Butler County Genealogy Trails Kansas Susan B. Allen Bio

Butler County’s Eighty Years ~ 1855-1935

by Jessie Perry Stratford

A History of Butler County Biographical Sketches and Portraits with Foreword by Rolla A. Clymer

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John Bunyan Adams, farmer, teacher, publisher, banker, lawyer, legislator; high in the councils of the Republican party and friend and adviser of governors and other officials, county and state, was born near Potwin, Butler County, March 25, 1873. He died in El Dorado, March 12, 1921, one of the most widely known and sincerely beloved citizens in Kansas.

One wonders at the wide range of his talents and especially one wonders that he, or any one, should become so outstandingly notable in so many lines. He was successful as a teacher, though he was only a youth, himself, at the time he taught. He founded the old Leon Press and later owned newspapers in Potwin, Augusta and El Dorado, being prominent in that profession throughout the time he acted as a publisher and editor. He became a banker and was high in the confidence of the late N. F. Frazier, whose son-in-law he later became, and he helped to found the Butler County State Bank, of which he was chairman of the board for many years. He served six years as a representative in the legislature from this county and was a leader in his support of constructive measures. He was brilliant and forceful as an orator and, as an impromptu speaker, he probably had no equal in the entire Central West. J. B. Adams, because of his intellectual attainments, his magnetic personality, his loyalty to friendships, his picturesque career, became one of the remarkable men of this section and left a heritage of splendid citizenship and civic and patriotic service to his family, his friends, his city, county and state that will endure.

Mr. Adams was educated in the Butler County public schools and in the Teachers College, Salina, from which institution he was graduated in 1893. He taught school the following winter and in May, of the following year, 1894, he began the publication of the Leon Press, at Leon. The following January, he removed the plant to Augusta, changing the paper's name to The Augusta Press. In September, 1896, he was offered a position as teller in the Farmers & Merchants bank, then owned by N. F. Frazier, Sr., and his associates, and came to El Dorado. In 1899, when the Frazier interests disposed of their stock in the Farmers & Merchants Bank and founded the present Citizens State Bank, Mr. Adams became cashier of the new institution. He continued in this capacity until 1909, when he withdrew and founded the Butler County State Bank, with a capital stock of $25,000 and of which he became chairman of the board. At one time, 1916, although the youngest bank in the county, it had deposits accumulating to nearly $400,000. He also was a stockholder and vice president in the State Bank of Douglass and assumed a leadership among the associated bankers of the state, being vice-president of the Kansas State Bankers Association for two consecutive years.

His first political preferment came in 1899 when he was elected to the legislature, serving for three terms, or until 1905. At various sessions, he acted as chairman of the committees on banks and banking and on penal institutions. He also sponsored and successfully passed various bills for the promotion of sound banking in the state and gave industrious co-operation to all measures looking toward the more rapid development of better roads, schools and other Kansas institutions. His party nominated him for the state senate in 1904 and, in 1912, the conservative, or regular wing, of the Republican party gave him its support for the nomination for congress from this district, but the Roosevelt sentiment, centralling in Victor Murdock, publisher of the Wichita Eagle, was too much to overcome. In 1916, he was chosen as one of the Kansas delegation from Kansas to the Republican national convention, in Chicago, which nominated Charles Evans Hughes, present chief justice of the United States supreme court.

But regardless of these wide business and political activities, he first was a progressive citizen of El Dorado. It is a well known fact that not a single progress movement ever initiated in this city failed to secure his support. When Chester C. Shelden decided to dispose of his Walnut Valley Times, Mr. Adams purchased it and continued its publication, using it to help develop the city's consequence. He later joined with Rolla A. Clymer and others in consolidating the two papers, in 1919, under the name of The El Dorado Times and was principal owner of the paper at the time of his death. He joined with others in providing ample residences

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for the great influx of people during the "oil boom" and two additions, Liberty and the Adams, each of which is filled with beautiful homes, are monuments to his civic progress. He assisted in making the Kafir Corn Carnivals a success; was a charter member of the Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary Service club, the Country Club and of all other similar organizations of the city. Fraternally, he was a thirty-second degree Mason, Knights Templar and Scottish Rite and a Shriner with membership at Midian Temple, Wichita. He was a member of no church, but his people were largely Methodists. He was a generous contributor, however, to all the denominations.

Mr. Adams was of English stock and his American ancestry traced back to Colonial Massachusetts, where Joshua Adams, founder of the family in America, settled upon coming from England in 1660. "The family," says Judge Volney P. Mooney, in his History of Butler County, "has been representative of the best citizenship and its sons fought in the French and Indian, the Revolutionary and the Civil Wars and have been active factors in the development, from a pioneer standpoint, of Massachusetts, Maryland, Vermont, Illinois and Kansas." J. B. Adams' parents were Amos and Nancy M. (Cain) Adams, natives of Illinois. The father of Amos Adams was William Adams, born in Hagerstown, Maryland, and who moved to Fulton County, Illinois, becoming a pioneer of that region, just as his son, Amos, moved on to Kansas in the late 1860's and became one of Butler County's most responsible citizens. Amos Adams was a Civil war veteran and was active in the Grand Army of the Republic organization in Butler County for nearly two score years.

On November 29, 1905, Mr. Adams was united in marriage to Miss Edna Frazier, only daughter of the late N. F. and Emma (Crook) Frazier, pioneers of Butler County. Mrs. Adams was given every advantage of wealth and culture and is one of the leaders of the group of younger matrons in club and civic work. Her ancestral line is given in full in the biographical sketch of her father, the city's leading banker for thirty years and which appears in this volume.

Two children were born of the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Adams. They are Frank Frazier and John Bunyan, Jr. They reside with their mother at the Adams home on Walnut Hill.

