Stephen Reid Boggs

STEPHEN REID BOGGS. This is the record of one of the older residents of Smith County, Kansas, a man who has been variously identified with it as a merchant, farmer, land owner and good citizen, and is now enjoying a well deserved retirement at Athol.

Mr. Boggs was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, November 11, 1846. His paternal ancestry goes back to Wales. The Boggs family first located in Delaware, and some of them fought as soldiers in the Revolutionary war. Mr. Boggs' grandfather, Rice Boggs, was born in Delaware, but went as a pioneer to Eastern Ohio and was a farmer in Belmont County until his death. Stephen Boggs, father of Stephen Reid, was born in Belmont County, Ohio, but spent his active career in Chester County, Pennsylvania, as a farmer. He began voting as a democrat, but in the change of politics during the middle period of the nineteenth century he became a republican. He held various township offices and was a member of the Presbyterian Church. The maiden name of his wife was Ann Jane Reid. She was born at Philadelphia and died in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Their children were: Maggie, who died in Chester County at the age of thirty-nine years; Mary Ann, who died in the same county at the age of twenty; William R. T., now a retired farmer at Franklin, Nebraska; Stephen Reid; Adam R.; Wallace, who lives on the old home farm in Chester County; and James Crowell, who was a merchant and died at Athol, Kansas, in March, 1911.

Stephen Reid Boggs secured his early education in the public schools of Chester County where he lived on his father's farm to the age of twenty-two. His first independent venture was as a merchant at Batavia in Jefferson County, Iowa. From there in 1883 he came to Kansas and at Tyner in Smith County opened a stock of merchandise, also acquired land and farmed in that vicinity, and conducted a second store at Jacksonburg in the same county. The Jacksonburg store was burned in 1895, and after that Mr. Boggs gave most of his personal attention to farming until he moved to Athol in 1901. He still owns a fine farm in the county comprising 438 acres.

Mr. Boggs has been a man of local prominence and represented his county in the Legislature in 1905 and 1907, served under Speakers Stubbs and Simmons and was chairman of the House Committee of Public Buildings. He voted for Charles Curtis for United States senator. His fellow citizens in Pleasant Township honored him with several local offices. He is a republican, is affiliated with Vesta Lodge No. 153, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, at Smith Center, and is a member of Smith Center Lodge of Masons and Lebanon Chapter of the Royal Arch Masons. Mr. Boggs is a veteran of the Civil war, having enlisted in 1862, when sixteen years old, in Company B of the Second Regiment of State Militia of Pennsylvania.

In 1875 in Jefferson County, Iowa, Stephen R. Boggs married Miss Hattie A. Stansberry, who was born in Indiana and died in Jefferson County, Iowa, in 1879. She was the mother of two children: Eva J. is the wife of W. T. John, a farmer and real estate owner at Athol. They have two daughters, Elsie May and Bessie Evalia; John S. is a farmer in Kit Carson County, Colorado. He married Daisy L. Lester and has children Ralph S., Joseph R., Irma Maud, William Harold and Thelma Marie.