USA > Missouri > Linn County > Compendium of history and biography of Linn County, Missouri > Part 41
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Bernard J. G. Bettelheim was twenty-three years of age when he came to Brookfield with his parents. Notwithstanding his numerous changes of residence and the unfavorable circumstances under which he passed his childhood, his education was carefully attended to, and he became an accomplished man in scholastic attainments, and was also thoroughly trained for business. He was not long in the city before he was launched on the fitful sea of mercantile life, and then, for nearly forty-two years, he was active, and during the greater part of the time one of the leaders in the business world of this part of the state. A few years before his death he gave up the active management of his business interests to his sons and passed the remainder of his days in comparative freedom from labor and care, enjoying a rest he had richly earned.
On December 26, 1870, he was united in marriage with Miss Mary Eliza Roberts, a daughter of Dr. and Mrs. J. F. Roberts, early settlers in Brookfield and accounted as among its most worthy and estimable
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citizens. Eight children were born of the union, five of whom are liv- ing: Dr. B. F., a resident of South Dakota; E. F., who lives in New Mexico; and A. E., Mrs. H. C. Pratt and Miss Florence, all of whom reside in Brookfield.
As has been intimated, Mr. Bettelheim's death was very sudden. It occurred in 1910, and without a moment's warning. During that day he was in the business section of the city and was apparently unusually well and in fine spirits. At four o'clock he went home, and sometime after arriving there, went out to do some chores about the place. When supper time approached and he did not return his daughter Florence went to look for him and found him lying dead in the back yard. His wife at the time was in Dakota.
The announcement of his death shrouded the whole county of Linn in gloom and was a source of universal grief. His remains were laid to rest in Rose Hill cemetery, whither they were accompanied by hosts of mourning friends and consigned to the tomb with every manifestation of popular esteem, the Masonic order, of which he had been an honored member, conducting the services at the grave. He has been greatly missed in religious and business circles, having been prominent in both during his long residence in Brookfield, and zealous in the service of all the interest involved in each, as he was in behalf of every worthy enterprise.
He was a gentleman of extensive and varied information and one of the most successful business men the city has ever known. He was, moreover, a man of great but unostentatious liberality toward every commendable purpose, and generous almost to a fault in private char- ity. His church was a large beneficiary of his bounty, and all other churches had the benefit of his liberal aid. In the language of the old Latin poet, he was a man, and nothing that was human was foreign to him. The city and county of his home will not soon look upon his like again, if they ever do. But they show that they were worthy of him by the appreciation in which they held him and the veneration in which they cherish his memory.
RICHARD T. SMITHER
Tried by hardship, privation, hourly peril in war, reverses and disappointments in business, and hope deferred in many ways, Richard T. Smither, one of the prominent and successful real estate dealers of Brookfield, has practically laughed in their faces and proven himself
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superior to them all. He has been regularly successful in his opera- tions, even if there have been lapses at times and he has not always realized all he hoped for from his labors. In all circumstances and under all conditions he has been sustained by his own resourceful and self-reliant spirit, and this has ever dared Fate to do her worst.
Mr. Smithier is a Kentuckian by nativity, his life having begun on "The dark and bloody ground" at Mt. Sterling, Montgomery county, on April 1, 1849. His parents, Alexander and Cordelia (Hawkins) Smither, were also natives of Kentucky, and the latter died in that state in 1854. Soon after this sad event the father moved his children to Missouri, arriving in this state the same year his wife's death occurred, and located at Marion for a short time. From there he moved to Boone county, where he passed the remainder of his days, dying in that county. His forefathers were Tennesseeans, and early settlers in Kentucky. His father was a distiller and he a tailor. He and his wife were the parents of five children, all of whom are dead but Richard T.
