History of Butler County Kansas, Part 50

Author: Mooney, Vol. P
Publication date: 1916
Publisher: Lawrence, Kan. : Standard Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 946


USA > Kansas > Butler County > History of Butler County Kansas > Part 50


Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).


Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96


Mr. Brown was united in marriage at Augusta, February 4, 1891, to Miss Icy M. Rodgers, of Augusta, whose parents were pioneers of Wal- nut township. To Mr. and Mrs. Brown have been born three children, as follows. George W., Jr., died at the age of two years; Pauline and Dorothea, both of whom reside with their parents.


M. M. Gregg, a Kansas pioneer who had much to do with the early development of Butler county, is a native of Missouri. He was born in Washington county, May 21, 1847, and is a son of John R. and Eliza- beth (Maxwell) Gregg, the former a native of Washington county, Mis- souri, and the latter of Washington county, Virginia. They were the parents of nine children, seven of whom are living, as follows: Theodore lives in Arkansas : Marshall, Decatur, Tex. ; Walter, Decatur, Tex .; Philo, Olympia, Wash .; Lucien, Willow, Cal .; Mary Alice, Olympia, Wash .; and M. M., whose name introduces this review.


M. M. Gregg received his education in the common schools of Ar- kansas, where the family resided until the Civil war broke out. The Greggs were loyal to the Union, and the neighborhood in which they re- sided was pretty generally confederate, and the Gregg family experienced considerable hardship and financial loss on account of their loyalty to the Union. However, they remained firm in their sympathy, and active in the cooperation of the Union cause. Their home was burned and var- ious other depredations committed against them by the secessionists.


When Mr. Gregg was about nineteen years old, in 1866, he came to Kansas and settled in Jefferson county on what was then the Delaware Indian reservation, and in 1871 removed to Marion county where he took a homestead. In 1877 he came to Butler county, settling in Rock Creek township near Muddy Creek. Pine Grove postoffice was established here, and Mr. Gregg served as pastmaster for seven years. When he took the office, the mail service in that section was meager and irregular, but through his efforts good service was soon obtained, and he served as postmaster of that place until 1885, when he removed to Augusta in or- der that his children might have better educational facilities. It has been one of Mr. Gregg's ambitions that his children might have every oppor- tunity to obtain a good education, a privilege that was denied him in the wilds of Arkansas where he spent his boyhood days. Since coming to Augusta Mr. Gregg has followed stone construction work and plastering.


M. M. Gregg and Miss Mary E. Seed were united in marriage at Harris Grove, Jefferson county, Kansas, in 1869. Mrs. Gregg's father


·


480


HISTORY OF BUTLER COUNTY


was S. P. Seed, a native of New York. Her mother was Lucy Shew, a native of Indiana. She has a sister, Mrs. Anna Elliott, Norwich, Kans., and four brothers, J. W. Seed, Tumwater, Wash .; William, a Methodist minister, Olympia, Wash .; Philip, Montana, and Albert, Skiatook, Okla. To Mr. and Mrs. Gregg were born the following children : W. H., an elec- trical engineer, Kansas City, Mo., married Miss Sarah McNabb, Parsons. Kans .; Mrs. Angie May Thomas, Bloomington township; Mrs. Effie Clark, who lives near Haverhill, Kans .; Mrs. Mattie Morris, Winfield, Kans .; P. H., tool dresser in the oil field, married Miss Nora Fanning, of Bartlesville, Okla., and they now reside in Augusta.


Mr. Gregg came to Kansas at a time which gave him an opportunity of experiencing many of the vicissitudes of pioneer life on the plains. He relates many instances of the trials of early days. During one of the bad years in Kansas in the early eighties, like many others, he was hard up and although he had plenty of food, he had no money with which to buy clothing. A friend of his, James Bell, who resided on Rock Creek, told Mr. Gregg that he could have all the walnuts on his place, which were in abundance, if he could make any use of them. Mr. Gregg immediately proceeded to gather them up and hauled about forty bushels to Wichita, which he sold for $1.00 a bushel with the hulls on, which tided him over the winter. Mr. Gregg says that as soon as his neighbors throughout that section learned of his lucky strike, they all immediately proceeded to gather walnuts and within a week the whole population was hauling walnuts to Wichita and flooding the market to such an extent that they were absolutely worthless. Mr. Gregg and his family are well known in Augusta where they have many friends and are highly respected.


