Butler County Genealogy Trails Kansas James D. Joseph Bio

BUTLER COUNTY'S EIGHTY YEARS BIOS

JAMES D. JOSEPH

(Transcribed by Peg Luce)

James D. Joseph, cashier and for forty-two years an active officer and director of the Bank of Whitewater, former member of the upper house of the State Legislature; and one of the most influential citizens of this section of the state, was born at Joseph’s Mills, Tyler County, West Virginia, December 15, 1864. He came to Kansas when a young man, twenty-one years of age and has been a resident of Butler and Shawnee counties since that time, or for the last forty-five years.

He received his early education in the public schools of Tyler County and later, at the State Normal School of Fairmont, West Virginia, from which institution, he was graduated in 1884, at the head of his class. Always active, he became, when 16 years of age, the secretary of a political organization of 200 members in West Virginia, which included prohibition as one of its principal tenets, thus becoming one of the earliest champions of that great reform, and it is of interest that he believes that the home and the school are the most effective methods of teaching and training along the lines of temperance and without such teaching and training, laws are virtually next to futile. At 17 years of age, he left his father’s farm and launched forth for himself, first teaching school, then farming. In 1885, he came to Kansas and in 1892 became an officer and director in the Bank of Whitewater and has continued as a banker and farmer up to the present time, a period of forty-two years. Besides his interest in the Bank of Whitewater, he owns a farm in the rich Whitewater River valley and naturally ahs taken a more or less active part in politics of the county and state, and has the distinction of being one of the only two Democratic senators ever representing this county in the legislature; the other being W. F. Benson, whose sketch also appears in this volume, proving that both were chosen strictly for their –re-eminent qualifications rather than any partisan affiliations. Senator Joseph was elected in 1912 and served for four years, and suggestive of the recognition accorded his abilities, he was made chairman of the committee on banking and also the committee on public utilities. At the close of his term, he was appointed the Democratic member of the State Efficiency Commission and as such member, he made and published a minority report. He is the author of about 20 bills that have become laws in Kansas but he has not been able to see some enacted in which he feels the greatest interest. He does not think the bankers of Kansas were justified in protesting their taxes and taking from the public treasury several million dollars. He is a pioneer in the advocacy of lower taxes and a more equitable distribution of its burdens. He regards Kansas as somewhat backward in legislation to secure justice and promote the public welfare. He regards our taxation system as antiquated, inequitable, and badly out of joint with the times; our laws governing the deposit of public funds bungle some, and apparently designed for political favoritism and indirect graft; our failure to protect state banks from being snuffed out or absorbed by a system that will centralize, federalize and monopolize the banks of the United States inexcusable; the failure to give the people an up-to-date registration system of land transfers, as the protection of about the biggest graft through abstracts a civilized people were ever forced to endure; our so-called free school system as without the semblance of system and without the semblance of justice in the taxes for its support; the building of certain roads at a cost of thirty thousand dollars a mile, over which one can travel almost any day ten or fifteen miles without meeting a single car, as a shameful waste of money exacted from taxpayers bled white from such expenditures all the way down the line; and the sending of men to Congress and keeping them there that vote with and for Pennsylvania and the East and against Kansas and the West almost uniformly, as a sad example of what a people blindfolded by political prejudice and newspaper propaganda – either Democratic or Republican will do. For these and many other reasons he says he cannot help but sometimes feel that Kansas instead of being a most progressive state is one of the worst governed states in the union.

As a banker, he has made a profound study of the problems of that division of business. As vice president of the Eighty District Kansas State Banking Association, according to Judge Volney P. Mooney’s History, Senator Joseph wrote and published a pamphlet entitled “Monetary Reform,” in opposition to the central bank plan, as proposed by the late Senator Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island. Also according to Judge Mooney, Senator Joseph was the first banker in the United States to issue the denomination cashier’s checks in the Roosevelt panic of 1907, and after using these checks for a time at his counter, he ordered from his correspondent in Kansas City, Mo., The First National bank, this form of credit, receiving the following letter, from the chief official of that institution: “We wish to thank you for your letter of the 28th inst. (October 1907). You are entitled to be called a “Captain of finance.” We are sending you tonight cashier’s checks issued to bearer, as many as we can prepare, equal in amount to $5,000, and will send you the balance tomorrow. Again thanking you for the suggestion, we remain,” etc. With the exception of his affiliation with the Democratic party, Senator Joseph has no other political religious, social or fraternal connections.

