A history of northeast Missouri, Vol. 2 pt 2, Part 58

Author: Williams, Walter, 1864- , ed
Publication date: 1913
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 912

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Mr. Kaster has always been a Democrat, and it was on the Demo- cratic ticket, in November, 1910, that he was elected to his present office, that of county collector of Lewis county. Fraternally, he is identified with various organizations, including the I. O. O. F., Modern Woodmen and Yeomen.

Mr. Kaster's marriage to Miss Susan Little, daughter of Joseph Little, Sr., was solemnized in 1888, and he and his wife are the parents of three children : Emert, born September 4, 1890; Paul, February 16, 1892; and Julian, February 16, 1894.

J. B. PORTER, one of the progressive farmers of Lewis county, Mis- souri, was born in Warren county, Illinois, January 15, 1854, son of J. D. and Mary H. (Irwin) Porter, natives of Pennsylvania, the former born in Huntington county and the latter in Philadelphia.

In 1850 the Porters moved to Illinois, making the journey by steamer down the Ohio river to Cairo, thence up the Mississippi to Keithsburg. On a farm near that place they made settlement and there reared their family, consisting of two children, a son and daughter, the latter, Annie, now being the wife of Doctor Green of Arkansas.

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J. B. Porter received his early education in the schools of his native county. Then he was graduated from Monmouth College in 1875. Then went to Eastman's Business College, Poughkeepsie, New York, from which he graduated in June, 1876. For several years he was engaged in farming, operating a fine tract of 250 acres in Warren county and specializing on fine stock, chiefly Shorthorn cattle. This land, now valued at $275 an acre, the Porters still own. From 1885 to 1905 he was in the hardware business at Alexis, Illinois. In October of the latter year he traded his business and Alexis property for his present farm of 450 acres, one mile west of Monticello, Missouri. Here, too, he makes a specialty of Shorthorn cattle, and also raises Poland China hogs, Angora goats and sheep, keeping high-grade registered stock. His farming operations have always been conducted along progressive lines, he has made many improvements on his present place, and he is regarded as one of the leading farmers of his locality.

Mr. Porter has been twice married. His first wife, Ella M. Porter, nee Small, whom he wedded in 1879, died in August, 1894, leaving one son, Irwin L., who was born in 1880, and who is now connected with the First National Bank of Chicago. In April, 1897, Mr. Porter and Eliza- betli H. Calder were united in marriage, and to them have been given a son, Fred Lee Porter, born in August, 1899. Mrs. Porter attended ladies' seminaries in Oxford, Ohio, and Topeka, Kansas, and graduated from Morgan Park Ladies' Seminary, Chicago, Illinois. She is a daugh- ter of John Calder, who was of English birth and who was the last sur- vivor of the Sir John Franklin expedition. After his return from that expedition, he settled in America. At Chicago he was engaged in a meat business and also in boating on Lake Michigan, and in these enterprises acquired considerable means. Later in life he moved to Galesburg, Illi- nois, where he bought a farm, and where his death occurred in 1911.

Mr. and Mrs. Porter are identified with the Methodist Episcopal . church at Monticello, and, politically, he is a Democrat. He is a member of the Court of Honor and the Modern Woodmen, and in Masonry has received high degree; his identity with blue lodge, chapter and com- mandery being at Alexis, Rio, and Galesburg, Illinois, respectively. As an up-to-date stock farmer and an all-around worthy citizen, Mr. Porter enjoys the confidence and respect of everyone who knows him.

JUDGE THOMAS J. SMITH. A farmer by occupation, Thomas J. Smith has had the honor of holding the position of presiding judge of the Pike county court, and is looked upon in his community as a man of great worth and ability. He was born near Cyrene, Missouri, February 1, 1843, the son of James M. Smith.

James M. Smith was born in Virginia in the year 1815, his father be- ing Austin Smith, a planter. He had two brothers and two sisters, Robert Y., William M., Catherine, who married Pleasant Edwards, and Eliza, who married Simpson Edwards. Austin Smith also had two children by a second wife. These were Alexander, and Sarah who married Dr. Veach, and subsequently moved to Florida, where she and her husband both died.

