USA > Missouri > Macon County > General history of Macon County, Missouri > Part 81
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In reference to public improvements and the multiplication of all good agencies and the comforts and conveniences of life for the people in general he is eminently progressive, broad-minded and energetic, conferring with his neighbors and friends for the public advantage and doing his full share in the work of promoting it. His political faith is grounded in the principles and governmental theories of the Demo- cratic party, and his political activity is expended in its behalf. Fra- ternally he is a Knight of Pythias and a Modern Woodmen of America. On March 3, 1909, he was married to Miss Chlora Wright, a daughter of George Wright, of this county. She is a prominent member of the Christian church.
DAVID W. JONES.
Having come with his parents to Macon county when he was but five years old and lived within its borders ever since, David W. Jones, of Lingo township, is practically a product of its resources and insti- tutions, and except what is due to inherited race and family charac- teristics, all that is involved in his personality and record is American and Missourian. He was born in South Wales on March 3, 1851, and in 1856 accompanied his father and the rest of the household from the land of his birth, when the parents were looking up a prospect for the family in the New World. Mr. Jones is therefore fifty-eight years old and has lived in this county more than half a century. He obtained his
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education in the public schools of Callao township, learned his efficiency in the duties that have occupied him nearly all of his life so far in tilling the fertile and responsive soil of this region, and formed his friendships and associations almost wholly with its people. Knowledge of his native land is with him merely matters of dim and distant memory, tradition, family narrative and general reading, and in sympathy. devotion and interest he is altogether American.
Mr. Jones is a son of William and Jane (Rees) Jones, who were born, reared, educated and married in Wales. When they arrived in this country they located for a short time on Yellow creck, in Ohio, then came on to Missouri and took up their residence in Macon county. Here the father passed several years working in the coal mines, an occupa- tion he had followed in his own country, but devoted the later years of his life to farming. His arrival in this part of the state was an event of far greater importance to it than he supposed when he came. For it was to him and Hopkin Evans that the region was indebted for the discovery of coal here, and all the development and results of the mining industry in this section that have come since are due largely to their intelligence and sagacity, although like many other discoverers and inventors, they never reaped their proper share of the harvest they made possible. The discovery would doubtless have been made later, but the early years of the mining work in the region, and all that they embodied, were the immediate results of the special knowledge and capacity possessed by these men.
At the time of his death the father owned and farmed ninety-four acres of land, and had it all in a good state of productiveness and well improved with good buildings and other structures. He was married in 1848 to Miss Jane Rees, in association with whom he had grown from childhood to manhood. They became the parents of nine children, seven of whom are living: David W., of Lingo township; Elizabeth, the widow of the late Daniel T. Evans, of this county ; Thomas R., who lives in Bevier; Jennie, the wife of F. D. Jones, also of Bevier; Susan, the wife of David Davis, of Oklahoma; William T., who resides at Callao; and Evan, whose home is at Bevier. In political allegiance the father was a Republican and in religious affiliation a member of the Presby- terian church.
After leaving school David W. Jones worked in the mines near Bevier and on his father's farm, assisting the family until 1873. He then started on a laborious but successful career for himself, working in the mines in winter and farming in summer for a period of twelve years. In 1885 he gave up mining and since then has devoted his whole
HISTORY OF MACON COUNTY
attention to farming and raising stock. He has flourished in all his undertakings and now owns 160 acres of productive, well cultivated and highly improved land. His farming operations are extensive and he knows how to make them profitable. His practical knowledge of the science of agriculture, gained in years of studions experience and from careful reading and reflection, together with his skill in applying it, has won him a wide and well established reputation as one of the leading farmers of the township, and his close and intelligent attention to every feature of his stock industry has brought him success and good esteem in that line of endeavor also.
