USA > Kansas > Montgomery County > History of Montgomery County, Kansas > Part 31
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HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.
Southern Kansas. C. C. Kincaid is president, Mr. Newton cashier and S. I. Howard assistant cashier. The bank has a capital of $50,000 and car- ries a surplus of $6,000.
In the different communities in which our subject has resided, he has always taken a most active part in its municipal life, having been, at one period or another. mayor of the four different towns in which he has lived.
At the time he left Illinois he was the representative of his district in the State Legislature and was one of the best known men of that see- tion. Since his residence in this State, he has been active in many differ- ent lines of service, having been a member of the board of trustees at the inception and building of the present county high school of Montgomery county and on this board he served a period of four years.
Ho and his family are active workers in the M. E. church, in which or- ganization he holds several official positions. His love for children has led him to be active in any work that looks to the proper development of the child mind and he has, as already stated, devoted practically a life time to Sunday School work. having been superintendent of the Sunday School from six years prior to the date of his coming to Kansas, No more car- nest worker in this line resides in the county.
Mr. Newton is a member of the Masonic order, Blue lodge. Chapter and Commandery, and is also a member of the Noble Order of the Mystic Shrine. In political affairs Mr. Newton has always taken an exceedingly active and prominent part and was a delegate to the Kansas City conven- tion of the Democratic party in 1900.
The domestic life of our subject has been a happy one, beginning in 1865. when he was joined in marriage with Ada Anderson, a native of Ripley, Brown county, Ohio. To this marriage two daughters were born, Revilla, and Minnie. deceased.
Mentioning briefly a few points in the family history of Mr. Newton, the biographer notes that he was the son of Major George MI. and Fanny ( Loomis) Newton, both of whom were natives of Green county, New York. They were farmers by occupation, and the father also followed carpenter- ing and the mill-wright busines. They were early settlers in Illinois, hay- ing removed to the State in 1834, traveling overland by wagon. George Newton was a major in the New York militia and was very active in the public life of the different communities in which he resided. He was postmaster of Tonica, Illinois, for a number of years, that point having been located as a station when the Illinois Central was built through his farm. He died at the age of seventy years, his wife having passed away some years previous at the age of forty-five. They were prominent mem- bers of the Baptist church and stanch supporters of every good cause in the communities in which they lived. They reared a family of six chil- dren, of whom but three survive.
27 1
HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.
HARVEY A. TRUSKETT-The readers of this volume are here in- trodneed to one of the best and most favorably known men of Montgom- ery county ; one whose connection with the business interests of the enter- prising community of Caney has been of great value, and whose wide ae- quaintanee among financiers makes him a potent factor in the develop- ment of this section. As president of one of Montgomery county's solid financial institutions, the Home National Bank of Caney, he wields an influence widespread in its beneficient character, and always exerted in the interest of good government and right living.
Harvey 1. Truskett is a "Buckeye" by birth, borne in Monroe county, October 7. 1855. the son of Thomas W. and Elizabeth (Williams) Trus- kett, pioneer settlers of that county. They were both natives of Penn- sylvania, Thomas having been born November 25. 1822. the wife the pre- vious year on the first day of August. Reared to maturity in the "Key- stone State", they there married and at once began life in the then "far west," the county in which our subject was born. They were farmers by ocenpation and well fitted to play their part in the development of a new agricultural community. Remaining in Ohio until 1859, the family re- moved to Cooper county, Missouri, where they continued tilling the soil. Morgan county. of the same state, and Vermont county. Missouri, then he- came their home until 1880. when they settled on a farm in Montgomery county, Kansas. Here the parents were worthy and respected citizens until their death, the father passing to rest on the 16th of January, 1887, the mother on September 20, 1894. Mr. Truskett is remembered as one of the immortal band who. in the dark days of '61 '65. offered themselves as living sacrifices for the principle of equality before the law. He be- came a member of the First Nebraska Volunteer Infantry, in which regiment he fought valiantly to the end. While in the service he suffered capture and imprisonment, but was fortunate enough to be exchanged. Mr. and Mrs. Truskett became the parents of eight children, of whom six are yet living.
