Harry Franklin Briggs

HARRY FRANKLIN BRIGGS during his active career of more than twenty years has had an extensive experience in the lumber industry and has been manager and owner of several lumber plants ever the states of Kansas and Oklahoma, he is now manager of the leading lumber business at Bunker Hill.

His paternal ancestors came from England in colonial times and settled in the State of Virginia. His grandfather, Henry Briggs, was born in that part of Virginia which later became West Virginia. He followed farming all his life and died at Wheeling, in 1882, leaving among his children a son Isaac.

Isaac Briggs, father of Harry F., was born at Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1828, and when he was a boy his parents moved out to Illinois and he grew up in Iroquois County of that state. He was a farmer there, married in that county and in 1879 came to Kansas, locating in Nemaha County. After farming there ten years he engaged in the lumber business at Oneida, where he died in 1895. He was a republican and an active member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He married Belle Courtney. She was born in Ohio in 1841 and died at Oneida, Kansas, in 1916. In their large family of children were: Jennie, who died at Oneida, Kansas, in 1880, wife of O. M. Henderson, a farmer now living at Seneca, Kansas; Mary, who also died at Oneida in 1880, at the age of nineteen; William H., a farmer at Oneida; John T., in the lumber business at Summerfield, Kansas; Cora B., wife of George Gilmore, a land owner at Oneida; James C., auditor for the Burgner Boeman Lumber Company at Emporia, Kansas; Charles, who died in Oneida in 1880, as a child; Harry F.; and Dora; wife of B. G. Hanson, an automobile salesman living at Sabetha, Kansas.

Harry Franklin Briggs was born in Iroquois County, Illinois, August 13, 1875, and four years later his parents came to Kansas. He received most of his education in Oneida, graduating from high school there in 1894, and soon after began his connection with the lumber business under his father. In 1898 he went to Oklahoma and established a lumber yard at Lucien, where he owned and operated a prosperous business for three years. After selling that he was on his father's farm as its active manager for five years. His next location was at Stafford, Kansas, where he took charge and managed for eight years the lumber and hardware business of the D. J. Fair Lumber Company. He moved to Bunker Hill in 1915 and has since been manager of the Foster Lumber Company. The yard and plant and offices of the company are on the Union Pacific Railway tracks. Besides this business connection Mr. Briggs is a stockholder in the Marland Oil and Refining Company in Oklahoma. He is a republican voter and is affiliated with Beulah Lodge of Masons at Bunker Hill.

Mr. Briggs married at Oneida, Kansas, in 1896, Miss Ivy Wilson, daughter of C. C. and Anna (Peaver) Wilson. Her parents live at Pawnee, Oklahoma, where her father is a stock buyer. Seven children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Briggs, constituting a very interesting family of young people. Annabel, born in 1898, is a graduate of the Bunker Hill High School and is a teacher at Kipp, Kansas; Berenice, born in 1900, is a graduate of the Bunker Hill High School and is employed in the National Bank at Sabetha, Kansas; Harlow, born in 1902, attends high school at Pawnee, Oklahoma; Howard, born in 1904, is a sophomore in the Bunker Hill High School; Maxine, born in 1906, is in the first year of the Bunker Hill High. School; Jeanette, born in 1907, and Gwendolyn, born in 1911, are the youngest children and are in the early grades of the local school.

Pages 2120-2121.