In polities Mr. Jones is a Republican of firm convictions and great activity. He is always energetic in the service of his party and his services to it are highly appreciated. In local affairs he is zealous for the continued welfare of the community and sedulous and effective in his efforts to promote it. His wife is a devoted and earnest member of the Methodist church, taking great interest in its work and held in high esteem by its other adherents. Her maiden name was Tirza Morgan and she is a daughter of Thomas J. and Tabitha (Evans) Mor- gan, natives of Wales but long respected residents of this county. She was married to Mr. Jones on April 10, 1873, and they have had two children, both living, their sons, William T. and Ralph, both residents of Macon county.
JOHN THOMPSON.
Descended from old English families, whose history runs back into the deep shadows of a distant past in the mother country, and himself born and reared in one of the most progressive and influential states of what was once the West, John Thompson brought to Missouri when he was twelve years old sterling traits of character inherited from his forefathers, which were broadened in scope and intensified in action by the stirring impulses and great wealth of opportunity, amid which he grew from childhood to man's estate in new sections of this country, different in many particulars but alike in their striding progress toward high development and improvement.
Mr. Thompson is a native of Meigs county, Ohio, where he was born on December 29, 1856. His parents, James and Jane (Graham) Thompson, were natives of England. the father born in 1821 and the mother two or three years before. Their ancestral homes were near historie Newcastle-on-Tyne, which always enlists the interest and admiration of the traveler and retains the love of its people, but which did not offer to any but the privileged classes in and around it the
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opportunities for advancement and the promise of material, political and social consequence held out to all classes by the open hand of the New World. Moved by this fact, and eager to secure for his offspring the best chance that was attainable, Mr. Thompson brought his family to the United States in 1856 and located near Middleport, in Meigs county, Ohio, where he continued his operations as a miner, which he had begun and followed for a number of years in his native land. The family remained in Ohio twelve years, then sought even better oppor- tunities in life by coming to this state in 1868 and locating in Macon county. Here the father bought land which he farmed energetically and profitably until ten years ago, when he retired from active business on account of advancing years. He now makes his home with his son John.
In 1846 the father was married to Miss Jane Graham, and they became the parents of four children, one of whom has died. Those living are : Jane, the wife of W. B. Willis, of Emporia, Kansas ; Thomas, who resides in this county; and John, the immediate subject of this brief review. The father has belonged to the Republican party from its birth, and during the active years of his life, both in this state and Ohio, he was very energetic in its service. He always took an earnest interest in the welfare of the community around him and did what he could to promote that and the lasting good of its people. He is now generally esteemed as one of the patriarchs of Macon county, and his record of profitable service to its people is cherished for the advantages to them it has brought and the elevated and stimulating citizenship it exemplifies.
John Thompson, whose name is a household word in Lingo town- ship, this county, where he has passed more than forty years of his industrious and productive life, was prepared for the strenuous duties that awaited his coming to this part of the country by his experiences in Ohio as a boy destined to depend on his own exertions for advance- ment in the world. He became a resident of Macon county when he was twelve years of age, and completed in the district schools in the neigh- borhood of his present home the education he had begun in those of Meigs county, Ohio. He remained at home and assisted the family until 1879, when he began the struggle for the improvement of his for- tunes on his own account. In that year he bought forty acres of land, and ever since then he has been actively and successfully occupied in farming and raising superior live stock. He now owns and cultivates 270 aeres, which he has acquired through his enterprise, thrift and good management, and makes a specialty of shorthorn cattle, running
HISTORY OF MACON COUNTY
seventy-five to one hundred head on an average every year. His fore- sight and enterprise in this respect have done considerable to raise the standard of cattle in the township and many other localities, and his name is well known as one of the most progressive and successful stock breeders in this part of the state. In fact, Mr. Thompson is one of the most prominent and influential men in the township, which has the honor of his citizenship and the benefit of his progressiveness and breadth of view.
