Kansas City Kansas

Biography of Fred G. Palmer

Fred G. Palmer was chiefly responsible for the establishment and upbuilding of one of the leading industries of Kansas City, Kansas. This is the Kaw Boiler Works Company. Like many other concerns that now wield a large influence in a city’s industrial life this business started on a small scale. Mr. Palmer was associated with exmayor T. B. Gilbert in organizing the business in 1905. They started making boilers and other equipment of that class in a rented building. The partnership was continued by these two men for six years. In 1911 the Kaw Boiler Works Company was organized and … Read more

Biography of Benjamin Richmond

Benjamin Richmond is head of the B. Richmond Department Store at 635-637 Osage Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas. One of the leading merchants of this city since 1901, his is a record of success in every way unusual and most creditable. He came to America without capital and at one time worked for very low wages. He comes of a high class and cultured Jewish family. He was born in Russia September 15, 1874, one of the four children still living whose parents were Rev. Moses and Bessie Richmond, who were also natives of Russia. Rev. Moses Richmond was a … Read more

Biography of Thomas J. White

Thomas J. White, a lawyer of high standing in both Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, had been a resident of Kansas forty-eight years. He had his experience as an early homesteader, was in railway service for a number of years, and gained a very thorough knowledge of public men and national politics in his relationship as confidential clerk to Senator Ingalls. He had been a lawyer for nearly thirty-five years. Mr. White was born at Whitstable, a town on the seacoast in County Kent, England, January 27, 1842. He was the second in a family of seven children … Read more

Biography of Walter Robson

Walter Robson, a former representative of Pottawatomie County in the Legislature, is a man of large and important business interests in and around Westmoreland. His chief business is farming, but whether as a farmer, legislator, merchant he had played a forceful and virile part in every one of his numerous interests. Reared in Kansas from early infancy, Mr. Robson was born at Wilmington in Will County, Illinois, February 26, 1875. His father, John Robson, is and for many years had been a prominent factor in Pottawatomie County and is still living on his farm two miles northeast of Westmoreland. He … Read more

Biography of Albert Mebus

Albert Mebus. It demands a large measure of business discernment to enter an old field, already well occupied, and to be able within a few years to harvest success and not only that but to stand second foremost with all competitors. It was in 1909 that Albert Mebus, who is now the second largest insurance handler in Kansas City, Kansas, went into business for himself and his rapid progress in the insurance line, proves great business capacity and keen foresight. Not only, however, in his private affairs has Mr. Mebus manfully responded to business opportunities, but publicly as a progressive … Read more

Biography of Estevan Ochoa

Estevan Ochoa was a New Mexican by birth. In his early youth he went to Kansas City, where he obtained employment and acquired a fair knowledge of the English language. He started in business on his own account at Mesilla, New Mexico. He made a success of the enterprise, and thereafter started a number of branch stores in both New Mexico and Arizona. The firm of Tully & Ochoa, of which he was a member, was one of the largest mercantile establishments in Tucson. In Bourke’s “On the Border with Crook” is an account of his visit to Tucson, in … Read more

Biographical Sketch of W. R. Barnard, Dr.

Barnard and Galley, D. V. S. As veterinarians one of the best equipped firms in the State of Kansas is that of Barnard & Galley of Belleville. In a few years they have acquired a practice extending all over Republic County, and they are both accomplished young men, scientific and practical, and valuable adjuncts to the business of agriculture and animal husbandry in their section of the state. The senior member of this firm, W. R. Barnard, is a native of Kansas, born in 1880, and a son of W. A. and Hannah Barnard. His parents were Illinois people and … Read more

Biography of Frank J. Hauber

Frank J. Hauber. A business is only as strong as that of the character and the personal forces behind it. This had been demonstrated over and over again, and perhaps no one enterprise in Kansas is a more signal illustration of this truth than the great Hauber Cooperage Company of Kansas City, Kansas. The president of this company is Mr. Frank J. Hauber. It is a business which had endured all the arrows and slings of fortune, was twice destroyed by floods, and twice by fire, and Phoenix-like had arisen again and is now bigger and better than ever. The … Read more

Biography of Col. Jeremiah B. Cook

Col. J. B. Cook. In all Southeastern Kansas there is no better known figure than Col. J. B. Cook of Chetopa. For more than forty years he has been recognized as one of the old and reliable and standard real estate dealers. He was one of the pioneers in Labette County, and lived on and improved a claim there before taking up his present business. He is not only an interesting character because of his long and honorable record in business, but for a life of varied service and experience. Many who know him well in real estate circles have … Read more

Biography of Nathan L. Hollowell

Nathan L. Hollowell is grand keeper of records and seals for the Knights of Pythias of the State of Kansas. He had his offices in the Husted Building at Kansas City, Kansas, and had been a resident of that city for several years. The office is an elective one and for an annual term. Mr. Hollowell became grand keeper May 15, 1910, and had been re-elected every year since then. He had long been prominent in the Knights of Pythias order and became active in the fraternity while living in Indiana. In that state he was a member of the … Read more

