Salina Kansas

Biographical Sketch of Joseph A. Muir

One of the farms that gives a character of progressiveness to Saline County is owned and occupied by Joseph A. Muir, one of the younger representatives of the agricultural industry in this state. This farm is near Mentor in Walnut Township. It is a farm that Mr. Muir had known all his life and he was born there. He had 200 acres of land, and well adapted for the raising of alfalfa, which is one of his principal crops. In every point it is modern in equipment and facilities. He had substantial buildings, including barns and silos for the care … Read more

Biography of George Howe Bechtel

George Howe Bechtel. Of the men who are maintaining Montgomery County’s reputation and prestige in financial circles, few are more highly esteemed as banking officials and citizens than George Howe Bechtel, eashier of the Liberty State Bank, of Liberty. Like many other Kansas bankers, Mr. Bechtel is a product of the farm and of the schoolroom. It would seem that the practicality developed in agricultural life and the mental sharpening acquired in the educator’s vocation form a combination happily adaptative to the great and important business of banking. At least, Mr. Bechtel’s career and his success support such a view. … Read more

Biography of Thomas Watson Roach

Thomas Watson Roach, for twenty-one years president of Kansas Wesleyan Business College, and a former president of Kansas Wesleyan University at Salina, had not merely found but had made for himself a distinctive place in educational history of the Sunflower State. He came to Kansas more than forty years ago. His name is closely associated with several progressive movements in Kansas educational affairs. He was the pioneer worker for the consolidation of country school districts. He also did the first practical work toward procuring uniformity of text books throughout the state. But even more important than all this he will … Read more

Biography of Oliver D. Walker, M.D.

Oliver D. Walker, M. D. By reason of his active service as a member of the Kansas State Board of Health, of which he was president in 1912, and the honor conferred upon him in his election as president of the Kansas State Medical Society in 1915, Doctor Walker, of Salina, is one of the best known physicians and surgeons in Kansas. At the doctor’s home in Salina resided his venerable father, George M. Walker, whose long experience and active service identifies him with a number of pioneer things in the State of Kansas. George M. Walker was born in … Read more

Hayes, Katherine Etta “Katie” Harris Mrs. – Obituary

Katherine Etta “Katie” Hayes, 81, died Aug. 9, 2005, at St Elizabeth Health Services after a knee replacement operation. Her graveside memorial service will be at 11 a.m. Monday at Mount Hope Cemetery. Katie was born at Salina, Kan., on Aug. 21, 1923, to Nathaniel Creager Harris, a not-so-tall Texan, and Mary Margaret Shank. The Shank family had lived in Kansas for many years as homestead-era farmers. Salina was her home through 1941. After graduating from Salina High School, she set off like many of her generation to work in support of the war effort as a Western Union operator … Read more

Biography of Thomas Anderson

Thomas Anderson. The honors and responsibilities of public life come with singular appropriateness to Thomas Anderson, of Salina, where he was among the first group of pioneer settlers and where his home and activities have been centered for the past fifty-five years. He retired from business a number of years ago, and the greater part of his time since his retirement had been spent in the office of county commissioner of Saline County. This old time citizen of Salina is a Scotchman by birth. He was born March 24, 1838, at Fenwick, Scotland, a son of Archibald and Margaret (Young) … Read more

Biography of Levi Livermore Tucker

Levi Livermore Tucker, late superintendent and president of the Kansas Wesleyan Business College of Salina, devoted practically his entire life to the training of young men and women for business. Fully forty years were given to that profession, and few men accomplished a more satisfying aggregate of results in this field than Professor Tucker. He was of New England birth and ancestry. The farm in Orange County, Vermont, where he was born December 10, 1853, was also the birthplace of his father, Levi Livermore Tucker, Sr., and the house that thus served as a birthplace to these two generations was … Read more

Biography of Bryce Muir

Bryce Muir is one of the prominent pioneers of Saline County, Kansas. He had lived in that locality more than fifty years, and if any man can be accounted an authority on the early history and development of that section of the state it is this genial and well known old timer. Prosperity had come to him in large measure during these long years, but he still prefers to keep his home on his fine farm near Salina, on rural route No. 2. He was born September 9, 1840, in Scotland. He had many of the characteristics that have made … Read more

Biography of Hugh Carlin

Hugh Carlin. From their quiet firesided in their comfortable homes at Salina, Kansas, there are men now retired from active life who can recall without an effort of memory the days when this busy city was little more than an Indian camping ground and pioneer conditions existed for miles adjacent. The hardy men who have been the upbuilders of Saline County have known both stirring times and hardships. They have lived in dugouts, have pursued and killed game for sustenance and have suffered from the depredations and offenses of hostile Indians. In counting the years they do not seem so … Read more

Biography of James W. Jenney, M. D.