Of the family Harvey A. was the seventh child. Though born within the confines of the "Buckeye State"he is by rights a true westerner, as he was but four years of age when he crossed the Mississippi. The cruel war and the disturbed condition of the country immediately succeeding it deprived him, as well as thousands of others, of that precious boon, a good education. The school of adversity through which he passed, how- over, taught him many valuable lessons of thrift and economy, which com- pensated to some extent the loss of book knowledge. He early became his own business man and engaged successfully in farming and stock rais- ing, accompanying the family to Montgomery county in 1880. He was or- eupied at a point known as Elgin, Chautauqua county, for a period of two years, when he went down into the Territory and for the following twelve years was extensively engaged in farming and stock raising.
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HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.
In the year 1892, Mr. Truskett located in Caney, engaging in the Imaber and grain business until 1896, when he organized the present fi- nancial institution, of which he has since been president. The Home Bank is capitalized at $25,000 and carries a list of deposits aggregating some ninety to one hundred thousand dollars.
Mr. Truskett is held in high esteem in his community, where he has been honored by membership in the town council and has also served as township clerk. Politically he affiliates with the party of reform and is looked upon as one of its trusted advisers.
Marriage was contracted by our subject in Elgin, Kansas, on the 8th of December. 1880. Mrs. Truskett was Ida F. Gepford, daughter of Silas H. and Jennie Gepford, early pioneers of Bourbon county, Kansas. She is the mother of four promising children- Edwin E., Harvey H., Arthur F. and Lita M. To this family was added a niece, Miss Elsie Truskett, whom they reared and educated, and who is now an efficient employe of the bank.
Reared to exacting and toilsome labor, schooled by adversity's hard knocks and fighting his way step by step from penury to prosper- ity, Harvey A. Truskett has reached a plane, while yet in the prime of life, where he can give full reign to the promptings of a nature benevolent and full of the milk of human kindness. No worthy case of need is ever turned from his door unaided and the struggling youth finds in him a sympathetic and kindly adviser and helper. He and his family merit the large place which they are accorded in the hearts of friends and neigh- bors in Caney and Montgomery county. He is a member of the I. O. O. F. and the family are members of the Christian church.
MRS.JANE BLUE-The tide of immigration to Montgomery county in the earlier years was at its flood in the year 1871. Many of the pioneer families of the county date their coming in that year, among them the Jady whom the biographer is now permitted to review. She was born in Vermillion county, Indiana, in the year 1836, and was reared in that county and educated at Eugene, Indiana. Her parents were Jacob and Sarah (Ilall) Coslett. They were farmers in Vermillion county and pioneer settlers of that section of the State. Their family consisted of six children. three, only. of whom are now living: William, who lives in Douglas county, Illinois, and is a prominent farmer of that section of the State: Mrs. Jane Blue, the subject of this sketch; William, also a leading farmer, of Cherokee county, Kansas.
Mrs. Blue was first married to David Wise in the year 1853 in her native county in the "Hoosier State." Mr. Wise was a leading farmer of the county and they reared seven children, four of whom are now liv- ing: Margaret A., who married William Blancet, a native of Ohio, and
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HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.
has three children, two living, viz: Minnie, wife of Thornton MeCune, of Oklahoma, and Alice, who married William Carpenter and lives in Montgomery county, Kansas; the four children of Alice being Nettie, Orval, Bertha, and Earl. Clara Belle Wise married Frank Smith, of Independence, with two children, Donoven and Forest. Minnie Wise married Robert Perry and lives in Bourbon county with their sev- en children. Eliza E. Wise married David A. Clark and had four child ren, Harry. Charlie. Ira, and Grace. Mrs. Clark is now dead.
David Wise died in 1874 and in 1878. Mrs. Wise was joined in mar- riage to Jacob Wise, a brother of her first husband. Four years later he died. In 1896, March 1, Mrs. Wise married David Blue. He was a na- tive of Ohio and was a gallant soldier of the Civil War, having enlisted as a volunteer in an Indiana regiment in April of 1861, and served his country faithfully to the close of that sanguinary struggle, and being dis- charge in 1865. He was a commercial traveler by ocupation, handling nursery stoek. He traveled for a period of nine years for the famous seed house of D. M. Ferry, and later for a silverware manufacturing com- pany of Detroit, Michigan.
The farm on which Mrs. Blue now resides was purchased in 1871 by her first husband. It is located four miles from the county seat town of Independence and consists of eighty acres, making one of the best farms in that section of the county. In religious belief, Mrs. Blue is a member of the United Brethren Church.
