USA > Missouri > Macon County > General history of Macon County, Missouri > Part 31
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Mr. Brockman was born near where he now lives in 1873. His life began in Atlanta, and he is a son of John Wesley and Sarah E. (Hamil- ton) Brockman. He obtained his education in the district schools of Lyda township and as soon as he left school began his life work as a farmer. He has held to this occupation with unwavering devotion ever since he started in it, and his fidelity to the temple of industry in which his devotion has been exhibited has poured out upon him abundant rewards. He now owns and farms 120 acres of fine land, which he has improved with good buildings and provided with all that is necessary for conducting his farming operations with vigor and according to the most approved modern methods. He is also interested in raising live-stock for the markets and his industry in this line of effort is a flourishing and profitable one.
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In politics he is a consistent and zealous member of the Democratic party, but while he is earnest in his attachment to the principles for which it stands he has never been a very active partisan or in any sense desirous or willing to accept a political office. In fraternal life he is a Modern Woodman and in religion is connected with the Baptist church. In 1895 he was united in marriage with Miss Nevada Bunch, a daughter of Perry L. and Martha (Cook) Bunch, and a sister of Henry Bunch, a sketch of whom will be found in this volume. Mrs. Brockman was born and reared in this county. She and her husband have one child, their son, Paul, who is still a member of the parental homestead and an ornament to its family circle.
ALBERT JACOB CRAWFORD.
Among the early settlers of Ralls county, Missouri, in fact, one of the pioneers of that section, was Wilks Stark Crawford, the grand- father of Albert J. Crawford, now one of the prosperous and progres- sive farmers and stock men of Jackson township, Macon county, and the subject of this brief memoir. Helping to lay the foundation of civ- ilization and government in this state, and to redeem its wide and rich domain from the wilderness and its savage elaimants, nomadic men and beasts of prey, he was a very useful man and acquired prominence and influence among its people of that early day. In Ralls county he lived and labored, laying down his life at last amid the scenes of his toil and endurance and the substantial triumphs of progress he had helped materially to win. It was in that county he located on his arrival in this state from Virginia, where he was born and reared, and it was there, also, that his son, Jonathan, the father of Albert J., was born in 1834.
Jonathan Crawford grew to manhood on the frontier and became an extensive farmer and raiser of live-stock, keeping pace with the prog- ress and development of the country around him and under all eirenm- stances taking a leading part in whatever was attempted for its advancement. Soon after attaining his majority he married with Miss Susan Killinger, a native of Virginia, whose parents were also early settlers in that part of the state. Seven children were born in the household of Jonathan Crawford and five of them are living: Wilkes S .; Jefferson D .; Mary Ann. the wife of John Hollyman; Albert .J., and Ada, the wife of D. Q. Flinchpangh. The parents are also living, although practically retired from active pursuits. ' The father has been a life-long Demoerat in his political faith and allegiance, and has at all times given his party loyal and effective support.
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Albert J. Crawford obtained his education in the district schools and at Oak Lawn College, which is located at Novelty, in Knox county, this state. On completing his education he at once began farming, and having put his hand to the plow in this way he has never looked back, but has steadily gone on in his chosen occupation. His progress has not been startling or spectacular, but regular and steady. It was slow and, perhaps, at times, painful at first, but he had the mettle for deter- mined perseverance, and the business capacity to nse all his oppor- tunities to advantage, and soon had a fair start. Since then he has gone onward with accelerating speed and steadily increasing prosper- ity. He has a fine farm of 866 acres and has it all under vigorous and judicious cultivation except the portion necessarily reserved as a graz- ing ground for his stock. He feeds and raises large numbers of cattle and quantities of other live stock, giving the industry close and careful attention and making every element of it minister to his benefit, while his business adds also to the commercial importance and power of the county and state.
