The ancestors of Colonel Taylor were Scotch-English colonists, who immigrated to New England at an early day. His father, John Taylor was a very successful merchant of Eaton, Ohio, to which place he removed from Concord, New Hampshire, after his marriage. He was conspicuous for his integrity of character and superior business qualifications, was an earnest, active Presbyterian, and an influential member of that church. In politics a Whig, he was an ardent supporter of General Harrison. His wife was a native of Massachusetts, thoroughly educated in the schools of that State, and much superior in attainments and culture to most women of her time. Extremely benevolent in her disposition, and of devoted piety she was a leader in all Christian and charitable enterprises. She died when her son Houston was seventeen years of age, having so impressed his mind with her loving, noble spirit, that to her influence he attributes much of his life's success, and whatever is sterling in his character. Her husband died several years before her, and no authentic record has been preserved of him.
Their son, Houston Lee Taylor, was born in Concord, New Hampshire, April 3, 1831, removed with his parents to Eaton, Ohio, where he was prepared for college and received a good, practical business education. His intention of entering college was never carried out, but his general education has been greatly improved by after years of study and research, and he is justly considered a man of thorough, practical business education. Having acquired a knowledge of general merchandising after some years service as a clerk, he commenced business for himself at twenty years of age, engaging in the hardware trade at Mattoon, Illinois, where he remained four years, being quite successful financially, and establishing a good reputation for sound practical business ability. Leaving trade he concluded to apply himself to the study of law, upon which he now entered, and was soon after appointed postmaster at Mattoon, which office he held for three years.
He was a warm admirer of Stephen A. Douglas, and supported him for the United States Senate in 1858, and so continued until Mr. Douglas return from his southern campaign. Upon reaching Cairo the Senator telegraphed Mr. Taylor to secure a room, and meet him at Mattoon. Here, in a private conference, Mr. Douglas intimated that the electoral contest was clearly between Breckenridge and Lincoln, upon which Mr. Taylor informed him that as between Breckenridge and Lincoln he was for the latter. When the conference closed the Senator shook Mr. Taylor by the hand with great cordiality, expressed his regret at parting company from him, and at the same time admitted that he might be right in supporting Lincoln, assuring him also of his continual friendship. From that time forward Mr. Taylor warmly support Mr. Lincoln for President and Richard Yates for Governor of Illinois.
He was admitted to the bar in 1860, but continued to discharge his duties as postmaster until after the breaking out of the war. He was among the first to respond to the President's call for "300,000 more" in 1861, enlisted in the 59th Illinois Infantry United States Volunteers, and was commissioned captain of Co. H., participating in the engagements of Knobnoster, Pea Ridge, siege of Corinth and others. In September 1862, he was promoted for gallant service in the field and commissioned lieutenant-colonel of the 68th Illinois. On being honorably discharged in 1864, he was appointed by President Lincoln, special treasury agent, and assigned to duty in the Mississippi valley, in which situation he remained until 1865, when he was appointed by the United States Government agent for the Shawnee Indians in Kansas, retaining this position until he was relieved from duty by President U. S. Grant's Quaker policy in 1869.
In 1870 Colonel Taylor engaged in banking at Oswego, Kansas, and made an enviable reputation as a successful financier, leaving the bank with a first class standing wherever its transactions extended. Retiring from the bank in 1873, he devoted himself for a year to the care of his property and farming.
In May 1874, he accepted an appointment from President Grant as register of the Wichita land office, which position he still holds. He was one of the corporators, and for a year one of the directors, of the Carthage, Oswego & Southwestern Railroad, now constructed from Pierce City, Missouri, to Oswego, Kansas, a distance of one hundred miles.
Colonel Taylor is a member of the Masonic fraternity, an affiliate of Mattoon Lodge. By no means a sectary, he firmly holds to the principles of Christianity, and is a liberal supporter of the Christian church and ministry. In politics he is thoroughly identified with the Republican party.