Richard T. Smither grew to manhood in Jackson and Boone coun- ties, and obtained a limited common school education in their schools. In 1863, when he was but fourteen years old, he enlisted in the Confed- erate army as a member of Strode's Company A of sharpshooters, which was under the command of General Price. The young recruit remained in the service to the close of the sanguinary contest and par- ticipated in many of its principal engagements. He had a horse shot under him at Fulton, where the spirit was high and the fighting fierce, even though the battle did not last long or take rank among the great ones of the war.
Mr. Smither was mustered out of the service in May, 1865, and at once returned to his Boone county home, where he followed farming during the next ten years. He then clerked for a time at Clarksville in Pike county, and followed this experience by a period of ten years passed in business for himself in that county. In 1883 he moved to Linn county, located in Brookfield and opened a store in the hardware and implement trade, which he conducted for seventeen years.
His finger was ever on the pulse of progress and he kept in touch with the genius of improvement that has been for years doing so much to increase the power and add to the comfort and convenience of man- kind. When the hour was ripe he united with others in founding the Electric Lighting Company and securing the erection and operation of its plant. This company has very largely engaged his attention and employed his faculties by its expanding business and growing demands.
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He is now its president and guiding and controlling spirit, and he devotes himself almost wholly to its management. At the same time, he is zealous and energetic in his support of other public improvements, giving valuable and appreciated aid to every worthy undertaking for the advancement and betterment of his locality.
The public affairs of the city and county of his home also engage his interest in an effective way, and he does his part toward giving them proper trend and guidance. In political faith and adhesion he is con- nected with the Democratic party, but he has never desired or sought public office, although he has always been an active worker for the success of his party. In fraternal relations he is a devoted member of the Masonic order, with which he has been connected from his early manhood.
On June 14, 1877, he was married to Miss Sallie T. Ship, a daughter of T. B. and Sarah (Fisher) Ship, pioneers of Pike county. No chil- dren have been born of the union. Mr. and Mrs. Smither are widely known throughout the county, and everywhere they enjoy in a marked degree the confidence and regard of the whole people. They are known to be upright and useful citizens, representative of all that is most worthy and estimable in Linn county citizenship, and are esteemed in accordance with their demonstrated merit, and their agreeable social qualities, genuine benevolence and other admirable characteristics. Mrs. Smither is a faithful working member of the Presbyterian church, and prominent in all the activities of the congregation to which she belongs, and in which her membership is highly valued.
JOHN B. PATRICK
The versatility and ready adaptiveness of the American mind to all kinds of business, to all the requirements of official life, and to every demand of circumstances, whatever they may be, is so well known and has been so often illustrated by impressive examples and described in published narratives that it has become not only an oft-told, but almost a trite and well-worn tale. Yet, in some lives among us there are such specific features, and such unusual combinations that their story is worthy of detailed narrative, even though much that is told in them seems like tame and unprofitable repetition of general history.
Some of these specific features and unusual combinations are found in the career of John B. Patrick, of Laclede, this county. He is the leading hardware merchant, grocer and furniture dealer of the town.
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He has been a farmer, a merchant, a farmer again, the owner and manager of a livery barn and once more a merchant, and has made every line of endeavor in which he has engaged minister to his welfare and advancement and contribute to the general weal of the community in which he has operated.
Mr. Patrick was born in Livingston county, Missouri, on February 3, 1864, and is the son of John M. and Margaret (Warren) Patrick, the former a native of Virginia and the latter of Kentucky. The father was brought to Missouri in his boyhood by his parents, and passed his life in Livingston county. For a number of years he taught school, and then passed the rest of his life as a farmer. He died in 1867 at the age of fifty-five years, universally respected as a good man and useful and progressive citizen.
The mother was a daughter of Thomas Warren, a pioneer of Howard, Boone, Randolph and Livingston counties in this state, who died at Chillicothe, Livingston county, after many years of creditable living and usefulness as a merchant and farmer, leaving the mark of his influence in each of the four counties named as one of the founders of their civilization and aids in establishing and building up their civil, educational and religious institutions of every kind, and giving charac- ter and tone to their citizenship.
