USA > Kansas > Crawford County > A Twentieth century history and biographical record of Crawford County, Kansas > Part 30
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In 1639 a small vessel left England for the new world and in due time made harbor about twenty miles east of New Haven, Connecticut. where they founded the colony of Guilford. John Bishop, our pro- genitor, was one of the pioneers, and established the family that has since spread from ocean to ocean. He had three children, the eldest of whona retained his father's name, married and had nine children, one of whom was also named John. This John married and reared three children, and one, Reuben, afterward became the father of Joel, who lost his mother at the age of six years, and while yet in his teens entered the Revolutionary war and suffered with others in the struggle by which this nation was conceived and brought forth. He was taken prisoner by the British, and confined in New York till the end of the war. At the age of twenty-five he married and settled in Charleston, Montgomery county, New York, where he lived for twenty-eight years, during which time he cleared two farms, each one in the woods, and built houses and barns thereon. In 1812 he moved his family of thirteen children to Genesee, purchasing fifty acres of land south of North Rose, a part of the land still being owned by one of his granddaughters. He resided there till his seventy-seventh year, when, with his two youngest sons, he made his fourth venture into the wilderness, settling at Havana, Ohio,
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where he died soon after. Most of the descendants of this worthy pioneer, scattered throughout the north central states, chose the occupa- tion of farmers, and while occupying comfortable places in life only one or two amassed wealth, and several have held high places in public service or been honored in the various professions. Of this family Harriet Gardner was a descendant.
William Calhoun moved to Illinois about 1840, and married Miss Gardner in 1851. He came out to Kansas in 1865 and settled in Craw- ford county in September, 1866, taking up a farm adjoining the old town of Monmouth, where he lived until his death in 1877, at the age of fifty- six years. His wife lived on the home farm until her death, April 14. 1904, being seventy-three years old. They were the parents of five children : Mary J. and James W., deceased ; C. F .; Lucy M. Mattox, in McCune : and C. L .. in Pittsburg.
Mr. C. F. Calhoun was reared on the farm, and came to Crawford county with his parents in 1866, so that he has been a resident for nearly forty years. He received such education as the country schools of that day afforded, and he remained at home till his marriage in 1884. He then engaged in the drug and livery business, continuing in the former for eight years. He passed the examinations by the board and received certificates as a licensed pharmacist, being entitled to engage in that pro- fession at the present time should he so desire. But his love for horses, and good ones at that, caused him to engage in the buying and selling of horses, at which pursuit he has made his best success and at which he has continued to the present time. He has bought and sold some fine roadsters during this time and still owns several fine animals. He moved to McCune in 1889, which has been the center of his operations ever since. In 1901 he and Mr. Justice erected the large and finely equipped Hotel McCune and a business block, and they are running the hotel in connection with other enterprises. Mrs. Calhoun also conducts a large millinery store in the town, having for several years given her entire attention to this pursuit. Mr. Calhoun owns the hotel, his resi-
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dence and other property in the town, and is in prosperous circumstances. He has filled the offices of township clerk and police judge, and has been concerned in many affairs for the city's progress and upbuilding.
Mr. Calhoun was married, March 11, 1884. to Miss Anna Thomp- son, who was born in Putnamville, Pennsylvania, July 2, 1859. Her father, John C. Thompson, was born in Armstrong county, Pennsyl- vania, April 26, 1828, and was married to Mary Beck, of Armstrong county, her mother, Margaret Gould, being of the same family as the Goulds of railroad and financial fame. Mr. Thompson moved to Kansas in 1868 and settled near the present site of Pittsburg, where he and his wife still reside. Their seven children are all living, as follows: Jennie S., wife of A. H. Gillam; George B. Thompson, of Missouri; Anna, of McCune; W. B. Thompson, of Longton: James E., of Washington state; Maggie Plass, also of Washington; Charlotta, wife of Dr. O. Aberty, of Dawn, Missouri. Mrs. Calhoun was educated in Kansas, and after finishing the country schools took one year's course at the Mission school at Osage Mission, and also one year in the Fort Scott Normal School. Before her marriage she taught six years in this county, being in the Monmouth city schools four terms. Mr. and Mrs. Calhoun have had two children. Kenneth L., born June 19, 1887. is now in the Cherokee high school; Mary Cleo, born February 3, 1890, died August 12, 1894.
