History of Vernon County, Missouri : past and present, including an account of the cities, towns and villages of the county Vol. II, Part 47

Author: Johnson, J. B
Publication date: 1911
Publisher: Chicago : C.F. Cooper
Number of Pages: 632


USA > Missouri > Vernon County > History of Vernon County, Missouri : past and present, including an account of the cities, towns and villages of the county Vol. II > Part 47


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On January 17, 1899, Mr. Ward was united in marriage with Miss Cora Pippin, and there has been born to them one child. Ertie, by name, who was born September 22, 1901.


Henry J. Webber, late an honored citizens of Deerfield town- ship, Vernon county, Missouri, was born in Germany March 30, 1841, and came to this country with his parents when he was 10 years of age. The family settled in Pennsylvania, and here our subject learned the carpenters' trade and worked at it till his marriage, in 1864. He also owned and carried on a saw mill in Pennsylvania. In 1872 he moved to Atchison county, Missouri. and the same year removed to Vernon county and purchased and settled on 180 acres of land in section 35, Deerfield township. He


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afterwards sold this farm and bought eighty acres in section 1, where he made his home till his decease, which occurred February 23, 1911.


Mr. Webber acquired his schooling for the most part in Ger- many. He was fond of books and kept himself posted on current literature, and in touch with the trend of modern movement and affairs. But of all books, the Bible was his favorite, and by con- stant and careful reading and study of it he was well versed in its teachings and precepts.


In religious faith he was affiliated with the Methodist Epis- ~ copal Church South, and took an earnest and devout interest in church and Sunday School matters. In politics he adhered to the principles of the Democratic party. On August 24, 1864, Mr. Webber married Miss Elizabeth Schwalp, who was born Sep- tember 15, 1841. Five children were born to them, named, respectively, John E., born June 5, 1865, deceased ; Mary L., born January 30, 1867, who is now deceased; Christina, born October 18, 1868, married to J. S. McAllister, of Oklahoma; Lewis J., born May 20, 1870, lives at home, married Ora Haines, a native of Vernon county ; Ruben M., born January 30, 1867, deceased.


Burton Welch, a prosperous farmer of Vernon county, Mis- souri, was born on the farm he now owns, in section 36, Richland township, on December 14, 1873. He is the fourth child of a family of six children, born to Moses H. and Amilda Susan (Amos) Welch. Their other children are Alice, born August 20, 1868, who is married to Mr. William Wheeler and lives in Colorado; Alfred, who was born March 17, 1870, and lives in Oklahoma ; Linna, who was born April 9, 1871, and is now the wife of Mr. E. I. Pottorf, of Nevada; Charles, who was born April 20, 1875, and is now pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church at Exeter, Mo., and Ida S., who was born March 21, 1879, and now lives in Oregon, the wife of Mr. Robert Fryoer.


Moses H. Welch, our subject's father, was born September 8, 1840, in Warren county, Missouri. William J. Welch, father of Moses H. Welch and grandfather of Burton Welch, was born August 1, 1809, in Kentucky, and died in 1872. His wife, Frances S. Welch, was born in Canada December 1, 1815, died in 1862. William J. Welch located in Warren county, Missouri, in 1855, and later settled on 160 acres of land in section 36, Richland town-


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ship, which they secured as a grant from the United States Gov- ernment. Moses H. Welch lived there with his parents till 1868, when he purchased land at the juncture of Lake Coal and Rich- land township, 316 acres in all, 80 acres being in Richland township, on which he built and established the family home, and where he died February 16, 1880. His wife, our subject's mother, whom he married September 7, 1867, was born May 9, 1845, and passed away April 30, 1879. At the time of his father's death, Burton Welch went to live with his aunt, Mrs. Laura L. Dale, in Box township, Cedar county, Missouri, and grew to manhood there, attending the district schools and working on the farm. In 1894, he left his adopted home and settled on a tract of land of little more than forty-six acres, which he inherited from his father's estate, in Lake township, which he improved, and on which he built a house. Three years later he bought forty acres in Richland township and twenty-six acres in Coal township, being portions of his father's former homestead, and moved his house onto the Richland township tract, north of which he had previously bought a forty-acre tract, so that his present farm comprises 154 acres of the land formerly owned by his father.


