USA > Missouri > Centennial history of Missouri, vol. 2 > Part 2
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39
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William Rockbill Relson
one, that whisky has ever benefited, I will give up my fight against it; and they can have the whole country to search in for that one man." While his inter- ests centered in Kansas City, he was continually putting forth most effective effort in the championship of right and progress throughout the southwest and indeed in all sections of the country. It was seldom that he did not have a crusade on hand for the benefit of his fellowmen. Just before the war with Spain was declared he sent a reporter to Cuba to investigate the reports of starvation among the non-combatants there and as the result of the report he inaugurated a movement for relief that led within ten days to the shipment of five hundred tons of food and clothing from Kansas City. The movement was warmly commended by President MeKinley. Through the columns of the Star he advocated the separation of the poor and the insane, who were housed together in most miserable quarters in Kansas City, and though it required several years to arouse the public, the County Home-commodious, sanitary and comfortable- stands as a monument to his humanity, while the insane of the county are now cared for in excellent state institutions. Having improved poor-farm conditions in his home city, he turned his attention to the entire states of Missouri and Kansas with gratifying results.
It was Mr. Nelson who took the initial step in establishing The Santa Claus Fund in 1886. A contribution of nine hundred and thirty-five dollars and ninety-five cents was secured. To this he added two hundred and fifty pairs of shoes, and year after year the work of Christmas distribution was carried on through the circulation staff of the Star until it became too big for the paper to handle. Every organization that desired to raise funds for public purposes sought the cooperation of the Star, which gave notable help to the Swope Settlement, the Boys' Hotel, the Provident Association, the Y. M. C. A., the Red Cross, and other organizations.
In politics Mr. Nelson ever maintained an independent course. He believed that politics should be a constructive force and he supported those men who stood for constructive measures. Ile was at no time bound by any party ties, and his independent attitude was shown by his advocacy of Cleveland for presi- dent and at the same time his support for Major William Warner, the republican candidate for governor. Twelve years later he championed the cause of Theodore Roosevelt for president and Joseph W. Folk, democrat, for governor. Feeling that the progressive party was taking a forward step along the line of con- structive politics, he became again the supporter of Roosevelt when he headed that ticket, and after the election he gave just as vigorous support to the pro- gressive policies promoted by Woodrow Wilson. He had not the slightest desire for public office, and though he knew many of the eminent men of the country, he would never ask for a political appointment or favor for any of his friends.
Mr. Nelson's private charities were most extensive, but he never spoke of these if it could be avoided. 1. There were almost countless recipients who benefited by his bounty, which always came in the form of friendship and not of duty. His was an intensely religious nature and yet not one that held to dogma or creed. Ilis religion was of the most practical character. In this con- nection one long associated with him said: "He felt that he could best show devotion to God by doing justly and loving mercy. It was a matter of religion with him that the Star should fight for high ideals and great causes. . . His
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William Rockbill Delson
reverence for God was as real and profound as his devotion to his fellowmen. In those rare moods when he could talk with his associates about his deepest convictions he would speak of his faith in the Power not ourselves that makes for righteousness and of his own sense of obligation. He was serenely confident that the universe was the expression of a Righteous Creator; that in the end right would triumph ; and that no evil could befall a good man in death." Wil- liam Rockhill Nelson passed from this life April 13, 1915. According to the terms of his will, the income from his estate was to go to his wife and daughter, and when they pass on his fortune goes to the city, the income to be devoted to the purchase of art works. His agricultural property, Sni-a-Bar farms, com- prising seventeen hundred and fifty aeres, is to be conducted as a model farm for the benefit of the publie for several years and then to be sold and the income from the proceeds to be used according to the terms of his will for art purposes in Kansas City. His wife and daughter, as executors of the estate, are con- tinuing the publication of the Star, carrying out the spirit of its founder. After their death the Star, too, is to be sold for the benefit of the art fund.