Five children, two sons and four daughters, were born in the parental household of Mr. Patrick, of whom he and three of his sisters are living. Their mother survived their father twenty-nine years, pass- ing away in 1896. She was ardent in her devotion to the welfare of her offspring and zealous in care and attention to them to the end of her days, and when she died full of years and with a long record of use- fulness to her credit, she was one of the most revered matrons in the whole county of Linn.
John B. Patrick grew to manhood on his father's farm in Livings- ton county and obtained his education in the public schools near his home. After completing their course of study he followed farming until he reached the age of thirty years, then for ten years was engaged in the livery business and grocery trade at Wheeling in his native county. At the end of the period mentioned he returned to farming and adhered to it three years. But his fondness for mercantile life remained with him and kept insisting on attention, and in 1907 he yielded to its persuasive voice.
In that year he moved to Laclede and purchased the mercantile establishment of C. E. Hilton there, which he has ever since conducted. The business includes grocery, furniture and hardware departments,
REV. CALVIN ALLEN
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and also a cream station and cold storage room which is the largest in the county. He has given his business close and careful attention, pushing his trade to the limit of his opportunities, and making every effort in his power to keep pace with the progress of trade and the requirements of the community in which he operates, and all accounts agree in attesting that he succeeds admirably in these laudable designs.
But Mr. Patrick has not confined his interest in business and the welfare of the community to his merchandising operations. He has taken part in other institutions of value much to their benefit and the advantage of the people around him generally. He is a stockholder in the Central States Life Insurance Company of St. Louis, and con- nected with other fiscal and promotive agencies in Laclede and else- where. He is a wide-awake and enterprising man, and always at the front in behalf of any worthy undertaking for the progress and improve- ment of his township and county.
On January 7, 1900, he was united in marriage with Mrs. Elva Thomas, a widow whose maiden name was Rickett and who was born in Ohio. She had one child by her former marriage, Elliott W. Thomas, who is still living with her and Mr. Patrick. At the time of her mar- riage she was a resident of Wheeling, Livingston county, and there the marriage occurred. Mr. Patrick is a Democrat in politics but not an active partisan. Fraternally he 'is connected with the Modern Wood- men of America, and in religious affiliation is a devout member of the Christian Church. He is widely known throughout the county and is everywhere held in high esteem.
REV. CALVIN ALLEN
The record of a long life of faithful and self-sacrificing usefulness, of valuable services performed in many fields of labor, without present compensation or hope of future reward in a material way, is always a pleasing one to write, and it is also full of influence and incitement for good to those who read it. For the facts in the narrative, however crudely and imperfectly set forth, are in themselves suggestive and bear their own comment without the aid of word-painting or any of the embellishments of art.
A pleasing task of this nature is furnished the publishers of this work in the case of Rev. Calvin Allen, of Laclede, who is now in the eighty-fifth year of his age, retired from active pursuits, and able to share in the benefits of the civilization, industrial and mercantile con-
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ditions and moral, intellectual and social advantages he has helped so materially to create and build up for the people of Linn county. His long day of toil and trial is over. He bore faithfully its heat and bur- den, and is now resting calmly and peacefully amid the mild glories of its late evening, with the fruits of his fidelity beaming around him on every side and contributing to his comfort and general happiness.
Mr. Allen was born near Paint Rock, Campbell county, Tennessee, on October 26, 1827, and moved to Indiana with his parents about the year 1836, when he was nine years old. The family located on a farm in Daviess county, in that state, and on that farm the son grew to man- hood, obtaining what education he could get in the district school in the neighborhood of his home. Its course of instruction, however, was not sufficient to more than give him a start in mental training. His own reading and studies have since done the rest, and made him a very well- informed and cultivated man.
In 1854, with his young wife and the children they then had, he came to Missouri, making the journey from his Indiana home with ox teams and experiencing many hardships and privations on the way, through portions of which every hour of the twenty-four was fraught with peril from Indians who were still roaming in their wild state in various localities along the route, and night was ever made hideous with the terrifying howls of beasts of prey in search of their predatory livelihood.
