USA > Kansas > Crawford County > A Twentieth century history and biographical record of Crawford County, Kansas > Part 46
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is that he is progressive and ambitious, and his desire for advancement and high attainment in the work which he had chosen for a life occu1- pation led him to attend the Ohio College of Dental Surgery, from which he was graduated in 1897. The Ohio College of Dental Surgery is the dental department of the University of Cincinnati, and is the second oldest dental college in the United States and has turned out many of the most noted dentists of the country. While attending these professional schools Dr. Embree filled up his vacation periods by prac- ticing at different places, principally at Caney, Kansas, and at Dallas, Texas, where he passed the examination of the state board of dentistry and was licensed to practice. After finishing at Cincinnati he practiced for a time under a preceptor at Lamar, Missouri, and early in 1898 he located in Pittsburg. Here he has built up a practice that keeps him constantly busy, and he receives patients from some of the leading physicians of the city, who have the utmost faith in his skill and ability. He earnestly works for the maintaining of the profession of dentistry on a high ethical plane. and he deprecates any tendency that would lower the dignity of dentistry, which he rightly holds should be recog- nized by law and public opinion as in the same class with medicine and surgery. He maintains that dentistry will eventually embrace more of the physician's and the surgeon's work than even it does now, and thus its requirements and standards will be raised. He himself keeps thoroughly in touch with the growth of the science, and directs his influence and efforts not only for the increase of his own skill and ad- vantage but for the progress and betterment of the profession in general. Dr. Embree is a Mason, and highly esteemed as a citizen and social factor.
J. N. LAWLER.
J. N. Lawler. who is engaged in dealing in general merchandising at Farlington and is also operating in real estate and acting as land agent for the Frisco Railroad Company, was born in Vermilion county.
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Illinois, on the 17th of February, 1858. He is a son of William and Amanda (Hale) Lawler, residents of Girard, where the father is now living retired. They came to this county in 1873 and located on a farm three and a half miles west of Farlington, but at the present writing Mr. Lawler is engaged in no active business pursuit but is enjoying the fruits of his former toil in a period of well-merited rest.
J. N. Lawler came to Kansas in his boyhood days, being a youth of fifteen years when his parents removed to Crawford county. His early education was acquired in the common schools of Illinois and he continued his studies in the high school of Girard. Kansas, with Professor Quick as his preceptor. When he was but eighteen years of age he became imbued with the idea that he might make a fortune more rapidly in some other way than hy following the occupation of farming; to which he had been reared. His father, willing that he should try what he could do, gave him twenty-five dollars and he started away from home, making his way to Webb City, Missouri. There he secured employment in the mines, but three months sufficed to show him that his rose-tinted hopes were without material foundation and he wrote his father telling him that if he would send him thirty dollars with which to pay off his debts he would gladly return to the farm. The father again consented and Mr. Lawler once more took up his abode on the old homestead. At the age of twenty-three years he assumed the management of the farm, which he operated continuously and successfully for ten years. He and his father than traded the property for a stock of hardware in Girard and were connected with mercantile interests in that city, but at a recent date they disposed of their store there. Mr. Lawler then turned his attention to real estate operations as a partner of N. J. Johnston, of Nevada, Missouri, and spent one year in that place. He afterward came to Farlington and he traded one hundred and sixty acres of land in western Kansas for the store and stock which he now owns. At that time the store con- tained but fifty dollars' worth of goods, but he has constantly enlarged
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this until he now carries a stock valued at about three thousand dollars. On the 2d of January. 1901, he purchased his father's interest in the business and has since been sole proprietor. In the conduct of his mercantile enterprise he follows progressive and modern methods and at the same time he is strictly honorable in all his trade transactions, so that he enjoys the unqualified respect and confidence of his fellow men. In addition to his store he also owns four lots and a good resi- dence in Farlington. He deals to some extent in real estate, places loans and is also land and immigration agent for the Frisco Railroad Company.
