Kansas

Biographical Sketch of William R. Spilman

William R. Spilman, the oldest son of Judge Spilman, was born at Manhattan December 6, 1870, and received his education in the city schools and the State Agricultural College. In 1890 he became court reporter under his father of the Twenty-first Judiela I District, and that position he held for seventeen years. He resigned to become a stenographer in the navy department at Washington, but later at the request of Assistant Postmaster General Bristow was transferred to the postoffice department. In that department he has filled a number of important positions. He has been superintendent of rural delivery, superintendent of … Read more

Biographical Sketch of Robert Bruce Spilman, Jr.

The only son of the late Judge R. B. Spilman still living in Manhattan is Robert Bruce Spilman, Jr. He was born in Manhattan September 7, 1875, and that city has always been his home. He attended the public schools, and in 1894 entered the halls of his father’s Alma Mater, old Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. He continued his studies at Wabash until 1896. Returning home he occnpied himself with various lines of employment until 1900, and in that year was elected clerk of the District Court for Riley County. Since beginning his duties as clerk of the District … Read more

Biography of James Franklin O’Daniel

The reader of modern Kansas history learns of the wonderful development of the state, of its wealth and resources, of its great educational institutions and its culture, and of its enterprise and reform legislation. Back, however, of all these truthful and encouraging records exists a vital and more interesting page of history, and only by linking the past with the present, may justice be done to all. A half century in the great cyele of Time means little, but it sometimes covers an entire individual life. There are men in different sections of this great state to whose labor, courage … Read more

Biography of William A. Phillips

William A. Phillips was one of the pioneers of Kansas who made it free from the dominion of slavery, kept it in the Union during the Civil war, protected the interests of the loyal Indians and afterward did fine service as a congressman. He was born in Scotland Jannary 14, 1824, and had laid the basis of a good education before he was fifteen years of age, when he came with his parents to a farm in Randolph County, Illinois. About the time he reached his majority he became associated with B. J. F. Hannah as editor of the Chester … Read more

Biography of Peter P. Elder

Peter P. Elder, deceased, ex-lieutenant governor of Kansas, and for many years a resident of Ottawa, was one of the most notable characters of Kansas and one of the select few who gave it a unique and substantial standing among the western states of the Union. He was a native of Maine, born in Somerset County, September 30, 1823; was of North-of-Ireland ancestry and Revolutionary stock. Mr. Elder spent the first thirty-four years of his life in his native county, getting an education and teaching school. He became an ardent abolitionist early in life, and in 1857 located in Franklin … Read more

Biography of James Humphrey

James Humphrey, as lawyer, editor, judge and state official, firmly established his position throughout a period of half a century as one of the ablest and most popular citizens of Central Kansas. He was born in Nottinghamshire, England, March 8, 1833; came to New England in 1854, and during the succeeding three years was a resident of Fall River, Massachusetts. There he became interested in the Kansas agitation for free statehood and in April, 1857, reached Manhattan. His first employment in connection with the shrievalty was a good test of his pluck, and he so arose to the occasion that … Read more

Biography of Marshall M. Murdock

Marshall M. Murdock, a pioneer journalist of Kansas, the founder of the Wichita Eagle and one of the marked men of the commonwealth, was born in the Pierpont settlement of what is now West Virginia, in 1837. He was of Scotch-Irish ancestry, and his father married into the Governor Pierpont family. Soon after his marriage the family moved to Ironton, Southern Ohio, and there Marshall Murdock attended the public schools and commenced to learn the printer’s trade. Thomas Murdock, the father, was unsuccessful in his business venture, and, as he had an abhorrence of slavery and Kansas was then the … Read more

Biography of John Melville Kimball

Kansas has many octogenarians. The soil and climate and other conditions are conducive to bringing men and women to a happy and contented old age, but few of them have lived so long in the Sunflower State as John Melville Kimball, who at the age of four score is still young in spirit and can enjoy the wonderful retrospect of years which goes back to the very establishment of the institntions of the state. He is a pioneer settler of Riley County, and for half a century was successfully identified with farming in Manhattan Township until he retired to his … Read more

Biography of Rev. William Knipe

Rev. William Knipe is one of the few surviving participants in the war with Mexico, which was fought nearly seventy years ago. Many other interesting distinctions attach to this venerable and useful resident of Kansas. He was one of the pioneer Methodist missionaries in Jackson County, Kansas, and is one of the very oldest members of the Methodist Conference. He was also a soldier of the Civil war and few men who live so long succeed in compressing so much useful service to humanity within a lifstime. His birth occurred in a log house in Wayne County, Indiana, September 28, … Read more

Biographical Sketch of Alexander P. Riddle

Alexander P. Riddle, a widely known newspaper man and public character of Ottawa County, was born at Harlansburg, Pennsylvania, August 16, 1846. He learned his trade as a printer in the office of the Franklin (Pennsylvania) Spectator, and in 1869 came to Kansas as a “jour.” He first located at Olathe; then moved to Girard, where he set type and became half owner of the Press. In 1885 he sold his interest and settled at Minneapolis, which has since been his home. There he purchased the Minneapolis Messenger, which he still publishos and edits, as well as the Kansas Workman … Read more