THE HAPPY WARRIOR

“Nature Might Stand Up

“And say to all the World: “This is a Man.’”

He sprang from fighting forebears and looked upon the world as a gay battle ground. There was bold New England blood in his veins and he breathed the air of a free Kansas. Liberty and freedom came to him as a rich heritage, and he enshrined them with all the devotion of an acolyte. So out into the wide world he went – a brave, jaunty, rollicking, pugnacious lad, and they called him “Bun.”

He was spoiling for a scrap and the world gave it to him. Every little skirmish was an epic and he was an army with banners. He disarmed his opponents with a sincere smile that went clear to the heart, and when need arose he was ready with a blow that carried a fighting man’s punch behind it. But the burning of the noon-tide heat and the burden of the day was all a glorious frolic to him – as boy or man. He was ever ready for a fight, but more ready to make friends of those with whom he had broken lances in the common tourney. His friendliness was golden, and his loyalty a living thing. His foes melted away into allies and his battles became largely lively memories. He beat the old world hands down, and success tumbled head over heels into his lap. So he won position and riches and some fame and friends – friends, friends.

The green is getting back in the trees. All nature is garbed in robes of peace. But it is not so everywhere. Far off, in those regions where earthly eyes cannot see, the phantom hosts are in alignment for the onset. And there, far off behind the fleecy clouds that fringe the eastern sky, Our Happy Warrior – we feel this day – is girding his loins for the fray that has called his winsome spirit, and has turned his smiling, loved face squarely toward the fore. – R. A. Clymer, in The El Dorado Times, March 12, 1921.

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GILES ROBERTS ATHERTON

Giles Roberts Atherton, vice president of the Citizens State Bank, vice chairman of the State Forestry, Fish and Game Commission, a member of the board of trustees of Alien Memorial Hospital, past president and a member of the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce, was born in Kingston, Pennsylvania, November 1, 1876. He has been a resident of El Dorado since November, 1913, coming here as manager of the Western Distributing Company.

Mr. Atherton has always ranked as one of the most actively constructive and thoroughly capable citizens of El Dorado. He was one of the group of younger business men whose commercial ability and civic leadership were put to the test when the discovery of oil in Butler County in 1915 changed the city of El Dorado, almost overnight, from a quiet country town into a seething, churning city of thousands of excited newcomers. Mr. Atherton, together with scores of other men of ability, prospered by the new prosperity of his community, and also gave of his time and thought to see that El Dorado prospered too.

When the United States entered the World War in 1917, he was one of the first to become active in making Liberty Loan, Red Cross and other drives successful here and elsewhere.

Following the war, he joined with other citizens and helped to make of El Dorado probably the cleanest and most attractive city of its population in the entire Mid-West. He expanded into various channels and became a decided influence in the life of the community. His interests not only are wide, but of outstanding prominence. In business, besides being a heavy tax-payer upon realty and personal properties, he is vice president of the Citizens State Bank and active in its management. He also was one of the founders and is now a director of the $5,000,000 Mid-Continent Building and Loan Association. He was a member of the board of directors of the former St. Luke's Hospital; is a former member of the Kiwanis Club and was one of the organizers of the El Dorado Amusement Company, which spent thousands of dollars in the purchase and improvement of Forest Park, a recreational center.

And added to all these activities, in which he is most energetically identified, he has found time to be useful in other ways. He became a member of the First Kansas Forestry, Fish and Game Commission, serving on that board from 1925 to 1929. He also is a national director of the Izaak Walton League of America and for the last fifteen years has been associated with the local state and national trap shooting organizations, attending meets at Pinehurst, North Carolina, and in other cities. He is a charter member of the El Dorado Country Club and a member of the Wichita Club, also a social organization. Fraternally, he is a K. C. C. H. in the Wichita Consistory, with memberships in the York Rite lodge and the Midian Shrine at Wichita, and with El Dorado Lodge of Elks. He is high in the councils of the Republican party of Kansas. While a communicant of no church, he has been a liberal contributor to religious movements.

Mr. Atherton received his early education in the grade and high schools at Knoxville, Pennsylvania, later taking a commercial course in Warner's Business College, Elmira, New York. After quitting school, except for the period of the Spanish-American War in which he enlisted and served with the 12th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, he has been connected with oil and gas companies. First, he was with the Crystal City Gas Company, Corning, New York, and in 1905 became identified with the Kansas Natural Gas Company, at Joplin, Missouri. Eight years later, he was transferred to El Dorado as manager of the Western Distributing Company. He resigned as manager of the local concern in 1917 to devote his entire time to private affairs.

Mr. Atherton, is of English descent and is the son of Andrew E. and Laura A. (Dunham) Atherton, the former a native of Lucerne County, Pennsylvania, and the latter of Tioga County, Pennsylvania. His parental grandparents were James and Nacy (Raub) Atherton, both natives of Pennsylvania. On the maternal side, his grandfather was William Dunham, a native of Canada, and Ruby (Mattison)

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Dunham, born in Pennsylvania. Mr. Atherton was married March 4, 1907, to Miss Sybil D. Koplin, of Joplin, Missouri. Mrs. Atherton is the daughter of Aaron Koplin and Jane A. (Dickason) Koplin, the former a native of Ohio and a Civil War Veteran, serving in Company F. 23rd Regiment, Ohio Volunteers. Presidents William McKinley and Rutherford B. Hayes were members of this regiment. Aaron Koplin was born June 30, 1838 and died in 1917. The mother, Jane A. (Dickason) Koplin, was born in Ohio, April 4, 1845 and died December 23, 1923. Mrs. Atherton is a member of Mary Vance Tent Number Fifteen, Daughters of Union Veterans.