An editorial in the Des Moines Capital comments upon his will as follows: "William R. Nelson, owner and editor of the Kansas City Star, in making arrangements for the final disposition of his estate, turns it over to Kansas City for an art gallery. The income from his property, carefully guarded, will go to the wife and daughter during their lifetime. After that it will pass into the hands of a board of trustees to be sold and the proceeds used for the purchase of art treasures for the enjoyment of the people of Kansas City. We look upon this as a wise bequest. With Colonel Nelson art was not merely a rich man's fad. He was a lover of the beautiful. He appreciated its refining power. He knew that an appreciation of art is a matter of education. He loved Kansas City, the arena of his life struggles and his life triumphs, and in his desire to leave a perpetual monument, he has chosen wisely. In his life he made service to the people a dominating passion. It was an honest desire to benefit the masses which caused him to provide for the future art enjoyment of the city which he loved-a munificent gift which will make the name of William R. Nelson a treasured memory for generations to come." Collier's at the time of his death said: "Mr. Nelson was much more than merely a great newspaper man. Ile was one of the dozen important personalities of his time in America. The liberal and progressive movement which arose in the middle west between ten and twenty years ago and came to dominate the political and social forces of the period, centered largely around the Kansas City Star and the other forces of publie opinion which took their leadership from the Star." In the same pub- lication William Allen White wrote: "Mr. Nelson literally gave color to the life and thought and aspirations of ten millions of people living between the Missouri river and the Rio Grande in the formative years of their growth as commonwealths-part of the national commonwealth. Ile and they together were dreaming states and building them, each reacting npon the other. The aspirations of the people were caught by his sensitive brain, and he gave these aspirations back in the Star policies. Kansas, Western Missouri, Oklahoma, Northern Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado form a fairly homogeneous section of our population. That section has grown up on the Star. Its religion, its conceptions of art, its polities, its business, its economie scale of living, reflect
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William Rockhill Delson
the influence of the indomitable mind of the man behind the Star, just as he gathered and voieed the latent visions of these people and gave them conseious form." Hundreds of papers and magazines throughout the country bore testi- mony to the great work and noble character of Mr. Nelson. The Outlook said he "stood sincerely, and without a trace of cant, for publie welfare." Harper's Weekly said: "Colonel William R. Nelson did not wait for others to set fashions. He began things himself. For more than thirty years he made the Kansas City Star a foree, a leader, a help. He feared nobody. The forees and trenches of money and society found him undismayed. And he was hard-headed about it. Ilis specialty was not hot air. The causes for which he contended were immediate, concrete. IIe dealt not in isms but in the next hard-fought step ahead. He never faltered. He was big, strong and sure. The Kansas City Star has been the most powerful journal of light between the Mississippi and the Pacific, and Colonel Nelson was the Star." The direetors of the Associated Press adopted the following resolution : "That the death of a private eitizen, who was not the incumbent of a publie office and never had been, should be seriously characterized as a publie calamity is a high testimonial of individual worth and a conelusive evidence of unusual accomplishment in the serious aetivi- ties of life. We, who enjoyed the intimacies of personal association with William Rockhill Nelson during the nine years he served as a member of this board, feel that there is no exaggeration of phrase in speaking of his passing from life as a publie loss of such moment that it may be deliberately and truthfully said : 'It was a publie calamity.' Sharing in an exceptional degree the feeling of dis- tinet personal bereavement the deeease of a friend inevitably occasions, we attest not only that sentiment in this formal record, but our sense of the service Colonel Nelson rendered to his profession, to the eity and state in which he lived and to the whole country during his long and successful career as an editor and publisher. We had peculiar opportunities to appraise the rugged force of his character, the unwavering courage with which he adhered to personal convie- tions when onee established. We know that he made a newspaper that was big enough to make and shape the development of the community for which it was published, that it was an exemplar of the best and highest standards of jour- nalism, and we know as well that this newspaper was in every characteristie feature merely a material embodiment of the man who was its owner and director."