October 15, 1864, Colonel Taylor was married, at Mattoon, Illinois, to Annie M., daughter of John M. Walter, merchant of Cincinnati, Ohio and Terre Haute Indiana. Mrs. Taylor is a graduate of the Terre Haute Female College, a lady of considerable literary culture. They have four children - Walter Sherman, Houston Roscoe, Raymond Jay, and an infant daughter unnamed at this writing. (Kansas Biographical Dictionary, 1879, pages 739 & 740)
Seth M. Tucker, a member of the Kansas Legislature, was born at Barnard, Windsor county, Vermont, September 7, 1830. He was of Welsh on the paternal and Scotch-Irish descent on the maternal side. His ancestors were eminently patriotic, and both grandfathers, John Tucker and John Foster, were soldiers in the Revolutionary war, and his father, Robert Tucker, was a soldier in the war of 1812, and the first gun the subject of this memoir ever used was the one which his father carried through that war. His mother's maiden name was Sarah Foster, an eminently pious, good woman, and both parents were Christians and members of the New England Congregational church.
His parents removed to Ohio in 1836, settling in Union county, where he was primarily educated in the common schools, receiving an education sufficient to qualify him to teach school, a profession which he pursued for about six years for the purpose of acquiring an education, and by his own resources entered Central College, where he received a good business education. At the age of seventeen, by the premature discharge of a cannon, he lost his left hand, which compelled him to pursue a profession, and, after a course of severe trial and hard efforts to qualify himself, he entered the law office of Judge P. B. Cole at Marysville, Union County, Ohio, and was admitted to practice in the courts of that State after an examination, before Judge John A. Corwin, by three commissioners, since noted in American laws and politics - Hon. J. R. Swan, Hon. Sol. Hinkle and Hon. William Lawrence.
Removing to Iowa, he practiced law in Cass county for about eight years. In 1859 he went to the Pike's Peak region and spent two seasons in mining with moderate success; returned eastward, locating in Atchison county, Kansas, and engaged in business pursuits until the breaking out of the war. He aided to raise the first company for the war in Atchison, was offered the first lieutenancy, but did not accept because he was informed that he would be rejected on account of the loss of his hand; but, anxious to participate in the struggle for the preservation of the Union, he succeeded in entering the next company raised, and was made first lieutenant of Co. B., 4th Kansas, afterward the 10th Regiment. He participated in the battles of Locust Grove, two engagements in Newtonia, at Cane Hill, Prairie Grove, and was in the engagements in the Price raid, acted as volunteer aid-de-camp to General Curtis in the battle of Westport, and was in many other engagements and innumerable skirmishes with the rebel guerrillas of the border.
On retiring from the service he opened a law office at Fort Scott in 1865, where he practiced law until 1871. In 1865, he was appointed county attorney of Bourbon county, to fill a vacancy, and in 1866 was elected to the same office. In that position he prosecuted the celebrated murder case against Major Mefford for the killing of Thomas Dilnorth, and many other important state cases. In 1871 he removed to Wichita, where he practiced his profession until 1877. He defended the notorious, "Rowdy Joe," for the killing of "Red Beard," and succeeded in securing his acquittal - one of the most noted cases in that part of the State. He also defended Winner in the celebrated case of Winner and McNutt murder trial, and had a large and important practice at Wichita.
In 1877 he removed to a farm and is now engaged in the occupation of a farmer, where he has been eminently successful; has one hundred and sixty acres all hedged and under cultivation, well improved.
In 1878 he was elected a member of the Kansas House of Representatives from the 93rd District as the regular Republican nominee.
From his youth he has been a believer in the harmonial philosophy, or the religion of Spiritualism. In politics he was originally an Abolitionist; his first vote was cast for John C. Fremont for President, and he has always been an ardent Republican. He was married at Fort Scott, July 30, 1871, TO miss Mollie, daughter of B. B. Stotts, a native of Kentucky, and an eminently good woman. They have four children - Walter, Jessie May, Cora Pearl and Willie.