Biographical Sketch of Robert M. Wright

Robert M. Wright, a prominent resident of Dodge City, has prospered as a farmer, stockman, merchant and public servant. He is a native of the South, born in Bladensburg, Prince George County, Maryland, September 2, 1840. His father, who was born at Alexandria, Virginia, in 1800, often recounted his experlence as a boy on the battlefield of Bladensburg administering to wounded American soldiers. Mr. Wright’s great grandfather was a Prdsbyterian minister in Revolutionary times and raised a regiment of plowboys at Elizabethtown, New Jersey, of which he had command at the battle of the Meadows. The British had a price … Read more

Biographical Sketch of Samuel C. Pomeroy

Samuel C. Pomeroy, one of the leaders of Kansas in the times of her free-state travail whose political ambition overleaped his sense of honor, was born in Southampton, Massachusetts, January 3, 1816. When a young man be became strongly imbued with antislavery sentiments. He happened to be present when President Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and is said to have remarked to the nation’s chief executive: “Your victory is but an adjournment of the question from the halls of legislation at Washington to the open prairies of the Freedom-loving West, and there, sir, we shall beat you.” So earnest was … Read more

Biographical Sketch of Charles W. Goodlander

Charles W. Goodlander was an able and large hearted business man, and among other tributes to his benevolence is the Home for Children which he founded at Fort Scott. He was a Pennsylvanian of English-Quaker ancestry, born at Milton, April 25, 1834. He obtained a partial high school education and mastered and followed the carpenter’s trade in Ponnsylvania, Maryland, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri, before deciding to venture west of the Mississippi in his search for a location. Finally, in April, 1857, he arrived at Fort Scott, the first passenger to come from Kansas City by stage coach. Mr. Goodlander at … Read more

Biography of Percival G. Lowe

Percival G. Lowe, for many years prominent in the public affairs of the city and county of Leavenworth, worth, was, in his young manhood, a typical plainsman and Kansas dragoon. He was essentially a man of action, and his only literary production in book form, “Five Years a Dragoon,” presents many cloarcut pictures of those early times. As a life-member and president (1893) of the State Historical Society he has also placed on record many valuable papers dealing with those subjects with which he was so practically identified. Mr. Lowe was born at Randolph, Coos County, New York, September 29, … Read more

Biography of James R. Mead

James R. Mead, one of the founders of Wichita and one of the noted pioneers of Kansas, was a Vermonter, born May 3, 1836, and at an early age showed his love for out-of-doors life. During his school days he read and dreamed of the Great American Desert, and in the fall of 1859 started for the plains. For four years he traded with the various Indian tribes in the present State of Kansas, hunted buffaloes and finally established a post on the Salina River, about twenty miles from its mouth. In 1861 he contracted his first marriage, and two … Read more

Biographical Sketch of William D. Street

William D. Street, a pioneer of Northwestern Kansas and long a leader in state affairs, was born near Zanesville, Ohio, in 1851. He moved from Ohio to Kansas in 1861, and eight years later became identified with Northwestern Kansas. Mr. Street first became known to the people in that part of the state as a soldier in a campaign against the Indians, conducted in 1869, by Company I, Nineteenth Kansas Volunteers, and Company D, Second Battalion, Kansas State Militia, of which he was a member. In 1883, 1889, 1895 and 1897 he served in the State Legislature, during the last … Read more

Biography of Foster Dwight Coburn

It is no disparagement of the rank and file of that host of Kansas militant farmers who bore the heat and burden of the day and by their aggregate efforts raised Kansas to front rank among American agricultural states, to say that Foster Dwight Coburn is the distinguished leader of them all. He has long held secure a place as “one of the really great men of Kansas.” And like other Kansas great men, his achievements and influence have translated him to a place among the nation’s great men. His position in life is the more interesting because it is … Read more

Biography of John H. Rice

John H. Rice had the distinction of having made his mark in two states of the Union of widely different tendencies–Georgia and Kansas. He was born in Greene County, Tennessee, November 14, 1825, and his father, a native of Virginia, was surveyor of the county, named for twenty-six consecutive terms. Mr. Rice commenced his higher education at Tusculum College, in his native county, of which his maternal uncle, Dr. Samuel W. Doak, was president. He was admitted to the bar in 1845 and, a few months afterward, opened an office at Cassville, Georgia. In 1855, in addition to conducting a … Read more

Biography of Fred Schuyle Jackson

Fred Schuyle Jackson, of Topeka, prominent lawyer, former congressman, ex-attorney-general of Kansas, is one of the many able men who have made Kansas notable as a commonwealth. His father was Martin Van Buren Jackson, who bore a conspicuous part in the border warfare of Kansas. Fred S. Jackson was born April 19, 1868, and his birth occurred in the block house at Stanton near Osawatomie. His early education came chiefly from the public schools of Miami and Greenwood counties, and of earlier experiences and service readered should be mentioned five years spent in the schoolroom as a teacher, In the … Read more

Biographical Sketch of A. P. Tone Wilson, Jr.

A. P. Tone Wilson, Jr., has for a number of years been one of Topeka’s suceessful lawyers and is also proprietor of the X-Rays Printing Company, publishers of the X-Rays Democrat, of which he is editor. The printing company of which he is the head does a large business in commercial printing, catalogue work and the printing of legal blanks. No doubt he gets his profession from his father, Anthony P. Wilson, who for many years was a successful attorney, but is now retired. Mr. Wilson, Jr., is a native of the State of Nebraska, where he was born June … Read more