In March. 1883 occurred the marriage of Mr. Lawler and Miss Lillian F. Spicer, the eldest daughter of J. W. Spicer, of Pittsburg. Kansas. They now have two children: Roscoe C., who is associated with his father in the conduct of his store: and Lota Pearl, who at the age of sixteen years is attending school. Mr. and Mrs. Lawler hold membership in the Baptist church, taking an active part in its work and contributing liberally to its support. He is also identified with Girard lodge, No. 93. F. & A. M., and is also connected with the Modern Woodmen Camp. No. 6072. He has been township trustee for four terms and as a public official is loyal to the general good, while in all matters of citizenship he seeks the general welfare, and in his com- munity he has co-operated largely in measures for the improvement and progress of the town along substantial lines. He is indeed a wide- awake business man, recognizing the possibilities of the great and growing west and he is contributing his full share to the promotion of community interests.
GEORGE W. H. LUCAS.
George W. H. Lucas, mayor of Cherokee and a leading real estate dealer, is honored and esteemed as one of the oldest citizens of Cherokee, having made this his home continuously for thirty years, and his con-
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nection with this section of the Sunflower state antedates this by about ten years, so that very few men in these whereabouts are more thor- oughly identified with the life and progress of this region. He belongs to a family, in fact, which has kept pretty well on the advanced frontier of civilization in the United States, and through more than one member become conspicuous by the part taken in administrative and business affairs. The nearly seventy cycles of time which Mr. Lucas has filled out have been froni an early age teeming with industrious and useful effort, and the many honors and emoluments rewarding his career have heen as the recognition of a high merit and a conscientious and high- minded performance of responsibilities and duties.
Mr. Lucas was born near Portsmouth, Ohio, in 1835, being a son of Samuel and Nancy ( Hitchcock) Lucas, both natives of Ohio. An uncle of Samuel Lucas was General Robert Lucas, one of the noted military and public figures in the history of the middle west during the early half of the last century. He earned his military reputation and rank with General Cass, and was a soldier with a distinguished record during the war of 1812 and in the later Indian wars in the west. He was governor of the state of Ohio for two terms, and was later appointed governor of the territory of Iowa when it formed a part of Wisconsin territory, and was also its governor when it became a separate territory. He tendered his nephew, Samuel Lucas, an appointment as Indian com- missioner in the Iowa territory, and the latter, in the pioneer year of 1837, with his entire family, moved from Ohio to Iowa, locating at Bloomington, now Muscatine. That was the frontier of western civili- zation in those days, and there were only a few houses in the settlement of Bloomington. As Indian commissioner Mr. Samuel Lucas helped in the removal of the Sac and Fox Indians further west. He lived in Muscatine a long period of years, and died there in 1877. His wife survived him, and died a few years later in Kansas.
Mr. George W. H. Lucas was accordingly reared to manhood from the time he was two years old at Muscatine, Iowa, or near that place,
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most of his boyhood being spent on a farm. He remained in his native state until the Civil war, in which conflict the Lucas family were well represented. He and three of his brothers were Union soldiers. He enlisted at Muscatine in 1862 in Company F, Thirty-fifth Iowa Infantry, and was at once commissioned second lieutenant. He was put in the Trans-Mississippi department under General A. J. Smith, and his service was along the Mississippi river. He was appointed an aide on the staff of General Tuttle, of the Third Brigade, and as such took part in the Red River expedition, and for his bravery during this was brevetted major by General Banks.
He was mustered out at Davenport in 1865, and then came to southeastern Kansas. He took up a claim in Cherokee county not far from the present town of Cherokee, but on account of an ailment con- tracted in the army his health was poor in this vicinity, and he returned to Muscatine. His brothers. Joseph and Jesse, located at Cherokee at the same time. He remained in Iowa until 1874. and then returned to this part of Kansas and located at Cherokee, Crawford county, where he has lived ever since. His first enterprise here was in the mercantile. business, which he continued until 1878. and he then engaged in the grain and coal business and also dealt in real estate. He took a prominent part in the development of Cherokee and this part of the county. He was secretary of the company that was organized to build the Cherokee and Parsons Railroad, a narrow-gauge road, now consolidated with the Frisco System. Mr. Lucas is now in the real estate business almost exclusively, and is the owner of valuable coal and farm lands in Craw- ford and Cherokee counties.