DR. C. H. STRONG.
Dr. C. H. Strong is one of the oldest citizens, both in point of years and length of residence, of Crawford county, and the county is proud to do honor to such a pioneer and energetic and public-spirited citizen, who at the age of seventy-four still does manual labor every day, is a hearty and well-preserved citizen, and secure in the possession of hosts of friends and, better still, an honored name and a past filled with usefulness and good to himself and his fellow-men. As the history
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of any community, or state, or nation, consists mainly of the deeds of its principal men, for this reason a history of Crawford county would have several serious gaps and omissions should it not record the part Dr. Strong has taken in its early development and progress. In particular does the county seat of Girard owe to him what a child does to its father, and he is indeed held in this venerable relationship by the citizens of that town.
The life history of Dr. Strong began on a farm one mile east of Girard, Erie county, Pennsylvania, February 28, 1830, so that he is approaching the seventy-fifth turn on life's race course. That his ele- mental vigor is yet unimpaired by time, it is only necessary to recall to the citizens how, in the fall of 1903, he won the premium offered by the Girard Press to the exhibitor of the largest pumpkin grown on any indi- vidual's patch, and the large plat of ground which he devotes to garden- ing and light farming, doing most of the work himself, is evidence of his energy and activity.
He received his education in the public schools, and at the age of sixteen attended the academy at Springfield, Pennsylvania. Two years later he entered the college at Girard, from which he was graduated in two years. He taught school in Erie and Crawford counties for eight years, then taught three years in Madison and Painesville, Ohio, from there went to Attica, Indiana, and thence to Belvidere, Illinois. He was in St. Joseph, Missouri, for a short time, and then returned to Illi- nois and taught at New Berlin and Loami, in Sangamon county. He taught the academy at Loami for two years, and in 1849 turned his atten- tion to medicine. He studied under Professor J. W. Bishop, dean of the faculty in the Cleveland Eclectic Medical College, and later took the course of lectures and graduated in 1858. . He was engaged in prac- tice in Sangamon county, Illinois, for about eight years, and some years after coming to Kansas, in 1879, took the examination at Girard, and practiced with success in that city.
Dr. Strong's health failed while he was in Illinois, and he came out
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to Kansas in December, 1865, believing that he could hardly live three months. In his own words, "the gentle zephyrs and dry and healthy atmosphere of Kansas, the change of water and diet, venison and prairie chicken, were a great help, and in a month's time I began to gain strength and an appetite, and have not had a week's sickness since." In 1866 he taught a subscription school at Cato, Crawford county (but then known only as the Cherokee Neutral Lands), and in fact throughout much of his career in this county he has devoted himself to the advancement of education. In October, 1867, he was nominated for the offices of county superintendent of public instruction and clerk of the district court, and was elected in the following November. After the election he was appointed deputy to the probate judge, Levi Hatch, the county clerk, Henry Germain, and the register of deeds, H. T. Coffman, which officers had been elected at the same time, and he thus held two offices by election and three by appointment.
In the fall of 1868 Dr. Strong was re-elected to the office of county superintendent of public instruction, and in this capacity he accom- plished a most praiseworthy achievement for the future welfare of the county, and made a record that is perhaps unsurpassed in the history of the state's education. Before he entered his office as superintendent there was not a schoolhouse nor an organized district in the entire county, and the youth of the community had only the primitive sub- scription school as a means of acquiring learning. In two years, with the co-operation of the people, Dr. Strong organized one hundred and three school districts in Crawford county, and thus established public education on a firm and permanent basis. Mr. McVicar, the state super- intendent, reported that no other county could show a larger number of districts organized in a similar period of time.
