Noah Hayes, M. D., of Seneca, Kan., who for over thirty years has made Seneca and its vicinity the scene of his professional activities, was born in Henry county, Indiana, June 21, 1844, the fifth of eight sons. John D. Hayes, the father of Dr. Hayes, was born in Guilford county, North Carolina, March 23, 1800, and in 1815 joined a number of Quakers from Guilford county who went to Indiana and formed a colony near where is now the city of Richmond. John D. Hayes, then a youth of fifteen, was the only one of his family to join the colony. He grew to manhood there and married, but lost his wife shortly after the birth of their daughter. In 1832 he chose as his second wife Sarah Eliza Fagon, but as their marriage was not according to the strict custom of the Friends' church he was "turned out" formally, but practically he remained a consistent member of his birthright faith until his death, attending the meetings regularly on the "first day" and "fourth day" as he had always done. With his wife he moved into the woods of Henry county, Indiana, and built a one-room log cabin. He rented his little patch of cleared ground to neighbors while he worked at building houses and barns for them. When there was not work of his trade to do he turned his attention to other kinds of labor. There he and his wife endured all the privations and hardships incident to pioneer life and reared their family. They were simple, religious and upright people, of cheerful and social disposition, who could appreciate equally the humorous and serious sides of life. No better tribute could be paid to their character than that given by their son who, after nearly seventy years of a full and broad experience in life, says that in a comparison absolutely impartial he has never met any one superior in character to his father and mother. They were among the most respected residents of Henry county and had the affectionate regard of all who knew them. These parents often repeated to their children facts concerning their respective family histories, but unfortunately they were not committed to writing and in the fading memory of many years have become lost. The mother of Dr. Hayes was also a North Carolinian by birth, born Nov. 10, 1813, and when an infant accompanied her parents into Guilford county and thence to Henry county, Indiana. They settled near Newcastle, and it was there she met her future husband. John D. Hayes died in 1867, survived by his widow and four of their eight sons.

Dr. Noah Hayes was reared in Henry county, Indiana, and attended the district school near his home, two miles from Cadiz, their nearest postoffice. His advantages were such as the time and place afforded and his curriculum contained the "Three R's" only. Early in 1861 Dr. Hayes, then but seventeen years of age, and two of his brothers enlisted in the Thirty-sixth Indiana infantry. In 1862 a younger brother, also but seventeen years of age, enlisted in the Ninth Indiana cavalry. Though abolitionists by birth and training, the controlling motive of these four sons in so promptly responding to the call to arms was to maintain the union of the states. The oldest brother was discharged because of sickness and died soon afterward. The next oldest was mortally wounded at the battle of Stone's river, Murfreesboro, Tenn. After more than three years of service Dr. Hayes and his younger brother were spared to return to their home. The Thirty-sixth Indiana saw hard and active service. It was in the battle of Shiloh, the siege of Corinth, the pursuit of Bragg through Kentucky, was heavily engaged at Stone's river and also at Chickamauga, and moved with Sherman's army in the Atlanta campaign, taking part in nearly every skirmish and engagement in that movement, and besides these principal engagements, bore a gallant part in many other campaigns of lesser note. At the age of twenty-one Dr. Flayes again became a pupil in the home district school and learned rapidly. In 1866 he attended the Newcastle High School for three months and the following winter taught the home school. In 1870 he was elected county surveyor, having learned the business while working on a farm with an ex-surveyor, and having committed to memory practically the whole of the United States system of surveying. The neighbors agreed to pay double the legal fees for surveying and furnished a man to carry his instruments from station to station. He carried with him a seal, administered oaths and made deeds in the field, his earnings averaging about $10 a day, with more work being provided for him than he could do. In 1869 an act of the Indiana legislature made the building of gravel roads and the thorough drainage of the land compulsory, which step marked the beginning of the state's prosperity. Dr. Hayes became ex-officio road surveyor, a day's work measuring the distance a horse would travel, stopping every 100 feet for the driving of stakes. In June, 1871, after having earned and received $27 at 3 p. m. for the day's work on a race track at Middletown, he laid down his instruments for the last time and never saw them again. They were the property of Dr. Meinsinger, the son of the engineer who superintended the building of the bridge across the Mississippi at St. Louis. The occasion for his sudden leavetaking was the receipt of a telegram from Commander Charles Francis Hall, of Cincinnati, to whom the government had given the command of an expedition toward the north pole under the auspices of the navy department. Dr. Hayes was unknown to Commander Hall and received his appointment on the strength of a letter which he had written Hall upon seeing in the Cincinnati "Enquirer" an account of the proposed expedition. The letter was an earnest one, a pledge of single-heartedness and fidelity, and secured for Dr. Hayes an experience denied to hundreds of other applicants. Upon receiving his message to "Come" on the afternoon mentioned he left at once for Washington, D. C., and of the expedition, its purposes and accomplishments, his own account is the most interesting.