For, while he gives his own interests close, careful and intelligent attention, he is not oblivious of the claims of the community on him, and he responds to them liberally and with all the ardor and energy of his nature. He is foremost in every good work undertaken for the benefit of the township and its people, and his excellent judgment is much relied on for wise counsel as his energy and activity are for the accom- plishment of practical results. He has served as school director with great acceptability and is now president of District No. 4 in the town- ship. His political affiliation is with the Republican party, for which he is a zealous worker, and in which his services are highly appreciated. On October 24, 1879, he was united in marriage with Miss Harriet Fletcher, whose father, James Fletcher, was born in England but now lives in this county. All of the eight children born of this union are living. They are: Elizabeth, who is living at home; James, whose resi- dence is at Fargo, Oklahoma; Margaret, the wife of W. M. Fessler, who is living in that town also; Roy, of Texhoma, Oklahoma; and Daisy, William, Nellie and Bertie, all of whom are still under the family roof. The whole family is held in high esteem and all its members deserve the regard bestowed upon them.
OWEN W. JONES.
For forty-three years, or thereabout, this venerable citizen of New Cambria has been a resident of Macon county, and the work of his long record of usefulness among its people stands forth in enduring phrase and conspicuous memorials to his credit. He located in this region when it was still largely an unbroken waste, or so sparsely settled that the few homesteads in its midst only emphasized and intensified the far surrounding loneliness and primeval conditions of wildness. Ile stuck his stake in this wilderness, however, and through his labors, and those of others like him. it has been transformed to its present state of high development and continuons and substantial progress. Mr. Jones may literally be called the father of the progressive town in which he now
HISTORY OF MACON COUNTY
has his home. He was one of its founders, laying out its streets, plot- ting its ground into building lots, and building within its present limits the first hotel and the first general store erected in this portion of the county. From the germ he planted it has grown to material conse- quence, social distinction, municipal importance and commercial influ- ence. And in the substantial character of its people and its institutions it shows that its foundations were well and broadly laid and its future was wisely provided for.
Mr. Jones is of Welsh ancestry, his parents, Owen W. and Mar- garet (Evans) Jones, having been born, reared, educated and married in North Wales, where their forefathers lived and labored for many generations. The father was born in 1790 and bronght his family to this country about 1830. He located in the village of Floyd, Oneida county, New York, where he was engaged extensively and prosperously in farming and raising stock until his death in 1866. He and his wife were the parents of ten children, but three of whom are living, Owen W. and his brothers, John O. and Watkins C., all of them residents of New Cambria.
Owen W. Jones was born at Floyd, Oneida county, New York, on January 15, 1833. He obtained his education in the public schools of that village and at Whitestown Seminary, being graduated from the lat- ter with a certificate of qualification as a teacher in the public schools. He followed the occupation of teacher for a number of years in his native county, then came with his brother, W. C. Jones, to Iowa, where they passed several summers together. In 1864 Owen, still possessed of the western fever, and deeming the frontier the most desirable local- ity for the exercise of his powers and the realization of his hopes, moved into Missouri and took up his residence in this county, where he has lived ever since.
Mr. Jones was a progressive man and thoroughly imbued with the possibilities of the region in which he cast his lot. To his imagination it opened in vistas of growth and development, and he saw its future rich in the fruits and fragrant with the blossoms of civilized life, the home of an industrious, enterprising and prosperous people making the most of their material resources and cultivating in time all the higher powers of mental and moral greatness. And he at once, or soon after his arrival, began to work to make his vision a reality. As has been noted above, he laid out a town and prepared it for settlement. The result has justified his most ardent hopes, for although his munici- pal offspring is now but fairly started in its career of advancement, it is already one of the rising and promising towns of this part of the
HISTORY OF MACON COUNTY
state. As a nucleus for the thriving settlement he felt must follow his efforts, he built a hotel and put up a general store building, and in the latter opened a merchandising enterprise which he conducted success- fully, as he also did the hotel, until 1891. In that year he sold all his interests in these undertakings and retired from active business, but he had made an enduring record in both and in other lines of endeavor which can never be effaced from the history of the locality. He served twelve years as railroad land agent and twenty-two as postmaster at the town he founded; and as he was eminently successful in the manage- ment of his private affairs during his activity, so was he also in con- ducting the interests of the railroad company to profitable results and the affairs of the postoffice with great eredit to himself and satisfaction to the people who patronized it, and to the government.