Mr. Welch is a practical, up-to-date farmer, progressive in his ideas and methods, and a man highly esteemed in the community. He is a Democrat, politically, but has found no time to give to political affairs, more than to perform his duties as a good citizen. He is a member of Deerfield Lodge, No. 790, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and also belongs to Camp No. 3303, at Deerfield, Modern Woodmen of America. On March 26, 1875, Mr. Welch was united in marriage with Miss Hattie Repass, who was born in Springfield, Mo., in May, 1876, to David and Sarah (Roberts) Repass, natives of West Virginia and Missouri, respectively.


Mrs. Repass died in 1886, when thirty years of age, and Mr. Repass now-1911-resides in Colorado.


Mr. and Mrs. Welch have a family of four children, named respectively, Richard L., born February 5, 1900; Linna Marie, born March 30, 1902; Hubert V., born July 17, 1906, and Mildred May, born October 5, 1909.


Levi Welch, deceased. The parents of the subject of this sketch, Thomas and Nancy (Pryor) Welch, were both natives of Tennessee, though their ancestry can be traced back to Irish and


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English families who became located in this country in an early day. His father, Thomas Welch, was an old Revolutionary soldier and came to this continent during that struggle. He and all the family were murdered by the Indians, the son only escap- ing by secreting himself in a hollow log while the others were being horribly butchered; afterwards he joined Washington's army. He lived to be 110 years of age. Thomas Welch (Levi's father) died in 1849, and his widow in 1876. To them were born a family of seven children, four boys and three girls. Levi, whose name appears above first saw the light in White county, Ten- nessee, December 28, 1832. A son of a farmer, he early learned the details of an agricultural life and to know what hard work meant; consequently his educational advantages were somewhat limited, though by no means neglected, as later years proved. In 1854 he went across the plains to California with a large drove of cattle, reaching his destination five months after starting, and remaining there from October until the following August, when he returned. In 1864 he took his family to California, but came from there to Vernon county, Missouri, in 1868, and this county was his home the balance of his life. Here he was numbered among the well-to-do, respected citizens of the county. His valua- ble farm of 326 acres was improved, evidence, as seen in its sur- roundings, of being the place of a progressive, intelligent agri- culturist. In 1856 Mr. Welch was married to Miss Rachel Pryor, who bore him eight children. In January, 1878, Miss Lydia Smith became Mr. W.'s second wife. In politics he was known as a stanch Democrat.


Sidney Abram Weltmer, Nevada, Mo. Founder and president of the "Weltmer Institute of Suggestive Therapeutics."


When a man acquires notoriety and gets in the public eye we naturally become curious, if not interested, in knowing his antecedents-his early history and boy-hood life, that we may, in our own mind, pass judgment on the man. Therefore, the fol- lowing sketch of Prof. Weltmer will no doubt be gratifying and interesting to most readers.


His father, Abraham Weltmer, was born in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, February 22, 1813, of pure Holland ancestry.


He was educated in the University of Pennsylvania and in the Heidelberg University of Germany. He took a post-graduate


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course in Amsterdam College. He was a linguist, speaking, read- ing and writing several languages.


He came of a wealthy and prominent family, and as a young man was wealthy in his right, both by way of patrimony and acquirement. In the beginning of his married life he met with financial reverses, brought about by endorsing papers for friends. From these reverses he never recovered, seeming to have lost the ambition to become rich, and centered his entire force in studious pursuits.


He was married to Catherine Hull at Wooster, O. Catherine Hull was the daughter of George and Catherine (Kirkendall) Hull. Her father was born in Ireland, her mother in Wales. They moved to Virginia in 1810. They moved to Wayne county, Ohio, in 1819, her father being one of the first settlers of that county. She was born on August 19, 1819. She was educated in the common schools of her county, and finished her collegiate education in Denison University, being the first woman to gradu- ate from a collegiate course in the state of Ohio.


Abraham Weltmer removed from Pennsylvania to Wayne county about the year 1849. Shortly after he was married to Catherine Hull. To this union was born Elizabeth, who died in infancy ; Sarah E., February 29, 1855, who married Jacob Arison, and now resides at Snohomish, Wash .; Sidney Abram, the subject of this sketch, born July 7, 1858, and John Edwin, born April 7, 1861, who married Jennie Noble, of Atchison county, Missouri, and now resides in Nevada, where he is associated with the sub- ject of this sketch as a professor and teacher of Suggestive Therapeutics.


The parents removed from Ohio to Missouri, landing in Tip- ton, where they remained one year. In the following April they removed to a farm purchased in Morgan county, six miles south- west of Tipton. Here the parents, with other pioneers, took up the work of rehabilitating the country from the ravages of the war. General Fremont's army was still camped at Tipton when they arrived there.