James M. Smith came to Missouri alone, in the year 1839. He settled in Pike county, near Cyrene, where he devoted his life to agricultural pursuits. About 1840, he married Susan Sparrow, a daughter of John Sparrow, a pioneer farmer of Pike county, who came from North Caro- lina during the year 1838. Mrs. Sparrow was Polly Bowman before her marriage, and was, like her husband, a native of the Tar-Heel State. James M. Smith died in 1851, at the early age of thirty-six years. His wife survived until 1889. Her children were as follows: William L.,

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of Elsberry, Missouri ; Judge Thomas J .; Mary L., wife of W. W. Jami- son, of Elsberry, and Martha, who is now Mrs. John M. Huckstep, of St. Louis.

Thomas J. Smith was only eight years old when his father died, leaving his ten-year-old brother and himself responsible for the material support of the family. In spite of the cares devolving upon him at an early age, he was able to acquire an adequate education, attending the country schools and Watson's Seminary. When ready to take his own start in life, he adopted as his own, the agricultural calling of his father. Although old enough for service at the time of war, home duties pre- vented him from taking part in the struggle, and he was forced to con- tent himself with feeding the needy sons of the Confederacy, as they straggled by his door.

In 1867, when he was twenty-four years old, Thomas J. Smith moved to Lincoln county, and settled near Elsberry, where he bought a farm, cleared it and placed it under cultivation. He was married at Paynes- ville, Missouri, in February, 1871, to Mary F. Jamison, a daughter of Samuel Jamison, who came to Missouri from Virginia. Mrs. Smith died in 1880, having borne Lou E., wife of M. A. Barton, of Elsberry, and James G., who married Katie Mays, and now makes his home on a farm near Paynesville. The second marriage of Judge Smith took place in October, 1883, at Paynesville, to Miss Bettie B. Bell, a daughter of Montgomery and Adeline (Gibson) Bell, and one of four children. Mrs. Smith is a descendant of Revolutionary ancestors, and her first daughter is a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Judge and Mrs. Smith have two daughters, Elsie, who is a graduate of the Barnes Business College of St. Louis, and who now is private secretary and stenographer of Governor Major, and Ina V., who is a teacher in the Louisiana high school, having received a diploma from the University of Missouri.

In 1891, Judge Smith bought his present farm near Paynesville, and lived on it until 1901, when he moved to Bowling Green in order to give his daughters the advantage of the high school there. In June, 1907, he moved to Louisiana, where he has lived ever since in his residence on South Carolina street.

Soon after his removal to Bowling Green, Judge Smith entered the race for the position of county judge. He was nominated and elected in 1902, and filled the office with great credit for four years. During his · period of service, the county rejoiced in the construction of several minor bridges, as well as of the larger structure which spans the Salt river. Gravel road building was also encouraged under his jurisdiction, and the rock roads, for which the charters had expired, were taken over by the board as county property, and a toll tax instituted to pay for their maintenance.

Judge Smith's modest activities in politics have always been on the side of the Democratic party, and he has endeavored to uphold all of the highest principles of Democracy throughout his public life. Judge Smith is also a factor in the private life of his community, and is held in high esteem by his neighbors and friends. He is a member of the Bap- tist church, as are the other members of his family, and in all respects is considered an upright, conscientious citizen.

HENRY T. SPURLING. Fourteen miles northwest of Mexico, near the village of Thompson, is the fine country home and farm of Henry T. Spurling, who has been an energetic and prospering farmer and stock raiser of Audrain county for the past thirty years.