As a Democrat of firm conviction and zealons loyalty to his party Mr. Crawford takes an active interest in public affairs and is an ardent and effective political worker, although he has never songht a political office of any kind. Without regard to politics he has served as a member of the school board for a period of twenty-one years and has given the schools under his direction the most careful and helpful supervision. In religions connection he belongs to the Presbyterian church, and is a very active worker in the congregation of which he is a member. For years he has been one of its elders and the clerk of the session, and during the last twelve years the energetic, efficient and appreciated superintendent of its Sunday-school.
Mr. Crawford has been married twice. His first union was with Miss Mollie B. Goodding, a native of Macon county, and the marriage occurred in 1888. They had one child, their son, Finis B. The mother of this child died on January 30, 1889, and in September, 1891, the father married again, his choice on this occasion being Miss Fannie Goodding, a sister of his former wife. They have four children, Carl Herbert, Ennice Mary, Herschel Goodding and Herman Harold. Mr. Crawford is in the prime of life and has excellent health. He is com- fortable in a worldly way, and has the means to gratify his desires. so far as his personal comfort is concerned, and also to develop any ambitions for his own advancement or the benefit of his township and county he may have. He is firmly established in the regard and good will of the people and accounted one of the most worthy and
*
CAPT. BEN ELI GUTHRIE
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representative men among them. He would seem from all the circum- stances to have before him many years of usefulness to his section of the state and the way open to still greater prominence and influence, if he should desire it. He has the best wishes of the people for his advancement, and his widespread popularity will give him their active support in any distinction he may seek. For he is truly representative of their best aspirations and characteristics and would do them credit in any position or capacity.
CAPT. BEN ELI GUTHRIE.
V
Gallant, intrepid and skillful as the leader of his host in war, when "Red Battle stamped his foot and nations felt the shock"; patient, persevering and knowing as a teacher in the humbler temples of Cad- mus and the higher avenues of scholastic training; resolute, resourceful and masterly as an advocate and counselor, a veritable sunbeam, gilding and warming everything he touches in social life, and in every relation an elevated citizen, cultivated gentleman and man of sterling worth, Capt. Ben Eli Guthrie, of Macon, has dignified and adorned the citizen- ship of Missouri in every walk in life into which duty has called or inclination has led him. He is the leading member of the Macon county bar, and is not outranked in his profession in the state, even though his well-known modesty may cavil at these statements and object to their being made in this work.
Captain Guthrie was born near Keytesville, Chariton county, Mis- souri, on May 31, 1839. He is a son of Rev. Allen W. and Elizabeth (Young) Guthrie, natives of middle Tennessee. The father came from his ancestral home to Missouri an orphan boy at the age of seventeen, and passed the remainder of his days in this state actively engaged in farming and ministering to the spiritnal welfare of the people as a min- ister of the gospel of the Presbyterian sect during the greater part of his mature life. He was the youngest son of Rev. Robert Guthrie, who was born in Maryland in 1773, his parents having emigrated from the North of Ireland to that state before the Revolutionary war. Rev. Robert Guthrie removed to North Carolina later, and still later to middle Tennessee. The father died in 1843 and the mother in 1846, in Missouri, having come to Missouri in 1831. Two of their sons, Rev. Eli Guthrie and the father of Captain Ben, were the first members of the family to become residents of Missouri, coming to this state in 1830. The older brother, Eli, was drowned in the Missouri river at Dewitt, Carroll county, in 1837, while trying to resene persons who had been
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canght in the floating ice, with a generosity and humanity characteristic of the family, risking his own life to save others.
That generation of the Guthries belonged to the Cumberland branch of the Presbyterian church, and three of its members were ministers of the gospel, ordained by that branch. They were men of ability and daring, and were widely known throughout Northeastern Missouri, the portion of the state in which their services were rendered to the pio- neers. They came into a region still largely given up to the dominion of savage wildness of man and beast and called it to a higher state. The wilderness hearkened to their eloquence and became milder because of their presence.
