Walter E. Pickenpaugh is one of the younger generation of business men upon whom had fallen the mantle of responsibility and had already made such headway as to be considered one of Culver’s leaders in business and civic affairs.
Mr. Pickenpaugh was born at Jamestown, Kansas, July 22, 1890, twenty-seven years ago. His father, Ed G. Pickenpaugh, was born in Missouri in 1864, grew up a farmer and in 1886 located in Cloud County, Kansas, where he continued in the role of an agriculturist. His wife, Etta A. Stroup, who was born in Eastern Kansas in 1869, lives at Culver, Kansas. They had two children, Walter E. and Gladys E., the latter living with her mother and is a freshman in the Culver High School.
Walter E. Pickenpaugh acquired his early education in the common schools of Nemaha County, Kansas, and attended high school at Alton and Oberlin in this state. His business career really began at the age of seventeen, when he left school and found work in Osborne County and in 1908 he was given the position of assistant manager in the lumber yard of the Rice & Johntz Company at Downs in that county. In 1911 he became assistant to the yard manager for the Leidigh & Havens Lumber Company at Lincoln, Kansas, a year later went to Salina for the same firm and in the same capacity, and in 1913 came to Culver as local manager for the Leidigh & Havens Lumber Company. Their yard, well stocked with all classes of building material, is situated on Kansas Avenue and is the only lumber supply business in the town.
Besides his position in local business affairs Mr. Pickenpaugh is a member of the City Council of Culver. He is a republican, a member of the Christian Church, and is affiliated with Culver Lodge No. 649 of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. In 1914, at Lincoln, Kansas, he married Miss Blanche Webb, daughter of George L. and Ruth M. (Hedrick) Webb. Her parents still reside in Lincoln, Kansas.