USA > Missouri > Jasper County > A history of Jasper County, Missouri, and its people, Vol. II > Part 23
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At the time of his arrival in Joplin Mr. Ornduff had concluded to establish himself upon a more independent footing and he rented a store room and made the necessary steps to start a hardware house, although on a modest scale as compared with his present business. Mr. Arthur Rannarbarger was taken into partnership and their location was at 305 Main street. After conducting the business in such manner for about one year Mr. Ornduff bought out his partner's interest and removed to more commodious quarters at 625 Main street. Here he is still located, secure in the enjoyment of a large and ever-growing patronage. From very moderate beginnings and a stock of only a few hundred dollars, the latter has been increased to twelve thousand dol- lars. All branches of the hardware business are included.
Mr. Ornduff's father, James Ornduff, was a native of the state of Illinois, his birth having occurred in Coal county, that state, in Octo- ber, 1835. He removed to Jefferson county, Iowa, in 1855, crossing the country by wagon and settling on a farm when the country was very sparsely settled. In 1861 he removed to Lucas county, Iowa, but re- mained there but a short time, in the early '60s, with several compan- ions, traveled across the plains to Idaho and locating in the Walla Walla valley, where they experienced for a time the romantie and various adventures of the pioneer of the far west. The "wanderlust" was upon them and they again pulled up stakes and went on to Califor- nia, prospecting in that state from the southern extremity to the farthest northern point. This consumed four years and the luck encountered was of varying degrees. He then returned to his farm in Lucas county, Iowa, and here pursued a quiet pastoral life for a number of years. In 1865 he sold his Iowa farm and removed with his family to La- fayette county, Missouri. He subsequently, in 1882. took up his resi- dence at Carthage, Missouri, and bought extensive farming lands, a part of his farm now being included within the present limits of that city. He survives, a prosperous and venerable gentleman, making his home upon the old homestead. The mother, whose maiden name was Margaret MeBurney, was born in Guernsey county, Ohio, in 1834, and she and her husband were married in Jefferson county. Iowa, in 1860. She came to Jefferson county with her parents, Benjamin and Martha (Wheeler) McBurney, in 1859, and the father became the possessor of a part of the land upon which the city of Odessa now stands. Both of the subject's maternal grandparents were born in 1805 and died in 1882. His paternal grandfather. William Ornduff. was born in Virginia, later removed to Illinois and still later to Jef- ferson county, Iowa. He was a prominent factor in pioneer history.
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On December 27, 1900, Mr. Ornduff took a step which resulted in an independent household and a most congenial life companionship by his marriage to Miss Florence Fillmore, daughter of Judge L. A. and Emma Fillmore, prominent and highly respected citizens of Joplin. Mr. and Mrs. Ornduff maintain an elegant and hospitable establish- ment, and their circle of friends is coincident with that of their ac- quaintances.
Mr. Ornduff is a member of the ancient and august Masonic Order, belonging to Home Lodge No. 345. He is a popular member of the Country Club and also of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. He has decided social talents and proclivities and is a charter member of the St. Nicholas Dancing Club and of Germania. In pol- ities he has ever subscribed to the articles of faith of the Demoeratie party. and he and his wife are active and generous members of the Presbyterian church. Mr. Ornduff has a wholesome love of out-of- door life and takes particular interest in thoroughbred horses. He is well-known in business and social circles and has a large number of influential friends and associates.
JOSEPH K. WINGERT .- Having become a resident of Joplin in 1878, when he was but nineteen years of age and removed far from home and friends, a stranger in a strange country, with nothing to begin the bat- tle of life with or depend upon but his own faculties and elements of manhood, Joseph K. Wingert, now one of the leading citizens of the region he thus invaded as a poor boy a full generation of human life ago, began his residence here under very trying circumstances. And having made his way unaided to worldly comfort and independence, and attained to consequence and influence in his community, he has shown that he possessed primarily the qualities of body, mind and character which would have made him successful anywhere.