About this time there were but three postoffices in the county, Cato, Crawfordsville and Monmouth, the mail being carried from Fort Scott to Monmouth in a pony cart. Crawfordsville was then the seat of justice and administration, but there was various discontents with
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the location, and in this connection Mr. Strong became the founder of the town which afterward became the county seat and the principal com- mercial center of the county. The interesting episode of the beginning of Girard is best told in his own words :
"While at Crawfordsville I applied to the town company for a lot, by purchase or otherwise, on which to put my drug store, which was then at Cato, but was put off. Knowing the voice of the people of the county as to the county seat. I mounted Bob on the 28th of February, 1868, my birthday, and shouldered my old carbine, telling John T. Foss and J. T. Bridgens I was going on a hunt for deer and the county seat. I got the deer and dressed him near the southwest corner where the court house now stands. I have his horns now. While he was struggling after being shot I hunted a sprig about four feet long, pulled up some grass, tied it to the top, and wrote the name 'Girard,' for my home in Pennsylvania. There was but one log house to be seen, there being no trees or anything else but grass and the raw prairie. I took a quarter of venison and returned to Crawfordsville. W. W. Jones was post- master, and Henry Schoen and H. Brown were in the postoffice. I said to them that I didn't wish a lot, as I had named and started a town of my own. I qualified with Mr. McIntosh before H. Martin, justice of the peace, and applied to the secretary of the state for a charter for Girard city, and got it. I organized a town company, and we gave each person applying for the same a bond for a deed for a fifty by two hundred feet lot, and now you all see the result. I am proud of Girard and its people, and I bespeak for it prosperity and growth in the future."
From this interesting narrative the present generation may also gain many a picture of conditions of living and the physical aspect of the country as it was in the pioneer days of the sixties. On September 10. 1868, Dr. Strong received his commission as the first postmaster of Girard, and on September 15, when he opened the first mail. there were three letters and six papers for Girard. Such was the incipiency of the
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town, and its later growth and rise to importance are in palpable evidence to all the inhabitants of Crawford county.
At the present time Dr. Strong owns houses and real estate in Girard, in addition to the ten-acre tract just west of the city, where he lives, and also owns a farm of one hundred and eighty acres two miles west. He enjoys a prosperous and contented old age, and is happy in his daily work and in the esteem of friends and family. During the Civil war he saw service as second assistant surgeon of the One Hundred and Thirtieth Illinois Infantry.
Dr. Strong was married at Loami, Illinois, March 1, 1861, to Miss Frances Fowler. There were two children. The older, a daughter, died in infancy. The son, George W., lives in Frontenac, Kansas, and his nine bright children are a great source of joy to their fond grandparents.
FREDERICK A. GASKELL.
Frederick A. Gaskell, an old and well-known resident of Crawford county, has spent nearly thirty-five years of his career in farming and kindred pursuits in this county, and has been so highly successful in his enterprises that a few years ago he gave up the personal and active man- agement of his farm and moved into Pittsburg, where he engaged in the furniture business for about six years, until he retired to private life. well circumstanced and content with what the past years have given him. Besides his excellent civil record, he has the honor of being a veteran who saw much and varied campaigning during the rebellion and gained his first introduction to the Sunflower state during that war.
Mr. Gaskell was born in 1843, in Worcester county. Massachusetts. where has been the family seat for many generations. Among his Quaker ancestors were two who came over with Penn and settled in Pennsylvania, but his direct forefather came to the Massachusetts colony in the seventeenth century, and the old homestead in Worcester county
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has been in the Gaskell family for several generations and is still in their possession.
The parents of Mr. Gaskell were Elisha and Susan (Taft) Gaskell. In 1854 his father brought his family to the west and settled in Bureau county, Illinois. The railroad had not yet been built through there at that time, and Elisha Gaskell secured a contract, with P. D. Armour, for building a portion of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy through the state. When he had completed this contract he returned to his farm in Bureau county and engaged in farming until his wife's death, when he moved to Chicago and made that his residence till his death.