President Wilson wired: "The whole country will mourn the loss of a great editor and eitizen," while Ex-President Taft spoke of him as "a man of most exceptional ability, great power, and the widest influenee, which he exereised with undaunted courage for the right as he saw it." The message from Theodore Roosevelt was: "We have lost literally one of the foremost citizens of the United States, one of the men whom our republie eould least afford to spare." E. A. Van Valkenburg, of the Philadelphia North American, said: "His death is a national calamity." In an editorial the Jackson County Examiner said : "Kansas City will always bear the impress of the thirty-four years in the life of William R. Nelson as a citizen. His work was one of service, his sueeess was beeause the people eame to know that the man and his paper were trying to reach the best things, his proof of success the enmity and hate of so many men upon whose selfish purposes he trampled and whose iniquitous plans he exposed."
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William Rockhill Delson
The Republican of Springfield, Missouri, summed up his great life work in the words: "The Greater Kansas City of today is in no slight degree the monu- ment of William R. Nelson. He was indeed a mighty man."
C. K. Bixby
William Keeney Bixby
W
ILLIAM KEENEY BIXBY, retired manufacturer and art col- lector, whose deep interest in St. Louis and her advancement along eultural lines has been manifest in his many generous contributions to the Museum of Fine Arts, has after a period of substantial suecesses in business reached a point where leisure enables him to gratify his taste for all the ennobling influences of life.
Mr. Bixby was born in Adrian, Michigan, January 2, 1857, a son of Alonzo Foster and Emma Louisa (Keeney) Bixby, the former a lawyer by profession. The family is of English lineage, founded in America by one of the name who was a native of Suffolk county, England, and on crossing the Atlantic became a resident of Ipswich, Massachusetts.
Completing a high school course at Adrian, Michigan, as a member of the class of 1873, William K. Bixby went in 1874 to New Orleans and afterward to Texas, where he served as station baggagemaster at Palestine. IIe was subse- quently made train baggagemaster and later became substitute railway mail agent and then station baggagemaster at Houston. Further advancement brought him to the position of general baggage agent for the International & Great Northern Railroad at Palestine and also for the Texas & Pacific Railroad at that place. For a time he acted as general baggage agent for the Texas & Pacitie and the International & Great Northern Railroad and also as station agent at Palestine, whence he removed to St. Louis, where he has since maintained his home. For a time he was stationary agent for the Missouri Pacific and the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railway at St. Louis, and also held a similar position with the Wabash. On leaving the railroad service he became connected with the Missouri Car & Foundry Company, originally filling the position of lumber agent, while subsequently he became purchasing agent and later was elected the secretary of the company. From that point he advanced to the vice presidency and at the same time was made general manager. At length he became the first president of the American Car & Foundry Company and afterward chairman of the board and so continued until his retirement from active business in 1905, having through successive stages of promotion and achievement gained a place of distinction in business eireles and a measure of prosperity that now enables him to live retired. As the years passed he became more or less closely associated with many other important business concerns both in St. Louis and elsewhere. He was chosen to the presidency of the Laclede Gas Company, also of the Provident Association, the Essex Investment Company and the Temple Realty Company. He became a director of the Missouri Pacific Railway, of the St. Louis Union Trust Company, of which he was made a member of the executive committee, of the First National Bank,
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William Keeney Birby
the Wagner Electric Manufacturing Company, the Union Sand & Material Company, the Consolidated Investment Company, and also of the First Na- tional Bank of Lake George, New York. Ile was appointed one of the receivers of the Wabash Railroad Company by the late Judge E. B. Adams.
The executive force, keen discrimination and marked business ability of Mr. Bixby were also sought along other lines, many of which were directly of a public character. He became the vice president of the Washington University and the vice president of the Missouri Historical Society and is president of the board of control of the City Art Museum. All those things which are of inter- est and value to his fellow men have awakened his interest and breadth of his activities is indicated in the fact that he was one of the national incorporators of the American Red Cross, is a member of the Society for Study and Cure of Tuberculosis, the St. Luke's Hospital, of which he is also a director, the Hospital Saturday and Sunday Association, the Bolton Improvement Association of New York, the St. Louis Academy of Sciences, the Bibliophile Society of Boston, the Artists' Guild of St. Louis, the American Ilistorical .Preservation Society, the American Anthropological Association, the Sons of the American Revolution, the Society of Colonial Wars, the New England Society of St. Louis, the Society of Iconophiles of New York, the Antiquarian of Worcester, Massachusetts, the New England Historical and Genealogical Society of Boston, the Society for Preservation of New England Antiquities of Boston, and still others which indi- cate the nature and breadth of his interests and his deep concern in all those things which promote intellectual progress or which have their root in broad humanitarianism. He was appointed by the governor as a member of the com- mission for the decoration of the state capitol.
