William Elsey Connelley

“ Of the men who have served Topeka in official capacities of importance and responsibility, few have won more fairly a reputation for fidelity than has David O. Crane, since 1884 superintendent of the Topeka Cemetery. In the thirty-two years that he has been the incumbent of this office he has labored efficiently and conscientiously to discharge its duties in a reverent and honorable way, and the mere fact that he has held his office during such a long period should be sufficient evidence of the quality of his ability and the worth of his service. ”

“ With Quivira Kansas made her first manifestation. She broke on the world with a radiant flash as a recompense to Coronado for Cibola and the pueblos of the Rio Grande—the mummy villages of the dead deserts. While she was not appreciated and was left to her “brutish people” and her rolling herds of wild oxen for some centuries, it is a source of satisfaction to know that the Kansas plains were ridden over by mailed knights generations before Jamestown and Plymouth Rock were planted on our eastern shores. ”

“ Precisely speaking there is no new country and pioneers and pioneer life no longer exist. An absorbing and fascinating condition has passed into history, and its lessons and inspiration live principally in the lives of those who endured the hardships and contributed by various services and diversified gifts to the upbuilding of the present. Shawnee County has as noble a roll call of early settlers as any part of Kansas, and among those inseparably associated with the Fulton County records, none are more deserving of perpetuation in its annals than is the late Edwin Scotton. ”

“ Van Petten is a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and of the Modern Woodmen of America, at Burlingame. In politics he is a republican, but not an office seeker, and while he has taken some interest in local affairs of a public character, it has been merely as a booster for his friends and his party. He is a member of the First Methodist Church and is a class leader therein, but as his business keeps him away from the city a great deal of the time he is not able to be as active in religious work as he would prefer. ”

“ Alexander Carraway Spilman, living at McPherson at the age of eighty, is one of the few survivors of the true pioneer epoch of Kansas. The range of his experience seems remarkable even for a man of his age. He was in Kansas as a witness and newspaper correspondent of the factional turbulence of territorial days. He is a civil engineer by profession and was a member of the United States surveying party which surveyed Kansas west of the sixth principal meridian in 1858. It is probable that he is the only living pioneer or the oldest settler west of that meridian in Kansas. ”

“ John C. Mitchell was always a hard working man and while he did his best to contribute the comforts to his family, his children were reared in comparatively humble circumstances and became inured at an early age to hard work and some privations.
These were the early circumstances of Charles L. Mitchell's career. He grew up in Kenosha, and received his education in the public schools and at Kenosha College. There was an element of willingness and energy in his makeup which undoubtedly accounts for his success in life. He paid his own way both through school and college. ”

“ At the head of the Aetna Building and Loan Association today, in the office of president, is found John Sayre Downes, a business man of sterling capacity, who during the twenty years of his connection with the company has been appreciative of the value of fair treatment for policy holders and the results occruing therefrom. President Downes is a self-made man, whose own experience should serve as an encouraging example to those starting life in modest circumstances, as well as being illustrative of the desirable results attainable through thrift and wise investment. ”

“ But associated with Kansas it became an indefinite mystery vital as the pilgrimages to find the Holy Grail. Romances will have their seat in it. Quivira is not only coequal with Kansas—it is Kansas. It matters not now about exact metes and bounds, and never more will matter, for they are not essential to Quivira. It assumes a larger part—takes form as our earliest absorbing tradition. It is our remotest background in which take refuge the mystic tragedies incident to the evolution of the Great Plains. As a field for the fanciful it holds an expanding value to the coming generations of Kansas. ”

“ George Hill, father of the young attorney at Independence, has long been one of the respected and esteemed citizens of Montgomery County and is the head of a fine family. He was born in New York State in 1854, and was reared partly in Louisiana, but came to Kansas when a young man. That was in 1874, and his operations as a farmer and in various business and public capacities have been largely centered around Independence, where he still resides, owning an attractive residence at 903 West Myrtle Street. He owns land in Oklahoma, and has built up a large business in real estate at Independence. ”