Mr. F. A. Gaskell had the substantial rearing and training of a farmer boy, and remained on the farm until the Civil war. In August. 1861, he enlisted in the Bureau county company known as Company D. They were sent to Quincy, Illinois, where they expected to join an Illi- nois regiment, but there was no demand for troops at that time. While they were encamped at Quincy, John Brown, Jr., son of the famous one of the name from Osawatomie, came along. in charge of a company that he had raised in Ohio, on his way to Kansas. The Bureau county boys were told that if they would come to Kansas they could enlist there, and. being very anxious to see actual service, they went along with Brown. They shipped their horses on the old Hannibal and St. Joe Railroad, and they themselves rode on top of box cars across the state. At Leaven- worth they were mustered in as Company D of the Seventh Kansas. The first winter was spent in scouting duties and in chasing Quantrell along the Missouri-Kansas border. In the spring of 1862 the regiment went by boat down the Missouri and Mississippi and up the Ohio to Paducah, and thence through Kentucky and Tennessee, becoming a part of the Sixteenth Army Corps. They took part in the siege of Corinth, and in other skirmishes and battles on their progress to the south. While with Grant's army on the way to Vicksburg they were defeated at Holly Springs, and they later served at the siege of Vicksburg, being engaged in scouting duty at the time the city surrendered. The regi-
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ment was ordered to join Sherman for his march to the sea, but was later ordered back to Nashville. Mr. Gaskell's last service was in Mis- souri, where his regiment was engaged in keeping Price at bay. He was mustered out at St. Louis at the close of the war.
Mr. Gaskell returned to Bureau county and remained there until 1870, when he came out to Kansas and cast in his lot as a pioneer of Crawford county. There was no railroad in this vicinity, nor even anything worthy to be called a wagon road. He took up a fertile tract of land in Washington township, about five miles north of where the city of Pittsburg afterward grew up, and there he lived and developed a fine agricultural estate. He was unusually successful in his operations, and so bounteous were the fruits of the soil that in 1894 he retired from farming and moved to Pittsburg, where he has a beautiful home at 401 West Euclid avenue. He is esteemed as one of the substantial citizens of the town, and is well known throughout the county for his solid financial ability and his personal worth and integrity.
Mr. Gaskell affiliates with the Masonic fraternity and the Grand Army of the Republic. He was married in Bureau county. before coming to Kansas to live, to Miss Carrie Shawger. Their only child, Alice, is the wife of Frank Magie, of Duluth, Minnesota.
JAMES JONES.
James Jones, of Lincoln township, has been acquainted with Craw- ford county perhaps as long as any other citizen now living here. Mr. Jones is a much-traveled, broad-minded, enterprising, and highly es- teemed man of affairs, who in the course of a long life has seen much of the world and its peoples, has been identified with various enterprises. and in his later years may well be content with the success and material comforts which his varied life of effort has brought to him. He first saw and traveled through this county in 1854, when the Indians still considered it as their lawful territory, and although he has been in other
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parts of the country most of his subsequent life he has constantly kept in touch with the county's affairs, and is really one of the best informed men in regard to its development from primitive times to the present.
Born in the same county as the late President Mckinley-Trumbull county, Ohio, in Fowler township, on July 15, 1832, he comes of an old and prominent family of the Western Reserve in Ohio. His grand- father, Silas Jones, who was born in Wales and came to this country when a boy, grew up in Connecticut and became captain of a company which fought the British and helped achieve the national independence. Some time after the war he became one of the pioneer settlers in the old Connecticut territory of the Western Reserve in Ohio, and he cut out his home from the dense forest of Fowler township, Trumbull county, making himself a good farm and living there until his death. William Jones, the son of Silas and the father of Mr. Jones, was born in Connecticut and was a boy in his teens when he accompanied his parents to their new abode in the woods of eastern Ohio. Here he grew to manhood and married Sarah Morsow, who was born in Wash- ington county, Pennsylvania, a daughter of John Morsow and his wife, he a native of Scotland and she born near Belfast, Ireland, whence they became early settlers in Trumbull county, Ohio. William Jones and wife had the following children : Ed, who died when seventy years old: Robert, who lives in Ohio; Dwight, who died at the age of twenty-one; Aaron, mentioned hereinafter ; John D., who lives on the old homestead in Trumbull county ; and Franklin, who lives near the old homestead. The father of this family died at the age of sixty. He was a cattle dealer and drover, often driving stock from his Ohio home over the mountains to market in Pittsburg and Philadelphia. He was a successful and honored man in all his relations. Politically he was a Whig. He was one of the most active workers and supporters of the Congregational church of his community, and was liberal in all his contributions to worthy causes, giving a considerable sum to Oberlin College when it was founded.