Thomas Benton Murdock .- In 1841 Thomas Benton Murdock was born in the mountains of Virginia. He was one of five children who lived to maturity, of Thomas Murdock and Katherine Pierrepont. From the mother's side came the pride of the Pierreponts; from the father's the insurgent instincts of the Irish Murdocks who left Ireland after the Irish rebellion failed in 1798. So, even though reared in the mountains among most simple people and most primitive surroundings, the Mur- docks who have dominated Kansas for half a century have been proud soldiers of the militant democracy. They have been fighters who led naturally, by instinct and training but never fighters for the old order. They always were pioneers, always moving out into new territory of thought and action, looking forward. Thomas and Katherine Mur- dock could not endure the iniquity of slavery so in 1849 they freed their slaves and left the slave country for Ohio. They settled near Ironton but lost everything they had in the panic of 1855 and loaded their house- hold goods on a boat, went down the Ohio to the Mississippi and jour- neyed as far west as Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. There the family spent the winter and the father went to Kansas and found a location. He brought his family to Topeka in the winter of 1856-1857. They rented a little hotel and kept tavern, among others having for guests, Jim Lane and


THOMAS BENTON MURDOCK


ــلة


٢


48I


HISTORY OF BUTLER COUNTY


A. D. Stevens, famous as a border fighter under Montgomery and afterwards killed at Harper's Ferry under old John Brown. Going and coming in the little Kansas town of the Virginia abolitionist were the men who made Kansas free and famous in the great conflict that began at Lawrence and ended at Appomattox.


In this atmosphere of strife and patriotism young Benton Murdock, a youth in his late teens, grew up. In 1860 the family homesteaded at Forest Hill, near Emporia, and the father and mother lived in Emporia the remainder of their lives; the father died in 1896 and the mother in 1887.


When the Civil war broke out Thomas Benton Murdock enlisted with his father and brother, Roland, in the Ninth Kansas Cavalry and served until the end of the war. He served in the Rocky Mountains in 1863 and there met J. H. Betts, now of El Dorado. When they met seven or eight years later in El Dorado John Betts kept eying Murdock and finally said : "Say, aren't you the chap that relieved me of that army overcoat out west ?" Murdock's company was confiscating Government property wherever he found it. Murdock looked at Betts and replied : "Well I guess I am. But I'm here to start a newspaper. What's the chance ?"


"Bully," returned Mr. Betts, willing to let bygones be bygones, and they remained friends for forty years.


Returning from the army where he had gone snow blind on the plains-a calamity that hung over him all his later days-young Mur- dock who had been a hod carrier and general workman as a youth around Topeka, learned the printing trade. He worked in the office of the Emporia "News." then owned by P. B. Plumb and Jacob Stotler who had married Leverah Murdock during the war. His brother Mar- shall who had worked at the printers trade during the war was running the Burlingame "Chronicle" at the end of the war. Young Benton went back to Ironton, Ohio, married the sweetheart of his boyhood, Frances Crawford, and came to El Dorado, March 4, 1870, and founded the Walnut Valley "Times" with J. S. Danford. His wife lived only a few years leaving at her death their daughter, Mary Alice, editor of the El Dorado "Republican."


From the first Mr. Murdock became a leader of politics in Kansas. He stood for the Walnut Valley and the Kingdom of Butler. In 1876 he was elected a member of the State senate. He served with such men as E. N. Morrill, Charles Robinson, J. M. Hadley, father of the former governor of Missouri; Benjamin F. Simpson, J. R Hallowell, D. W. Finney, W. A. Johnston, chief justice of Kansas, all members of the senate, while in the house were Lyman U. Humphrey, John Gil- more, A. W. Smith, L. B. Kellogg, P. P. Elder. His political career was fostered and guided by Mrs. Antoinette Culbreth-Murdock who for a generation has been wife, friend, comrade, guide and inspiration, who bore him five children of whom Ellina Culbreth only now is living. Mrs.


(31)


482


HISTORY OF BUTLER COUNTY


Murdock survives him with his two children. In 1880 he ran for the senate again but was unfairly defeated he thought. He sold the "Times" and moved to Topeka and became connected with the Topeka Daily "Commonwealth," then controlled by the Baker family. But El Dorado held his heart and he returned in 1883 and founded the El Dorado week- ly "Republican." The Daily followed the Weekly in 1884 and the paper at once took a prominent place in the affairs of Kansas.


Mr. Murdock was, during the late senator's life time, a friend and ally of P. B. Plumb. He and Plumb were young men together in Em- poria, thought alike and had much in common in training and inspira- tions. And so after Plumb died the courage and independence and pro- gressive Kansas spirit that made Plumb an insurgent who voted against the adoption of the Mckinley bill, lived on in Kansas through Mr. Mur- dock. He was politically always with the scouts, with the pioneers, ever with the skirmish line. It was the spirit of 1860 in his soul, the rebellion of the ancestral Murdocks in his blood.