Rev. Allen W. Guthrie, father of the Captain, was ordained in 1838, and during all of the next ten years preached throughout Chariton, Macon, Monroe, Randolph, Howard, Boone, Audrain and Callaway counties. He was married on September 6, 1838, to Miss Elizabeth Young, a daughter of Hon. Benjamin Young, of Callaway county. Ten children were born of the union, of whom four grew to maturity and two are now living. The mother died in 1855 and the father in 1891. As pioneers, they had the spirit of daring and endurance the conditions of the region required. As moral agencies at work among the people they were widely and practically useful. As man and woman they were highly esteemed, and as important factors in founding the civilization of this part of the state their memory is held in reverence. Capt. Ben Eli Guthrie began his scholastic training in the district schools and continued it at Chapel Hill college in Lafayette county, attending that institution in 1855 and 1856. During a part of 1856 and all of the suc- ceeding year he was a pupil under the tutorship of the late Col. Alonzo W. Slaybock of St. Joseph, Missouri. In 1858 he matriculated at MeGee college at College Mound, in this county, for the regular course of academic study. He remained at that institution until the beginning of the Civil war, and was but two weeks from his graduation when Governor Jackson's call to the people for volunteers to defend the state against armed invasion sounded through the commonwealth with trumpet tone, and, moved by the firmness of his political opinions and a sense of devoted loyalty to his state, Captain Guthrie, young man of twenty-two as he was, and on the very verge of academie honors, flung everything else to the winds and obeyed the call.
He mustered a company of which he was chosen captain and was soon at the front with his mnster under the command of General Price. The company took part in all the activities of General Price's cam- paign in the fall of 1861, then took his company over to the Confed-
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erate army in December of that year, it becoming Company I of the Fifth Missouri Infantry, and a part of the First Missouri brigade. He remained in the service to the elose of the memorable conflict and, although participating in many historie battles and countless minor engagements, escaped without disaster except what grew out of the hardships and privations incident to all war, and particularly experi- eneed by the armies of the Confederacy. He was mustered out of the service at Jackson, Mississippi, in May, 1865.
"When the war drum throbbed no longer, and the battle flags were furled," Captain Guthrie taught school in Mississippi until 1867. In that year he was elected professor of languages in MeGee college, College Mound, Macon county, and he filled this position until the sum- mer of 1874. At that time he resigned and at the succeeding election was chosen school commissioner for Macon county, an office which he filled with great acceptability for two terms. In the meantime he had studied law, and in September, 1875, he was formally admitted to prac- tice at the Macon county bar. In 1878 he was elected proseenting attorney of the county, and at the end of his first term was re-elected for a second.
Since retiring from the office of prosecuting attorney, Captain Guthrie has been continuously engaged in the practice of his profes- sion and has been very successful in it, rising to the first rank in the bar of the state and being a very important factor in the management of many important eases. In 1888 he was appointed reporter for the appellate court of Kansas City, and during the next twenty years he rendered exceedingly valuable and highly appreciated service to the state in that capacity, retiring voluntarily in the summer of 1909. Dur- ing the greater part of his service as court reporter he was also asso- ciate counsel, with Hon. Gardner Lathrop, of Kansas City, for the Santa Fe Railroad Company, and was conspicuous in the defense of many noted eases for the company. In 1909 he was the leading counsel of the people of Macon county in the celebrated M. & M. bond ease. (See General History for a more extended account of the bond issue).
Of Captain Guthrie's extensive and accurate knowledge of the law, both as written and as interpreted by the courts, of his eloquenee as an advocate, his skill and alertness at the trial table, his wisdom and common sense as a counselor and his mastery of analysis and argument before the courts, this is not the place to speak. They are well known to the people of Missouri, and any attempt to enlarge upon them here would be inappropriate. They will pass into history with his name, and
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remain in the public mind as a part of the imperishable heritage left to Missouri by her ablest and best ctizens.