Mr. Spurling, whose family has been resident in Northeast Missouri Vol. III-25

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since the pioneer era, was born near Clark in Randolph county, Novem- ber 6,, 1858. Both of his parents, John W. and Elizabeth (Gibson) Spurling, were also natives of this state. Alfred Spurling, the grand- father, a Kentuckian, came into Missouri about the year 1830, and his settlement was on land near the present town of Clark in Randolph county. James Gibson, the maternal grandfather, was from Tennessee, and located in this neighborhood about the same time. John W. Spur- ling, who made farming his life work, is still living at his home near Clark, being now seventy-five years of age. By his wife, Elizabetlı Gib- son, he had three sons, namely : Henry T .; W. Grant, who was killed by lightning on his farm in Audrain county about 1902; and James R., whose home is near his brother Henry.

Henry T. Spurling has won his prosperity by industry and good management. When he came to Audrain county in 1881, his capital consisted of a team of horses, and for the first three years he rented land within two miles of his present homestead. He then paid eighteen dollars an acre for some unimproved land, and from year to year has been increasing his holdings and doing a larger business until he now ranks with the leading farmers of one of the best farming districts in Northeast Missouri. Since getting his first land he has since paid as high as sixty dollars an acre for some of his purchases. In company with his son, Cyrus Russell, he now farms an extensive area of seven hundred and forty acres, which is divided into two separate but adjoining farms, the home place consisting of five hundred and sixty acres. Mr. Spurling located at his present homestead in 1903, it having formerly been the farm of Judge J. A. Lewis, now a resident of Mexico. Grain and stock are his principal products on this estate. Each year he feeds three or four cars of cattle, sheep and hogs, and grows about two hundred acres of corn and a hundred of oats. He also raises a number of jennets and jacks for the markets.

Mr. Spurling, though never an office seeker, was elected to the office of county judge in 1896, and by re-election served two terms of four years. During the last two years his associates in the county court were Judge Martin Flynt, Guy McCune and J. E. Sims. Politically he is a Democrat, and he and his wife are members of the Bethlehem Audrain Baptist Association.

At the age of twenty-seven Mr. Spurling married Miss Sallie Lee Hudson. She was born in Audrain county, and her parents were the late Thomas C. and Rohama Ann (Sims) Hudson. Mrs. Spurling's father . resided near Thompson and was for twenty years a justice of the peace in this district. Mr. Spurling and wife have one son, Cyrus Russell, who was born December 31, 1885. He married Bertha T. Snidon, and they have one son, Henry Shannon Spurling, born Sep- tember 15, 1908.

THOMAS C. HUDSON. By the death of Thomas C. Hudson, June 30, 1898, Audrain county lost one of its old and respected citizens and a representative of a pioneer family. He was born near Rocheport in Boone county, January 14, 1825, and was one of a family of thirteen children whose parents were Richard and Elizabeth (Harris) Hudson, Richard Hudson having come to Boone county from Kentticky during the years of first settlement in Boone county. He was born in Wake county, North Carolina, and emigrated to Simpson county, Kentucky, where he married Elizabeth Harris. He later moved to Boone county, Missouri, during the first years of settlement of that county, where he lived the remainder of his life.

The late Mr. Hudson was reared on a farm and was fairly well

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educated, considering the crude advantages offered him in his youth. He was endowed with a strong mind and the spirit of enterprise, and these qualities, together with inflexible integrity, he displayed through- out his long career of usefulness. He was always known as a more than common man in the point of Scriptural and political knowledge. At the age of nineteen he united with the Primitive Baptist faith, and he took a leading part in the erection of the Liberty church in 1872, and until his death remained the clerk and one of the most earnest members of that society.

In the year 1850, during the gold discoveries, Mr. Hudson, in company with a number of friends, went to California to seek his fortune and was out west two years. On January 3, 1855, after his return, he married Miss Rohama Ann Sims, whose father, James Sims, was one of the California party, and whose life, it is said, Mr. Hudson had saved during the perils of that long journey. Three daughters were born to Mr. Hudson and wife, namely: Winifred A., wife of W. H. DeJarnett; Elizabeth H., wife of Joseph W. Pickett ; and Sallie Lee, the wife of Henry T. Spurling.

