Biographies
of
Graham County, Kansas

LUCILE CLAY BUNDY

Lucile Clay Bundy, clubwoman, welfare worker, and nurse, was born at Peoria, Illinois, April 22, 1875, daughter of William and Sarah Ann (Roberts) Kelly. Her father, born in New York City, died at Kansas City, Missouri, March 9, 1912. He was a soldier in the Civil War three years, serving with the 91st Illinois Infantry. His wife, Sarah Ann, was born at Richmond, Missouri, May 30, 1836, and died at Los Angeles, July 28, 1921.

She was a devoted homemaker and mother, who devoted much effort to charitable work. Her grandparents came from England to America in 1775. Her husband's parents were Irish, and died when he was a very small child.

Lucile Clay Kelly, attended public school, and was graduated from old Central High School at Kansas City, Missouri, in 1893. Her marriage to Dr. John Arthur Bundy was solemnized at Kansas City, April 26, 1906, and since that time Mrs. Bundy has assisted her husband in his professional work.

She has been active in welfare and charity work for years, and has been chairman of the Graham County Chapter of the Red Cross since 1931, and has been a member since 1914. While Dr. and Mrs. Bundy have no children of their own, they are devoted to the young and have assisted one nurse through her training, three young men through medical college, and one through business college.

Perhaps Mrs. Bundy's greatest interest is in the work of the Kansas Crippled Children's Society, in which she is now chairman of Graham County, having held that position since its organization. She has ever been a friend and comforter to the needy and suffering. Mrs. Bundy is a member of the Presbyterian Church, the Order of Eastern Star (1906-), the Graham County Library Board (president 1926-), the American Legion Auxiliary, and the Helios Study Cub (bureau service chairman three years.) In the latter she has been a member fourteen years.

Her hobby is her flowers and she as a beautiful lawn and rock garden. Residence: Hill City.

[Source: Illustriana Kansas, by Sara Mullin Baldwin & Robert Morton Baldwin, 1933, page 174]

ENOCH KRUSAN & REBECCA (KING) FOX

Enoch Krusan Fox and I, Rebecca Jean [should be "Jane"] King, were married July 5, 1878 at Vinton, Benton County, Iowa. He was 25 and I was 19. We came to Belleville, Kansas, in November of that year in a wagon train of twelve wagons. He and two other men, John and Elias Leech, came on out to Graham County and took homesteads about Christmas time the same year. Our homestead was the NE sec. 31, Twp. 8, Range 24, and those of the Leech's were nearby, but I don't remember their numbers. These three men came back to Belleville and we wintered down there. In March of 1879, three families. Leech's, Slades, and ourselves came to Gettysburg where the families stayed while the menfolks prepared dugouts, etc. At this time Gettysburg consisted of one store, a post office, a hotel, and a small land office building. We built a dugout for the three families of us here. In it all of us cooked and ate, and two women and four children slept, while the others slept in their wagons because of the lack of room in the dugout.

When we came out here Texas Longhorn cattle roamed over the prairies and sometimes stampeded and destroyed anything and everything in their path. While we were all living in a dugout which we built a little later up on Youngs Creek, a drove of these cattle stampeded late one afternoon. The men were out on the brush pile when these Texas Longhorns surrounded the premises. They yelled at us women and children to stay away from the windows and door so the cattle wouldn't see us, then they shot at them, and with the help of our good dog, Jack, frightened them away.

This dugout on Young's Creek was only 10 ft. by 16 ft., but all three families cooked, ate and slept in it. There were five members in each of the Slade and Leech families, and only two in ours - Ene and myself. One night while we were all living in this house he had company. That night sixteen of us slept in that one-room dugout.

Leech's moved to themselves into a dugout they had built. They only stayed out here two years.

Mr. Fox took the axe he had brought from Iowa and hewed out the soft rock and built a house 10 ft. by 12 ft. and laid it up with native lime. A portion of this original house still stands on the old homestead which is where the E. P. Goddard family live now.

As we came from Belleville we had stopped in Beloit and bought a small cookstove and cooking utensils which came with it, a walnut table and three chairs, and $5.00 worth of dishes. This is the equipment with which I set up housekeeping in the first rock house.

In one corner of the house Ene made a corn bin using a board a foot wide which he sawed in two and built into the corner in such a way as to form a bin about the size of a bed. Into this he put the corn he had brought out with us from Belleville, and over this we but a corn shuck tick and this was our bed for a year or two until we could get a bedstead.

One could get sugar, flour, raisins, currants, rice, coffee, a little canned goods, and once in a while a little meat, and a few other staples at Gettysburg, but we could get no potatoes. For lumber, hardware, etc., we had to go to Kirwin or Stockton as these were our nearest trading posts. We could buy calico, muslin, and some gingham, but it was poor quality. A spool of thread was ten cents.

The first year Ene broke some prairie and put in sod corn, and put up a sod stable. The corn didn't grow. In July 1879 we drove our span of mules back to Iowa where Ene ran the threshing machine he owned back there.

This had been my first stay away from home and I was awfully homesick, and so was our good span of mules. Each night when we picketed them out here in Kansas, they would work on the northeast side of their picket ropes all night. Going back to Iowa they also knew each crook and turn in the road. As we neared our old home the mules brayed and I bawled. When we finally arrived at La Porte City and they were unhitched, each one went to his own stall. We drove this same span of mules back to Kansas.

Our first child, Elmer, was born September 39, 1879, while we were in Iowa. The three of us came back to Kansas in the following March. We drove a covered wagon in which he had a stove that kept us very comfortable even though we had a severe snow storm and were delayed one week on the road because of the snow and cold.