They remained on that place until 1880, when the parents removed with the younger son, John E., to Fairfax, in Atchison county. The farm on which they settled in Morgan county had been partially cleared before the war. After the settlement of


Sidney a weltmer


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the family there about fifty acres additional were cleared of the timber standing there and the soil cultivated.


Here the subject of this sketch and the other children grew to manhood and womanhood, sharing, outside the home, all things common to the country at that time as to educational, social and religious privileges. The educational advantages in that dis- trict at that time were very meagre and it was fortunate for the family that both the father and mother were college-bred people, else the impetus which they have since manifested might have been lacking.


The family remained intact until 1879, when Sidney married Mary Genoa Stone, and removed to an adjoining farm. The same year the sister married and moved to Atchison county, where she was followed the next year by the parents and the youngest son, John Edwin.


In Atchison county, in 1882, Abraham Weltmer died. In 1892 or 1893 the daughter, Mrs. Arison, removed to Snohomish, Wash., accompanied by Catherine Weltmer, the mother, who died there in January, 1900. The subject of this sketch brought her body from the state of Washington to Atchison county, Missouri, and laid her beside her husband.


As intimated above, the subject of this sketch settled with his parents in Morgan county, Missouri, in April, 1866, being then eight years of age. There were no school houses within reach of them, all having been destroyed during the Civil War. One church was left standing, situated a mile and a quarter east of the parents' home.


In 1867 a subscription school was started by a traveling school teacher, who was passing through the country, and the school was conducted in this church. Sidney Abram Weltmer attended this school, but at the beginning of the fourth week of this term the teacher was wanted on some charge connected with the guerilla warfare of preceding years, and was escorted out of the country by an armed posse.


This terminated the public opportunities for an education for three years. However, from the very beginning of the family's residence in Morgan county, the mother assumed the role of teacher and began the systematic education of her children. This was continued uninterruptedly as long as the family held together, until Sidney was twenty-one years old and all public schooling


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received thereafter was merely auxiliary to the instruction given by the mother.


In his fourteenth year Sidney formed the acquaintance of Dr. J. W. Brent, of Tipton, Mo., who, having observed the studious habits of the boy, offered to lend him books from his medical library. This offer was eagerly accepted, with the result that he became an ardent student of the subject of medicine. This he continued until his twentieth year, at which time he discontinued his study on account of failing health. The story of this period of his life is best told by his oldest son, Ernest Weltmer, in a book entitled "Realization."


When twelve years of age he was superintendent of a Sunday School; with his mother's help, and that of Mrs. Campbell, a little nucleus of a library was secured. That year a union Sun- day School picnic was held and he was chosen as representative of all. He prepared a speech on Robert Raikes, the founder of the Sunday School, in which work he had the assistance of Dr. J. H. McLean, of St. Louis.


On this occasion, Prof. Simpson, the county school commis- sioner, was to give the address of the day, but something pre- vented him from attending and Sidney Weltmer was left to fill the gap made by his absence.


Sidney had prepared his speech very carefully, giving a care- ful history of the Sunday School work, so acceptably filling the place for an hour that they dubbed him "Professor," which appellation has clung to him through all the years of his work, and thus his public career began in his thirteenth year at a Sunday School picnic. That religious interest increased until in his fifteenth year, through communication with an aunt in Ohio, who was wealthy, she, in appreciation of what he had written her, sent him a religious library of several hundred books, which he at first assembled in the Sunday School of which he was superintendent and a regular attendant. Afterwards he divided it up among the four other Sunday Schools which constituted the union. It was through his activity in Sunday School work as a public speaker that he was voted a license to preach in the Baptist Church, of which he was a member.


After the recovery of his health he devoted his time to edu- cational work. On October 8, 1879, he was married to Mary Genoa Stone, daughter of Benjamin and Nancy E. (Adair) Stone.


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To this union were born eight children, three of whom died in infancy, the remaining five being Cyrus, Silas Woodson, Stella Truman, Tracy Carleton and Beulah Ethel, all of whom live in Nevada, the sons being associated in the conducting of the busi- ness of the Weltmer Institute of Suggestive Therapeutics Com- pany with their father, Silas Woodson being the only one married.


During his study of medicine he became acquainted with the editors of the "Tipton Times," and was induced by them to learn the art of printing, which he did, studying half the day in- the printing office, reading medicine the other half and attending to the chores on the farm morning and evening, riding six miles between.