The late Mr. Hudson served as justice of the peace for twenty-six years, and at the time of his death was candidate for the fourteenth term. Very few of his decisions as justice were ever reversed in the higher courts. He was a strong man both mentally and physically, never used a pair of glasses and showed few signs of weakness until his final illness. He was a good man, an honorable and useful citizen, and enjoyed the confidence and esteem of his friends and neighbors through- out his life of more than three score and ten years.

ORRIS B. SIMs, who for nearly half a century has resided on the same farm, a tract lying on the south branch of the Salt river, twelve miles southeast of Mexico, Missouri, is one of the old and honored resi- dents of Audrain county, where he has seen the country grow and flourish from a wild waste of prairie land to a center of commercial, agricultural and industrial activity. As one who has done his share in bringing about the wonderful changes that have taken place during the last fifty years, Mr. Sims takes prominent rank among his county's citizens, and is known as a man who has at all times labored for the good of the community in which he has resided, and where his friends are legion, so numerous are they. Orris B. Sims was born May 26, 1837, eight miles west of Fulton, in Callaway county, Missouri, and is a son of James and Hannah (Barnes) Sims. James Sims was a brother of Garland Sims, father of Judge J. E. Sims.

William Sims, the grandfather of Orris B. Sims, was a native of Madison county, Kentucky, and an early settler of Missouri. He settled in the eastern part of Boone county, where he carried on farming up to the time of his death, in 1855 or 1856, being about eighty years of age and one of the prominent and influential men of his day and locality. Hannah Barnes was a daughter of Phil Barnes, also of Madison county, Kentucky, who was the butcher in old Franklin Fort, and also settled on the east side of Two Mile Prairie in Boone county. Thus James Sims and Hannah Barnes grew to maturity together, knew and loved each other, and were married in Callaway county. Mrs. Sims died some time previous to the war, but her husband survived her a number of years, reaching the advanced age of eighty-eight years. Mr. Sims carried on general farming with slave labor prior to the war, and was one of his community's prominent citizens and a leader in the Primitive Baptist church in Callaway county. He and his wife had the following children : Orris B .; Lycurgus, who is engaged in farming in Audrain county ; Rohanizan, who married Thomas Hudson, of Boone county, and died at

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Centralia at the age of seventy-six years; Mrs. Frances Steward, living with her children; Mary, who married Harris O. Sims and lives on the old homestead of his father; and Parlee, the widow of Dave Little, of Callaway county.

In 1864 Orris B. Sims was married to Miss Lucinda Maxwell, of eight miles west of Columbia, daughter of John and Jane (Anderson) . Maxwell. She was born on the Maxwell homestead in Boone county, and was twenty-one years of age at the time of her marriage. During that same year Mr. and Mrs. Sims came to Mr. Sims' present property on the south branch of Salt river, then only a tract of sixty-six acres, for which he spent his entire capital of $1,000, although since that time he has paid as high as $20 per acre for land. He continued to add to his holdings from time to time until he had 500 acres of land, on which there were substantial, modern buildings, all the latest improvements, and large herds of cattle, horses, hogs and sheep, and although he has given away a great deal of his property, he still has 226 acres of the old home- stead. Mr. Sims carried on every branch of farming and also operated sawmills and threshing machines in season, and his high abilities and tireless industry made all of his ventures successful ones. He can look back without a shade of regret over a long and well spent life, back to the days of his early youth when he was allowed to accompany his uncle, William Sims, on a trip to Mexico, where he beheld the first railroad train that ever reached that point. His career has been without stain or blemish, and he can comfort himself in his declining years with the thought that when he has passed away he will not only have left his children comfortable competencies in a material way, but also has be- queathed to them the heritage of an honorable and honored name. In political matters Mr. Sims is a Democrat, but he has never been an office seeker. He and his wife are consistent and liberal members of the Primi- tive Baptist church of Mount Tabor, or Salt Run.