In the spring of 1880 after we returned from Iowa, Ene broke more sod while I followed up with the sod hand planter and planted corn in the furrow. I had to put the baby in a box and leave him at the end of the field. This proved a better season and we had unusually good corn that year.

The winter of 1881 Ene freighted meal, flour, meat and occasionally a few potatoes from Arapahoe, Nebraska, and other places along the Republican and Beaver Rivers, to Gettysburg and Millbrook. He made pretty good money at this, and as a few dollars accumulated he would buy cattle. During the seasons that we had poor crops Ene would go down around Ellis and Salina and harvest while I stayed home to keep things going. With the money he earned this way we bought more cattle until he had a large herd.

After the complete crop failure in the summer of 1883 Ene and I went to Saline County during harvest. He threshed and I cooked for the crew. This, we did for seventy-one days.

That fall we bought more cattle and some feed to help us winter one hundred thirty head of cattle. During this winter, when the grass was covered with snow, Ene nailed boards together in the shape of a capitol A, then hitched our mules to the point of it and drug it around over the prairie. The boards would push the snow aside and the cattle followed along behind and ate the grass where the snow was cleared off. The cattle came through this winter in good shape.

Things picked up for two or three years, but in the winner of '86, which was a very hard winner, we lost a lot of cattle in a blizzard that lasted three days and nights. The snow had drifted over a long shed which housed the cattle and we had to dig them out. We lost most of our cattle that winter, and those that didn't die then were never very healthy and most of them died the next winter.

In the year 1886, we took a filing and built a solid house on it. This house had no floor. In April of 1889 our daughter Myrtle, was born in a solid house.

Along about this time we began farming heavier and raised some wheat and quite a little corn along with our cattle. We bought additional land as we could, until at the time of Ene's death, we had 4,200 acres of land.

About 1890, we had a stonemason saw enough stone for a house a story-and-a-half high and 18 ft. by 20 ft. on our homestead near the site of the first house built there. In March 1892, Katie, our third child, was born.

We were very fortunate in not losing any of our children, though they were seriously ill innumerable times, and suffered many injuries while playing, working, and riding horseback.

In 1897, we added to our house by building three rooms on the west, then in 1907 we built three rooms on the east, which made an eight-room house. This old house still stands in fairly good condition and is used by the Jolly Workers 4-H club.

In 1907, our son married Barbara Keith, daughter of Alexander and Charlotte Cormick Keith and in 1914, Myrtle married J.A. Keith, Barbara's brother.

In 1916, Katie was married to Edward P. Goddard.

Ben was in poor health for several years and died in 1919 , while we were visiting in Iowa. In a couple of years I moved into Morland and have made this my home.

Contributor: Jackie Wilson Goddard

DAVID CUNNINGHAM KAY

David Cunningham Kay, cashier of the Moreland State Bank, was born in Glasgow, Scotland, January 3, 1863, and since his marriage in 1886 has resided in Kansas.

His father, James T. Kay, who was a traveling salesman, died at Chicago in an elevator accident in 1881. His mother died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1888.

Mr. Kay attended public school in Greenock, Scotland, and Philadelphia, and on June 7th, 1886, was married to Eva Sinclair at Chicago. She was born in Chicago in August, 1863. To them two children were born, Fremont, who was the first child born at Morland, April 18, 1888, who married Ethel Fuller; and Angelo, April 18, 1894, who died in 1912. Fremont was manager of the Morland city electric light plant until 1930, when he accepted a position with the Western Kansas Light & Power Company.

Mr. Kay is a Republican. He served as county clerk of Graham County four years; as justice of the peace at Morland for six years; and as mayor of Morland for four years. For a time Mr. Kay was the owner of a small hotel in Morland, he having built the building in 1886, which he operated 10 or more years and after serving as county clerk was manager of the Farmers General Store there for two years. Since 1902 he has been cashier of the Morland State Bank. Four years he was connected with the British Consul's office in Philadelphia when just a young man.

His memberships include the Ancient Order of United Workmen, the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Masons. In earlier life Mr. Kay was fond of boating, and at the present time is an ardent baseball fan. His hobby is dramatics. Residence: Morland.

[Source: Illustriana Kansas, by Sara Mullin Baldwin & Robert Morton Baldwin, 1933, page 616.]

SIDNEY SCHOFIELD NEVINS

Sidney Schofield Nevins, building contractor, was born in Michigan, March 4, 1852, son of Oran Green and Eliza (Schofield) Nevins. The father, who was post master at Houston several years was born in New York State in 1825, and died at Edmond, Kansas, in October, 1889. The mother was born in New York in 1834 and died at Clinton, Wisconsin, in 1868.

Educated in common schools, Sidney Schofield Nevins has engaged in the contracting business most of his life. He is a Republican, and is fond of reading in his leisure time.

His marriage to Margaret Stratch was solemnized at Edmond, November 3, 1877. She was the daughter of William Stratch. Mrs. Nevins was born in Iowa, October 3, 1859, and died at Edmond, March 27, 1893. To them were born the following children: Edith, August 6, 1878, who married Joseph Wesley Smith, Oren, January 22, 1880, who married Pauline Maggie; Laura, December 27, 1885 who married Garfield Inlow; Allen, February 18, 1883, who married Alice Gordon; Maggie, January 12, 1887; who married Earl Ayers; Hester, September 8, 1890, who married Ray Gordon; Oscar, August 29, 1892, who married Bessie Vicar; and Harry, December 18, 1896, who married Mary Root. Oscar, who served in the World War, died on December 14, 1929. Residence: Hill City.

[Source: Illustriana Kansas, by Sara Mullin Baldwin & Robert Morton Baldwin, 1933, page 863.]

BiographiesofGraham County, Kansas

Biographies
of
Graham County, Kansas