Mr. Tucker is a genial, whole-soul gentleman, an active participant in the politics of the State, and in all respects a useful citizen and a worthy man. He is a sound, practical speaker, an able lawyer, and a good practical farmer and business man. (Kansas Biographical Dictionary, 1879, pages 382 & 383)
Josiah R. Van Zandt was born in Oakland county, Michigan, November 27, 1836. His paternal grandfather, Francis Van Zandt, was a Hessian soldier under General Burgoyne during the American Revolution; settled and married in Albany county, New York, and pursued the occupation of a farmer until his death in 1802. His father, Francis Van Zandt, Jr., was the youngest of seven children; was born in Albany county, New York, in 1802; was a farmer in his native county until 1836, when he moved to Oakland county, Michigan, where he is still following the business of farming at the advanced age of seventy-seven. His mother, Laura A. (Hemmingway) Van Zandt was descended on the maternal side from the Warren family of Puritans of which General Joseph Warren, of Revolutionary fame, was a member.
Josiah's opportunities to attend school were very meager. His early life was that of a son of a pioneer farmer, and his days were mostly spent in that laborious and wearisome toil that develops the muscles - clearing the wild land of timber, grubbing stumps, making rails and preparing the ground for the plow. His mind was active, enterprising and hungry for proper food. A few months spent in the winter schools stimulated rather than satisfied his intellectual longings, and such books as fell in his way were greedily devoured by the light of the evening fire. This close application to books seriously impaired his vision and he suffered much from this malady. At the age of eighteen he began to teach school during the winter months, an occupation he continued for three years. In 1858, desirous of bettering his fortunes, he traveled in the Southwest, located in Bates County, Missouri, and for three years was employed as a teacher.
In the spring of 1861 he moved to Linn county, Kansas, intending again to engage in farming, but in the following August he enlisted as a soldier in Co. D., 6th Kansas Cavalry, and was employed for about eleven months along the Missouri border contending against the guerrillas that made predatory warfare in that region. In July, 1862, owing to disability, he was discharged, and returning to Linn county he resumed farming. He joined the militia on his return, and during the Price raid served as first lieutenant and for a while as post adjutant at Mound City.
In the fall of 1863 he was elected register of deeds of Linn county. The county clerk having resigned, he was appointed October 8, 1864, to fill the vacancy, discharging the duties of both offices. November 8, 1864, he was elected county clerk and clerk of the district court. He filled these three positions until the expiration of his term as register of deeds, holding the other two offices until his term as clerk of the district court expired in January, 1867. He then, in partnership with D. F. Parks, established a hardware and agricultural implement house at Mound City. On the completion of the Fort Scott & Gulf Railroad through Pleasanton, the firm removed their goods thither.
In 1873, Mr. Van Zandt was elected to the Legislature from Linn county. He was chairman of the committee on fees and salaries, and was the author of the present salary law, the passage of which was defeated on its first presentation in the Senate, but which was adopted by both branches of the Legislature at the next session. He declined a re-election to the Legislature, and engaged in active business pursuits. In July 1875, he disposed of his interest in the firm, returned to Mound City and resumed farming. In April 1876, he accepted the general management of the Wichita branch of Smith & Keating's Kansas City agricultural house, and although the transactions were then small, he has succeeded by business tact in building up a large and growing trade in the valley of the Arkansas.
He is an active Republican, a member of the Methodist Episcopal church and a Royal Arch Mason. He was married January 29, 1863, to Miss Mary Jane, daughter of James and Jane (Mansfield) Scott, of Tuscarawas county, Ohio. They have three children.
Mr. Van Zandt's life has been upright and honest, and his frequent elections to positions of trust show that he has the confidence of his fellow-citizens and possesses great personal popularity. (Kansas Biographical Dictionary, 1879, pages 484 & 485)
Adolph Weigand was born April 21, 1841, in Hesse Cassel, Germany. Joseph Weigand his grandfather, was a native of Schmekalden, province of Hesse Cassel, Germany, was many years a superintendent of government forests; becoming superannuated in the service he was pensioned by the Government and lived to the great age of one hundred and four years. His father, Nicholas Joseph Weigand, was also a native of Schmekalden, born in 1793, received a thorough education, and graduated in the universities of Wurtemberg, Munich and Marburg, was appointed judge of the Supreme Court, and died April 4, 1847, aged fifty-four. His mother was originally Barbara Josepha Hoeflien.