Mr. and Mrs. Sims have had eight children, namely: James Oliver; Mettie Ann, the widow of John Brown, of Centralia; Elizabeth Jane, who married George Brown, a farmer near the old Sims homestead; Amanda Catherine, who married Lee Wilcox, of Audrain county ; Sallie Lee, who married Benjamin A. Brown, a farmer near the Sims homestead; Mary Florence, who married Victor Wayne, of Moberly, Missouri; and John Milton and Orris Reuben. The three Brown boys, John, George and Benjamin A., are brothers, and are sons of Jack Brown.

JAMES BENJAMIN JONES. In the death of James Benjamin Jones, at Bethania, North Carolina, November 8, 1911, there was removed one of the most beloved men of Fulton, Missouri; the cause of education lost a supporter who ever worked for the highest ideals; and the community one of its most exemplary citizens. As a minister of the gospel, Dr. Jones ministered not alone to the duties of his own pulpit with extraor- dinary success and steadily increasing usefulness, but by his advice and example he influenced many young men to enter the ministry and to build up other churches. As a citizen he took a prominent part in every movement that made for the city's good; but he will probably be best remembered for the exceptional results accomplished as president of William Woods College, a position he held for sixteen years, from 1896 till his death. Dr. Jones will have many successors during the coming years of the institution ; there will be men among them who will handle successfully the matters pertaining to its welfare; but it is not probable that any of them will possess in greater degree all the qualities that made him a truly great educator-his broad education and information, the teaching instinct, the ability to impart to others of the full store of his

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own mind; the high ideals which characterized his every action; the foresight that anticipated difficulties; the persistency and energy that knew no defeat; the great kindliness of heart and the thorough knowledge of human nature which made him the sympathetic friend of each and all who came within the circle of his magnetic influence. It was these qualities, with the deep spirituality of the man, that made Dr. Jones so deeply loved; it is the remembrance of them that will keep his memory green.

James Benjamin Jones was born at Bethania, Forsyth county, North Carolina, April 16, 1846, the second son in a family of six sons and four daughters. His father, Dr. Beverly Jones, came of a fine old Virginia family, and was an eminent member of his profession during his active years, and even in the latter period of his life, when over ninety years old, took the keenest interest in the progress of the medical science. His mother, Julia A. Jones, was of German ancestry, a daughter of Abraham Conrad, who settled in North Carolina in the Moravian colony of Count Sinzendorff. She was a woman of strong intellect and Christian charac- ter, and was splendidly educated for her day, being a graduate of the well-known Moravian Academy at Salem, North Carolina. After receiv- ing instruction under private tutors in his home, Dr. Jones was sent at the age of twelve with his older brother to the Moravian Boys' Academy at Nazareth, Pennsylvania, but was taken home within two years on account of the unsettled condition of the country incident to the years just preceding the Civil war, and just after John Brown's raid at

Harper's Ferry. For the next two years he taught his younger brothers, and acted as overseer of his father's farm in Henry county, Virginia, often making the trip back and forth, a distance of sixty miles, on horse- back. In the early spring of 1864 he enlisted in the First Battalion of North Carolina Sharpshooters, under command of Maj. Virgil A. Wil- son, and saw hard service under General Early. He was for a time in the trenches before Petersburg, Virginia, and was at Appomattox Court House at the surrender of General Lee. Six days' marching brought him to the old home plantation, largely dismantled and impoverished as was all of the fair southland. After a few months on the farm this youth of nineteen years left for Louisville, Kentucky, to take a position as clerk in a large cement company, under his uncle, W. A. Hauser, from whom he received much valuable instruction in business methods. Before leaving home, Dr. Jones had made a public profession of his faith in Christ, and set out with the full determination to become a minister of the gospel-a decision from which he could not be diverted, though his uncle opposed his choice of a life work, telling him he would never be anything but a poor man. At the end of one year he had saved from his earnings $367, with which he entered the College of the Bible of Kentucky University (now Transylvania University), Lexington, Kentucky, Jan- uary, 1867. With the exception of $200 from the Kentucky Christian Educational Society, he made his way through both the College of the Bible and the College of Arts, graduating in June, 1873. A wealthy and benevolent woman of Lexington offered to defray all of his expenses of board and tuition during these years, but he courteously declined, preferring the hardships of the dormitory and independence to accept- ing this generosity. During his student years, he preached regularly for several churches, the largest and most influential being that of Cynthiana, Kentucky. It was during this pastorate that he first realized the strength and the iniquity of the liquor traffic, and here began the battle against that traffic which he waged with relentless vigor to the day of his death. Though he was known among his college mates as "the gentle Jimmie Jones," there was beneath this womanly gentleness a will of iron, and the