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Mr. James Jones was reared on the old homestead, and in his boyhood the pioneer conditions had not yet disappeared from Trumbull county, for he attended a log-cabin school, where all the furnishings and educational equipments were indeed rude and primitive. He several times assisted his father in driving the cattle to Pittsburg and Philadel- phia, and perhaps as a result of these long and eventful journeys ac- quired that taste for travel and adventure which have been dominant characteristics in shaping his entire career. In 1850, when a young fellow of eighteen years, he sailed for New York for the California land of gold, and at the isthmus took passage on a vessel which touched at the Sandwich islands and was one hundred and forty-two days in reaching San Francisco. For four years Mr. Jones mined and pros- pected in Sierra and Yuba counties, and then went back to Ohio, again by the isthmus route. In 1854 he went west to Missouri and Kansas, and this was the occasion which brought him through Crawford county at such a pioneer time in its history. He also went through Fort Scott, being on his way to the lead mines in Newton county, Missouri; and he mined and prospected in southwestern Missouri for several years.
Mr. Jones belongs to the Kansas contingent of veterans of the Civil war. At the beginning of the war he enlisted at Fort Scott in Company K. Sixth Kansas Cavalry, under Captain Jewell, who was later promoted to colonel and killed at Cane Hill, Missouri. This regi- ment saw much rigorous service along the Kansas and Missouri borders, in that most dangerous of warfare, with the bushwhackers and guer- rillas, and took part in the battle at Carthage and several engagements with Price's troops. They were also fighting the famous Quantrell and his men, and after the Lawrence massacre took six of the rebels prisoner, one of whom was released, and the other five are buried where the city of Pittsburg now stands. Two of these men Mr. Jones had known before the war. Mr. Jones was in the army for three years and four months altogether. and experienced many of the roughest
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phases of war and rebellion, acquitting himself most creditably in the cause of his country.
After the war he settled near Cato in this county, and lived there until 1876, in which year he went out to the Black Hills country, where he was successfully engaged in prospecting and mining for twenty- seven years. He then returned to this county and bought a ten-acre tract of land in Lincoln township where he has a very comfortable home and most pleasant surroundings in which to pass the declining years of his life. He is a very entertaining talker and companion, with no end of anecdotes concerning his experiences in various parts of the world, and is a genial, frank and popular man with all. He was formerly affiliated with the Odd Fellows, in politics is a stanch Republican, and is a member of the G. A. R. post.
Aaron Jones, a brother of Mr. James Jones, is also one of the highly esteemed and prosperous citizens of Crawford county, where he has lived since 1871. He was born at the old home in Trumbull county, April 17, 1835. and in 1858 moved west to Ringgold county, Iowa. which was his home until 1871. From this latter county also he enlisted for service in the Civil war, being enrolled in August, 1862, as a mem- ber of Company G. Twenty-ninth Iowa Infantry, under Colonel Thomas Benton. He took part in the battles at Helena and Little Rock, Ar- kansas, and at Sabine Cross Roads in the Red River expedition, and gave a creditable account of himself throughout his military career. He was in the hospital for six months altogether, and received his hon- orable discharge at Davenport. Iowa. On coming to this county in 1871 he bought a farm of eighty acres, and has since been successfully engaged in its cultivation, being one of the substantial men of the com- munity.
He was married at Mount Ayr, Iowa, to Miss Frances Larr, who was born in Ohio, a daughter of James and Jane (Ford) Larr. They have four children living, William, Althie. Cora, Grace, and the daugh- ter Laura died at the age of twenty-five. Mr. Jones is a Republican in
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politics, a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, and his wife is a member of the Methodist church.
CHRISTOPHER HORNADAY.
Christopher Hornaday, who finds an interesting and profitable occupation in the tilling and managing of his farm of one hundred and sixty acres in section 4 of Osage township, two miles northeast of Mc- Cune, is an old and honored resident of Crawford county and has been prominently identified with its agricultural development and progress for over thirty years. He is a public-spirited and progressive gentle- man, able in his endeavors, and his fellow citizens have always held him in high esteem for his sterling integrity and genial personal character.
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