Mr. Wingert is of German ancestry and inherited from his fore- fathers all the thrifty attributes and persevering energy for which his ancestral race is distinguished in every field of human endeavor. He was born in Somerset county, Pennsylvania, on January 11, 1859, and is a son of Jeremiah and Mary (Weller) Wingert. the former a native of Maryland and the latter of Pennsylvania. The American progenitors of both families emigrated to this country from Germany at an early day in our history and located in the states in which their descendants above named were born and reared. They were frugal and industrious people and linked their names with the progress and development of their respective states in lines of sturdy usefulness and creditable citizenship.
The parents of Joseph K. Wingert were both advanced in years .when they died. The father, whose life began in 1812, passed away in 1890, at the age of seventy-eight; and the mother reached the age of sixty- four. having been born in 1817. She died in 1881. The father was a tanner in a tannery of his own in the county in which his son came into being. He and his wife were the parents of eleven children, of whom Joseph was next to the last born.
He was reared at the age of sixteen in his native county, and after a limited course of instruction in the district school near his home, be- came an apprentice to his father and learned the trade of a tanner under the direction of that skillful master of the business. After com- pleting his apprenticeship he worked at his trade in various places until 1878, then yielded to the persuasive voice of the great West and rame to Missouri. He took up his residence in Joplin and soon secured employment in the retail shoe store of E. P. Barr. For two years he
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served Mr. Barr so acceptably as a clerk and salesman that at the end of that period he became his manager in a store of the same kind located in Galena, Cherokee county, Kansas. He managed this store for Mr. Barr three years, then bought it, and during the next twelve years conducted it on his own account.
By the time he had been this long in mercantile life the great min- ing industry in this part of the country had secured the attention of everybody, and he was seriously smitten with the fever it spread through the region. He sold his store and turned his attention to this more alluring avenue to fortune, beginning at the bottom of the in- dustry as a prospector and working his way forward through it until he became superintendent and manager for the South Side Mining Company of Galena. The company had excellent service from him in this capacity for two years, and he received good returns for his fidelity by acquiring a thorough knowledge of mining in all its local develop- ments.
Mr. Wingert was now fully prepared to operate on his own account in a big industry, and lost no time in starting an enterprise for him- self. He returned to Joplin, and, in company with J. H. McKenna, organized the Joplin Foundry Company, Incorporated, with himself as president. Two years later he purchased Mr. McKenna's interest in the company and has ever since retained the presidency and been the controlling force of the enterprise. The other officers of the company are : E. J. Tutty, vice president, and W. A. Miller, secretary and treasurer.
This foundry company has one of the leading industries of its kind in southwestern Missouri, and one of the largest and best equipped plants of any kind in Joplin. It employs regularly about thirty-five workmen and does a very large business. Moreover, it has the credit of being a pioneer in its line, and of having opened the way for other flourishing undertakings of a similar character. Its success, growth and excellent reputation are due in a very large degree to the far-see- ing mind and strong directing hand of Mr. Wingert, who is recognized wherever he is known as one of the best foundry men in Missouri.
It is needless to add that Mr. Wingert has prospered and become one of the most substantial men in the county in a material sense. He owns valuable land in JJasper county and some in Kansas, and is also pos- sessed of bank stock and other fruitful assets of various kinds. He is vice president of the Galena National Bank and the Miners State Bank of Galena, and also a director of the Citizens State Bank in Joplin. In addition to his interests in these institutions he is connected in a lead- ing way with others which are very useful and profitable to the com- munities in which they operate.
In his political faith Mr. Wingert gives his allegianee to the prin- ciples of the Democratic party. But he has never been an active par- tisan, and the allurements of publie office have never presented any attraction or temptation to him. His interest in the fraternal life of the community is expressed in his active and helpful membership in the Joplin lodge of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and his devotion to the enduring welfare of his city and county is shown by his earnestness and zeal in supporting every commendable undertak- ing designed to promote their progress and improvement and make life more agreeable to their people. He is in all essentials a self-made man, having throughout his career depended wholly on his own capacity and exertions for his advancement, and having made the most of all his opportunities. He is now one of the most capable and influential busi-
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ness men in the city, and one of its most agreeable and entertaining gentlemen socially. He has never married.
