Robert A. Lough

ROBERT A. LOUGH is manager of one of the most important co-operative institutions among the farmers of Northern Kansas, known as the Farmers Co-operative Association, with headquarters at Osborne. Co-operative marketing and merchandising is finding rapid favor in many sections of the western states, and of county organizations that in Osborne has many times justified its existence by practical results and benefits. Mr. Lough was one of the organizers of the association in 1908. The company is incorporated and owns and operates seven grain elevators and six stores in Osborne County. The stores are located at Osborne, Portis, Downs, Bloomington, Alton and Covert.

Mr. Lough is member of a notable family of Kansas. He was born in Ontario, Canada, January 19, 1861. His grandfather, William Lough, was a native of Scotland, was a millwright by trade, and in early life located in Ontario, where he died in 1883. John A. Lough, father of Robert A., was born in Ontario in 1835. He grew up and married there, followed the trade of miller and millwright, and in 1870 located at Pleasanton in Linn County, Kansas. He built the first flour mill in that section. Later he built a large flour mill at Chetopa, Kansas, and died in that town in 1894. He was a Methodist and a republican.

John A. Lough married Susan Jane Craig, who was born in Ontario in 1836 and died at Chetopa, Kansas, in 1912. The oldest of their children, William J., is a miller at Morrisville, Missouri; Martha is the wife of F. D. Allen, a merchant at Baldwin, Kansas; Robert A. is the third in age; Thomas H. is a merchant and elevator operator at Bayneville, Kansas; Emma married E. J. Kinzer, a retired lumber dealer at Baldwin, Kansas; Samuel A. is a widely known educator, born in Ontario July 7, 1864, graduated from Baker University at Baldwin and since 1893 has been connected with university life as an instructor and professor, being a member of the faculty of the University of Denver until 1917, and since July 10, 1917, has been president of Baker University at Baldwin, Kansas; Harriet lives at Baldwin, wife of Rufus Milner, now deceased, who was a hardware merchant; and Nellie is the wife of N. E. Allen, a lumber dealer at Vancouver, Washington.

Robert A. Lough was about nine years old when his parents came to Kansas, and he received his education in the public schools of Chetopa, graduating from high school in 1879. He attended Baker University one year and then entered upon an active career as a miller. For twenty years he was in that business at Chetopa, and in 1902 moved to Osborne County and was a rancher there until 1908, when he took an active part in organizing the Farmers Co-operative Association. He is also a half owner in a flour mill at Holyrood, Kansas. He is chairman of the official board of the Methodist Episcopal Church at Osborne, is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias and the Modern Woodmen of America at Osborne, and has served as a member of the board of education both at Chetopa and Osborne. He is a republican in politics.

In 1884, at Chetopa, Mr. Lough married Miss Maude Wright, daughter of Henry and Sarah (Howard) Wright, both now deceased. Her father was a farmer. Mr. and Mrs. Lough have three children, Bernice, a graduate of the National Training School at Kansas City, Missouri, now a teacher at Arkansas City, Kansas; Muriel, wife of O. H. Wood, a graduate of Baker University, and now in the bond department of the National City Bank of New York City, but a resident of Kansas City, Missouri; and Mary, who graduated A. B. from Baker University and is now superintendent of schools at Woodston, Kansas.

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