In 1888 he was again elected to the State senate. He served until 1892 and was on the committee that tried Theodosius Botkin and went over the old county seat troubles of western Kansas. He was defeated for reelection by the Populist wave, and until appointed fish and game warden by Governor Stubbs never held public office of any kind again.


But he was a public man all the time. His influence on the State has been more rather than less because of the fact that he was not in office. In every Republican State convention for forty years Mr. Mur- dock has been a power of the first class. Yet he sacrificed that power and worked for the primaries which put convention politicians out of power. He was never selfish, never little, never mean and so it hap- pened that he was large enough to retain his influence in the State and multiply it through the primary. Gradually he has grown in strength with the people of Kansas, and since 1902-his last allignment with the old political machine-he has been easily the leader of the forward movement in Kansas Republicanism. Others have had the honor; but he has made them. He has expressed, as no other man has been able to express it, the sentiment of popular protest against the wrongs of government by ring rule. He has been the voice of the people-an in- dignant people clamoring for a larger part in their State government.


He fought with arms for freedom in his youth ; he offered his body then ; he gave his life to freedom in this latest struggle, and fought with his spirit-a brave, successful fight.


As an editor he was equipped as few men are equipped-with an individual style. He expressed something more than an idea. He re- flected an ideal plus a strong, unique personality. He therefore in a way dramatized whatever he wrote-made it the spoken word of a com- batant in the conflict, the defiance of a partisan in the contest. So thousands of people knew him as a voice, who did not know him as a man as we of his home town have known him for forty years.


.


483


HISTORY OF BUTLER COUNTY


Here was his real life, his real friends, his real success. For be- fore he was a Kansan he was a Butler county man, an El Dorado man. He always stood by the home folks. Of course he took part in local matters, and having taken part had to take sides. He was never neutral in any important contest here at home. But he always fought in the open, and he always fought fair. He never abused a man. He attacked causes, movements, orders, administrations, organizations and princi- ples of his opponents-but the personal character of the men he opposed -- there was the limit. He never returned abuse for abuse. He had no newspaper fights. He never made his personal enemies objects for newspaper ridicule. He had no office black list. Every man or woman in Butler county received exactly the same treatment from the "Re- publican" under Mr. Murdock that every other man or woman received, no matter whether he or she was friend or enemy. He strove to be fair. Many is the politician in this county in the old days who has fought Mr. Murdock knowing he could always depend on Mr. Murdock to be fair, to keep to the issue, to be silent on old scores, to leave per- sonal matters out of the question. Men have risen to power in this community opposing Mr. Murdock who have capitalized his innate de- cency, and have risen more by reason of his charity and humanity than by their own ability. He was a gentleman of the old school, was Thomas Benton Murdock, and that fact has given more power to those who opposed him often than their own worth should have given to them.


As his best qualities grew intenser, as people grew nearer to him, as they who knew him best here in his home community thought more of him than those who knew him in the State, so even better than they knew and loved him in the town, did they know and love him in his home. Mr. Murdock was a home man clear to the core. Some men are least known at home. He was best known there, and best beloved, for there he showed always his best side. He kept the finest part of his heart and mind and soul for those who met him in his home. There he was in his kindest, his gentlest, his most human aspect. Home was his heaven. There he brought all his joy. There he left the world be- hind. When blindness threatened him, as it did for a quarter of a cen- tury off and on, it was in his home that he found his only solace. When enemies pursued him, when cares overcame him, when troubles com- passed him about, he turned always up the hill-always homeward. There he drank the elixir of life, and returned full armed, anew and strong to the contest.


When his soul went out into the Greater Soul that gave it, how lovingly he must have followed the last ride of his shattered clay tene- ment as it journeyed through the Kansas that he loved, down the West Branch into the Walnut valley that loved him, up the hill and through the gloaming into the home that was his first heaven. For it was a journey with a climax in love. And when those whom he knew best and loved


484


HISTORY OF BUTLER COUNTY


best gathered about his wasted body of death, his soul triumphant in the new life must have felt glowing even through the dark veil the warmth of an affection too deep for words and tears.


So his last wish was granted. And after "taps" had sounded we left all that was mortal, only a withered husk of the exalted and risen soul of Thomas Benton Murdock under the prairie grass out in the sunshine. Sunshine and prairie grass-and the end.


Dr. George Warrender, a prominent veterinary surgeon of Au- gusta, Kans. is a Butler county pioneer in his profession, and comes from a family of veterinary surgeons of three generations, his father and grandfather having been veterinary surgeons of prominence. Dr. Warrender was born at Garbetsville, N. Y., in 1851 and is a son of Dr. Robert and Anna (Pearson) Warrender, both natives of England.


