Butler County Genealogy Trails Kansas Walter Fletcher McGinnis Bio

BUTLER COUNTY'S EIGHTY YEARS BIOS

WALTER FLETCHER McGINNIS

(Transcribed by Lori DeWinkler)

Walter Fletcher McGinnis, native Kansan, a resident of El Dorado for more than sixty years, prominent in oil development, real estate, insurance and other business and civic enterprises, is among the more widely known men of this section of the state.

He was born in a log cabin in Coffey County, near Hartsford,Lyons County, October 31, 1860. His early education was received in the public schools of Coffey County, in a log school house, then at the Old Hartford College in Lyons County, and, later,El Dorado. He also took a commercial course in Pond's Business College, Topeka, and for three years was a student of medicine in the office of his father, the late Dr. James Allen McGinnis. He also explains that he attended the “school of hard knocks” in that his mother died when he was six years and his brother four months of age. The father stayed at home on the old farm, which he had homesteaded in 1854 and kept bachelor’s hall, caring for his two motherless boys, on the then frontier until 1869, when he removed from Coffey County to Hickory Township, Butler County. Upon to 1873, when they moved into El Dorado, the nearest church or school house, he performed all the arduous duties of a boy on a pioneer farm. These “hard knocks”, however, were happily interspersed with the more joyous occupations of chasing antelope and deer, trailing panthers and shooting buffalo.

Since coming to El Dorado, he has been continuously in the real estate, loans, and insurance business. He was among the first to insist that oil lay beneath the surface of Butler County soil and, as far back as 1887, he and several associates, erected a rig and drilled on what now is Riverside park, El Dorado. When oil actually was discovered in 1915, he became one of the more active and successful of the local business men engaged in that business. He was interested in numerous leases and reaped heavy royalties. His enterprise, as a citizen and town builder, always has been manifest. He took an active interest in the building of the El Dorado Hotel; was the owner of the McGinnis Opera House; and purchased and improved several office and store buildings in the downtown section of the city, besides buying or building many residences and other buildings in an effort to help take care of the congestion that resulted with the discovery of oil. He also was one of the founders of the Kansas State Bank, which later merged with the Security State and now is the Walnut Valley Bank. His progressive idea and his never failing optimism relative to the future of El Dorado and Butler County always have been his dominating characteristics.

Mr. McGinnis’ ancestral line is long and illustrious, dating back eight generations in America and into the Fourth century in Spain and Ireland. His father, Dr. James Allen McGinnis was a native of Indiana, and his mother, Sarah Ann (Benedict) McGinnis, a native of Ohio. Dr. McGinnis removed to Kansas in 1854 and settled in Coffey County. When the war between the states broke out, he enlisted in the Federal army and was given a commission of first lieutenant by President Lincoln. He served throughout that conflict with Company D, Ninth Kansas, and when mustered out of service had risen to a captaincy. In 1869, the family removed to Hickory Township, Butler County, and, in 1873, to El Dorado, where Dr. McGinnis established an office where the Oldham building now is and later on improvised rooms over the Miller building, on South Main Street. He continued to reside in El Dorado until 1894 when he removed to Dewey County, Oklahoma, where he died April 5, 1912. Mrs. McGinnis, wife of Dr. McGinnis, died March 13, 1867, while the family still were residents of Coffey County. He was active in church and political affairs, was mayor and councilman of El Dorado, and served as county commissioner six years and as register of deeds for four years, 1883 to 1887. He was a Republican in politics.

The grandfather of Mr. McGinnis was Dr. Ira J. McGinnis, native of Guyandotte, now Huntington, West Virginia (then Virginia). He moved into the Northwest territory early in the Nineteenth century and for years was a practicing physician and Methodist circuit rider minister in what now is Indiana and Illinois. Dr. Ira E. McGinnis’ grandfather and numerous uncles and other relatives served in the War of Independence. Family records show that twenty-two McGinnises participated on the American side during that glorious struggle. It also is of record that the McGinnises served in the early French and Indian wars, the War of 1812 and in the Mexican war. Of the family line, extending from the American branch back to the time of the earliest records, the following extracts from a genealogical table, now in possession of Mr. McGinnis, show:

“The names McGinnis, Magennis, McGinness, Maginis, McInnis, McEnnis, or any of the other various ways the name is spelled, all are descended from the same parental stock. It is of Milesian origin, descended from the sons of King Milesius of Northern Spain, who reigned before the Christian era, the house of Ir, of Clanna Rory, ruling house of Ulster, known as Utonians. Their ancient palace at Emainia, Ireland, was burned in the year 322 A.D., while they were engaged in a war with the Heremonian Princes of the south of Ireland. The Clanna Rory then settled in the extreme northeastern part of Ulster in the counties of Down and Antrim and organized the new kingdom of Ulidia, known also as Dal-Aradia. The descent from Eughruidhe, or Rory, is to Canall, Cearnach and direct to Conall, then to Aenghusa, twelfth in descent from Conall, Clan Aodh, that is, the clan race of Hugh, was the tribe name of the Magennises and also was the tribe name of their territory, but they later extended their power over Upper and Lower Iveagh and over all Ulidia, or Dal-Aradia. The line starts with Milesius to Ir to Rory to Conall to Aenghusa, each being an ancestor in his proper place in the line.