WILLIAM A. MILLER .- In the management of the Joplin Foundry Company Mr. Wingert has had valuable counsel and help from the other officers of the institution. One of these is William A. Miller, whose serviees as secretary and treasurer of the company have been and still are invaluable. He has been well trained for the business, has a high sense of duty in reference to everything he is connected with, brings to bear on all he does great general intelligence and excellent judgment, and is in the very prime of his manhood and usefulness.
Mr. Miller was born in Vernon county, Missouri, on August 14, 1871, and became a resident of Joplin in 1898. He followed mining here until 1901, then entered into association with. Mr. Wingert in eon- ducting the affairs of the Foundry Company. Since 1907 he has been the secretary and treasurer of the company, and has filled the position with great credit to himself and benefit to the corporation. On June 14. 1903, he was united in marriage with Miss Emma Hill, a native of Vernon county, Missouri, like himself, and also like him an admirable representative of its most estimable citizenship. They have three ehil- dren.
EDWARD J. TUTTY .- Another mainstay and most valuable coadju- tor Mr. Wingert has had in the management of the Foundry Company is Edward J. Tutty, the vice president of the institution ever since his first connection with it in 1898. He is recognized as one of the most far-seeing and prudent business men in this part of the state, and his executive ability is of a high order. The practical details of the business receive his elose and intelligent attention and all are made to work together for the good of the company under his skillful guiding hand. In character, in praetieal knowledge of the business, and in eapa- city for large affairs he is admirably adapted for the position he holds and the duties that fall to his lot. He makes a success of everything he undertakes.
Mr. Tutty is a native of Ireland, and was born in county Wieklow on May 23, 1858. He came to the Joplin distriet in 1888, and during the next sixteen years was engaged in mining. He was a poor young man when he came to Joplin, with no capital but his good health, clear mind, ready hand and determined spirit. He has used these wisely to his own advantage and that of the region in which he has operated, and has built up a record that is one of the business inspirations of south- western Missouri. Like Mr. Wingert, he has escaped the shafts of Cupid and remained unmarried.
HAROLD R. LUCAS, M. D .- Marked by insistent devotion and effi- cieney has been the course of Dr. Lucas as an exemplar of the work of the medical profession and he is worthy of recognition in this work as one of the representative physicians and surgeons of Jasper county. He is not only engaged in active general practice in the city of Joplin but is also ineumbent of the responsible position of consulting physi- cian and surgeon to the Friseo Railway Company. He is a man of fine intellectual and professional ability and has those social qualities that ever make for personal popularity.
Dr. Harold Roy Lucas finds a due mede of satisfaction in revert- ing to the old Buckeye state as the place of his nativity. He is a seion of a family whose name has been identified with the annals of Ameri- can history from the early colonial epoch. The original progenitors
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in America came from Plymouth, England, and became members of the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts. Eight generations of the family have been represented in the social and industrial activities of New England, that cradle of so much of our national history, and members of the family are now to be found in the most diverse sec- tions of the Union. Dr. Lucas was born on a farm in Ross county, Ohio, on the 7th of July, 1876, and is a son of John E. and Melissa (Ware) Lucas, the former of whom was born in Washington county, Pennsylvania, on the 17th of October, 1843, and the latter of whom was born in Ross county, Ohio, March 6, 1848, a member of an old and honored pioneer family of that section of the state. John E. Lucas was reared to maturity in the state of Ohio, where he continued to be identified with agricultural pursuits for many years and in the late '70s he removed with his family to Kansas, where he continued to be actively concerned with the same line of industry until his retire- ment from business life. He is now residing in Lyons, that state, and his cherished and devoted wife was there summoned to the life eternal on the 30th of December, 1906. Her ancestry is traced back fully two centuries and is of Holland Dutch origin, though the founders of the American branch came from England.