In political relations Mr. Jones has been a Republican from the birth of the party, and in his younger years he was a very earnest and effective worker for the success of his organization. For many years he has been an earnest working member of the Presbyterian church, the edifice in which the congregation to which he belongs having been built by him. He was married on October 8, 1866, to Miss Libby J. Cole, who was born and reared in the same community as himself. Six of the eight children they had are living: Della E., the wife of Arthur Boone, of La Belle, Missouri; Clara C., the wife of William Grant, of the same town; George W., whose home is in St. Joseph, this state; Ada M., the wife of John T. Evans, of Pierre, South Dakota; Vernon L., who is living at home; and J. Burton, who also dwells in New Cambria. The name of the family stands high in Macon county, and every member of it is esteemed in the community of his or her home. For all are most worthy and estimable citizens.
JOHN W. LUNDAY.
Tried by many tests of his fidelity to duty, including work on the farm and at the forge, the perils of the battlefield in terrible civil war- fare, the exactions of business, the blandishments of social life and the temptations of official station, John W. Lunday, an eminent citizen of New Cambria, in this county, has been proven sterling in all and alto- gether worthy of the high esteem in which he is universally held. He was born in this county, in the town of Winchester, on October 19, 1838, and has passed all of his subsequent years within its borders. There is. therefore, nothing taken for granted or speculative in his record, for it has been an open book among this people, and is well known to them all.
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HISTORY OF MAACON COUNTY
Mr. Lunday is a son of Gabriel and Ellen (Windle) Lunday, natives of Virginia and pioneers of Macon county. His grandfather, James Lunday, was also a Virginian and came to this county very early in its history. The father was born in Montgomery county, in the Old Domin- ion, in 1805, and became a resident of Macon county, Missouri, in 1836, locating in Winchester, Liberty township, where he took up a home- stead from the government. He was actively and profitably engaged in farming this land and raising live stock on an extensive scale nntil 1870, when he retired from active pursuits and sold his property, having by that time acquired the ownership of 300 acres of land in Russell town- ship, whose high state of development and prodnetiveness and valuable improvements represented in large measure the labors of his years of strenuons endeavor in this state. He did not, however, live long to enjoy the rest he promised himself, but died in 1872 in Chariton county, just outside of Macon, in a new home he had established there. His marriage occurred in 1832 and resulted in the birth of nine children in his family, six of whom are living: John W., Temple F. and James W., residents of this county ; Rachel Ann, wife of J. W. Braley, of Hor- ton, Kansas; George T., who lives in New Cambria ; and Philip R., who is a citizen of Chariton county. In his early manhood the father was a Whig and remained loyal and true to his party until it passed out of action into history, giving place to the Republican party. From then to the end of his life he was a member of that organization and stood by it with the same loyalty and devotion he had bestowed on his first choice in political relations. He belonged to the Methodist Episcopal church and was an active worker in its ranks.
John W. Lunday was literally a child of the frontier and grew to manhood under the weight of its exacting labors and amid the experi- ences of its rugged. hazardons and spectacular life. He obtained the little education available to him in the primitive country schools of his boyhood in this locality, where, at that time, nature was the source of inspiration and experience the principal schoolmaster. He worked hard on the parental aeres, as all boys of the period sitnated as he was were obliged to do, remaining at home and assisting the family in the farm work and the necessary toil of a blacksmith shop on the home -. stead, until the beginning of the Civil war. Having been brought up with reverence for the Union. and looking upon its dismemberment as the worst of evils, at the beginning of hostilities he promptly joined a company organized as a part of the state militia, of which he remained a member until 1864. He then onlisted in the regular federal service as a member of Company K, Forty-second Missouri infantry, under com-
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mand of Colonel Forbes. The regiment was stationed on the border most of the time during the rest of the war and only saw actual fighting in skirmishes. But it was a valuable aid in subduing the border war- fare and proteeting the lives and property of the people from bands of predatory marauders.
