USA > Missouri > Greene County > Past and present of Greene County, Missouri, early and recent history and genealogical records of many of the representative citizens, Volume II > Part 87
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Politically, Mr. Camp is a Republican. He belongs to the Masonic Order and to the Anti-Horse Thief Association. He is a member of the Cumberland Presbyterian church.
JOHN KINSER.
One of Clay township's enterprising farmers is John Kinser. He has made a success in his calling very largely because he has been willing to give up many of the old and antiquated ideas of farming and adopted such new ones as were practicable here. He is one of those farmers who never loses sight of the fact that the soil must be well supplied with organic mat- ter; that humus is absolutely necessary to the soil to make plant food avail- able; that if one practices crop rotation, one must not fail to include one or more of the legumes. These and many other similar ideas of successful farming have long been known to him and it is a pleasure to look over his well tilled place.
Mr. Kinser was born in Greene county, Missouri, about two miles from his present residence, October 11, 1852, and here he has been content to spend his life. He is a son of Jefferson and Sarah (Lee) Kinser. The father was born in Virginia and grew to manhood and received his educa- tion in that state, being a young man when he immigrated overland to Mis- souri with his parents, making the trip in wagons drawn by oxen. The family settled in Greene county, the father entering a large amount of land from the government which he cleared and improved, and carried on gen- eral farming and stock raising successfully here in the pioneer days. Dur- ing the Civil war he joined the Federal army. under Col. John S. Phelps, and most of his service was confined to Greene county. He was a partici- pant in the battle of Springfield, when General Brown's forces were at- tacked by General Marmaduke. January 8. 1863. He was honorably dis-
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charged at Rolla, Missouri, at the close of the war. After the war he re- turned home and resumed farming, which he followed until his death, which occurred at the age of seventy-seven years.
Politically, he was a Republi- can. He belonged to the Christian church. He was a well known and in- fluential man in his locality, and had a great many friends wherever he was known. The mother of the subject of this sketch was born in Virginia, and she received a common school education.
She was young in years when she came to Missouri with her parents, the family locating on a farm in Greene county. She was a great help to her husband on the farm, was industrious, spun and wove most of her cloth in the early days, and raised cotton for this purpose. She was a member of the Christian church. Her death occurred prior to that of her husband.
To Jefferson Kinser and wife eight children were born, namely : Joseph, deceased; Ephraim lives in Greene county on an adjoining farm to our subject; John, of this review; Mrs. Sarah Davis, deceased; Mrs. Mary Fulton, deceased; Mrs. Anna Dykes lives in Webster county; Nancy, de- ceased; William is engaged in the livery business in Oklahoma.
John Kinser was reared to manhood on the home farm where he re- ceived his education in the district schools of his community. He worked for his father at home until he was twenty-five years of age, when he was married to Sarah Cloud and began farming for himself. His father gave him a good farm of one hundred and twenty acres, to which our subject has added eighty acres. He cleared part of his land, making many improve- ments of a substantial and permanent nature, built a comfortable home, several convenient barns and his excellent place of two hundred acres is entitled to rank among the best in this part of the county in every respect. About thirty acres is in timber. He carries on general farming and stock raising. He has lately moved to Menter, where he now resides, going to and from his farm as necessity requires.
Mrs. Kinser was reared to womanhood in Greene county, and here she received her education in the common schools. She proved to be a most faithful helpmeet and was a woman who was a favorite with her many friends, and her untimely death at the early age of thirty-eight years was deeply deplored. She was a daughter of Calvin and Elizabeth Cloud. Her father was one of the earliest settlers in Greene county and he owned an excellent farm here and spent the rest of his life on the home place, and there his wife died also.
To Mr. and Mrs. Kinser four children were born, namely: Mrs. Laura Estes lives in Greene county ; Mrs. Lula Patterson is living at home with her father; Mrs. Lennie White lives in Greene county; James E. is living on the home farm.
Politically, Mr. Kinser is a Republican, and is loyal in his support of the party, although is no office seeker or public man.
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JOHN C. CHAFFIN.
