USA > Missouri > Jasper County > A history of Jasper County, Missouri, and its people, Vol. II > Part 71
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Mr. Fletcher is a valued member of the Century Club and his wife holds membership in that delightful organization-the Crown Club. Both are valued members of the Baptist church and the head of the house gives his allegiance to the men and measures of the Republican party, in whose superiority he has all confidence. He has wide ac- quaintance with the prominent men of the community and his knowl- edge of mining matters in Jasper county is such as to give him high prestige in the fraternity.
Mr. Fletcher is essentially domestic in his tastes, as seems the case with so many successful men, and he finds great pleasure in his home, in which his two small daughters are the chiefest treasures. A fine library is one of the most important features of his beautiful home, and he is familiar with the best literature. In his personal opinion, fishing is "the king of all out-door sports." During the summer months he takes an extended vacation, going with his family back to the old Maine home, where, away from business cares, he spends a season with his mother, who is still hale and hearty at a ripe old age. She makes her home with one of her daughters in the northern part of Maine.
THEODORE B. BAKER .- By his rise from very moderate circumstances to material and social consequence and influence among men Theodore B. Baker, manager of the widely known and highly esteemed Connor hotel in Joplin, has demonstrated his natural ability for business and his self-reliant and persevering spirit, for all his success is the work of his own energies and faculties, unaided by the favors of fortune or adventitious circumstances of any kind. He has been alert to see and seize his opportunities for advancement as they have presented them- selves and diligent and keen in searching them out when they have'not. He has also been wise and judicious in using them all to the best ad- vantage, making every day of his life in active work tell in his favor and minister to his welfare.
Mr. Baker was born in Washington, Iowa, on July 11, 1875, and is the youngest of the five living children of William and Leoramia (Grayston) Baker, natives of West Virginia. The father died on Janu- ary 13, 1909, at the age of eighty-one years. He was engaged in keep- ing hotels during nearly all of the active period of his life, but retired about twelve years before his death and passed the evening of his days in comfortable leisure, esteemed by all who knew him and cheered by the recollections of his long and fruitful service to his fellow men.
Theodore Baker obtained the elementary part of his scholastic train- ing in the public schools at Cawker City, Kansas, where his father was
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conducting a hotel during his boyhood, and completed his education in the high school at Beloit in the same county, which he attended until he reached the age of eighteen years. He was ambitious for success in business and made an early start, beginning the battle of life for him- self as soon as he left school. From that time to the present his progress has been steady and continuous, and his field of operations has widened as the years have rolled by. He has maintained every foot of ground he ever gained in his career, and has, at the same time, grown rapidly and permanently in the esteem of all who know him and the respect and good will of the publie.
Mr. Baker's first venture in business was as a partner of C. W. Heg- berg, in the operation of a steam laundry in Beloit, Kansas. He and his partner were very successful in this enterprise, but the work was not entirely in aceord with Mr. Baker's taste and desires, and after a short period of activity in it he sold his interest in the laundry to Mr. Hegberg. He then accepted employment as night elerk in the Avenue hotel in Beloit, a position which he filled for eighteen months.
But he was of an aspiring nature and felt within him longings for something better than working for wages. He therefore, at the end of the time mentioned above, went into the hotel business for himself, and since then has firmly adhered to this line of endeavor. He has sue- cessfully managed three first rate hotels in Kansas, the Greenwood at Eureka, the Whiteley at Emporia and the Goodlander at Fort Scott, and also made a very creditable record as manager of the Kingfisher in the city of the same name in Oklahoma. He was in charge of the Goodlander at Fort Scott from 1907 to June 1, 1910, when he came to Joplin and took over the management of the Connor hotel, with which he has ever since been connected.
The Connor hotel has long had a widespread reputation for the ex- eellence of its accommodations and cuisine. It is one of the most mod- ern in equipment and enterprise west of the Mississippi river, and it has suffered no loss in easte or standing sinee it came into the hands of Mr. Baker. On the contrary, he has kept it abreast of the times and added to its completeness and attractiveness, and his genial disposition and obliging manner have very considerably increased the popularity of the hostelry, especially among those modern knights errant, the trav- eling salesmen.
