Lawrence Kansas

Biography of Robert G. Elliott

Robert G. Elliott was one of the founders of Kansas as a free territory and state. He was born in Union County, Indiana, July 23, 1828, of South Carolina parentage, and was graduated from the University of the Hoosier State in 1850. Among his classmates were the son and three nephews of Henry A. Wise, governor of Virginia. After teaching four years in Indiana and Tennessee, and becoming thoroughly educated and aroused in his absorption of the prevailing issues of the ante-war days, he became associated with Josiah Miller in the establishment of the Kansas Free State newspaper at Lawrence. … Read more

Biographical Sketch of James F. Legate

James F. Legate was a leading citizen of Leavenworth for nearly forty years, and during the active period of his life few men in the state were better known in legislative affairs. He was a native of Massachusetts, born in Worcester County, November 23, 1829, in the house built by his paternal ancestor five generations preceding him, and on land deeded to that ancestry by the Engilsh government in the reign of George H. His father was a captain in command of a privateer in the War of 1812, and on both maternal and paternal sides were numerous representatives of … Read more

Biography of William Lloyd Garrison Soule

William Lloyd Garrison Soule, Auditor of San Bernardino County, and founder of the mining town of Calico, is a lineal descendant from Puritan stock, and was born in the State of Maine, in July, 1836. He was reared from early childhood in Massachusetts, and started to learn the printer’s trade in Boston at the age of fourteen. He came with his parents to Kansas in 1854, and set the first stickful of type ever set within the boundary of that State, on the Herald of Freedom, established at that time in Lawrence. Being like his illustrious namesake, an uncompromising enemy … Read more

Biography of William R. Smith

One of the fine buildings bordering the State Capitol grounds at Topeka is the Kansas State Printing plant. That is the official headquarters of William R. Smith, state printer, and also secretary of the State Printing Commission and chairman of the School Book Commission of the state. Doubtless any citizen, and particularly a printer, would deem it an honor to be at the head of an establishment which experts pronounce to be the equal in mechanical equipment and operating effieiency of any commercial printing establishment in the country. When Mr. Smith went into office on July 1, 1915, he brought … Read more

Biography of Charles S. Gleed

Charles S. Gleed was born in Morrisville, Vermont, March 23, 1856. His father, Thomas Gleed, was a leading lawyer of Vermont who held various public offices and who, while still a young man, died as he was about to enter the army in 1861. His grandfather, the Rev. John Gleed, was an English missionary preacher of great force of character who came to the United States for the purpose of participating in the movement against slavery. Mr. Gleed’s mother was Cornelia Fisk, a woman of rare intelligence and refinement. His grandfather was Moses Fisk, a Massachusetts pioneer in Northern Vermont. … Read more

Biography of Charles Leavitt Holman

There are few business enterprises that so closely touch the comfort and welfare as that which has to do with the lighting of homes and business houses, and the man who is active in control of public utilities must be one of broad vision, of thorough understanding of needs and conditions and of marked enterprise that he may keep in touch with the changing times. Possessing all these requisites, Charles Leavitt Holman has steadily advanced since he became connected with the Laclede Gas Light Company of St. Louis in April, 1903. He was advanced through various positions to tile presidency … Read more

Biographical Sketch of Frank A. Gates

Frank A. Gates general farmer and fruit-raiser near Anaheim, was born in Groton, Massachusetts, in 1836, a son of Loring Gates, a well-known merchant in Groton, Massachusetts, and Boston. Mr. Gates attended the University at Hartford, Pennsylvania, and at the age of eighteen years he went to Chicago, where he was engaged in the wholesale clothing business with his brother, James L. Gates, until 1859. He then went to Lawrence, Kansas, but, finding all vegetation dried up and the prospects of business consequently poor, he returned to Chicago and engaged with his cousin, Charles A. Eaton, in trade in guns … 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 Charles R. Jennison, Dr.

Dr. Charles R. Jennison, of Leavenworth, a brigadier general during the Civil war and afterward a leader in the public affairs of the state, was born in Jefferson County, New York, June 6, 1834. When he was twelve years old he moved with his parents to Wisconsin, and at the age of nineteen years he began to study medicine. After completing his medical course he practiced for a short time in Wisconsin and then came to Kansas, settling at Osawatomie in 1857. Within a short time he moved to Mound City, where he remained for three years, and then went … Read more

Biography of Enoch Chase

Enoch Chase was one of the founders of the City of Topeka. He was actively identified with the free state movement in territorial times, and for years was a man of prominence in the state capital. While these reasons make his career a part of Kansas history, it is also noteworthy that his daughter became the wife of the war governor of Kansas half a century ago, while his granddaughter is the wife of the present war governor of Kansas, Arthur Capper. Enoch Chase was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, August 29, 1824, a son of Nathaniel and Harriett Ann Chase. … Read more