Mr. Lunday was mustered out of the service at Nashville, Tennes- see, in 1865, and returned then to his Maeon county home. He soon afterward started a blacksmithing enterprise at New Cambria, devoted to general smithing and repairing and the sale of farming implements. He was in charge of this industrial and mereantile undertaking until 1898, when he determined to retire from business and sold his estab- lishment. He is still living in New Cambria and is regarded as an important factor in the commercial, official and social life of the town. He has served several terms as a member of the town board and is a eltarter member and director of the New Cambria State Bank. He is also prominent and energetie in all movements undertaken for the improvement of the town and the welfare of its people, being as enter- prising, far-seeing and progressive in reference to such matters as he was in his successful private business eareer.
On March 4, 1869, Mr. Lunday was united in marriage with Miss Mary A. Wilson, a native of Ohio and daughter of Moses and Jane (Mc- Coy) Wilson, the former born in New Jersey and the latter in Ohio. Three children were born in the Lunday household, but only one is liv- ing, a son named Charles G., whose residence is at the town of Hope in Arkansas. The father is a Republican in politics and zealous in the service of his party. He belongs fraternally to the Grand Army of the Republie, and in religious inelination he favors the Methodist Episcopal ehureli, of which his wife is a leading and hard-working member. New Cambria has no citizens who are more highly respected than Mr. and Mrs. Lunday, and none more worthy of universal esteem and admiration.
MARCUS B. LEIST.
Marens B. Leist, of Callao township, whose transactions as a breeder and handler of superior strains of horses are so extensive that they have attracted the attention of dealers in the noblest animal we have throughout the country, and even made him a name and repu- tation in foreign lands, has a history in himself and his ancestors that is full of interest. He is descended from families of the hardy woods- men of Pennsylvania who helped to open up that great domain to civilization and lay the foundations of its prosperity, and who were
MARCUS B. LEIST
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as valiant in defending it as they were courageous and resolnte in brav- ing the perils of its wild and savage condition as an unbroken and track- less expanse of wooded mountain, dense forest and virgin plain. Some of them fought with Washington at Fort Du Quesne and aided in clearing the way for the advance of his army toward that hapless and tragical conflict. In the following days of the American Revolution many of them stood shoulder to shoulder with the great commander and helped greatly to win his final triumph. Later, their descendants invaded the farther wilderness and began the conquest of what is now the state of Ohio and its transformation into a civilized and productive region, fragrant with all the flowers and rich in all the fruits of eulti- vated life.
Among the early settlers in Ohio were some of the forebears of Marens B. Leist, of this county, who is the immediate subject of this review, and it was in Piekaway county, in that state, that he was born, his life beginning on December 23, 1846. He is a son of Cornelius B. and Isabel (Wann) Leist, both born and reared in Ohio, as their par- ents were. They had eight children, four of whom are living: Marcus B .; Emma, the wife of Wilson Stout, of .Ohio; John P., who lives in Indiana, and Laura, the wife of Charles Cook. The mother died in 1897 and the father in 1901.
Their son, Marcus B., has shown the military spirit of his ancestors and been a fighter, too, but only in the army of peaceful conquest and the contests among men for the advancement of their several fortunes and the gratification of their various ambitions. His father was a farmer, and after obtaining a limited edneation in the district schools of his native county, the son became one also. He began farming for himself soon after leaving school and has continued his operations in this line ever sinee. In connection with them he has made a specialty of raising fine cattle and horses, and, as has been intimated, has con- dueted the business and is still conducting it on a scale of great mag- nitude, his conquests in this line being as great in their way as were the achievements of his forefathers in theirs.
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