ABIGAIL HUDIBERG-One of the worthy pioneers of Mont- gomery county, whose memory runs with remarkable clearness back to the days of 1869. the date of her arrival here, is Mrs. Abigail Hudiberg of Independence township. The events of the long and weary overland journey hither from Johnson county, Indiana. together with fifteen other families, are as happenings of yesterday to her, and that first winter in their strange new home in the straggling village of Independence, with the boundless prairie all about them, peopled with Indians and coyotes, yet howls its lonely requiem in her ears. The comfortable farni house of the present day is in strange contrast to the 14x16 board shanty in which they shivered through the winter, and the little log hotel. the four "straw" honses, and the single general store of that time make an odd picture in contrast to the splendid business and residence properties of the present.
Mrs. Indiberg was born in Johnson county, Indiana, March 7, 1843. the daughter of Robert S. and Letitia ( Henry) Parkhurst, a full sketch of whom appears elsewhere in this volume. In 1863, she married in that rennty. Lonis Hudiberg, son of John and Elizabeth Hudiberg, whose other children were Samuel, Thomas, Mary A., Lorinda and Elijah
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HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.
(twins) and John. Mr. and Mrs. Hudiberg resided in Johnson county for six years and then came to Kansas. When spring came after that first uncomfortable winter, they located on a claim six miles from the vil- lage, where they have since, in the main, maintained their home. Here the parents and three children began the battle of life anew and succeed- ed. before the death of the husband, in making a very comfortable home. Mr. Iludiberg died in 1890, leaving Mrs. Hudiberg with a family of nine children, as follows : Robert S., a farmer of Chautauqua county, who married Anna Gray and has four children-Nellie. Alice, Matthew and May; John E .. Independ- ence; George, a farmer of Sycamore township, married Jessie Webber and has two children-Leo and Bessie; Lorinda and Wilfred are twins; Lorinda lives at home: Wilfred married Mattie Berger and resides with his mother, with his two children-Lonis and Amy; Albert, a farmer of the county, married Lillie Drennen and has two children, Hazel and Glenn ; Walter S., Myrtle and Elmer are at home.
These are all "likely" children, well trained, and of good capabili- ties, who, together with their revered mother, are highly regarded in the community where they have so long made their home.
JUDGE THOMAS HARRISON-In the passing away of the subject of this memoir. Montgomery county lost one of its landmarks of civil- ization and a venerable and worthy pioneer. He identified himself with this frontier municipality in Angust, 1869, and from thence forward to his death was an active participant in its affairs. As scholar, lawyer, public official and farmer his citizenship was of the genuine type and his character unreproached.
Settlers were widely separated in Montgomery county when Thomas Harrison, of this review, cast his lot with the frontier municipality and took a government entry near Verdigris City in 1869. The MeTaggart mill and homestead marks the sight of his original "elaim," taken up not so much with the intention of proving np on it, perhaps, as to the more closely identify himself with the county and to seal a tie of common in- terest with its citizens. He did little toward the actual improvement of his elaim, being a lawyer and engaged in the practice of his profession at old Liberty. When the question of a permanent county seat was set. tled in favor of Independence he ultimately established his office in that plaer and maintained it there till March 30, 1877, when failing health forced him to relinquish the law and seek rest and renew his vigor in the pure air and exercise of the farm. He purchased an eighty-acre traet ad- joining in the four corners of sections 2, 3, 10 and 11, township 33, range 15. where, with the exception of his years in official service, he passed the remainder of his life.
JUDGE THOS. HARRISON.
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HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.
Judge Harrison was born in Northamptonshire, England, on the 21st of September, 1825. At seven years of age his parents came to the United States and settled in U'tica. New York, but remained there only four years when they came on west to LaSalle, now Kendall county, Illinois, where they died. His father was Thomas Harrison and his mother was Mary ( Musson) Harrison who reared to maturity eight of their nine children, namely: William, deceased, ex-member of the Kansas Legisla- ture from Butler county, ex-probate judge and a prominent citizen of the county; Mary, who died in Wisconsin, married Richard Hudd and was the mother of the late ex-Congressman Hudd, of Green Bay, Wisconsin ; James, who died at Santa Barbara, California, passed his life chiefly in the dairy business in Chicago; Ann, who married Warren Chapin, died in St. Francis, Indiana ; Hannah, who died at Remington, Indiana, was the wife of George Bullis; Theresa, of Santa Barbara, California, is the wife of Henry H. Polk; Thomas, of this sketch ; and John, of Morrow county. Oregon.
