Samuel Bateman Chapman is the leading lumber merchant at Eskridge, and had been a Kansas business man for a number of years.
This branch of the Chapman family had its original seat in England and Mr. Chapman’s ancestors were colonial settlers in Maryland. His father, Joshna Thomas Chapman, was born on the eastern shore of Maryland in 1817. At the age of seven he accompanied his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Joshua Chapman, to Meigs County, Ohio, where the grandfather cleared up a portion of the wilderness and converted it into a farm. He spent the rest of his life in that county. Joshua T. Chapman was reared and married in Meigs County and his active career was spent as a farmer. In the fall of 1865 he removed to Dupont, Indiana, where he continued farming until his death in 1884. He was a republican in politics and a very active supporter of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The maiden name of his wife was Mary Ann Green. She was born in Muskingum County, Ohio, and died at Dupont, Indiana, some years before her husband. A record of their children is as follows: Roxanna and Flora, both deceased; Samuel B.; Catherine, wife of Edward Gaskell, a resident of Dupont, Indiana; Viola, wife of Thomas Rowland, a carpenter and farm owner at Paris, Indiana.
Samuel Bateman Chapman was born in Meigs County, Ohio, September 19, 1845, and secured his early education in the local schools. Before he was nineteen years of age, in May, 1864, he left his father’s farm and enlisted in Company H of the One Hundred and Fortieth Ohio Infantry. He was in serving with his regiment until mustered out the following September. He then returned home, and in the fall of 1865 went with his parents to their new farm at Dupont, Indiana. In 1868, Mr. Chapman married and began farming for himself at Dupont, Indiana. For about a year he was also engaged in the heavy labor of hauling saw logs.
Mr. Chapman came to Kansas in 1885, and had since been identified with the Eskridge community. He lived on and was actively employed in the cultivation of his farm of 320 acres two miles east and two miles north of Eskridge until the fall of 1904, when he sold his land and in February, 1905, moved to Eskridge and bought the lumber yard of J. D. McMichael & Company. The yard is located on Main Street, and he still continues business, furnishing lumber and all classes of building material to a large trade over this section of Wabannsee County. Mr. Chapman owned his home on Main Street and had considerable other local real estate.
In politics he is a republican, and is affiliated with Eminence Lodge No. 205, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, and is present commander of W. H. Earl Post No. 75, Grand Army of the Republic.
By his first marriage Mr. Chapman had two sons; Emmett A., living with his father; and Claude C., who for a number of years was in the lumber business in Idaho and is now in the same business at Los Angeles, California. At Butler’s Switch, Indiana, in 1881, Mr. Chapman married for his present wife Miss Dana McNutt. She was born in Switzerland County, Indiana, in 1855. They have three children. Horace Edgar is employed in a lumber yard at Burley, Idaho. Harvey who was educated in the public schools of Eskridge, is assisting his father in the lumber business, and he married Nettie E. Hakes. The youngest child is Nellie V., still at home with her parents.