On August 31, 1873, he was united in marriage with Miss Susie A. Mitchell, eldest daughter of Robert C. Mitchell of College Mound. Two children have been born of the union, but only one is living, a son named Allen, who is connected with Theodore Gary in the tele- phone business and is a man of force and influence in his community. The Captain and his wife and son are members of the Presbyterian church, and for many years he was an officer in the church organization of the congregation to which he belongs, and the superintendent of its Sunday-school.
We have the wisdom of antiquity in the admonition to call no man happy until after his death. But if the respect and esteem of the whole people of the state, if high character and elevated citizenship, if com- manding eminence in one of the leading professions, if clean living and domestic peace, if a long and unbroken record of usefulness to man- kind-if all these, or any of them contain the elements of happiness, we might waive the admonition in the case of Captain Guthrie, for they are all his. He has good health and continuing vigor also, although he has passed the Scriptural limit of human life, and all his faculties are in full flower and fragrant with the odors of high vitality. In prospect he has the reward of his upright life, and in retrospect, the satisfaction of an unsullied and serviceable past. And all who know him rejoice over both. "The elements are so mixed in him that Nature may stand up and say to all the world 'This is a man!' "'
JAMES WILLIAM FARMER.
This worthy and highly esteemed citizen of Lyda township, in this county, who is a farmer both by name and occupation, has every incentive to feel the earnest and intelligent interest in the welfare of his township and Macon county which he manifests in every way, and is altogether sincere in his devotion to them. For he is a native here and has lived in the same locality all the years of his life to this time, drawing his stature and his strength from the soil on which he was born, obtaining his education in the schools hard by, mingling in the activities of the region from his youth as an individual producer on his own account, associating with the people living now around him in all the relations of life, and selecting his partner for life from among the danghters of their households.
Mr. Farmer was born in Lyda township, Macon county, on Janu- ary 4, 1863, and is a son of Henry T. and Biddie Ann (Kelly) Farmer,
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natives of Kentucky and the latter a daughter of Francis Kelly, a man of influence in that state. (For a more extended notice of the parents see sketch of John T. Farmer, brother of James William, to be found elsewhere in this volume.) The father was a farmer, and was suc- cessful and prosperous in his work. He was a Republican in politics, but never became an active partisan or held a political office. He died on December 5, 1905. The mother is still living and has her home in Lyda township. Although she is sixty-six years of age, she supervises and directs the operations of a farm of 340 acres. She and her husband were the parents of six children and four of them are living: James William, the immediate subject of these paragraphs; John T., the postmaster of Atlanta; Frances, the wife of Henry Bunch, of Lyda township, this county; and Edgar, who lives in Macon county.
James W. Farmer's experiences as a child and boy were in nowise different from those of other children and lads who were reared with him in this portion of the country. He attended the district school near his home and, when he was well enough developed to do so, began to assist his father on the farm. He grew to the age of seventeen in this way, a plain and useful farmer's son, doing well his part as a farm hand and meeting all the obligations of society which rested upon him. But as a youth his experiences were different from those of many, if not all, of his associates. For at the age of seventeen he began farming for himself, and he has been actively and profitably engaged in this industry ever since. He owns a fine farm of 180 acres on which he conducts a general farming enterprise of magnitude and importance, and also carries on a flourishing and extensive industry in raising live- stock for the markets. His farm is well improved, completely equipped with the necessary up-to-date implements for its vigorous and intelli- gent cultivation and has been brought by his skillful husbandry to a high degree of productiveness.
Mr. Farmer is a progressive and public-spirited citizen and takes a leading part in all matters pertaining to the development and advance- ment of the township and county in which he lives. He has served as a member of the school board during the last eighteen years, and as such he has rendered the community excellent service by lis intelligence and breadth of view with reference to the cause of public education, and his vigor and energy in the administration of his office. Fraternally he is connected with the Modern Brotherhood of America, and in his political allegiance is allied with the Republican party. Although by no means an office-seeker, or even an active partisan in the usual sense of the term, he takes an earnest interest in the welfare of his
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party and gives it the best service his circumstances allow in all its campaigns. But party spirit and party claims never obscure his vision as to the best interests of the people, and with him those interests always come first, partisan considerations and personal desires being at all times secondary and subordinate.