Biographical Sketch of James S. Emery

James S. Emery was one of the stalwart pioneers of the free-state cause, who bravely and ably assisted the struggling territory and commonwealth to firmly lay their foundations. A son of the Pine Tree State, he was born in Franklin County, July 3, 1826; graduated from Waterville College in 1851; was admitted to the bar in New York City in January, 1854, and in the following September came to Lawrence with the second party of free-state immigrants to make the venture into the danger zone. He was a member of the Big Springs convention and in September, 1855, made a … 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 John Falleaf

John Falleaf, a native son of Oklahoma and a representative of one of the pioneer families of the state, is widely and favorably known in Washington county, where he has spent his life, and he is now the owner of a well improved farm near Dewey. He was born ten miles east of the place upon which he now resides, his parents being Silas and Eliza Falleaf, who were natives of Kansas and made their way to Indian Territory in 1866. They were of Delaware extraction and were numbered among the earliest settlers in the territory. Mr. Falleaf acquired his … Read more

Biography of Eber Cowen

Eber Cowen. One of the oldest residents of Osage County is Eber Cowen, who came to this part of the state when it was raw and new, nearly half a century ago. The business by which he had gained his prosperity had been farming, and at the same time he had enjoyed the respect and esteem of his fellowmen by his sturdy citizenship and his ability as a home maker and valuable factor in community affairs. He was born in Jersey County, Illinois, February 22, 1846, a son of John and Maria Cowen, his father a native of Vermont and … Read more

Biography of Paul Phillip MacCaskill

Paul Phillip MacCaskill. One of the younger members of the Kansas bar, in active practice at Parsons, Paul MacCaskill has already had a wide range of experience in his profession and in public affairs. While studying law and since he spent a good deal of time in the service of public men, at Topeks and elsewhere, and in 1915 was secretary to Hon. Baille P. Waggener, the Atchison County representative in the State Senate. He is of a fine strain of Scotch ancestry. The name MacCaskill, or MacAskill, is of Norse origin, meaning Anses Kettle, or sacrificial vessel to the … Read more

Biography of Albert Henley

Albert Henley has been a resident of Lawrence for thirty-nine years. In all that time he had been actively and conspicuously identified with the material growth and commercial development of the state. Mr. Henley was a pioneer manufacturer of barbed wire in Kansas. Barbed wire is now accepted as a commonplace product of American industry. Only the old timers recall with what prejudice this wire was introduced into general use and also the crude forms in which it was at first manufactured. Mr. Henley’s early attempts at the manufacture were on a very small scale. He began at Lawrence under … Read more

Biography of Ely Moore, Sr.

Ely Moore, Sr. If Kansas should seek among its living citizens a man whose career is richest in associations with the events far back in territorial times there could be no better approximation to the ideal choice than that of the venerable Ely Moore, Sr., of Lawrence. Now in his eighty-fifth year, he saw when a young man in his early twenties much of that strenuous struggle which made Kansas Territory the battle ground of the nation. His own life had been regulated on strenuous lines, and he comes of fighting ancestry. He is descended from Sir Thomas More, who … Read more

Biography of Marshall M. Murdock

Marshall M. Murdock, a pioneer journalist of Kansas, the founder of the Wichita Eagle and one of the marked men of the commonwealth, was born in the Pierpont settlement of what is now West Virginia, in 1837. He was of Scotch-Irish ancestry, and his father married into the Governor Pierpont family. Soon after his marriage the family moved to Ironton, Southern Ohio, and there Marshall Murdock attended the public schools and commenced to learn the printer’s trade. Thomas Murdock, the father, was unsuccessful in his business venture, and, as he had an abhorrence of slavery and Kansas was then the … Read more

Biography Of Irving Hill

Irving Hill, of this sketch, is one of the citizens of prominence in Lawrence, who is identified with the younger generation in the promotion of its industries, its finances and its civic affairs. He is of good Scotch blood, and comes naturally by his traits of intellectual and business acumen. William Hill, his father, was born in Greenock, a suburb of Glasgow, and when a boy came with his parents to the United States and settled at Baraboo, Wisconsin. There he followed newspaper work, became owner of a paper in that place, and later corresponded for the Chicago Tribune and … Read more

Biography of Alexander Lewis

Alexander Lewis was identified with business and civic affairs at Lawrence from territorial times until his death on January 30, 1905. He was one of the fine characters of the university city and a man whose capable business judgment was marked by a benevolence and a kindly interest in the welfare of his community and his fellow man. He was born in Tompkins County, New York, November 13, 1830, and lived to be nearly seventy-five years of age. His parents were Luther and Mary (Sheldon) Lewis. His grandfather Luther Lewis was a native of Suffield, Connecticut, and moved from there … Read more