Conditions are so widely varied in the vast area in the Middle West that is devoted to agricultural pursuits on a more or less extensive scale ; the results desirable by both individuals and communities are so widely divergent, and the fact that most profitable results to one would mean positive loss to another, make any general rules, laid down to cover the entire country, unsuited to many farmers; so, it is necessary for each to use his brains as well as his brawn and decide for himself the problems that are most vital to him personally. Such methods have been adhered to by John C. Chaffin, a farmer of Washington township, Greene county, and he has, therefore, been successful in his chosen vocation.
Mr. Chaffin was born in this county on September 25, 1859, and he has been contented to spend his life in his native community. He is a son of Joseph and Eliza (Day) Chaffin. The father was born in Hawkins county, Tennessee, September 21, 1824, was a boy when he was brought to Missouri by his parents, was reared on a farm and educated in the early- day schools of Greene county, where the family settled upon arriving here, after a journey of hardships in wagons from the state of Tennessee. Joseph Chaffin worked for his father on the home farm until he was twenty-one years of age, then entered one hundred and twenty acres of land from the government, to which he later added two hundred acres, cleared most of his land and developed a good farm, which he kept in first-class condition in every way. He was a very industrious man and made a great success as a general farmer and stock raiser. In 1869 he went to Montana for his health and remained there four months, and died at Corvallis, that state, January 27, 1870. He was a man noted for his liberality and kind deeds, helping the poor and needy whenever occasion demanded, and he was in- influential and highly esteemed in his community. He was a member of the Christian church, and, politically, was a Republican. In the early days he hauled goods from Rolla to Springfield with an ox team. He worked for Governor Phelps for some time as overseer on the governor's farm. His wife, Eliza Day, was born in Greene county, Missouri, May 4. 1837. was reared on a farm and educated in the early-day schools. She was a fine type of the industrious, self-sacrificing women of her day (different from the majority of women of this generation). She was willing to as- sist her husband get a start in life, raised cotton, from which she spun and wove cloth for her family and did much hard work that the average woman of today would not do. But there were few in her day who did not do the same things. She was a worthy member of the Christian church and set a good example among her neighbors and acquaintances. Her death oc-
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curred in Christian county, Missouri, March 1, 1913, when nearly seventy- six years of age.
To Joseph Chaffin and wife six children were born, namely: James E., who lives in Greene county; Mrs. Nancy S. Samuels lives in Greene county ; John C., of this review; Mrs. Emma J. Everly lives in Montana; Mrs. Mary Frances Summers lives in Montana; Mrs. Orlena A. Stow lives in Christian county.
John C. Chaffin grew to manhood on the farm where he is now living. He received a common school education in this vicinity. He was eleven years old when his father died, and our subject and his elder brothers operated the farm after that until the mother married again. When twen- ty-three years old our subject bought forty acres of the homestead, to which he later added one hundred and forty acres. He went in debt for the place, but paid for it in due time by hard work, good management and economy, often depriving himself of many things in order to do so. He sold eighty acres of his land some time ago, and now operates one hundred acres. He cleared about thirty-five acres of his land. He has a well-improved and pro- ductive farm and has made a success as a general farmer and stock raiser. Twelve acres of his land is timbered. This farm was known to the old settlers at the "Bill Jessup" farm.
Mr. Chaffin was married, August 13, 1879, to Winnie Stephens, who was born in Wright county, Missouri, February 19, 1861. She is a daugh- ter of John G. and Cynthia (Beattie) Stephens. The father was born in middle Tennessee, and there grew up on a farm and received a meager education in the early-day schools. He immigrated to Missouri prior to the breaking out of the Civil war, and settled in Wright county on a rented farm. During the war he was a member of the Sixth Missouri Cavalry and saw service in the Union army, was honorably discharged at the close of the war, but came home sick, and died a few days later. He was a mern- ber of the same company in which "Uncle Jeff Watts," of Rogersville, served. His wife, Cynthia Beattie, was born in middle Tennessee, July 4, 1837, was reared on a farm and received limited educational advantages in her native community. When young she came to Missouri with her father, the trip being made in ox wagons. She was a member of the Methodist church. Her death occurred on December 8, 1906.