On his arrival in this state Mr. Allen took up government land in Grundy county, for which he paid seventy-five cents an acre, it being prairie land. The timber land to be had at the time sold at two dollars an acre, which was more than he could afford to pay. He remained in Grundy county engaged in farming four years, then entered the Missouri Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church on probation with a view to devoting the remainder of his life to preaching the gospel and doing pastoral work among the people of this region.
Mr. Allen's first appointment in the Christian ministry was to Albany circuit in Gentry county and two other counties in the same scope of territory. The circuit embraced the greater part of the three counties and had twenty-seven charges requiring attention. He found his work exacting, the claims on his time and energies exhausting, the recompense for his services in a worldly way so meager as to give him very little for provision for his family, and the prospect for improve- ment in the conditions next to nothing. But he was impelled by a high sense of duty and persevered in the arduous labor for twenty-three years.
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He was first on probation four years, then regularly in the ministry nineteen years, entering the conference in 1858 and being placed on its superannuated list for six years in 1881. In 1887 he was placed per- manently on the superannuated list, and he still belongs to the Con- ference as a superannuated member, having been connected with the organization continuously for fifty-three years. He settled at Laclede in 1881, and has resided there ever since. While he still does minis- terial work occasionally, he has not been regularly active in the harness for a long time, although he has never lost an iota of his interest in the labor.
In July, 1847, he was united in marriage with Miss Elvira Crook, a daughter of "Boss" Asa Crook, who was a Kentuckian by nativity. Six children were born of the union, only one of whom, Edmund B. Allen of Laclede, is now living. A sketch of his life will be found in this work. The mother died in Laclede on February 1, 1890. She was a noble pioneer woman, heroic in spirit, ready to undergo any labor, . face any peril or endure any hardship for the benefit of her family, the good of the people with whom she mingled and associated, or the fur- therance of the work in which her husband was engaged. Her memory is enshrined in the affectionate regard of all who knew her, and the force of her example is still potential wherever she lived and exhibited her loftiness and strength of character.
The father, although a man of peace, and devoted to the spread of the doctrine of good will among men, has always had a high ideal of patriotism and been ardent in seeking to promote the welfare of his country. During the Civil war he was a member of the first regiment of enrolled militia in this state, which, when he joined it, was known as Colonel Kimball's Reserves, but is now usually designated as the Home Guards. In this organization he was always ready for field duty, if it should be required, and was faithful to every claim of the service, what- ever was involved, meeting his obligations where the salvation of the Union was at stake with the same high sense of duty that impelled him when the salvation of immoral souls was the supreme and impressive issue.
Rev. Calvin Allen has lived among the people of Linn county for thirty-seven years. His life among them during all of that period has been an open book, and it has not a stain on any of its pages. The residents in all parts of the county know him well, and there is not one in all their number that does not do him reverence. Although so far advanced in years, his body is still vigorous and active, his mind is strong and clear and his heart throbs as intensely for the good of
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humanity as ever. The burden of his years has stayed his once ready hand in its great activity, but nothing can dim the lustre of his deeds or take away anything from the admirable record he has made. He is approaching his "narrow house and his long sleep" attended by the veneration and loving esteem of all who know him, and the evening anthem of his long day is medolious with the tributes of approval which thousands to whom he has ministered bestow upon him. "Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright; for the end of that man is peace."
JONATHAN J. HENDERICKS
For fifty-six years Jonathan J. Hendericks, of Brookfield, has been a resident of Linn county, and during all of that long period has been connected directly or indirectly with its farming industry. He has been actively engaged in the real estate business during the last sixteen years, but even in connection with that he has been more or less in touch with the farming industry of the county, and may therefore be properly said to have been a farmer, or an adjunct to agricultural work from his boyhood to the present time (1912).