Adolph was the youngest of a family of twelve children. His early education was received in the primary schools of his native place. At the age of thirteen he entered the college at Fulta, where he remained about three years. In 1857 arrangements were made for him to enter, as an apprentice, the studio of a sculptor in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Coming to America in the year of the great financial panic, he found business stagnant and his employment gone. He then engaged to work in Schem's brewery in Philadelphia to learn the brewing business, where he remained about four year. In 1862 he went to San Francisco, California, and engaged in the cigar trade for about seven months. Selling his stock at the end of that time, he went to Guadalafora, Mexico, and entered upon the brewing business. He remained there until the French were driven out of Mexico, in 1868, when the business being insufficient to warrant him in staying longer, he started for Matamoras across the country on horseback. Finding no business in Matamoras to justify his remaining, he proceeded to St. Louis, Missouri, where he entered the wholesale tobacco house of Woods, Forbes & Co., and was clerk in the establishment about three years. In 1871 he moved to Wichita, Kansas, erected a brewery, and has been from that time to the present successfully engaged in the brewing business, having secured a large trade in the southwest. Politically he is a Democrat, but takes but little interest in the management of party machinery, preferring to vote for men rather than with his party. He was elected a member of the city council of Wichita in the spring of 1878. In his religious sentiments he is liberal. He is an Odd Fellow and a member of the Encampment.
He was married June 15, 1875, to Miss Ann Ekenheard, daughter of Philip Christian and Christine (Eby) Ekenheard, of St. Louis, formerly of Berne, Switzerland. They have had two children, only one of whom is living.
Mr. Weigand has established a good business reputation. In his social relations he is much esteemed, and as a citizen none occupy a more elevated position. Benevolent and generous, he contributes liberally to every enterprise tending to promote the growth of the city or the welfare of the citizens. (Kansas Biographical Dictionary, 1879, page 756)
Among the early settlers of South Carolina was Edward Woodman who emigrated from the Parish of Christian in England near the year 1750. At the breaking out of the Revolutionary war he entered the colonial army and served under Washington, DeKalb and LaFayette. He married Miss Sarah Stevens whose father's house was the field head quarters of DeKalb and LaFayette. Marrying into a Quaker family he connected himself with their church, and was an honored member during his life. He was the father of five children, one of whom Abishai Woodman, was the father of our subject. He was born in 1792, on the old camping ground at Valley Forge. By profession he was a builder and contractor, but during the later years of his life, was engaged in general merchandising at Pottsville, Pennsylvania, where he resided until 1864, when he retired from active life, and moving to Jacksonville, Illinois, spent his remaining years with his children.
William C. Woodman, the eldest of six children, was born at Valley Forge, Chester county, Pennsylvania, October 16, 1816. He received his early education in the common schools of his native county, and when he arrived at his fifteenth year he worked at the carpenter's trade for three years and then became clerk in a mercantile house at Norristown, Pennsylvania, where he remained until 1842, and then entered a wholesale dry-goods house in Philadelphia.
At the end of ten years he opened trade on his own account and became very successful, but in the panic of 1857 was obliged to suspend on account of financial reverses, and he then moved to Jacksonville, Illinois. He conducted a very successful business at this point for a number of years. In 1870 he moved to Wichita. At this time the county was thinly settled, and in the town there were but few inhabitants.
He soon engaged in real-estate speculations, general merchandising and private banking and met with unusual success. After building one of the most commodious business houses in the Arkansas valley he disposed of his mercantile business and confined himself exclusively to banking and real estate, and in the last named business has accumulated a large amount of property. His banking business is conducted under the name of the First Arkansas Valley Bank, and the firm is known as Woodman & Son.
Having been thrown into active business life, and among first-class business men from early childhood and having spent many years in successful business pursuits, during which time the country has suffered from three panics, he has made the financial problem a study and has succeeded in placing before the public a financial system which has met the approbation of some of the ablest financiers of the country.