Mrs. Chaffin was reared on a farm in Greene county and was edu- cated in the common schools, walking three miles to attend school in an old log house. She is a member of the Methodist church.
Four children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Chaffin, namely: Ar- manda D., born September 1, 1880, died October 9th of the same year ; John H., born July 11, 1889, died on March 5, 1890; Eunice J., born on
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May 12, 1893, is living at home; Stewart C., born June 30, 1895, lives at home.
Politically, Mr. Chaffin is a Republican, and while he has never sought political honors, is always ready to do his part in furthering any good move- ment for the general welfare of the community in which he lives and in which he is well and favorably known.
LEE CASPER KENNEDY.
This is often called the age of young men, and it is no doubt true that more men of tender years are filling responsible positions than ever in the history of the world. One has only to look about a little in any commercial center to find that this is true. In these rushing, "iron clanging days" young and vigorous blood is required, although, of course, were it not for the sagacious counsel of the gray-haired element in the business arena, there would be many more financial catastrophes than there are, great though the number already is, owing to a degree of feverish recklessness that has crept into the twentieth century way of doing things.
Among the young men of Springfield who hold positions of trust is Lee Casper Kennedy, a descendant of an Irish ancestry. He was born in Stock- bridge, Michigan, February II, 1885, and is a son of William S. and Eliza- beth (Doyle) Kennedy. The father was born at St. Thomas, Ontario, Can- ada, in 1858, of Irish extraction, and there he grew to manhood and was educated, and in his earlier years he followed lumbering and race horse raising, being successful in both lines, and at present he is making his home in Detroit, Michigan, where he is engaged in the real estate business. Politi- cally he is a Democrat, and in religion a Catholic. He and Elizabeth Doyle were married in Dexter, Michigan, in 1878. She was born in Pinckney, that state, about 1861 and there reared and educated. The Doyle family were also originally of Ireland.
Lee C. Kennedy spent his boyhood days at Stockbridge, Michigan, and there received a good education in the common and high schools, being graduated from the latter in 1903. He began life for himself as a teacher which he followed two years in Ingham county, Michigan, and although he gave promise of becoming a highly successful educator, he did not see an encouraging future to this line of endeavor and so turned his attention to the world of industry. After working a year as foreman of a basket fac- tory, he accepted a position as bookkeeper and cashier of a poultry house where he worked one year, then, in 1908, came to Springfield, Missouri, and clerked in the Frisco offices for three years, after which he became book-
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keeper and cashier with the Quinn-Barry Tea & Coffee Company, where he remained two and one-half years. In all these positions he gave eminent satisfaction, being faithful, alert and painstaking in all his work and at the same time he was broadening his general knowledge of business forms and customs, and in the year 1912 he went with the Tegarden Packing Company, now known as the Welsh Packing Company, as treasurer, which responsible post he still occupies in his usual able manner.
Politically, Mr. Kennedy votes independently, however he supports the Democratic ticket in national elections. He was reared in the faith of the Catholic church and from this he has not departed. Fraternally, he belongs to the Knights of Columbus, and to the Loyal Order of Moose.
Mr. Kennedy has remained unmarried.
GENERAL COLLEY B. HOLLAND.
No name in the annals of Springfield and of Greene county, occupies a more enviable position than that of Colley. B. Holland; and no history of either city or county would be complete without a sketch of his life and work.
Mr. Holland, like a large majority of the pioneers of this region, was a native of Tennessee, being born in Robertson county in that state on the 24th of August, 1816. While yet a mere lad he was left fatherless, and, boy as he was, being the eldest of four children, found himself with the responsibility of the support of his widowed mother, and the younger chil- dren. Evidently the industry and business acumen that were to prove his strong characteristics all through life, were even at that early age strongly developed. For we find that not only was the family kept in comfort, but that before he left home to seek his own fortune, he had bought for his mother a home for her old age, and when he started in life for himself she was left well provided for.
