Butler County Genealogy Trails Kansas Charles Otis Boston Bio

BUTLER COUNTY'S EIGHTY YEARS BIOS

CHARLES OTIS BOSTON

(transcribed by Sheryl McClure)

A courageous man is Charles Otis Boston, a man who can turn a dubious fact to victory—if an old-time, long-respected superstition can be called "a dubious fact." All of which is to say that he scorns the common credence about the number thirteen. He knows it's all the bunk, for is he not happy, prosperous and healthy and has he not deliberately defied thirteen as an unlucky feature of the domestic landscape? Not only has he defied it, but he has had the nerve to adopt the number thirteen, and has celebrated it in his personal history several times. He was born on May 13th; he was married on July 13th; he started business in El Dorado, May 13th. He bought a cottage for a studio on the 13th of the month.

His life has been a remarkably happy and successful one. One would call it "fortunate," were it not for the fact that character, and not luck, makes or unmakes a life-story. If a man's a success it's his own fault, and it's only fair to render honor where honor is due. The saddest fact in the life scope of Mr. Boston was the death of his father, George Edwin Boston, when Charles Otis was four years old. He remembers his father lifting him down from a high load of fodder, on which the child had been riding in great glee, no doubt, and setting him gently on the ground. The next morning the good father could not rise from his bed, nor did he do so until death relieved him of all suffering more than a year later, at the age of twenty-nine. This is the son's sole personal memory of his father, and a dearly-treasured one.

His mother, so early bereft of her husband's help and counsel, carried on bravely, taking upon herself the entire care of the farm and all the business of her own life and that of her children. Once ninety of their hogs died of cholera. Mr. Boston says he was twelve years of age when this farm tragedy befell, and he remembers how the disaster set back all his mother's plans, and his boyish ambitions and desires.

He usually rode to the post office, he says, only a mile or so, but he did not jump on the horse, bare-back, and go lickety split, as the other boys did, and as farm boys usually do, on brief errands. He had a saddle he was very proud of, and he saddled the horse properly, then rode through the gate with dignity, as befitted a boy who owned a saddle.

His mother is now eighty-eight years of age, hale and hearty, with a vigorous interest in life. She writes her son long, newsy weekly letters, from the home of her daughter, in Indianapolis. The penmanship is clear and firm. She makes hooked rugs, and has quite carpeted the house with these beautiful, substantial coverings. His one sister is the wife of J. W. Putnam, dean of Butler University, Indianapolis. Dean Putnam is now acting in the capacity of president of the university.

On both sides Mr. Boston's family is of English stock, transplanted to Kentucky several generations ago. Pioneers in Kentucky, that is. His paternal grandparents moved from Kentucky to Illinois about 1840. They settled in Morgan County, on a farm north of Jacksonville. His maternal grandparents moved from Lexington, Kentucky, to Illinois about the same time. He was born on the family homestead about eight miles east of Jacksonville, the post office being Orleans. The date, May 13, 1873. It was to Orleans that he rode so grandly for the mail, using the fine saddle he was so proud of.

Irvin Cobb has called Jacksonville "The City of Elms," and of late years it has become quite the fashion to praise the beauty of the quiet little Illinois town. Not long since there was an article in the Saturday Evening Post in which the statement was made that Jacksonville is the loveliest town of its class and size in this country. The town is built around a central square, as the fashion was ninety or a hundred years ago in the laying out of towns. Most of the commercial life of the town is concentrated around the Square. Tall, handsome, wide-branching elms grow in the park in the center of the Square, and the elms are inhabited by hundreds of squirrels, soft, furry, whisking denizens that play hide-and-seek in the branches the year around.

The main industry of Jacksonville is, or was seventy-five years ago, institutions of learning and of protection. There were three young ladies' seminaries, two colleges, a private asylum for the insane, a state asylum for the insane, and the largest asylum for the deaf and dumb in the United States. So cultured was the town that it was called "The Athens of America."

Well, Charles Otis Boston was born in this "Athens of America," or eight miles from it, which is about the same, for it was to Jacksonville that he and his mother drove when they had trading to do. After attending Whipple Academy, in Jacksonville, he entered the Illinois College, a Congregational school for young men. He had to work part of his way through college, a first-rate discipline for any young man. He graduated from Illinois College, and, upon his graduation, set up in business as a photographer, on the Square, of course, in sight of the elm trees and the happy squirrels.

The year 1898 was a banner year with him. In that year he was graduated, was married, and went into business, all in Jacksonville. Wasn't he the bold one, to take so many "important steps," so many "dangerous risks" in one and the same year! His bride was Miss Frances Elizabeth Stimpson, of Jacksonville. They have one child, a daughter named Barbara, and love her dearly. She is now Mrs. Scott Gardner, a graduate of Washburn College, Topeka and a Kappa Alpha Theta.

In 1905 the Bostons deserted the elm trees and the squirrels and the busy Square, the scholarly quiet of Jacksonville, and came to Butler County, Kansas, settling in El Dorado, then a town of some three thousand inhabitants. The year before, the Missouri Pacific had moved its shops to Wichita, so the town was in something of a slump. Mr. Boston bought the business of a photographer, G. M. Sandifer, a Kentucky man, and started in business in a room over Selig's drug store.

That was twenty-nine years ago. Twenty-nine years of steady advancement. He just has moved into handsome, commodious quarters, and has fitted the new place to meet every necessity of convenience and progress. He would have moved on the 13th, but his stock was too big, so the moving could not be pulled off in one grand Big Day. He must have been disappointed.

Mr. and Mrs. Boston are members of the First Presbyterian Church. He has been superintendent of the Sunday School intermittently since 1899. He is a Rotarian, and, in point of time, just escaped being a charter member of that organization; is a member of the Chamber of Commerce, and has served on the school board and the library board twelve years. He belongs to the Country Club, has no time to play golf, and plays bridge about four times a year, probably in penance!

Mrs. Boston was one of the first women in El Dorado to drive a car. Which fact tells a good deal about her. It took courage, you may remember, for in those days the new motor contraption was queer and skittish, and given to mysterious halts and breakdowns, a creature of temperament.

So here are the Bostons, happy in their home life, successful in their business or profession, useful in their community, and highly valued by their fellow citizens. It's a fine total, is it not?