Throughout his entire life Mr. Bixby has been a man of strongly marked literary tastes and is a member of various book clubs, including the Grolier Club of New York city, the Bibliophile Society of Boston, the Caxton Club of Chicago, the Society of Dofobs in Chicago and the Club of Odd Volumes of Boston. He is president of the Burns Club of St. Louis and was a member of the board of directors of the public library. He is also a member of the Noonday, Country, Franklin and the Bogey Golf Clubs of St. Louis, the Lake George, the Saratoga and Glens Falls Golf Clubs of New York and the Middle Bass Club of Ohio, and in many of these he has held office.
In San Antonio, Texas, on the 13th of June, 1881, Mr. Bixby was married to Miss Lillian Tuttle, a daughter of Sidney and Sarah (Stewart) Tuttle. They have become the parents of seven children : Sidney T .; Emma Stewart, the wife of Albert Ilastings Jordan; William Hoxie, who married Stella Fresh; Harold McMillan, who wedded Elizabeth Wise Case; Ruth, the wife of I. A. Stevens; Ralph Foster; and Donald Church. The religious faith of the family is that of the Congregational church, and Mr. Bixby is also a stanch believer in the principles and tenets of Masonry, in which he has attained the thirty-second degree. He has served as senior deacon in the blue lodge and as a high priest in the chapter. His political support was given to the democratic party until the Bryan campaign, since which time he has voted with the republican party. Since leisure has permitted he has given much time to travel, and he and his wife and son, Ralph Bixby, have recently returned from an extended trip to the Orient, where Mr. Bixby improved his opportunity of adding to his own private
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William Keeney Birby
collection of Oriental art and securing most interesting art treasures of this character for the City Art Museum of St. Louis, thus giving to his fellow townsmen the opportunity to study the art development of China and Japan. It has always been his desire to share his treasures with others, as proven by his many gifts to St. Louis institutions.
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George Warren Brown
HE name of Brown has been linked with the great shoemaking T industry of St. Louis since its inception. It was the broad vision, the keen sagaeity and the initiative of George Warren Brown that made him the pioneer in the shoe manufacturing business in St. Louis. Opportunity is not local-it is univer- sal; and the success is the outcome of enterprise, adapta- bility, progressive spirit and, above all. unfaltering industry. An analyzation of the eareer of Mr. Brown shows that he is the possessor of these qualities, and after founding the first shoe manufacturing enterprise of St. Louis, these traits constituted the basic elements of the upbuilding of a business of large proportions, of which he remained the head for thirty-five years and still retains his connection therewith as chairman of the board.
George Warren Brown was born on a farm in the town of Granville, New York, March 21, 1853, his parents being David and Malinda ( Roblee ) Brown. The ancestral line on the paternal side has been traced baek by The American Genealogieal Society to John Browne, a shipbuilder who was born in the north of England, May 2, 1584, and who joined the Pilgrims at a very early day, becoming one of their trusted counselors in Holland. He came to America in 1635 and was soon elected one of the governor's assistants. He was also one of the commissioners of the colonies of New England from 1644 to 1655 and the records state that he was "a man of talent, integrity and piety." He became proprietor of large landed interests at Taunton, Massachusetts, and with Miles Standish under appointment of the general court fixed the boundaries of that town. He was also on terms of friendship with Roger Williams, who in fact was a distant relative. The father of George W. Brown was a thrifty farmer, as was also his mother's father, Thomas Roblee. The latter was a devout mem- ber of the Baptist church, as was Mrs. David Brown, who exerted a strong religious influenee over her son in his early childhood. He was but seven years of age when he joined the Band of Hope, thereby agreeing to abstain from all intoxicating liquors as a beverage-an incident which constituted a real epoeh in his life. Another interesting ineident of his boyhood was that of being entrusted to drive a horse and buggy to conduct two soldiers of the Civil war who had been home on a furlough and were going back to the front. He drove them three miles over the hills to the Middle Granville railway station in the evening after dark, when he was but ten years of age.
