Esom Gatliff Farris (1844-1920)

Portrait from the Kansas Legislative Directory of 1903.

   The vast annals of the Kansas state legislature yield another oddly named representative in Esom Gatliff Farris, a two-term legislator from Sumner County. A native of Barbersville, Kentucky, Farris was born there on January 14, 1844, being the son of Cornelius and Nancy (Witt) Farris. Esom's youth was spent on his family's farm and at the dawn of the Civil War sided with the Union, enlisting in Co. F. of the 32nd Kentucky Infantry.  Following his service, Farris removed to Indiana to reside with his brother James and soon decided to pursue a career in medicine.

   Farris would enroll at the Central Normal College at Danville, Illinois, and furthered his studies at the Central College of Physicians and Surgeons in Indianapolis. In the early 1880s, Farris would graduate from Rush Medical College and in 1885 married in Greencastle to Sadie Bondurant (1850-1895). The couple would remain childless. Shortly after their marriage Farris and his wife left Indiana for Sumner County, Kansas, and after settling in the town of Conway Springs Farris established his medical practice. 

  More than a decade after his removal to Kansas Farris entered the political life of the state when he won election as Sumner County's representative to the Kansas legislature in November 1902. Taking his seat at the start of the 1903-05 session Farris was named to the following committees: Hygiene and Public Health, Roads and Highways, and Legislative Apportionment. Shortly after his election, Dr. Farris was profiled in a brief write-up in the Topeka State Journal, under the heading "Good Roads His Hobby". Coming out as fully in favor of the passage of road improvement legislation, Farris remarked:

"I think a physician is pretty well qualified to judge of the roads question, an I am for some sort of legislation that will give us better roads. People who travel over the country roads in the daytime can drive around the bad places, but a doctor goes over them night and day, and he knows what a bad road is."

   As a backer for improved roadways, Farris further related that he'd been in favor of the creation of a Kansas state engineering post, and office that would, in Farris's words, "have general oversight of roadmaking". In addition to the betterment of Kansas roads, Farris also proposed the prohibition or regulation of importing hogs from other states, as well as a measure that would: 

"Compel people to bury or burn their dead animals. He thinks dead carcasses which are left unburied are a fruitful source for the spreading of diseases, and if buried, insists that it should not be near water courses."

Portrait courtesy of Find-A-Grave.

  Acknowledged as a "sound-money Republican" and a "friend of the widow and orphan", Esom Farris won a second term in the legislature in November 1904, a term that saw him named to the committees on Penal Institutions, Roads and Highways, and the State Historical Society. In 1909 Farris removed from Kansas to St. Cloud, Florida, where he continued to practice medicine and also served on a soldier's pensions board there. Farris died in St. Cloud on February 6, 1920, aged 75 and was later interred at the Mount Peace Cemetery in that city.

Ortho Olden Wolf (1874-1944), Ortho Voorhees Stevens (1881-1976)

Ortho O. Wolf, from the Kansas City Star

   We continue our stay in Kansas to profile four-term state senator Ortho Olden Wolf, who, in addition to his service in state government, was a leading agriculturalist, veterinarian, and farm organization leader, serving as the president of the Kansas Farm Bureau for a number of years. Although a resident of Kansas for over six decades, Ortho O. Wolf's birth took place in Allen County, Ohio on June 4, 1874. The son of Charles and Mary Abbott Wolf, Ortho moved to Kansas with his family in 1884 and his early education took place in Franklin County. As an adolescent, he attended both Baker University and the Kansas Agricultural College and in 1898 graduated from the Chicago Veterinary College.

   After a time spent traveling Great Britain and Scotland to study methods of stock-raising Wolf returned to Kansas and over the succeeding years established a reputation as a veterinary surgeon and cattle breeder of "sound judgment and practical experience", making a specialty on short-horn and Jersey cattle breeds. Wolf married on November 11, 1904, to Daisy Sterling (1965) and later had one daughter, Mrs. Charles E. Funk of Berkley, California. Wolf's status as one of Ottawa, Kansas's prominent farmers received extensive mention in the June 23, 1931 edition of the Daily Huronite, which notes that:

"In the vicinity of Ottawa he owns three tracts of land, 243 acres, 160 acres and 219 in extent, all of which are farmed under his personal supervision."

