William B. Lockwood

WILLIAM B. LOCKWOOD, vice president of the Citizens State Bank at St. Francis, has been identified with that community nearly thirty years, so that his own life may be said to cover practically the entire history of this northwestern corner of the state.

Mr. Lockwood comes of an old American family and his father, the late Rev. J. H. Lockwood, was one of the pioneer ministers of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Kansas. This branch of the Lockwood family is descended from one of the brothers who came from England in colonial times, one of them settling in Delaware and the other in New York. The Delaware branch furnished the forebears of William B. Lockwood.

The late Rev. J. H. Lockwood had a career of greatly diversified labors and extended usefulness in the cause of the church. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1837 and lived there to the age of fourteen. He came to manhood in Illinois, finishing his education in Carlyle. In 1861 he became chaplain in the Forty-ninth Illinois Infantry and served with his command all through the war, taking the hardships and dangers of the common soldier's lot. After the war he was assigned to various charges in the Illinois Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

His pioneer work in Kansas began in 1872 in Saline County. There he took up a soldier's homestead of a quarter section and proved up on it. He also served the church at Salina three years as pastor, and three years in the Methodist Church at Beloit, and was also presiding elder of the Beloit District six years. He was for six years presiding elder of the Salina District, and another period of six years was agent for the American Bible Society in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. These positions, so briefly outlined, required practically a lifetime of effort and devotion to the church and the propagation of Christianity. At one time he was also a member of the General Missionary Committee of the church, representing Kansas, Missouri and other states. He finally retired from the heavier burdens of these positions and went to Pasadena, where he died in 1916. He was a republican and a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and at one time was state chaplain of the Kansas department of the Grand Army of the Republic.

Reverend Lockwood married Ruth Locke. She was born in County Armagh, Ireland, in 1843, and is now living, at the age of seventy-five, at Pasadena, California. She was the mother of a large family of children, a brief record of whom is as follows: Mary Elizabeth, unmarried and living with her mother; William B., who was the second in age; Frank C., who fills the chair of English in the State University of Arizona at Phoenix; Charles D., a physician and surgeon of Pasadena, and during the war commander of a base hospital in France; Anna B., wife of Rev. Daniel McGurk, former pastor of Union Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church in Kansas City, Missouri, and now pastor of a large church in Cincinnati; George M., who has a cleaning and dyeing establishment at Redlands, California; Eva B., wife of Fred Bull, who is a business partner with George M. Lockwood and manager of an establishment at Pasadena; Minnie B., wife of W. H. Carhart, a traveling salesman living at Ellsworth, Kansas; and Richard C., a dentist whose home is at Pasadena.

William B. Lockwood was born at Johnsonville, Illinois, July 30, 1862, and was ten years of age when his parents moved to Kansas. He received most of his education in the public schools of Salina and Beloit. When not in school he lived on his father's homestead, but in 1884, at the age of twenty-two, entered upon a commercial career as bookkeeper in the First National Bank of Beloit. Two years later he came to Cheyenne County, and thus identified himself with practically the first things in this remote frontier district. He organized the Citizens State Bank at St. Francis and continued faithfully at his post as cashier for seventeen years. Then followed a period of residence in California. He was in the furniture business 4 1/2 years at Pasadena and Redlands. He took up his home again at St. Francis and resumed his connection with the bank as vice president. The other officers are L. J. Willis, president, and F. L. Shields, cashier. The Citizens State Bank is capitalized at $20,000, with a surplus of $10,000, and is one of the oldest banking houses in Northwest Kansas. Its handsome brick home was erected in 1912.

Mr. Lockwood is a republican in politics. For three years he was a county commissioner of Cheyenne County and in 1902 was elected to represent the county in the Legislature, handling his responsibilities with credit during the session of 1903. He is affiliated with St. Francis Lodge, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, Atwood Chapter, Royal Arch Masons, and is a past grand of St. Francis Lodge of Odd Fellows and has represented it in the Grand Lodge. The Lockwood family resides in a modern home built in 1910.

Mr. Lockwood married at St. Francis in 1889 Miss Mary E. Taylor, daughter of J. B. and Mary (Gregory) Taylor, both now deceased. Her father was one of the pioneer farmers in Cheyenne County. Mr. and Mrs. Lockwood had four children. The first born, Bruce W., died when only three months old; Ruth is a graduate of Baker University with the A. B. degree, and is the wife of George A. Benkelman, Jr., of St. Francis, Kansas, where Mr. Benkelman is a dentist, but during 1918 he was performing his professional duties in the uniform of a United States soldier at Camp Beauregard, Louisiana; Lucile finished her education after leaving the public schools of St. Francis at Baker University and the Kansas State Agricultural College, and is now a teacher in the home schools of St. Francis; Ava is a junior in Kansas University at Lawrence. Mrs. Lockwood passed away March 23, 1918.