Judge Harrison was educated at Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois. He was poor and worked his way through school. as a farm hand or at teaching or other honorable employment, and graduated in 1853. Among his classmates were Chief Justice A. M. Craig of the Illinois Sy- preme Court and A. A. Smith, a prominent lawyer of that State. The Judge was educated primarily for the ministry but when he came to em bark in life's realities his views somewhat digressed from the orthodoxy of the time and he turned his attention to law. He established himself at Galesburg. Illinois, where he practiced till his entry to the army in 1862. He was a sergeant of Company "A," Seventy-seventh Illinois In- fantry, until near the close of the war, when he was commissioned a first lieutenant and assigned to Company "A," Seventy-third U. S. Colored Troops. The war over, he resumed the practice of law and was located at Galesburg, Illinois, when he decided to come west and started on his jour- ney to Montgomery county, Kansas.
Ir his new home in Kansas Judge Harrison was ever a prominent figure. In polities he wielded an influence which contributed to many victories for the Republican party but his views changed somewhat on the approach of the avalanche of reform which annually swept Kansas from 1890 to his death, and his sympathies went ont to the political movement engendered and fostered by the Farmers' Alliance. In 1882 he was elected probate judge and served in that capacity with credit and ability. He filled the office four years and retired to his farm to enjoy the peace of a private eitizen.
December 28, 1854, Judge Harrison married M. Eliza Chambers. Mrs. Harrison's father was Matthew Chambers, likewise her paternal grand- father. The latter was born a Scotelnnan, was the second son of his par- ·ents and. for some displeasure at home, ran away and went to sea for
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IHISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.
several years. On hearing of the struggle of the American colonies for independence he came to their assistance, offering his services in behalf of the cause. His worth was discovered and rewarded by his being com- misioned and placed in command of a company of men. Among his sev- eral battles was Saratoga, where Gen. Burgoyne surrendered and where Mr. Chambers met an own cousin of his in a British uniform, a prisoner of war, and the storming and capture of Stony Point in which assault Captain Chambers received a wound by a bayonet passing through his leg below the knee. From this wound he never fully recovered and it finally induced his taking-off. After the war he located at Londonderry, New Hampshire, where he reared his family and died. He had a family of three sons and two daughters, namely : John, who settled in western New York, reared a family and finally disappeared as if lost; Margaret, who married Thomas Dickey and died in New Hampshire; Robert, who passed his life in Vermont and introduced the Spanish Marino sheep into that country ; Mary, who married John Lund and died in New Hampshire, and Matthew, who died at Galesburg, Illinois, in January, 1869.
Matthew Chambers, the second, was born in 1785 and was a soldier in the War of 1812. He was a colonel of Vermont militia, was a mer- chant in Bridgeport. that state, and left there in 1836 and came ont to Illinois. For a wife he married Hannah Smith, a daughter of Jacob Smith, a Jerseyman. Two children living from this union, viz: Edward P. Chambers, of Galesburg, Illinois, and Mrs. Harrison, the widow of our subject. Five others are deceased. viz: Jacob Smith Chambers, Matthew Carey Chambers, H. Cordelia (Chambers) Willard and William Henry Chambers. Mrs. Harrison was born in Bridgeport. Addison county, Ver- mont, on the 23d of September, 1832. She was the wife and companion of Thomas Harrison for forty years and is the mother of the following children : Mary, wife of Seth Starr, who has two children, Harrison C. and Ruth N .; Thomas J. Harrison, of Scammon, Kansas; and Cordelia E., wife of Frank E. Lucas, of Park Place, Oregon, who have five children, to wit : Frederick, William, Charles, Helen and Mary.
We are fortunate in this article to be able to present to posterity the paternal chain of the Harrison and Chambers families complete from their English ancestry. The spirit of Americanism was dominant in both families and both have furnished ample evidence of their love for the in- stitutions of our Republic. To their descendants we commend this brief biography in the belief that it contains lessons worthy to he learned.