In 1880 he began his work as a teacher in the public schools. Having had no experience in the school room his ideas were naturally original and his methods differed from those then in use, he having gleaned his knowledge of the subject of pedagogy from school journals and current literature relating to the history of education in the actual spirit of the newer things, and he found himself antagonized by the teachers of the county. This, however, did not injure his standing in the district where he taught.


He taught the fall term of the same school for five consecu- tive years, teaching several years in other schools in the spring, in between.


In 1885 he built a private school at Akinsville and named it the Akinsville Normal School. This was for the purpose of obtaining and applying his broader ideas of what was then known as the new education. This school was conducted for five years, when he sold it to other parties and returned to the farm, teach- ing winter terms of school and farming and traveling for school book houses between times.


One of the principal reforms which he introduced in the schools of his county was the establishment of school libraries in most of the districts. Having a distinctly library spirit culti- vated, he found very attractive a proposition submitted to him by a library company in Des Moines, Ia. In November, 1892, he took employment with this library company and went to the city of Sedalia and organized a public library.


This organiation was a corporation whose constitution and by- laws were made to conform to the public library law of 1885,


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HISTORY OF VERNON COUNTY


which provided for the support and maintenance of a public library by taxation.


The capital stock of this library was $5,000, all of which was expended for books furnished by the library company. He was then elected librarian. This library was established in July, 1893.


Mr. Weltmer at once began his duties as librarian and secured the donation of all the books held by various societies and former libraries, to the public library, establishing the institution in the basement of the Court House, where some rooms were furnished by the County Court for that purpose.


He remained as nominal librarian until in 1895, by a vote of the people, it was given public support. He retained the key as librarian until in 1900. when Andrew Carnegie gave the city a. public library building.


During the latter part of 1893 and in 1894, while nominally public librarian, he took a position with the Central Business Col- lege of Sedalia as teacher of mathematics and English and general solicitor for the school. It was during the periods of the organ- ization and establishment of this library that he became interested in the study of the occult sciences by hypnotism, suggestion and kindred subjects, and in February, 1897, came to Nevada and laid the foundations for the establishment of the Institute of Sug- gestive Therapeutics. .


David F. Welton,* one of the prosperous and substantial farm- ers of Coal township, in Vernon county, Missouri, is a native of Vernon, Indiana, and was born June 10, 1864, the son of Archibald S. and Elizabeth Welton. The father, who was a native of Ohio, moved to Vernon county and was a prosperous farmer and stock- man. and at the time of his decease, January 2, 1901, owned three hundred acres of land. He was a Republican in political opinion and in religious faith a Baptist. The mother passed away May 30, 1908. David F. grew up on the family homestead, acquired a common school education, and had such experiences as commonly fall to the lot of the farmer boy.


On October 6, 1893, he was united in marriage with Miss Emma Besonceny, whose family came from Tennessee and who passed away August 29, 1898, without issue. Mr. Welton now owns the family homestead, which is situated in sections twelve and thir- teen, Coal township, and devotes himself to general farming, giv-


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ing particular attention to breeding and feeding hogs for the market. He has his place handsomely improved and well stocked and equipped, and is justly counted among the progressive farm- ers of the community.


Enoch B. Weyand, who has been a resident of Vernon county, Missouri, thirty-four years, is a native of Marion county, Ohio, and was born September 11, 1834, to Daniel and Eliza (Beckley) Weyand. The parents were born in Northumberland county, Pennsylvania; the father on May 11, 1807, and the mother on March 16, 1810. Their respective families moved to Marion county, Ohio, where they soon afterward married and settled on a farm. Four years later, in 1836, they moved with a yoke of black oxen to Cass county, Indiana (making the journey in twenty-one days, on nineteen of which it rained), and settled on a claim of 160 acres, which they purchased from the govern- ment a year or two later when it was put on the market at a $1.25 per acre. The father was a thrifty farmer and owned at the time of his decease 500 acres of land.


Both were worthy members of the Christian Church, and he was many years an elder in that body. They both passed their lives on this Indiana homestead, where the mother died in 1889, and the father on March 16, 1895. They had a family of seven sons, all of whom grew to mature manhood, the first to pass away being the second, who died at the age of 46 years. Our subject and the youngest son, George W. Weyand, of Royal Center, Ind., are now (1911) the only survivors.