Mr. Lucas was elected to his present office of mayor of Cherokee in .April, 1903. and previously he had filled several terms as councilman and in other local offices. He is one of the prominent Democrats of this section of the state, and has been a delegate to numerous conven= tions and chairman of the Democratic county central committee. He is affiliated with the Masons and other local lodges.
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Mr. Lucas was married at Cherokee to Miss Lola E. Hitchcock, who is herself a woman of much business ability, as is evidenced by the fact that she is a director in the First National Bank of Cherokee. Mr. and Mrs. Lucas have three children. Charles, Mrs. Lillie Heap and Frank E.
LEONARD C. BAXTER.
Leonard C. Baxter, manager for the Long-Bell Lumber Company at Pittsburg, has lived in Crawford county for the greater part of thirty years, and his greatest successes have been achieved near the home of his boyhood, for he was only twelve years old at the time of his location in this county. He has been connected with the lumber business ever since he attained his majority, and is one of the ablest and best known lumber men in this section of the state. His long connection with the Long-Bell Company, one of the largest in the country, shows how high he stands in their confidence and esteem, and his ability and enter- prising spirit have contributed in no small measure to their success in this city.
Mr. Baxter was born on a farm near Geneseo, Henry county, Illi- nois, being a son of Abram and Hannah E. ( Westlake ) Baxter, the history of whose worthy and influential careers in this county will be found on other pages of this work.
Mr. Baxter came out to Crawford county, Kansas, with his parents in 1872, and was reared to manhood on the homestead farm four miles east of Pittsburg, where he remained until he was twenty-one years old. He completed his education in this county, and on leaving the farm went to Pittsburg, where he entered the employ of his brother. Sylvester W., in the lumber business. In the fall of 1881, however, this brother sold his business to the Long-Bell Lumber Company, and then the two brothers both worked for that company. Mr. L. C. Baxter con- tinued this employment until 1884, when he went west and located at
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Fresno, California, where he was in business for four years. As soon as the Long-Bell Company heard of his return to Pittsburg in 1888, they at once offered him a position, which he accepted on October 15. He became their local yard manager, first at Pittsburg, then at Hen- nessy, Oklahoma, where he remained about five years, and was then manager of the company's yards at Weir City, Kansas. In 1899 he was once more placed in charge of the yards at Pittsburg, which im- portant position of manager he still holds. He is considered a first-class lumber man, with long years of experience to increase his usefulness in this sphere of activity, and for a long time he has held the confidence and esteem of the Long-Bell Lumber Company, whose interests extend over a large territory of the middle west.
Mr. Baxter affiliates with the Masonic, the Modern Woodmen and the Maccabees fraternities. But his most cherished connection, outside of his own fireside. is with the Christian church, of which he has been a worthy member for a number of years. He was married at Pittsburg to Miss Ida Kelly. They have five children, Myrtle. Abram. Sylvester Westlake. Ruth and Milton.
[The following sketches of the Hathaway and Jewell families, con- taining biographical and descriptive matter of greatest importance to the history of Crawford county, were prepared by Mr. F. A. Jewell and owing to unavoidable delay did did not reach the publishers in time for their proper insertion on earlier pages.]
PHILIP WING HATHAWAY, a pioneer of Iowa and the Cherokee Indian Neutral Lands, was born on a farmi near Wareham, Massachu- setts. His early life was little unlike that of most boys of his day- spent in farm work with few school advantages, intermingled with pleas- ures and griefs. He stayed at home until 1832, when his father died. which parent left surviving him a wife and six children-two daugh- ters. Adline and Sophia : four boys, Albert. Andrew, Philip and Mathias.
