Biography of Edward C. Gates

Edward C, Gates. It was in 1887 that Edward C. Gates was admitted to the Kansas bar and undertook to build up a reputation and practice at Fulton, where be resided until he came to Fort Scott. In Fort Scott for the past twenty years he had enjoyed a reputation among the ablest members of the Kansas bar. Until 1913 he was actively associated with A. M. Keene in the firm of Keene & Gates, and since then had pratticed alone. The law had always represented to Mr. Gates a profession rather than an occnpation, and in all his work … Read more

Biography of Lloyd Lakin

Lloyd Lakin is one of the prominent young business leaders of Kansas. He is secretary, treasurer and active manager of the Lakin-McKee Manufacturing Company of Fort Scott. This is the largest individual industry in that city, the largest of its kind in Southeastern Kansas, and perhaps the largest in the entire West. The output is overalls. The Lakin-McKee overalls are distributed all over the Middle West. The goods are pre-eminent for quality and service. It is a business built up on character, and to a large degree the constructive and creative ideas of Lloyd Lakin have been fundamental in the … Read more

Biography of Albert Irven Decker

Albert Irven Decker. In the demands which it makes upon its devotees, educational work is exceedingly exacting. The duty of the educator, ostensibly, is to instill a practical, working knowledge into each of his pupils, but his correlative, although less direct, function of instilling character and worthy precepts through his personal influence is equally important. The duty first named calls for an individual of knowledge and specialized training, while the second demands a conscientious and capable person whose life and mode of living provide a fit criterion and example for the minds of youth. When a man is found in … Read more

Biography of William Lester Kellogg

William Lester Kellogg. The superintendent of motive power of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad, William L. Kellogg, had worked his way to his present position through his own initiative. At the outset of his career he had no favorable influences to assist him, and he had depended upon no happy circumstances to aid him in his promotion. The chances he had had have been the chances that have come to every man who had been placed in a position similar to his own; the reason that he had gone further than some of his fellow workmen is due to … Read more

Biography of Perry D. Cover

Perry D. Cover is one of Riverside’s early settlers, and has been associated with her various industries for the past fifteen years. He is a native of Richland County, Ohio, dating his birth in 1843. His parents were Daniel Cover, a native of Frederick County, Maryland, and Lydia Cover, nee Stevenson. Mr. Cover was reared to agricultural pursuits on his father’s farm until 1862. He then volunteered in the service of his country and enlisted as a private soldier in Company D, Eighty-seventh Ohio Volunteers. His regiment was sent East, and after some time in camp at Baltimore, was placed … Read more

Biography of Frederick H. Ireland

Frederick H. Ireland. For many years Fort Scott had been recognized as one of the leading commercial centers of Kansas, being splendidly fitted for such preeminence by its location in regard to transportation facilities. This supremacy, which is recognized even in the old eastern cities, had been brought about and maintained by the aggressive business men who have chosen this city as the field of their operations, many of which are far-reaching in their results. Among the men belonging to this class of citizens is Frederick H. Ireland, of the Ireland & Rollins Planing Mills Company, whose career is one … Read more

Biography of Frank H. Cron

Frank H. Cron. Of the men who have in recent years taken a prominent part in the financial and public life of Butler County few are better known than Hon. Frank H. Cron, assistant cashier of the Citizens State Bank of El Dorado and ex-member of the Kansas State Legislature. He is a native son of Mercer County, Pennsylvania, born June 3, 1868, his parents being A. G. and Emma F. (Womer) Cron. A. G. Cron, who is now a resident of Mulvane, Kansas, was born in Pennsylvania and came to Kansas in 1881, locating in Bourbon County, where he … Read more

Biography of John C. Lardner, M. D.

Dr. John C. Lardner, born April 1, 1869, in Muscatine, Iowa, was a prominent physician and surgeon in Fort Scott, Kansas. His parents, John and Mary (Butler) Lardner, were Irish immigrants from County Galway who settled in Bourbon County, Kansas, in 1879. After working as a schoolteacher, Dr. Lardner earned his medical degree from Kansas Medical College in 1902 and established his practice in Fort Scott. He married Marie W. Germain in 1899, and they had one son, John Germain Lardner. Dr. Lardner was a Democrat and a member of the Catholic Church.