In 1867 and 1868 he first placed his theory before the public, in elaborate communications and by private lectures to senators and members of Congress; but either from unjust influences of Wall Street speculators in and out of Congress or through want of comprehension it failed of its mission; and not until it was publicly revealed that silver had been demonetized and the resumption of gold forced upon the nation by speculation in money did the masses awake to the realization of the fact that his theory was calculated to solve the financial problem. Since then he has advanced his theory before the commercial, literary and political organizations of the Mississippi valley, and finally before an audience in Washington composed largely of members of Congress, and everywhere meeting with the undivided attention and approbation of the people and very flattering hopes are entertained that, ere long it will become the financial policy of the Union.
His system is too elaborate for a sketch of this kind, but a brief synopsis is due his disinterested labors.
His theory would in effect, establish a United States Bank with power to issue and place in circulation $350,000,000, neither more nor less, legal tender notes good for all taxes with the exception of taxes on imports and exports; making the national banks fiscal agents for the Government in circulating the currency - the capital to be not less than $25,000 nor more than $5,000,000, compelling them to secure depositors twenty per cent over and above the capital stock of the bank, and doubly secure by making the stock-holder responsible for twice the amount of capital stock and suck amount of stock issued as the conditions of trade require in the repeal of the resumption act and demonetization of silver; in the issuing four per cent bonds, to replace those bearing a higher rate of interest, in such sums as will place them within the reach of all, thus concentrating our debt at home - payable in coin - principal and interest; said bond to run a certain number of years and be replaced by the issuing of like bonds. By this means we have a reduction of the interest to $60,000,000 a year, which subtracted from the yearly coin receipts of $150,000,000 gives a surplus of $90,000,000 a year, with which surplus we will naturally drift into a resumption of specie payments. By placing the national word as the standard of value, instead of gold we have a settled financial system not governed or controlled by Wall Street speculators. In the present condition of our country he favors a suspension of payments on the national debt, and the employment of the money that would otherwise go to the payment of the debt, in the improvement of our rivers, canals and other commercial highways; by this means giving new life to the manufacturing, agricultural and other business industries of our country, and furnishing employment to the suffering laboring classes; postponing the payment of our debt until we have fully recovered from our present financial difficulty, when with the large surplus of coin that must inevitably accumulate in the country, we will have not only an abundance to meet the principal and interest of the coin-bearing bonds, on maturity, but, as a natural consequence will have returned to specie payments, and have revived the industries of our land into a healthy activity. By this means the debt occasioned by the war, instead of being a curse to the nation will become a blessing. We thus become a seller or payer instead of a buyer reducing the national interest $30,000,000 annually, preventing the expensive necessity of holding a large coin reserve in the treasury at ruinous expense to the public, and have drawn order and system out of blind confusion - demonstrating to a fact: First, the confusion of our national debt not a financial system. Second, our own history is our proper field of research and example. Third, specie is not a sound basis for a credit system. Fourth, the bonded confusion is gain to rich and loss to the poor; and Fifth, a simple, defined system is necessary to prosperity.
In politics Mr. Woodman is an old line Whig. He was devoted to the cause of the Union during the rebellion, and as a civilian gave of his means and time to the suppression of the war. He identified himself with the Republican party, and was a firm supporter and personal friend of Abraham Lincoln, at whose funeral he was called to Washington to act as one of the chief mourners from the White House in the last sad rites of his departed friend.
He was first married to Miss Amanda Twining, daughter of William and Lucretia Twining, of Norristown, Pennsylvania. By her he had six children, five of whom are now living. His wife died February 22, 1862. His second wife was Miss Elizabeth Williams, a native of Chester county, Pennsylvania, and by her he has four children, all living.
Mr. Woodman can well be denominated a self made man, beginning at the lowest place he has gradually made his way in life until he has attained an enviable position, not only as a financier but as a business man. After so many years of close attention to business pursuits he still possesses an active and vigorous mind, and manifests the same interest in all affairs of life. He is a kind father, an esteemed neighbor and friend, and is highly valued in social life.(Kansas Biographical Dictionary, 1879, pages 789, 790 & 791)
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