Mr. Baker is sedulously devoted to his business and takes no active part in political contentions. He always manifests, however, a good eiti- zen's interest in the welfare of his eounty, state and nation, and does what he can to promote it. He votes independently, according to his judgment of the qualifications of candidates without regard to political creeds or partisan interests. In other affairs he gives the good of the community elose and careful attention and is always ready to render it any service in his power. He is a leading member of the Commercial Club and chairman of its visiting committee. His religious affiliation is with the Presbyterian church, and in the affairs of the congregation to which he belongs he also takes an active and helpful interest.
On July 30, 1903, he was united in marriage with Miss Mayme Crawley, a native of Knoxville, Tennessee, and daughter of Peter Craw- ley. One child was born of the union, a daughter named Mary Louise, whose life began on November 5, 1905, and ended in July, 1907. The father has property interests in Joplin, farm lands in Kansas and other investments of value. He is esteemed as one of the most enterprising, representative and estimable citizens of Jasper county.
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JOHN A. MCMANAMY .- At this point is accorded recognition to John Alexander McManamy, who has been an essentially representative citi- zen of Joplin, Missouri, for the past thirty-seven years, his advent in this city being marked by the year 1876. Mr. MeManamy is at the present time incumbent of the office of chief of police at Joplin and in that connection he is acquitting himself with all of honor and distinc- tion. He was born in Jefferson county, Kansas, on the 7th of June, 1857, and is a son of John and Serena F. (Sebra) MeManamy, both of whom were summoned to eternal rest before the subject of this review had reached the age of fourteen years. The father was a native of Vir- ginia and he was identified with farming operations during the greater part of his active career. He died in Elk county, Kansas, at the age of sixty-four years, and prior to his death he had been honored by his fellow citizens with election to the office of sheriff. He was also incum- bent of a number of other important public offices during his lifetime and in all of them his service was marked by efficiency. He married Miss Serena Frances Sebra, who was born in Platte county, Missouri, and who passed away in 1864. Mr. and Mrs. John McManamy were the parents of nine children, and of the number the immediate subject of this sketch was the second in order of birth.
John Alexander McManamy was orphaned at an early age and was adopted into a family named Burke, who subsequently removed to Michigan, where the youthful John completed his early educational training. Attending school until he had reached the age of sixteen years, Mr. MeManamy then turned his attention to farm work, in which he was employed for the ensuing three years. In 1876 he severed the ties which bound him to his home in Michigan and in that year came to Joplin, Missouri, where he has resided during the long intervening years to the present time. His first employment in this place was in the zinc mines, in which he continued to work for a period of sixteen years, at the expiration of which, in 1890, he joined the Joplin police force, be- coming an officer under Chief J. J. Coffer. In 1893 he was himself elected chief of the department to succeed Mr. Coffer, and he then re- mained in tenure of that office for a period of three years. The next chief of police was W. E. Morgan, who served during the years 1897 and 1898. In 1899 Mr. McManamy was again appointed to this im- portant office and he was succeeded in 1901 by T. J. Coffer, a brother of the former chief of the same name. The year 1903 again witnessed Mr. McManamy as the incumbent of this office but he was succeded, in 1906, by Joseph Myers, whose regime lasted until 1909, in which year Mr. MeManamy was re-appointed to the office. Chief McManamy is the present incumbent and he has won for himself a reputation as a fear- less officer. He has had many an encounter with desperate characters, particularly in the earlier days, and he has done a great deal toward exterminating the lawless element which is wont to infest a booming city.
In his political proclivities Chief McManamy accords an uncom- promising allegiance to the cause of the Republican party, in the local councils of which he has ever been an active and zealous factor. While he has never been ambitious for any office other than the one which he now fills, he has ever been on the alert to further the best interests of the community and of the county at large. He is a man of indefatigable energy and unusual persistency and he always carries to successful com- pletion each and every undertaking in which he becomes involved. In a fraternal way he is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, in which he has been a member of Joplin Lodge, No. 287, for the past twenty years ; and he is also connected with the Modern Wood- men of America.