Biography of John Thomas Sims

John Thomas Sims, who many years ago secured prestige as one of the most forcible lawyers of the Kansas City, Kansas, bar and is now serving as judge of the Probate Court of Wyandotte County has had his share of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. His early life was one of hard and continuous work, often ill repaid, and again and again overtaken with calamity or disaster. He tried farming in the early days of Kansas, and various other occupations, and again and again when prosperity seemed to smile upon him he was put back at the beginning … Read more

Biography of James L. Beggs

James L. Beggs, who for six years had been commissioner of streets and public improvements in Kansas City, Kansas, had been a resident of that city thirty-seven years, and first knew the town when it was in the earlier stages of its development. For a number of years he had been well known in public affairs, and is also one of the city’s most capable business men. Mr. Beggs was born on a farm near Belfast, Ireland, December 6, 1869, but he had lived in the United States since two years of age. He was third in a family of … Read more

Biographical Sketch of Otis B. Gunn

Otis B. Gunn was a native of Massachusetts, born at Montague, October 27, 1828, and before he came west as a railroad engineer, had served as rodman on the Hoosac Tunnel Railroad and superintendent of the construction work of the line between Rochester and Niagara Falls. In 1853 he was appointed division engineer in the building of the Toledo, Wabash and Western, and followed railroad construction westward until he settled at Wyandotte, Kansas, in 1857. He was a member of the 1861 State Senate, and while thus serving was appointed major of the Fourth Kansas, later the Tenth Kansas Infantry. … Read more

Biography of Ira Puderbaugh, M.D.

Ira Puderbaugh, M. D. The second physician in practice at Ozawkis was Dr. Aaron Puderbaugh, and in that same locality his son Dr. Ira Puderbaugh had handled the bulk of the professional work for the past fifteen years. Ozawkie is the native town of Dr. Ira Puderbaugh, where he was born March 5, 1878. His ancestors were Germans who immigrated to Pennsylvania in very early times. His grandfather was born in Pennsylvania in 1810, afterwards moved to Western Ohio, from there to Indiana, and finally came to Kansas, where be lived retired until his death at Ozawkie in 1883. Dr. Aaron … Read more

Biographical Sketch of Eugene F. Ware

Eugene F. Ware, a soldier of Iowa, a lawyer and public man of Kansas, and an author both of that state and Missouri, was born at Hartford, Connecticut, May 29, 1841. His parents moved to Burlington, Iowa, in his childhood and he was educated in the public schools of that place. During the Civil war he reached the rank of captain in the Fourth Iowa Cavalry. He took a section of land in Cherokee County, Kansas, in 1867, studied law and was admitted to the bar at Fort Scott and to the United States Supreme Court; entered the law firm … Read more

Biographical Sketch of Patrick McInerney, Rev.

Rev. Patrick McInerney is pastor of the Assumption Catholic Church of Topeka. Reared and trained for the duties of the priesthood abroad, he has been in the ministry of the church in America for the past eighteen years, and all that time has been spent in Kansas. He is an able priest, devoted to the cause, and has an important record of constructive work in the various parishes where he has served. One of the eleven children of Patrick and Bridget (Purcell) McInerney, he was born in Ireland March 6, 1876. He attended the local schools of Ireland and the … Read more

Biography of Peter W. Goebel

When the American Bankers’ Association in their annual meeting at Kansas City, in September, 1916, gave unanimous choice to Peter W. Goebel for president of the association, they not only honored one of the ablest bankers of the country but also the State of Kansas, where Mr. Goebel’s career as a banker began and where for over thirty years his name and influence have been growing to that point where they were recognized in such distinctive manner by the bankers of the nation. The story of one of the greatest of Kansas banks and of Mr. Goebel is almost identical. … Read more

Biography of James Willis Gleed

James Willis Gleed, general attorney for the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company of St. Louis, was born at Morrisville, Vermont, March 8, 1859. His father, Thomas Gleed, now deceased, was a native of England, who came to America during the ’30s, settling at first in Canada, but later he removed to northern Vermont, where he resided to the time of his death in 1861, when he was but thirty-five years of age. In early manhood he had wedded Cornelia Fisk, a native of the Green Mountain state and a representative of an old New England family that was established in Massachusetts … Read more

Biography of Maurice L. Alden

Maurice L. Alden, a son of the late Judge Henry L. Alden, had since his admission to the bar in 1898 become a prominent member of the Kansas City legal profession, and inherits many of the enviable qualities that distinguished his father. He was born in old Wyandotte, now Kansas City, Kansas, October 10, 1873, was educated in the public schools, graduating from the Kansas City Kansas High School in 1891 and from the Kansas State University in 1895. At the age of twenty-one he became secretary to Congressman O. L. Miller, who represented the Second Congressional District of Kansas … Read more

Biographical Sketch of Dr. Joseph P. Root

Dr. Joseph P. Root, who was one of the early physicians of Wyandotte, then a part of Leavenworth County, was born at Greenwich, Massachusetts, April 23, 1826, and died at Kansas City, Kansas, July 20, 1885. He was a member of the Connecticut-Kansas Colony, better known as the Beccher Bible and Bifle Company, which settled at Wahaunsee. He organized free-state forces and in every way identified himself with the early history of the torritory. As chairman of the Free-State Executive Committee, he located the road from Topeka to Nebraska City, thereby securing a safe route of travel for free-state immigrants. … Read more