Dr. Warrender, of this review, was born about three weeks after his parents came to America and is one of a family of four, as follows : Mary, married William Layman, now deceased: George, the subject of this sketch; Robert, lives at Douglass, Kans .: and Jane, married William Henry Thornley, and they live in Iowa. The Warrender fam- ily removed from New York to Illinois, settling in Cass county, when George was a child. Here he was reared on a farm, attended the pub- lic schools and later studied veterinary surgery. He practiced his pro- fession in Illinois until 1885. when he came to Kansas, settling near Douglass, where he engaged in the practice of his profession, and at the same time was interested in farming, until 1904. when he located at Augusta, and has since devoted himself exclusively to the practice of his profession.


Dr. Warrender has been uniformly successful in his professional work and is recognized as the leading veterinary surgeon of Butler county. He is not only well known in Butler county, but has a State wide reputation among extensive stock men and his fellow practi- tioners.


Dr. George Warrender was united in marriage at Mason City, Il1. in 1870 to Miss Sarah A. McCluggage, and five children were born to this union, three of whom are living, as follows: James O., married Ella Boucher, and lives seven miles west of Augusta; Charles, married Myrtle Johnson and lives near Mulvane, Kans., and Leota, a successful Butler county teacher, resides with her parents.


Gustavus F. Gallagher, Augusta, Kans .- This Civil war veteran, and his pioneer wife, belong to that noble band of men and women whose courage and industry knew no limitations in the early days when they came West, and contributed their youth and energy to conquering the wilds of the plains. Gustavus F. Gallagher was born at Fremont, Ohio, or where Fremont is now located, in 1830, a son of Thomas and Eliza- beth (Foose) Gallagher, the former a native of Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, and the latter of Kentucky, who came to Ohio with her parents when she was four years old. Thomas and Elizabeth (Foose)


485


HISTORY OF BUTLER COUNTY


Gallagher were the parents of four children, as follows: William W., John D., Thomas M., and Gustavus F. Gustavus F. Gallagher bears the distinction of having been the first white child born in Fremont, Ohio, and he recalls with pride that Rutherford B. Hayes, who later became presi- dent of the United States, was one of his boyhood friends and playmates.


Mr. Gallagher was reared and educated in the State of Ohio, and in early life went to Illinois, and was about thirty-one years of age when the Civil war broke out. He enlisted at Danville, Ill., in Company D, Twenty-fifth regiment, Illinois infantry, and for three years and three months, fought beneath the stars and stripes in defense of the Union. He was mustered out of service and discharged at Springfield. Ill., and shortly afterwards settled in Indiana where he remained until 1881. He then came to Kansas, settling two miles north of Augusta, where he bought 200 acres of land, and six years later removed to Augusta and has since made his home there. Mr. Gallagher was married in Vermillion county, Indiana. January 1, 1856. to Anne Foose and to this union four children were born, as follows: Mrs. Elizabeth Anne Crane, Augusta : Gustavus, Jr., married. Cella Carpenter and lives in Oklahoma: Mrs. Jessie Wishard, lives at Alvin, Texas ; and Clarence D., married Estella Markham, and lives at Johnson, Stanton county, Kans. The wife and mother of these children died December 13, 1890, and Mr. Gallagher mar- ried for his second wife Mrs. Charlotte Gardner, widow of John R. Gard- ner, of Augusta, who died August 5. 1887. Mr. Gardner was a soldier of the Civil war, and for ten months and twenty-seven days languished in the Confederate prison at Andersonville.


The present Mrs. Gallagher was a daughter of Elijah and Welthy (Lamb) Weston, the former a native of New York, and a cousin of Pay- son Walker who has walked himself to fame, and the latter a native of Connecticut and a member of the Lamb family of that State, noted for their wealth and commercial prestige in the early days. Mrs. Gallagher was born at Troy, Geauga county, Ohio, and was one of the following children, born to her parents: Charlotte, now Mrs. Gallagher, wife of the subject of this sketch ; Barnabas, deceased ; Thankful, deceased ; John. de- ceased ; Mrs. Mary Bower lives in Oregon ; Mrs. Hannah Auxer lives in Ohio, and Mrs. Elzora Scott also lives in Ohio. Mrs. Gallagher was edu- cated in the public schools of Ohio, including one term at Able's High School, Troy, Ohio, and at the age of seventeen married John R. Gard- ner at Bundysburg. They were the parents of two children : Elijah H., who died in 1890 at Augusta, Kans., leaving one son, Lile F. Gardner : Mrs. Effie Brewer, of San Luis Obispo. Cal. She has one son, Frank R. Powell, by a former marriage.


