Lifestyle

Silas G. Hindman was born to February 7, 1830 in Carterville, Illinois to his father William, who was 35 and his mother Nancy, who was 40. His mother died when Silas was 14 and his father died when he was 16. When he was around 18, he married Mary Powell and they had their first child in 1849. They had several more children over the next few years. Unfortunately, several of the children died as did Mary in 1859. Silas then married Nancy Woodard and they had one child. Nancy died while they lived in Illinois and he married Emma Louise Barber in 1883. Emma was born on April 8, 1854 in Richview, Illinois. They had a son and a daughter while living in Illinois and in 1888 they moved to Augusta, where a second daughter was born and their last child, a son, was born in 1896 when Silas was 66 years old.

From a composite of Burl Allison’s History of Augusta book, beginning in the chapter on the 1930s and an essay written by John Freeman in 1975:

Dear Readers,

Jacob Henry Davis, ‘Judge,’ was born on April 4, 1852 in Denton, Iowa. He came to Augusta in 1867 before Augusta was even a town. He hauled freight across the prairie from Emporia, even hauling material for the first building in Augusta. When Judge came to Augusta, our neighbor to the west, Wichita, consisted of no more than a log cabin and a trading post!

John Haines was born in Wetzel County, West Virginia on March 12, 1847. He was one of 13 children of a prosperous farm family. When John was 15, he moved with his family to Appanoose County, Iowa where he grew up on his father’s farm, learning the lesson of hard, intelligent work and getting its reward in knowledge and the beginnings of a career as a farmer. In 1852 he met Mary E. Brown, who was born in Martinsburg, Indiana on September 27, 1852. Mary came to Iowa as a girl and became a school teacher at Centerville, Iowa. In 1871 they were married and began planning their move to Kansas.

Fourth of July in Augusta through the decades

A few years ago, we had a visit from a young woman asking if we had any information about a man who was fatally shot by an Augusta policeman in the 1920s. A quick search of our records provided nothing, so a visit to the Public Library microfiche unearthed the following story.