“ He is one of the most extensive farmers in Western Kansas, where he had 1,200 acres in wheat, 800 acres in grain, and other large tracts devoted to produce, and has the greatest faith in his part of the state, believing that any man with good health and the spirit of industry can make a success. That he is a skilled farmer is shown in the fact that on his special farm of forty acres, located at Hoxie, he sowed wheat in 1914, 1915 and 1916, and secured a yield of ninety-seven bushels per acre, or above thirty-two bushels per acre per year. ”

“ Samuel Hummer grew up in Pennsylvania, followed farming there for a number of years, and in 1868 brought his family out to Kansas. On the 16th of December of that year he ate his first meal in the state at the old Gordon Hotel on East Fourth Street in Topeka. He then settled on his farm and from the first gave particular attention to the raising of good grades of livestock. He was one of the successful men of his time, and lived a long and useful life, which came to its close in 1891 at the age of eighty. ”

“ Marvin Frederick Truby is one of the younger men who are supplying their enterprise in the fields of oil production at Independence.
Independence is his native birthplace, where he was born February 19, 1891. He attended the public schools there and the Montgomery County High School, and completed the sophomore year in the Kansas State University. Leaving college in 1910, he has since been in the oil business and has producing wells both in Kansas and in Oklahoma. He resides at 217 North Second Street. Mr. Truby is a member of the Episcopal Church and politically is an independent democrat. ”

“ Professor Potter is a man of versatile talent. His studies have been mainly directed along the line which natural talents indicated but he is thoroughly educated in other directions than the one he has found most congenial. As an author in the line of his profession, he has to his credit some fifty signed articles which have been published in such standard journals as Power, the Electrical World and the Coal Age, and other published articles on such subjects as: fuels, gas producers, steam and gas engines, steam turbines, power plant auxiliaries and power plant economics. ”

“ Roy Pitts is chief of the fire department at Independence. During his two years in that office he has developed the service to a high point of efficiency, partly by organization and partly by the introduction of modern apparatus, so that Independence today can boast of as perfect an equipment for fighting fire as any city of its size in Kansas. ”

“ In 1904 he returned to Topeka, where he has since been identified with the dry goods firm operating under the style of the Mills Company. Mr. Adams has had a successful career, as shown in the prosperity he has gained, as farmer, cattleman, and merchant. He is a man of strong character and sound judgment, and likewise known as a good and public-spirited citizen, and a supporter of beneficial civic movements. Mr. Adams was married first to Ada Metsker, of Shawnee County, a daughter of Judge D. C. Metsker, a pioneer of Kansas. ”

“ Bowie has large bank interests. He devoted a great deal of time and helped to make a success of the Shawnee State Bank, which was organized in 1902 with a capital of $60,000, with Thomas Page as president, D. J. Hathaway as vice president and David Bowie as secretary. He is a director of the Bank of Topeka, also of the Prudential Trust Company, is secretary and treasurer of the Mills Building Company, and treasurer of the Pelletier Stores Company, which he helped to organize.
Mr. Bowie has no political tastes nor ambitions but votes as an independent republican. ”

“ One of the very successful contractors at Topeka is John M. Leeper, who when a young man learned the trade of brick mason, and on that trade as a foundation has built up a large business in brick contracting and the services of his organization has entered into the construction of several of the most conspicuous public buildings in the state. He is a native of Kansas and was born in Lyon County, September 6, 1872, when that section of the state was still well out on the frontier. ”

“ William Henry Wilson is one of the oldest of Topeka's merchants. He is an honored veteran of the Civil war, and has been a resident of Topeka since December 17, 1877. Along with success in business he has given his time unselfishly and conscientiously to the betterment of his city, and he should be long remembered for his efficient service while on the city school board. ”

“ Baird has taken no active part in public affairs, but like all good business men has accepted his share of the responsibilities of citizenship and is always eager to assist in the advancement of movements making for the general welfare, for the advancement of education or for the betterment of civic conditions. He is a thirty-second degree Mason and a Knight Templar and Shriner and has filled most of the chairs, and is also a member of organizations of railroad men. ”

