C. W. Trickett

C. W. TRICKETT. The most successful men anywhere are those who are able to transform opportunities into concrete realities and to give a definite direction to those productive activities which mean most to the welfare of the world. One of them in Cheyenne County is C. W. Trickett, president of the Bird City State Bank, a young man of tremendous energy who has applied his talents to a number of different enterprises and not one without some degree of success.

Mr. Trickett was born at Fellowsville, West Virginia, January 28, 1875. His people were early settlers in Ohio. His grandfather, George Trickett, was born in 1786 and was a farmer in Ohio for many years and died at Fellowsville, West Virginia, in 1882. A. G. Trickett, father of the Bird City banker, was born in Ohio in 1843, grew up and married there and was a general merchant until he moved to Fellowsville, West Virginia, in 1870, and continued a merchant there for a number of years. In 1885 he went west and filed upon a homestead in Cheyenne County, Kansas, which had not yet been formally organized. He also took up a timber claim of a quarter section, and he lived on the homestead for nineteen years. He went through all the good times and bad in this section and ultimately prospered. He had 480 acres of land, but sold out in 1905 and moved to Bird City, where for four years he was associated with his son in the lumber business. He then retired, and has since lived in California, his home being at Whittier. He is a republican, and for two terms was mayor of Bird City. Several years ago he was given a medal commemorating his fifty years of membership and good standing in the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. He also has to his credit a record of three years one month and one day as a soldier of the Union Army with an Ohio regiment.

A. G. Trickett by his first wife had the following children: Priscilla, wife of Elmer Sidwell, a farmer in Ohio; Maggie, who married A. J. Shahan, who lived at Fellowsville, West Virginia, until the fall of 1917, when they came to Bird City, Kansas, where Mr. Shahan is a farmer. By a second marriage A. G. Trickett had two daughters, Lula and Susa, both deceased. For his third wife he married Miss Mary Bolyard. She was born in West Virginia in 1853 and died at Bird City, Kansas, in 1907. C. W. Trickett is one of her two children: Amelia is the wife of Isaac Nutt, a rancher at Whittier, California. A. G. Trickett married for his fourth wife a Mrs. Ward, a native of Iowa.

C. W. Trickett was given his first school advantages at Fellowsville, West Virginia. In April, 1886, at the age of eleven, he and his mother came to Kansas to join the father on the homestead. While growing up there he had such advantages as were extended by the rural schools of Cheyenne County of that day. He also worked on the home farm, and at the age of twenty-one exercised his rights as a homesteader. His quarter section was a mile from his father's farm and five miles northwest of Bird City. This homestead was sold in 1909. For six years Mr. Trickett also owned and operated an outfit for the drilling of wells. In 1905 he bought out the lumber business of J. A. Van Dorn at Bird City, then a very small enterprise, and he and his father together built up a large and flourishing business. He bought out his father's interests in 1909 and at the same time acquired the Chitwood Anderson Lumber Company, which had been established in 1907. He continued the augmented business until January, 1916, when he sold out to other parties.

In 1911 Mr. Trickett bought the Bird City State Bank. This was established under a state charter in 1906 and is the older of the two banks in Bird City. He is now majority stockholder and the president, the other officers being William Burr, vice president, and E. M. Boynton, cashier. The bank has a capital of $15.000 and surplus of $3,400.

While his business interests require most of his time and energies, Mr. Trickett has some large farms to look after, owning 1,800 acres in Cheyenne and Sherman counties, devoted to grain and livestock. He also owns a business building and five dwelling houses in Bird City and has a modern home of his own which he built in 1907. Through all these years he has done what he could to further the definite growth and improvement of his town and has been continuously a member of the city council since 1905. He is a republican, is past grand of Bird City Lodge of Odd Fellows, and a member of the local lodge of Modern Woodmen of America.

On December 25, 1896, at St. Francis, Kansas, Mr. Trickett married Annie Maxson. Her mother, Mrs. Rebecca (Woodworth) Maxson, lives at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Trickett. Her father, the late John Maxson, wos[sic] one of the early settlers near Bird City. Mr. and Mrs. Trickett have five children: Louise, a senior in the Bird City High School; Alice, also in the senior class of the local high school; John, a junior in the high school; May, in the primary grade of the local schools; and Carrol.