Kansas City Cut Stone Company

Otho E. Laird

E. F. Dix

THE KANSAS CITY CUT STONE COMPANY. - Kansas City, Kansas, has her full share of industrial interests, prominent among those of importance being the Kansas City Cut Stone Company, which was formed in 1906 by Otho E. Laird and F. Lang, men of progressive views and of undoubted enterprise and ability. At the end of two years of prosperous operations Mr. E. F. Dix bought a share in the business, with which he has since been actively associated. This company deals in cut stone for building purposes, and since its formation has furnished material for many large private residences and blocks, and for many handsome public buildings, including among others the substantial high school building at Westport, Missouri, and the City Hall in Kansas City, Kansas.

E. F. Dix, a member of the Kansas City Cut Stone Company, was born in 1858, in Quincy, Adams county, Illinois, where he lived until sixteen years old, while there acquiring the rudiments of his education in the public schools. Subsequently moving with the family to Sedalia, Missouri, he learned the trade of a stone cutter, which he there followed a few years. Locating in Kansas City, Kansas, in 1895, Mr. Dix was for ten years in the employ of the Phoenix Cut Stone Company. Subsequently resigning his position with that firm, he became a member of the company with which he is now actively identified, and is meeting with satisfactory success in his operations. Fraternally Mr. Dix joined the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks in 1906, in Kansas City, Missouri.

Otho E. Laird, one of the founders of the Kansas City Cut Stone Company, was born in Seymour, Jackson county, Indiana, a son of Albert R. and America Jane (Anderson) Laird. Albert R. Laird enlisted in an Indiana Regiment during the Civil war, and was in active service four years, taking part in many important battles. Leaving Seymour, Indiana, when his son Otho was an infant, he took up a homestead claim in Washington county, Kansas, and having proved up on his one hundred and sixty acres, he returned to Indiana with his family and there remained nine years. Coming then again to Kansas, he took up another homestead claim of one hundred and sixty acres in Hodgeman county, where he lived a year. The ensuing four years he was in the employ of the Union Pacific Railway Company, being located at Wamego, Kansas. From there he removed to Oklahoma, where he took up a claim on which he resided two years, after which he returned to Kansas, and is now a resident of Olathe.

Attending school in the various places in which his boyhood and youth were passed, Otho E. Laird became a contractor in stone at the age of nineteen years, and has continued until the present time, erecting many handsome stone structures, notable among those of importance being the Christian Science church building in Kansas City, Missouri. Mr. Laird was one of the original members of the Kansas City Cut Stone Company, which is well known throughout this section of the state for the excellent quality and durability of its work.

Mr. Laird married, in 1887, Alice Becker, who was born in Missouri, a daughter of Jacob and Elizabeth (Mossman) Becker. Five children have been born into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Laird, namely: Erna Elsie, Earl and Pearl, twins; Ruby and Fred.