“As family names were not introduced until the Eleventh century, over 800 years ago, it was not until then that the family name of McGinnis, in all its various spellings began to be used. The ‘Red Hand of Ulster’ is the armorial bearing of the family. There is not all Europe an armorial bearing of more distinction, or about which there is more history of clans, races, battles and honors, coming, as it does, down through the hundreds of years of struggles. It is used at the present time by the members of the family in Ireland and Europe. *** During the great emigration from Ireland to America, in 1700, thousands of Irish sought the American shores. Philadelphia and New Castle seem to have been their objective points. There is evidence that there were many in Philadelphia, bearing the name of Magennis and McGinnis about the middle of the Eighteenth century. These names were found recorded in the marriage records of many churches. The register of the Christ church, Philadelphia, shows that Edward Magennis and Rose Fullerton were married August 27, 1746. From the year 1750, up to the close of the century there are many of that name mentioned in the 8th and 9th volumes of the State Archives, Second series.”

The American family line from John McGinnis, who came to America in 1700 from County Antrim,Ireland, and settled in Pennsylvania, down to Walter F. McGinnis and his children of the present generation, follows in direct or lineal, descent: James, son of John; Edmund, son of James; Edmund, Jr., son of Edmund; Dr. Ira E., son of Edmund, Jr.; Dr. James Allen, son of Dr. Ira E.; Walter Fletcher, subject of this sketch, son of Dr. James Allen; and Walter F. Jr., son of Walter Fletcher McGinnis. Eight generations of Americans; John was a native of Ireland; James and Edmund, Sr., of Pennsylvania; Edmund, Jr., and Dr. Ira Edmund, of West Virginia; Dr. James Allen, of Indiana; and Walter McGinnis, Sr., and Walter McGinnis, Jr., natives of Kansas.

Walter McGinnis married Miss Ida May Surdam, of Towanda, at El Doardo,June 23, 1885. Mrs. McGinnis died in El Dorado, July 28, 1933. She was the daughter of Tunis Surdam who moved to Kansas in 1870 and settled in Sedgwick, then Butler County. The Surdams were one of the pioneer families in that section. Five children were born of the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. McGinnis; Faith M., wife of R. C. Loomis,El Dorado; Hazle, widow of the late Jud P. Hall, El Dorado oil man, accidentally killed by an automobile in Wichita in 1920; Aletha, wife of Lieutenant Rolland Ainslee Browne, U. S. A., now stationed at Fort Ethan Allen, Vermont, and who returned in December 1934 from the Philippine Islands, where Lieutenant Browne was stationed two years and eight months; Walter Fletcher, Jr., El Dorado attorney, who married Wannah Mosier of Towanda; and Pauline Lylian who married Walter C. Gallatin, of Ponca City, Oklahoma, and whose death occurred in that city July 1, 1928.

There are four grandchildren, Pierson McGinnis Hall, Richard Clayton Loomis Jr., Allyn Mosier McGinnis and Walter Fletcher McGinnis III.

Mr. McGinnis, although not an enrolled member of any church, was reared in the faith of the Methodist Episcopal. He has joined the Odd Fellows and Modern Woodmen and, until late years, was active in the affairs of the Chamber of Commerce and the Country Club. Politically, he is a Republican.

This tribute to Mrs. McGinnis, written by R. A. Clymer, editor of The El Dorado Times, was published in that newspaper:

Mrs. Walter F. McGinnis, Sr., was a woman of lovely character. She was gracious and charming. She devoted her life to her family and reared children who are filling places of useful service in the world, inspired by the ideals she taught them and exemplified daily by her own method of living. In her span of life—more than fifty years of which was spent in this town—she had seen the civilization about her undergo great changes. She had seen her state emerge from its primitive pioneer condition into a commonwealth of great power and prosperity. She had seen both the highs and the lows, had witnessed the booms and the depressions and had noted the great turbulent forces at work in the changing character of the modern world. But her own life through all was changeless. She lived a quiet, serene, peaceful, beautiful life presiding as a queen over the sanctuary of her home and ministering to her loved ones in the devoted, effective fashion of countless women whose influence is after all the strongest element in the careers of men. Her annals are simple ones but her contribution of motherhood and wifehood is strong and sweet and enduring and leaves a heritage of priceless worth to those who knew her best.