M. D. WRIGHT-M. D. Wright, retired merchant and honored citi- zen of Elk City, was born in Fayette county, Indiana. November 12th, 1832, and is a son of Jonathan and Susanna B. ( Jones) Wright, natives of Maryland. The father was, by occupation, a miller and plied his vocation in Pennsylvania until about the time of the war of 1812, when he removed
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ILISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.
to Cincinnati, Ohio, and embarked in the mercantile business. After the war he traded for wild lands in Fayette Co., Ind. and subsequently moved to Richmond, Ind., where he continued to reside until his death at the age of seventy-nine years. Our subject lost his mother the day of his birth, she being then forty years old. The parents were devoted adherents of the Quaker faith. Their family consisted of eight children -three now living. M. D., our subject ; Thaddeus, of Minneapolis, Minn. ; and Martha, widow of Paul Barnard, who resides with her brother in Elk City.
M. D. Wright has had a somewhat remarkable career, in his earlier days partaking much of adventure. Ile began life at sixteen years of age as a clerk in a country store, but soon went to Cincinnati, where he speut three and a half years in a wholesale establishment. He then went east, where, for the next two years, he was similarly engaged in Phila- delphia and New York. The Australian gold fields were, at that time, ereating great excitement and he concluded to try his fortune in those regions. Embarking on the sailing vessel "Rockland" he made the trip in one hundred twenty days, going via Rio Janeiro and the Cape of Good Hope. He reached the Australian mines in May of 1851, and. for the fol- lowing year, had varying success. He, however, did not faney the hard life of the gold miner and engaged with a firm to act as clerk in their store in New South Wales. Here he spent fifteen months more pleasantly, but by this time he was ready to again return to civilization in the states, but was loath to do so empty handed, and he determined to take a drove of horses to Sidney and dispose of them. if possible. at a profit. This enterprise, for various reasons, proved a failure. financially. From Sid- ney he embarked on a small trading vessel, trading among the South Sea Islands, finally landed on the Samoan Islands, where he remained six months. He shipped on a man of war and cruised in the Caribbean Sea. The vessel put in at Valparaiso, where, on account of sickness, he was discharged. A four months' whaling voyage followed, filled with exeit- ing adventures with these great saurians of the deep. Resolved again to return home, he, after a most tempestuous voyage around the Horn, at- tended with desperate scurvy sickness, which attacked every one on board but the captain and himself. found the quiet home of his boyhood, mid the blessings of civilization, and where he was ready to repeat with the sweet singer, John Howard Payne,
"To us, in despite of the absence of years,
"How sweet the remembrance of home still appears;
"From allurements abroad which but flatter the eye.
"The unsatisfied heart turns and says with a sigh, "Home, home, sweet, sweet home, "Be it ever so humble.
There's no place like home !"
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HISTORY OF MONTGOMERY COUNTY, KANSAS.
Mr. Wright arrived home in the spring of 1857. In company with a brother, he now entered on a mercantile career, which he pursued until his enlistment in the Union army in 1864, becoming First Lieutenant in Co. "D." 146th Ind. Vol. Inf. He served a year, his regiment being used chiefly to oppose the noted cavalry commander. Gen. Moseby, and with whom they had many exciting skirmishes. His company was mustered out at Harper's Ferry in May of 1865.
Mr. Wright now took on another occupation, engaging in the sedate occupation of the school master, quite a remove from the exciting ex- periences of travel and war. This experience was in Benton county, In- diana, and preceded his overland trip to Kansas, in 1870. He came to Elk City and, trading his outfit for a cabin and lot, began a mercantile business. He continued here with moderate success until 1890, and then spent three years in Oklahoma in the same business, since which time he has remained in Elk City managing his real estate holdings.
Mr. Wright was, for thirteen years, postmaster of the village and. in the early days, was the moving spirit of the town. He has always ex- erted a potent influence in the affairs of the community and holds the respect of its citizens in a marked degree. He has reared a family of children, who are respected members of the different communities in which they reside, and is rounding out a long and useful career in the enjoyment of the fruits of earlier labors, amid the uniform esteem of old friends and neighbors.
Marriage was contracted by our subject in Indiana in 1858. His wife, who is still his companion on life's journey, was Miss Lydia A., daugh- ter of William and Miriam (Wickersham) Fosdick. Her eight children are: Kate B., Mrs. J. M. Smythe; Jessie, married C. J. Hafey, and died at the age of forty years; Jennie. Mrs. E. E. Masterman; Lizzie, married C. O. Chandler and is now deceased; Mary, wife of Charles Stafford; Irene. deceased at eight ; Miss Nellie, a stenographer at Medicine Lodge, Kansas; and Cora, Mrs. Richard Power, of British Columbia.
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