On October 10, 1888, Mr. Farmer united in marriage with Miss Alice Brockman, a native of this county and a daughter of John W. and Sarah E. (Hamilton) Broekman, prominent citizens of the county and reckoned among its most useful residents. Four children were born of this union and three of them are living, Clella, Bessie and Damon. All the members of the family enjoy in a marked degree the regard and good will of the people on all sides and in all classes, and they well deserve the high esteem in which they are held wherever they are known.
HENRY BUNCH.
1
Working industriously on his farm of eighty acres in Lyda town- ship from day to day and year to year, steadily pushing forward his own interests without reference to the affairs of other people, yet never negleeting his duty as a citizen or withholding his support from all worthy undertakings for the benefit of the locality in which he lives. Henry Bunch is one of the most estimable citizens of Macon county, and in his way one of the most useful. He ought to have a deep and abiding interest in the welfare of Maeon county, for it is the place of his birth and has been his home all his life so far. He ought also to feel an earnest and helpful desire for the comfort and advancement of its people, for he has been living and laboring among them ever since his childhood. His local patriotism meets these requirements and is manifest and ardent.
Mr. Bunch's life began in Independence township in 1864. He is a son of Perry L. and Martha (Cook) Bunch, natives of Kentucky, the former a son of Henry Bunel and the latter a daughter of Valentine Cook, and both belonging to families long resident in that state. The father eame to Missouri in 1837 and located in Independence town- ship of this county. At the time of his arrival in this part of the state it was still wild and unpeopled to a large extent, and all the hard- ships and exaetions of frontier life had to be borne by its few scat- tered inhabitants. The elder Bunel accepted the situation, with all that it involved, and throughout all the early history of the region he faithfully performed his part as a pioneer and promoter of the best interests of the people. He was of a retiring disposition, and never
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sought publie office or mingled much in the management of publie affairs. But he met every duty of citizenship with fidelity and never shirked a task that belonged to him, however disagreeable it might be. In polities he inclined to the Republican party, after it was formed, but he never became an active partisan.
He and his wife became the parents of six children, all of whom are living. They are: Henry; Ida, the wife of Charles Howell, of Atlanta; Dora, the wife of Elwin George, of Oklahoma; Rose, the wife of A. A. Saunders, of La Plata; Nevada, the wife of W. H. Booekman, and Alta. The father died on February 3, 1897. He was a farmer all his life, and in his day was a prosperous one. The mother was married in 1906 to J. H. Saunders and now lives in La Plata.
Their son, Henry, obtained his education in the schools near his home, and as conditions at that time were much disturbed, owing to the lingering agonies engendered by the Civil war, his schooling was neces- sarily very limited. On leaving school he began farming for himself as soon as he was able, and this has been liis steady occupation ever since. He has eighty aeres of good land, which is well improved and highly cultivated, and he also carries on a flourishing business in raising live-stock for the markets. In both lines of endeavor he has been very successful, making a competency for himself and helping to raise the produetiveness and wealth of the township. Like his father, he is a Republican in polities, but not an active partisan, and has refused all overtures made to hini to become a candidate for publie office, either by election or appointment. He is an earnest and devont member of the Baptist church and an ardent worker in its interest, taking a leading part in all its benevolent and other worthy under- takings. Fraternally he is connected with the Modern Woodmen and the Maccabees, and he is active in his membership and devoted to the welfare of both organizations.
While Mr. Bunch has not helped in an official way to direct the destinies of the township or county, and has left to others the functions of government and the responsibilities attached to them, he has not failed in the full performance of his duty as an excellent citizen. He has given the people around him a fine example of industry and thrift, and has shown how essential they are to success, even in this land of plentiful opportunities and practically boundless resources. Ile has also lived an upright and useful life in social and general relations, and has won by his worth the generous and appreciative regard of all who know him. In 1897 he was united in marriage with Miss Frances
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