    As the owner of over six hundred acres of farmland, Ortho Wolf's name was one of the most recognizable in agricultural organizations of the period. A member of the Kansas Board of Agriculture for over two decades, Wolf also held the presidencies of the Kansas State Agricultural Council, the Kansas State Farm Bureau, and the Farmer's Cooperative Elevator Association of Ottawa, and was a member of the Kansas State Board of Veterinary Examiners, the Producer's Commission Association, the National Wool-Grower's Association, and the Mid-West Wool Marketing Association.
   Active in other aspects of Kansas public life, Wolf served as an executive committee member for the Franklin County Fire Insurance Association  and for many years was affiliated with the Kansas State Fair Association, serving in 1911 as the superintendent of its "cattle division." 
   O.O. Wolf first entered Kansas political life in 1912 when he was elected to the Kansas State Senate from Franklin County. Reelected in 1914, Wolf would serve on the committees on Cities of the Second Class, Commerce, Enrolled Bills, Labor, Live Stock, Municipal Corporations, Military Affairs, Ways and Means, and chaired the committee on Drainage. Wolf would be returned to two further terms in the Senate in the elections of 1920 and 1922, serving a total of eight years in all.

Ortho Wolf (third from left) at a Washington,  D.C. agricultural meeting, February 1937.

  During his third term in the senate in 1921 Wolf was selected as a member of the "Livestock Marketing Committee of Fifteen" a group of noted agriculturalists gathered under the auspice of the American Farm Bureau Federation to "give special study and consideration to livestock marketing problems" as well as to "submit recommendations". Wolf would become a founding board member of the National Live Stock Producers Association in 1921-22 and was chairman of the board in 1929. Three years later he became President of the Board of Managers of the Kansas State Fair and continued to serve in that capacity into the following year.

   On several occasions, Wolf was sought out to attend agricultural conferences in Washington, D.C., one of these being a meeting with U.S. Agriculture Secretary Henry A. Wallace in 1937 (portrait shown above.) In January 1939 Wolf again visited Washington as one of two dozen delegates from the American Farm Bureau, meeting with President Roosevelt to discuss its legislative program, as well as labor and wage rates. Wolf maintained a busy schedule in various agricultural organizations until his death, which occurred at a Wamego, Kansas hospital on April 7, 1944. His wife and daughter survived him, with his burial taking place at the Highland Cemetery in Ottawa, Kansas.

                                                   

Ortho O. Wolf in 1939 at an American Farm Bureau conference in Washington, D.C.

From the Caney News, November 1, 1913.

  Another Kansas "Ortho" who carved a career for himself in politics was Otho Voorhees Stevens, who served one term in the state house of representatives from Montgomery County. While little information could be found on his life, the rare portrait of him shown above comes as a welcome surprise. Born in Kansas on May 1, 1881, Stevens was the eldest son of Thomas Andrews and Luella Sams Stevens. He married Nellie W. Barr (1884-1932) in January 1905, and the couple had at least one daughter, Marjorie Barr (Stevens) Oakson (1906-1995).

  The manager of the Burgner-Bowman Lumber Co. in Caney, Kansas, Stevens' company also sold lime, cement, paints, and oils. He entered into the race for state representative from Montgomery County in September 1912, running on the Democratic ticket, and that fall opposed Republican Daniel Dabney. In October of that year, Stevens spoke on his campaign and that year's presidential contest at a Wilson For President meeting in Caney, and that November won his legislative seat. 

  Taking his seat in January 1913, Stevens' one term saw him named to the committees on Cities of the First Class, Judiciary, Municipal Corporations, the Political Rights of Women, Public Utilities, and Supervision of the Journal. Early in his term Stevens visited home in Caney and was interviewed by the Caney Chronicle on his status as a freshman legislator. Speaking on the speed of the legislative process, Stevens remarked:

"The legislature is getting down to real law-making. I have been fortunate enough to be appointed to some of the leading committees and the work has kept me busy night and day. The trouble with the law making to date is we Democrats, get that, we Democrats aren't putting any foolish laws upon the books. The work has been committee work so far and the bills are being threshed over. When the time comes to pass them, we will pass them in a jiffy, get through and come home"

 Towards the end of his term in 1914, Stevens announced that he wouldn't be seeking reelection that year, noting that "the job does not pay expenses." Despite living to the age of 94, little else could be found on Stevens's life after his term concluded. Widowed in 1932, Stevens was later a resident of Collinsville, Oklahoma, where he died on March 3, 1976, two months shy of his 95th birthday. He was survived by his daughter and was returned to Caney for burial at the Sunnyside Cemetery.

Atlantic Abraham Moore (1834-1916)

   Known by his contemporaries as "Lank" Moore, Atlantic Abraham Moore was indeed named after the second largest ocean in the world! A native of the Buckeye State, Moore would relocate to the American midwest in the late 1850s and following settlement in Kansas attained prominence in politics, winning election to both houses of that state's legislature. Still more political honors would await Moore after he permanently resettled in Arizona, as he served two terms in the territorial and state house of representatives, and was a delegate to the state constitutional convention of 1910.

