes her home on a farm eighteen miles east of Van Buren. She came to this county in 1870 and settled where she now lives. She is now the wife of Fred Richenmeyer.
Our subject was one of four children and the only one reared, the others dying young. He obtained a liberal education in the schools of Indiana and after leaving school he began clerking in a store in Vincennes. Later he went with his mother and step-father to Carter County, Missouri, and worked on the farm. Three years later, or in 1873, he began working in a saw mill as lumber and log scaler. In 1883 he was elected sheriff of the county and reelected to the office of sheriff and collector, his term of office lasting six years. After that he became manager of the store he now owns, for Holland Bros., and conducted this for two years when he bought out the stock and embarked in business for himself. He is possessed of excellent business acumen and has met with the best of fortune in this venture.
In politics he advocates the principles and policy of the Republican party and was elected to his official positions by that party. At present he is a member and the secretary of the County Central Committee, and a man of considerable influence. Mr. Waymeyer was married in this county to Miss Sarah Boyer, daughter of Alexander Boyer of Wayne County, and three children have been born to this union: Henrietta, died when five years of age; Henry E. and William L. Mr. Waymeyer has a farm in Wayne County and has it rented. He also owns property in Van Buren. He is a stockholder in the bridge across Current River, and is one of the pushing, enterprising young men of the town. He is treasurer of the bridge company, and is well and favorably known all over Carter County. Mrs. Waymeyer’s father and mother are both deceased. For a number of years they resided in Wayne County, where Mrs. Waymeyer was born, but they came originally from Tennessee.