Thomas Page, proprietor of the Mid-Continent Mills, of Topeka, Kan., is one of that city's best known men of affairs and comes of that sturdy Scotch stock so welcomed to citizenship, everywhere. He has had a commercial career of exceptional prosperity and one which appeals peculiarly to the liking and sympathy of the average American, for it is an exemplification of what can be accomplished in our country by pluck, perseverance and industry.

He was born in Fifeshire, Scotland, Sept. 3, 1843, the son of David Page, a linen manufacturer who was also a native of Scotland, born there in 1786, and who was a member of the British army at the time of the battle of Waterloo. Euphemia Black, the mother of Thomas Page, was also a native of Scotland, having been born there in 1801. Neither the father nor the mother ever came to the United States but passed away in their native land where their respective deaths occurred on Feb. 7, 1858, and on Jan. 6, 1881. The Page family had lived in Fifeshire, Scotland, for many generations back and there Thomas Page was reared and educated. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to a merchant miller and served four years, by which time he had mastered the miller's trade. Urged by the American promise of opportunity, Mr. Page, in 1866, when twenty-two years of age, crossed the ocean to the United States without friends or influence to help him in a strange land. He first located in Albany, N. Y., where he spent three years engaged at his trade. At the expiration of that period, or in 1869, he traveled westward to Illinois and spent two years as a journeyman merchant miller in the cities of Peoria and Rockford. In 1871 he went farther westward and located that time in Topeka, Kan., which city has remained his home to the present time. There he continued at his trade eight and a half years in the Shawnee Mills, one of the pioneer business enterprises of Topeka and its only flour mills at that time. In 1879 he embarked in the milling business for himself, and in conjunction with the late Willis Norton, built the Inter-Ocean Mills in North Topeka. Mr. Page sold his interest in the Inter-Ocean Mills in the spring of 1892 to his partner, Mr. Norton, and immediately afterward built the Mid-Continent Mills, also in North Topeka, of which he has been the sole owner to the present time. The Mid-Continent Mills have a capacity of 600 barrels of flour per day and though not the largest, is one of the best equipped flour mill properties in the State of Kansas. Besides being the proprietor of the Mid-Continent Mills of Topeka, Mr. Page has other milling interests in Kansas, being president of the Manhattan Milling Company of Manhattan, Kan. He is also interested in other great business enterprises, being president of the Shawnee State Bank of North Topeka, vice-president of the Prudential Trust Company of Topeka, and a stockholder and director of the Topeka Street Railway Company. He was formerly president of the Freeholders Fire Insurance Company of Topeka, and is now a director of the Western States Portland Cement Company of Independence Kan.

On March 2, 1880, Mr. Page married Miss Jessie Ewing McLintock, also a native of Scotland, having been born in Stirlingshire, Jan. 26, 1855. Mr. Page met and became acquainted with his wife in Scotland upon the occasion of his first return to his native country in 1878 when he crossed over the water to visit his aged mother, whose health was becoming feeble. The parents of Mrs. Page were John McLintock and Grace Lecky, neither of whom ever came to America. Mr. and Mrs. Page have three children, one son and two daughters, as follows: David Gladstone Page, born Jan. 7, 1881, who is now associated with his father in the milling business; Miss Grace Lecky Page, born March 4, 1884; and Miss Euphemia Black Page, born May 15, 1887. Mr. Page is a Republican in his political views, and while he takes a deep and loyal interest in public affairs of a political nature and always votes on election day, he has never been an aspirant for political honors. He is a member and an elder in the Second Presbyterian Church of North Topeka, and is a member of the board of trustees of the Presbyterian college at Emporia, Kan.

Mr. Page has been a resident of Topeka forty years and is recognized as one of its foremost, influential and public-spirited citizens. In short no enterprise promising benefit to Topeka or its people has failed of hearty encouragement from him. He has recently built a magnificent new residence on a six-acre tract which he purchased in the western part of Topeka. The home is modern, complete and elegant in all of its appointments and is one of the finest in the city. There they will continue their charming and gracious social hospitality of the past. Mr. and Mrs. Page have traveled extensively. They have visited Scotland together six times and upon the occasion of their visit made in 1906 they lived for several weeks in the stone house in Fifeshire in which Mr. Page was born and which his father had built. They have also visited France and Holland, as well as every part of the United States.