Dr. Lucas was about two years of age at the time of the family removal to Kansas, and thus in his youth he was not denied the inspir- ing spirit of the west. He attended the public schools of Lyons, Kansas, until he had completed the curriculum of the high school and thereafter followed higher academic studies in Cooper Memorial College, at Sterling, that state. Having formulated definite plans for his life work, he next entered the medical department of the Univer- sity of Illinois, said department being established in the city of Chi- cago, and in this institution he was graduated as a member of the class of 1904, with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. Thereafter he served for a time as interne in the hospital of the Frisco Lines at Springfield, Missouri, and he initiated the private practice of his pro- fession at Grandin. Carter county, this state, where he was appointed district physician for the Missouri Lumber & Mining Company. Two years later he removed to Chaffee, Scott county, and assumed the posi- tion of division surgeon for the Frisco Railway Company, in which connection he had charge of the division between St. Louis and Mem- phis, Tennessee. He thus continued in service until October 1, 1909, when he came to Joplin, in the capacity of consulting physician and surgeon for the same corporation, an incumbency which he has since retained and in addition to which he has built up an excellent private practice that gives him place among the leading representatives of his profession in this county. While a resident of Chaffee the Doctor served as a member of the board of aldermen in 1907-8 and was then elected mayor, a position which he resigned upon his removal to Joplin. He is affiliated with the lodge, chapter and commandery of the Masonic fraternity and also with the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. the Woodmen of the World, the Modern Woodmen of America, and the Knights & Ladies of Security. In the line of his profession he is affiliated with the American Medical Association, the Missouri State Medical Association, the Jasper County Medical Association and the American Association of Railway Surgeons. In his home city he is also a valued member of the literary society known as the Niangua Club, and he and his wife hold membership in the First Presbyterian church of Joplin. The family home is a center of cultured and gracious hospitality and both Dr. and Mrs. Lucas are persons of fine literary tastes and engaging personality, so that they are valued factors in connection with the best social activities of the community.
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At Springfield, Missouri, on the 13th of September, 1909, was solemnized the marriage of Dr. Lucas to Miss Mary May Neergaard. who was born at Ashgrove, Greene county, this state, on the 10th of October, 1883, and who is a daughter of Theodore Neergaard, now deceased. Dr. and Mrs. Lucas have one child, Harold Roy, Jr., who was born on the 2d of August, 1910.
OSCAR E. LICHILITER .- Civilization will hail riches, prowess, honors, popularity,-but it will bow humbly to sincerity in its fellows. The ex- ponent of known sincerity, of singleness of honest purpose. has its exemplification in all bodies of men : he is found in every association and to him defer its highest officers. Such an exemplar, whose daily life and whose life work has been dominated as their most conspicuous characteristic by sincerity, is Oscar E. Lichliter, who has long been interested in mining operations in Jasper county, Missouri, and who, at the present time, in 1911. is incumbent of the office of city clerk of Joplin.
A native of Pennsylvania, Oscar E. Lichliter was born in Somerset county, that state, the date of his nativity being the 19th of Decem- ber. 1875. IIe is a son of N. B. Lichliter, who was likewise born in the fine old Keystone state of the Union and who is now living virtually retired from active business life at Joplin. After attaining to years of maturity the father engaged in agricultural pursuits and the general merchandise business at Arcina. Pennsylvania, where he continued to reside until 1879, in which year he followed the tide of westward migra- tion and went to Kansas, where he resided for one year, removing thenee to Joplin. For two years after his arrival in this city he engaged in business as a merchant, but at the expiration of that time he directed his attention to the mining business, continuing to be identified there- with until his retirement in 1909. He is now spending his time in looking after his extensive investments and in traveling. IIe has main- tained his home at Joplin for fully thirty years, is a highly respected citizen of splendid character and is a man whose success in life must be attributed to his own industry and sterling business integrity. He married Miss Rebecca King, who was born and reared in Pennsylvania and who was summoned to the life eternal in 1878.