   Atlantic "A.A." Moore was born on September 15, 1834, in Ohio. As a child he moved to Waukegan, Illinois with his family and as an adolescent lived in Wisconsin for a time. In 1858, Moore and his older brother found employment driving government ambulance wagons from Kansas City, Missouri to Santa Fe, New Mexico. The task proved to be arduous, and after one trip out the Moore brothers returned to what is now Durham, Kansas, where they bought out a trading post. Within a few short years, the area in which they had settled became Marion County, Kansas, and Lank Moore was elected as county treasurer in 1865. That same year he was elected to the Kansas House of Representatives and was re-elected to that office in 1867 and 1871.  With his name firmly established in Kansas politics, Lank Moore ran for a seat in the State Senate in 1868 and handily defeated his opponent.

   Moore continued residence in Kansas until 1882 when he relocated to the Arizona Territory and settled in Prescott. Within a short time, he established a large ranch and engaged in the raising of cattle, while also taking an interest in Arizona's vast mining industry. Moore also began involving himself in Arizona politics, serving as a Prescott City councilman for several years. 

  In 1898, the citizens of Yavapai County elected Moore to the Arizona Territorial House of Representatives, where he served from 1899-1901. He was later reelected to the state house in 1911, shortly after Arizona gained statehood. During his legislative service, Moore was named to several committees, including the Committee on Public Lands, Public Health and Statistics, and Agriculture and Irrigation. He was described in an 1899 Arizona Legislative Manual (where the below picture was located) as one of the "quietest members of the legislature, yet one who has been found by his associates as fully capable in all members of parliamentary procedure."

   The year before his reelection to the legislature, Atlantic A. Moore was named as a delegate to the Arizona Constitutional Convention, again representing Yavapai County. He died at age 82 on December 22, 1916, at the home of his son in Glendale, Arizona. A newspaper of the time lists A.A. Moore's cause of death as appendicitis. He was interred at the Walnut Grove Cemetery in Yavapai County and was survived by his second wife Nancy Waterman Moore, who died in 1926 at age 78.

Atlantic A. Moore as he appeared in an 1899 Arizona Legislative Manual.

Parkinson Isaiah Bonebrake (1835-1920)

   With a name that combines both a degenerative nervous system disorder and bone fracture, the curiously named Parkinson Isaiah Bonebrake rose to become a prominent public office holder in Kansas, serving as a state representative and as auditor of that state for three consecutive terms. The rare portrait of him shown above was discovered in the 1905 work Men of Kansas.

  Parkinson I. Bonebrake (recorded as "P.I." by most period sources) was an Ohioan by birth, being born on September 25, 1835, in Preble County, Ohio, the son of George and Eliza Adams Bonebrake. His birth year is also given as either 1834 or 1836, and it is known that he migrated to Kansas in 1859, settling in Shawnee County. Bonebrake married in December 1857 to Ms. Martha Jane Lowe (1837-1905), with whom he had four children: Edith (died aged sixteen), Otis (died aged seven), Frank M. (birthdate unknown), and Fred Buel Bonebrake (1872-1943).
  Within a few years of his relocation, Bonebrake made his first foray into Kansas politics, winning election as Shawnee County clerk in 1866. He served in this office for exactly ten years, and in his last full year as clerk won election to the Kansas State House of Representatives from Shawnee County. Bonebrake took his seat in the state legislature in 1876 and served only until November of that year, as he was appointed to fill a vacancy in the office of Kansas State Auditor. He was elected to that office in his own right a few months later, continuing service until 1883.

From Andreas' 1883 History of Kansas.

                                  

    As his final term in office came to a close in 1883, Bonebrake turned his attention to other public affairs, including the development of the Central Bank of Kansas. He had previously organized the Central National Bank of Topeka in 1882 and served as its president for thirty years, retiring in 1912. Bonebrake was also active in state fraternal organizations, including service as Secretary of the Masonic Mutual Benefit Society of Kansas. Topeka also benefitted from Bonebrake being the founder of the original city waterworks, of which he served as president and secretary. He would remain connected with that utility until retiring "when the water supplying system was sold to the city."
   P.I. Bonebrake continued to be socially active in his native city of Topeka well into his eighth decade and in 1919 celebrated an unusual record--having been present at the inauguration ceremonies for every Kansas state governor from Charles Robinson (inaugurated in February 1861) to Henry J. Allen (first inaugurated in January 1919), a spread of nearly sixty years. Bonebrake died at the St. Francis Hospital in Topeka on March 19, 1920, aged 84. Widowed in 1905, he was survived by his two sons, Frank and Fred, and was subsequently interred at the Topeka Cemetery in Shawnee County. Bonebrake's wife Martha and son Fred were also interred at this cemetery. Following his death, he was memorialized in the Pittsburg, Kansas Sun for his long service to the state, and that:

"He was a man of an exquisite sense of honor and rare nobility of character.He lived to be 84 years old; his career full of achievement."

From the Topeka Daily Capitol, March 19, 1920.

From the Hays, Kansas Free Press, April 1, 1920.