Mrs. H. E. King is one of the capable business women of Leon, Kansas, where since her husband’s death she had managed the estate, is a director in the State Bank of Leon, and had many other extensive interests in Butler County.
Her husband, the late Harrison E. King, was a man of great business ability, and his untimely death at the age of forty-seven, on February 7, 1914, was a matter of general regret throughout the large community in which he was so well known. Mr. King was a man of striking appearance, possessed business judgment in a marked degree, and unquestionably was one of the coming citizens of Butler County.
He was born August 3, 1869, in Mercer County, Missouri, near Leon, Iowa, which is just across the state line from Mercer County, Missouri. His father, Jacob King, was of German ancestry, was born in Mercer County, Ohio, in 1840, and after his marriage moved to Mercer County, Missouri. In 1870 he came to Butler County, Kansas, homesteading the quarter section of land where the town of Leon is built. He was a farmer and a fine type of citisen. He finally sold his farm and retired to Augusta, Kansas, where he died in 1905. He was a republican and a member of the Christian Church and an elder in that denomination. Jacob King married Lydia S. Miller, who was born in Ohio in 1850, and died in Butler County, Kansas, in 1911. One of their sons, a brother of the late H. E. King, is Charles L. King, president of the Butler County State Bank at El Dorado, and elsewhere mentioned in this publication.
Harrison E. King came with his parents to Butler County, where he grew up and as a boy attended the public schools at Leon. After leaving high school he became a merchant and grain buyer, and was also in the implement business until 1903. He afterward retained his interest in the hardware and implement business, but from 1903 until his death was actively identified with the State Bank of Leon as cashier. He was a large land owner, and Mrs. King and Mr. W. S. Marshall, who is cashier of the State Bank of Leon, own jointly about a thousand acres in Butler Gounty and close to the oil districts.
Mr. and Mrs. King were married at Leon in 1888. Mrs. Fylena E. (Lindsey) King was born at Girard, Kansas, December 20, 1870. The Lindsey family had its original seat in Ireland, and three brothers of the name came to America and were very early settlers near Keokuk, Iowa. Mrs. King’s father, Thomas J. Lindsey, was born at Keokuk, Iowa, July 9, 1847. When only fifteen years of age, in 1862, he enlisted in the Twelfth Missouri Cavalry, in Company I, and was a faithful and gallant soldier until the close of the struggle. Once he was taken prisoner, but after the war he returned home safe and soon afterward moved to Girard, Kansas. He was one of the pioneers in that seetion of Southeastern Kansas and developed a farm from his homestead of 160 acres and also operated a shingle mill. In 1872 he removed with his family from Girard to Butler County, locating on a farm six miles south of Leon. He remained one of the capable business men and farmers of that section until 1890, when he went to Southern Oklahoma and is now engaged in buying grain at Bernice, Oklahoma. He is a republican and a member of the Masomic fraternity. T. J. Lindsey married Martha Walker. She was born at Nashville, Illinois, November 15, 1853. Of their children the oldest is Mrs. H. E. King. Laura, the second, is the wife of L. S. Downing, a physician and surgeon at Portland, Oregon, and they have two children, Roberta and Opal. E. Edwin Lindsey is a railroad man living at Joplin, Missouri. Daisy married H. E. Downing, a grain dealer at Bernice, Oklahoma, and their children are Dora and Rachel. Pearl is the wife of Marx Snell, a grain dealer at Nevina, Oklahoma, and she had one child, Merrill.
Mrs. King was reared in Butler County, attended the public schools at Leon, and was married soon after she finished the course of the high school. She is an active member of the Christian Church and was one of the organizers of Leon Chapter No. 362, Order of the Eastern Star, and is a past matron. Mrs. King owned her home on Main Street, had considerable other local real estate, including a quarter interest in the bank building and is owner of several other business buildings and dwellings. She is vice-president and director in the State Bank of Leon. The late Mr. King was a republican and at one time served as mayor of Leon. He was active in the Christian Church, was a member of the Masonic fraternity, and was one of the class of 529 new members taken into Wichita Consistory No. 2, when the new part of the Temple, which had been reconstructed, was dedicated. He was also a member of Midian Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Wichita.
Mr. and Mrs. King had one daughter, Audine. She was a young woman of many talents and of aplendid promise. She graduated from the Leon High School and had finished courses in the Sickner Conservatory of Musie at Wichite and for two years was a stadent in the New England Conservatory of Musis at Boston, Massachusetts. Her untimely death came July 23, 1910, when she was twenty-one years of age. She was drowned while swimming in Cold Water Lake, Michigan. Though an excellent swimmer, she was stricken with heart failure while in the water.