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courage of a martyr, which nerved him to undertake this fight in the face of wealth and influence arrayed against him, a mere youth. Just after his graduation in 1873, he was induced by his college president, Robert Graham, to undertake the pastorate of the Christian church in Little Rock, Arkansas. At this time political feeling ran high, and the Brooks- Baxter imbroglio ran so high that the United States government had to intercede to suppress the temporary revolution. The work here was arduous and trying, and here began also the long-continued fight for health against hemorrhages of the lungs, which had to be renewed from time to time until he finally conquered the disease, though a less deter- mined man would have succumbed. Soon after the resignation of his work in Little Rock, he was married to Miss Mary F. Rogers of Carlisle, Kentucky, whose father, John Rogers, a pioneer preacher, was for forty- seven years pastor of the Christian church of that town. To this union were born two sons, the oldest dying in infancy and the second one a few months after his father; and three daughters, who survive him. A few months' pastorate at Newport, Kentucky, was closed by a return of hemorrhages, and he went to North Carolina to his old home. With characteristic determination and independence, he refused the cod liver oil and whiskey prescribed by his father and other physicians, and lived in the open air and dieted. His health improving, he returned to Ken- tucky and taught for a time in Columbia Christian College, resigning his professorship to take the pastorate of the church in Carlisle, the home of his wife's people. His health continuing precarious, he located on a small fruit farm just outside of Lexington, but was not able to resist the urgent appeals to hold meetings, and do other work too arduous for his strength. Ill health finally drove him south, and he spent two years in southeast Georgia and Florida, superintending the planting of orange groves. His wife and three children were left at the old home in North Carolina, and books and his gun were his best companions in this enforced absence from loved ones. His health seeming established, he was contem- plating a return to his farm in Kentucky when news was received of the burning of the home. He returned to Kentucky, but to take up for the next three years the work of financial secretary of the State Missionary Society, a work which he regarded as most helpful to him in many ways, and which resulted in great financial benefit to the society. The solicit- ing of money was not so congenial to him as the work of a pastorate, and he accepted in 1886 a call to the church in Columbia, Missouri. Once more, however, after less than two years with this church, he was forced to seek a kinder climate, and accepted the call to the Temple street church in Los Angeles, California. He remained here two years, and though he was pleased with the "angel city" and his health was perma- nently restored, he yielded to the solicitation of warm friends in Ken- tucky and returned to the work of the State Missionary Society, remain- ing in the work one year, and bringing it financially to high water mark. Following this service, he became professor of Bible, Psychology and Ethics in Hamilton College, Lexington, Kentucky, a position which he held for five years, at the same time writing largely for publication, especially in the Apostolic Guide, of which he was associate editor. It was during these years that he felt impelled, though dissuaded by his warmest friends, to take a very active part against the return of W. C. P. Breckenridge as congressman of the Ashland district. He knew no com- promise with evil, and acknowledged no master but the God whom he served; no cause that was righteous in his eyes ever lacked a champion of fiery zeal. His articles were published in the Lexington papers and afterwards published in pamphlet form by many of the wives and mothers of the Ashland district.

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A history of northeast Missouri, Vol. 2 pt 2, Part 58

Author: Williams, Walter, 1864- , ed Publication date: 1913 Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis publishing company Number of Pages: 912

Author: Williams, Walter, 1864- , ed
Publication date: 1913
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 912