Vol. II-31
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On the 5th of November, 1885, was solemnized the marriage of Chief MeManamy to Miss Nancy E. Cullison, a daughter of John Cullison and a native of the state of Indiana. John Cullison was an early set- tler in Joplin, where during his lifetime he was identified with its busi- ness interests. Chief and Mrs. McManamy are the parents of one ehild, -Grace B., whose birth occurred at Joplin and who was the widow of John Chester prior to her marriage to Fred Fitz John, a prominent busi- ness man at Joplin. The MeManamy family are popular in connection with the best social activities in their community.
WILLIAM P. CLEVELAND .- In all parts of this great and progressive country men of eapacity, energy and pluck have left their impress on the localities in which their genius for improvement and development has been displayed, many of them giving their names to what are now great cities after laying the foundations of civilization and putting in motion forces for good and steady advancement whose fruits will aug- ment and multiply through all coming time.
Moses Cleveland, the grandfather of William P. Cleveland of Jop- lin, who came to this country from England at an early period of west- ern development and was the progenitor of his branch of the family in America, was a man of this character and experience. He founded the city of Cleveland, Ohio, which stands today an impressive monument to the breadth of view with which he planted the seeds of its growth, as well as to his excellent judgment in seeing the possibilities of the region for industrial and commercial power. He was the father of seven sons, one of them William A. Cleveland, who was born in the state of New York and is now a resident of Waterville in Oneida county of that great commonwealth, where he is living at leisure after a long and pros- perous career as a general farmer. He married Miss Catherine E. Carter, also a New Yorker by nativity, but now deceased, and they be- came the parents of four children, William P. being the second in the order of birth. He was a distant cousin of the late Grover Cleveland, the twenty-second and twenty-fourth president of the United States, and the only Democrat elected to that office since the Civil war.
William P. Cleveland was born at Waterville, New York, on January 16, 1866, and was reared and began his education there, passing through the various grades of the common schools and the town high school. He afterward pursued a course of special training in Lehigh University at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and was graduated from its scientific de- partment with the degree of Analytical Chemist, his aim in life being to devote himself to interesting and exacting inquiry in the line of endeavor to which his training assigned him.
His first professional engagement was with the Lehigh Zine and Iron company at Lehigh, which he served as chemist for a short time. In the autumn of 1890 he came to Joplin to take employment as chemist for the Empire Zinc Company, and he remained in charge of its labora- tory for a number of years. He was then promoted to the position of superintendent, and served the company in that capacity for nine years. At the end of that period he resigned his position and established a laboratory of his own, which was known as the W. P. Cleveland An- alytical Laboratory, and was devoted to the assaying of ores and every- thing else subject to its processes. While conducting his laboratory he was also engaged in mining and metallurgical pursuits.
His mind was active and he was very studions and observant in connection with his work. He saw every feature of it any many new possibilities in connection with it, and this led him to the invention of the Cleveland-Knowles magnetie separator, a device for the concentra-
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tion of ores containing iron, which is now in universal use in mining work. He also organized the Magnetic Separating Company for the manufacture of the separator, and, in 1902, incorporated the Joplin Separating Company, of which he became vice president. This company purchases low grade ores and concentrates them for commercial pur- poses, and is the only one of the kind in the Joplin district. The indus- try is a very popular and profitable one, and has fully vindicated Mr. Cleveland's wisdom in starting it.
Mr. Cleveland is also president of the Magnetic Separating Company and of a similar enterprise which is operated at Galena, Illinois. He has now under consideration the erection of a separating plant in the mining district of Wisconsin, which will probably be under way for its useful service at an early day. In addition to the enterprises mentioned he is interested in Joplin city property as secretary of the Ryland In- vestment Company and connected with other projects of great utility and value to the community of which he is so serviceable and appre- ciated a citizen.