Mr. Hendericks is a native of Virginia, and was born in Tazewell county in the Old Dominion on October 25, 1842. His parents were Mark and Sarah (Scott) Hendricks, also born in Virginia, the former in Montgomery and the latter in Tazewell county. The father was a blacksmith and also followed farming. In 1843 he determined to seek better opportunities than his state seemed to afford him on the virgin soil of the West, and loading his household goods on a wagon, started for Missouri overland. He did not get out of his native state, however, for death overtook him at Kanawha in that part of it which is now West Virginia.
The mother returned to the old home with her young child, over- whelmed by her great bereavement, and without the nerve at the time to try her fortune alone in a new country so far from the friends and associations of her childhood, youth and young womanhood. She re- mained there eleven years, and was then seized with another longing for the West, and brought her family to Randolph county in this state, where they passed the first winter. The next spring the family moved to Linn county and located near Linneus, some time afterward moving to Bucklin township, the mother in the meantime having contracted a second marriage in which she united herself with a Mr. Carter. By
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her marriage with Mr. Hendericks she had two sons, but Jonathan is the only one of the two now living.
He was twelve years old when the family came to this state, and nearly thirteen when it located in Linn county. He attended the old- time country schools of the period, which were kept for a few months during the winter in a rude log shack furnished with slab benches, and in them acquired all he ever got in the way of scholastic training. At an early age he began life for himself as a farmer, and that occupation he followed steadily until 1900. He experienced all the hardships and privations of frontier life and all the difficulties of converting a tract of wild land into a productive and well improved farm, doing this on 160 acres in Bucklin township when the whole region surrounding him was still largely unoccupied and almost an unbroken wilderness.
In 1883 he bought a farm near Brookfield, which he lived on and cultivated until 1895. He then sold it and turned his attention to dealing extensively in real estate and carrying on an insurance business, in which he is still engaged. His operations have steadily grown in magnitude until now they have reached large proportions and given him a very considerable business. He is considered an excellent judge of property and has broad and comprehensive knowledge on the subject, making him a judicious adviser for both buyers and sellers, and causing him to be called into almost daily consultations with reference to it.
While he did not go far from home during the Civil War, he took part in it as a member of Company H, Second Missouri Provisional Regiment, which rendered valuable service to the state guarding the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad for a year and a half, from the fall of 1863 to the close of the war. Mr. Hendericks was corporal of his com- pany. The regiment took part in no actual hostilities, but was always prepared for the worst, and on several occasions was very near an en- gagement in deadly combat.
Mr. Hendericks was married in 1874 to Miss Cynthia J. Ramsey, a native of Indiana and a daughter of George and Polly (Broadhurst) Ramsey, who came to Linn county in 1844. No children have been born of the union. The head of the house is a Republican in his political faith and allegiance, and his services to his party have always been active and well appreciated by both its leaders and its rank and file. He has served as a justice of the peace and township trustee. He is a Freemason of the Royal Arch degree in fraternal relations. As a citizen he is regarded as sterling and representative of the best in the county. As a man of public spirit and enterprise, both in his own affairs and those of the county, he is esteemed as an influential force, resource-
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ful and progressive, wise in counsel and energetic and effective in action. In all the relations of life he is known to be correct and com- mendable, and the people of the county have for him universal respect and good will.
ROBERT R. SMITH
Orphaned when he was but little over one year old by the death of his father, and by this sad bereavement forced to begin the struggle for a livelihood and advancement among men at a very early age, Robert R. Smith of Brookfield, this county, has been wholly the architect of his own fortune, the maker and director of his own career, the source and medium of all his triumphs in life. In business, in social circles and in the bright record he has written for himself in the chronicles of the great fraternity of which he is now one of the highest officials and has long been a shining ornament and a potent force for good, he has made his own way without the aid of Fortune's favors or advantageous cir- cumstances at any time. His capital has been his high character, his native ability, his persistent industry, his determined self-reliance and his genial and benevolent disposition. These assets, freely invested wherever he has lived, have brought him in excellent and rich returns in the good will and esteem of the people, and given him prominence and popularity in every line of endeavor he has tried.
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