Young Philip. tiring of the farm, sought other pursuits more in keeping with his endowed talent as a mechanic. . At the age of nineteen,
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he entered the machine shops and rolling mills at Pittsburg, Pennsyl- vania, then followed his trade in the cities of Harrisburg and Philadel- phia until soon his energies, natural and acquired abilities brought him in favor with the masters of his trade and promotions followed succes- sively. Finally he became a partner in the ownership of one of Philadel- phia's rolling mills and machine shops which after a few years of suc- cessful operation burned down with sad disaster to its owners; and to satisfy their creditors Mr. Hathaway sacrificed his beautiful home and most of his other property, having barely money enough left from the sale to convey himself and family in 1849 to Allamakee county, Iowa, where he located a beautiful homestead twelve miles from Lansing. Here he met J. A. Wakefield, who afterward became famous in making Kan- sas early history. These men being near neighbors and each members of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and strangers to a new coun- try. their friendly relations were that of brother to brother. In 1856. through his friend Wakefield, who had sold out and gone to Kansas a year previous, Mr. Hathaway was induced to sell out and go to Kansas. He bought a squatter's claim near Lawrence, but when he returned with his family he found another had possessed his claim, having later pur- chased it of the same settler. In May, 1857. in company with his old friend Judge Wakefield, a tour of southeast Kansas and the "Neutral Lands" was made and on their return they stopped at a place on the military road about three quarters of a mile north of the present city of Arcadia, Kansas, where lived a man by the name of Howell, who had married a Cherokee Indian woman, thus giving him a head right in the Indian lands, and who had begun the building of a double log house, which Hathaway finished and lived in until he erected a frame building in 1871, a half mile south on the Howell tract. Hathaway gave Howell $1,000 cash for his 320 acre claim. Howell agreeing to and did give his new purchaser a permit which was passed on by the tribal chief and the same permit was renewed each year thereafter until said land became subjected to government entry. This is the first treaty recorded
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that a settler ever made with the Indians on the neutral lands for his head right or claim.
At the age of twenty-six in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, young Hathaway had met, wooed and wedded Elizabeth, the accomplished and college-educated daughter of a Mr. Gregg, an Englishman and a mer- chant of that city. Her father was so opposed to the wedding of his (laughter to the machinist, thinking her too good for a tradesman, that when each of the lovers sought his consent by argument and persuasion. they only met with rebuke, until finally Cupid was bound no longer, and as lovers of today are, so they were of yore, and leaving the stern par- ent in his rage they stepped across the street to the home of a magistrate and were married.
Mr. Hathaway's ancestry are those of English history, the Ameri- can branch of which came with the Pilgrim fathers to the shores of the Atlantic. Mr. Hathaway followed farming and stock-raising and erected a shop and followed his trade both in Iowa and Kansas and it is said that he was one of the best mechanics that ever came west and wrought in both wood and metal, and seemingly could manufacture anything from a common sewing needle to a locomotive. Here on his place he estab- lished the first postoffice south of Ft. Scott, named in honor of its founder, which he kept until after the war, in 1865, when it took the name of Arcadia. In April, 1858. fever took away his happy com- panion and wite, and interment of her body on the old homestead is that of the first who slept in the old Arcadia cemetery. The death of this kind and affectionate mother and devoted wife left Mr. Hathaway to console and care for his five motherless children, two boys-M. Ellis and Albert S., who are now gold miners and ranchers in northern Cali- fornia, and three girls, Adaline E .. widow of E. J. McCoy and now living with her brothers in the west; Sophia N., the widow of the late Lewis R. Jewell and who resides on the old Hathaway homestead; and Harriet E., wife of James Nichols, who resides with her husband and family in Woodward county, Oklahoma.
COL. LEWIS R. JEWELL
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In 1860 Mr. Hathaway married Jane Carroll, a lady of Cherokee Indian descent, who was of fair skin, tall, light hair and blue eyes. She was a good and loving mother and dutiful wife, but lived less than a year after her marriage.
Mr. Hathaway was a very pronounced anti-slavery advocate, and was refused enlistment in the union army on account of physical dis- ability. On the night of May 20, 1864. Henry Taylor, a sheriff of Vernon county, Missouri, before and after the war, at the head of a guerrilla band of eighty well armed and mounted men, en- tered the military road at the present city of Arcadia. Kan- sas, and took Mr. Hathaway prisoner, who, however. mirac- ulously escaped. with other prisoners, at Wheeling, five miles northeast of his homestead on the state line, when this band of bushwhackers was fired upon by a party of Wisconsin union soldiers headed by George Pond-an attack which occasioned Tayler's great confusion and rapid retreat to his home in Missouri.
