William Warren Strickland of Topeka, assistant freight auditor of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Company, is a native of Iowa, where he was born on a farm in Guthrie county, Oct. 22, 1871. His parents were Charles and Sarah A. (Salsbury) Strickland, the former a native of Yorkshire, England, who immigrated to America with his mother and his step-father when but a lad of about twelve years of age. He was reared and educated in this country and when a young man he met and married Miss Sarah A. Salsbury, a native of Indiana. He then engaged in farming in Iowa and followed that vocation until his death, in 1881, being survived by Mrs. Strickland until 1883, when she also passed away. They became the parents of three children: William W.; Franklin A., a farmer, residing near Rich Hill, Mo.; and Mrs. Robert J. Hill of Durham, Kan.

William Strickland was reared to the age of eleven in his native county in Iowa, but after his father's death he removed with his mother to Peabody, Kan. In 1887 he took up the study of telegraphy at the Santa Fe station, at Lyndon, Kan., and after mastering the art he accepted the position of operator and relief station agent at Lyndon with the Santa Fe railway and has been constantly in the employ of that great system since that time. Although he is still a young man he has devoted twenty-one consecutive years of faithful service to the Santa Fe Company, in their operating and accounting departments. In 1889 he was made operator and station agent at Williamsburg, Kan.; in 1890 was made operator and agent at Reading, Kan.; served as operator and station agent at Carbondale, Kan., two years, and at Burlingame seven years, and in 1900 he was appointed traveling auditor, which position he held four and a half years and, in January, 1905, he was transferred to Chicago, Ill., as a traveling accountant until November of that year when he was made chief clerk in the office of the freight auditor at Topeka and, in January, 1909, he was promoted to his present position of assistant freight auditor.

Mr. Strickland was married, in Topeka, Dec. 20, 1893, to Miss Anna Deane Kathary of Carbondale, Kan., but a native of Salem, Ohio. Politically Mr. Strickland believes in the principles of the Republican party, and fraternally he is a Knight Templar Mason and a member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, at Topeka.