His interest in public affairs is strong and abiding, based on intel- ligence and governed by principle. IIe belongs to the Democratic party, believing its theories to be the best for the government of the country, but regarding local issues he is independent, and in no sense is he a hide-bound partisan or desirous of a public office by either ap- pointment or election, preferring to serve the state from the honorable post of a private station, and do the best he can in that way to promote its welfare. In social relations he is a member of the Country Club and the Commercial Club. In the latter he served at one time as chairman of the executive committee, and has always been zealous and active in its behalf. His religious affiliation is with the Episcopal church, to which the members of his family all belong.
He was united in marriage with Miss Annabelle Bartlett, a daughter of E. O. Bartlett, a sketch of whose life will be found in this work. The union has been blessed with one child, a daughter named Elizabeth Lip- pincott, whose life began on December 1, 1900, and who is one of the ornaments of the attractive and hospitable home of the family at 511 Wall street.
Mr. Cleveland is a great lover of outdoor sports and recreation. Motor boating, automobiling, and similar forms of enjoyment are particularly attractive to him as reliefs from the burdensome cares of business, and while he is careful and judicious in the indulgence of them, he is at no time averse to a test of speed and endurance in the form of a race, es- pecially a boat race, in which all the best attributes of both body and mind are brought into vigorous exercise, and the spirits are roused to beneficial enthusiasm. Joplin counts him as one of her best business men and most worthy citizens.
Ross A. MARCUS .- Among the younger members of the Webb City bar is one who gained a wide reputation on the ministerial platform before he settled down to legal practice, and who is well known through- out many states as "The Boy Preacher." This is Ross A. Marcus, law partner of T. C. Tadlock.
Mr. Marcus is a native of Missouri. He was born at Bonne Terre, St. Francois county, January 17, 1885, a son of Missouri parents, Wil- liam J. and Siotha M. (Wigger) Marcus. William J. Marcus was born April 18, 1855. For a number of years he was a mine operator in southeastern Missouri, and since 1893 he has been a resident of Webb City, where he is now living retired. On Christmas of 1883, at Bonne Terre, he married Miss Siotha M. Wigger, who was born there May
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17. 1859, one of a family of nine children of Philip A. and Charity (Or- man) Wigger, natives of Kentucky and early pioneers of St. Francois county. Philip Wigger was of English origin and his wife of German. For fifty years he lived on the old homestead in St. Francois county, and he and his wife lived to see all of their children pass away except two. Mrs. Marcus and her brother George W. Wigger, now a resident of Colorado Springs. In her girlhood Mrs. Marcus walked a distance of three miles to attend district school, and her only books were a spelling book and an arithmetic.
Ross A. Marcus, like his mother, looks back to the district school as the place where he received his early lessons. Later he went to school at Webb City, and still later entered Carrolton College at Farmington, Missouri, of which he is a graduate. In the meantime he felt called to preach the gospel and entered the Evangelistic field. He was only thirteen years of age when he preached his first sermon, and for four years, until the time of his graduation, he was active in evangelistie work, serving under the supervision of the Union Missouri Association of St. Louis and traveling over many states. Then he accepted pastoral work in the Methodist Episcopal Church, in which he was engaged seven years, having charges at Webb City and Anderson. All his sermons, from the time he started out a boy of thirteen, were delivered without manuscript or even notes, and his message was always convincing. Dur- ing his ministerial work he studied law, having for preceptors John W. McClellan and T. C. Tadlock of Webb City, and with the latter he is now engaged in the practice of law.
Politically Mr. Marcus is a Democrat, and recently he has taken an active part in local politics. He is a member of Company T, Second Regular National Guards, at Webb City, and he is also a member of the I. O. O. F.
On September 2, 1906, Mr. Mareus married Miss Nell T. Ball, like himself a native of Missouri, and they have one daughter, Nadine R., born October 27, 1907. Mrs. Marcus is a daughter of Caleb C. Ball, a native of Liverpool, England, and now a merchant of Granby, Missouri.
