Caleb Dagg

CALEB DAGG. In all the changes that the passage of thirty years has wrought in Kansas the most notable and interesting are those brought about in the lives of the men who have been identified with the progress and development of different sections daring this period. To many of these may be justly attributed the great advancement made not only in their personal affairs but in almost every activity and industry that has broadened commercial opportunities and made people more independent, happy and contented. These pioneers and builders may not all have pursued the same path but the result has been beneficial. Perhaps no citizen of Lane County has worked more industriously or set a better example than Caleb Dagg, widely known in financial and other circles, who is vice president of the First National Bank of Dighton, president of the First State Bank of Healy, Kansas, and on July 6, 1918, was appointed treasurer and elected a director of the Federal Land Bank of Wichita, Kansas, one of the largest financial institutions in the country.

Caleb Dagg was born March 10, 1859, in County Tipperary, Ireland. His parents were Adam and Margaret (Powell) Dagg. Adam Dagg and wife were also natives of County Tipperary. They came to the United States in 1884 and Adam Dagg bought a farm in the southwestern part of Shawnee County, Kansas, on which he lived during the rest of his life, dying there in 1905, at the age of seventy-five years. He married Margaret Powell, who still lives in Shawnee County. They had the following children: John, who died in Shawnee County; Caleb; Margaret, who, became the wife of Robert Clampatt, of Los Angeles, California; George, who lives in Shawnee County; Thomas, who died in Shawnee County; Eleanor, who is a resident of Los Angeles, California; Elizabeth, who, with her sister Temperance, the widow of Robert Willason, lives at Santa Fe, New Mexico; Susan, who resides with her brother Caleb at Dighton; and Adam, William and Frances, all of whom reside in Shawnee County.

Caleb Dagg attended the common schools in Ireland and then for a time was a clerk in a mercantile establishment. He had had no farm training when he accompanied his parents to the United States and to Shawnee County, Kansas. He made his home with them for one year and then started out for himself. In October, 1885, he came to Lane County and entered a homestead, the southeast quarter of section 5, township 16, range 27. Travelers on the great trans-continental railroad trains, rushing from the eastern to the western seaboard, may still see in some of the western country a "dugout" home, and this was the type of residence Mr. Dagg constructed immediately after taking possession of his homestead. His was a one-room affair, 10 by 12 feet in dimensions, with half inch boards supporting the sod roof and with a dirt floor, with a half window inserted to admit light. While there was not much room to admit luxuries in the way of furniture, at that time Mr. Dagg had no time to enjoy the same. Contrary to a practice frequently followed, he remained on his land from the first, determined to succeed if hard work and frugal living could accomplish it.

Mr. Dagg through working for others was able to obtain a few cattle and as he raised feed on his own land, this gave him a start. Before he had finished proving up his land, however, it was necessary to build a second sod house, this fact being unpleasantly brought to his attention one night when he returned home wet from a cold rain and found a lively Texas steer occupying his bed room, having fallen through the roof. The work on the new "soddy" he did at off times, making the single room a trifle larger than the old one, and in that 12 by 12 hut he passed two years. In the meanwhile, having succeeded quite well with his first land, he took out a pre-emption claim adjoining, built there another sod cabin and proved up on that land also. For seven years he remained on his country property, each year improving it and all the time setting am example of industry.

In the meanwhile the nearby village of Dighton had grown into a town of about 700 people with settlers coming continually, and Mr. Dagg had the ability to forsee that the time would come when this place would inevitably be a business center. When appointed postmaster of Dighton he accepted and conducted the office for four years and upon retirement was chosen cashier of the First State Bank of Dighton, officiating in that position for eighteen months. His fellow citizens had learned to place confidence in him and much satisfaction was shown when he was elected to the office of register of deeds. In that office, one of unusual importance at that time, he served five years. Returning then to business life, he resumed banking as vice president of the institution with which he had formerly been identified, and when later it was converted into the First National Bank he continued in the same relation. His name is an asset to any enterprise and an assurance of stability in the financial institutions with which it is connected.

Politically Mr. Dagg is a democrat, casting his first vote in Lane County, and is a strong party man in state and national issues and has been a delegate many times to state conventions, but in local matters he uses his own judgment. He is identified with a number of fraternal organizations, being a Master Mason, an Odd Fellow, a member of the Order of Modern Woodmen, the Woodmen of the World and the Occidental. He was reared in a home of Christian influences, his people being members of the Episcopal Church.

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