"Though not popularly known as such, the expedition was the most important that ever explored the circumpolar regions. The scientific societies of Europe and America held to their belief in an open polar sea. Such a sea would imply the presence of animal and vegetable life and would constitute a new and unknown world. The Polaris expedition had for its purpose the discovery and exploration of this sea, if such existed. The ship Polaris carried a remarkable crew from commander to cook. Captain Hall had lived ten years with the Eskimos in the higher latitudes, was master of their habits, language and traditions, and understood all about heavy ice, its movements and dangers to vessels. The sailing master, Sidney O. Buddington, of New London, Conn., had been a whaler in Baffin Bay, its straits and sounds, for thirty years, and the first mate, H. C. Chester, had followed the same business in the same waters for fifteen years. The second mate, Morton, had sailed up the Smith Sound route in two previous expeditions, those of Dr. Kane and Hayes, and with but one or two exceptions every other member was in like manner peculiarly fitted for the duties and responsibilities of the service upon which they had entered. The astronomer, R. W. D. Bryan, now of Albuquerque, N. Mex., had remarkable abilities, both natural and acquired. He established accurately, therefore permanently, the geographical location of our first winter's quarters, the first achievement of its kind above 80° north latitude. The expedition dispelled the myth of the open polar sea. This was a disappointment to those proteges of great scientific societies who held to the old theory. They seriously questioned the accuracy of our records, since verified, but the 'open polar sea' remained in the school geographies and other maps for many years afterward. The ship was crushed in the ice at Littleton island in the early part of our second winter. We succeeded in getting the wrecked ship on the beach at high tide, where she lay on her beams when the tide ebbed. From the wreck two flat bottomed boats were built, and the following June we started south in these, expecting to meet vessels of the Scotch whaling fleet at Cape York. We were belated in reaching that point, but fortunately for us the the Ravenscraig, one of the ships of the fleet, had also been caught in the ice and delayed. We were discovered by them at a distance of about ten miles, and their masthead, just above the horizon, was seen by one of our officers. Over the sea, jumping from one piece of ice to another, some of the crew made their way to us. Just before we met face to face, they held out their hands, offering tobacco. After a jolly good time hunting for and catching whales, we were landed at Dundee in the autumn following."

While the experience had been satisfactory in the way of adventure, it had not advanced Dr. Hayes financially, and upon his return to Washington he found himself dependent upon the hospitality of the secretary of the navy, who permitted him to board on his private cutter, the Tallapoosa, and kept him on the pay roll until a friend of Captain Hall—Colonel Lupton of Cincinnati—secured a position for him in the patent office. A year later, after taking the civil service examination, he was promoted to assistant examiner, and after a similar period in the latter position he was transferred to the office of the comptroller of the currency. In the treasury department his work was very light. Noting that there were more clerks than needed and having the opportunity and the leisure time necessary for study, he matriculated in the medical department of the Georgetown University, two fellow clerks, ladies, keeping up the little work that came to his desk, such as recording the United States bonds to secure the currency of the national banks. In December, 1879, having voluntarily resigned from the civil service, he located at Fairbury, Neb., for the practice of medicine. A few months later, in the spring of 1880, he went to Leadville, Col., where he was employed part of the time as a transit man with the Denver & Rio Grande Railway Company, and part of the time in surveying claims for mining prospectors. In the fall of that year he returned to Jefferson county, Nebraska, where he remained with a brother until the summer of 1881, when he located at Seneca, Kan., where he has since resided and has been an active and successful practitioner of medicine. He is a member of the Kansas State Medical Society and of the American Medical Association; has been local surgeon of the St. Joseph & Grand Island railroad during all of his residence in Seneca; served as president or secretary of the examining board for pensions, and has been county physician for a number of years. Fraternally he is a member of the Masonic order and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. He became a member of the Christian church in Indiana, but in later years has held to the Unitarian faith, being very liberal, however, in his views on all religious matters. Politically, as nearly as he can be placed, he is an insurgent Republican, a progressive in the truest sense of the term, controlled by his independent opinions of the issues of the day, and practically finds himself a man without a party.