“ He has always been willing to co-operate with his neighbors in the furthering of practical local improvements and personally has been a generous and benevolent man. He has long been a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
When Mr. Maus first came to Shawnee County, the whole country was one vast prairie, an oasis here and there indicating where a courageous pioneer like himself had made a settlement. ”

“ Of the agriculturists of Shawnee County who have been the architects of their own fortunes, and who, from small beginnings, have worked their way to independence and position, Joseph W. Cochran is a leading representative. He began his career without advantages of any kind, and his early struggles to gain a foothold,necessitated the use of all his energies, but his present fine farm of 107 acres, in Menoken Township, illustrates what may be gained through the exercise of industry and well directed effort. ”

“ John H. Tole. While it is certainly true that a live and growing community such as Liberty offers many and widely diversified opportunities for advancement along every line of personal endeavor, yet it is just as true that only a certain percentage achieve distinction, and a large number fail of even attaining a competency. It takes something more than mere opportunity to elevate a man from the common level of every-day accomplishments. ”

“ Most of Mr. Porterfield's own children are grown and established in business or homes of their own. In Venango County, Pennsylvania, in 1880, he married Miss Lydia A. Ogden, a daughter of J. N. and Priscilla Ogden. Her father is still living, a retired farmer and music teacher, at Oil City, Pennsylvania. Five children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Porterfield: Garnette Luella is the wife of Frank McKenna, a boiler maker by trade and a resident of Marietta, Ohio; H. M. is an oil producer and oil worker and lives at Wayside, Kansas ”

“ Downes' business career in Topeka dates only since 1896, but during this time he has achieved such a success as most men would regard as a triumph if accomplished through a half century of patient effort. Coming here at a time when the keenness of business competition, particularly in the matter of loans and investments, rendered success impossible unless through the exercise of sound judgment, allied to a certain degree of venturesome determination, he has achieved a reputation and acquired wealth through developing one of the country's great institutions. ”

“ He left Indiana, with his parents, in 1871, and after attending school for one year in Kansas, began his career as a stock dealer, but one year later returned to Indiana with his parents. In 1875, he again came to Kansas, this time to reside permanently, and began farming on the 160-acre farm which had been purchased by his father and on which he continued to carry on operations for a quarter of a century. At the end of that time, he left his family in their home at Topeka, and went to New Mexico, where for three years he was engaged in the cattle business. ”

“ Among the notably efficient men who make up the faculty of the Kansas State Agricultural College, at Manhattan, particular attention may be directed to Prof. Andrey Abraham Potter because of the achievements which already crown his comparatively short life. As dean of the division of engineering and director of the engineering experiment station, of the Kansas State Agricultural College, he qualifies as an expert in his profession, his recognized standing in which has been signally pronounced upon by his appointment on important national boards and committees. ”

“ The life of the financier is less conspicuous before the world than that of a member of a learned calling, or of one who mingles in public affairs, but is none the less one of arduous labor and thorough engrossment, requiring a high order of organizing talent, watchfulness of the trend of affairs and financial skill. ”

“ There, in 1810, was born Winslow Parker Tole, the grandfather of John H. Tole. He was reared in Kentucky, and there educated, but as a young man moved to Missouri, where he became a pioneer farmer and a buyer and seller of livestock, occupations in which he continued to be engaged throughout the remainder of his life, his death occurring in Pike County on his farm in 1880. The grandfather was a man of substance, who occupied a prominent place in his community and had the respect of his community as a citizen and a man. ”

“ Mitchell has deserved success because he has earned it. He was born at Kenosha, Wisconsin, February 12, 1873, a son of John C. and Sallie Ann (Connell) Mitchell. His father saw four years of active service in the Civil war and died in 1898, while the mother is still residing in Wisconsin. John C. Mitchell was a native of Scotland, being brought to America at the age of five years. The family spent five weeks on board the sailing vessel that brought them to the New World. The Mitchells took up a homestead in southwest Wisconsin, at what was then known as Southport, now Kenosha. ”