In November, 1874. Mr. Hathaway having been afflicted for years with the chronic disease of gravel which he contracted in the rolling mills of Pennsylvania, was conquered by the grim messenger of death. He had been a man of fine physique, broad shouldered and six feet tall, well informed in biblical, political and current topics ; a man quick to anger and as soon to forget and forgive, and yet a man of deep convictions, and generous to a fault. No man was ever turned away from his door hungry, he he a federal or confederate soklier.
COLONEL LEWIS R. JEWELL, son of Lewis and Deborah ( Brooks ) Jewell, was born August 16, 1822, at the old Jewell homestead at Marl- boro, Middlesex county, Massachusetts, where his brother John L. yet resides. He was of the seventh generation in the line from Joseph, who was the third son of Thomas Jewell of near Boston, Massachusetts, of whom earliest authentic record found was in 1639. The name has been changed and modified from Jule. Joyell. Jewel to the present Jewell. At what times in English history the modifications of the name took
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place, the family record fails to show. He was raised, schooled and trained under the stern Christian parents of the Methodist belief and while yet in his teens his uncle Abiga Brooks, then a leading merchant of Harmer, Ohio, sent for him to assist in the mercantile business, which he did until he entered into a contract with the Spalding Pump Man- ufacturing Company by the terms of which the company agreed to keep him supplied with its factory's output. In a short time the firm enlarged and increased the capacity of the factory to its uttermost, the young salesman having met with such marked success in his first "self-reliance" business that the fatory was months behind with the filling of orders. He decided to enter the mercantile business with David Putnam, which he did, and bought an interest therein.
Mr. Jewell was married to Susan, daughter of John and Nancy (Warren) Hutchinson, March 15, 1843, and after the purchase of a few household goods he found his capital stock in cash was less than four shillings. Thus was Jewell beginning his married life.
In 1854 having sold out his interest in the mercantile business with David Putnam, he purchased of Douglas Putnam an undivided one- fourth interest in the Harmer Manufacturing Company's business and property, and in this business was employed as a general and traveling salesman at a salary of $1.500 per annum to sell the company's product, consisting of all kinds of machinery, moulded and turned, and buckets. While traveling through the east he found like factories were being erected whose products would soon come in competition with those of his factory, and hence thought it a wise time to sell his interest in the factory, which he did to John Pool, of Boston, Massachusetts, in 1856.
He then had a steamboat built, christened "Martha Putnam," named in honor of his early partner, David Putnam's, daughter. The boat was equipped with modern machinery from his old factory and in 1857 made its initial trip from Cincinnati to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, carrying 300 passengers and its capacity of freight. The boat remained in commission on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers until it was burned
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at Cairo in the dead of winter with considerable loss to its captain and owner, although it was heavily insured.
In the spring Mr. Jewell, hearing and reading of the great possibil- ities of the great territory of Kansas, embarked therefor in 1859, and finally arrived in the Cherokee Neutral Lands, in the winter of the same year. Fifteen miles south of Ft. Scott in the pleasant valley west of Ar- cadia, he located claims and began farming and stock-raising, which he continued until his enlistment in the army in 1860. His first difficulties in the neutral lands occurred when Captain Sturgis, com- manding a company of United States troops in company with the In- dian agent, beginning at the lower part of the neutral lands, had burned the improvements of and driven away the settlers thereon. They con- tinued their destruction of property until they reached within a few miles of Jewell's home, where they were met by Mr. Jewell and a delegation of settlers, demanding a hearing of their rights or a fight. Captain Sturgis, knowing the feeling and seeing the determination of the set- tlers, agreed to meet them at Cato, Kansas, which he did on the follow- ing day. Where the settlers gathered and formed in battle array con- fronting the United States troops, arguments and speeches were the program of the day ; an agreement was finally reached that a delegation consisting of three should be sent to Washington to lay their troubles before the president. Captain Sturgis agreed to wait their report, which he did and which report was to the effect that no further trouble should be given the settlers of the neutral lands for a year, during which time it was partially guaranteed that all trouble would soon be amicably set- tled. The excitement of the approaching national troubles seemed to have absorbed any further consideration of such neutral land troubles until after the war.
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