Enoch B. attended "subscription schools" in Indina and lived on the home farm till he attained his majority, when he married and settled on forty acres of wild land given him by his father. This he cleared and grubbed and improved with a frame house and other buildings, and brought under a good state of cultivation, adding to it at a later date another forty-acre tract.


In February, 1865, Mr. Weyand enlisted in Company "F," One Hundred and Fifty-first Regiment, Indiana Volunteer Infantry, and served in the Union army till September of that year, when he was honorably discharged, the war being over.


On February 10, 1877, Mr. Weyand, on account of his wife's failing health, with his household effects and two teams, started


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for Missouri, and arrived at the home of his cousin, Judge E. S. Weyand, on March 12 following. Here he remained one year and then leased and moved on to a tract of land on the Osage river, in Metz township. In 1882 he purchased eighty acres in section 30, Metz township, adding to it a forty-acre tract at a later date, and here made his home with his family, engaged in general farming, till February 22, 1902, when he retired from active work and moved to his present home in Metz.


Mr. Weyand has been an elder in the Christian Church more than fifty years, and is active in the Sunday School of the local body. He is widely known as a singer, and in early life taught vocal music, and ever since he was 17 years of age has led the choir in the Sunday School.


On May 12, 1855, Mr. Weyand was united in marriage with Miss Phoebe J. Grant, born August 22, 1840, the daughter of William and Mary (Martin) Grant, natives of Ohio. Mrs. Grant passed away January 25, 1879, leaving a family of eight children as follows: Hattie, who is married to Mr. R. H. Tremain, of Iuka, Kan., and has four children, viz .: Minnie, Jay, Stella and Alice, the last named being married to Mr. Edgar Smith; Eliza, the wife of Mr. J. R. Quinn, of Beaver City, Okla., who has seven children, viz .: Nora, wife of Wallace Quinn; Arthur, Jennie, wife of Harmon Fox; Enoch, Martin, Orvil and Orveta. Lottie, a widow, who was married to Mr. William Brewer, and who died about 1886, leaving one son, Charles P. Hultz, by name; Leonard, who lives in Colorado Springs, and who married Miss Emma Weir, of Kansas, and has one child, viz .: Ella, who is married to Mr. Simpson; Alice, the wife of Mr. John McFeeley, of Kansas City, Mo., who has four children, viz .: Grace, Henry and Harry, twins, and Hyle; Ella, who was married to Mr. John W. Coats, and who died February 26, 1910; Emma, who is married to Mr. Henry Kinney, of Horton, Vernon county, has two children, viz .: Mattie, wife of George Robinson, and Hattie ; and Nettie, who is the wife of Mr. Richard T. Cox, of Richards, Vernon county, and has four children, named, respectively, Essie, Glessie, Rex and Grace Reola Richards.


On March 14, 1886, Mr. Weyand married Mrs. Martha (McKee) Humble, who was born in Belfast, Ireland, May 28, 1840, and came to this country with her parents in 1842. She passed away April 16, 1908, and on February 28, 1911, Mr. Weyand


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married Mrs. Josephine (Smith) Ramsey, his present wife. She was born in Nodaway county, Missouri, October 10, 1862, and is a daughter of Gustavis and Mary A. (Riley) Smith, natives of California and Louisville, Ky., respectively. Both Mr. and Mrs. Weyand are members of the Modern Brotherhood of America, and he belongs to Mount McGregor Post, Grand Army of the Republic.


Enoch S. Weyand* was born in Richland township, Vernon county, Missouri, February 15, 1860, and is the fourth child of a family of six children born to Judge Enoch S. and Caroline (Dickinson) Weyand, their other children being Washington P., now a resident of Richards, Vernon county ; Milicent, who is mar- ried to L. B. White, of Weiner, Arkansas ; Archibald B., of Golden City, Missouri; Tillman H., who died September 14, 1878, and Marion L., who passed away February 8, 1864.


The Weyand family is of German-English lineage. Peter Weyand, our subject's grandfather, was born November 29, 1798, in Pennsylvania, and there learned the hatter's trade and later engaged in mercantile business. He moved to Ohio in 1834 and in 1838 settled in what became Vernon county, Missouri, where he died January 7, 1847. He married July 12, 1821, Rebecca Yocum, who was born November 21, 1801, on a farm included in the present site of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and who passed away April 3, 1860, leaving three children, viz., William Henry, who was born in Pennsylvania, March 29, 1832; Enoch S., our subject's father, who was born October 4, 1824, in Perry county, Pennsylvania, and Jane, who is married to Elijah Rhea, of Ver- non county.




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