In 1887 Dr. Hayes was united in marriage to Miss Lucy Mary Bogle, of Hustonville, Ky. Two children came to this union: Helen Mary, born Jan. 5, 1890, and Lucius Bogle, born Feb. 27, 1891, both named for their mother, who died a few days after the birth of Lucius. The Bogles were originally of Scotland, but left that country about the time of the severe religious persecution to settle in the north of Ireland. The introduction to Sir Walter Scott's Rob Roy gives an accurate account of the early history of the Bogles in Scotland though under their rightful name of MacGregor, which "By an Act of the Privy Council dated 3d April, 1603, was expressly abolished, and those who had hitherto borne it were commanded to change it for other surnames, the pain of death being denounced against those who should call themselves Gregor or MacGregor." The family was established in this country by William Bogle and his wife Catherine, born Boggs, the grandparents of Lucy (Bogle) Hayes. Both were born of Presbyterian parents in Ireland, in the North Country. Soon after their marriage there they came to America and settled in Mason county, Kentucky, where all of their children except the eldest were born, and where all were reared. John A. Bogle, the eldest child and the father of Lucy, was born at an inn where the parents had stopped on their way across the mountains to Kentucky. He was educated at Center College, Danviile, Ky., where he met his future wife, Miss Nancy Cowan, to whom he was married after he graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary. She bore him one son, now Dr. John C. Bogle, of Danville, Ky., and died when he was nine months old. Two years later Rev. John A. Bogle married Miss Chloe Masterson, the youngest daughter of William Masterson of Lincoln county, near Hustonville, where Mr. Bogle had his first and only pastorate, and where he died at the age of seventy-two. He was a man of the most sterling integrity and of rare intellect and accomplishments, who in his religious life had nothing of the traditional austerity of his church (Presbyterian), but a sunny and loving disposition accompanied by a keen and cultured humor which never conveyed a rebuke nor sting. The same traits and graces were characteristics of his wife, who outlived him many years. Seven children were born to them, of whom Lucy was third. Mrs. Bogle was descended from the Bells of Belfast, Ireland. Her great-grandmother, Jean Bell, came as a widow from Virginia and settled at Boonesborough, Ky. Her grandfather, William Masterson, one of nineteen children, came from Virginia to Kentucky with a married sister after the death of his father and mother. All his people, the Mastersons, Crawfords and Shackelfords, were high-church Episcopalians, while the Bogles were identified with the Southern Presbyterian church. Lucy (Bogle) Hayes graduated at Alexander College, Burkesville, Ky., and Caldwell Seminary, Rome, Ga. She was reared in a cultured Christian home and is remembered and loved by a great many people. In 1899 Dr. Hayes took as his second wife Miss Libbie Swaim of Mound City, Mo., of a good family and widely related to many eminent men and women. The son and daughter of Dr. Hayes are both graduates of the Seneca High School and are now both attending the University of Kansas at Lawrence, where they have as their companion their mother, Mrs. Hayes. Helen has musical talent of a high order and also excels in literature and mathematics, and Lucius is making rapid progress in his studies. Dr. Hayes and his family enjoy a high standing in their community and are highly esteemed by all who know them.