Senator Joseph’s ancestral line extends centuries into Continental Europe and the British Isles and, in America back into Colonial Virginia, in that section now known as West Virginia and Delaware. There is a sort of legend in the Joseph family that at one time they were Austrian Jews, who were banished to Wales from where they emigrated to America, first settling in Delaware, from which state the American line is traced. Senator Joseph’s parents James Joseph (born in Tyler County, West Virginia, June 24, 1833, died in Plum Grove Township, Butler County, February 1, 1899) and Nancy (Conaway) Joseph, born in Tyler County, January 21, 1835; died in Potwin, September 11, 1893. The paternal grandparents of Senator Joseph were Waitman F. and Sarah (Cox) Joseph. Waitman F. Joseph lived at Joseph’s Mills, the community being named for him because he had built and operated the mills, but about 1859, he left West Virginia and located in Butler County, Kansas, near the present site of Potwin, where he lived until he died. Waitman Joseph’s father (Senator Joseph’s great-grandfather) was Nathan Joseph, who lived near West Union, West Virginia. The father of Nathan was William Joseph, who was born in Delaware and later located near Morgantown, West Virginia. He served in the Continental Army from Colonial Virginia and his son, Nathan, was born near Morgantown, moving in early manhood, to Tyler County, where he reared his family in that part of Tyler, which afterwards became Dodridge County and of which West Union is the countyseat. He served in the war of 1812. The wife of Nathan Joseph, great-grandmother of Senator Joseph, was Marguerett Furbee, daughter of Waitman Furbee, who lived at one time in Delaware. J. D. Joseph’s grandparents on his mother’s side were Andrew and Rebecca (Loomis) Conaway. His great-grandfather on his mother’s side was Thomas Conaway, who came from Fermanagh County, Ireland, and who married Rebecca Dew, native of Ireland, and from which family name Senator Joseph secures his middle name. The father of his grandmother, Sarah (Cox) Joseph, was James Cox, who was a farmer and lived near Morgantown, West Virginia.

On March 2, 1892, Senator Joseph was united in marriage to Mary M. Neiman, at Whitewater. Mrs. Joseph was born in Tipton, Iowa, December 8, 1860, and is the daughter of Isaac Neiman (born in Berks County, Pennsylvania, January 24, 1813, died at Tipton, Iowa, September 7, 1862) and Eliza (Swartz) Neiman, born in new Berlin, Pennsylvania, September 7, 1820, died in Whitewater, April 20, 1900. The parents moved to Iowa in 1854, where the father, Isaac Neiman engaged in the harness-making business at Tipton until his death; the mother Eliza (Swartz) Neiman remained in Tipton until 1889 when she removed to Whitewater, with her daughter, now Mrs. Joseph, where she (Mrs. Joseph) kept house for her brother, George P. Neiman and taught school until her marriage to Senator Joseph in 1892. The grandfather of Mrs. Joseph was Peter Neiman who lived at Boyerton, Pennsylvania, and his father (Mrs. Joseph’s great-grandfather) was Carl Neiman, who lived in Berks County, Pennsylvania.

Three children have been born to the marriage of Senator and Mrs. Joseph: they are: Donald B. Joseph, born December 4, 1892, married Florence Fuqua, and is one of the leading farmers and stockmen of Butler county; an infant, born November 24, 1894, and died ten days later; and Marion (now Mrs. Arthur J. Nigg, Whitewater) born January 27, 1896. There are seven grandchildren: two boys and two girls being the children of Mr. and Mrs. Donald B. Joseph, and one boy and two girls, being the children of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Nigg.