ILARRY I. SWITZER .- A prominent influential citizen and business man at Joplin, Missouri, is Harry I. Switzer, who, in company with William H. Flippen, is condneting the Switzer Printing Company, an unusually successful publishing coneern in this city. Mr. Switzer was born at Iowa City, in Johnson county, Iowa, on the 14th of September, 1868, and he is a son of James L. Switzer, whose birth occurred in Carroll county, Maryland, on the 15th of December, 1837. During his early career the father was identified with agricultural pursuits in his native state but afterward removed with his family to Altamont, Kan- sas, where he started the White Banner News, editing the same for a number of years. At the time of the inception of the Civil war he en- listed as a soldier in the Union army, becoming a member of the Twenty- second Iowa Infantry. He was assigned to the General Grant Brigade and was with Grant at Vicksburg, Mississippi, where he was taken ill. IIe was then relieved from duty and was on a furlough, during which time he was in the hospital at Davenport, Towa. After his recovery he was unfit for field service but served in connection with the hospital work until the close of the war. He is now living at Lakeside, Missouri, where he is well known and respected as a citizen of sterling worth and un- questioned integrity. He married Miss Elizabeth L. Kaye, who was born in England, in the year 1844, and who came to America, in com- pany with her parents, when she was a child of but three years of age. The Kaye family settled in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, im-
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mediately after their arrival in the United States and subsequently re- moval was made to the state of Indiana, in Washington county of which commonwealth Jesse Kaye, father of Mrs. Switzer, passed the closing years of his life.
Harry I. Switzer received his primary education in the public schools of Kansas, whither his parents had removed when he was a mere child. After reaching years of maturity he entered the Fort Scott Normal School, in which excellent institution he completed his education. Dur- ing a portion of his school career he was engaged in teaching in order to defray expenses. For six years he was identified with the pedagogic profession in Crawford county, Kansas, and for a period of four years he was engaged in the same line of work in Oklahoma. His health be- coming impaired, he turned his attention to farming, locating on an estate in Oklahoma, where he resided for three years, at the expiration of which he disposed of his farm and engaged in the printing business. At Ames, Oklahoma, he conducted the Ames Enterprise for two and a half years and he then leased his business, later disposing of the same. In 1906 he came to Joplin, Missouri, where he began to work for his father in the printing business. Two years later he purchased his father's interest in the Switzer Printing Company and he is now asso- ciated in business with William H. Flippen. The Switzer Printing Com- pany published the Joplin Review and it also conducts a large job print- ing department, where strictly first-class work is turned out on short notice. It is one of the big business concerns of the city and its pro- prietors are everywhere accorded recognition for their fair and honor- able dealings.
On the 24th of December, 1889, was recorded the marriage of Mr. Switzer to Miss Henrietta Root, the ceremony having been performed in Crawford county, Kansas. Mrs. Switzer is a daughter of Isaac and Melissa Root, the former of whom is a retired farmer and merchant. Mr. and Mrs. Root are passing the evening of their lives at Los Angeles, California, where they are enjoying to the full the fruits of their former labors. Mr. and Mrs. Switzer have four children, concerning whom the following brief data are here recorded,-Guy Rutherford, born on the 15th of January, 1891, is in the employ of the Joplin Printing Company in this city ; Elvin James, whose birth occurred on the 22nd of October, 1892; Edna May, born February 14, 1894, is attending the high school in this city ; and Emmet Isaac, born February 11, 1899, in Woods county, Oklahoma, is a pupil in the Emerson school. The three older children were born in Crawford county, Kansas.
While Mr. Switzer maintains an independent attitude in local pol- ities, in national affairs he votes the Democratic ticket. In a fraternal way he is affiliated with the Modern Woodmen of America and with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.
The Switzer home represents one of the beautiful residence prop- erties in Joplin and it is the scene of gracious entertainment and most generous hospitality. In addition to his other business interests Mr. Switzer is the owner of a great deal of valuable real estate in this city and he also owns some fine farming property in Jasper county. He en joys the friendship of a large circle of influential acquaintances and no one in the city is accorded a higher degree of popular confidence and esteem than is he.
O. T. A. WILFLEY, M. D .- A man of culture and talent. well versed in the science of medicine and surgery as practised at the present time. O. T. A. Wilfley, M. D., of Webb City, rightly holds a noteworthy posi- tion among the leading physicians and surgeons of Jasper county. A
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