James W. Jenney, M. D. Among many other titles of distinction Dr. James W. Jenny, whose name is professionally known in almost every state in the Union, enjoys that of pioneer physician at Salina, Kansas, which city had been his permanent home for forty-six years. He came here a young man, in the first flush of professional success, earnest and ambitious, and the passage of time had in no way lessened his devotion to medical science. James W. Jenney comes of solid old Quaker stock. He was born in a log cabin on his father’s farm in Huron County, Ohio, … Read more

Biography of Walter E. Connelly

Walter E. Connelly of Salina had had some unusual experience as an educator in the western part of the state. As a boy he attended one of the old dugout schoolhouses of Kansas, and he spent seventeen years teaching, concluding that service with a term as superintendent of instruction in Saline County. Since retiring from that office he had founded and is manager of the Salina Collection Agency, the first and only exclusive collection agency in the city. He represents a family that during the past century have by successive stages progressed half way across the American continent from New … Read more

Biography of Edward J. Ryan

Edward J. Ryan. It is somewhat remarkable, wheu the fact is considered, that nine-tenths of the prominent men of the country were reared on a farm and with very many a love of out-door life continues with them ever after. In Edward J. Ryan, mayor of Lincoln, Kansas, is found a livestock dealer, and a man who understands agricultural matters as thoroughly as he does the insistent needs of the municipality he governs. Mayor Ryan is of Irish ancestry and parentage but was born at West Union, Iowa, November 30, 1859. The pioneer settler of his family in America was … Read more

Biography of C. B. Goodrich

C. B. Goodrich. A life of quiet effectiveness, marked by a record of many duties well done and many responsibilities faithfully fulfilled, was that of the late, C. B. Goodrich, who died in Lawrence in 1910 at the age of sixty-six. He was one of those quiet unassuming men, rarely known to the world in general, but worthily filling the niche in the affairs of life allotted to them. Of Canadian nativity, born at Sarnia, he was brought to the United States when very young and was reared in and about Kankakee, Illinois. The first service in his quiet routine … Read more

Biography of Fred N. Adam

Fred N. Adam. The popular and energetic postmaster of Longton, Kansas, Fred N. Adam, who was appointed to this office in April, 1916, had been a resident of Longton since 1911, and had been well known in mercantile circles as one of the proprietors of the establishment conducted under the style of Adam Brothers. Almost immediately upon his arrival here he became known as a live and energetic citizen, capable of handling official duties, and his appointment as postmaster was preceded by several terms of good work as a member of the local council. Mr. Adam is a native son … Read more

Biography of Levi D. Hill

Levi D. Hill is an old timer in Saline County and is now living retired at Salina. His had been a long and creditable career, and as a young man he served as a soldier of the Union in the Civil war. He was born January 8, 1844, in a one-room log house on a farm in Johnson County, Indiana, a son of Squire S. and Mary Ann (Cunningham) Hill. His father was born in Kentucky and his mother in Indiana. Squire Hill was born February 17, 1810, and died August 5, 1886, at Tipton, Indiana. Throughout his active career … Read more

Biography of Charles Wilbur McCampbell

Associate professor of animal husbandry in the State Agricultural College at Manhattan and secretary of the State Livestock Registry Board whose offices are in the same city, Charles W. McCampbell is a native Kansan and for ten years had broadened and amplified his experience and authoritative knowledge of all phases of the livestock industry, not only with reference to Kansas but to the world at large. While he had perhaps rendered his greatest service as an instructor of the younger generation of Kansas farmers, some of his practical demonstration work and experiments have attracted national attention from livestock men. He … Read more

Biography of Knut J. Knutson

Knut J. Knutson. Three quarters of a century is the measure of a long lifetime. It is a sufficient time in which to accomplish all those things which men most desire. These seventy-five years from birth to old age have been well utilized by Knut Knutson of Saline County. Mr. Knutson came to Central Kansas over forty years ago, and while he had many hardships and difficulties in establishing a home and maintaining it in earlier years, he came to the age of three score and ten with all that he might reasonably desire. He had ample material possessions in … Read more

Biography of Hon. John Shaw Dawson

On the roll of men who have been prominently identified with the civie affairs of the State of Kansas during the past two decades, the name of Hon. John Shaw Dawson occupies a leading and conspienous place. When he came to this state, in 1887, it was as a country school teacher, but he possessed the ambition and ability necessary to carry him to high position, and it was not long are he became connected with public matters, and, being admitted to the bar in 1898, rose rapidly in his profession and in public confidence. After serving in various positions … Read more

Biography of La Rue Royce

La Rue Royce, who recently began practice of his profession as a lawyer at Salina, represents one of the distinguished names of Kansas. He is a son of John Quincy Royce of Topeka, long prominent as a lawyer, editor and a dominating character in republican politics in this state. John Quiney Royce was born on a farm in Fayette County, Iowa, June 1, 1856, a son of David P. Royce, who was a native of New York State. When nine years of age John Quincy Royce was taken from the farm in his native Iowa county to Independence in that … Read more

Biography of Alexander M. Campbell Jr.

Alexander M. Campbell, Jr. Those who scan the pages of American history with a view of selecting the personages most deserving of attention in their day and generation because of lives which have been useful and inspiring to others, could not fail to mark the name of Campbell in the annals of Saline County, Kansas. It had been continuously identified with the county since 1858, when Alexander M. Campbell, father of the present bearer of that name, came herE and immediately became a vital factor in the development of this section. At the present time the family includes 400 individuals … Read more