Oscar E. Lichliter, the youngest child born to his parents, was but three years of age at the time of his mother's death. He was educated in the public schools of Joplin and subsequently he attended Drury Academy, where he took a preparatory course for entrance in Drury College, at Springfield, Missouri, in which excellent institution he was graduated as a member of the class of 1900, duly receiving his degree of Bachelor of Arts. After leaving college he returned to Joplin, where he became his father's associate in the latter's extensive mining ope- rations. continuing to devote his attention thereto until 1909, in which vear he was appointed city clerk of Joplin. As the faithful and con- scientions incumbent of this office he is discharging his duties with all of honor and distinction. A young man of fine character and splendid ideals. he looks upon public office as a "public trust" and accordingly exerts his every power to make good in connection with the duties which devolve upon him. His political convictions are in harmony with the principles and policies promulgated by the Republican party, in the local councils of which he has long been an active factor.
Mr. Lichliter has always manifested a deep interest in musical af- fairs at Joplin. being at the present time a member of the board of directors of the May Festival Association. He is also active in church
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work, being a devout member of the First Methodist Episcopal church, with which his father is also affiliated and in which he has been a mem- ber of the board of trustees since his arrival in this city. In a fra- ternal way Mr. Lichliter is connected with the grand old Masonic order, in the York Rite branch of which he is a member of Fellowship Lodge, No. 345, Free and Accepted Masons; Joplin Chapter, No. 91, Royal Arch Masons; and Ascension Commandery, No. 39, Knights Templars. He has also passed through the circle of the Scottish Rite branch, having attained to the thirty-second degree, and in addition thereto he is a member of the Red Cross of Constantine. In all the relations of life Mr. Lichliter has so conducted himself as to command the unqualified esteem of his fellow citizens.
ORVILLE B. DAVISON .- In the commercial life of Joplin, Orville B. Davison holds a leading place as proprietor of one of the principal meat markets of the city. He is a useful business man whose personal success has contributed to that of the whole community, and as a na- tive son of the state he is particularly loyal and interested in its destiny. Mr. Davison was born near St. James, Missouri, November 1, 1872, and is the son of John and Harriet. E. Davison. When he was a mere child his parents moved to within a few miles of Carthage, Missouri. and in that city he attended school. He had finished the lower grades and entered high school, but just prior to his graduation his mother became ill and died, and after this lamentable interruption he did not go back to complete his course. When it became incumbent upon him to find an occupation he had some thought of learning the baker's trade, but after ten months trial he gave it up and started a small restaurant, which he conducted about a year. At the end of that time, having an opportunity to sell out, he did so, and secured employment at the Harrington Hotel in Carthage as second cook, and after remain- ing in that capacity for a year he made a radical change by coming to Joplin. In November, 1895, shortly after his arrival, he and his brother became associated in the retail meat business, locating at the corner of Eighth and Main streets, and building up a good trade which they sup- plied in successful fashion for over ten years. However, a splendid opportunity to sell presented itself and they disposed of their smaller business and went into the wholesale meat business. Their success was remarkable from a financial standpoint, but it entailed several serious disadvantages. Mr. Davison did the buying of the live stock and he did much of his journeying into the country on horseback. He spent many sleepless nights on the road in the middle of winter and suffered untold hardships. When overcome by cold and rain he was frequently too far from any habitation to dry out or change his wet garments for many hours. The life was so severe, in fact, that finally he had to give it up and he again embarked in the retail business at his present loca- tion, with his brother, Edward Davison. The present concern was started April 10, 1909, and has become one of the largest retail meat markets in the city.
The subject's father. John Quincy Adams Davison, was born in, Columbus, Ohio, in the year 1830. He was a farmer and stock raiser and also in the nursery business in Maries county, Missouri, whence he came with his bride as a young man. They were married in the capital city of Ohio and traveled overland by wagon. The father purchased farming land near Carthage and became prominent and highly respected in his community. He sold his property some time before his death, a large part of the original tract being now included in the city of Carthage. This worthy gentleman and pioneer died in
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