Butler County Genealogy Trails Kansas James Hugh Higdon Bio

BUTLER COUNTY'S EIGHTY YEARS BIOS

JAMES HUGH HIGDON

(Transcribed by Peggy Luce)

A glowing fire in the new fireplace in John Joseph’s house, in Potwin; the quiet of a prairie village in the outside darkness; leisure to enjoy the warmth and soft glowing light within the room, and the soft prairie darkness without; leisure and freedom to talk frankly of interests near the heart of memories – under such fireside conditions James Hugh Higdon is at his best. The talk rambled “from grave to gay, from lively to severe,” rambled to many themes and many experiences; touched on faiths, and creeds, ideas and mere notions, and all the while Hugh Higdon was proving himself a man whom life has enriched through experience. Some men are soured by experience; some are embittered; some, hardened; some saddened. The nature and character of James Hugh Higdon has been purified and sweetened. Experience has broadened his sympathy, and made clearer his understanding of the human heart. As he has lived without bitterness, he now views life with humor, the greatest healing power of all.

His expressions have not been unusual; nothing spectacular, or sensational in his life; nothing “glamorous,” as that beautiful word is now cheapened by the motion picture interests. Quite the contrary. He has done his duty, as it came to him, without ostentation, without fuss. He has worked among ordinary folk, in the humdrum way the average life demands; he has suffered, conquered little ills and big disappointments, as all do. At least, all who grow in worth as the years have their way. He has pursued the even tenor that, in the end, is conducive to happiness, and the calm and balance of contentment. The richness of his harvest, in the affection and respect of his home community, is the result of the way he has taken life’s experiences, and used them to unselfish ends.

He was born December 2, 1875 in Harrison County, Missouri. Bethany was the post office. He is of English-German blood, his ancestors having come from England to Kentucky in the pioneer times. His paternal grandfather moved from Kentucky to Indiana, and later removed to Missouri, Harrison County. At the age of eighteen, his father enlisted in the Union army, in 1864, and served six months. They were loyal Union people, the Higdons. His father had two brothers and three uncles in the Army of the Potomac. One brother was killed in the siege of Richmond.

His mother was Mary Alice Bryant. Her father, of English ancestry, went from Kentucky to Indiana when he was a boy. Later, from Indiana to Harrison county, Missouri. She was born on the home farm, three miles east of Bethany. Her father, too, was a Union man, and served in the Civil War.

While on the subject of Civil War soldiers, Mr. Higdon remarked, “Uncle Joe Mead, the last Civil War veteran, died recently.” That is, in 1934. “We always called him “Uncle Joe.” He was ninety-one at the time of his death, and quite hale and hearty. A Civil War veteran living to that age,” Mr. Higdon added, reflectively, “shows what sturdy physical manhood America produced three generations ago.”

Mr. Higdon has lived in Potwin since 1905, excepting four years, 1924-1928, spent in Whitewater. While preaching in Whitewater he worked hard for the federation of three churches there, the Lutheran, the Reformed and the Christian. He loved the work, he says, and it was successful. Today Whitewater has a new church which houses the happily federated congregations of the three churches. A beautiful and practical work, and a success upon which Mr. Higdon is to be congratulated.

On March 4, 1900, Mr. Higdon married Nellie Holmes. They have four children: Phillip, Butler County superintendent of schools; Elsie, a teacher in Potwin, Mrs. Mary Frerking, of Elbing; and Mrs. Carrie Hill, of Coldwater.

For three years, from 1905 to 1908, Mr. Higdon was superintendent of the school of Potwin. He smiles when he tells you that, for Potwin had only two teachers, “of which he was one of whom.” For eleven years he was minister of the Christian Church, or Church of the Disciples, in Potwin. He was pastor or “minister” as well as preacher. The distinction is one of importance. Nowadays there are plenty of preachers, but fewer pastors, or overseers of their flocks. Dr. Primrose was a minister, you remember, “a man to all the country dear.” Mr. Higdon is now in the insurance business, but one suspects that he is still a ”pastor,” so deep is his interest in practical Christianity, and so constant in his ministrations to those in need of help and sympathy.

He’s “a tolerably straight Republican,” he says, with twinkling eyes, “not having been any more crooked than the average Republican.” He missed voting for McKinley by one month. The “miss” was one of the great disappointments of his life. “In fact, I haven’t got over it yet,” he said, in speaking of his admiration for that good man. He considers Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln our “great Republicans;” he admired Calvin Coolidge for his conservatism and his strong common sense. The present Roosevelt he considers a sincere, big-hearted man. We must not judge him yet. “Give him time,” said Mr. Higdon, with Republican largeness. “Give the man time!”

Potwin is a village of four hundred and thirty-five people. Or it had that many at the time Mr. Higdon sat by the fireside in John Joseph’s house, one November night. The town has a weekly paper, The Potwin Ledger, and a Potwin State bank, with a flower box in the front window. Its main industry and “commercial center” is the Vickers Oil Refining plant. The high school and grade schools are housed in one substantial brick building, with a grand total of nine teachers. The town began in 1885, as a shipping point for cattle, when a branch line of the Missouri Pacific was built. It was named for Charles Potwin, who owned a great deal of land in the vicinity. There is an Old Folks’ Dinner served annually, which Mrs. John Joseph started, in her sympathy and liking for old people. One assumes there are church socials, but there is no organized lodge work in the town. “The truth is,” said Mr. Higdon, summing up the facts about Potwin, “The truth is, if it weren’t for the Vickers Refinery we wouldn’t last a minute!”

Perhaps, commercially speaking. But there are other ways of speaking than in terms of commerce. Life is pleasant in Potwin. Neighborly kindness abounds; there are garden flowers, and chicken parks, and wide front porches were on people sit at leisure; self-respecting dogs scout the streets – real dogs, not the city variety of canine; honest-to-goodness smoke ascends from the chimneys; neighbors hand hot biscuit and special brands of salad over the back fences; everybody calls everybody by his or her front name, and one can borrow a dollar almost any time, so solid is the financial basis of friendship.

Life is pleasant in Potwin and very human. And amid its pleasant scenes and its neighborhood griefs and needs, its arresting sorrows, Hugh Higdon lives his useful, unselfish life. Many, many nights he has sat the long hours through, by the bedside of the sick, and of the dying; in many, many homes he has ministered tenderly to the dead, for Potwin is a village. No handsome mortuary dominates the situation.

To call him a community blessing would offend his simple modesty, yet there are people in Potwin who call him just that, and tell of his broad charity for human failings, his sympathy, his cheerful humor. He’s one of the town’s assets, not as tangible as the Vickers Refinery, perhaps, but an asset of actual value, since life makes its demands on spiritual forces, too.