Baldwin City Kansas

Biography of Forrest M. Hartley

Forrest M. Hartley’s talents made him foremost in the activities of college life while he was a student in Baker University. For a number of years he was actively identified with Kansas journalism and then returned to Baldwin City where he is now one of the leading merchants. Mr. Hartley was born at Indianola in Vermillion County, Illinois, July 26, 1874. He is one of the three children of George S. and Caroline (Vayhinger) Hartley. George S. Hartley, now a resident of Arkansas City, had for many years been a conspicuous figure in the political, banking and civic life of … Read more

Biography of Lester Martin Combs

Lester Martin Combs has been an active newspaper man since he graduated from Baker University five years ago and is now editor, manager and treasurer of the Anthony Republican, the official paper of Harper County. The Republican is the oldest paper in Harper County and was established a few years after the county was organized in 1879. The first editors and publishers were George W. Maffet and Charles Metcalf. For several years in the late ’80s the Republican had a daily edition. At the present time the Republican is printed at a modern plant on South Bluff Street. The Anthony … Read more

Biography of Charles Purdy Ives

Charles Purdy Ives. Every substantial city in Kansas had reason to be grateful to a group of its individual citizens who took the lead in affairs and largely molded those influences and institutions which make the community noteworthy and distinctive. Baldwin City thus honors the memory of the late Charles Purdy Ives, who was not only a business man but a citizen who stood foremost in every movement for the general good. Mr. Ives had a very long and interesting career. He was born January 27, 1840, in West Plains, New York, now part of New York City. When a … Read more

Biography of Christopher Beal Beeks

Christopher Beal Beeks was a Kansas pioneer whose memory should be kept green in coming generations. He was a man of quiet forcefulness intent in his devotion to those things that he believed right, and he made his career count for much in his chosen community because of a faithful performance of those duties that lay nearest at hand. He was a Kansas pioneer of the territorial period. He came here in 1859. Though a native of Virginia he was reared on a farm in Ohio, and his people being comparatively poor and his early youth being spent in a … Read more

Biography of Lewis A. Markham

Lewis A. Markham was a physician by profession, but the services by which he will be longest remembered in Kansas as elsewhere were those he rendered as a devoted minister of the gospel. He spent his last years at Baldwin City, where the family have been prominent for over a quarter of a century. Doctor Markham practiced medicine for six years in Ohio, part of the time in Akron and part of the time at Massillon. He was married at Akron, September 19, 1858, to Sarah Wirt. Sarah Wirt was of a family of pioneers. Her father was born at … Read more