The boyhood years of George Warren Brown were like those of most farm lads who spend their summers in the work of the fields and attend school begin- ning with the fall term and extending through the winter and early spring months. When nineteen years of age he was graduated on the completion of
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George Warren Brown
a course in the Bryant & Stratton Business College at Troy, New York. His entire capital in starting on life's highway and the only money that came to him from his home was made on the farm, the proceeds of the sale of a young horse, of which he had become the owner when the animal was a colt. This horse brought him one hundred and seventy-five dollars, and added to this he had the proceeds of the sale of about two hundred bushels of potatoes which he had raised on one acre of ground, during one of his last summers at home. On the 7th of April, 1873, a few days after reaching the twentieth anniversary of his birth, he severed home ties by bidding adieu to his father, mother and three sisters and his neighbors of that locality and started for the west, hoping to find a business opening which would afford him opportunity for success in life. He planned to go to Missouri or Texas, but his first objective was St. Louis, the gateway to either state. His elder brother, A. D. Brown, had the previous year embarked in the wholesale shoe business in St. Louis in connection with James M. Hamilton, under the style of Hamilton-Brown & Company. Upon the arrival of George W. Brown in St. Louis, April 10, 1873, his brother was at the river ferry landing to give him a cordial weleome and an invitation to remain with him a few days, suggesting that he look around St. Louis before going to Texas. He accepted the proffered hospitality and a few days later his brother secured him a clerkship with a retail merehant of the name of Shepard at Springfield, Missouri. George W. Brown had about decided to go to Springfield and accept the position when Mr. Ilamilton offered him the posi- tion of shipping elerk with the firm of Hamilton-Brown & Company and he gladly accepted, entering upon his duties May 1, 1873. During the months that followed, Mr. Brown not only discharged the duties of shipping elerk but found time to become well posted on every line of shoes carried by the house, informing himself regarding leather, styles, etc., so that within less than a year he was made traveling salesman, starting on the road March 17, 1874. He soon gave unmistakable proof of his worth expressed in honesty, good habits, hard work and salesmanship-a combination which explains his later sueeess.
It was while occupying this position as traveling salesman with the St. Louis wholesale shoe house, of which his brother, A. D. Brown, was a member and which was engaged in the jobbing of eastern made shoes, that G. W. Brown, then only twenty-four years of age, first became impressed with the great possibilities of St. Louis for the manufacture of good shoes. He promptly imparted these ideas to his brother, A. D. Brown, who gave some consideration to them, but coneluded not to undertake the projeet in the face of the fact that nearly all such ventures in the past had been failures, and, as he pointed out to George W. Brown, they had a prosperous business and it seemed unwise to undertake the manufacture of shoes with the probability of failure before them. After waiting for about a year, George W. Brown, becoming more and more interested in his plan as the result of his study of the business situation and conditions, invited two other men to join him in establishing a shoe faetory. The combined available capital of the three amounted to only twelve thou- sand dollars. Nevertheless, after returning from one of his trips in November, 1878, Mr. Brown informed his brother, as the head of the firm for which he was working, that he intended to undertake the projeet. The brother used every argument in his power to dissuade him, but he could not be moved.
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George Tarren Brown
There was no written agreement with his friends, but he had given his word to them and the word of George Warren Brown has ever beer as conclusive as any bond fortified with signature and seal. The brother even offered him a partnership, as he felt sure that the venture would not succeed, but G. W. Brown resigned his position and in so doing displayed another of his charac- teristies inasmuch as before leaving the firm he had secured the services of another young man, subject to the firm's approval, for the important territory which he was giving up; and it is also worthy of mention here that his friend whom Mr. Brown had selected when he himself was a young man of twenty- four years became one of the leading men of his house and is today a director in the Hamilton-Brown Shoe Company.
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