Biography of Charles Estabrook Cory

Charles Estabrook Cory, of Fort Scott, divides with Hon. J. G. Slonecker, of Topeka, the honor of being the two oldest referees in bankruptey in continuous service in the State of Kansas, Both were appointed to this office in 1898, before the Bankruptey Law actually went into effect. Mr. Cory received his first appointment from Hon. Cassius G. Foster, and was continued in office by reappointment from Judge William O. Hook, and his last several appointments came from Hon. John C. Pollock. As a lawyer Mr. Cory had been identified with Fort Scott for over thirty years. He began his … Read more

Biography of Rev. William E. Means

Rev. William E. Means, proprietor of the Atwood Herald, was born at Paris, Edgar county, Illinois, June 28, 1850. He attended the district school during the winter, working on prepared to enter Paris high school. In 1874 he matriculated at the Northwestern University, and was graduated from the theological department of this well-known institution in the farm (luring the summer months, until the class of 1879. After graduation he was admitted to the Minnesota conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and was appointed pastor of the Rushmore charge, where a hand-some four-thousand-dollar church was built, free from debt. In the … Read more

Biography of William Stephen McDonald

William Stephen McDonald. The distinctive fact in Doctor McDonald’s record as a physician and surgeon at Fort Scott is not the twenty-five years he has practiced there, nor even the exceptional attainments and the skill he has gained in the profession, but more than all these the spirit of service which has animated him in all his work. Such a man never measures his success by fees, but by the satisfaction of doing all he can to alleviate human suffering and by the conscientious performance of his duties to the world and humanity. Doctor McDonald is of old New England … Read more

Biography of Elisha Wesley McComas, Hon.

While the years of his greatest activity and achievement, the period which made him a national figure, were spent in other localities, a special interest attaches to the career of Elisha W. McComas in Kansas, not only because he lived in that state for many years, but members of his family still reside there. He was born in Cabell County in Old Virginia, the second in a family of six sons. His father was a prominent man in Old Virginia, served several terms in Congress, filled a position on the local bench, and other places of honor. The early life … Read more

Biography of David Prager

David Prager. It was the influence of his personality and character as much as his successful business activities that made David Prager so useful and valuable a citizen of Fort Scott, where he resided for over forty years. His carcer illustrates the fact that the successful man is not necessarily the selfish man. He did not keep the resources of his heart nor of his material means to himself, but dispensed them with free hand among his family, his friends and the entire community. He was one of Fort Scott’s most beloved and best known citizens. David Prager was born … Read more

Biography of Rufus Joel Hill

Rufus Joel Hill. There are many points of historical interest pertinent to the personal career and ancestral record of this venerable pioneer citizen who is now living practically retired in his pleasant home at Independence, Montgomery County. On both the paternal and maternal sides he is a scion of fine old American colonial stock and individually he had precedence as being one of the pioneer members of the Kansas bar, as well as a broad-minded and public-spirited citizen who had played well his part in connection with the civic and material development and progress of the Sunflower State, within whose … 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 Oscar R. Farris

Oscar R. Farris had an active experience as an educator for a number of years in the State of Indiana, where he was born, and about eight years ago he came to Kansas and had been a factor in vitalizing some of the schools of this state. He is now superintendent of the city schools system of Eureka. That is one of the best equipped public school organizations in Kansas, and his responsibilities and eapable administration make Mr. Farris one of the leading educators of Kansas. He was born in Knox County, Indiana, January 16, 1881. His Farris aucestors came … Read more

Biography of C. F. Lutes

C. F. Lutes. The largest hand glass plant west of the Mississippi River is that of the Fredonia Window Glass Company, located at Fredonia, Kansas. The president and general manager of this enterprise, C. F. Lutes, had been connected with the glass industry ever since entering upon his career, and is a man of experience, resource and energy, who, since coming to Kansas in 1904, had occupied a position of importance among the business men of Fredonia. The success of the company with which he is identified, and its allied interests at Caney, Kansas and Okmulgee, Oklahoma, must be accredited … Read more

Slave Narrative of Phoebe Banks

Person Interviewed: Phoebe Banks Location: Muskogee, Oklahoma Date of Birth: October 17, 1860 Age: 78 In 1860, there was a little Creek Indian town of Sodom on the north bank of the Arkansas River, in a section the Indians called Chocka Bottoms, where Hose Perryman had a big farm or ranch for a long time before the Civil War. That same year, on October 17, I was born on the Perryman place, which was northwest of where I lived now in Muskogee; only in them days Fort Gibson and Okmulgee was the biggest towns around and Muskogee hadn’t shaped up … Read more

Biography of Charles I. Martin, Gen.

Kansas, in the course of its history, had produced soldiers as well as farmers, statesmen, orators and business men. As is well known, some of these soldiers have covered themselves with glory. It is the distinction of Gen. Charles I. Martin, present adjutant-general of the state, that he had succeeded in bringing the state militia, usually known as the National Guard, nearer to a basis of war perfection and preparedness than is true perhaps of the militia of any other state in the Union. In face, General Martin’s name possesses a nation wide significance. It was while teaching country school, … Read more

Biography of Elisha H. Rollins

Elisha H. Rollins, partner of Mr. Ireland in the proprietorship of the Ireland & Rollins Planing Mills Company, and one of the progressive and energetic business men of Fort Scott, was born March 15, 1859, on Prince Edward Island, a son of John and Mary (Harker) Rollins, natives of that place, who passed their entire lives there in agricultural pursuits. The father died in 1909, at the age of seventy-five years, while the mother passed away many years before, being forty-seven years old at the time of her demise. The fourth in a family of nine children, Elisha H. Rollins … Read more