The educational advantages in Tennessee in those early times were of the scantiest, and the young man owed but little to their aid. However, he was gifted with an active and retentive mind, and few indeed of those who have had a regular collegiate training could compete in their store of practi- cal information with this self-taught, and self-made man.
Early in life he had determined to learn some good trade, and having chosen that of tailoring he applied himself to it with earnestness until he had mastered it in all its details. With his occupation as his only capital, he felt himself justified in establishing a home for himself, and he was married to his boyhood's sweetheart, Miss Emeline H. Bigbee, daughter of
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a neighbor in his Tennessee home, and with whom he had been acquainted from their mutual childhood. At the age of twenty-five, in the year 1841, with his mother provided for, and seeking a wider field for his own efforts, Mr. Holland emigrated from Tennessee to southwest Missouri.
With his young wife, and his brother, John L. Holland, he reached Springfield, and at once, with his brother as a partner, opened a tailor shop. It is interesting to look back for a moment to the little frontier town to which the young man had come, and in the future of which he was to have so important a part. It was then but little over ten years since the Indians had been sent out of the region, and it was less than three years since the town had been incorporated. The record says that when thus made into an incorporation Springfield had "About two hundred and fifty people." The place was then, as it has always been, the commercial center of a vast region, but in 1841 that region was but thinly populated, and it is probable that the entire trade of the little town did not exceed fifty thousand dollars per annum. In the census of 1840 Greene county is credited with a population of five thousand three hundred and seventy-two, and this small number, it must be remembered, was scattered over an area out of which more than a score of counties were afterward carved.
There is little to tell of Mr. Holland's life for the next few years. Cer- tain it is that he was busy and successful, for the records in the office of the recorder of deeds for Greene county, show that from time to time he was putting his earnings into Springfield realty, a habit which was laying strong, wide and deep the foundations of the success the future was to bring him. General Holland was indeed gifted with that faculty, possessed by few men, and not to be acquired, but is born in its possessor, of knowing at a glance the right piece of real estate in which to invest. It would be wholly safe to wager that Colley B. Holland never bought a piece of realty on which he lost money.
With all his other interests we find that he found time for doing his part in public matters. In 1845 the Springfield branch of the Missouri State Bank was established, and Mr. Holland was one of the directors. Here he soon showed those qualifications of business integrity and sagacity that were to lead him in later years, to such a high place in the banking business. In 1852 he was appointed postmaster at Springfield, but resigned at the end of a year. Having felt the deprivation of a school training him- self, he was always glad to lend a hand to the promotion of educational ad- vantages for others. Thus we find that he was one of the incorporators, in 1859. of the Springfield Male Academy, and was a liberal contributor toward its establishment, and a member of the building committee. This
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school at once took a front rank in the Southwest, but was destined to but a short life, for it died never to be resurrected, when the Civil war broke out.
In the spring of 1861 the storm of war between the states struck the land, and Springfield, holding a position that was strategic in war as it was in commerce, became at once a center of strife. During the four bloody years that were to follow Colley B. Holland was to show a new and sur- prising side of his strong character. Looking over his previous life one would hardly consider it as the training school for a soldier. Those who had known the man all his life would hardly have selected him as the suc- cessful leader in desperate battle; but this man proved himself both.
Quiet, unobstrusive, attending strictly to his own affairs, there was nevertheless a strain of iron in his blood; a stalwart determination to stand for those things which he believed to be right, a calm personal courage that never failed him, even when men were falling on every side, and when the battle seemed lost to all but himself. He had as a young man, served as a non-commissioned officer in the Seminole war in the swamps of Florida, in 1836-7, and the experience then gained proved invaluable to him in the great conflict now pending. From the first whisper of secession Mr. Hol- land had openly declared himself an uncompromising Union man; and when Sumter was fired upon, and Lincoln issued his call for seventy-five thou- sand men, he was one of the first to volunteer.
In gathering data for this sketch the writer naturally turned to a for- mer history of Greene county published in 1883, and which contains much valuable information compiled from county and other records. To his surprise he found that the name of Colley B. Holland is not to be found in the book! Such an omission can only have been intentional on the part of those responsible for the publication, and tends to lessen the confidence of future writers, in the correctness of the whole work.