In 1851 they removed to Noble county, Indiana, settling in the wil- derness of that section where they remained until 1860 when they went west again, this time settling in Logan county, Illinois. In 1868 they came to Kansas, settling in Crawford county, on what was known as the neutral lands. After some difficulty they secured a clear title to their


.


486


HISTORY OF BUTLER COUNTY


land. and in 1871 removed to Butler county, and took a claim in Doug- lass township, or that part of it which is now Richland township. After residing on their claim about two and one-half years, they removed to the town of Douglass, in order that they might have better educational advantages for their children.


Mrs. Gallagher relates many interesting incidents of pioneer life in Butler county. She remembers distinctly when the grasshoppers came, destroying everything in their wake in 1874, and she tells how she saved her small fruit trees from destruction by the pests by tying sheets over the trees. They escaped the destruction of the hoppers much bet- ter than did many of their neighbors, who were left absolutely destitute. They had twenty-five acres of corn which happened to be ripe-too ripe to be palatable for the grasshoppers, which as a rule are not particular, and the following winter found ready market for all the corn they had to spare at $1.00 a bushel. They also had a good crop of wheat that year and taking everything into consideration, they were about as prosperous grasshopper year as it any other time. In 1876 the Gardners removed to Augusta and bought the National Hotel, which they conducted for a number of years.


In 1907 Mr. and Mrs. Gallagher went to Stanton county, Kansas, and filed on a claim, five miles south of Johnson and lived there for two and one-half years when they returned to Augusta, where they are now spending their declining years in ease and comfort in their cozy home on Main street. Mrs. Gallagher takes an active part in local historical work, and is keenly interested in the preservation of the early history of Butler county. Mr. Gallagher has been a Republican since the candidacy of John C. Fremont and is a staunch supporter of the policies and principles of the Republican party.


Henry Moyle .- The ranks of the vanguard that led the way to the opening and settlement of Butler county are rapidly thinning, and Henry Movle, of Augusta, stands out conspicuously as a Butler county pioneer, who did his part in the sixties and seventies in laying the foun- dation of this empire, of itself, which now ranks as one of the fore- most political subdivisions of the great State of Kansas. Henry Moyle was born in Cornwall, England, in 1846, and is a son of Matthew C. and Elizabeth (Treloar) Moyle, both natives of the mother country. They were the parents of the following children: Eliza Ann. deceased ; John, deceased; Henry, the subject of this sketch; Julia, deceased ; Mary, married Alexander Petrie, and they reside in Pasadena, Cal.


Henry Moyle emigrated to America with his parents in 1848, and they located at Gold Hill, N. C., where the boy was reared and received a fair education. He lived the peaceful life of the average boy until the great Civil war broke out, and naturally when the great struggle came on, his sympathies were with his own State, and he enlisted in the First North Carolina infantry, and fought beneath the stars and bars, fol- lowing the vicissitudes of war for four years and ten days, or until the


487


HISTORY OF BUTLER COUNTY


hope of the Confederacy was placed in the catalogue of the world's lost causes. While in the line of duty Mr. Moyle participated in many of the important and hard fought battles of that great struggle. At the battle of Big Bethel Church, Va., he was seriously wounded below the right knee by a musket ball.


After the clouds of war had passed away he returned to his home where he remained until 1867, and on May 20, 1869, he came to Butler county, Kansas, locating on a claim near White Station on the Wal- nut river. This was long before the railroad was built. He erected a primitive log cabin on his claim and proceeded to break prairie for himself and his neighbors with ox teams, for which he received five dollars per acre while breaking for others. This proved to be a fairly remunerative vocation, but was a little over exercise if anything, both for the man and oxen. He remained on his claim until 1875 when he sold it and engaged in the hardware business at Augusta, a place which had assumed quite pretentious proportions by this time. However, when Mr. Moyle located in Augusta township in 1869, Augusta was not the hustling oil town that it is today. The entire residence and business district at that time consisted of one log house and C. N. James and Shamlever conducted a store in that building, which, by the way, is still standing but has been sheeted with boards so that it pre- sents the appearance of a frame building, with the exception of its un- usually thick wall, and it is now used as a residence. Mr. Moyle was one of the first hardware men to locate in Augusta, and later engaged in the grocery business which he conducted for thirty-four years. However, he has not confined himself entirely to a mercantile life, but about 1895 he began investing in farm lands extensively, which has proven to be a successful financial move. He and his sons now own 720 acres of valuable farm land which is located in the heart of the rich gas and oil belt of Butler county, the future possibilities of which can not be estimated at this time.




Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.