In this connection it is recalled that the late Dr. E. T. Robberson, him- self a resident of Springfield before, during, and after the war, once said to me: "General Holland has never received half the credit due him for his war record. Especially for the part he played in the defense of Springfield at the time of the Marmaduke raid." Doctor Robberson was the very soul of probity and honor and such words from him carry weight with all who knew him in life.
In this short sketch the only desire of the writer is to "Give honor to whom honor is due," and that the story of the part General Holland acted in those stormy years may receive truthful and permanent record. In that sterling and authoritative work, "The Encyclopedia of Missouri History," printed in 1901, is an outline sketch of General Holland's life, and from it and local sources have been drawn the statements herein made, of his part in the Civil war.
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The work above named states that Mr. Holland was made captain of Company D, in the famous Phelps Regiment, organized in the summer of 1861. Whether General Holland took part in the battle of Wilson's Creek or not, we are unable to state, but he was in the great engagement at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, the heaviest battle west of the Mississippi during the entire war.
General Holland was promoted to the position of lieutenant colonel of the reorganized Phelps Regiment, and in the fall of 1862 he aided in recruit- ing the Seventy-second Regiment, of Missouri State Militia, and was com- missioned colonel of that organization, his commission bearing date of September 9, 1862. In about six weeks from that date he received a com- mission from Governor Gamble, as brigadier general of Missouri Militia, bearing date of October 29. 1862.
After this he made his headquarters at Springfield, and held the respon- sible office until the end of the war. His district included all of southwest Missouri, and all the militia in that region were under his command.
It was while acting in this capacity that General Holland was called upon to take part in the defense of Springfield against the attack of a Con- federate force under Gen. John S. Marmaduke, on the 8th day of January, 1863. The forces defending the town were officially stated to number one thousand five hundred and sixty-six men, while the Confederates were said to number "about two thousand."
It is not the province of this sketch to describe the battle of Springfield, except so far as to give the part taken by General Holland in that fight. In the Missouri history mentioned above, we are told: "He acquitted him- self as a true soldier, and at critical times restored confidence when the fight was well nigh hopeless." Surely no higher tribute need be asked than those words. The same authority continues: "Particularly was this the case when about three o'clock in the afternoon Gen. E. B. Brown (ranking officer, and in chief command) was wounded, and he (Holland) became the commander."
So the battle was fought and won, and Springfield with its vast stores for the Federal army was saved to the Union. And to no one man was the result more attributable than to Colley B. Holland. He was never the man to sound his own praises, and he had no publicity bureau, then or since, to publish abroad his fame, thus it is only simple fairness that at this late day, more than half a century after the event justice be done the quiet, effi- cient man who commanded the Missouri Militia on that fateful day.
At last the war was ended, and to General Holland it ended at once and forever. He was not the man to exult over a defeated and despairing foe. Rather was it now his part to help in building up the waste places, to bind up the wounds left by the conflict, and to give his potent aid to
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rehabilitate the little city that was his home, and which he had so well defended.
He entered actively into the financial and manufacturing interests of this place. He was one of the men who organized the Springfield Cotton Mills, and he served as president of that enterprise for several years. In 1875 he, with his two sons, T. B. and W. C. Holland, established the Hol- land Banking Company, an institution which was to prove the greatest of all his successful ventures. In the panic of 1893 six out of the ten banks of Springfield failed, and meanwhile the deposits of the Holland Banking Company more than doubled. Comment is needless.
And so, known and honored of all men, Colley B. Holland drew near the end of his long and useful life. He had helped to organize the First Cumberland Presbyterian church of Springfield, and had served as its stated clerk for nearly forty years; he had reached a helping hand to struggling educational institutions; he had served his country at the risk of his own life upon the battlefield. He had "acted well his part," and on the fifth day of May, 1901, when nearly eighty-five years of age, "an old man and full of years," he closed his eyes upon earthly scenes, to open them upon a fairer world.
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